“Sure is!” she shouts over the moaning sky.
“Let’s find some cover!” I shout.
We walk up the sidewalk, stepping over a sprawled, soiled drunk oblivious to both the rain and the small puddle of vomit beside his face.
“Where are we going, Chi?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Where are the children?”
“Follow me. I will bring you to some of them.” She walks northward. Do I detect a slight limp in her gait? We walk for five minutes.
We approach three orange Cotel Teléfono booths, their glass walls fogged up and stained by graffiti. “Where are you going to sleep tonight?” I ask her.
“I’ll sleep on the streets,” she says. “Where else?”
“Can you find any cover?”
“That’s what I am looking for,” she says.
“Where is everybody?”
“Right here,” she says. I look more closely inside the telephone booths and see faces peeking out at me, four children jammed into each cubicle. I open one of the booths. They shake uncontrollably. “Joven Chi! Joven Chi! Cold night, eh?” They jump up and down.
“It’s kind of chilly,” I say. I walk to the next booth and recognize more of the children.
“I have a sore throat,” a boy pleads.
“Look at my lip.” The girl’s lips are swollen to the size of small plantains as a result of an allergic reaction to paint thinner. “My bottom lip is busted.” I treat the boy and the girl. Other children line up in the rain. I use the booth as my examination room. When I am finished, Vicki tugs at my jacket. “I need to talk to you.”
We walk to a booth occupied by a single ten-year-old boy, José. “I need to talk to Chi,” Vicki tells José. “Get out.”
“Are you crazy?” José shouts. “It’s raining!”
“I need to talk to Chi. It’s private.”
“Whatever!” he replies.
“It will just be a couple of minutes, José,” I tell him. José leaves with a long grumble.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“My stomach hurts,” she says.
“Why does it hurt?”
“One of the boys punched me in the stomach.” She holds her tummy.
“Why did he hit you?”
“Because I would not give it to him.” The rain batters the window of the telephone booth, muffling all words.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“He wanted me. You know. He wanted to get some.”
“Oh,” I reply, “so what did you do?”
“I said no,” she says, without pride or shame.
“And then?”
“And then he punched my stomach out of anger. Chi, it really hurt. I kneeled over and started to cry. And then he left.”
Boiling blood rushes to my face. I am no longer cold or wet. I am angry at the boy. I want to take retribution. To give him a strong punch to the stomach. Vicki is a child; she is poor; she is homeless; and she is a girl. Four strikes and Vicki is out. I wish I were there when she was doubled up in pain, trembling on the concrete. I wish I could have comforted her. But I was not there. She had no one to cry to. No one to hear her pain.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask her. “I gave you money and my phone number so that you can contact me at any time.”
“I know, but I forgot,” Vicki whines. “I was too scared.”
“Where is the boy now?”
“I don’t know”—Vicki crosses her arms—“and I don’t care.”
“Yes, you care, or else you would not have found me. Am I wrong?”
“No,” she whispers, the word curling out of her mouth as a wisp of steam. “I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. Don’t you know yet, Chi? I don’t care what happens to me. I’m garbage. Leave me alone.”
“No. I won’t leave you alone.” You expect to be treated like garbage so you’re never disappointed. You cauterize your heart. No one can hurt a dead girl. And yet who am I to tell you that you are alive? What good will it do if you believe you’re a human being and no one else does? Can you survive on these streets if you insist on being treated with dignity? Can a street child afford self-worth? All God’s children are created equal. But who really lives as if they believe this? One first world baby stuck at the bottom of a well generates more heartfelt anxiety than the 100 million children trapped on the streets of the developing world ever will. Should I foster hope in Vicki? “Vicki,” I ask, “where is this boy? If you didn’t want me to talk to him, you wouldn’t have searched me out in the rain to tell me what happened.”
Lightning cracks the sky like an egg and sparks her eyes, even in this telephone booth. She says, “I guess you’re right.”
“Let’s go find him,” I say.
“But it’s raining.” She holds her hand open, as if it were raining in the booth too.
“What’s a little rain?” I ask her. “What is his name?”
“Eric,” she says. I open the booth, and we look outside. Do we really want to go out there? On the streets, the strong abuse the weak, and justice is almost always of a poetic, accidental nature rather than purposeful. Can we rewrite this rule of the streets? José steps back into the phone booth. Our three minutes are up, and we walk back into the rain, unsure which way to walk, but we walk anyway, down Calle de las Americas, each of our heads huddled beneath a hood, mine Gore-Tex and hers cotton. We walk all the way down las Americas, make a turn and walk that way, and turn and turn again, checking the usual well-covered spots around downtown. For forty minutes we walk. For forty minutes the rain does not relent and neither does Vicki. She walks briskly down street after street as I wait for her to give up. I sincerely doubt we’ll find Eric. But Vicki knows every nook and cranny downtown. And so we continue.
Finally, she slows her pace. She stands before a storefront awning. I stand next to her waiting for her to say she’s given up, but instead she rears back her foot and kicks a human being huddled underneath the awning. I had not even seen him through the gray sheets falling about me. The boy screams and holds his left leg tightly. “F— you!” the boy barks.
“You a—!” Vicki shrieks at him. The boy looks at me, wondering what I am doing here. He’s big for a teen; his body has filled out early. A punch from his fist would probably double me over. I can’t imagine what it felt like for Vicki.
“Calm down and step back,” I tell Vicki. I pull her away from Eric, and then I stand before him. My heart races faster, faster. “Stand up!” I bark. Thunder punctuates my words.
Lightning strikes a mountaintop, and I can see the lines of fear on the boy’s face as his head creeps upward along the door of the clothing shop. His brown eyes grow bigger and his top lip begins to quiver. Eric has seen me horsing around on the street, playing fútbol. He knows me as a doctor. Where is my compassion for this young brute?
“What do you want?” he asks in a trembling voice.
“Did you hit Vicki today?”
“No,” he replies.
“You —ing liar!” Vicki barks.
“Shut up, Vicki,” I say. “Did you hit her?”
Eric looks at me and looks at Vicki. He weighs the two elements that make up the world: lies and truth. He wants the best of both. “Maybe,” he says.
“Maybe?” I yell over the thunder. Lightning splits the sky into two. Which side are you on? “What do you mean ‘maybe’? It is either yes or no!”
“Yes.” He creeps sideways along the wall. “Yes. Yes.”
Eric probably ran away from a desperately poor family living in a mud-brick shanty in El Alto. Violence is a language to him, and he is well versed in many dialects. Club to the head. Knife in the side. Punches, kicks, scratches, whips. When he speaks, he wants people to listen; the streets twist every facet of human existence into a brutal farce. And so it is with me, too. I pick up the boy by his shirt and pin him against the glass door. Over his shoulder hangs the Closed sign. “Listen to me closely,” I mutter gutturally. “You will never
lay a hand on Vicki again. Do I make myself clear to you?” I look into the darting eyes of Eric. He could take a knife out of his pocket and stab me as I leave. He could tell the boys in his group; they could gang up on me. I don’t care. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Don Chi,” says Eric, remembering the serious look in my eyes. Yes, these streets are wild, but there are some people who care—who care, yes, but who will assert some control. “I will never touch her or hit her ever again!” he declares.
I let him go and he runs away down the street. I stand facing the Closed sign. Lightning flashes again, and I see my face in the reflection of the glass door. They are selling old leisure suits or something inside this store. What did I just do?
It isn’t right, threatening children. Or is it? I don’t care. She’s my sister. I couldn’t call her my sister if I didn’t mean it. The first rule of the streets is “protect your own.” From your birth until you meet God, that is all you have, and on the street your sister’s life and your life are one and the same.
I turn around and look at Vicki, who smiles humbly at me. She’s not really your sister, Chi. What if I had simply given Eric a stern lecture? Would he have changed? Would his friends? I won’t take that risk. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure my sister is never again beaten or raped. We walk silently back toward the phone booths uptown. “I am glad that you told me about this boy,” I tell Vicki.
“Me too,” says Vicki, wiping her hair from her face. She rarely dresses up in the more fashionable outfits she wore when I first met her. What is going on? Was my initial instinct correct? Can a girl simply not keep up such an “extravagant” lifestyle on the street? Is Vicki on her way down? We reach Alonzo de Mendoza. It is clean. The excrement has been washed away, and the humans begin to return. We keep walking. The roads glisten.
I hail a taxi. Vicki gives me a salutatory kiss on the cheek. “Ciao,” she says.
“Ciao,” I echo. “Hey, by the way. Cut out the profanity, okay? You’re better than that.”
“Okay.” She watches me sit down in the taxi. I will be dry and warm tonight. She will be wet and cold. Lightning zigs across the sky, and a sudden sheet of rain blasts Vicki. Her face is defined now by the falling water as it smashes and splashes against her cheekbones, against the cartilage of her nose, against the enamel of her teeth. She smiles again. Little sister, find some cover.
27
Potato Chips
11:45 p.m., March 2, 1998;
Plaza San Francisco, Downtown La Paz
If it happens every day, can it still be a tragedy?
The selling of prepubescent female bodies is now the norm to me. The pimping and prostitution have become mundane and, yes, at times boring. Every night it is the same thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls and the same drunks and the same fee and the same one-hour hotels. Nothing really changes.
I treat self-inflicted cuts to see those arms slashed up the next evening. I prescribe penicillin for syphilis so that the girl can be newly infected with her next trick. I administer oral rehydration therapy to tiny, malnourished street babies so that they may grow up to die early deaths, or worse, grow up to be prostitutes, ready to be beaten or raped. Is this God’s intention for me? Is it His intention for these girls? Is this God’s joke? Or His test of faith, even for those who cannot conceive of faith? Or has God simply forgotten about us?
Do I care? Sure I care. Just not right now.
Alonzo de Mendoza. Piggybacking their children in their colorful ahuayos, the girls sit and chatter together like American teenyboppers at a mall on a Saturday afternoon. And then, from among them, she stands up. Vicki. The boulder of my Sisyphean existence. Every day, I buttress her self-worth with apparently worthless words. Every day, I implore her to stop sniffing thinner. Every day, I tell her how she could earn money by selling soda pop or gum instead of her body—and yes, the juxtaposition of those three “items” now seems normal to me. Every day, she walks up to me, as she does today, and with a smile and a nod, ignores everything I say. Today she is dressed in red jeans and a purple cotton jacket, and she stands next to me as I stubbornly brood over the activities that transpire nightly at Alonzo de Mendoza.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hello,” I reply, tightening my crossed arms.
“Let’s play soccer, Chi.”
“Maybe later.”
Vicki takes a deep sniff.
“Why are you still sniffing?” I ask out of habit.
“Because I like it.”
“Well, I don’t,” I snap, surprised at my tone of voice.
“I know.” She takes another sniff.
Silence.
“How was your day?” I ask. “Did you make money today?”
“I made five bolivianos.”
“I thought your rate was six bolivianos.”
“It was,” she says with a smile and waits for me to say something. First, she quits dressing nicely; not that I really want her to attract more men. Now she lowers her fee. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she has little potential, no true desire to get off the streets. Maybe I’m just easing her way into permanent homelessness. “Which street are you going to sleep on tonight?” I ask her.
“No street.”
“Which hotel?”
“None.”
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“In a beautiful home.”
Silence. In a beautiful home? Is she dreaming? Or has she found a sugar daddy?
“An orphanage home,” she clarifies.
“Really?” I jerk my head to look at her. Yes, it really is Vicki speaking to me. “When did you leave the streets?”
“Last week.” She beams.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Hmm.” I am scared to believe her. I’ve pushed the boulder to the top of the hill. It sits there precariously. I’m betting it’ll roll down the other side and then, just like Sisyphus, I will have to push it back up the hill. I look at her face, her glowing cheeks. Yes, this is for real! I say nothing, and she says nothing. We don’t want this moment to end. Finally I ask her, “What made you decide to leave the streets?”
“Do you want to live on the streets, Chi?” She points her chin at me.
“N-n-no,” I stutter. “Of course not.”
Silence.
“How’s the home?” I ask.
“It’s good.” She shrugs. “Beautiful, even.”
“How can a dilapidated home with mattresses smelling like mildew be beautiful? Nice, maybe. But beautiful? How is it beautiful?”
“It’s my home.”
“Oh,” I reply, made dumb by this simple, tautological answer that could be no closer to truth. “What do you do during the day?”
“We make arts and crafts. We wash our clothes. We play games. We talk. You know. Girl stuff. We talk about boys. Sometimes we even talk about you.”
“I’m not a boy,” I say seriously. “You know that.”
“I know.”
Silence. Vicki is not sitting too close to me. She’s not flirting with me with her eyes. Has she learned how to be a sister to me, to her brother on the streets?
“So,” I ask, still putting the pieces together, “why are you on the streets tonight?”
“Our curfew is midnight,” she explains.
“Oh,” I say. I wonder if she knows what time it is.
“What time is it?” she asks.
“11:30 p.m.,” I tell her.
“I should be leaving now,” she says. “Walk with me?”
We walk down Calle de las Americas in silence. I am so happy and she is so happy right now, I don’t want to ask what I must ask. But I must. “How can you prostitute yourself while you are living at the home?”
“I don’t.”
“You said you made five bolivianos.”
“I am selling potato chips now.”
“Really. Since when?”
“I started last week.”
; It hits me. She doesn’t dress in fancy clothes anymore because she has phased herself out of the business of prostitution. Her efforts, my efforts, our efforts—they have not been in vain. No, the exact opposite is true. By telling her story to a sympathetic ear, by internalizing my encouragement, by realizing that her worth is not housed in her sexuality, by going after Eric and punishing him for violating her body, by doing all these things and mostly by sheer power of will, Vicki has learned to value herself, her life, and her body. A miracle, a slow and steady one, has been playing itself out beneath my nose, and I just recognized it. “How’s business?” I ask, the words now meaning something altogether more beautiful.
“It’s difficult. I have to sell potato chips all day just to feed myself and stay alive. Sometimes I can buy a little treat for myself. I can’t rely on men anymore to take me out and buy me things.”
The cars and buses are honking ferociously at each other in Plaza San Francisco. A couple of street girls pass us and wave hello. We wave back, and suddenly Vicki stops in her tracks. “This is my street,” she declares. “Thanks for talking.”
“My pleasure.” My voice goes soft. I want to tell her how proud I am of her. How happy I am. “You know,” I say, “if you ever have trouble selling potato chips . . . I love potato chips. My mother tells me that I am too skinny and need to be fattened up like a little pig.”
We smile at each other, and I give her a wink. She knows by now what I mean by this wink. A wink means “no” to prostitution. A wink is our mutual understanding that we are moving forward together toward a better life, hopefully, never to “walk” the streets again. A wink means she can count on me. Even after I return to Boston? I try not to think about it right now.
“Thanks, Chi,” she says. “I love potato chips too.” She has not smiled this much in months.
Slices of simple potato with a touch of salt, deep-fried in a kettle of oil. One greasy bag sells for one boliviano. Selling six bags takes eight hours. To earn one American dollar, the sturdy greenback. One trick earns a dollar too. In a fraction of the time. But those fractions of time have fractured her heart. By taking the longer, slower road, Vicki takes a needle and thread to her heart, attempting to sew the vital organ back together. To retransform meat into flesh and blood. She has committed herself to her own humanity, her own unique humanity.
When Invisible Children Sing Page 21