Later in the week we take our program to an orphanage, where the children sleep on a large concrete slab with a partially finished roof and a wall made from a holey white curtain hanging on a clothesline. The children, most who have been dropped off by parents who can't afford to care for them, get little attention. There is nothing to entertain them, no toys, books, or games, so I hide a rock behind my back and let them guess which hand it is in. A few girls are intrigued and we play this game for what seems like an hour. I am so tired of hiding the rock, I can hardly stand it, but the children want more. They are used to endless days of nothing. Their toys are the things of the earth: dirt, water, sky.

***

She was just a baby the first time I saw her. A shiny cooing infant with course hair, fat cheeks and dark skin the color of mocha. Her mother was the washwoman for the missionaries, a thin, young girl with no husband. The missionaries told us the baby's name was Georgie and said they were looking for a family to adopt the child. They never said it, but I had the feeling they were peddling this child to us, like a used car salesman dangling a set of keys in front of us.

I don't know this now, but I will return the following year and see Georgie again, this time sitting on a cooking pot in the yard. I am painting the back of one of the new buildings when I see her mother set a pot on the ground and then sit Georgie in it. She is potty training, using a small gray metal cooking pot, and the naked toddler will not use it, but sit there and stare at me, the blan with the paint roller. We will not take her home during that trip either, although I will want to, even more than I did before. Adoption is difficult in Haiti, even when you are willing to play the game of bribery and corruption, and most orphans will never be adopted. But I will still see Georgie sitting on that pot, waiting for something, many years from now.

Later, I will email the missionary couple and ask them if their orphanage is ready and if they have children to adopt. The missionary man will tell me that the orphanage is ready, but the adoption paperwork process is not. He is not saying what he really means: that Haiti is not ready. There is still too much corruption. Years later, I will get a card in the mail from the missionary family, with a picture of their family on the front, and it will take me some time before I realize who the preschooler in the photo is.

I am too late. It is Georgie.

***

When we sing songs at the orphanage, Sam sits next to a boy named Steven, who looks not quite two and doesn't know how to clap. Crouching in front of him, Sam takes Steven's hands and slaps his palms together to the beat. Steven is a stone-faced puppet, his hands flopping together like a doll's, lifeless and dangling. The child is not retarded. He has never been taught how to clap.

The missionaries bring their adopted son Junior with them to the orphanage and he toddles over to Steven, delighted at having found a playmate. They look the same age, but most likely Junior is younger and better fed, dressed in a spotless plaid blue and white one-piece that looks like it stepped off the pages of a Baby Gap ad. His cheeks and arms bulge with baby fat and his black skin is shiny, like a copper penny. Steven is also wearing blue, but it is a long blue t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, so that his skinny arms and part of his rib cage show through the overstretched holes. The shirt ends a few inches above his kneecaps, revealing naked legs. Junior reaches out to hold Steven's hand, and they almost look like brothers. One of Steven's black knees is dusted with white from the ground. All the children wear the dust from the earth, like a permanent imprint, a reminder that their days are numbered. For dust you are and to dust you will return. I want to wash the dust off them before it is too late.

This may sound heartless, but I am not usually a sensitive person. I don't tear up at Hallmark commercials or sentimental movies. Not even starving children in Africa, on a Sally Struthers' commercial, bothers me. Even my mother agrees--I am not naturally a merciful person. But leaving the orphanage that day, I am suddenly sick with grief. The children wave goodbye. It is just another day for them. One group of blans leave, but others will come. Nobody stays. They are used to saying goodbye. But I am not.

Before we leave, one of the missionaries tells us not to bore people in America with our stories of Haiti. He says something like, People will ask you if you had a good trip, and all you have to say is yes. Don't pull out your ten roles of pictures. Most people really don't care. If they want to know more about it, then tell them the good things about Haiti, about the children and the blue water and the beautiful things.

That is what he tells us before we leave. As I sit and look out of the window on the plane, I see a line of faces, probably the same faces I saw a week ago, standing on the balcony of the airport. They watch our plane take off and as I look down, their bodies grow smaller and smaller and then disappear completely, like the mountains and the blue water below. When I return home, people ask me if I had a good trip. For a second, I feel a sudden small grief, maybe even see a brief snapshot of Georgie or Steven, but instead, I tell them yes, and nothing else.
9:16:57 PM