I dip the towel in the water. Twist. Twist. Water trickles into the basin. I wipe Maria’s face, hoping it will bring back some color. It doesn’t. Maybe the angel dress will make her look more alive.
Alejandro whispers to me, “What are we going to do with these red marks, Chi? Daniela will be quite upset if she sees this.”
“Do we have makeup of this color?” I ask.
“I don’t think any of the girls have white makeup.”
We maneuver the funeral dress over Maria’s stiff arms. Two semitransparent paper wings extend from her chest. I tug the wings upward but cannot make them cover the scratches. I hear voices. Startled, I turn around. Five little faces peep through the curtains in the front window. I throw open the door, slamming it into the wall. “How many times do I have to tell you to go downstairs?”
The little girls fly down the stairs. They have never seen me angry before. Shock paralyzes Alejandro. I offer him no explanations.
I watch night fall. The cloudless sky fades away, from brilliant red to pink to dark purple. Blink, blink, blink go the neon lights of Plaza San Francisco. Downstairs, the girls clink and clank plates, clang and bang pots as they prepare dinner.
With night comes the Andean wind. At eleven thousand feet, heat dissipates rapidly, and wind kicks up in a hurry and gets into everything. The wind whistles in through the broken window before me and tickles the candle fires that glow softly on the closed coffin, within which lies Maria, cloth flowers tied to her collar to hide her death scars. Daniela, who has been waiting for four hours, walks cautiously into the room, taking in every detail, her mouth agape. She has never seen this room so clean, and rarely has anyone prettied anything up for her.
“Do you want to see Maria?” I ask Daniela.
She nods apprehensively. She shuffles to the rigged-up table. I lift the lid of the casket. She lets out a gasp and jerks her head downward. Her body shakes as she weeps. Her sobs fill the room quicker than the wind ever could.
A knock on the door. Three of the older Yassela girls approach the casket. These girls fed and changed Maria when Daniela was busy or away. I lift the coffin lid. One girl manages, “Pobresita, pobresita,” before they sit down with Daniela.
Minutes later, the Yassela social worker crosses herself and walks with a respectful slowness toward the coffin. I remove the coffin lid. Her brows curl inward. She steps backward, step by step, into the doorway, crosses herself again, and leaves without having spoken a single word.
Silence. Brutal quietness.
Another knock. I open the door and see a young man. He is short and thin, yet strong looking. He wears a striped shirt and cheap dress slacks. “I am Maria’s father.”
He walks up to the casket, and I take off the lid. He looks at his daughter. His right hand goes to his face. His eyes narrow. His fingers tighten over his face. He looks up toward heaven with his hand over his mouth, as if keeping himself from speaking. He looks back down, between the candles, at a photograph: Maria is being blessed by a priest as Daniela and Pedro watch with young smiling faces.
Where were you, Pedro, when your baby was at the hospital? Where were you when your baby was dying and gasping for her last breath? Are you a man or a child? You are both, more child than man.
Pedro sits down next to Daniela.
“Did you call my parents?” Daniela asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Are they coming?”
“They didn’t say.”
Silence. We sit and ponder for another hour or two. Some time after midnight, I say a prayer for Maria Moreno. I ask God to protect her soul and to lend us strength and wisdom to honor Him with our lives.
Daniela looks up from her bowed head. “Thank you for the prayer, Don Chi.”
“You are welcome,” I say. “I know what you are going through.”
“How do you know?” she asks.
I had not meant to bring it up, but perhaps some part of me wants to talk about it. “My sister died,” I state concisely.
A quizzical look flashes across her face. “She did?”
“Yes.”
“How?” It seems by Daniela’s questions that she believes no one dies in the United States, that it is an Eden of sorts.
I sit down next to Daniela. “A virus killed her on Christmas morning. For most people, this type of virus causes the common cold, but we learned from the autopsy that this virus attacked her heart and killed her. I had a very difficult time for the first two years after she died. I missed her nearly every day. An emptiness lay inside of me and nothing could fill it up. Not work. Not family. Not entertainment. Not even God.”
“What did you do?”
“I worked hard to forget the past. To put it away in a dark corner of an attic.”
“Did it work?” she asks, perhaps considering this route.
“No,” I tell her. “It never does.”
“So what did you do?”
“I prayed and got help with my sadness.”
“And . . .”
“And even though the pain and emptiness never fully disappear, the nightmares eventually stopped. I finished living the past in order to walk into the future. You need to do the same thing. Let’s make this a proper wake and burial. Find friends or even me to talk with. Mourn together. Mourn alone. But you must mourn. And then you must focus on the future. The future is Natalia. The way you can redeem yourself is to make sure Natalia grows up to be an adult.”
“Yes, Don Chi.” Daniela nods.
The rest of the night is a long, slow hypnotism by flickering candlelight. The dark yellow flames dance in all directions. We wait for Daniela’s parents, but they do not come. For most of the world, Maria is just a street baby, a small part of one statistic that shows up on a World Health Organization chart in Geneva. We doze off here and there. The candle flames finish their dance together, still far apart, and the light goes out.
The next day, a dozen street boys carrying plastic cartons full of water stand around the front entrance of the cemetery. As an elderly woman approaches the entrance, one of the boys escorts her, saying, “Señora, would you like me to water the flowers at your husband’s grave? I am sure they would look a great deal better next week when you come see him.”
“I am sorry,” says the old woman, “but I promised another boy that he could water the flowers for my husband.”
“Please, Señora.”
“I am sorry, my child.” She pats him on the back and moves on. These are the cemetery kids—street children who live among the dead. Eerie. They sleep in unoccupied graves, and they rest in peace. Neither the dead nor the living bother them here. Are they preparing for their own early exit? They sleep two to three in a grave, to keep warm.
A man sits at a table, an accounting notebook and bureaucratic forms strewn before him. “Good morning, sir,” I say to him.
“Good morning.”
“The mother of this baby wants her to be blessed before she is buried.”
The man looks at Daniela and Pedro. He can tell they live on the street. “It will be ten bolivianos for the blessing.” He looks at his ledger sheet filled with numbers and figures and furiously pencils in debits and credits.
“What do you mean ten bolivianos?” I ask.
“Ten bolivianos for the blessing. This is what we charge.”
“Since when do we sell God?” I ask.
“The priest needs to feed himself, you know. He is supported by offerings.”
Alejandro nudges me gently, to no avail. I say as calmly as I can, “These street children have no home, no family, and no money. I can’t believe you have the audacity to ask for money from these youths. If the priest wants to charge, then I want to talk to the priest.”
“You can’t see him right now. He is doing a mass.”
“Then I can wait.”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to pay this time.”
“Or ever.”
Daniela and Pedro look at each other; as street child
ren, they fear all authority. They are amazed that I challenged this clerk for their sakes.
Daniela and Pedro walk out of the church carrying Maria, now blessed by the priest. The caretaker leads us into the cemetery. “Maria is to be buried at site G-3.”
Three orphan girls carry bright flowers as we walk past cement block after cement block. Each block, two stories high or so, contains a couple of dozen coffins. Embedded in each block is a plaque stating who is buried within. Most of these dead come from families too poor to bury them underground. The spaces are leased by the year, and if the lease is not renewed, the dead person is incinerated.
“G-3. Hmmm. G-3,” mumbles the caretaker. We make a turn here, a turn there. “I’m sorry,” says the caretaker, and we backtrack. “Ah, yes. Here it is.” A three-story block.
Daniela and Pedro look spent but resolved. “The workers will arrive soon,” says the caretaker.
We wait in the quietude between G-3 and G-4, in some windless corridor within the card catalog of the deceased. I am about to black out. Daniela looks at my weary eyes and says, “Chi, can you pray for Maria?”
Thank you, Daniela. And yet I don’t feel I should be the one to pray. “Maybe Pedro or a priest would be better,” I say.
“No,” she says, “I want you to pray.” We bow our heads and face the ground, even as the thousands of dead surrounding us face upward to the clear sky. “Heavenly Father, Lord, Holy Spirit. We are gathered here to bury Your child, Maria Moreno, who died too soon. I don’t understand why she had to die, but I pray for protection for this baby and comfort for Daniela and Pedro. I trust in You. Fill us with the Holy Spirit and give us wisdom to continue on after such tragedy. In Christ. Amen.”
Two elderly men in cement-stained overalls lean a ladder against block G-3. I climb the creaky ladder and look down into a hole in the roof of G-3, and I see caskets. Alejandro passes me the casket holding Maria, and Daniela watches me intently. Using pulleys, I lower the casket through a hole in the roof, down into the cement block, slowly laying the body of Maria on the cement floor. I step down, and the two old men fill in the hole with a cement slab that is broken in two. They mix cement dust with water and fill in the cracks around the slabs. G-3 is sealed.
Daniela hands me a stick. “You have the best handwriting.” I climb the ladder. I press the stick into the layer of wet cement:
Maria Moreno
Descansa en Paz
Daniela sobs.
21
Batir
30°F, 11 p.m., December 10, 1997;
Alonzo de Mendoza
Batir: to beat; to batter; to beat down.
A group of schoolchildren jostle for a soccer ball on the corner plot of Plaza San Francisco. But none of these children are from the street. No facial scars. No missing teeth. No furtive glances or meandering walks. My subcortical street child radar is completely silent. Weird.
And then I feel it. Beatriz. The young street mother rumbles toward me from Alonzo de Mendoza, where she spends her nights. Her large body jiggles like Jell-O. Beatriz rarely acknowledges my presence, except to ask for sore throat medication. I scare her away with my songs of God.
“Chi, I have been looking all over for you. You must come quick.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“It’s a batir.”
“A batir. What’s a batir?”
She drags me up the street with the full two hundred pounds of her strength. At a street corner, seven child mothers, their babies in ahuayos on their backs, stand around a small child sitting on his shins, slumped over, his back forming a soft tortoiseshell and his bent elbows moving like the wings of a bird. His hands, I see now, wipe his eyes over and over again. He screeches like a cat. I run to his side. The child’s name is Christopher Chávez. He is nine years old.
His younger brother Daniel runs up. “We’ve been looking for you. Some men gassed Christopher in the eyes. We didn’t know what to do.” Christopher and Daniel inhale paint thinner almost every minute of the day, which is an anomaly even for street children. Their alcoholic mother used to beat them with whips, chains, belts, and steel rods. They left their El Alto home a year ago to look for a better life on the streets.
“Who is that?” peeps Christopher.
“It’s me. Chi.”
“Chi, my eyes! I can’t see! They burn, Chi! I can’t see!” Christopher lets out a horrendous scream. It is as if he’d been waiting for someone to listen. He rolls from side to side, and I put my hand on his back to calm him down.
“What is a batir?” I demand.
“The violent men,” explains Beatriz. “Every month or two, they round up a bunch of street kids to take to dark places. If we resist, they beat us and spray gasoline in our eyes.” The “gasoline” Beatriz speaks of is actually a Mace-like chemical sprayed from an aerosol can. “They are ‘cleaning’ the streets of all undesirables, and that includes us.”
“Where are they now?”
“They are gone for now, but they’ll return. You’ll see. Ten to fifteen men. They take us away, where no one can see, and they beat us and rape us. This is a batir.”
“If they’re coming back, maybe you should all leave,” I suggest to the child mothers.
“We cannot leave Christopher here. He is part of our family.”
I leave for Bururu orphanage and return within a few minutes with a silver kettle of water. A couple of the violent men have returned too. The street mothers argue vehemently with them. “Leave the boy alone!” Beatriz snaps. “We haven’t done anything to you. We have a right to stay in this park just like anyone else.”
“You can’t loiter in the park!” barks the enraged man.
“What about that man drinking over there? Or that couple over there kissing? Aren’t they loitering?”
“We are cleaning the streets.” The man calms down. “You need to leave. We will take care of this boy.”
“We are not going to leave Christopher and Daniel,” shouts Beatriz. “What wrong did they do?”
“He talked back,” says the man, “and he received the consequences.”
I lead Christopher to a nearby bench, whereupon I guide him onto his back. I tell him to stop rubbing his eyes, and then I let the water pour. The boy closes his eyes and turns his head away. “Christopher, you need to keep your eyes open so that I can wash all the chemicals out.”
“But it burns, Chi.”
“I know, but I have to do this.” I pour the entire kettle of water into his eyes, and he breathes easier. “Why did the men spray gas into your eyes?” I ask him.
“Because I talked bad to them,” he says guiltily.
Suddenly a hush falls upon the mothers. A large, dark-skinned man walks drunkenly toward me and Christopher. His stomach protrudes out of his suit jacket. The street mothers rush over and stand around Christopher, ready to defend him with their own bodies. The big man walks up close to me and speaks down into my face. “You know these children?”
“Yes.”
“These children should not be on the streets.”
“These children have no home, sir.”
“That’s why there are orphanages.”
“I know. I work at one. Unfortunately, some of these orphanages are as dangerous as the streets. On the streets, they don’t risk living in the same building as abusive adults, and they avoid stabbings and fights within closed quarters. Better to risk the streets than to live with the guarantee of physical and sexual abuse.”
“Who are you?” The large man falls to one side, then catches himself.
“My name is Chi Huang. I am a medical student, and I work with street children.”
“Where are you from?”
“The United States.”
“Oh, yes. The great country.” He smiles. I project a calm face. He turns away. Not one of the street mothers or the children back off. A bead of sweat drops from his brow. He talks to the young mothers and girls. “The streets are no place for children, especially girls. You sho
uld come with us to a place where you will be cared for. There is even a television there for you.” The girls stare blankly at him.
A van screeches to a halt twenty yards away. Ten men sitting in the van gaze at Christopher, Daniel, and the girls. The large man approaches the van, and the van door cracks open.
I whisper to the children, “Go south near the river. They never go past the downtown area. Go and sleep in the woods by the soccer fields. You will be safe there if you stay together as a group.” Watching the violent gang of men carefully over the months has finally paid off; I know how they operate.
The dozens of street children begin to run and walk en masse down the street as the men step out of the van. I urge the last stragglers to hurry; some street children buy into a fatalism that tells them that since they will be killed eventually, they might as well let it happen sooner than later. Christopher and Daniel deftly weave between pedestrians, and the men only halfheartedly chase after them, knowing that the boys, who play fútbol every day, can outrun and outmaneuver them.
It is 1 a.m. now, and I walk down the street toward Plaza San Francisco. Without the street children, Plaza San Francisco is deathly peaceful. I will get an early night’s sleep tonight.
A group of young men stand on a large median. They appear to be gang members who roam the city communicating with each other by their signature whistle calls. One of these young men crouches over his knees and holds his head in his hands as if his cranium might fall apart. Between his feet, a pool of bright red blood expands with each drop of blood. “Ahhh!” he yells in pain. As I approach, two grown men—who apparently beat the young gang member—glare at me.
“Hello,” I peep timidly to the pained one.
“Who is that?” screeches the boy in agony.
“My name is Chi,” I reply.
“Chi, thank God that you are here,” he declares. “It’s Pedro. Daniela’s lover.”
“What happened to you?”
“Those men,” he whispers. “Are they still around?”
When Invisible Children Sing Page 17