Many of you readers will remember the item in a recent Yerba Buena newsletter about Manuelita, the little Chamula Indian girl that was scalped. [Click here and here] Manuelita is now one of our girls and lives and works at Yerba Buena.

I was away on a trip when she came to live at Yerba Buena. The first time I met her after I returned, I didn't recognize her, so I asked her who she was. (I should have known her by the big, red handkerchief she had over her head.) She said, "I'm Manuelita. Don't you remember me?"

Then with a big smile she took the red bandanna off so I could see her badly scarred bald head. She asked, "Now do you remember me?" Of course I did!

Eighteen months ago, when Manuelita was receiving her first skin grafts in our hospital, Chloe Sofsky, art teacher at La Sierra College, was visiting Yerba Buena. She told us that the Alabaster Club of La Sierra would take as one of their projects the purchasing of a new wig for Manuelita as soon as her head was healed.

The skin grafting was finally finished and healed this summer. The Wig Warehouse donated one third of the cost of a nice, shiny, black wig for Manuelita, labeled, "made in South Korea." The Korean women have black hair like the Indian women do here.

Manuelita with her new wig

The next morning we called Manuelita in to tell her we had something for her. When she saw the wig she just stood there, looking with her big, black eyes, like any little girl who has just been given her first, long-wanted doll. Then she looked up at us and smiled shyly. "Is it for me?" she asked.

She took off the red bandanna and Marie put the wig on, taking the dear child into our bedroom where she could see herself in our full-length mirror.

The happiness in Manuelita's eyes and her smile were all the payment anyone could ask.