Wish You Happy Forever (20 page)

Chapter 11

One Who Is Drowning Will Not Be Troubled by a Little Rain

“Look folks,” I said as our bus left Shaoyang, “I know you're tired of hearing about this, but if you insist on continuing with us to Baling, will you please write a note to our board and tell them why?”

No problem!

Hi Board from ZZ,

Thanks for your concerns for all of us working in China's institutions at this critical moment. . . . Fortunately, there is not a single SARS case in Hunan. People enjoy their weekend. Children are flying kites in the square with a beautiful warm weather. We can certainly feel that spring has arrived! We all wish and doing our best to make families returning home safe!

. . . I made the decision to stay because I believe so strongly in the work of the Foundation. This is a personal decision that I made completely on my own. . . .

Jackie (Nanny Trainer)

. . . The greater risk is probably the plane ride home (including the in-China flight, where the seats are very close together). Whether we leave now, or next week, we still have to get on the planes to fly home. In fact, the risk of flying could be less by next week, as people become more aware of what is going on. . . .

Although I am not an epidemiologist but rather an anesthesiologist, I do not perceive there is any increased risk (or at the most minimal) of staying another week. All of life is a risk. We took a risk in embarking on this journey in the first place, and I do not think the risk has changed all that much.

Cynthia (Volunteer)

Every one of our crew wrote to the board. There was no response. And so we forged on.

A CARTON OF
3M N95 mouth masks, the most protective and last available in China (ZZ had managed to convince a hospital in Shanghai to share) was waiting for us when our bus stopped in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, for lunch. After a celebratory banquet, ZZ distributed the masks and the Hunan Provincial Civil Affairs team passed out new bottles of best local brand flu-killing vinegar to all. Our volunteers vowed to wear their masks in crowded places and to drink their vinegar religiously (except for the kids, who absolutely refused the vinegar but adored the masks). Then we reboarded the bus, now bound for Baling.

In truth, I would have returned to Baling alone if I'd had to. I knew some little girls were waiting for us there—in the dark.

Jingli

Ba Jingli, female, was born on January 3, 1996; found at the gate of Baling City Social Welfare Institution on May 3, 1996, with a bottle, two suits of clothing, and a bag of diapers. She had a round face and black hair, with misshapen lower limbs. She was reported to Baling City Security Bureau on that day. The police couldn't find her parents and relatives, so placed her in Baling City Institution. We hope she can conquer the serious illness and have a peaceful, happy, and lucky life.

I first saw Jingli in the fall of 2002 when I visited her orphanage as a prospective program site. I always tried to scout potential sites well in advance of selection—in part to assess the need, but equally, to scope out the director and staff. It hadn't taken long to learn that the success of our programs would depend on those people.

Based on the obvious criteria, Baling was not a place I would have chosen. The Baling orphanage director reminded me of the worst kind of Hollywood agent, right down to the black shirts, quirky bright neckties, and slicked-back hair. But it wasn't the garb—Director “Slick” stood too close and was a butt-grabber, and he charged adoptive parents five hundred dollars for a homemade DVD about his orphanage. And maybe it was just me, but I had a hunch the man was a baby-broker.

I'd seen the signs before. Row after row of beautiful, healthy baby girls, all less than a year old—perfect for adoption. No older kids. No special needs. He walked me through the baby rooms as if they were auto showrooms. Only after he'd hurried off to take a call from the mayor (making sure we knew who was calling), and left us with a young office administrator, did we find the rest of the Baling story.

“
Nihao
,” I said to the office administrator. “What's your name?”

“Luo.”

“ZZ, please ask Ms. Luo where the older children are. There must be some. Explain that Half the Sky would like to build a beautiful preschool here in Baling for the older children. But we must meet them first.”

I'm sure that ZZ put it better, for Ms. Luo made a phone call and motioned for us to follow her to the yard behind the children's building.

It was a low, small concrete building. Out front, in the pounded dirt courtyard, a couple of women were providing rehabilitation massage for two small boys with cerebral palsy. The women seemed to be expecting us and beamed happily as we watched them set upon their tasks with vigor, bending and stretching spastic little limbs.

I edged toward the worn wooden doorway. Miss Luo tried to stop me. Too late. I was inside.

The only light came from one small window. The walls were dank and dirty. The air musty. The little children were lined up against the wall on small chairs or benches. There were maybe twenty of them, from about four to ten years old. All had special needs. They weren't tied. They
knew
to just sit. This was how they spent their days. All day, every day.

I can see the image even now. A still photograph. Near darkness, eyes looking at me. . . . A little girl whose face was burned off. A toddler who looked healthy, alert, and confused, as if she'd been dropped at the wrong bus stop. Another child, limp, almost translucent—she seemed to have no bones.

And especially, I see Jingli. Perhaps six or seven, she sat obediently alone on her plastic mini-chair, against the wall, away from the other kids. Her hair had been cropped not too long before. I see scabs on her scalp where the clippers had missed and bruises on her thin arms. Her lower legs are twisted. Her feet are askew; they look useless. But she sits composed, her little hands folded in her lap. And she has a fire in her eyes that glows even in that horror we came to call the Root Cellar.

I promised those girls I'd come back. I thought of Jingli every day until the day we returned.

 

A SHOWMAN ALL
the way, Director Slick provided us a police escort, complete with sirens, the entire two and a half hour drive from Changsha to Baling. Leave it to him to also provide an adorable, chipper English-speaking greeter to deliver the requisite bus monologue on an ear-piercing loudspeaker:

“Hello, Half the Sky! Welcome! Baling lies in northeast Hunan Province on the eastern shore of Dongting Lake, the second-largest freshwater lake in all of China. Dongting Lake is on the boundary between Hunan and Hubei Province to the north. Do you know, the word ‘Hunan' means ‘south of lake,' ‘Hubei' means ‘north of lake'?

“Baling is
famous
for many things, including Baling Tower, which is three stories of wood constructed with not a single nail! Inside, you may read a tribute to Baling written in Song dynasty by
famous
poet Fan Zhongyan.

“Speaking of poets, in 278
BC
, when his country's capital was captured in war, Qu Yuan, the father of Chinese poetry, walked into Dongting Lake carrying a huge rock and drowned himself!”

We checked into a posh lakeside resort, clearly a spot for high-ranking Communist Party officials to take their ease. After our Shaoyang experience, the volunteers were ecstatic. Within minutes, the gleaming lobby was emptied of people and luggage, and hot showers were flowing.

“
LISTEN TO THIS
: ‘Today the Rolling Stones announced that their first-ever concerts in China—in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing—are cancelled because of the SARS epidemic.'”

“You mean
Keith Richards
is scared?” Dick said, toweling Anya dry postbath. I showed him the article.

“Okay,
now
I'm scared.”

“Ha.”

“Think about it. All the stuff that guy has done to his body, and he's scared to come to China?”

DIRECTOR SLICK HAD
a dream, and he couldn't wait to share it with the foreigners. He was building a hotel!

Not just any hotel—this would be a place for foreign adoptive families to come and stay. They could bring their children back to visit their hometown. And best of all, it was right on the grounds of the orphanage.

He'd hinted at this little project earlier, when I first visited. But now he had something to show. So, before we were allowed to take the volunteers to visit the children (the very idea bored him), we all had to go and see Slick's dream hotel.

The orphanage was at the end of a narrow lane. As our bus squeezed toward it, Slick's fantasy was unmistakable. Still under construction, it towered over everything else in the neighborhood. Yet there had been no sign of it on my last visit, only a few months earlier.

We followed Slick into the lobby, floorless and still coated with plaster dust. He showed off his massive cut-crystal chandelier. We didn't know how to react. So he took us into the one already-working elevator. The doors opened onto an elegantly finished floor of rooms. We walked around.

“Wow!” I said.

“You like it?” asked Slick.

“How many floors like this will your hotel have?”

“Eleven!” he said.

“Fantastic,” I said. All I could see was Jingli . . . her eyes, shining in darkness. “May we use two of them? One for the preschool and one for the infant center? And the preschoolers can have their dormitory on the preschool floor? This one is nice.”

I imagined the Root Cellar kids riding trikes down these gleaming hallways.

“But—” Slick said. “I see. Oh . . .”

“I think he can't say why not,” said ZZ.

“I'll bet he used adoption money to build this place,” Dick muttered. “What can he say?” Already my husband didn't care for Slick. Now he started addressing Slick as Director Motherfucker. I prayed that Slick was as ignorant of English as it appeared.

Slick made a phone call. Carol and I wandered around making plans for our newest preschool, every room with a private bath!

ZZ found us happily plotting in one of the suites. “The director says that Half the Sky is welcome to use these two floors for programs,” she reported. “He says that was always his intention, and this is why he wants to show you first thing. He hopes you like it.”

“Hooray! Please tell him we
do
like it. Very much.”

BY THE SECOND
day Slick ignored us completely, except at banquet time. So I took Dick to see the Root Cellar. He saw Jingli. Those eyes.

Quietly, we took pictures, just as we always did before we began our programs. There was no way we would let these children be left out. The place was so dark that we took the kids outside one by one to photograph them. We asked the lone
ayi
to carry the ones who couldn't walk.

Jingli shuffled out the door, her bum legs going every which way.
All my byself
. She allowed Dick to place her against the crumbly wall, watching his every move—lest anyone doubt, the child was fully in control of the situation. With absolute presence and calm, she permitted him to take her picture. Her eyes were blazing. Who was this girl?

 

BY THE FOURTH
day Slick had pretty much vanished. I think we were a disappointment. No money to be made; no junkets to America to angle for. We seemed to have the posh lakeside resort all to ourselves. Just as well, because the littlest crew members were getting stir-crazy. The lobby rang with squeals and giggles. Hide-and-seekers darted every which way, ever-smiling
ayi
s in pursuit.

As we were about to board the bus bound for the orphanage that day, Anya tried a fancy slip-slide-dive-under-the-flower-display-table maneuver, then shrieked with sudden pain.

“It broke! It broke!”

She screamed. Then louder still. We ran.

“I heard it broke! My leg . . . my leg!!!”

She couldn't stand. And then we wouldn't let her try. This was not a five-year-old tantrum. We needed a doctor.

After forever, the only ambulance in town pulled up outside. It was a little converted van of some sort. And it was grimy—must have been used for something else during the off-hours. The attendants lifted out an old army stretcher and placed Anya, still howling in fear and pain and unanchored to anything except my hand, on the floor of the van.

I crawled in after her. “But Madam . . . !” they said. Then Dick squeezed in too. We held on to Anya and each other and anything else we could find. ZZ followed in a cab.

The van had a siren, but still it bumbled through traffic. Every jolt was agony. We soothed Anya down to a whimper and moan.

“There's gonna be sick people in that hospital,” Dick said. “Maybe even one with SARS.”

“We have no choice.”

“I'm sorry, Mommy!” wailed Anya.