Kyle and an airport baggage handler maneuvered the wheeled carts holding their boxes to a spot by the curb and stopped. The boxes contained the bears and some other supplies the DePauls had donated. Terri pulled the suitcases up alongside them. Through the orphanage director, Bears Without Borders had arranged for a driver to meet them and take them to the hotel. Terri scanned the crowd for a man holding a sign with their name on it.
“Over there,” Kyle yelled, then pointed. Several yards away, a white sign with black letters that spelled “Roxton” bobbed above the dark sea of heads.
“I see it,” Terri yelled back, and she, Kyle and the baggage handler eased their way toward it, weaving through the throng of people.
In broken English, their driver told them his name was Sim Chun. He directed them to an odd vehicle he called a “tuk-tuk.” It appeared to have a motorcycle’s steering apparatus and tank, with a covered open-air cabin attached to the rear fork. The cabin’s interior contained two long bench seats on either side that, together, could seat six or more people. Since Terri and Kyle were the only passengers, they had plenty of room for their two pieces of luggage, Terri’s overnight bag, and the boxes containing the bears and supplies. They stacked them on the empty seating area, as well as on the floor.
Once they left the airport and headed into the heart of Phnom Penh, the rain subsided. Terri held Kyle’s hand and soaked in the sights. Neither spoke much, and she guessed that he was as awe-struck as she by the surreal scenery—the silhouette of a templelike structure in the distance, barefoot children selling books and newspapers from baskets that hung about their necks, an orange sunset that cast a shimmering glow over the busy city’s dirty, congested streets.
Bicycles, mopeds and tuk-tuks seemed the transportation of choice; few cars traveled the roads. Police officers directed traffic as Sim Chun maneuvered their tuk-tuk past open-fronted shops that spilled more noise into the twilight: voices and laughter, blaring Asian music, television programs.
Terri gazed down a wet, puddle-dotted side street lined with rickety, torn umbrellas meant to protect an open-air market from the weather. Shopkeepers closing for the day packed up unsold vegetables in one shop, bolts of cloth in another, and an assortment of other merchandise she couldn’t identify as they whizzed past. Rotting garbage overwhelmed her senses one second, followed by the sweet, delicate fragrance of jasmine and something like frying bananas the next.
A short while later, the tuk-tuk turned onto the hotel grounds and Terri gasped. A long paved road led them toward a sprawling white building topped by a red roof. The front entrance rose like a temple above the rest of the structure. “I wasn’t expecting it to be this nice,” she told Kyle as they pulled up in front.
“Me, neither. Not for the price we paid.”
Two hotel staffers came out to help with the boxes and luggage, then Sim Chun told Terri and Kyle he would return at eight the next morning to take them to the orphanage.
After they had settled into their separate rooms, Terri and Kyle met in the hotel restaurant, where they ate crab scampi and orange beef on white tablecloths. Terri was exhausted and fatigue dulled Kyle’s eyes. Still, they couldn’t stop talking about all they’d already seen, or wondering aloud what tomorrow would bring.
This was what she wished they could recapture forever, Terri thought, as they chattered nonstop across the table. The way they had been once upon a time when they had looked forward to a future filled with endless hopes and possibilities.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Sim Chun arrived right on schedule the next morning, this time in a minivan instead of the tuk-tuk. The sun blazed bright in the sky, with no rain falling as it had the previous evening. The van’s air-conditioning vents blew tepid air that did little to assuage the stifling city heat. Even with the windows closed, Kyle smelled the dust rising up from the paved potholed street. Behind him in the rear seat, Terri waved a paper fan that she’d bought in the gift shop earlier.
Soon they left the city limits and the pace slowed as the paved road became a dirt track. The flat landscape looked like a patchwork quilt made of squares in varying lush shades of green, the smooth expanse of it interrupted only by an occasional clump of trees and a small winding stream.
“I feel like we’ve stepped back in time,” Kyle told Terri as they passed a water buffalo cooling off in the muddy water and a farmer canoeing around his field. On the road’s opposite side, a small herd of emaciated cattle grazed alongside a mud hut.
The driver maneuvered the van around an oxen-pulled cart, and as they passed a scattering of tin shacks, he began to answer Kyle’s and Terri’s questions. Most of Cambodia’s people, he told them, lived in the rural parts of the country, much as they had lived for hundreds of years. Many earned only dollars a day. Countless children had lost parents to HIV, as well as land mines, millions of which still existed unexploded, left behind after the Vietnam War and the bloody Khmer Rouge regime. Sim Chun went on to confirm that the orphanage they would be visiting had only been in existence a year, and that it housed forty-three children and had many needs.
Kyle was glad he’d already relayed that fact to the DePauls. Louis and Rachel had reached even deeper into their pockets and hearts to send clothing and school supplies that Terri and Kyle would deliver along with the bears.
The van turned off the road onto a drive that led to a cluster of wooden buildings in a field where children played. When the children saw the van approaching, many of them ran to stand outside the nearest building, while several adult women gathered the others. They lifted their arms and waved, calling out in excited greeting to Kyle, Terri and the driver.
“Oh, Kyle,” Terri murmured, and he reached back between the seats to take her hand. “Look at them.”
The black-haired children wore clean, mismatched clothing; some were barefoot, many wore sandals. As the van pulled into the circular dirt drive, big dark eyes in beautiful, scrubbed brown faces peered into the windows, some wary, others eager and curious. “I never imagined we’d have such a welcoming committee.” Touched, Kyle rolled down his window and called “Hello!” to the ever-growing group outside.
“Hi!” Terri called out to them in a cheerful voice. Kyle glanced back at her as she leaned out her window, waving vigorously.
When the van stopped and they climbed out, a tall, thin woman with gray hair stepped forward to greet them. “Welcome! I’m Sally Fremont.” She shook their hands in greeting. “So you’re the Bear Ambassadors. We’ve all been eager for your arrival. The children, especially, as you can see.”
Kyle took one child’s hand after another as they drew closer to him and Terri and reached up to mimic Ms. Fremont’s handshake. “We’ve been eager to get here, too,” he said. “Believe me…” He gestured at the giggling, chattering crowd of youngsters. “This makes the long flight worthwhile.”
Ms. Fremont instructed some of the older children to bring the boxes, then led everyone toward the largest thatched-roof structure. The children seemed to carry Kyle and Terri along like an ocean wave as they all made their way across the patchy grass.
“I can hardly believe we’re here,” Terri said loudly to be heard over the singsong voices around them. “This is like a dream.”
When they stepped inside, Kyle saw that the structure contained only one room with a floor made of wide polished wooden planks. Curtains had been pulled aside at the large open windows to let the air in. The entire space was cheerful, clean and breezy. Rattan cradles hung suspended from the ceiling by rope, and babies slept inside of them. On the other side of the room, small hammocks created napping places for the older toddlers.
A few teenage girls and three women presided over the infants, and they looked up when everyone came in. They took some of the infants who weren’t sleeping from their cribs and drew nearer.
A boy about seven or eight tugged on the hem of Kyle’s cargo shorts. Kyle stooped to talk to him, and the boy began reciting the ABCs. Kyle shot a quick
glance around the room to find Terri, and saw that she was with a group of girls who were repeating English words they had learned for the visit today.
“Baby!” one tiny girl said in a chirpy tone, pointing to one of the rattan cribs. “Go sleep.”
“Pretty,” said a taller girl with a melodious voice. Then she reached up and touched Terri’s face.
When the little boy with Kyle reached the letter Z, Kyle ruffled his hair and said, “Good job, bud.” The boy made a silly face, then started over at A again.
Minutes later, with all the boxes in the building and opened, Terri and Kyle began handing out the bears while the adults in the room clapped and cheered. And as big eyes lit up and smiles slowly spread on even the shyest of faces, for the first time in more than a year, Kyle actually wanted to smile, too, and did. Not the dutiful smile he’d forced whenever necessary since Hannah’s death, but a genuine smile that reached all the way to his soul.
Startled by a beautiful sound, one he had thought was lost to him forever, he turned to see Terri crouched down next to a girl about Hannah’s age, her head thrown back in laughter. The little girl had one arm looped around Terri’s neck, while clutching a bear with the other.
Kyle caught Terri’s gaze and held it. Though tears streaked down her cheeks, her joyous smile warmed his heart and made his own smile spread wider. So this is it, Kyle thought. The place I’ve been looking for.
THAT NIGHT AT THEIR HOTEL, Terri stood outside the door to Kyle’s room in her robe. She drew a deep breath, then knocked.
“Who is it?” he called.
“It’s me.”
The door opened and Kyle looked out, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn all day. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the stone in her throat, and took another breath to steady her nervousness. “May I come in?”
“Sure.” He opened the door wider.
Terri walked in and stood at the window. Though it was dark, she could just make out the view of the Mekong River far below. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me, neither,” Kyle said. “I haven’t even tried. My mind is so packed with all that happened today I’m not sleepy.”
She faced him. “It was wonderful, wasn’t it?”
“It was great. Those kids are something else. That was some concert they put on.”
“Their voices were beautiful.”
Kyle lifted a brow. “Most of them.”
“Kyle…” Terri scowled at his teasing. “Ms. Fremont said they practiced two weeks to get ready for us.”
He winced as he stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. “That guy front row and center could’ve used a couple more months.” Terri’s scowl quickly transformed into laughter, and Kyle, laughing, too, said, “It might’ve been the best concert I’ve ever attended.”
It thrilled her to see this side of her husband again, this teasing, fun-loving side. “I’d like to go back for another visit before we leave.”
“We’ll plan on it.”
“Kids are the same everywhere, aren’t they?” She sobered and added, “It made me sad, though. From some of their reactions, I got the feeling many of them have never been given a gift before.”
“They probably haven’t.” Kyle sat at the edge of the bed and turned to face her. He started to say something else, then dipped his chin and, blinking, looked down at his lap.
He was as apprehensive as she, Terri realized, and a sudden rush of love almost knocked her to her knees. He was the same man she’d always loved, with the same dark, mischievous eyes, broad shoulders and strong hands. Hands capable of carrying a full-grown man out of a burning building, or touching her with the utmost tenderness. But he’d been changed by the events of the past year, just as she had. And many of those changes, she suspected, would stay with him forever. He was quieter than he’d been before, but more open and sensitive when he did talk. She sensed his underlying sorrow even when he joked with her, even when he had laughed with the children today. A certain doubtfulness existed in him that hadn’t been there before Hannah’s accident. Doubt about life. About himself. About the future of their marriage. She intended to erase those last two.
Terri stepped closer to the bed, her heart racing as fast as Phnom Penh’s traffic. “I felt Hannah there today at the orphanage, just like I did on the plane.” Kyle glanced up at her then, and she continued, “At the school on the evening of the wreck, my watch stopped. The one Hannah gave me. I haven’t had it repaired since, but I think maybe it’s time I did.”
He watched her with eyes so darkened by sadness that she almost had to look away. But she didn’t; Terri looked into those eyes that had once provided her relief and comfort, a soft place to hide away from the stresses life tossed her way.
“Terri…” His quiet utterance of her name was a whispered plea.
“Hannah hugged one of the bears she decorated that night and told it to make some kid happy. That’s what I felt today…Hannah hugging me and telling me to make some kid happy. But I think she was also telling us to be happy, Kyle, that it’s okay to live again.”
He held her gaze. “Are you? Happy again?”
“I was today.”
“What about now? And tomorrow and the next day and the day after that?”
“I think I could be, if—” The fearful hope in his expression squeezed Terri’s heart.
“If what?”
“Why haven’t you signed the divorce papers, Kyle?”
He flinched, and she knew he’d misunderstood her question. “I guess I was hoping you’d change your mind and tell me to tear them up. But if a divorce is what will finally make you happy…” He turned his back to her, his shoulders slumped.
Terri rounded the bed until she stood in front of him. “Tear them up.”
Slowly, he looked up at her. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Tear them up,” she said, louder this time.
Kyle watched her for several moments, then shook his head. “No.”
Terri’s heart dropped. “You won’t?”
“I want you to tear them up. And I want to watch.”
Relief made her knees weak. Terri sat down beside him and they clung to each other, finally finding the comfort that had eluded them both for so long. How had she ever thought she could give up on what they shared? He held too many of her most precious memories in his soul and her heart in the palm of his hand. There had been something more substantial than mere attraction between them during their brief courtship so many years ago. Who could say if it would’ve grown into love had Hannah not been conceived? But the fact remained that Hannah had come into their lives, and they had fallen in love not only with their daughter, but with each other. That love still existed.
“Do you have any idea how much you just scared me?” Terri asked, easing away to look at him.
Kyle lifted one hand to the back of her neck, slid it up to her scalp, threading her hair through his fingers and drawing her face close to his. “Not half as much as those papers scared me. I love you, Terri. I want you in my life. Always.”
“I love you, too,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry I pushed you away.”
“It wasn’t only you…We both made mistakes.”
Their lips touched then, and Terri wasn’t sure if the tears she tasted were hers or his. She only knew that she couldn’t stop kissing him, holding him, afraid if she let go she’d wake up and realize this was a dream.
“We have a lot of work to do when we get home,” Terri said minutes later, between the kisses he brushed across her mouth.
“Work?” Kyle leaned back to look into her eyes.
“I need a partner to help me get Hannah’s Hugs going.”
“I’m your man.” His smile warmed her as he lowered her back against the pillows and leaned over her. “But first things first. Just let me look at you.” Propped on one elbow, he scanned her face as if starved for the sight of her, skimmed his fingertips gently over her lips, her
cheeks, her chin and throat as if she were a delicate, precious piece of china. “God, I’ve missed you,” Kyle breathed, and closed his eyes.
Terri wrapped her arms around him. An ocean separated her from Texas, yet she was home again. Finally. With a future full of promise. One Hannah’s love would always touch. One she would share with the man she loved.
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed reading about the Roxtons’ journey toward healing and were as impressed as I am by the work done by Bears Without Borders. In Hannah’s Hugs, Terri and Kyle visited the Bears Without Borders Web site and were inspired to reach out and get involved. If you would also like to know more about this real-life organization’s efforts and see for yourself the beautiful, smiling faces of the children served, go to www.bearswithoutborders.org. There you can read about the work of Aviva Presser and her husband, Erez Lieberman, the organization’s energetic and enthusiastic founders. This young couple’s dedication and willingness to tackle any obstacle that stands in the way of their service to needy children is truly amazing. If possible, please donate to this worthy cause. You, too, can supply “toys and smiles to children in need all over the world.”
Thank you,
Jennifer Archer
Sally Hanna-Schaefer
Mother/Child Residential Program
It happens all too frequently: a woman is abandoned by her partner, left to cope alone with raising the children, struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Sadly, many of these mothers have no means of support, little education and no knowledge of where to turn for help.
Sally Hanna-Shaefer, founder of Mother/Child Residential Program, a not-for-profit charitable corporation that provides shelters and services such as counseling and educational opportunities to homeless women and children in the southern New Jersey area, knows all about how it feels to be in this situation—in the early seventies she was left with three small children, the youngest only three months. Yet this woman, who over the past twenty-five years has helped scores of families, and who likes to joke that she’s helping to “change the world, one baby at a time,” not only survived, but also became stronger and more resourceful and ultimately a treasure to her community.
More Than Words Volume 4 Page 30
