Signal Hill girl’s unsettling art reveals rough home life

The house and horizon are geometrically perfect. The windows are identically proportioned rectangles, as if drawn with a stencil. But the curtains are tattered, the cloth door has a Chinese character meaning “happiness” on it and above the house is a disturbingly dense scribble. There’s a black cloud over this home.

Mealea, 13, calls her drawing “Abandoned House,” but the winding path to the front door might as well lead to hers.

“She has a lot of strength; she’s bubbly and creative,” says Trang Leete, a psychologist at Asian Pacific Counseling and Treatment Centers. “Just looking at her, you’d never guess what she goes through.”

Her mother survived the brutal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and carries emotional scars. Mealea’s home life is rough by American standards, but through an interpreter her mother says, “Physical discipline is common in Cambodia. Teachers and parents use it but do not hurt the child to the point it would be life-threatening. In this new country we have to go along with the laws of this culture that physical discipline is not allowed, but often children will not turn out right if you do this.”

Mealea has fashioned a collage of a woman holding a tiny baby. The giant woman is a patchwork of faces and nationalities. Her eyes are hidden behind garish sunglasses.

In another drawing, a house in bold, sharp lines stands against a dim, gray sky. The stairs leading up are turned sideways at an impossible angle. The fence around the yard is jagged.

“My neighborhood is sad and good at the same time,” says Mealea of the gang fights she’s witnessed and the friendships she’s forged in Signal Hill.

Although she is the middle child of five, it usually falls to Mealea to care for her 5-year-old sister. Leete worries that some of these responsibilities are inappropriate for her age.

Mealea will have a respite this summer when she goes to the Salvation Army’s Camp Gilmore in Malibu via the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign. She doesn’t know what it will be like, but it’ll be different from what she does every day.

“When a kid like Mealea gets a taste of goodness, care, beauty, and it’s interesting, not destructive,” Leete says, “it gives her something to hope for.”

Mealea painted one picture in color. It’s an angelic figure in warm blue robes against a clear white background. But unlike the other sharp-edged, black-lined images, this one is fuzzy and distant, out of focus. Like a dream.

About 11,000 children will go to camp this summer, thanks to $1.6 million raised last year.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, go to la times.com/summercamp.

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