Wish You Happy Forever (27 page)

It was true, CNN and
Newsweek
and a few others were coming, but we had permission, more or less. Or at least we had advice from our friends in the Jiangsu government that it would take too long to get official permission and the build would be long over, so the journalists should just show up as if they were volunteers. When the big day finally came and we were all gathered—new teachers, new nannies, new parents, trainers, foreigners, and assorted journalists—to celebrate our nineteenth children's center and first Family Village along with the children of Gaoyou, Director Ni, who was gaunt to begin with, looked as if he'd lost ten pounds.

The man barely spoke to anyone. I tried to discourage the reporters from asking him any questions. I feared he'd keel over. The
Newsweek
journalist asked one of the new fathers, a radiologist who already had a nineteen-year-old son, why he had made the decision to add such a difficult second chapter to his life.

“We have been good parents,” the man said. “Our son has done well. He is in university now. He doesn't need us anymore. There is . . . a hole in my heart. These children—I have known them only a short while, but . . . my new children fill that hole.”

Director Ni's taut shoulders seemed to relax just a bit.

Xinyang, Henan Province

The following month, Mr. Hu invited us to return to Henan. Besides the faint hope that he'd made some progress on the AIDS front, I looked forward to visiting our new centers in that province. Although we had a growing team of program directors and field supervisors and trainers working to raise and maintain quality at all of our sites, and although we received quarterly reports on every child, there was nothing quite like a site visit to help me stay connected with our work.

Xinyang Director Feng had delivered. Often a new center would struggle in the early months as the teachers, nannies, and youth mentors worked to create a family-like environment while quietly integrating themselves into daily orphanage life. Under the best directors and over time, the new nurturing child-centered atmosphere would spread beyond the Half the Sky programs throughout the institution. It was already happening in Xinyang.

We visited the infant nurture rooms and watched Half the Sky nannies on the floor, playing with and cuddling the babies. No one even noticed we were there. The babies not in arms were busy crawling or toddling about, exploring their world; the nannies were busy watching the babies. The once-silent rooms were now full of life.

Just as I walked into the preschool, I saw Baobao's chubby cheeks disappear in a cloud of pouf as her teacher slipped a lavender chiffon dress-up gown over her head. What emerged in front of the mirror was a princess. Bright eyes and a sudden, stunned smile. Now a diamond-studded tiara atop scraggly, starting-to-grow hair. Baobao looked down and fingered the filmy fabric of her gown. She looked up. She gazed at the mirror in absolute wonder.
This gorgeous girl is me, Baobao!

Baobao saw us watching her in the mirror and waved happily. She turned toward us with excitement. “
Ayi, nihao! Ayi
, see my dress! Do you want to see my flower?”

We did. She took our hands and led us to a windowsill lined with flowerpots. From each sprouted a tiny seedling. She found the pot marked with her name and proudly held it high. “What is it, Baobao?” ZZ asked.

“Flower seeds!
Hao chi
[good food]!” she said. Now Director Feng was like one of the kids; he jumped in, even more excited than Baobao. “Come, let us show you the sunflower wall! See, the photos show the children planting the seedlings outside, then tending the garden. Now here's a chart where they mark how the seedlings grew.”

“We ate sunflower seeds at snack time one day,” Baobao's teacher said. “The children wondered where the seeds come from, so we started a garden. While our seeds were growing in the garden, we learned the parts of the plant and made drawings and sang sunflower songs and talked about what makes plants grow.”

“When we harvested the seeds,” said Director Feng, “the children decided to eat only some and to plant the rest. Look how their drawings have become more complex over time. Even growing up in the countryside and working on the land, I did not learn so much!”

“I don't know who is more proud,” Baobao's teacher said, laughing, “the children or Director Feng.”

“Half the Sky has brought our children great good,” Director Feng said. “Even the little babies are stronger and more confident. I
am
proud. And I'm proud of our Baobao!”

“
Ayi,
” Baobao said, tugging on my shirt. “You want to see me ride my bike?”

“Sure!”

I watched Baobao, still in lavender chiffon, zipping around on her trike. I watched her give rides to her schoolmates, her face glowing with the thrill of sport. It was almost impossible to believe that this was the footless waif I had lifted from a broken stroller only a year before.

A few years later, Baobao's new American mother, an amputee herself, would tell me, “She is fearless! She will try anything—skating, running, swimming, biking, or kickball. Anything! And our little girl is beautiful, confident, and full of love. She is the kindest child I've ever known.”

Like a child who had been loved all her life.

MR. HU CAME
for us at lunchtime. He explained to Director Feng that he would take us sightseeing.
Sightseeing?
I glanced at ZZ. She shook her head.

“Don't worry,” she murmured. “Just follow.” Of course I did.

The road to the village was carpeted with sheaves of wheat, spread over the road by wily farmers who enlisted passing cars and trucks to ease their workload. Mr. Hu's driver dutifully rolled over miles of drying grain. Here and there, farmers winnowed with giant two-pronged forks as the car passed, tossing the separated wheat chaff in the air.

The fields outside the car window were brown, flat, stubbled with waste. Still, there was an air of timeless order about the place. A row of evenly planted narrow trees lined either side of the road. Their trunks had been painted white once, now long-faded. Ghosts of what had been.

At one nondescript spot in the road, a car waited. We stopped. Three men in the standard uniform of local officials—short-sleeved shirt (black or white), black belt (silver buckle, black-leather cell-phone case), black shoes, lit cigarette—stepped out to greet Mr. Hu warmly. We rolled down the car windows. The men looked at my foreign face and said hello with a wary smile.

As we followed the local officials' car up a dirt road toward the village—a cluster of scraggy trees and mud houses—I thought of the leaflet thrust into my hand when I first came to Henan. Someone had translated an anonymous villager's plea into English:

Have you heard the blood plague that is surrounding our village? . . .

Because of our own ignorance, public health department's setting up so many plasma collection stations and the national propaganda on “taking pride of donating blood” and the slogan of “donating blood to save lives of the injured,” our innocent peasants reached out their strong arms from years of hard labor. Their freshly red blood streamed into the collection stations and in turn they received “fees of nutrition” to compensate their blood losses. . . . These benevolent and innocent peasants always have dug their food from the earth. Who has pushed us into the valley of death? . . .

The young peasants died one after another leaving seventy-year-old parents and still breast-fed babies behind. Some victims hung themselves, threw themselves into the wells or took poison, unable to cope with the pain and suffering. Those who have stayed in bed for a long time moaned and cursed for relief: “God, please let me die, I can't take it anymore.” These scenes were unbearably chilling and it made this village of only orphans and elderly without support.

Whose fault this blood plague is . . . ? And who is there to sympathize us . . . ? People of our village wish to thank you with our deepest gratitude.

WE CLIMBED OUT
of the car. Assorted mongrels ambled over to check us out with halfhearted barks. Right behind them were the village officials—two men in the same basic local officials' garb, except scruffier and with an extra coating of dust.

We were expected. Mr. Hu explained that we wanted to help the children and wanted to see their situation. The village officials thanked us and shook our hands and we followed them toward a nearby home. No ceremonies here.

I'm pretty sure I was the first foreigner they'd seen in that place, and they were curious to have a look, but there seemed to be no fear or paranoia. They were just like villagers I'd met all over China: friendly, eager to share their lives and to know about mine.

One young woman proudly showed me her chubby baby boy; two little girls tagged behind me, giggling and running away each time I turned to peek at them. I tried to take a picture of a scrawny, shirtless old fellow, bronze from countless hours of labor in the fields. He waved me away. “No pictures, no pictures.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, and hastily put my camera away.

“It's okay,” ZZ said. “The old man is embarrassed he's lost some teeth.”

I reached out to shake the old man's hand. “
Duibuqi
, I'm sorry,” I said. “I wanted to take a photo because you are a handsome man.”

“All right, then. All right.” And he posed.

I snapped a quick shot and caught up with the officials. I'd forgotten where I was. This place was charming. Just another village somewhere in China. Life goes on—no cloud of death as I'd imagined.

That changed when we entered the first courtyard.

IT WAS BARREN
, save for an anorexic pig, hunched motionless in a too-small pen that was dark and shrouded with torn burlap. A lone, tired-looking chicken patrolled the hard ground, halfheartedly pecking at what seemed to be nothing more than dirt.

Although clearly long-neglected, the broad-faced brick home with a carved wooden lintel must have once commanded respect in the village. Standing at almost military attention before the door, perhaps the saddest family I had ever seen: two grandparents, a young father, and three children.

The grandparents both looked ancient, but ZZ said they were likely younger than sixty. Their eyes were red with fatigue and sorrow—as if they'd borne all the pain and suffering a human being can endure.

Behind them lurked their son . . . or what remained of him. Disheveled, gaunt, haunted—he didn't seem to know where he was or why he was standing there. Mr. Hu told us he was sick with AIDS and dementia. I prayed that they hadn't taken the man from his bed to greet us.

“His wife died only a few months ago,” Mr. Hu said. “In this area, more women sold their blood than men. Even after the sickness came. They believed that as long as they menstruated each month, they were all right.”

There were two girls, perhaps ten and seven, and a boy about five. It was clear that everything this family had left was being given to the children. Despite their poverty, the children looked well fed. Their hair was combed; their faces and hands, washed. Their clothes were almost clean. Someone cared. The two littlest ones looked on timidly—probably frightened of me. The big girl looked resigned.

I was sure she could be no more than ten. No hint yet of approaching puberty. Yet it seemed only a matter of time before these three lost the grownups in their lives. Ready or not, she would be the woman of the family. No hopes and dreams for her.

What could we do for these children?

THEN A FAMILY
of four—mother sick (father dead), again two girls, and then the long-awaited boy.

The mom had not been tested; there were no antiretroviral (ARV) drugs available here yet. She didn't know there were such things. She was too sick to work the land. Her eldest girl, not yet twelve, had dropped out of school to care for the family.

“Is there no help from the government, Mr. Hu?”

“While the mother lives, the local government provides eight
yuan
each month.”

Less than a dollar.

“We have many such families,” he said. “Almost twenty thousand in the province, twenty-three in this village alone. We are trying to get more subsidy for them.”

A local official chimed in. “Only true orphans can be helped. When the mother is gone, the government will take care of her children. They'll be better off then.”

Don't say that in front of her!
I felt sick. A fraud.

Better off without her.
The mother stood mute, chastened for being alive. I longed to help them.
What could I possibly have to offer here? Was this mission drift? I couldn't remember the rules.

My foreign self got the best of me. I put my arms around the mother. She stiffened even more in my arms. The entire room tensed. Chinese people don't do that. They don't hold strangers.

“What is your name?” I asked the mother.

“Rao,” she said.

Now what? I had to do something.

“Mrs. Rao, we would like to help your children stay in school,” I found myself saying. “If you agree to let your daughter return to school, we will offer support of 500
yuan
each month for your family.”

Sixty dollars—a fortune in this place. I handed her the first installment. She cried. I cried. ZZ cried. Even Mr. Hu got teary-eyed. I told ZZ that my family would cover the costs if we couldn't find support somewhere for AIDS-affected kids. I didn't know what else to do. I'd never felt so helpless in my life.

WE VISITED ANOTHER
village . . . and another. Wherever we went, the villagers knew Mr. Hu. They greeted me like I was somebody special. Someone who could help make it better. I felt worse and worse.

Zhoukou, maybe the most dismal town I'd ever seen, was the place that Mr. Hu had told us was the cradle of Chinese civilization. As we drove along the barren main drag—past a man who appeared to be dying in a doorway, past a cluster of scraggy adolescent boys practicing martial arts with cigarettes dangling from their mouths—the fellow from Zhoukou Civil Affairs repeated the claim. He embellished a bit: “The ancient city Pingliangtai is over 4,600 years old—oldest city in China!”