Until you think.
Watching the movie, “Annie”, brings back a memory of my earliest recollection settling in America. We were temporarily in my grandmother’s nearly dilapidated home, embracing the harsh realities of my Papa trying to make it on our own as a family with five children. No doubt, movies provided an escape from what truly was to what it could be.
The movie, “Annie”, led to the joyful, happy ending of where this curly red-haired orphan, Annie, was finally taken in by this wealthy, bald-headed man. I express the characteristic images as matter-of-fact for the following reason: I want to be certain that I wasn’t the only child back then who thought of the “what if that had been me” wishful thinking. In other words, finding oneself as an orphan to then, eventually be adopted by someone you hardly even knew, much less, an older man without a spouse in the picture, but had the riches and power to change your world.
The longing feeling did not last with me. In fact, fear overtook me and I quickly pushed my thoughts away from such a possibility.
My Papa arrived to America with $8,000 in cash, having sold some of his inherited land in hopes of starting a life here with his family. Lacking knowledge of how to invest or confidence to put a down payment on a home which would have been more than enough back in the 80’s to get his family started in a decent direction, we went from one rental home to another. While he briefly thrived opening a deli named after his first grandson, no business was to prosper either. Still, he was my Papa. The thought of trading him in for any other man, even one with great riches or a better life scared me. I wanted no part in such a possibility. And yet, I recall when I was introduced to such actual circumstances where a child could find themself with no choice.
I recall going over to our relative’s house to visit in my earliest years upon arriving here in America. The oldest daughter, several ages older than I, started to chit-chat with me, asking about what I remember back as a child. She, too, had been born and lived in the same country as I had before her family went ahead of us to stay here. All of a sudden, she shared with me something beyond my preparation to take in.
With a bemused response, “No”, she asked if I ever heard about the time she had gotten kidnapped. I had not heard nor had been told of such a tragic incident. I would think being taken away from your love ones would be a horrifying experience. To my surprise, however, she made the abduction sound so eventful, telling me that she had been taken under the belief of being the child they had been searching for, prophetically as “the one”. I listened quietly as she briefly went into another room to come back with this scarf, showing me what they had left with her to keep after she had been returned.
Returned? That was the striking part to me. Even more interesting, she mentioned that my Papa had been one of the men who came for her upon the return. She was surprised I had not heard of the story.
I, while indeed having no recollection of hearing such story, was quietly still stuck on her uttered word, “return”. I could not picture such a transaction after the thought of being taken away. It was strange to me. How does that happen? And even more, why she was returned seemingly unharmed was comforting news, but left me utterly confused with such kind of abduction. As to add to my silent perplexity, I wondered why Papa never told me.
As if that was far too much for me to fully process and believe, some years passed until I came across a similar report.
My family was visiting yet another relative a few years later. I had let go and had long stopped thinking about that abduction story told to me. As if all sounded like a replay, I am introduced to yet another relative, again, a few years older than I, who had apparently underwent the same predicament. This time, I don’t recall the story directly being told to me by the abducted; it had been relatives around me who decided to recall the uncanny events I had already heard.
The story sounded like such a recant of what I’d been told years before that I actually thought the apparently abducted had been the same person. She hadn’t been. But now I was back to the confusion of how a return transaction occurs following an abduction once more. Once again, I was told my Papa had partaken in this return as well. Once again, I had never been told.
Had there been struggle and conflict on getting each girls back, both at different times? Why had I not heard of either incidents? Did both really happen? If not, how is it that both families from distant sides have the same story to attest? Did such abductions actually take place where one is “returned”? Is there really such a search for “the one”? So many questions. My young and ignorant thoughts left me in silence. If there are those attesting to such hunt, what more is there to ask?
I used to cut Papa’s hair and recall seeing a healed thick scar across the back of his neck, just above the hairline. When I asked him about it, he just gently shook his head, as if my questioning had opened up some repressed memories, like the times I could see his eyes recalling World War II and how he just sat in silence in apparent recollection of bitter times. I dared not push to get anything more. Perhaps this is why I remained silent with my questions. I figured, if Papa had wanted me to know something, he would have already told me.
Needless to say, I never asked Papa about either abduction incidents. It had been weird for me to fathom young girls around the age of five being taken only to be returned because they were concluded as not having been “the one”. More eerie was that in both cases, these girls were of kin to me. Neither had been hurt. In fact, I gathered they were each given respectful treatment during their entire time of being taken.
You hear of stories of children chosen as the “golden child” or the “chosen one”, but when it hits close to home, it’s not one I felt I wanted to believe.
I recall watching some documentary of how parents are told their child was to be the chosen one. I thought it weird for anyone to suggest such prophesy. Even more, what made my heart beat to the fullest in my silent thoughts is how parents concede to such claims. Who is to say? Who is to suggest it right to take your child away due to what suggestively is a mere inkling?
I had a boy cut up until I started school. I didn’t even start school until first grade, skipping the whole kindergarten experience. Were there any reasons for these other than I being told Papa had always hoped his youngest to be a boy and that I didn’t need kindergarten? If Papa had been part of both children’s return, had he any fear that I could have also been taken?
One of my abducted relatives mentioned she had been outside a church, selling candles when she had been taken. No way would Papa have had me alone that way. In fact, I can’t recall ever being out in the open without him being by my side unless we were within the proximity of our home. I enjoyed playing outside, but I was never to go far. We had no neighbors. The stray dogs I recalled, would sit outside our house at night as watch. I was always okay with the isolation. I had a cousin and my siblings in our home. All with me was enough.
I recall thinking and feeling that I would not have wanted to be taken away, no matter how fascinating each story tried to portray itself to me. What search is this where children are taken for some prophetic purpose? It all sounded scary or daunting to me, not inviting. Sure. An uncle told me he quickly ran in to check on me when he saw a swarm of bees coming out of my room only to thankfully find me unharmed. Another occasion where I was helping an older cousin of mine carry a soda liter to his home only to have him tell everyone upon our arrival that two snakes had wrapped around my legs as I walked before both were seen uncoiling to pass on which left him tongue-tied and afraid to say a word as he watched. Would someone knowing either of these coincidental accounts have led those in search to deem me as that “one”?
(They would then later learn that my neck had suffered from an attack of a hive of bees when I [silly, around 5-years old me] curiously took a stick to poke into the bottom hole of a beehive; as for snakes not biting me- why did Papa tell me to stay still as he quietly came up behind me to drop a large rock on a snake’s head he later told everyone who gathered in that bamboo forest? No matter the mumble that followed, I doubt Papa was going to wait to see if the snake would have actually bitten me.)
Funny how you start to think maybe you were that secret never told. And then, you dare not think so. Fear overcomes you- no way hoping and thus, holding any desire to be taken from those you love.
Perhaps Papa never told me about those abductions so I would not have to fear. Regardless of his reasons, they worked. I never felt afraid of being taken from my family as a child. Some things are better left as yesterday to move for a better tomorrow. I had my Papa, Mama, siblings, and a home surrounded by friends and relatives within distance. How should an innocent child think to just let all that go to be the “chosen”?
By the time I arrived to America, Papa had loosened up on his proximity restrictions. I sensed this because my cousins and I were left to play outside my grandmother’s house many times unattended by an adult. A comedian had made a joke about no child in the poor neighborhoods would ever be abducted. Why? We can’t even afford our own? (Hahaha.) Still, while I grew to be a rebel of my boundaries, desiring to embrace my own independence as early as I could, I realized Papa was still watching me.
I recall a very quiet conversation both Papa and Mama had as I was entering junior high, deeply considering to send me back to my home country where I would stay in a convent. I had once visited a convent- not a sound to be heard other than my own squeals when Mama pinched me due to my inability to patiently sit and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I feared what could be the inevitable if they so agreed it would have been best. I recall pretending to not have heard the conversation, but being silently filled with worry that they would follow through. It never happened, but why they had the conversation made me think they felt I was going in the wrong direction. I will never know Papa’s thoughts about that, either. I do know that I had been deeply afraid.
Our fathers protect us. That is what I know so much now than ever before. For my own story, I am convinced Papa only continued to loosen constraints because I was the kind to work so hard at being free. By the time I was ten, I told on myself that I had not followed his fatherly order. I still recall him lying on my grandmother’s couch, just telling me not to do it again. I remember feeling for the first time I had been freed, but somehow also had gained Papa’s trust from thereon.
While fathers can’t protect you from your own curiosities, they do their best to protect you for as long as you let them from the world. I know that now. My urgency to be autonomous, secretly teaching myself to take public transportation so I could attend after school dances in junior high, getting a job at the age of fourteen at a grocery store and walking home late at night just so I could have school money, going to see movies by myself in movie theaters- those precarious decisions to my naïveté all had put me within reach of countless danger. I was foolishly not thinking about my safety because I lacked the fear. Papa protected me for as long as he could, in as much as he knew how-until I let go.
The fascination of being Annie was a blink. A young, innocent, kind girl given a second chance to have a life only others could dream of. I struggled along with Papa’s struggles, but I would not have traded him for some bald-headed man in a tuxedo clearly with much greater riches and reputable power.
My Papa gave me love and protection beyond what he wanted me to know. Priceless.
I am a good mother of five, a devoted wife, a teacher to so many other children who have taught me, year after year, so much about myself… I am because of my Papa’s protection. Sometimes to his exhaustion, but unquestionably, he did what he could to give me the life I needed to see; he loved me so.
The temptation of being the “chosen one”? To me, I was the chosen one. I was my Papa’s daughter whom he dearly loved. That was and is still enough.
