That Rainy Afternoon I Met Xiao Man Outside Pu’er
I went to Yunnan last March, not for tourism, not for formal volunteer work exactly, just tagged along with my college roommate Lili who’s been doing this rural child protection stuff for five years. I had two weeks off between jobs, was tired of scrolling my apartment walls looking for something to kill time, so I threw my old hiking boots and a pack of snacks in a bag and went. I had no idea what we were walking into that day. She got a call a week before we left, a teacher at the village primary school tipped her off about a 7-year-old girl, kept coming to school with bruises, wouldn’t say where they came from.
The van couldn’t go all the way up the mountain, so we had to walk the last three kilometers. It rained hard the night before, and the dirt path was turned into slop. My boots kept slipping, I tripped over an exposed tree root once, got my whole left jeans leg caked in dark mud, complained the whole way up. Lili just laughed and said I’d get used to it, I never did. When we finally got to the village, the house was at the very end of the road, mud brick walls, a rickety chicken coop out front that reeked of manure. That’s where Xiao Man was.
She was hiding behind the kitchen door, only half her face peeking out at us. The woman who’d been abusing her, her dad’s new girlfriend, had left that morning, ran off to Kunming after the teacher started asking too many questions. I fumbled in my bag and pulled out a Snickers I’d stashed, kept it in the outer pocket in the sun all morning, it was completely melted. When I peeled the wrapper, half the chocolate oozed out and stuck straight to my thumb. I stood there like an idiot, not knowing what to do, and Xiao Man just stared at my thumb for a full minute, then stepped forward slow as a cat and took a tiny lick off the tip. Lili elbowed me, so I pulled out another one that was still okay stashed deeper in the bag, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that tiny lick. When she finally came out a little more, I rolled up the sleeve of her too-big hand-me-down sweater to check her arm, and there were four or five round cigarette burns, some scabbed over, some still pink and raw. I had to turn around fast and pretend to squint at grandma’s row of pickled vegetable jars so no one would see I was crying. That sounds dramatic, I know, but it just hit me out of nowhere.
Grandma was 78, her legs were so swollen she could barely walk across the room. At first she wouldn’t talk to us, said it’s family business, we outsiders shouldn’t meddle. Said her boy works construction in Kunming, hasn’t been home in two years, only sends 1000 yuan a month, that new woman was the only one willing to stay here to look after Xiao Man and her. If we chase her away, who’s gonna cook, who’s gonna carry water from the well up the hill? Lili didn’t argue. Next day we got up at dawn, went to grandma’s small tea plot behind the house to help pluck early spring buds. I was useless, plucked a bunch of big old leaves mixed in with the tender buds, grandma had to sit and pick them all out again, I just stood there sweating. But that slow work got her talking. She said she saw the woman hit Xiao Man, once broke a ceramic bowl over her head because she spilled half a bowl of rice. She tried to stop it once, and the woman pushed her down, and she couldn’t get up off the dirt floor for an hour. She just didn’t know what to do. If she ran the woman off, her son would blame her, stop sending money, then all three of them would starve. That’s the part no one posts about online, right? It’s never just one bad person. It’s a whole web of no good options.
Talking to the village cadres was even more awkward. One of them kept saying domestic disputes are best settled at home, didn’t want to file an official report, said it would make the village look bad for the county poverty alleviation inspection coming up next month. Lili had to pull out a printed copy of the child protection law, had to call a contact she had at the county women’s federation, before they finally agreed to sign off. In the end, we took Xiao Man to the small foster home the volunteer group runs in the town down the mountain. She didn’t cry when we left the village, just held that sticky half-melted Snickers the whole way, didn’t let go of it even when it got chocolate all over her new sweater.
I went back to my city life a week later, started a new job, went to barbecues with friends, forgot about Xiao Man for whole weeks sometimes. I feel bad about that, honestly. Like I’m supposed to care all the time, right? But life just pushes on. Last week Lili sent me a photo. Xiao Man is in first grade now, she’s got a new blue backpack with a unicorn on it, she’s standing by the foster home’s vegetable garden, smiling a tiny wobbly little smile. But Lili said she still flinches every time anyone raises their hand fast near her, she still won’t sleep with the bedroom door closed, she barely talks more than a few words a day to the other kids.
I don’t have a nice neat ending to this. I used to think rescue was one big dramatic moment—you show up, take the kid away, everyone lives happily ever after. It’s not. It’s walking three kilometers in mud, it’s plucking tea for two days to earn an old lady’s trust, it’s arguing with people who don’t want trouble, it’s melted candy and awkward silences and a hundred small steps that don’t feel like they’re doing anything at the time. And even after you get the kid out, the hurt doesn’t just vanish. I send 500 yuan to the foster home every month, I look at the photos Lili sends once in a while. That’s all I can do right now. I still think about that tiny lick of melted chocolate off my thumb, sometimes. I hope one day she gets to eat a whole solid Snickers, no hiding, no flinching. That’s all I got. (1187 words)
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » That Rainy Afternoon I Met Xiao Man Outside Pu’er