Wish You Happy Forever (16 page)

Before long everyone was dancing, caught up not only in the music, but in a whole new way of looking at their world.

ZZ and I wandered away to explore the orphanage to make sure no children had been forgotten in the excitement. Sometimes orphanage directors didn't understand or truly believe that we were trying to help
all
the children, including those with severe special needs. On occasion, we'd find them still waiting in dark rooms, months after our programs were under way and their sisters were beginning to flourish.

ZZ and I came upon a wide rooftop balcony where a young
ayi
was hanging piles of wet diapers to dry. The girl looked no more than twelve or thirteen. When I asked, she told me that her name was Baimei and she thought she was thirteen, but nobody knew for sure. She'd had no schooling. She spent her days cleaning up after the younger children at the institution. I asked her about her dreams for the future. She shrugged.

“But if you could do anything you wanted—go anyplace in the world—be anybody?”

“Maybe . . . I don't know . . . maybe a pop star?”

“A singer? Do you like to sing?”

She shrugged again.

“Do you think you have a pretty good singing voice?” I asked.

“No. I don't think so.”

“But you wish you could learn?”

“I don't know.”

“Well . . . do you know why you might like to be a pop star, Baimei?”

“Oh yes.” She didn't hesitate. “They make people happy.”

The absence of childhood dreams seemed unbearably sad. My dreams were what sustained me. But in the early days of Half the Sky, I never once met an institutionalized child who could share her dreams with me. They didn't seem to know that dreams were possible.

During an orphanage visit that first summer, I met a sixteen-year-old who'd spent her life in an institution. Unlike many of her sisters, she was articulate and unsettlingly straightforward. She said to me, “I have no plans for my future. None at all. Sure, I would love to find a family. But I'm too old to be adopted. And for girls like me there is nothing. My education will soon be over, and then that will be the end of it.”

But your whole life is ahead of you! You're a smart girl—it's ridiculous to say that you have no hopes!
I thought this, but I didn't say it. Part of me knew she simply spoke the truth. Even Half the Sky, so keen to remember forgotten children, put all of its resources into transforming the lives of the young ones. They were resilient. They needed so little in order to thrive. It was as if we held the key to their happy futures. But older children who'd never known love, or who'd had it taken from them—theirs was a different story.

As I watched the little ones begin to flourish in our new infant centers and preschools, I often thought about that girl and about all the other big girls whose fates were sealed when their lives had barely begun.

 

OVER HOTPOT
, at a posh restaurant with a live tree growing in the dining room, I asked Chengdu Director “Little Pretty” Chen about the older children in her orphanage and how they did in school. She was, as always, in full face paint and perfectly coiffed. Today she'd chosen knee-high lavender platform boots and a red leather miniskirt. Little Pretty Chen carried a cigarette at all times, even an unlit one in the baby rooms. “One must smoke because it is fashionable,” she'd told me when we first met.

Now she took a drag on her cigarette and piled live shrimp on my plate. I watched their little tentacles wave in the air.

“Orphanage kids are not welcome in our community schools,” Little Pretty said. “They are poor students. They have no motivation. We do everything for them. We feed them and clean up after them. They want for nothing. They're lazy and spoiled and don't care to work hard at school or at anything else.”

Right then, while listening to Little Pretty Chen, I decided that we must design a program for older children, one that would try to meet their individual needs and interests. Besides the loving attention and guidance that the kids so obviously hungered for, we would provide opportunities to study music, art, computers, languages, dance, sports, or anything else they could dream up. We would offer vocational skills and school tutoring. We would find a way to pay for college tuitions. We would be doting parents and mentors for big kids who had no one at all.

The next morning, Baimei became our first Big Sister.

Baimei

Baimei was three or four years old when she was found wandering in the vast Chengdu train station. The police thought she told them that her uncle had taken her there and instructed her to wait for him. He never returned. That's what the police understood. But the child couldn't speak clearly and no one could be sure.

Baimei doesn't remember much about her early years at the orphanage. She remembers that no one liked her. The
ayi
s and the other children called her the Garbage Picker because they said she ate garbage. She doesn't remember eating garbage.

Baimei attended first grade at the local community school. She thinks she did well. But at the end of the year, there was an exam. Baimei didn't understand that the test had a time limit. She lent her only pencil to a classmate who'd forgotten to bring one, and waited for her turn. When the girl finished, Baimei wrote her name on her own exam paper—and then the time was up. Her test score was zero. Little Pretty Chen told Baimei that she was stupid and could no longer attend school.

For the next two years, Baimei begged to be allowed to return to school. Finally Little Pretty said, “All right. If you can learn to recite the multiplication tables before the next school year begins, you can go to school.”

The new school year was only three days away. Baimei borrowed a book and, in just three days, somehow managed to memorize the tables. She tried to recite them for Little Pretty, but Little Pretty had no time to listen. Baimei was never allowed to return to school.

When the Big Sisters program began, Half the Sky hired basic education and music teachers for Baimei. Her quarterly progress reports were glowing:

Baimei's enthusiasm for learning grows more and more. She has changed from one who received knowledge passively to one who is actively exploring, seeking new information, and sharing it. She understands what she is taught in class and raises very good questions. She has even been able to correct me, her teacher, on more than one occasion!

She always prepares for class ahead of time, writing the
pinyin
and words for new characters with the help of a dictionary. Once when I wrote a new character incorrectly, she looked it up in the dictionary and showed me the correct way. I praised her, and she told me shyly that she had looked it up the day before. Her vocabulary is growing rapidly. I am so proud of her!

Our Big Sisters were also required to send us their own quarterly reports. Baimei's written Chinese was rough, but it was easy for our translators to find the heart of her story:

Dear Uncles and Aunts at Half the Sky,

I have made a lot of progress. I feel that my Chinese and math are much better than before, and I even know some English! I want to tell you that it's your support that makes me full of self-confidence. I am no longer a girl that fears things. Now my life is going well for me. I love studying, especially English. I only know a little about that, but it is enough to me to fall in love with it. I can have a short conversation with my teacher. I am very happy and grateful for the opportunity you provide for me, and I won't forget your love.

An American family learned about Baimei and wanted to adopt her. Adoption of an older child was rare in those days, but these people were eager and well prepared to give Baimei a good home. She would have siblings also adopted from China, and a friend from her orphanage lived close by. Baimei was excited. A whole new life! But Little Pretty Chen said she was too old. Never able to turn chameleon with Little Pretty, I stammered in frustration, “But she's only thirteen! Chinese law allows children to be adopted until fourteen.”

“The papers are wrong,” Little Pretty said decisively. “She is fourteen.”

A few months later, Little Pretty Chen was arrested for embezzling 750,000
yuan
(about 90,000 dollars at the time) from foreign adoption donations. She received brief Public Enemy fame in hopes of deterring others who might be considering venturing over to the dark side. She was sentenced to fifteen years in prison; she was in for ten. “Her husband didn't even divorce her,” ZZ said wistfully. “He must love her very much.”

Baimei lost her chance to have a family, but she kept working. She decided she wanted to become a makeup artist because “beauty makes people happy.” Half the Sky sent her to beauty school, where, in time, she became a cosmetician.

I remember the first time I served the customer I felt very nervous, but now I feel much better. Sisters in the beauty shop told me that I have made great progress, which makes me very happy. But don't worry, I won't be conceited on these praises. I will continue working hard and I won't let you down.

If I ever had my doubts about the futility of trying to reach older, institution-damaged children, our first Big Sister wiped them out. She taught me never to walk away. Not from
any
child. Since I met Baimei in 2002, Half the Sky has helped more than 6,500 teens attend universities and vocational schools; study languages, computer science, music, art, sports, and dance; and begin to dream. It's never too late to start . . . and our dreams set us free.

My dream now is to study in Beijing with Mao Geping, China's famous makeup artist. If I can improve my skills, I will work for the TV crew. Sometimes I feel I am an unfortunate girl, but still, I always have my dreams.

Chapter 9

A Burnt Tongue Becomes Shy of Soup

Summer 2002

Old Yang told us that Guangdong Province was a definite go. So that summer, while our volunteers and trainers established a new Half the Sky center in Shanghai, I made an exploratory trip to Guangdong with a young adoptive mother whose daughter was from Yangdong, a small Guangdong town (population only four hundred thousand!) and one of our now-confirmed orphanage build sites for the fall. Her family had committed to sponsor the new center. We were welcomed with enthusiasm.

Another family had agreed to sponsor a new center in Huazhou, the second Guangdong site. Both of these orphanages had elicited dozens of e-mails from concerned adoptive parents whose children had come to them with an array of typical post-institutionalization problems—emotional distance or shutdown, food hoarding, nightmares, developmental delays, and, as with our Anya, just plain anger.

Eager to launch their own Half the Sky programs, the Huazhou and Yangdong directors attended our training in Shanghai. After three years of trying, we were finally going to Guangdong!

Organizing each build and training is a lot like preparing to shoot a movie. We recruit a crew of volunteers. We order developmental toys and books and supplies from multiple sources. We organize hotels and transportation. We interview and hire local teachers and nannies and mentors and supervisors. We measure and photograph rooms and prebuild bookcases and climbing equipment and puppet theaters and plenty more. Our two-site Guangdong build was scheduled for October 2002. When I arrived back in Beijing in September to make final preparations and sign agreements, everything was lined up and ready to go. Fortunately, Terri had agreed to lead the builds. Things were looking up.

ZZ MET ME
at the Beijing airport. Bleary-eyed from what was becoming my regular twelve-hour commute, I was ready for an uneventful evening. That wasn't to be.

“We must go to the Social Workers Association. They wait for us,” ZZ said. Not good. We made our way to the association offices as fast as Beijing traffic would allow. When we walked into the reception room, the gentlemen of China Social Workers Association were already lined up in the formal configuration. Our only booster at the association, Old Yang, had been demoted to the end of the row. He studied a blank piece of paper with great interest.

President Red Sun Liu motioned us to sit. Even as my tea glass was being filled, Red Sun Liu started in on ZZ. Spittle flew. ZZ calmly wrote until the boss finished his harangue. She looked up at me—her face impassive.

“He says this: ‘When we brought the American mother to Yangdong for the visit, it was not the right way,'” she began.

“In June?”

“In June. ‘The proper procedure is to advise the association, who then advise the ministry, who then issue written documentation for approval.' But I don't do it right,” ZZ said. “So he think this is why Guangdong Province now reject Half the Sky to start programs.”

“No programs in Guangdong?”

“Proper procedures have not been followed.”

Not again.

“President Red Sun Liu suggests he may help,” ZZ continued. “Half the Sky should submit a proposal explaining the goal, the activities, the items to buy, the training needs and salary and other expenses, together with how much Half the Sky will be obligated to pay. He personally brings proposal to Guangdong capital city, Guangzhou, for approval. He suggests the way of cooperation is we wire the money to him, then he wire to the institution, let them do the work.”