This is the most fabulous wedding story I’ve known in thirty-three years as a priest and at least 500 weddings.
It’s about a famous model in Bangkok and ten street children she asked to be her bridesmaids and flower girls. Can’t use her real name, I promised, so we’ll just call her Model Lady, because she is that, a model lady, total class all the way.
She asked these girls—some right out of detention homes, others just off the street, all of them bruised and abandoned—to walk down the aisle with her and her man in church, to be close to her when she took her vows. She bought them all pretty white dresses and white patent leather shoes and took them to a beauty parlor to have their hair done. Some make-up, too, though they were already beautiful.
The first to go down the aisle was Miss Malee, nine years old and still bursting with pain, although you wouldn’t have known it on that day. You remember Miss Malee? I wrote about her before—the pedophile uncle story.
On her first night with us, when her teacher brought her to our Mercy Centre, Malee was a very frightened young girl. I promised her I would sleep downstairs by the door that night because she was afraid her uncle would come looking for her. She didn’t believe any “adult” promises, so three times she got up that night and shook her teacher awake to come down and make sure I was still there.
She made it through the night, and in the dawn, felt a little safer. (Days are always easier than nights.) The police were informed and Malee’s uncle was taken to the station.
Malee would have good days and bad after that, the worst coming several days later. After reviewing the evidence on the uncle’s charge, the public prosecutor returned the case to the police, saying the case was weak and the uncle would probably walk free.
The police could hold him for eighty-four days, but after that, what would happen? Even with him in jail, we were paying a small stipend to trusted friends to look after the teacher, who was being threatened with physical harm by the uncle’s cronies. He had already made it known that he wanted his niece back when he got out, and he didn’t want the teacher to testify. Seems uncle had forced Malee to run drugs. She knew all the drop-off points and he didn’t want her to tell anyone. He wanted to stay in control.
The police requested more—and better—evidence. Two more times we took Malee to the police station for wide-awake, daytime nightmare scenes. We had phoned the Model Lady to see if she could come to the first one, but she was working in Europe at the time, so Malee went with six adults she trusted: our lawyer, two house moms, two legal aid staff and her teacher. But an investigating officer looked like her uncle and she panicked, peeing in her pants and onto the floor. She couldn’t say a thing. So we decided to try another day.
Meanwhile, Malee was still in great pain. You could see it in her eyes even when she smiled and played with other children. And knowing that she would have to go back to the police station weighed her down even further.
But back to the Model Lady and Malee.
Somehow, the Model Lady had heard about us and came to Mercy Centre to take a look. She arrived at our front door during a monsoon downpour and I hollered for somebody to let the lady in out of the rain. Malee was closest. She opened the door for the Model Lady. They looked at each other. And something wonderful happened. Malee knew immediately that she had found the most beautiful big mom in the world, and the Model Lady saw in Malee the little girl she once was, deep inside maybe still was.
A couple of visits later, Malee decided she wanted the Model Lady beside her at the police station. She had asked for her phone number earlier and she’d been watching how to use a phone, so she made the call herself. The Model Lady was back from Europe and answered the ring. Malee whispered into the phone, asking her if she’d come with her and be her make-believe mom at the police station.
The Model Lady promised. She told me later that that was when she got the idea of inviting the girls to the wedding.
She said, “This is how I can help make Malee whole again. Feel like a little girl again. My wedding is the most important event of my life and Malee can be part of it. She can be a lady. That’s what she needs most right now, to be a lady—a fancy lady.”
The Model Lady understood the joy of make-believe and fantasy. And just as she had hoped, the event turned into a true dream wedding. Everything was perfect, even with all the tears messing the ladies’ make-up. The groom’s parents had flown to Bangkok. They knew about Malee’s saga, and they were overwhelmed at the sight of her leading their son and his bride down the aisle. They started crying first, and everyone else followed—tears of sorrow and joy. Miss Malee said it was the nicest day of her life, that she felt pretty and safe.
That should be the end of the story but it’s not. Once again, the police said they still didn’t have enough evidence. They scheduled Malee to testify one more time and sign another statement the day after the wedding.
Malee agreed to go only if she could wear her bridesmaid’s dress and shoes, and the Model Lady had to come with her, too. We thought this was too much to ask her but at the reception, Malee whispered in her ear, and the Model Lady promised again. She told us it was the very best way she could think of to start her married life.
So early the next morning we traveled to the police station, more than twenty of us in a caravan. On the way, we stopped by Malee’s school. The school year having just ended, Malee wanted to know her exam results and find out if she had advanced to second grade.
She didn’t make it. Mrs. Jiraporn, who has taught kindergarten and first grade to slum kids for thirty-two years, told us that Malee needed to stay in first grade until her reading improved. It was the right decision, but Malee cried, and this time, out loud—the first time she had done that. She had always cried silently, held mute by her bottomless fear. This time, we couldn’t make her stop until her house mom said, “Don’t cry, girl, you’ll stain your pretty dress.”
The Model Lady, as promised, met us at the station. She brought her first batch of wedding photos and two gifts for Malee: a Barbie doll and a play kitchen. The Model Lady and Malee sat together on a couch, holding each other, before Malee nestled into her lap and fell asleep. The officer assigned to the case said it was okay, that they could wait, so we all waited a while, a few more minutes, until Malee was ready.
Sitting on the Model Lady’s lap and combing the hair of her new Barbie doll, surrounded by the adults she trusted, Malee, for the final time, told the tale of her uncle’s abuse, and with that final testimony and her accompanying signature, the legal ordeal was over.
Uncle goes on trial soon and Miss Malee feels safe at last.