Alejandro carries in a mattress from another room, and I retrieve a blanket. I search Miguel for drugs and knives and tell him, “Miguel, there is no fighting, no stealing, and no drugs in the home. We have breakfast at 8 a.m. and then you will have a chore to do. This will be your bed with your little sister. She can stay with you tonight. But since this is an orphanage for boys, Pilar needs to be with you at all times. Do you have any questions?”
“I don’t think so.” Miguel and Pilar lie down on the mattress. As I back out of the room, little Pilar waves her arm. I walk back toward her, between the bare soles of the sleeping children. She cups her hands against my ear. “You will come back. Won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Promise.”
“Promise. I will be back tomorrow.”
She takes off her tiny, worn-out tennis shoes and gets under the cover. She snuggles up to her brother and quickly falls asleep.
I return from church the next morning to find Miguel and Pilar gone. Alejandro tells me they left around ten that morning. They did not say where they were going. Back to their mother, I hope. Hope is all I can do. Anxiety eats at me as I realize they may have returned to the streets. When I don’t see them on the streets over the following days, I want to believe they have gone home. Of course, they could simply be sleeping on the streets in a different area of La Paz, or they could be hiding in trees like some children, or they might have moved to a different city altogether. “Get them off the streets.” The mantra. Get them off the streets. “Promise”—her one word to me echoes. Promise. I never see Miguel and Pilar again.
7
Gabriel
32°F, Midnight, Alonzo de Mendoza
(the Red-Light District of La Paz)
Bam! Bam! Boom! Plack! Feet scrape concrete. Chests bump chests. A child’s body smacks the ground.
Another night in Plaza San Francisco watching the children play soccer. An evening of fútbol is a cool oasis in the hell that is every other minute of life. To most children in the developed world, playing is an assumed part of childhood. To girl prostitutes and street boys, kicking a leather soccer ball between two stones and into a puddle of urine is a gift from heaven. Every time I hear the children shout “Gooooalllllllll!” it is music to my ears.
Bop! Bam! The ball careens off of a young boy’s head into the aforementioned pool of urine. One team raises their hands in triumph. The other team looks to me. “Chi, come and play with us,” pleads a girl. “We need help. The boys are being rough, and we are losing.”
I jump into the arena and play fútbol with my two left feet. The air is still thin for my lungs. A heavy pant beats a quick rhythm for my fatigued body. Sweat pours down my face, which is cooled only by a whizzing ball. “Goooallllll!” The opposing team scores again, and the children celebrate by running to the steps and whipping out their tiny plastic bottles of paint thinner. They inhale and enter into their other world.
One boy’s head stands out, high above the younger ones around him. A red, tattered cap covers his brow but cannot hide the black hair that falls to his shoulders. A knifing scar crawls across his left mandible. Pimples dot his face like cities on a map. I can’t see his eyes. He’s a big kid, maybe fifteen, but already five foot three. The average Bolivian man stands about five foot four. From his baggy jeans he brings forth a half-liter bottle of clear fluid. Girls and boys, young and old, crowd like vultures around a fresh kill.
“Give me some!” they plead in asynchronous voices.
“Wait. Everyone will get his share,” the taller boy announces with calm authority. I often see him breaking up fights and leading a pack of younger boys through the streets. A couple of his “followers”—José and a black boy named Mario—keep the crowd back as he pours paint thinner into two-ounce plastic bottles. Street kids always share their thinner; they never keep a surplus. The kids snatch up the bottles as soon as they are filled.
A chill courses through my body. I watch from a distance the surreal tragedy occurring four feet in front of me. Little boys not older than eight years old clamor for more inhalant. Little girls who should be jumping rope shove others aside to get more of this brain-damaging fix. The drug is more precious than food itself. My mind zips from one scenario to another. Confiscating the drug would only deter the children from it temporarily. Asking or telling them to stop would be futile. And so I watch as the children inhale the amnesia-inducing poison, the antidote to memory, the thinner that thins out brain cells.
The euphoria goes on for several minutes. They return to earth. They disperse.
Another night on the streets. For a couple of weeks now, I have been watching the confident boy who shares his euphoria, noting his mannerisms, actions, and reactions. I know his name.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” he replies. Same drug. Same clothes. Same cap. His hood hides his eyes; I see them only as sparks intercepted by the light as he turns his head away from me. Our eyes bore holes into the concrete at our feet.
“Your name is Gabriel, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And your name is Dr. Cheeeeee! Even though I sniff”—he inhales deeply—“I am still as smart as a cat.” He’s been watching me, these nights, longer than I’ve been watching him.
I offer my hand. He takes it. I shake his hand with as strong a grip as I can muster. “You’ve been on the street for quite a long time.”
“Yuuuuuppppp!”
“Where do you live?”
“Oh, you know, here and there.”
“In the sewers, right?”
“How do you know?” He’s surprised.
“I’ve seen you walk down into the sewers.”
“I live way far down. Deep. It is very dark. No one can see me. It is my hiding place.”
“Do you like the sewers?”
“It is better than the streets. Life is horrible on the streets and in the sewers. But I feel safe down there. Not even the violent men are willing to walk into the sewers. I have ten furious mutts and a few drunks sleeping with me!” He speaks with pride. “The rule on the streets is survival. You either live or die by your actions. I choose to live.”
He respects me, I can tell, as I respect him. I take a deep breath, relax, ready myself to ask the big question, the silly question for a tough kid like Gabriel. But I must: “Would you be interested in living in the home?”
Gabriel looks at me with an eye of suspicion.
“Why would I want to live in a home when I can be outside and free?”
“We have a bed with blankets, food three times a day, school, and arts and crafts for you to learn.” An uneasy silence. “Plus, in a home, no one can beat you.”
He walks away. I guess that means no.
The fútbol game is even fiercer tonight. Older boys have joined the nightly game. With his yarn pressed against his panting mouth, Gabriel dribbles the ball past one defender and shoots. The goalie leans and deflects the ball with her right hand. Gabriel’s teammate kicks the ball to him, and for once he takes the thinner from his face, to head the ball. Although his cap is soaked with sweat, Gabriel is not tired; his body has adapted so well to the inhalant that it doesn’t slow him down.
My mind flutters from one thought to another. Sleeping five hours a day over the past week has taken a huge toll. It is only half past midnight, but I will call it a night and go home. Gabriel approaches me. I stick my hand out to shake. “Have a good night,” I tell him. “I will see you tomorrow.”
“I want to go.”
I squint at him. “You want to go where?”
He looks me in the eye for the first time ever; he stares hard, as if trying to catch a glimpse of my soul. “To the home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It will be tough, you know.”
“I want to go.”
“There will be rules and everything.”
“I know.”
“No drugs. No knives. No fighting.”
Gabriel does not aver
t his eyes from mine. Here is a proud kid, a kid who understands dignity and its absence. A kid who stays warm at night by hugging a sewage canal but who hasn’t a toilet to use in the day. A kid who speaks of survival as a religion unto itself but who must steal the very essence of life—water—from other human beings. A kid who knows where he stands in the eyes of mainstream Bolivia and yet wears his street stains with the armor of thinner and the pride of a lion. “I want to go.”
“David! David!”
Boom! Boom! Boom! I slam my fist harder against the door. I hear the clinking sounds of David’s belt buckle as he attempts to hastily dress in the dark.
“Hermano David. Please wake up.”
The door opens and a short, pear-shaped man steps into the light.
“I am so sorry to wake you at this hour.”
“No problem.” He smiles at me.
“Gabriel wants to live at the house.”
David’s smile disappears. He leans over to the side to catch a glimpse of the boy hiding behind me.
“Step to the side, Gabriel,” I tell him. “Come on.”
He drags his feet and enters into view.
“What’s your name, kid?”
Gabriel’s cap is nearly covering his eyes. His head angles downward.
“Gabriel, David asked you a question. He is the counselor, the boss of the house.”
“Gabriel Garcia.” Metamorphosis. Gabriel transforms from a confident, gangsterlike street teenager into a timid boy uncomfortable with himself.
“Go ahead. Tell David why you want to live here.”
“Because”—he points toward a dirty window overlooking the city lights—“I am tired of being out there.”
“He knows the rules of the house,” I tell David. I turn to Gabriel. “Give me your drugs.” He hands me his ball of yarn and the plastic container. I turn his pockets inside out and search his body for knives. David fiddles with his motley array of copper keys and walks slowly to the first room on the left.
The door opens to darkness. Two large yellow eyes stare into the light. A low rumbling growl emanates from their direction. Room 1: You sleep with the dog. Two young boys lift up their heads and squint their eyes at me. “Hermano Chi, what are you doing here?” asks the shorter one, Carlos.
“Gabriel’s going to live with us.”
The two boys look at Gabriel. They begin shaking the other boys awake with vicious trepidation. Startled, one child jumps out of bed, confused and puzzled. He looks at me. He looks at Gabriel. “We don’t want him.”
“He is dangerous, Chi.” Carlos wags his finger at me. “Don’t let him stay here. He’ll ruin everything.” Gabriel can’t even catch a break from other street kids; do they not understand that living on the street is what made Gabriel dangerous, that now that he has been removed from that environment, he will behave differently? But I have no time to explain all this. I tell Carlos, “It’s not really your choice, is it now?”
“Chi,” says Carlos, “do you know on the street sometimes a kid with a bad reputation sits down on a bench, and all the younger kids get up and walk away because they fear him?” Carlos glances at Gabriel, as if I might not know of whom he speaks.
Without a word, Gabriel trudges to the far left corner where none of the children are sleeping. He lifts a blanket over himself and goes to bed. Not even the street boys want him. No one wants him except for some scraggly mutts and a few cirrhotic homeless men. And a small gang of street boys for whom he supplies thinner. And me.
“Take off your shoes, Gabriel.”
Gabriel reluctantly sits up and unties the tattered shoestrings of his almost sole-less shoes. I know he can be rehabilitated. I know it like I know the sum of two twos. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I say. Gabriel nods his head and pulls the llama blanket, with its colors of the sky, mountains, forests, earth, and blood, over his face.
It is 7 a.m. I did not sleep well this morning. My chest feels tight. Did he leave the home? Did he hurt anyone? Did he break anything? Is he feeling unloved? Has he returned to Mother Street?
I walk to Bururu and stand at the back door, petrified of what I might find. He will be gone. I walk into the Bururu dining room. Gabriel stands before a small, shaky wooden table. With his stubby fingers, he meticulously shapes a lump of clay into a Mary-like figurine. Entranced by his work and seemingly swimming within his element, he does not even notice me until he comes to a stopping point. He looks up at me, and a smile transforms his face. His face! I can see his face! His cap, his hood, and even his long hair are gone. And his smile—he is like a person who for years suffered from Parkinson’s disease and is now taking medication for the first time, awakening and stretching long-atrophied muscles.
“Chi!” he exclaims.
“How is it going?” I ask him.
“Good,” he replies with glee.
“Have they treated you well?”
“Yes.” He signals with a wink and an okay sign.
“Do you like it here?”
“Yes, I like it a lot here.”
“What do you like about it?”
“I get to work with my hands.” He shapes the face of his clay figurine. “I want to be a mechanic.”
“Do you need anything?”
He looks at me as if to ask why he would need anything when he has everything. I am proud of him.
“Do you need anything?” I ask again.
“No, not really.”
“How about some shoes?”
We both look down at his tattered shoes with toes sticking out of the front. I want to reward him with new shoes, to show my pride in him.
“I guess so,” he says.
“Great. I will come back this afternoon.”
“Okay, Chi.”
“You did a good job, Gabriel. You did good. What happened to your hair?”
He makes a scissors sign. The barber must have visited the orphanage today.
“It looks good, Gabriel. You looked like a girl before.” He acknowledges my joke with a smirk and an ambivalent nod.
We walk up the steep, cobblestone street to Mercado Negro, the black market. Hundreds of wooden stands sell thousands of imitation goods. Tourists are rarely seen among these crowded alleyways. Bolivians zip in and out of stands looking for underwear, socks, soap, and in our case, tennis shoes.
“How do you like the other kids at the home?”
“They are okay,” says Gabriel. “Can I have these shoes, Chi?” Gabriel hands me a pair of fake Converse canvas shoes. The white rubber sole is loosely stitched to the red cloth. The interiors have little sole support.
“How about these Aadidases?” I hand him a sturdier pair of counterfeits; the soles are double-stitched to the leather. He turns them around in his hands and rubs his fingers over the double a’s in Aadidas.
“Sure.”
“How much do they cost?” I ask the campesina woman.
“One hundred.”
Anger swells up through my neck and into my head. My scalp feels hot.
“Are you crazy? Quit ripping us off! Let’s go!”
The woman runs after us.
“I am sorry, joven. I thought that you were a foreigner. I will sell it to you for eighty bolivianos.”
Gabriel looks at me. Is this a test? “Seventy,” I say.
“Okay,” she says.
I hand her the seventy bolivianos, equivalent to fourteen American dollars. The shoes are quite expensive by Bolivian standards, but I know if I buy Gabriel cheap shoes, they will be torn up in the first week of street fútbol.
“Thank you, joven.”
“Thank you,” I reply.
Gabriel looks at me. “You did good,” he tells me.
“I am going to mark your shoes with your name on the side so that nobody will steal them at the orphanage. Is that all right with you?”
“Sure.”
I know Gabriel won’t return to the streets. I know he won’t. But he might try to sell his shoes to someone on the street
; that’s why I write his name on the shoes. I still don’t trust Gabriel with all my heart.
8
Stabbing
Sunday Morning, November 5, 1997;
Obrajes District (an Affluent Southern Area of La Paz)
I listen to Scott’s sermon with only one ear, as I turn every fifteen seconds to look at the door. There’s only half an hour left of the Iglesia de Dios service, and none of the street boys have shown up. David leads them in the hour-long walk from Bururu, and they usually arrive before the service begins.
My leg bounces up and down anxiously. It’s been one month since Gabriel joined the orphanage. Gabriel has transformed himself, with the encouragement of the Bururu counselors, into a model Bururu boy. Every day he takes a shower, cleans his room, and makes his bed. He has purged himself of all the traits of the street animal he was, showing his core innocence, proving that the hide he wore on the street was simply his original skin callused over by the beatings of his environment.
I nearly spring out of my seat when I see Daniel, a Bururu boy, standing on the threshold of the church entrance with his hands behind his back. His horizontally striped shirt is soaked with sweat. He signals to Jessica (a Bururu staff member), and she escorts him outside. Could it be Gabriel? Could he have stolen some thinner? Did he bully another child?
Ten minutes and a gallon of sweat later, I walk out of the service to find Jessica and Daniel outside in the sun and the breeze. “Tómas has been hit by a car,” she tells me.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
“He might have broken his leg. They have X-rays.”
“Good. I’ll take a look. How’d it happen?”
“The boys ran across Avenida Hernando Siles at the same time. Tómas was the last boy of the group. A taxi hit him on the leg. I’ve told the boys so many times to use the crosswalk. They never listen.”
“Did the taxi driver stop?”
“He stopped. We got his name and driver’s license. The police are talking to him right now.” He’s probably already in jail. In Bolivia, drivers who hit people are immediately thrown in prison, regardless of culpability.
When Invisible Children Sing Page 8