Please, Just Take my Baby

While visiting a family with three small children Nancy and I were running some errands in the center of town. Bob and his three children were acting as our guides. The middle child, a blue-eyed, blonde girl of four years who attracts adoring attention wherever she goes, was bouncing along with us exuding energy and the joy of living. We had already walked over a mile but she wasn’t beginning to flag. We had visited a travel agency to see about tickets, then we had found the hardware store to buy some necessities. Now we were on our way to see the one street that preserved the “old town” in the midst of a fairly aggressive plan of urban renewal.

Our path led to the walkway beside the river that runs through town and we paused to take in the view of the red, silt-laden water sweeping past. Nancy was just getting out her camera to take a picture when suddenly a local woman with a young baby on her back threw herself down on her knees on the paving stones right at Nancy’s feet. She bowed her head down to the ground and began wailing uncontrollably. We were all startled speechless for a moment as we beheld an incomprehensible scene of incredible sorrow where only seconds before everything seemed peaceful and beautiful.

Partly because the woman was crying so hard and partly because she speaks Mandarin with a strong local accent, Nancy couldn’t understand much of what she was saying. I turned to Bob for an explanation and he said, “She must be begging but this is extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like this.” The woman went on and on without raising her head, which also made it hard to make out her words.

The baby on her back appeared to be less than six months old and was quiet and smiling throughout this performance, snugly bound to her mother’s back in a beautiful child sling with local embroidery. The woman was not poorly dressed and did not look to be under nourished. But she was certainly distraught.

Gradually a few words of her story became intelligible and we gathered that she was concerned about not being able to take care of her child. We offered her a little bit of money but she would not accept it. Finally we realized that she was begging us to take the baby and raise it. “Please, just take my baby to America so it can have a happy life like your children.” She continued weeping and causing all of our hearts to break.

Even some elderly local street vendors were so touched by the pathos of the whole scene that they came over and tried to give her a few small bills. She would not even look at the vendors and they couldn’t force the money into her hands. They finally started stuffing the money between the baby carrying sling and the woman’s shirt but she paid no attention to them or their kindness. She went on trying to persuade Nancy to take her child.

We began to wonder whether we were being set up for some elaborate trickery because the woman didn’t look even as poor as the vendors who were trying to help her. It is not unthinkable that someone would try to extort money by handing off a baby to foreigners and then accusing them of kidnapping her child. And of course, it was impossible for us to take the child. Foreigners can’t begin to get a passport for an undocumented local child. Adoption procedures for foreigners are strictly regulated and can only be processed by authorized orphanages, not arranged by strangers on the street.

Bob made a couple of phone calls to seek advice from people who were not caught up in this emotional scene. The best advice we got was to get her off the street and take her to speak with a local believer. That way, perhaps we could get to the bottom of the story. She refused to see any Chinese people but agreed to go with us to talk to other foreigners. When I saw that four adults and four children were going to try to fit into a single small taxi, I volunteered to simplify the situation by taking the two older children with me and walking home. That left Bob and Nancy to be witnesses for each other and they kept Bob’s two-year old with them since he was too small to walk with me and his older siblings.

Bob gave me directions and assured me that the children could also guide me, though they are only four and seven years old. And his confidence in them was not misplaced. So the three of us trooped across the city and up the hill to their home.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party went by taxi to a café run by a like-minded western family. The mother explained that her husband had borrowed about $4000 from her brother and had bought a truck in the hopes that he could use it to make good money. Then she and her husband had quarreled and he had disappeared with the truck and wouldn’t answer his cell phone. Now her brother was putting pressure on her to return the borrowed money and she was at her wit’s end. When she saw Bob’s happy children, she assumed that they were just visiting from America and could take her child to a happy future when they returned. Then without the burden of caring for an infant, she could go off to a distant city where her brother could not pester her and she could earn a decent living.

Bob and Nancy and the other western woman commiserated with her and, over a meal, advised her that her situation was not altogether hopeless but that her desire to send her baby off to America was unrealistic. They brought in a local woman who is a believer and who offered her a job. They learned that the young mother is living with an “auntie” of hers who is herself trying to raise twins, so at least she had a place to live. They advised her that the best for her child would be for her to take care of it herself. And only if she really couldn’t take care of her child, her best option would be a local orphanage. But she didn’t want to go visit the orphanage, though she will keep it in mind as a future option. She just wanted her child to go to America, if at all possible.

During their long conversation, the mother nursed her child more than once and the child continued to be happy and very responsive to Bob’s two-year-old son. In the end, the mother accepted a small amount of money to help her get back to her Auntie’s home and exchanged phone numbers with everyone, including the local woman who had offered her a job. She promised to stay in touch and not to harm herself. Pray for her that she will find the water of life flowing for her and her baby in the midst of her trauma.