Jameson then stepped forward and asked us if we would take a picture of the four of them together with Clifton. Jameson said they all really wanted to have something to remember Clifton by, since we were taking him away and they would never see him again.
Oh boy, that did it, when he said that, Tami and I both broke down. We tried our best to hold it together in front of the kids. They had already been through so much, the last thing we wanted to do was confuse and upset them more. But that did it. Both of us kept wiping away the tears.
My head spun. An expectation existed, a plan stood in place. I felt so sure adopting Clifton was the right thing, for him, for Tami, for me, for us. I would exorcise the ghosts of past failures. Haiti had come to stand for solace, my rescue. Tami and I had been bonded through this wonderful little boy. But this changed everything.
I looked at Tami, her head downcast in an effort to hide the tears.
I then looked over at the five kids. They had stopped playing. They just stared at us.
Jameson, nine, raised an arm partway, pointing at my camera.
“Well,” he said. “Can we get one picture?”
A leaden sky hung overhead. Mountains loomed in the background.
“We can’t do this,” I said.
40
WE TAKE THEM ALL
“I FOUND HER. I found her,” the girl says. “Hurry. I know where she is.”
At this point she begins to run. We follow. We cross a ravine. Faster and faster the young girl tears through the streets. In the heat and humidity, we can barely keep up as she runs ahead.
“This way, come on, hurry,” she says again. “She’s this way, come on.” The girl picks up speed, dodging potholes, debris, a chicken, a broken-down car. Several times we nearly fall as we follow her.
We are in a district known as Delma 33. We follow the girl into the depths of Port-au-Prince. She continues over dirt, rubble, between fences, behind yards. Finally she slows, leading us onto a narrow path squeezed between two buildings.
As we emerge from the path, we arrive at an old brick-and-mortar church that looks like it was struck by an earthquake. Much is in ruins. It seems abandoned.
“Here,” the girl says. “She is in here.”
We look around in the dimly lit, desolate interior but can make out nothing through the heavy interlocking shadows.
Despite its decrepit state, the church retains a sense of mystery and gravity.
Finally, Tami draws my attention to a waiflike creature. She lies still on a mat in the corner of the church. She looks twice her age of forty-two. A scarf covers her head.
She has suffered several bouts of malaria as well as lesions of the brain.
She is homeless and lives in the church.
The woman begs us to pray for her. She cries that she is possessed by evil spirits.
As we kneel about her and say a prayer, we cannot stop staring at her.
Then Tami says to me, “Oh my God, Kermit, look at her face.”
* * *
Back at the Good Samaritan Orphanage, Tami had asked me, “Kermit, how can you say that?”
I turned to her and held her, then said, “We can’t break them up.”
“But—” she began.
I interrupted: “We either take them all or we don’t take any of them.”
“I know,” she said. “They’re still invested in each other.”
“Yup,” I said, “we take one, we take them all.”
“I know,” she said again.
“Then we take them all.”
“Are you serious?”
* * *
Now we stand in the old church. We have decided to pursue not one, but five impossible adoptions. The visit to this church is a step into the maze.
“What?” I whisper, having no idea what Tami is getting at.
She continues: “Look, Kermit. You can see the faces of all five of the children. Her face is like a mosaic of her kids.”
It is uncanny; despite the fact that the children all look different, there is a kind of composite of all of them within the mother’s withered features.
Looking away from the face momentarily at the contours of the old church, I grow nervous. This is the moment we have come here for, to gain her blessing for the adoption of her five kids. Without this, any future moves will be futile.
Because she is the mother of the five children, by law we need her consent. The entire process will be arduous enough as it is, but this first hurdle must be cleared. We have no idea how she will respond. Before asking her permission, we decide it best to get her some medical care and hopefully revive her somewhat.
After concluding the prayer, we bring her to a hospital and get her an IV. She is desperately malnourished and dehydrated.
Once cogent, she responds.
She is beside herself with joy. She cannot believe her good fortune. Her children will be saved, she says, removed from Haiti. Given her desperate condition, she has obviously been incapable of properly caring for them. She happily consents to the adoption.
* * *
After weeping for joy at this successful step in establishing a new family and starting a new life, I found my mind drifting back to that courtroom twenty years ago, again swearing I would not let past mistakes recur.
Testimony regarding Tiequon Cox’s mother rang in my ears. She was on drugs, half-crazed, a delusional alcoholic who was in and out of institutions, incapable of providing her kids with any type of normal home.
Now, in Haiti, as I looked at this sad woman, suffering from the ravaging effects of malnutrition and disease, and compared the possible fate of her orphaned children with that of Cox and his siblings, I knew that my mission was to save these kids. My resolve was steeled. I would provide these kids with a second chance, as they would for me.
“Protect. Lead. Act.”
This was it, the real deal, gritty, dirty, hard to look at. No theory, nothing abstract, no talk of doing good deeds from remote locations, saving the world from the comfort of an armchair.
This was the street-level world of Port-au-Prince, filled with sores, sewage, and stench. And I had learned, the hard way, that if you really wanted to make a difference, this was the world into which you had to dive. The more you wanted to look away, plug your nose, close your eyes, and run, the better you knew you were in the right place, the spot you were needed most. Hospitals, orphanages, shelters, the hardest to take, filled with cries, anguish, and pain. This is where I had to be.
Years ago in Watts I had unknowingly turned my back, failed to act, with a desperate kid who couldn’t control himself. It’s one thing to talk a good game, give speeches in front of children made to sit at desks and behave. It’s another to actually deal with the malcontents, misfits, and down-and-outs in the real world, those kids who won’t look you in the eye, and when they do, their eyes are filled with hate and mistrust. The kid to whom you say, “I want to help you,” and who answers, “Fuck you,” is the kid on whom you can’t turn your back.
I saw it now with true clarity, no delusions. I knew that taking five Haitian orphans into our home would be anything but easy. I had plenty of experience with large families and their incessant conflicts. It would be at times trying, brutal, frustrating, and heartbreaking. That was life. I was ready. The grand irony, with five children to care for on the horizon, I felt free, released from the dark shackles of guilt.
When I had prowled the streets of South Central years ago I was looking to kill; now in Haiti I was looking to heal. Action can overcome curse, help alter the hand of fate.
* * *
When we returned to California, we remapped the living arrangements for our home in Riverside. We planned out the house, which rooms would be for the children. We decorated their rooms. Over and over, we replayed that day when the five Haitian kids would together enter their home. What would their reactions be? Would they even know what refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing machines were? How would they react to their own pool, shower, and bathtu
b?
While we tried to keep ourselves busy, the wait was excruciating. While we had both been through legal and bureaucratic battles in the past—home purchases, divorces, insurance companies, courtrooms—nothing had prepared us for this. This even made a capital jury trial seem simple and easy to understand.
Aside from the intricacies typical of any adoption, the complications here were fivefold, due to the number of children, then infinite, due to the impenetrable nature of the Haitian government. Moreover, whenever the process seemed to move forward, it was derailed by a hurricane, a coup, a disputed election, and postelection riots.
During this time, Clifton remained at the Mission of Hope, where he was well cared for, but we moved the other children from Good Samaritan to a safer and more stable environment at the Haitian Academy Boarding School, a twenty-acre campus located near Titanyen in Cache-Cache Dougé.
To stay busy, and make money to support the costs associated with the upcoming adoptions and the constant trips to Haiti, I took a job as a community services officer at nearby Riverside Community College. Tami continued with her work at a nonprofit that fought against child abuse. She also started her own business, making gift baskets for real estate agents to present to new home buyers. We had a barn, storage, and office space built out back in the yard of our new home. This served as the headquarters for her business. It took off quickly, and within a few years Tami had several employees and hundreds of clients.
To occupy our time, we constantly planned ahead for our life after the adoptions. This made the adoptions feel more real and seem more imminent. We bought a van and a long dining room table to accommodate all of the incoming hungry mouths. We kept tinkering with the rooms, imagining the day the beds would be filled with little bodies.
As we worked and waited, I dreamed of once again having a full house, chaotic with life and activity, a house like the one in which I was raised.
Madee’s words, “There’s nothing worse than an empty house,” started to take on a more hopeful air, growing less sinister, and more prophetic.
I actually began picturing her with the kids, how she would interact with them. She’d watch over me, help me raise them.
Finally, after decades, a future to look toward once again. We had a new home, our finances were solid, the kids were on the way, and my siblings were making their way back into my life. And this time it wasn’t just to talk about executions, appeals, and district attorneys. My family was warm and supportive about the adoptions and helped me through the ordeal. They couldn’t wait to meet their new nieces and nephews.
* * *
One month later, on February 21, 2006, two hours before murderer and rapist Michael Morales was to be executed, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel granted a stay, ruling that California must conduct the execution in a manner that does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.
Fogel ruled that San Quentin’s gas chamber was never intended to serve as a site of lethal injections administered by poorly trained staff in a dimly lit compartment. This, Fogel said, risked leaving inmates conscious but in pain, thus violating Eighth Amendment prohibitions. Instead, the judge said, the sodium thiopental, the drug that puts the condemned to sleep, would have to be injected directly into the vein by a licensed medical professional. This put the state of California in a bind since licensed medical doctors are prohibited from engaging in executions.
* * *
Over the next two years the news out of Haiti was disheartening.
The Atlantic hurricane season of 2008 was one of the worst on record. The island was battered by Hurricanes Faye, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike. Collectively they thrashed Haiti’s naked mountains, leaving major cities underwater.
On top of that, in 2008 a spike in food and energy prices led to riots and an overthrow of the prime minister.
These continued shocks to Haiti’s stability made us fear the adoptions might never go through.
* * *
Two years later, on January 4, 2010, I turned sixty-nine.
Now, six years since I had first met Clifton, the adoption proceedings plodded, no end in sight, a constant repetition of lost paperwork, coups, riots, and natural disasters. I had to keep myself from slipping into the mind-set that whether it be criminals, bureaucracies, or Mother Nature, the world conspired against me.
Then, one week later, on the afternoon of January 12, 2010, everything changed once again.
Tami was driving her car on Interstate 15, in the process of making arrangements for our annual Super Bowl party. She was listening to the radio when a special bulletin interrupted regular broadcasting.
When she heard the report she felt ill, and nearly drove the car into the median.
My phone rang. Tami was crying. She told me to turn on the TV.
41
NEWS THAT DEMANDS A CHAIR
HAITIANS CALL IT “news that demands a chair,” meaning “you better sit down for this.”
Some referred to it only as bagay la, meaning “the thing,” refusing to give it a name, for fear that would bring it back.
It was described as an “acute-on-chronic crisis,” and just further evidence that the nation’s history was “written in blood.”
I assumed the worst.
As I saw the images, I felt sick, then fell to my knees in prayer.
At 4:53 p.m. local time, on January 12, 2010, six miles beneath the earth’s surface, the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone separating the North American tectonic plate from the Caribbean plate ruptured for the first time in two hundred years. The seismic activity along the fault line placed the epicenter near the town of Leogane, within ten miles of Port-au-Prince. The result was a magnitude 7.0 earthquake.
Buildings collapsed, zombies stumbled about under a layer of gray dust, panic-stricken wanderers prayed for their lives, cars crashed, rush hour shook to a halt.
I kept studying the rubble, searching for familiar faces.
My head thundered.
Tami returned. We hugged, then sobbed.
The street cracked, poles fell, bloodstained children shrieked.
We wanted to look away. Impossible. We stared. Brutal.
It was six years since we began the adoption of Clifton. Six years, and another dream was just out of reach, another arrival halted, busted. I was cast back into the Valley.
* * *
Hourly news coverage showed in graphic detail the dead, the injured, the starving. Huddled children were forced to eat “cakes” made of mud. Rancid sewage engulfed communities, threatening an epidemic to come. Ramshackle housing, which often crumbled before it was completed, collapsed to rubble and dust. And the reports were repeatedly interrupted by aftershocks, which brought down more buildings.
With each broadcast the death toll rose: 10,000; 30,000; 60,000. Because Haiti’s vital records are so approximate, an accurate total will never be known, but most estimates placed earthquake-related fatalities at somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000. An earthquake of nearly identical magnitude hit the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989. The death toll was sixty-three. The population of greater Port-au-Prince is two million, the Bay Area over seven million.
With alternating masochism and hope, we were glued to CNN. We didn’t sleep or eat, just sat watching in shock.
Building codes didn’t exist, and less than 10 percent of buildings approached modern standards. Worse, Port-au-Prince was an unplanned city that grew pell-mell with no consideration as to land use.
The National Palace, along with every government building but one, lay in ruins. The statue of Toussaint-Louverture stood. He was covered in dust, and as always, with his back to the palace, something locals claimed an ill omen. For centuries the nation’s founder refused to face his creation.
On the second and third days after the quake, stories of medical horrors started to hit the airwaves. And due to minimal communications and a crippled infrastructure, it was impossible to split rumor from fact. A wave of stories
covered amputations done to ward off gangrene, followed by reports of hastily done and unnecessary amputations.
This was followed that evening by rumors that slum gangs, called Chime (the downtrodden), roved through the devastation, heavily armed, terrorizing, and raping. Port-au-Prince was already known as the kidnapping capital of the world—following the quake the numbers of the “disappeared” exploded.
Collapsed floors, pancaked buildings, people covered in a fine powder roamed the streets. Forty percent of federal employees were listed as injured or killed. Coming out of Port-au-Prince, a new syndrome was reported to the world, psychose béton, or the phobia of concrete. Sufferers developed symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder: terror, paranoia, and sleeplessness.
* * *
When I learned of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affecting the people of Haiti, I heard my own diagnosis. The disorder was me.
It was brought on by “learning about unexpected or violent death . . . of a family or child,” and involved “intense fear, helplessness, or horror,” the “persistent reexperiencing of the traumatic event” through “recurrent and intrusive recollections . . . or recurrent distressing dreams.”
Symptoms included persistent anxiety, anger, irritability, an exaggerated startle response, and hypervigilance, an “abnormally increased arousal,” a constant “scanning of the environment for threats.” Sufferers felt out of control and devoid of support, reporting “painful guilt feelings about surviving when others did not,” engaging in acts of “phobic avoidance” of anything linked to the original trauma. This response ruins relationships and leads to “marital conflict, divorce, or loss of job.”
It was all me. The intrusions, the guilt, the avoidance, the anger. The unwillingness to open up, and the flights of rage when forced. I shut myself in and locked others out. When my father was in the service they called it shell shock. Now I called it my life.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death Page 29