When Invisible Children Sing

by Huang, Chi Cheng,Tang, Irwin,Coles, Robert

  2

  Slash, Slash

  August 1997, Yassela Home for Street Girls

  In mid-August, it is the dead of winter in Bolivia. The morning air stirs little as I meet Nurse Olivia at the entrance of Yassela Home for Street Girls. “Buenos días,” I say to her, and she returns the salutation.

  “How often do you see girls like Mercedes?” I ask her.

  “Girls like what?” she asks.

  “Girls who cut themselves.”

  “They are everywhere, Chi. Nearly all the girls cut. But they don’t all cut as much as Mercedes.”

  “Why?”

  The nurse looks at me as if the answer is self-evident. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why do these girls cut themselves?”

  “Because they enjoy it,” she tells me.

  I close my eyes. Slash. Slash. Two red lines gush along a thin brown wrist. Mercedes inhales deeply. I shake the image out of my head. “Did we get the results of the cervical culture? Is it gonorrhea? Chlamydia? Is it herpes?”

  “I don’t know,” replies Nurse Olivia.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I never got the results.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you take the sample to the laboratory?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Anger seeps to my temple as I realize that Nurse Olivia never intended to send the sample. Was she angry at me? Does she want to take care of the children herself? Luckily, I gave Mercedes a battery of antibiotics that would treat most major sexually transmitted diseases. Not HIV. I can’t test for it; I can’t treat it. Not in Bolivia.

  “Anyway, Chi”—she shoos me along—“enough talk. We need to get to work. Work, work, work. You have to complete physicals for nearly fifty boys at Bururu and twenty girls at Yassela.”

  “Yes, I know. I will start in half an hour.”

  “Start immediately. At Bururu. You will finish in three days.”

  “I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes.”

  “Thirty minutes, no later. Be careful with Mercedes. Her bites hurt.”

  I look at Señora Olivia. I still misunderstand jokes. “What?” I ask.

  “You will find out soon enough,” she replies. “Soon enough, you will know.”

  I find Mercedes sitting alone in a corner of the activity room. I sit down beside her. I try to look her in the eyes, but her clumpy hair blocks my view. “Mercedes,” I say. She doesn’t respond. “Have you taken your medication?”

  “Leave me alone,” she grumbles.

  “How is your wound?”

  “Fine.”

  “Can I see the cut? I need to check up on it.”

  “No,” she says numbly to nobody.

  “Remember what I said about necrotic wounds? You could lose your whole arm.” She doesn’t seem to care about her arm. “What’s going on, Mercedes? Don’t you want to get well?”

  “What will you give me if I let you look at my cut?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Let me listen to your Walkman,” she tells me.

  “What?” I ask.

  She doesn’t deign to repeat herself for me.

  “You want to listen to my Walkman?”

  “Give me your Walkman,” she says.

  “Can I ask you a question, Mercedes?” I want to know her. I want to figure her out, as if a human being can be deduced like a scientific fact.

  “No,” she says.

  “Did you want to kill yourself when you cut your arm?”

  “No!” She shoots an indignant and quizzical look at me. At least she is looking at me now. “What do you mean?”

  Not knowing exactly what I mean, I rephrase, “Did you want to die when you cut yourself?”

  “No.” She laughs at me. “Are you crazy?”

  To her I am the strange one because I think that slicing open one’s wrists is suicidal. “So,” I ask, “why do you do it then?”

  “Because I like it.” She looks at her sleeved arms, as if dozens of badges of honor were laced across them.

  “You have a new cut, don’t you? How often do you cut yourself?”

  “Every day,” she says.

  “How many cuts do you have?”

  “A few,” she states.

  “Why do you cut yourself?”

  “Because I need to do it.”

  “What happens when you do not cut yourself every day?”

  “I feel bad.”

  “Where do you feel bad?”

  “On the inside.”

  “How do you feel bad inside?”

  “Tension,” she says. “Tension inside.” She holds her fists to her chest. Her brows furl up, meeting to form a summit. She looks at me with such force built up in her body that I believe she might burst forth and break my nose.

  “So,” I say, “what happens when you cut yourself?”

  “I feel good.” She takes a quivering breath. “Tension goes away. Far away.”

  “Far away?”

  “So far away. I am not here anymore. All the tensions in my body are released. I am free, so free. I feel wonderful. You will never know unless you try it. Do you have a razor blade?”

  I use my razor blade to shave. “So, it doesn’t hurt?”

  “Of course not, silly.” She looks into my eyes. “You should try it,” she implores. She really, really wants me to try it.

  “No thanks,” I say, trying to steady my voice. “It never hurts?”

  “It hurts later.” She silently recalls the pain. “It always hurts later.”

  “Why do you have tension inside?”

  “I do not know. I always have felt bad inside.”

  “Always? Since you were little?”

  “Yes, quit asking so many questions.”

  “Okay. But why did you leave your home?”

  “Because it was boring,” she snaps.

  “What do you mean it was boring?”

  “There was nothing to do at home except chores.”

  What child would leave the secure boredom of home for the danger of the streets? “And the streets? What are they like?”

  “The streets are fun.”

  “What do you think about your mother?”

  “I hate her. She always yelled at me to do my chores.”

  “Your father?”

  “I hate him.”

  “Why? Did they mistreat you?”

  “Shut up, Chi! I just hate them. I hate you. Leave me alone.” Mercedes turns her back to me. What do I want from her? Answers? And when I get the answers, what then? Ask more?

  She walks away.

  “Mercedes.” I reach toward her. She whirls around, her hands again at her chest, this time clasped together. “Chi!” she says. “Take me dancing! Take me dancing this weekend!”

  “Dancing?” I step back.

  “Yes, dancing. Don’t you dance?”

  “Yes. I dance. But . . .” I say. “Who do you dance with? Your girlfriends?”

  “No. Guys.”

  “Boys from the orphanage?”

  “No, silly.” She chuckles. “Guys. At the club. Some are businessmen. They are older men. They pay my cover; they buy me drinks. They buy me whatever I want. They show me a good time.”

  “You’re only fifteen, Mercedes.”

  “So?”

  “So. Don’t you think you are too young to do these things?”

  “No.”

  “Why do they dance with you?”

  “I give them what they want.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She giggles. “You should know. You are the doctor.”

  “Don’t we have a curfew at 8 p.m.?”

  “Yes. They are so strict here. I hate it.”

  “Maybe the counselors are trying to protect you from getting into trouble.”

  “What trouble is that?”

  “These men in the clubs can be dangerous.”

  “They are
n’t dangerous, silly. I know them.”

  “Do they care about you?”

  Mercedes rolls her eyes. “Who cares about anybody in this world?”

  “Would they take you dancing if you refused to give them what they want?”

  She cackles. “Dr. Chi, everything comes with a price. Nothing is free. You have a lot to learn.”

  “Hmmm. Everything comes with a price, huh? Are you paying rent here at Yassela? Or buying your own food?”

  “No.” She scowls at me. “My payment is that I have to follow these stupid rules and curfews.”

  “Tell me the truth, Mercedes. Do the men ever hurt you?”

  Mercedes is quiet.

  “Do they ever beat you?”

  Mercedes is silent.

  “After you are with these men, do you cut yourself?”

  Mercedes turns her back on me again.

  “Mercedes,” I say. She walks away, up the stairs. I follow her to the rooftop. A gust of wind throws her matted hair up into the air, and I notice many colors in it—dark red, black, brown, auburn; she’s colored it over and over, never finding the perfect shade. She ducks beneath the clothesline, under a line of little girls’ dresses and pants dancing on the breeze. She stands at the edge of the building and looks down onto the street a few stories below.

  Perhaps she is sad because she thinks that I have figured her out. That I’ve taken her personality, divided it by her secrets, multiplied that by every one of the two hundred scars on her body, and come up with the answer. The answer of exactly what she is. Maybe she is sad because that formula—what makes her tick, what makes her cut—seems so simple, maybe even to her. Perhaps she doesn’t realize that I need her to be simple. I need her to be easily explained. I need the answers. But I know she is not simple. Knowing all her secrets, all her life history, will never explain her, never simplify her. But I ask her for answers anyway, believing in my gut that knowing those answers will help her.

  Another gust of wind nearly blows Mercedes over the edge of the building. “Mercedes.” I stand beside her. “Have you ever danced with anyone else? Anyone besides the guys at the clubs?”

  “No,” she says.

  “Anybody in your family?”

  “My uncle sometimes.”

  “So you went dancing with your uncle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that odd for you?”

  Mercedes twists a tangle of hair in her fingers, shielding her eyes from me. “No. It was fun in the beginning.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “It was not as fun as it was before.”

  “What do you mean, Mercedes?” I try to angle my way into her sight. “You didn’t like dancing with him?”

  “I didn’t like dancing with him.”

  “Did he ever do anything with you besides dancing?”

  “He used to hurt me afterward.”

  “What do you mean, ‘hurt you’?”

  “He made me his lover.”

  I am quiet. I am silent. Behind me, the little girls’ dresses do flips. Below us, a car holds a long note on its horn. Eventually, someone will move on and the car will stop singing. Before me, the slender ribs of Mercedes cut through the wind as she turns slightly.

  “Yes. His lover,” she says, twisting that curl in her fingers, razor scars crawling up her wrist.

  “When was the last time you saw your uncle?” I ask her.

  “I haven’t seen him since I left home.”

  “Does he or your parents know where you are?”

  “No one knows.”

  Mercedes turns to face me. “Chi, take me dancing.” She tries to smile. She sees that I see her trying too hard. “Take me dancing, or I’ll cut myself.”

  3

  American Dream

  Winter 1971

  A petite Taiwanese woman in her early thirties, her hands holding her protuberant abdomen, waddles to the end of a queue of women, each carrying her own bulging belly. The line to the shower moves slowly. There is always a line, and it is always slow. The Taiwanese woman looks back at the room. Twenty beds arranged perfectly parallel to each other, side by side and without dividers. The room reminds her of army barracks.

  At night, it’s hard to sleep. With twenty pregnant women, some going into labor at all hours, she wakes up and wonders if she, too, will scream and groan like her sisters. “Ahhh!” they scream. “Make the pain go away!” She’s not used to hearing so many expletives.

  Taiwan was better. She gave birth to her first child—a girl—in her home in the southern city of Tainan. Her mother was the midwife. They were together, smiling and sweating, welcoming the baby girl to the world. Her mother had gentle hands and encouraging words.

  This time she will give birth in Richland Memorial Hospital in a city called Columbia in a province known as South Carolina.

  A woman asks her a question. She does not understand. People in America speak too fast. The lady seems friendly enough, so she smiles back and says yes. She thinks about Taiwan again. Her family. Her friends. Her language. Her job as a schoolteacher; her life as a ballet dancer. She left everything she knew to live the American dream.

  A sharp kick in her uterus rouses her from her thoughts. Her baby. Her son, she hopes. A son to bring honor to the family. A son to be cherished. Her son will make her proud. Her son will be a doctor. He will support the family. She feels her water breaking.

  At three in the morning, at nine pounds and seven ounces, her son is born. Her son. Chi-Cheng Huang. Huang means “yellow.” Chi-Cheng stands for “your passionate heart will bring about great success.” Her baby boy.

  Spring 1973, Columbia, South Carolina

  Mrs. Huang arrives early at Stone Manufacturing Company, maker of undergarments. She does not want to be late. Polite and deferential, she wants no trouble. She needs the money to feed her daughter and newborn son. No English, no problem. Just sew. Always faster. Her job today is to sew the bra straps to the bras. She sews until she loses track of time and place.

  The buzzer shakes the metallic walls of the warehouse. All the sewing machines stop suddenly. A sigh of relief permeates the air. It’s five o’clock. Mrs. Huang blows on her red, painful fingers and notices a drop of blood seeping out of her cracked right index finger. The supervisor announces how many bras and pairs of underwear each assembly line sewed together today and then encourages the women by saying, “Good work today. Let’s have a better day tomorrow.”

  Errrkkkkk! The bus screeches to a halt. Mrs. Huang now stands before Henley Homes housing development: small two-story, red brick buildings lined up side by side; identical in size, shape, and construction. Just like the hospital beds.

  And now for the happiest moment of Mrs. Huang’s day: she walks toward Wilma’s apartment. Mrs. Huang found Wilma through a tedious process. She went door to door, saying to each resident, “Hello. Take care of my children. Pay money.” Astonished, her daughter often pleaded, “Mommy, you don’t even know her.”

  Knock, knock.

  “Hello, Wilma,” says Mrs. Huang.

  “Hello, Mary,” says Wilma.

  Mrs. Huang’s four-year-old daughter runs to her with open arms. Mrs. Huang carries her up the stairs to find baby Chi-Cheng. He is in the crib, his diaper wet. Again. She won’t say anything. Mrs. Huang will find a better babysitter when she sews the bra straps faster. Right now, she can afford to pay only five dollars per day. Her husband is a graduate student in mathematics at the University of South Carolina, and his teaching assistant salary barely covers tuition and books. She hardly ever sees her husband, except at dinner.

  Mrs. Huang thanks Wilma and quietly leaves. Mrs. Huang walks behind her apartment to the grassy backyard where her family’s clothes hang on a clothesline. They did it again. Someone has stolen her husband’s underwear. Four pairs are missing, and strangely, four remain.

  It is quiet now. Nighttime. The South. Crickets chirp their midnight songs in search of a mate, interrupted only by the humming of passing
cars. Mrs. Huang feeds her son.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! She looks out the window. The four windows of a car have been shattered. Two men jump into the car and look for valuables. They run away without any goods. She looks at her son. Feeding comfortably. Her husband is snoring loudly on the bed. Tears trickle down her cheeks. The car belonged to her husband. They had saved for years to buy it. A blue four-door Plymouth. It is too dangerous to look at the damage tonight.

  She does not sleep. She stares through the window. In the morning she will drop off her children at Wilma’s and take the Route 41 bus to Stone Manufacturing Company to sew bras together. She will come home to cook and wash. She will sleep tomorrow night.

  1976, Columbia, South Carolina

  I am Chi-Cheng Huang. I am almost five years old. My older sister is Chiufang. She is nine. She’s on the front page of the Columbia Record. That’s the city newspaper. She’s famous. She’s the first Asian student at A. C. Moore Elementary School.

  I’m at home watching Bugs Bunny. Sometimes I go out and ride in my plastic car and deliver mail to all the neighbors. I am going to be a mailman when I grow up. I used to want to be the garbageman. He gets to ride on the back of the truck and throw trash into the truck mouth and talk to everyone.

  A blonde lady comes on the television. I think her name is Sally Struthers. She’s walking through a village of poor people. There are tons of kids around her. They’re not playing. They’re starving. They don’t get fed by their moms and dads because there isn’t enough food to go around. They don’t even have clothes. They walk around naked, asking Sally Struthers to give them food.

  Whenever I watch this, I can feel my heart. It’s like a bowling ball in my chest. I don’t like having a bowling ball in my chest, so I say, “Mommy!” And my mom runs into the living room as if there’s something wrong.

  “What?” she says.

  “Mommy!”

  “What is it?”

  “Mommy, why are their homes made out of boxes?”

  “They are poor.”

  “Why don’t they live here with us? In Henley Homes?”

  “It is too hard to fly to the United States.”

  “And why don’t they have clothes?”

  “Because they are poor.”