Finding Chika, page 9
She was six.
Janine was adamant about her eating foods that helped her and avoiding those that might hurt. This included sugar, because of how it feeds cancer. Same for processed foods like chips and snacks.
But Chika was still a kid. She still longed for such things. Once, at a family party, I sat down on the couch and she slid a pillow between us.
“Are you trying to block me?” I asked, smiling.
“I don’t want you to be mad,” she mumbled.
“Chika, why would I be mad?”
She slowly moved the pillow.
She was hiding a bag of Cheetos.
Another time, she rode home from a wedding shower with our friend Nicole. When Nicole checked the rearview, Chika was sound asleep. Only when they reached the house did Nicole discover Hershey’s Kisses wrappers all over the seat. Chika had opened a gift basket and eaten all that chocolate at once.
Later, when Janine tried to tell me this story, Chika slapped her hands over my ears.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she protested.
“What, Chika? Let me hear.”
“OK. But don’t freak out.”
Freak out?
Of course, we were never mad over such things. On the contrary, we hated taking anything away from her. We hated doing anything that reminded her of her sickness. Janine cried when they told us we had no choice but to put that port inside Chika’s chest, mostly because Chika would now have to see a plastic bump in her skin every day.
“Those things get infected,” Janine said.
“What else can we do?”
“I don’t trust it.”
“You don’t trust it.” I sighed. “What’s our alternative?”
The day after nurses used that port for the first time, I took Chika back to Haiti for my monthly visit. A reward for her perseverance.
It was mid-July, the hottest time of the year. Janine dressed her in white shorts and a lime-green T-shirt and a white headband with a big green flower on it. Chika wanted to arrive after the kids were sleeping and sneak into her bunk bed, so when the girls woke in the morning, they would all say, “Hey, look! It’s Chika!” She reviewed this plan with military precision during our plane ride down.
She seemed particularly excited about this trip. Perhaps she was growing weary of America, the hospitals, the treatments. She could only walk on her own now with difficulty, and her left eye didn’t close all the way, even when sleeping. Her hair was missing on the back side of her neck, and her thighs showed stretch marks from the severe weight gains and losses. Her mouth drooped into the shape of a sideways teardrop.
We also noticed her becoming less patient. More defiant. She often yelled “NO!” She hid under the table. There were consequences to such actions, because we refused to allow pity to replace teaching, and we wanted to teach her for the rest of a long life.
Once, when she refused to drink her supplement shake, Janine said, “Chika, we’re just trying to take care of you.” And she spun and yelled, “You’re not here to take care of me! You’re here for punishment and taking things away!”
I tried to intervene.
“Chika, if you want to go to Aidan’s, you have to finish your shake.”
“If you want to stay HERE, you have to finish YOUR shake!” she retorted.
I can’t say these arguments didn’t affect us. They hurt sometimes. But we knew she was justified. Chika didn’t rail against going to bed or finishing her vegetables. If she didn’t want a medicinal milk shake, or to go for an MRI, could we blame her? We were always up against an invisible wall, not wanting to explain too deeply, not wanting to scare her or make her burden heavier.
We also never knew the extent of her pain; she dealt with so much, and so rarely complained. Sometimes she would say, “Mister Mitch, my head hurts,” and while I would say “Let me rub it” or give her a children’s aspirin, it would privately terrify me, because what if it wasn’t just a passing headache?
In a way, I was sort of relieved when Chika argued with us, when she showed us her fight, as I knew she would need fight to get through this. So, OK, I figured. Argue if need be. Yell and scream. Do not go gently.
We arrived in Haiti late, and the kids were asleep by the time Alain’s car pulled through the gates. Chika didn’t look well; she was tired and sweating. I suggested she stay in my room until morning.
She didn’t protest. I got her changed, and we said our prayers and she lay down on a small mattress. A few minutes later, she asked to sleep in my bed.
I lifted her head. I said, “Chika, what’s wrong—”
And she vomited all over me.
My chin, my shoulders, and my shirt were covered. I rushed her to the toilet, but she had already spit up everything. She was crying and I was saying “It’s OK, it’s OK,” and she was sweating through her nightshirt, but she moaned that she was cold. I cleaned her up and placed a wet towel on her forehead, and I gave her some Tylenol to fight the fever. She fell into a troubled sleep, matched by my own.
Us
Two days before Christmas, Chika visits again.
“Look, Mister Mitch!”
I spin from my desk to see her standing in the doorway, wearing a yellow gown with layered skirts, a satin bodice, and ruffled sleeves. I remember buying her this outfit in New York, after her treatments at Sloan Kettering had finished. We’d taken her to the Disney Store to pick out one thing she wanted. She ran her hand over dolls and water bottles, but she stopped at the clothing.
“It’s Belle’s dress!” she marveled. “Beauty and the Beast!”
I lifted the hanger.
“Can I get it, Mister Mitch? Please?”
As if I could say no.
We have a photo of Chika in that dress and its matching tiara. She is standing in front of a full-length mirror, looking proudly at her reflection. I love that shot. It’s the only picture we have of Chika smiling at herself.
Are you going out somewhere? I joke now.
“Where will I go?” she asks.
Nowhere. It’s just something people say when they see someone dressed up.
“Mister Mitch?”
Hmm?
“Do you really see me?”
Yes. Why?
“Do you see me now?”
She is suddenly in the corner.
I still see you, I say.
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
She pulls at something on her gown.
“This dress is pretty.”
Do you remember Beauty and the Beast, I ask?
“Yeah. It’s about a girl who has to save her father.”
I am about to correct her. But that’s actually true.
Chika? I say. Why did you ask if I could see you?
She suddenly has a wand in her hand.
“I didn’t,” she whispers. “You did.”
She waves the wand.
“Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!” she yells, and disappears.
Chika’s father is alive.
He is living in Tabarre, a forty-minute ride from the mission. At one point, we were told he was dead. Now we are told differently. Chika’s godmother says she knows how to find him.
This is not uncommon in the Haitian orphan world. Adults who bring us children will sometimes say the parents are deceased to increase their odds of acceptance. Now and then, the parents will actually send someone in with their child and instruct them to lie. Although we try to verify everything, there are no digital records, no agencies that keep track of such things. You ask questions. You ask for documents. At some point, you accept what you are told or you do not.
On the trip that begins with Chika vomiting, I ask Alain to drive me to the father’s house. We meander through traffic out to a rural, agricultural landscape. We park on a dirt road. We push through a wooden gate. There’s a small square of land, with a large breadfruit tree. This is where Chika was born.
And stepping out in front of me is her father, Fedner Jeune.
He is small and compact, maybe five foot six, with a wide mustache, a full head of hair, and deep bags under his eyes, which are bloodshot red. They rarely meet mine.
Alain handles the introductions and we speak, through translation. I ask about Fedner’s upbringing. I ask about Chika’s infancy. He answers every inquiry with very few words.
He says he was there when Chika was born, but was not at home when the earthquake happened. He says that for months, he and Chika’s mother lived apart, while he rebuilt the cinder block house. He confirms that after she died, all four of his kids went to live with other people. He doesn’t say why.
The house, which has no door, is one room now, with a single lightbulb for illumination. The ground nearby is spotted with bean and banana plants. Water is drawn from a pump. There is no bathroom; they use a latrine on a neighbor’s property.
A woman and a little child sit playing beneath a tree. Alain asks Fedner if this woman is with him, and he says, “Yes.”
Is this where Chika played? I ask.
“There,” he says, pointing.
Is that the field she slept in after the earthquake?
“There.” He points again.
I ask if he knew Chika was being brought to us when she was three.
“Yes, I knew.”
Did her godmother ask you or tell you?
“She told me.”
And it was all right with you?
“It was all right with me.”
I don’t ask why he didn’t want Chika back, even though part of me screams for an answer. I remind myself I can never know the circumstances of his life, or its hardships. I remind myself he lost his partner, the mother of his children. Who knows how his world was overturned?
Instead, I explain the reason I have come. Chika’s medical condition. He nods now and then, although I’m not sure he understands. “Whatever you think is best,” he says, “you do.”
I explain that her life could be in the balance.
“God will decide that,” he says.
I say I have a hard question. I say if Chika should not survive this brain tumor, is it important to him that she be buried here in Haiti? I hate even saying the words, it makes me physically shiver, but it feels like something I must ask him. Perhaps he would want to visit her grave.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Whatever you think.”
I want to stoke a connection between father and daughter. It feels like I should try. Chika once said she had a memory of her father taking her for ice cream when she was very little. She said it made her happy.
Do you remember that? I ask Fedner.
“I never took her for ice cream.”
Is there any place near here that sells ice cream?
“No.”
I struggle to keep the conversation going. He is not mean. Just vacant. I keep thinking how sad it would make Chika if she heard there was no ice cream store.
Still, I invite him to the mission. I want him to see his daughter—and her to see him—perhaps because, deep down, I don’t know if they will get another chance. We drive back together, and as we approach the gates, there is part of me that feels suddenly extraneous, as if I’ve been nudged to the side of the picture. For all Janine and I have done with Chika, this man has a certain claim that we never will. It’s different with her mother, who in dying, passed a torch that we eventually gripped. But Fedner Jeune is still here in Haiti. And while I force myself to ignore it, I feel strangely like a substitute.
When we arrive, Chika is playing in the gazebo. She is sweating heavily.
“Chika,” I ask, “do you know who this is?”
She looks up.
“It’s your daddy. Can you give him a hug?” (I say this in English so as not to embarrass him.)
She does as I ask. I leave them alone.
He sits on a bench, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, despite the heat, and she sits next to him. From time to time I look over, but I never see them speaking. Chika is playing with a doll and he is staring at the yard. The sun bakes down. One of our kids runs past with a “kite” made of sticks and a plastic bag, but with no wind, it doesn’t take off.
After two hours, Fedner walks over, shakes my hand, and leaves.
Lesson Five
When Children Are Yours and Not Yours
We had a little boy in our orphanage for three years. He was sweet and well adjusted. One day, a man claiming to be his father came to our gate. He said he wanted the boy right now. We’d never seen this man before. The mother had told us during the intake interview that the child’s father disappeared as soon as she’d gotten pregnant.
Now here he was, six years later, screaming threats at our director. When we contacted the mother, she begged us to ignore him. He was a violent person, she said, who just resurfaced and only wanted the child to prove dominance over her. She said her son would never go to school, or eat well, or be sheltered properly if we acquiesced. Please, she begged us, don’t give him up.
A week or so later, she called and recanted. Crying and clearly distressed, she said the man was beating her, and if we didn’t comply with his wishes, she was afraid for her life.
I told Alain we shouldn’t do it. We couldn’t do it. We’d be putting the boy—and his mother—in danger. I yelled and paced and yelled some more.
But in the end, we had no choice. There was no abuse hotline in Haiti. No court that would rule in our favor. The biological father had his rights. They trumped ours. It caused us great anguish, watching this boy play with the other kids, unaware of how his life was about to be uprooted. We pushed the deadline as long as possible, then reluctantly gathered his things. The nannies hugged him tightly. He started to cry. We drove him to an office, where, upon arrival, the angry father grabbed him without a word.
We never saw them again.
For three years our staff had fed, clothed, bathed, taught, and watched over that child. But the absent father’s claim was greater, and we had to stand down. After that, we insisted on signed consents or death certificates for both parents in the intake process. But to this day, I agonize if that little boy is all right.
Yours, not yours. We wrestled with this question many times, Chika. Remember what you once asked? How did you find me? I promised myself you would never feel lost again. I hated the idea that you—or any of our kids—might ever feel unwanted.
But seeing your father that day touched a nerve. True, we had to track him down. And he left the mission almost as quickly as he entered it. But what if he hadn’t? What if he had said, “I’ll take it from here”? Would I have been able, given your medical situation, to turn you over? To trust a man who had been so absent from your life to suddenly try and save it? Would I have been doing right by you? What about doing right by him?
Is it like Pope John XXIII once said, that it’s easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father? Who steps aside? It’s a debate that foster parents deal with regularly and why adoption agencies have strict rules on parental rights. But we were neither of these. We were—we are—a place of love and shelter for Haitian children with few options. And when your health was threatened and we brought you to Michigan, and you were lying on that hospital gurney with tubes and monitors and a white bandage around your little head, who had claim to you was the furthest thing from our minds.
So this was another thing you taught me, Chika, what “yours” means with children and what it does not. It is an important lesson, and why I put it on this list.
Occasionally, by the way, even friends would use the “yours” word. “It’s great what you’re doing for a child that’s not yours.” It stung me to hear it, and puzzled me to think there would be a difference in our efforts if somehow you had our DNA. I remember once we stood by a mirror, studying our reflections, and you held your arm up next to mine. I thought you were comparing our skin color. Instead, you pointed to a mole near my wrist and said, “Mister Mitch, why do you have that bump?” That’s all you were interested in.
Yours, not yours. The paperwork at the orphanage is signed by me. It obligates us to nurture, feed, educate, and protect the children—all things mothers and fathers are supposed to do. But in the end, it is a document of responsibility, not parenthood. I am, for all our kids, just Mr. Mitch, their “legal guardian,” the words I used at the first hospital you and I went to, Chika. It feels sometimes like a diminished title. Still, when I look around, it is me, or Miss Janine, or our compassionate staff at the mission, kissing the children good night, waking them every morning, tying their shoes, cutting their sandwiches, reading them books, racing them to the doctor if something happens.
We did not bring any of these little souls into the world. That truth can never be overstated. But recently, one of our oldest kids, for whom we arranged a college scholarship in the U.S., honored a request to see his biological father in Haiti, who had never been a part of his life. The man quickly dragged him to his friends and bragged, “Look at my son! He’s so smart he’s in American college!” The young man said it made him resentful, as if this person, despite a lifelong absence, deserved credit for how he’d turned out.
I wonder, Chika, if anyone has blind claim over a child, save for God. I have witnessed the purest connection between an adoptive mother and her children, and I have witnessed helpless infants shunned by those who birthed them. The opposite also happens. After a while, you make peace with the truth: love determines our bonds. It always comes down to that.
The day your father returned home to Tabarre, you ran a high fever, and you vomited again. And that night, while he slept in his cinder block house, you cried yourself to sleep at the mission. The next day, you seemed so weak, that when the time came to leave, you didn’t even say goodbye to the kids. You just took my hand and led me to the car.
At the Port-au-Prince airport, you complained about walking, so I carried you through the lines, one arm tucked beneath you, one arm wheeling my roller bag. When we boarded the plane, I put a pillow on the armrest.
