The Chen sisters in their home in China. The girls lived on their own for two years until they arrived in the United States on July 22.
One day in a kindergarten in China, Mingxuan Chen started to cry. No one had hit her or scolded her. The hurt went deeper than that. She felt it every afternoon when the other children rushed out of the building to walk home with a parent, and she was left to walk home by herself.
Mingxuan and her sisters had been alone for two years — ever since the accident that killed their mother and sent their father to the hospital, where he remains to this day.
At the time of the crash, the girls were 4, 7 and 11. They lived on their own until their aunt in the United States (Suki Chen) finally got permission to bring them to America. The girls arrived in this country on July 22.
“They miss their father, but they’re glad they’re here. They love America,” Mrs. Chen told us when we spoke at her nail salon last week. She and her husband recently moved from New Windsor to a home in Highland Mills that was large enough to accommodate their expanding family.
The Chens have four children, who were waiting to welcome their cousins and talk to them in their native language. “We were ready,” Mrs. Chen said. “When they came it was no surprise.”
It was no surprise, but it was exciting. Mrs. Chen took out her phone and scrolled through pictures of the cousins laughing together and hugging one another.
The newcomers have visited the library, and have eaten at the China Buffet in Newburgh and Poughkeepsie. They’ve also acquired a taste for pizza and chicken fingers.
One of their favorite activities is going to their aunt’s nail salon on Quaker Avenue in Cornwall, where they’re treated like celebrities and where they enjoy working on their own nails.
But the three girls have also been busy. They’ve been going to school during the day and studying English as a Second Language (ESL). Only one of them, the oldest, had ever spoken English in China, and she had learned just a little.
The move to Highland Mills put the Chen family in the Monroe-Woodbury School District, where all seven children will attend classes in the fall. “I still can’t believe they’re here,” Mrs. Chen told us. “They’re very good and very well behaved. And when I go home at night, they have a lot to tell me.”
Perhaps what she enjoys most is calling for her nieces at their school. “They come running out of the building and hug me,” she said. Then, summing up the experience, she offered one closing thought. “Now they can be children again.”
