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Reflections with Jerry Jenkins

Angela Unaware

On my way back to the United States after a research trip to Indonesia, the jet landed on a runway that dominated a tiny South Sea island—one of those inexplicable stops that are neither for picking up nor for dropping off passengers, or even taking on fuel.

Airline personnel herded us under a wind-and-sun-faded wood canopy where we sat on benches with our cameras and our fatigue. On three sides of us lay hundreds of yards of shell-strewn sand and the beauty of the endless sea. Behind us wound a few narrow streets of squalor.

Almost immediately we were besieged by the island's bronzed children. They had long, jet-black hair, dark eyes, and gleaming teeth. With their hands full of shells, they hard-sold everyone.

“Dollar!” they said, then laughed when people looked shocked. “Nickel!” they said, giggling. Some people bought shells they could have picked up themselves a few feet away.

“Don't do it,” an older man said wearily. “These kids are supporting their parents' drug habits.”

I had been so used to declining the beggars who had lined the streets of Jakarta that it was easy to turn away these little paupers. One boy started at a dollar and went to fifty cents, then a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and even a penny before he gave up. I didn't need or want any shells, and though I enjoyed him and smiled at him, I shook my head. He moved on to success with someone else.

At the edge of the tiny sales force stood a little girl with a face so radiant I will never forget it. She couldn't have been more than five years old.

When the rest moved on, she continued to stare at me, then she approached, her tiny hand crammed with three shells, each about the size of a golf ball. She smiled and held out her merchandise for me to see. I smiled and shook my head.

That's when she said the word in her own language that I could not understand. I assumed she was saying “cheap,” or “dollar,” or “deal.” I shook my head again and she reached closer. She pleaded with me now, repeating the word over and over.

How these kids have been trained to pull at your heartstrings, I thought. But I would not be moved. I shook my head again, and saw her tears form. Very well done, I thought. Almost worth a sale. But I was too sophisticated for that.

She moved away with shoulders slumped and tears streaming. She squatted nearby and wept, not looking at me. She had me; she had won. I pulled two dollars from my pocket and went to her.

What was this? She cried all the more, and now it was she who was shaking her head. And she repeated the word.

Confused, I went back and sat down. I leaned over and interrupted a missionary's daughter involved in another conversation to ask her what the word meant, pronouncing it slowly.

“It means ”˜free,'” she said.

I was staggered. What had I done?

I approached the little girl again, and she looked at me warily. I pulled my hands from my pockets and showed her my empty palms. Then I repeated the words as a question, and she beamed as she handed me the shells.

They had been mine for the taking all along, and I'd had no idea.