Seventeen years ago, Mum gave birth to a healthy son in a provincial prison hospital two hours outside of Bangkok. She named her son Ake. To avoid the nightmare of trying to remember who might have been the actual father of her child, she had blessed him with her own last name.
Long before Ake was born, Mum had been grabbed by a real Slimy Scum, a thuggish pimp who slapped her around and ordered her to never run away. If she did, he would find her; she would be cut into pieces and die slowly.
She had no protection, no place to run, so Slimy Scum "rented her out" in two-hour blocks. Cash upfront. Typical of these arrangements, the Virus -- aka HIV/Aids -- kicked in some years later.
But Mum's bout with the Virus and, ultimately, her death many years later, did not coincide with the birth of her son. In the Provincial Prison Hospital, everything was pretty normal. Mum and baby were healthy. The prison didn't do blood tests.
Birth in the prison hospital was more than sufficient and convenient. It was free and Mum didn't have one baht to her name. Also, babies there can stay with their mothers for three years, which was long enough for Mum to finish her prison sentence and prepare for a new start.
She was already many months pregnant when she was caught with "marked bills" and, subsequently, convicted of possession with intent to sell. She'd never touched drugs herself, but Slimy Scum had forced her into the game.
She was arrested in a mom-and-pop shop while buying cigarettes for Slimy Scum; he was standing right there but pretended he didn't know her. The rookie policeman on the scene didn't recognise Slimy Scum for the rodent he is and, as soon as eyes were off him, he fled like a scared sewer rat. She never saw him again. Word is, soon afterwards, he caught a bullet or three. Not many attended his cremation. An outsider. Lied that he was from the Klong Toey slaughterhouse. Trying to strut his stuff; cheated some drug folks, and bullets from an unregistered gun.
A kindly lady judge would preside over the case, and when the time came to sentence Mum, the judge showed her maternal mercy. Underfed and unkempt, Mum was a 24-year-old pregnant woman in desperate need of help. At least that's whom the kindly judge saw standing in front of her.
Mum pled guilty, and when she saw the evidence that police brought into the courtroom for her sentencing, she claimed the police were also guilty of a worse crime. She became indignant. She said police had stolen half of her stash, and she demanded to know what happened to the rest of the pills. When police said Mum had maybe forgotten how to count, Mum stared at them hard and shouted: "Shame on you, Mr Policeman! Shame on you!"
The lady judge worried that Mum, several months pregnant and homeless, would not be safe on the streets. In cases such as this, prison can be a reprieve. In prison, Mum's baby would be born in a hospital and given professional care. A prison hospital, yes, but a proper hospital nevertheless.
The judge gave Mum three years in prison. That way, the baby would be prison-born and cared for in-house, and he could leave together with Mum.
Leaving prison, Mum and now three-year-old son Ake found a home under Bangkok's Memorial Bridge. Mum had a distant relative auntie who lived there in a shack and did odd jobs in the nearby fresh market. So, this is where Ake grew up and where he formed fast friendships. The street kids became family, and when Mum died of the Virus, Ake was eight years old and surrounded by a tight circle of street kids. They prayed with him at the cremation of his mum and the abbot saw they were dirt-poor -- only teenagers, with no adults in sight, so he himself came to chant the sutras.
By the time now teenage Ake was 17, his "mob" of friends gave him the nickname Bridge Climber. He always refused to climb even partway up the bridge, as he was terrified of heights.
But one day, yes, afraid of heights and with one partially blind eye (result of a firecracker exploding a glass jar) and missing a front tooth (lost while breaking up a scuffle), he crawled to the pinnacle of the bridge to save a suicidal girl who changed her mind.
Blessings -- and heroes -- often come in strangely wrapped packages.
But more on the Superman stuff in a moment.
Teenage Ake had always loved comics, especially ones about good guys and girls overcoming all odds to correct a wrong. Mum had never gotten around to getting his birth certificate and registration, but a kind headmaster at a local school blinked, allowing Ake inside the schoolhouse. He learned how to read and write, and, while living with Mum and mob under a bridge, he spent many afternoons with his head buried in comics.
So maybe it was the comic-book dream that gave him the crazy courage to save the suicide girl. All we know about her is that she was seven months pregnant and wanted to die. Thought she wanted it so badly that she climbed to the highest point of Memorial Bridge with a short piece of rope. She would free-fall into the Chao Phyra River or she would hang. Either way, sudden death.
At the top she changed her mind. She didn't want to live, but she didn't want to kill the baby in her tummy. She said, later, that she thought she heard the baby in her tummy whispering to her: Don't jump, mummy. Don't jump. In effect, her unborn baby had convinced her to save herself.
Ake was home alone when he heard her screaming for help. His friends were out scavenging, but he was under the bridge with his comic books nursing a case of the flu and a cold.
But sick as he was, terrified of heights and with that one bad eye, he never considered his next move to be a choice. He had to climb to the top to help the screaming girl. It was instinct. He climbed to the top without thinking, as if he had done it daily for 17 years.
Descending, the girl was draped to Ake as if she were drowning. Finally on the ground, her legs trembled uncontrollably and Ake had soiled his underwear. She scolded him for that. By this time, the bridge mob had returned and seen enough to be amazed by their heroic friend. With the sound of police sirens coming closer, they told the suicide girl to run. You don't need the police. She fled quickly, never volunteering her name or even asking the Bridge Climber for his. No great friends of the uniforms, everyone scattered. Police arrived to find nothing and no one.
One year later, to the day, the girl returned to Memorial Bridge with her baby son. She told bits and pieces of her story, but never her name. Never asked his.
Before she left, she said to our prison-born Bridge Climber: "Maybe one day my son can grow up to be a hero. You know, like you."
Ake looked at her through his damaged eye and smiled his broken smile.
The girl returned his smile, hugged her swaddled son, and walked off into the twilight.
Father Joe Maier is the director and co-founder of the Human Development Foundation in Klong Toey. For more information, call 02-671-5313 or visit mercycentre.org.
