PALM BEACH POST December 17, 2006
Carlitos enters wonderful twos The mother of the little boy who has no arms or legs does not linger in the bicycle aisle. She does not ask the Wal-Mart clerk where to find the Jump-O-Gym, and certainly she does not stop in the guitar section, where the big boxes feature pictures of smiling kids plucking away at guitar strings. Those children have fingers, toes, arms, legs. Those children are not Carlitos. So, on a mission and without a second's self-pity, she speeds right by the basketballs and the toddler bats and baseballs, and then she skips the crafts section, where the parents of other, wholly formed children eye the latest educational toys. "I am looking for just the right thing," Francisca Herrera says as she patrols the Florida City superstore like a detective, scouring the aisles for the perfect gift. (Will her son be able to press the button on this toy? Manipulate the lever on that one?) She pats her left shoulder. "It all depends," she says, "on what he can do with this." She means the flap. Carlos Manuel Candelario Herrera turns 2 today. He does not know he is the boy in the middle: the middle of a two-state agricultural investigation; the middle of a high-profile civil lawsuit; the middle of rigorous debate about whether the pesticides routinely sprayed on Florida and North Carolina crops - where Herrera worked during her pregnancy - caused Carlitos' grave deformities. His body is a question mark. But the science behind his condition, the collection of research that is, at the end of the day, indefinite - that's for other people to worry about. And all Carlitos knows is this: He has a little flap of skin attached to his left shoulder, and inside that flap is part of a bone, the humerus, and because of that bone, he can actually do stuff. For himself. Punch the buttons on his mother's cellphone, for example. Or wedge a toy between his flap and chest and fling it. If you want to get technical, he could also learn to brush his teeth. But right now, he's just not very interested, thank you for asking. His mother has to brush them for him, and this takes a lot of coaxing. (His baby teeth, however, are beautiful.) The flap is his lifeline. With it, he can learn to hold a paintbrush, a pencil, a friend's hand. He might be able to do up his own buttons, even slide bread into the toaster. With advancing technology on his side, he will, as he grows older, learn to put all kinds of devices to good use. Already he can move a pen along a magnetic board to draw a picture. And if Jania Ramos, his occupational therapist, asks him to put a red peg into a peg board, he picks it up - with his mouth - and slides it in. The blue, green and yellow pegs, too. Sometimes, he slips up and puts in the wrong color, but that might be because he's not paying attention; he is, after all, a preschooler. His speech is delayed, in part because he must use his mouth for so many other things, not just talking. He loves to say Mami, Papi, milk, water. He has nowhere near the speaking vocabulary of many 24-month-olds - just five to eight words to their 50 to 100. But, says his mom, "I can tell he understands many more words than he speaks." She is looking for a speech therapist willing to come to the house because it is hard for her to travel with Carlitos, who gets squeamish in the car, and because she gets headaches on the long car rides, a side effect, she thinks, of the pesticides she was exposed to in the tomato fields. That's the back story.
The call to work in the tomato fields If you want to know the details, you have to go back to the beginning, right back to the day, Dec. 17, 2004, that Carlitos was born to a young woman, Herrera, from a hamlet in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, and to her common-law husband, Abraham Candelario, the schoolboy she had fallen in love with and followed north to the United States. The two of them were committed to each other and also to the prospect of finding work. They came just for that, the jobs, a chance to make enough to eat. The Florida and North Carolina crew bosses had summoned them; the word went out in their wretchedly poor town of red hills and stubborn corn fields that the big U.S. tomato farmers needed field laborers. So they came. She worked in the fields on and off during parts of her pregnancy. Midway through, she says, the doctors told her there was something wrong. Her baby did not have all his parts. She did not really believe this, though, until Carlitos was born, two years ago today. Then she saw the truth, and Abraham did, too. And at that moment, as their newborn lay like a dot in his hospital bed, wrapped in bandages and hooked to tubes, his limbless body a perfect rectangle, his mouth a rosy cherry, they knew for sure just two things: Carlitos was a tragedy. And they loved him very much. That is the script they cannot change. Now, when they go out, people want to know. Why is your baby this way? The adults try to back-door the question, slip it into conversation naturally, as if this were possible. The older children come right out with it: What happened to his arms and legs? The younger ones - and this is interesting, a blessing, really - don't seem to care. Carlitos is a fine playmate, with his cascade of giggles and even temperament, not to mention his ability to hurl a rattle clear across the room using nothing but his mouth. What could be better entertainment than that? "We try to stimulate him as much as we can," says Ramos, who visits the family in Miami-Dade County several times a week. "The possibilities are endless. He's very driven. He wants what he wants." That would be a cup of milk. His mom's lap. His dad's arms lifting him high. The normal things. Plus, Carlitos is a very good kisser, eagerly planting his lips on the cheeks of people he likes.
Technology offers possibilities His parents would like to be private people, and since they are here illegally, having crossed the border without papers, they worry about deportation. Carlitos, however, is a U.S. citizen, and The Shriners Hospitals for Children-Tampa, which makes hundreds of artificial limbs every year, has promised him free medical care until he turns 18. Whatever they can do for Carlitos, the hospital's doctors say, they will do. Technology is on his side. One day, he might sit in a wheelchair and blow through a straw to power it. He might write on a computer. Cook with a high-tech stove. For now, though, there are more immediate concerns. Such as, what to get Carlitos for his birthday and Christmas. Last year about this time, a friend took Francisca shopping. Pick out anything you want, she said. A new blouse? A pair of earrings? The same offer was made to Abraham. They would have none of it. What did they need when their boy is missing so much? So Abraham chose a new pair of sneakers, which enabled him to accept a job in a plant nursery that required workers to purchase their own rubber-soled shoes. Francisca asked for a sweeper, the quiet kind, so she could clean up after Carlitos but not wake him from his nap. Back in the Wal-Mart aisles on Monday, the shopping trip was a bit more complicated. Carlitos has grown so much, and he needs to be challenged. "I've got it!" Francisca cried, when at last she found the perfect gift. She is keeping it a surprise, for Carlitos, but it has Disney characters and lights that blink when a child presses the right buttons. Which Carlitos will. With his flap.
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