His Eyes--May 2015

June 19, 2021

His Eyes--May 2015

Sergo--1995

It is January in Haiti and his eyes find mine. They always connected and grabbed you whether you wanted them to or not.

Looking down in his hospital metal crib with flaking white paint I see a pathetic 10-month-old baby boy with a big head and beautiful brown eyes which seem to know. He stares back up at me, his face contorts and wrinkles like an old man’s, and he begins to cry. He does not want to be looked at.

I notice there is a large pressure ulcer on the back of his head which is eating through his scalp. He has been lying flat for much of his life without the strength to roll over or even turn his head. He has a cloth diaper on and the rest of him looks skeletal.

This baby was found near a pile of garbage in the street on Soleil 17 ten years before the gang wars and UN would shoot up that street and the slum. Elmonika, who is now dead, found him one morning and carried him to the hospital.

The nurses say to let him go. They have seen many like him. Typical slum hydrocephalic with no chance and no future. But a Polish Sister Lila says no. And she feeds him. And she names him Sergo after a bad guy with a big head in Soleil who threatens the nuns but dies of AIDS before he can kill them.

Sister Lila sings to baby Sergo in French and Polish and refuses to let him die. She even pushes Sergo propped up in a stroller to the nurse’s station. History has shown that Poles and Haitians together are hard to deny.

My neurosurgeon friend Dr. Bill tells me, “If you get him here I will shunt him”. Sister Lila was a tough sell but reluctantly agrees that Sergo must leave the slum and her loving care. Theresa brings him from Haiti to Laurie and Karen takes him from Laurie and deposits Sergo on our kitchen floor in Illinois. It is now late spring.

Twelve of us just stand around and look at him and scratch our heads. He looks back at us with those eyes but does not cry. What do we do? Will we drop him if we pick him up? Will his large head fall off? My eighty-year-old mom stands back watching us watch Sergo. She is enjoying this. We clearly have no clue what we are doing.

As the weeks go by mom gently feeds Sergo sips of warm milk and crushed banana from a small spoon. He does not know how to suck from a nipple. Every time the microwave goes on, Sergo’s eyes dart around in his immobile head and his little body starts jumping in his baby seat with happiness knowing more milk and bananas are on the way.

He starts to say “mama” as his eyes capture and control all of us.

His CAT scan is done and I look at it on the view box in neuroradiology. A surgical resident walks by and sees the large cranium filled almost entirely by fluid and sardonically says, “What do we have here? A Martian?” She doesn’t know that I have an affinity for this baby. I say nothing to the surgeon but peer even harder at the scan to see the thin rim of gray matter that assures me he will be fine.

It only takes Dr. Bill twenty minutes to insert a plastic tube into Sergo’s brain to drain the excess fluid into his abdomen. The pediatric nurses put Joules in a clean crib with white sheets and position his head just so. The Haitian hospital and Sister Lila flash into my mind’s eye as I witness his American nurses’ care and gentleness.

Sergo recovers fine and we bring him home. After second shifts in the ER I hurry back to his bedroom to make sure he is still with us. Warm summer air wafts in through his screen window at night and the crickets chirp like they do each year in the late summer. I am so happy that Sergo seems content sleeping in peace.

Many people are fascinated with Sergo and help my mom and me as the months pass. During the day I put him in a baby seat on the front porch alone and Sergo watches cars go by. Cars slow and people inside of them stare back at him. The police come to my door once after they are notified about an abandoned baby on our porch and they are partially right…

Autumn comes and Laurie returns often to visit Sergo and brings her parents Doris and Paul. Laurie wants to adopt this baby and I can think of no one better.

The big day comes at the end of October and we have an enormous going away party for Sergo who is renamed Joueles. We stand in the front yard as Laurie drives away with him in her van. As I stare at her waving goodby I am amazed at her courage and strength and I can’t believe I let him go. My mom and I go back in the house.

We visit Joules pretty often. Joules stares down people in the grocery store as they turn their eyes away from him. He tells them “hello” in perfect English and their surprised eyes dart back at him as they smile and struggle with a “hi”. He refuses to be denied. In restaurants people we don’t know will come over to the table and ask if Joueles can come eat with them. His personality is magnetic.

The years pass quickly. Joules gets bigger. He stands and walks with a walker. He is baptized, receives his first holy communion, and goes to school. Laurie and Doris and Paul turn him into a fine young man. He is no Martian after all.

We keep Sister Lila in Haiti informed of Sergo’s/Joueles’ progress. Laurie sends Sister pictures of Joules which she keeps close by her. Laurie travels to Haiti and meets Sister Lila and genuine happy tears are shared between two women from different parts of the world who have nourished and loved the same brown boy.

Twenty years pass. Sad things happen in these two decades that are too painful for me to think about let alone write about.

But Joules thrives. He emails me often now and explains clearly what he is doing that particular day and what his next vacation will be all about. He loves life and has changed all of ours.

And his eyes are the same.