Coming to America
Coming to America
October 19, 2005
Good Housekeeping, by Melissa Fay Greene
ATLANTA - Backstage, an elegant little girl with high cheekbones and huge eyes shivers inside her pink-and-turquoise leotard. She is fifth in the line of eight girls, students of Miss Trish’s beginning tap class at the Carol Walker Dance Academy in suburban Atlanta. Today is her first recital. Her heart is pounding, her hands are clammy, and her ballerina bun is pulled back so tightly it practically keeps her on her tiptoes. She hears the applause of the crowd in the Gwinnett Center as the previous act finishes, and she knows it’s her turn.
She’s prepared for this moment for nearly nine months. Now she clackety-claps across the wood stage in her tap shoes and faces a vast, darkened auditorium rustling with cellophane-wrapped bouquets. Somewhere out there are her parents, her brother, her grandmother—who flew in from New Orleans this morning—and half a dozen family friends. In the heartbeat before the music begins, six-year-old Mekdes Hollinger lifts her hand to her lips and blows a kiss to her mommy. She knows that Mommy is out there, in the middle of the orchestra seats, and will catch that kiss. Then the recorded music booms out from the loudspeakers: “Digga Tunnah Dance” from a sequel to The Lion King. “Digga tunnah, dig digga tunnah,” chant the African singers, “digga tunnah, dig digga tunnah, quick, before the hyena come.” The tap-dancing little girls pantomime scanning the horizon for hyenas, digging a tunnel, then hopping inside to hide just in the nick of time.
It’s a typical recital: Some of the children look at their teacher directing from offstage and never at the audience; other little dancers turn left instead of right and slam into the ones doing it correctly. One girl’s sequined headpiece falls off, and she’s not sure if she’s allowed to pick it up. The audience laughs and cries with happiness—with the exception of Mekdes’s husky little brother, Yabsira, who dives under the seats, announcing that he doesn’t like this show. (He’s afraid of the hyenas, as it turns out.)
Too quickly it is over, and the enthusiastic little dancers stampede offstage to the resounding ovations and whistles of the crowd. Mekdes shyly emerges from the dressing room into a hail of flash photography and accepts many bouquets from her cheering fans.
I was there to witness her triumph that night. But I was also there, as a journalist, 18 months earlier and nearly 8,000 miles away when Mekdes lay screaming and clawing in the dirt outside an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
HIV/AIDS had claimed first her father and then her mother, and on this terrible day, Mekdes had left her grandfather behind and traveled with her little brother and two aunts to a hole-in-the-wall orphanage. The heartbroken relatives were resigned to the fact that their poverty was too extreme to allow them to raise these children.
Almost five, Mekdes—a tiny, bright-eyed, intelligent girl—went berserk: She screamed and ran in circles on the dirt yard, wailing for her family. No one could catch her until she finally wore herself out and lay sobbing in the dust.
Her little brother watched sadly. Twenty months younger, Yabsira was a stout and jolly fellow at peace with himself as long as his sister was near. Mekdes, a sensitive and worried soul, clearly was going to have to navigate the now-empty world for both of them.
What happens to freshly orphaned children in Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries on earth, where HIV/AIDS has deprived more than a million children of their parents? Mekdes and Yabsira might have become what UNICEF calls a “child-headed household”—and starved to death. But these children got lucky: They came under the wing of a bighearted woman, Haregewoin Teferra, who was doing her best, without public funding, to feed and care for the orphans in her neighborhood. (I wrote about Haregewoin—and introduced Mekdes and Yabsira—in “Hope Lives Here,” an article published in the October 2004 issue of this magazine.) At the orphanage, Mekdes and Yabsira met Merrily Ripley, director of Adoption Advocates International.
Ryan and Mikki Hollinger live in a three-bedroom ranch house in Snellville, Georgia, outside Atlanta. They’ve been married for five years, and gold-framed wedding portraits are still the main decorating theme. Ryan, 36, from Ohio, is white, blond, fit, and blue-eyed. He was a high school football player and still looks the part. Malaika—Mikki—Jones, 34, is African-American and comes from New Orleans Creole people. The salutatorian of her high school graduating class, she wears stylish outfits and moves like the ballerina she studied to be. Ryan works in sales and graphic design; Mikki, in public health.
Bright future, two cars, spacious backyard, and a huge circle of friends. But the couple wanted a baby, and it wasn’t happening. “The doctors didn’t come up with any diagnosis other than that it was difficult for me to get pregnant,” Mikki says now. “Initially, we were hugely disappointed, but with the prospect of adoption, we got over it.”
In the spring of 2003, they signed up with Adoption Advocates International. Families hoping to adopt an infant wait to be matched with a baby boy or girl. But those willing to consider older children—from toddlers to
15-year-olds—are offered a glimpse of their prospective children by videotape.
On December 23, 2003, a video of Mekdes and Yabsira landed in Snellville. Mikki and Ryan watched it late on Christmas Eve. “I saw a princess,” Mikki recalls, “a tiny one who spoke in a whisper. And her adorable brother.” They rewound and watched and rewound and watched, giddy with the happiness of having become, in the blink of an eye, expectant parents.
Eight months later, Mekdes spotted a taxi pulling into the orphanage compound in Addis Ababa. She broke into a run and sprinted into her new mother’s arms, mashing her face into Mikki’s neck. Yabsira strolled over to Ryan, looked the big man up and down, and raised his arms to be lifted up. From the height of his new dad’s shoulder, he bestowed benevolent smiles upon the other children. Much later, as Mekdes became fluent in English, she would laugh: “First day? Mommy look like my Ethiopian mommy. Daddy not look like my Ethiopian daddy.”
They took a taxi to a nearby apartment to settle in for the two weeks it would take to complete the adoption. Mikki presented Mekdes with a child’s suitcase overflowing with new clothes: pastel sweat suits of the softest cotton, colorful little skirts, satin slips and nightgowns, flowered underpants. How could Mekdes choose? This couldn’t all be for her? All for her? “When she grasped that these were hers, she stripped off her clothes in a second,” Mikki says, “and stood there with a thousand-kilowatt smile, just waiting to jump into those new clothes. Nothing fit! But she wouldn’t part with anything, not even the new shoes, which were about three sizes too large. She just flopped all over Addis Ababa in those huge white tennis shoes.”
That first night, Mikki bathed Mekdes and dressed her in soft, enormous pajamas covered with sunflowers. Mekdes hopped onto her parents’ double bed, where Yabsira was climbing all over Ryan, who had stretched out, exhausted. Both children showered their new parents with kisses, then fell asleep between them.
Over the next few days, “if either Ryan or I left the bedroom for a second, Mekdes would call out almost frantically, ‘Mommy!’ or ‘Daddy!’” Mikki says. Mekdes carefully drew and labeled four pictures: Mekdes, Yabsira, Mommy, Daddy. She asked for tape, put the pictures on the wall as high as she could reach, seated Yabsira on the end of the double bed, and gave him a lesson on who everyone was.
At 3:00 a.m. on the day of departure to America, Mekdes was awakened first. “Go America, Mommy?” she asked in excitement. Then she panicked. “Yabsira, Mommy? Yabsira! No Yabsira America, no Mekdes America. Yabsira America.”
“Of course Yabsira is coming,” said Mikki.
They flew for a nightmarish 20 hours—Ryan was sick, and Yabsira was a wild man: He pushed all the buttons on his seat so relentlessly that a flight attendant arrived and virtually ripped the controls out of their sockets. He sang and yelled and kicked the seat in front of him and made numerous visits to the bathroom, where there were more buttons to push.
They reached Atlanta the following afternoon and drove the last 45 minutes to the ranch house in Snellville. They entered the little boy’s bedroom first. “Yabsira’s room!” said Mikki, stepping back to let the children take in the sunshine-yellow walls with a soccer-ball border. The twin bedspreads, switch plate, and lamps were also decorated with a sports motif.
Mekdes touched one of the twin beds and said, “Yabsira!” Then she touched the other and said, “Mekdes!”
“No,” said Mikki, patting first one and then the other bed. “Yabsira, Yabsira.”
Alarmed, Mekdes tried again: “Yabsira, Mekdes?”
“Come,” Mikki said, and drew Mekdes into the other bedroom, where Ryan had created a garden: spring-green walls with an actual white picket fence attached, hand-painted butterflies and bumblebees fluttering among huge flowers. “Mekdes’s room!” said Mikki.
Mekdes shrieked with joy and threw herself across the nearest bed, hugging the puffy flower bedspread. Then she raised her head and asked, “America?”
Mikki opened her mouth to explain, then simply said: “Yes.”
“America,” sighed Mekdes happily and laid her head down.
It was the end of August; if Mekdes Hollinger was going to take dance lessons, she had to begin the very next week. “I showed her books about dancers,” says Mikki, “and we played with Angelina Ballerina toys; I showed her my childhood dance pictures. She understood. When I gave her a leotard and dance shoes, she screamed. I thought she’d never take them off.” They drove to the dance school, and Mikki expressed, through eye contact and sign language: “I’m right here. If you don’t like it, come back to Mommy.” Mekdes skipped into the practice room with the other ponytailed little girls and came out only when the class was over. She was ebullient.
The second week in America, Mekdes discovered something hanging in her bedroom closet that merited closer study. Amid the rack of fabulous outfits with tickets dangling, it seemed to be…it was…a school uniform: a white top and a blue skirt! The Hollingers had enrolled the children in a church- affiliated preschool and kindergarten, where teachers would give them special attention and help them learn English. Mekdes ran through the house with the uniform flying behind her like a kite. “America class Mekdes!” she yelled. “Mekdes class America! Yabsira class America!” School is seen as a precious commodity by poor children in Africa; only children from families able to afford fees and uniforms may go to school. For three weeks until school started, she asked Mikki every morning, “Mekdes class America?” and spent her days mastering the English alphabet.
For Mekdes, the transition to life in a new country with new parents was remarkably smooth. “People honestly think the majority of these adoptions are plagued with problems,” says Mikki. “Colleagues of mine—bless their hearts—found so many social service resources for us to tap into. And here was this little girl just celebrating every day.”
Mekdes turned six years old three months after arriving. This made a deep impression on her. For months, when friends inquired, “How do you like America, Mekdes?” she proudly answered: “Mekdes like America. America make Mekdes six.”
In the beginning, Yabsira was more of a challenge. He threw fits constantly. He expected his slightest whim to be answered immediately. “I know people wonder, How could this orphan from a poverty-stricken country be spoiled?” says Ryan. “This kid was spoiled.” When opposed to the way things were going—say, he was not given the beach ball off the store shelf—Yabsira fell to the ground in a rage, took off his shoes and socks, and threw them. When her brother pitched a fit, Mekdes would run back and forth as intermediary. She’d scold Yabsira fiercely in Amharic, their native language, trying desperately to get him to straighten up, then turn to their parents and beg, “No yell Yabsira.” When Yabsira wanted to upset her, he came and kicked the wall of her beautiful room, and she wept. But she never wanted him punished. When he was sent to his bedroom for a time-out, she sat alone in her room. If he was deprived of dessert, she declined hers.
“She had her hands full,” says Mikki. “When it was time to clean their rooms, she’d straighten hers perfectly, and Yabsira would just dawdle. I’d yell, ‘Yabbie, get to work!’ and we’d hear him bark, ‘Mekdes!’ And Mekdes would hurry over to his room and tidy it for him.”
“Two months,” says Ryan. “She was his little mother for two months. Something hit her around October, something like, ‘Wait, I think we’re in good shape now; I think this thing is going to last.’ Suddenly we hear, ‘No, Yabsira, this is my room!’—slam!—and we think, OK, she’s going to be a little girl now.”
Still, Mekdes roused herself every night when Yabbie called for her. He needed her to stand guard against hyenas while he went to the bathroom. Hyenas don’t live in Addis Ababa, but they roam the Ethiopian countryside and are a source of fear in song and folklore for children. Every night, Mekdes dutifully stood yawning and rubbing her eyes in the hall, keeping her brother safe from hyenas in Snellville. Recently, Mikki discovered what was going on and volunteered to be the lookout. By then, Yabsira had learned not only to obey but to trust his new parents. Even more important, Mekdes now trusted them to keep Yabsira safe.
mekdes practices her amharic with Ethiopian friends of the family, even as Yabsira’s Amharic dwindles away. “I try to speak Ethiopia,” he explains. “But when I open my mouth, America comes out.”
Mekdes keeps alive the memory of her first parents, too, and drills her little brother on the family history. But she thanks her new parents constantly. “Oh, Daddy, you do so much for us,” she said one day. “Here, Daddy, I have something for you.” She handed Ryan a dollar.
“She gave me money too!” laughs Stella Jones, Mikki’s mom. “She says, ‘Here, Granny, now you can get yourself something.’”
Mekdes recalls the day her aunts dropped her off at Haregewoin’s orphanage. “Yabsira cry a little. I was screaming,” she says.
“Why did you cry, baby?” asks Mikki.
“I want Grandfather and my aunties.”
“You were sad,” says Mikki.
“No hope, Mommy. I have no hope.”
“Oh, honey.…”
“Because no one told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you are here in America. I will not feel so sad if I know.”
“Yeah, I was here, me and your daddy, waiting and getting ready.”
“I am crying because I don’t know you come for me.”
mekdes and yabsira are two out of 13 million African children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. For most of the 13 million, no one is coming.
Before leaving Ethiopia last summer, Mikki and Ryan drove outside Addis Ababa in search of the children’s original family. They found the grandfather, a spry, rough-shaven man in a baseball cap, who knelt and embraced his grandchildren with tears of disbelief and joy. They found one of the children’s aunts, who slung Yabsira onto her back and secured him with her shawl. The Hollingers and the children, the grandfather and the aunt, along with half the neighborhood, hiked to the hillside cemetery where Mulu and Asenake, the children’s parents, were buried. What Mikki and Ryan had sensed was true: Mekdes and Yabsira had been treasured by their family. Only death had pulled their parents from them.
“Your terrible loss has turned into our greatest happiness,” Ryan said at the graveside. His words were translated and relayed to the gathered crowd, many of whom began to weep. “We promise to love and care for and educate the children. Thank you for trusting us. We will always honor their connection to you and to their first parents and to Ethiopia. We’re all one family now.”
For information on helping families affected by the AIDS epidemic in Africa, visit www.stephenlewisfoundation.org. (Stephen Lewis is the UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa.)