When Invisible Children Sing

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

  “Why is the little boy on television during cartoon times, Mommy?”

  “The lady is asking for help.”

  “Can we help them?”

  “Chi, we can’t help right now. Not for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “Stop asking questions.”

  Why can’t they just feed the hungry people? It’s simple. Go to the grocery store, put food on a plane, and fly it over there. Everybody always says to share. We have plenty of food. Why not mail it to them? Why is everyone so stupid? Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?

  I have a secret plan to change everything. Everybody laughs at me right now because I’m a kid, but when I grow up, they’ll be asking, “What happened to all the Sally Struthers commercials? What happened to all the naked kids?” Because there won’t be any.

  1980, College Station, Texas

  Fifth grade. I am a timid kid. Especially around my father. He tells me what to do, and I don’t say anything. I just do it.

  But at school I am very competitive. I don’t like to lose. I hate losing. Even when we play the Quiet Game. I study really hard so I can be the best student in the school. And when no one can beat me, I try to beat myself. It’s not easy because I compete against a lot of professors’ kids. Now we live in College Station, Texas, also known as Aggieland, the home of Texas A&M University, where my dad is studying.

  Right now I’m running my thirty-third lap around the black asphalt playground. I run every day during recess for forty minutes straight. Everyone thinks I’m crazy. I’m training for the presidential medal for physical fitness, which is given to the best 10 percent of kids who do sit-ups and chin-ups and run the mile. I started out unfit. But I’ve been training like Rocky for six months, and soon I’ll be as good as Lance Stratton. His father won the Olympic gold medal in discus. I’ve got Lance beat on sit-ups. I can do 120 sit-ups in a minute. I can do ten chin-ups; I’m going to get that up to fifteen. I’m way behind Lance on the mile run. I have to shave off at least a minute and a half.

  Ringgggg! Recess is over and we run to stand in line for class. My clothes are drenched in sweat. Thirty-three laps in forty minutes. A new record!

  “Hey, look. Chi doesn’t have any underwear on!” The girl giggles.

  My white shorts are drenched with sweat, and my buttocks are bare through the cloth. I stand in line with my legs close together. Why aren’t we moving?

  The bully of our class looks down between my legs. “Look! It’s a tee-tee!” All the children start to laugh hysterically. “Hey, why don’t you have underwear on? Your mommy thinks you’ll wet your pants?” One girl is on the ground laughing so hard she’s crying.

  Underwear? What’s underwear? My father just wears his boxer shorts around the house. He wears his boxers to water the lawn. So I just wear my boxer shorts when I run and put my jeans on afterward. Who needs underwear?

  “Yep. A tee-tee!” the bully exclaims.

  I feel my chest caving inward. My mouth starts to quiver. My eyes get watery. Don’t cry, you weakling!

  Today is my first day in college. I’m ten years old. One hundred Texas A&M summer school students focus their eyes on me as I walk into class. They burn holes in my head. Hopefully, they won’t beat me up for being different. I stare at the floor tiles and sit down in the back row. I am wearing my favorite white shorts and my Mickey Mouse T-shirt. I pull out my Mead notebook and the mechanical pencil that my daddy purchased for me. Click. Click. Pentel 0.5 HB lead.

  I sit in the orange plastic chair, and my feet don’t even touch the ground. I rest my chin on the desk. I can’t see the board—“Jim Bob,” sitting right in front of me, has a big cowboy hat on his head.

  Why can’t I just go to summer camp like other kids? I get up at 7 a.m. At 7:30 we leave the house. At 8:00 I take swimming lessons. From 9:00 to 10:30 I take beginners’ tennis lessons. At 11:00 my mother takes me to Tinsley’s Chicken and we eat a little box of chicken. Then my mom drops me off at the Texas A&M library and gives me a bunch of homework I have to do. It’s mathematics my father has assigned me, along with homework for my university class. Every few days I also have to finish reading a book, such as Ramona the Brave or Charlotte’s Web. In the afternoons, my mother gives me a quarter and lets me go to the Texas A&M video arcade in the basement of the student center. Sometimes I play a video game such as Galaga, but it’s hard to get the hang of it when you get one quarter a day. So most of the time I end up spending the quarter on a pinball machine. Other kids think I’m weird because I don’t know who Luke Skywalker is, but it’s normal to me. I don’t like to watch TV or waste time anyway. I’ll have time to play after medical school.

  The syllabus is coming around. Jim Bob turns around. “Do you want a handout, kid?”

  Of course I want one! “Yes, thank you,” I tell him.

  “Are you some sort of savant, kid?”

  What’s a savant? Leave me alone. Are you some sort of cowboy, sir? “No,” I reply. “I just like math, and I’m auditing this course.”

  The professor begins his lecture.

  “Hey, kid, do you understand everything?” asks Jim Bob.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “Hey, kid, have you always been this smart?”

  I look down again. I’m not naturally smart. I just get a lot of practice. In fact, I completed all the odd-numbered questions in the book already. Why I am taking this class is still a puzzle to me. The only time I get out of doing math is when I pretend to be asleep. You see, my dad’s weakness is that he will never bother me if I am sleeping or sick. I wish Jim Bob would turn around. I can feel my eyes watering. Don’t be a big baby.

  “Hey, genius, I bet you a hot dog that I’ll beat you on the next exam.”

  “Ummhh. Okay. I bet you a hot dog that I can beat you.” I stick out my hand to shake on the deal. Three exams and one final equals four hot dogs or four dollars or sixteen pinball games. Thanks, Jim Bob.

  Jim Bob never made another bet with me.

  1982, College Station, Texas

  It’s 7:10 a.m. I sit where I always sit in the mornings—on the low cement wall next to the junior high school bike racks.

  “Hello, Colin.”

  “Hello, punk.”

  Colin is the seventh grade bully; he’s a grade above me. He steps up close to me. I feel precarious on my perch.

  “What’s up with the pants, punk?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a dork. Look at your pants. You have four folded rings at the bottom of your blue jeans. You look like a tree ring. Does your mommy unfold your pants every year?”

  I look down at my blue jeans. There are four successive rings. Whenever I grow a little bit, my mother unfolds the legs. I never thought it looked odd.

  “Your mom can’t afford Levi’s, punk.”

  I don’t answer. My head is hot. I am so angry. I want to make him shut up, but I can’t. I am a dork. A nerd. I’ll probably cry before I have enough courage to hit him. A wimp. A dork and a coward!

  “See you later, punk.” Whack! He kicks me in the stomach. I fall off of the wall and keel over in a fetal position. Everything turns black for a split second. Phhhh! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I look up and the sky is gray with ominous clouds. Oh good, I am still alive. I don’t think I can stand up. Maybe I have internal bleeding or something.

  1987, College Station, Texas

  I want to be a tennis superstar. I am fifteen, and tennis is my life. For the past four years, no one in my age group in College Station could beat me in tennis. Not even Lance Stratton—he can’t hit a tennis ball.

  For the last four years, I have been able to name the top fifty tennis players in the world by name and rank. They change every week, and I can tell you why the rankings changed, and who beat whom.

  Right now, I am playing in the finals of a citywide tournament at Royal Oaks Racquet Club—a country club. I’m already up a set. I’m about to win the tourney. I’ve already won first place at
the Brentwood Country Club. I wear underwear these days. And I wear the one pair of Adidas shorts my mother bought for me.

  I like it when my mom can watch me play tennis. I want to make her proud of me. We don’t belong here at the country club, though. I wish we did, but we don’t. People here are rich. And yes, I am jealous. But winning all the tournaments takes the pain away.

  I serve an ace. I win. Again. My mother stands up and walks into the country club store and looks for cheap shorts. I’ll meet her there later.

  I love winning. I’ll do anything to win. My father and my older sister are just like me. We all have to win. The only one who is different is my younger sister, Mingfang. But she’s unusual in our family. The rest of us, we’ve got to win.

  4

  Be Careful

  August 15, 1997; La Paz, Bolivia

  I have been here. In La Paz. For only two weeks. Slash, slash. It’s been one week. Drip, drip. Since my conversation with her on the rooftop.

  She has not changed. She will not change. She finds a man to take her into a nightclub. She drinks. Sometimes she has sex. She cuts herself with a Gillette razor blade. She flashes the wound at me, pretending I won’t notice. She will not let me treat her wounds unless I let her listen to my Walkman. She asks me to take her dancing. I say no. She finds someone else who will.

  Mercedes.

  I have been moping around for the last couple of days. I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to think about the street children; I don’t want to think about her. Today, after working at the orphanage, I came here, to Scott’s home, located among the cluster of buildings that make up La Iglesia de Dios.

  Scott is an atypical missionary. He sees Bolivia as his home and Bolivians as his brothers and sisters. He lives here with his wife and three children. His children go to Bolivian schools and have Bolivian friends.

  On my second day in Bolivia, Scott took me to a “welcoming” party in the altiplano. It was a convention for area pastors. When we arrived, no one else was present, so we walked around the small village and each had a soft drink. Eventually, a bus came and thirty men and women poured out of it. Everyone was warm and friendly, but I felt awkward and out of place. They were speaking Aymara. Most indigenous Bolivians speak Aymara or Quechua. A portion of the Bolivians also speak the national language, Spanish.

  Lunch was served as we sat on wooden benches. Scott sauntered by and whispered in my ear, “I guess you are the guest of honor.” I didn’t pay him any mind. I looked down into my soup and saw the toenail of some beast floating just below the surface of multiple grease globules. I grabbed my fork and poked at the toenail ever so carefully. The toenail dived into the deep abyss of the steaming soup. A three-digit claw floated upward. I waited for the claw to burst up and grab my face. I placed my fork on the table. Across the long table, everyone looked at me with a serious face. They were waiting for the “guest” to take the first bite. I looked across the room. Scott was leaning against the wall laughing hysterically, tears falling from his cheeks. Two thoughts repeated themselves: The Claw. Cultural sensitivity. The Claw. Cultural sensitivity. I took my fork and stabbed my enemy. Two bites. One swallow.

  Scott is gone now. He is on furlough in the United States for the next four months. I am in his living room alone, watching Monday Night Football by satellite. Watching U.S. television lets me tune in to America’s superpowered cleanliness and prosperity. It makes me forget about Mercedes and every other street child. It’s a brief jaunt back into the blissful oblivion from whence I came.

  Troy Aikman throws a pass to Michael Irvin. Yes. Touchdown. So this is what it’s come to. For fifteen or twenty years now, I have wanted to help the poorest of the poor children. I decided a year or two ago that the best way to help the poorest children was as a physician. Although the word missionary conjures up images of insensitive right-wing fundamentalists to my friends, and despite all my personal failings, I desire to live my life in a godly manner. I have taken a year of leave from Harvard Medical School. Upon learning of my desire to work as a medical missionary in Bolivia, my Sunday night congregation at Boston’s Park Street Church flew into action and paid for my entire trip and expenses.

  All so I could come to Bolivia and prove my whole life a sham. Is this where I stop being me? The me that I thought I was? I don’t want to get off of this couch and be me. Perhaps I ease into another identity—one that takes things easy. One that does not fixate unhealthily on the suffering of children. Who is the real me? The one that thinks, reads, and writes about the poor but is not ready to relinquish the finer things in life? Perhaps I will manage to “adjust.” Is there a special therapy for sellouts?

  Slash. Drip. Drip. Drip. Blood polka-dots the floor. Mercedes wipes the razor blade on her pants. I press my fingers into my eyes. Stop thinking about it, Chi, or you’ll be paralyzed forever. Think about how happy the children are, living in their tiny, smelly rooms. Their lives are full. Think about the carpentry classes you join them in, about how each table and cabinet is like a personal work of art, a very real triumph for each of them. Things get better each day. More tables, more cabinets. The blood clots into gelatinous globs along four parallel segments on her wrist. It is done.

  In Yassela’s open-air patio, a circle of girls make bracelets. Little Sara strings together a complex pattern of plastic beads, her brow furrowed in adorable concentration.

  “Pretty, isn’t it, Chi?”

  “Yes. I like how you choose the bright colors.”

  “Um-hmm,” she replies. “I will make you one later.”

  “Thank you.”

  As the other girls in the circle work earnestly, Mercedes sits outside of the circle, making herself a necklace. “Why isn’t Mercedes sitting with you, Sara?”

  “She is in a bad mood. She is always in a bad mood. She is no fun to play with.”

  I walk over to Mercedes and sit a couple of feet away from her. “Hello, Mercedes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing.” I take a deep breath. “How’s your wrist?”

  “Fine.”

  “Why aren’t you with the other girls?” I ask in a nice, high-pitched voice.

  “Because they are stupid,” she pronounces carefully.

  “I don’t think they are stupid,” I say. “What’s bothering you, Mercedes?”

  “I just got grounded.”

  “Grounded. Why did you get grounded?”

  “I was playing a game last night.”

  “What game?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What game, Mercedes?”

  Silence. She fears my reaction. Yet she wants me to know this, to know this part of her. “What game?” I repeat.

  “My game.”

  “What game is that, Mercedes?”

  “The cutting game.”

  “The cutting game?” My voice cracks.

  Mercedes presses an invisible razor blade against her wrist. “We cut ourselves”—she drags the invisible razor up her forearm into the crook of her elbow—“and see who has the longest cut.”

  “What?” I whisper harshly. “Who did you play with?”

  “Sara and—”

  I run over to Sara. “Sara,” I say, bending down to face her. “Show me your wrist.”

  A fresh two-centimeter slash crosses her right wrist.

  “Who did this?” I ask her.

  “I did,” she says innocently.

  “Have you ever done this before?” My voice rises.

  “No.”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “It is a game that Mercedes taught us?” she says, almost as a question, sensing my disapproval.

  “Where did you do this?” My heart pounds.

  “In our bedroom late at night.”

  “Where was the counselor?” My face is red.

  “Asleep.”

  “Sara, how old are you?”

  Sara looks at my face, unable to speak and about to burst into tears. She spreads her fi
ngers, signifying five.

  “Sara. Listen to me. This is not a game. Do you understand me?”

  Tears trickle down from her brown, almond eyes. She looks down. “Yes, Chi. We were just playing. I’m sorry.”

  “You will promise me that you will never do this again. Okay?”

  “Okay.” She sniffles.

  I am on the verge of screaming. I feel betrayed, though Mercedes never promised me anything. I put my trust in her youth. Maybe she does not know any better. She has long ago betrayed her own youth. I am the young one here, betrayed by my own naïveté. I take a deep breath. Tugging Sara by the arm, I take her to Mercedes. “Mercedes. Where did you find the razor blade?”

  She grins.

  “Answer me!” My temper flares. “Where did you find the razor blade?”

  “I have my own collection.” She smiles.

  “Where is it?”

  Silence.

  “Tell me.” I soften my tone.

  “The counselor took it away from me last night.”

  “If you ever teach these girls to cut again, you will be kicked out of the house. Do I make myself clear?”

  Mercedes looks me in the eyes. “I hate you!”

  “Let’s go, Sara.” I treat Sara’s wound as she cries and screams, but I redeem myself by placing a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on her cut. Sara runs down the stairs and finishes her bracelet.

  10:30 a.m., Bururu Home for Street Boys

  Badly tardy, I walk into the carpentry room at Bururu to see Señora Olivia running up to me. “Where have you been? I have been waiting for you!” She leads me to a storage room. “This is your examination room.”

  Lining the back wall are ten-gallon bags of carrots, potatoes, and chuña—miniature potatoes freeze-dried in the icy ground of the Andean peaks. Hundreds of species of potato are used to make chuña. Fifteen mattresses are stacked neatly beside the potatoes. A 1950 Singer sewing machine sits lonely in the corner. Before me is a four-by-two-foot table covered with sawdust.

  “Let’s get started.” Señora Olivia walks out of the storage room, shrieking, “Jorge! Jorge!” I clear my mind for the task before me; work is good for clearing the mind of disturbing, repetitive images. I lay my stethoscope, ophthalmoscope, otoscope, and blood pressure cuff neatly in a row next to my two medical texts. A small, semi-disheveled boy enters and stands on the other side of the table. He looks up at me sheepishly. “Chi, can you take care of my feet for me?”