I set two plates of sandwiches and two cups of milk on the table and call her into the kitchen. She slams open the swinging kitchen door, and I catch it before it slams back into her face.
“Let’s eat, Rosa.”
“Okay. What’s that for?” she asks, pointing at the dinner table.
“It’s the dinner table.”
“What is it used for? Why did you put the food way up there?”
“People eat at the table.”
“Really?” she wonders aloud. “Why?”
“Well, it’s where everyone eats: at a table.”
“How do they eat at a table? No one eats at one of these, not even my mother.”
“Oh,” I reply.
Rosa climbs into a chair, reaches up on the table, grabs the sandwich, takes it back into the living room, sits down on the floor, and eats.
Four Days Later
For four nights in a row, Rosa has slept on a bed in the bedroom. I sleep in the living room. In the morning she sees her mother, sometimes to stay with her the entire day. The initial novelty of clean water, a warm bed, and plentiful food has worn off, and I am happy that she is getting used to these luxuries.
It is nine o’clock, and I tuck Rosa into bed. I close the door to her room. As I lie in my own bed, I let my mind go blank. And then a wave of pathos rolls through my chest. I want to adopt Rosa. I have wanted to take care of her as my own daughter for months now. It is inhumane to do anything less. I spend my last waking minutes walking through this fantasy world where I am Rosa’s adoptive father and I am still working with the other street children of Bolivia.
I am awakened in the middle of the night by a wail. Rosa. I’ve never heard her cry like this before. I run into her room and let the light from the hall come in. Her face is streaked with tears. She sniffles and keeps her eyes closed to the light.
“I want to go home now,” she cries.
“Why? What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I wanna go home!” she hollers, and stomps her heels on the mattress. I pick her up and hold her in my arms, rubbing her back. Her tears soak into the skin of my neck.
“Rosa,” I tell her, “you can’t go home right now. I’ll take you back in the morning. Remember our routine? You stay here at night and you see your mother in the morning.” I rock her gently for a few minutes; she breathes slower and her eyelids grow heavy. Has she cried it all out? I lay her down on her bed, and I return to my own.
An interesting aspect of our biology: We can close our eyes, but we cannot close our ears. I can’t keep from hearing Rosa crying for her mother and for home. “I wanna go home!” she screams. “I wanna go home!” I close my eyes even tighter. Children always scream when they receive their immunization shots; they are in extreme pain, but those shots must be given. This is no different. Tearing her away from her home is the most painful thing she could endure right now, more painful than living on the street with rain, wind, and disease, all of which she is used to. She’ll get over it. She’ll fall asleep eventually.
“I wanna go home! I wanna go home!”
I get out of bed and walk to Rosa’s room. I pick her up in my arms, and she hits me in the face. “I want to go home. I want to go home. Chi, I want to go home.”
She wants the arms of her mother. Of her grandmother. I carry her to her shoes and fit them on her feet. We walk toward the front door.
“Wait, Chi. Wait.” She jumps down from my arms and runs into her bedroom. I follow her. Has she changed her mind?
“You forgot my new clothes,” she tells me. She wants to leave this home permanently, never to return, and she wants to keep her new used clothes for life on the street. I pick up all the designer clothes and stuff them into a plastic bag. T-shirts. Pants. Overalls. Her face glows with happiness to have received so many presents.
“Chi, you are not folding them right!”
She takes the metallic blue overalls and painstakingly folds them to her desires. She then gently inserts them into the plastic bag. I watch her, and my heart weighs heavy with sadness. Why must Rosa return to the streets? Because her grandmother has been the only stable person in her life. Who am I? Just a transitory friend with a lot of cool toys. Of course Rosa is going to prefer the street.
“And where is my duck?” she screams.
I dig out her yellow duck from beneath the large white comforter.
“There’s my duck. I have been looking for you, Mr. Ducky.” She looks up at my solemn face. “Okay, I am ready to go.”
I scrounge through the desk drawer for taxi fare.
“Shoulders. Shoulders, Chi!”
I lift her up onto my shoulders, and she gives me her signature laugh. It’s a high-pitched giggle that emanates from the bottom of her lungs and gurgles up through her mouth and sprays out uncontrollably, like water blowing out of a pent-up hose. I smile sadly and giggle with her.
So with her clothes in one arm and Rosa on my shoulders, we leave the house. Only a few taxis are working tonight in the quiet neighborhood.
“How much to Casa de la Cultura?”
“Fifteen bolivianos.”
“It’s usually twelve.”
“Twelve it is.”
The low hum of the engine and the crisp, cool air blowing past our faces slowly hypnotize us. The brown, barren mountainside is studded with green, white, and red night lights. Far beyond Mount Illimani, the black sky opens up a million brilliant eyes—its stars—glowing, twinkling, free. Rosa’s duck falls from her left hand onto the taxi floor. Her eyes are shut tightly. What does a street baby dream of? Certainly not Beanie Babies, Barbie dolls, or new Sunday dresses. Is she dreaming about a lollipop she gets once in a while? Is she dreaming about a warm Bolivian day when she can take a bath in the river? Is it a night when her father hugs her?
How could I fail like this? I was so close. A few more nights, and she would have gotten used to sleeping in a home. Yet she needs her mother. I am angry at her, at Catia, and at myself. Will Rosa become a street prostitute, a shoe-shine girl with engorged lips who goes by the name of her medication? My teeth are clenched in anger. What hubris I possess, to take her away from her mother, if only to keep her in the safety of a home during the dark nights. Her umbilical cord is buried under hard concrete, and it is nearly impossible to unearth it.
“Is she your child?” the taxi driver asks.
“Huh?” The question jars me.
“Is she your baby?”
“No. I’m taking her back to her mother.” I look at the taxi driver’s eyes through the rearview mirror. He awaits an explanation. “She lives on the streets,” I say. The taxi driver has not reached thirty years of age. His complexion is rich cocoa brown, and his eyes are jet-black.
“What do you mean?” he asks me.
“She’s a street baby.”
“What?” His face contorts uncomfortably.
“She’s a street baby,” I repeat.
I am confused at his inability to grasp this fact, considering he sees street children every day.
“So where are her parents?” asks the taxi driver.
“She lives with them. Her mother is a street woman, and her grandparents also live on the street. This child’s name is Rosa, and she is four years old now.”
He grows quiet, and the car’s low hum grows loud. Rosa breathes deeply in sleep. The streets are empty. The sidewalks see no feet. My mind wanders.
A throat clears, softly; it is clogged with tears. I hear sniffles. Part of me does not want to turn to look at the taxi driver, but I do, just to see if he is okay. His cheeks glisten with thin, slow tears. He does not bother to wipe them. They begin to fall from his cheeks faster and faster. His white shirt darkens with translucent spots.
“My daughter is her age,” he peeps out. “She’s four years old too. I love her very much. Very much.” He continues to cry. “Where does she sleep?”
I tell him through the rearview mirror, “Casa de la Cultura.”
“You mean on the sidewal
k in front of all the stores?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“How does her mother survive?”
“She sells fruit drinks at the plaza.”
“Does Rosa have a father?”
“Sort of. He is there sometimes. When he is there, he is drunk and beats Rosa and her mother. Thankfully he left them.”
“So why are they still on the streets?”
“Rosa’s mother is an alcoholic, and that makes it difficult for Rosa. Most of the time her grandmother takes care of her.”
I look down and see Rosa’s head against my chest. I look at her eyes. She has awakened and now stares out the window. My heart sinks. How much of our conversation has she heard? I feel that I’ve just betrayed her. Did I just destroy her idolized and rose-colored view of her mother, one of the two people in the world whom she trusts? Did I compromise that bond?
“How are you doing, Rosa?”
“Fine,” she whispers in a sleepy voice. She does not look up to acknowledge me. Her eyes are staring out into deep space.
The taxi driver takes a furtive glance at Rosa and darts his face back to the road, as if it is too painful to see her. What is his daughter like? Does she laugh like Rosa? What if one room was made available for every tear cried for these street children? Pity is useless and unwanted. Give me rooms. Give me clean water. Give me loving arms. Pity never built a home.
“Where are we going, Rosa?” I ask.
“Home,” Rosa says. “To see Grandma.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because she does not drink,” says Rosa.
I adjust myself in my seat and look deep into the sky, contemplating the bond between words and life. “Alcoholic.” The word rings in my head and echoes through the stars. We arrive at Casa de la Cultura. Rosa has fallen asleep again in my arms. I carefully position her to one side and dig in my pocket for the taxi money.
“You take good care of her,” says the taxi driver. “It’s cold tonight. You should give her your jacket.”
“She has a jacket in the bag,” I respond.
I place a little red-hooded jacket on her tiny body. The manipulation wakes her up, and she opens up a lion’s yawn.
“You make sure you take good care of her. Good care of her. You are responsible for her,” he pleads as he takes the twelve bolivianos.
“I will,” I tell him. “Don’t worry.”
I walk across one of the main streets and find Monica, who stands next to Ernesto and four other disheveled men. Her face breaks out into wrinkles as she sees Rosa. Her smile knows no teeth.
“Hello, Chi,” she says. “Rosa, did you have fun today?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I took a bath in a bathtub. I washed my hair. I washed my clothes. I ate lots of food. I played with toys.” She reaches out for her grandmother.
“Give Chi a kiss good night.”
Rosa kisses me on the cheek and yells out, “Good night, Chi. I will see you tomorrow. We can play again.”
I ride home in a different taxi, watching the sky at first and then closing my eyes. I want to go home. The words echo from the stars, and from every cardboard bed, from every empty bottle of thinner, from every fresh razor slash. I hear it as a scream, as a wail, as a cry, as a demand, as a shout, as a prayer, and I cannot close my ears. I want to go home. The tears burn down my face.
Epilogue
2006
Since 1998, the paths of these children have radiated in all directions.
Not long after Rosa’s father left her and Catia, the Bolivian Street Children Project began helping Catia, Rosa, and grandmother Monica by paying their rent on a tiny apartment. Catia and Monica continued selling fruit drinks and school supplies on the streets, but they no longer slept on the streets. Rosa, for the first time in her life, had a real home.
The Bolivian Street Children Project was founded in an attempt to bring attention to the plight of street children around the world. Our goal is to return to the abandoned street children in La Paz, Bolivia, their childhood, their rights, their dignity. We also strive to equip our children with the ability to become role models and agents of constructive change. In the early years, we simply walked the streets, as I had before, talking to the kids and treating their various ailments. With a growing group of staff and volunteers, we have made approximately six thousand street visits.
In 2001 the Bolivian Street Children Project started its first home, Hogar Bernabé, in La Paz, Bolivia. Our homes specifically serve abandoned street children, who, by definition, have no adult supervision or caretakers. In my eyes, these are precisely the children to whom we are called to respond in our charity of love and kindness. Abandoned street children in La Paz have an average age of 14.4 years, and more than 50 percent are boys. Nearly 90 percent of these children have been physically abused, and more than 90 percent of these children use paint thinner. Of the abandoned street girls, more than half of the girls are pregnant or have children, and 38 percent have reported being sexually abused.
With the building of Hogar Bernabé, I have satisfied, in a rather humble manner, one of the three requests of Daniela, Vicki, Gabriel, and others: to build a home for them. Hogar Bernabé is home for ten abandoned street children. We provide our children with holistic care. It is not enough to give them food and clothing. We must give our children the opportunity to feel safe. To know love. Besides physical problems such as dental cavities and wrongly healed bones from past beatings on the streets, the children suffer from suicidal desires, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, drug addiction, and the entire book of psychological disorders. Some have difficulty attaching themselves to others; others attach too easily. Most believe they will eventually be abandoned; in the first days off the street, some street children follow me and staff members around the home, making sure we don’t leave them.
Children at our homes live in a safe environment, with a high staff-to-child ratio. We do not utilize corporal punishment. An in-house tutor catches the children up on missed education. Our staff and our psychologist help the children recover from physical, emotional, and sexual trauma so they can take their first steps toward a future free of murder, rape, and homelessness—a future, perhaps, with peace of mind and spirit. Through both academic and technical education, the children learn to sustain themselves within the mainstream economy. Some of the children at Hogar Bernabé aspire to become lawyers or businesspeople. Through tenacious studying, one child is now the top student of his grade level at school.
Sometimes people ask me why we have only ten children in Hogar Bernabé. First, one cannot bring too many children off the street and into the same home simultaneously; the instability causes mass exoduses of children back to the street. Second, with our high staff-to-child ratio, more than 60 percent of our children stay in our home until they are prepared to sustain themselves in the outside world. Others who work with street children in other homes privately admit that their retention rates are in the single digits. Thus, our home for ten children rehabilitates more children than two or three homes housing fifty children each.
Our second home, Hogar Renacer, opened in 2005 as a transitional home for children who have recently left the streets. It is used as a bridge for children not yet ready to live with stricter rules and responsibilities. In 2006 we hope to open a third home, and if we can secure the funding, we would like to open four more homes for abandoned street children and street babies. We also hope to build a small school, a library, a soccer field, and microenterprises where children learn trades in realistic settings.
I cannot take credit for the successes of the Bolivian Street Children Project. Over the last decade, donations have appeared in my mailbox just in time to cover my bank account that was overdrawn by hundreds of dollars. I have survived several close calls on the streets. Some call it fate. I call it God.
In addition, 95 percent of the real work is done by the wonderful team I have been blessed to work with, along
with two dedicated boards in Bolivia and in Boston: Francisca Martínez Alave, Ben Branham, Kristy Branham, Juan Carlos Arteaga Flores, Luis Javier Yrusta Campos, Luis Carlos Ruiz Carreño, Carola Contreras Céspedes, Luly Quispe Condori, David Copa, Moisés Hurtado Céspedes, Rosario Quiroga de Castellón, Hernán Oliveira Durán, John Eggen, Michelle Eggen, Luis Gonzalo Fernández Pereira, Mary Frances Giles, Kristin Huang, Kep James, Noemí Karageorge de Rivero, Kurt Leafstrand, Laura Leafstrand, Luis Fernando Morales Medina, Vernonica Mendoza, Nils Cajareico Nauro, Gigi Ohnes, Karla Eliana Saavedra de Fernández, Deb Veth, George Veth, Antón Villatoro, and Thania Villatoro.
I have crossed paths with many of the street children I met in my first year in La Paz. Some of those children, sadly, I have never seen again.
A street girl spotted Mercedes on a bus going to the red-light district in 1999. I have not heard news of her since then. If she is alive, she is an adult by now. Maybe she is a prostitute. Maybe she sells ten-cent soft drinks on the corners in La Paz. Maybe she is married. Maybe she is a mother. Maybe she made one final razor slash.
Alejandro cooks at a local restaurant in El Alto, providing for himself, his wife, and their child. He was the catalyst for our project in 1997. He has done more for the children than he knows. I am excited for him and proud of his accomplishments.
Jorge continued to live at Bururu orphanage until he was promoted to a nicer orphanage with more opportunities.
Fernando moved from Bururu orphanage to another orphanage a couple of years after I first met him.
Gabriel reportedly traveled to Cochabamba, and I have not seen him since I washed lice out of his hair in 1998.
Tómas left Bururu shortly after the accident and was spotted on the streets a couple of times during the first year thereafter. Some people at the orphanage knew he was never going to stay. I disagree. A child will fail if you expect him or her to fail.
Anna committed suicide in 2001 in El Alto. She hung herself from a metal bar that held up a shower curtain. A street boy who was passing by told the authorities that Anna was one of the street children, and he walked on. No one else claimed or identified her.
When Invisible Children Sing Page 25