When Invisible Children Sing

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

  “Mario,” I call to the boy. He turns around, startled. He turns back and hollers through the hole in the fence, “Hey guys! Dr. Chi is here! Dr. Chi is here! Dr. Chi is here! Come here guys! Come here guys!”

  The boy waves his arm, telling me to hurry. I place my medicine box on the ground and crawl through the hole in the fence. Five cement steps descend to a worn dirt path. Turning right on the path leads to a five-foot drop-off, at the bottom of which sits a rectangular cement box, open on one side. It is big enough to hold several street children but short enough to make adults uncomfortable. Small children tend to stay there.

  The boy and I instead turn left and head down the steep path leading to the edge of a deep valley. Within this valley runs the gigantic sewage canal, which carries the city’s waste down into the La Paz River. A misstep on the steep path means an ugly fall down a slope lined with trash and excrement and into the valley of the sewage canal. A bad way to die. But living twelve thousand feet up, and among mountains, Paceños are used to climbing hills, and street kids take this path several times a day.

  We are now descending on all fours to keep from falling. It’s hard to keep my balance, as I am carrying a tackle box full of medicines. Above me, I hear the sizzle of hamburgers; below, the roar of raw sewage returning to nature. I look up at the fence. No one watching. I feel silly even though I’ve done this many times now. Small rocks tumble down into the valley, at the edge of which stand four boys and one girl.

  “Be careful. Hurry!” Be careful and hurry. A necessary contradiction for the children’s everyday survival. I get to the bottom of the decline. The kids surround me and shout out their various ailments.

  “I have a sore throat!” shouts Paola.

  “Look here,” says Enrique. “My cut. It has pus in it. Do you see? Do you see?”

  “My eyes. My eyes,” whines Lupe. “They itch.”

  “I have diarrhea! Bad diarrhea,” groans Jorge, holding his intestines.

  “Hello, Dr. Chi,” says Gabriel. He is sober, in more ways than one.

  “Hello, Gabriel,” I say. And then I announce, “I can only help you one at a time.” The kids put their fists to their noses to inhale their paint thinner–soaked yarn. A dog gingerly sniffs at my clean, soapy odor and growls. Lupe bats the dog away. I examine eight-year-old Mario’s left hand. Eight razor blade scars in a crisscross design. Last time there were seven.

  “What happened, Mario?”

  “It’s a cut.” He giggles.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I was drunk!” He stumbles about, and the kids laugh.

  “What did you use?”

  “A razor blade. It’s because I am tough!” Again they laugh.

  I clean his wound and move on to the next child. After taking care of all of them, I ask each of them how they are doing. Each child responds, “I’m fine.” I ask them if they would like to sing praise songs. They say yes, but they don’t mean it.

  “Look, Dr. Chi.” Gabriel points to the top of the hill. Two men peer down at us, their eyes narrowed. One man rests his hand on his club. He turns to his partner, who doesn’t take his eyes off of us. Silly me; we were being watched all along. And now we are trapped. The two men stand before the hole in the fence, the only safe way out. These men will go to unusual lengths to “cleanse the streets” of the street children. I still have not figured out why. Why would anyone be so cruel? Why would anyone go out of his way to cleanse the streets? I am not oblivious to the other side of the lives of these children.

  There remain two options. A small passageway approximately one foot in width runs along the sewage canal. The twelve-foot walls along the passage are smeared with the street children’s own fecal matter to discourage intruders. Walking through there would be like passing through a large intestine. At the end of the walkway is a plank that we can climb to get to the top of the encased sewage canal. Once there, we can walk to an overpassing bridge and climb up. But if the violent men were even somewhat determined, they could easily meet the kids at this bridge. The other option is to walk down along the sewage system toward the river. The walk would be about one hundred yards, but at the end of it, we would have nowhere to go except to jump into the river along with thousands of liters of excrement.

  The boys form a semicircle before me and Paola. They ready themselves to be beaten. I begin packing up. Mario’s voice trembles. “Don’t leave! Please don’t leave!” If I leave, the men will do whatever they wish, free from the eyes of any other adult.

  “I won’t leave,” I assure them. I was never planning on it. The man who had his hand on his club—the senior, it seems—begins to descend the dirt path. The other follows, slipping slightly in his leather boots. The boys’ bodies grow stiffer. Their brown eyes grow bigger as they glance back at me. What can I do? No one takes a step. No one says a thing. They’ll be down here within a few minutes, even if they are careful and do not hurry. Gabriel looks around. His fifteen-year-old mind turns quickly. He knows how these men work. He knows that down here, where no one can see them, the men can do anything they want. Gabriel raises his hands to the sky. “Let’s start singing!”

  The five boys and one girl open their mouths and sing. In the beginning, the song is simply a collection of trembling voices afraid to offend the men, afraid to let the world hear them, afraid, perhaps, to be heard by their own ears. But the song grows stronger and stronger, until the tepid murmurs transform into shouts of courage and hope. They sing about a God they rarely see in their world. A God who is truly a far-off myth—a Being they know of only through nearly unbelievable stories. They sing of His beauty and His splendor, and how He protects the weak and the helpless. The voices bounce off the walls of the sewage canal—up, out, into unsuspecting ears. The vendors stop their cooking and peer down into the valley to witness—what? A miracle? I hope.

  The two men finally step down to the edge of the sewage valley. They are on the same level as we are. I step forward and block their path to the children. Clocks throughout the city strike twelve. My heart starts to pound. Anger swells up within me. Such men are the enemies of my children. They rape the girls. Break the bones of children, leaving them crippled or limping. They kick boys in the crotch. I am ready to take the beating. The children’s song has shaken the fear out of me. The men approach.

  “Hello.” I stick my hand out to shake. Nothing. I bring my hand back into my jacket and tightly grip my metal flashlight; if I can get in a hard shot or two, the children may have time to rush up the hill and escape.

  “Hello,” says the older man. “What are you doing here?”

  Silence. We look at each other.

  “What are you doing here?” I respond.

  “It’s none of your business what we do.”

  “I work with the street children from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Thursday. I also work at two orphanages.”

  The older man looks me in the eyes. “These children are criminals and drug addicts, you know.” Had he heard a word of their song? Has he glanced for a millisecond at their faces? Our only chance to escape this beating is to make these men hear the inaudible, see the invisible. To transform, in their eyes, the children into children.

  “Well,” I tell the man, “some of them use thinner. Do you understand why? Do you know how these children become street children?”

  The man looks surprised by my forwardness. “Their parents are alcoholics,” he says, “and sometimes just abandon them.” I cannot tell if he says this to express sympathy or condemnation.

  “Yes,” I say, “most of them are from El Alto. Poverty can cause mothers to abandon their own children, fathers to beat their sons and daughters. Poverty can lead to alcoholism. Some of these children have been molested by their own blood kin. They are running away from the worst things you can imagine. They end up on the streets, sniffing thinner, trying to forget their past, present, and future. Look at them.”

  Although this man no doubt makes less money than the poorest-pai
d illegal immigrant in the United States, he still may not understand the utter poverty these kids run from. He may never have been beaten or abused. He may not empathize at all with these children, whom he sees as animals. Nevertheless the man obliges my simple request. Look at them he does, and perhaps for the first time. He looks at them as if they were real—living, breathing. With some vendors watching us, with some passersby squinting down into our sewage darkness, and with the song of the children still echoing in all our ears, the man looks at the children and takes a lip-twisting breath. He swallows, the muscles of his jaws tensing up.

  “Yes,” he says. “It’s sad.” He glances back at his partner, who seems less than impressed. The two men start their ascent back up the slope. Behind me, the children sing another song. The men stoop through the hole in the fence and disappear. A feeling of relief floods through me. The children look around at each other, grateful that the men did not beat them on their own territory. The children place their fists to their noses and deeply inhale their thinner. Entering a state of oblivion, they look vacantly at me for a response.

  “Listen to me, children. I don’t trust these men to stay away. Even though one of them looked as if his heart turned tonight, they may return later. So you guys will need to leave immediately. Do you have a place to go where you’ll be safe?”

  Gabriel steps forward. “I have a secret hiding place.” He does? He looks at me from beneath his raggedy red cap. Does he want me to stop him? If he shows the other kids his secret hiding place, it will no longer be secret. His enemies will be able to find him and stab him; malicious men may eventually learn of his hideout. “I know of this place,” he says without reluctance, “down in the sewer system, toward the river. There’s this little hole in the cement block where I sleep. No one can find me, and the sewage keeps me warm. There’s room for all of us.”

  The kids stare at Gabriel. “Maybe all of you should go with Gabriel,” I say.

  The children all nod. Gabriel is their leader, and they will follow him to a hole in a sewage canal before they sleep in a strange orphanage.

  “Very well, then. When I get to the top of the hill, I will check if the men are on the bridge, and then I will wave you clear. You can run to the hiding place undetected. Does that sound good?”

  “Yes, Dr. Cheeeee,” they sing.

  The children sniff their paint thinner, loosening their grip on this terrible existence, as Gabriel calls it. Mario asks me, “When are you going to come back?”

  “Tomorrow night. Don’t worry. Be careful. But hurry. Good night.” I climb up the hill, constantly losing and regaining my footing. I get to the top, and I look down at the kids, crowded together, a small choir, a chorus for their own tragedy. They look up at me for a sign. The only people on the bridge are street vendors. A taxi honks as it zips by. The children’s eyes are fixed on me. I give them a wave. Five boys and one girl run across a field littered with trash and feces. They disappear into the night.

  10

  I’m Bleeding

  November 9, 1997

  Out of the night, from out of the far-off darkness, down the street, up the hill, springs forth a pubescent boy holding a clear plastic bag of thin, whitish water. Before my head can crane down to see under the boy’s red cap, he is upon me. “Chi!” he says. “I’ve been looking for you!”

  The boy in the red cap is Gabriel. I should have recognized him by his walk—the way he shifts his body as he gaits forth—long before he greeted me. He is my little brother, a brother who looks like a stranger tonight. His eyes are clear, bright, focusing on this and then that. And then back at me. “Chi, you must come quick,” he says. “Anna is sick. She is bleeding. A lot.” Besides the white water, Gabriel carries in the crook of his arm two rolls of bread.

  “What’s that for?” I point to his food.

  “It is for Anna. She’s really weak.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Milk,” he replies.

  I cock my head to the side. “It doesn’t look like any milk I’ve ever seen.”

  “A little bit of milk with lots of water and sugar.”

  “It’s midnight. Where’d you get it?”

  “I had to look for a long time, and then I bought it. I didn’t steal it. I couldn’t afford to waste any time.”

  My face flames red with shame. I had written Gabriel off as a juvenile delinquent. It almost shocks me now to discover that he is a human being with feelings of empathy. How am I going to help these kids if I cannot even internalize their essential humanity? I fought for his residence at Bururu, arguing that he could not be judged by his past, and then he stabbed a boy in the back. I felt like he owed me for “rescuing” him from the street, and when he made me look like a naive fool, I retaliated by defining him as a bad egg.

  “Come on, Chi.” Gabriel pulls my hand. “We must hurry.”

  We walk briskly to “Gabriel’s house.” I call it Gabriel’s house because he is the only one who consistently sleeps here, and he takes care of the place. Gabriel lets any street children sleep in the shack as long as they leave room for him. The walls of the shack consist of wooden boards, corrugated metal, cardboard, and blue tarp leaning against each other. The roof is held up by six or seven wooden planks acting as pillars. The stone sewage canal provides the back wall. The house even claims a makeshift wooden door, tied to a post by ropes. As we approach the house, the two guard dogs bark at me. These two dogs belong to a pack of seven who rummage through trash and growl at passersby. They defend the children from strangers. They are loyal and stinky in the way only dogs can be. They sleep with the children, but tonight they wait outside. The sewage roars as it rushes by in the open canal.

  I open the door to Gabriel’s house and shine my flashlight into the darkness. Two bodies lie closely together, their backs toward me. His arm is around her stomach; his leg is over her leg. They breathe synchronously. Javier turns around, squints into the light. “Hello, Chi. We were hoping you would come tonight. Anna is bleeding. She is bleeding really bad. Can you help her?”

  “Where is she bleeding?”

  “You know. Down there.”

  “How long has she been bleeding?”

  “Two days. I don’t know what to do. Can you help her? Please.”

  “Why is she bleeding?”

  “We got rid of the baby.”

  My heart sinks. Street abortion is a reality I have difficulty facing. “How did you abort the baby?”

  “Matte.”

  “Matte?”

  Former street girls at Yassela have educated me on how to get rid of a baby. They cannot go to the “doctors” because they cannot afford them. So they go to the witches. Oh yes, there are witches everywhere, with all types of medicinal herbs and teas and llama fetuses. The underworld will take care of your problems in life. “The witch mixes the matte for us from her many glass containers filled with leaves and powder,” the girls explain. “We drink the horrible tea and within a day we start to bleed. It’s a horrible bleed. A bleed that you cannot believe. But it does the job. It does the job good.”

  “Yes, matte,” Javier tells me. “It’s over there in that bucket.”

  “I mixed it with hot water,” mumbles Anna. “And then I drank it. And then I started bleeding a lot. The baby started coming out.”

  I walk outside with Javier and see an old, rusted coffee can, the M of “Maxwell House” the only letter not completely rubbed away by time. I recall the Maxwell House slogan—“Good to the last drop”—and wince. I look inside the bucket. Different colored flowers with petals big, small, and weird. Green weeds, too. Boiling has muted the colorful flora.

  My heart aches. Was her only company a street mutt? I picture Anna drinking the bitter concoction from this bucket. Gulp. Gulp. She shrieks in pain. Dogs bark, sewage roars. The remains of a human fetus separate from her body. I can only imagine her pain, its depth and breadth, the way it reaches into every corner of her soul, how it curls in on itself and feeds itself inf
initely. I don’t need to tell her what is right and wrong. She knows by the pain. I cannot help but understand why Anna and other street girls abort their babies. Right now, the only thing I can do is support her.

  “Where did you place the baby?”

  “Right here.” Javier points to the ground right beneath my feet. I take a step back.

  “You buried the baby right in front of your house.”

  “Yes,” he replies. “Where else would I bury it?”

  So the fetus has been buried in the sewer, joining so many others. One third of the street children’s children are aborted, another third die in infancy, and the rest are street babies. These infants do not know beds or bathtubs. My tears fall gently on the ground of this sewage cemetery. How many more things can these children endure before they give up? I wipe the tears from my eyes and walk back into the house. Javier hunches protectively over Anna, whispering to her.

  Anna turns and looks at me, and then my tackle box. “Oh, no,” she says. “It’s better now. I’m fine, Chi.”

  “She’s still bleeding, Chi,” says Javier. “She is just afraid of needles. Give her a shot or something to stop the bleeding.” I am impressed by this boy’s sense of compassion for his lover. He even seems to feel responsible for her well-being.

  I dig deep into my fishing box and find the brown vial labeled “ergonovine.” My last vial. With this vial I am supposed to treat a street girl named Vera later on tonight. But Vera may not show up, and Anna is here, in pain. Ergonovine will contract the uterine arteries, the arteries that have been ripped open after the abortion. Two-tenths of a milligram of the drug will stop the bleeding for the night, buying me enough time to purchase more the next morning. Holding the vial inside my fleece jacket, I crack it open and withdraw 0.2 milligrams into my syringe. Anna looks at the 22-gauge needle, cringes, and hides her face in her blanket.

  “Okay, Anna, we are ready for you.” Javier giggles in delight.

  “Where are you going to put that?” she asks.