The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (20 page)

But the car now had its own idea of where it wanted to go. Gouts of dry dust engulfed us, so it was difficult to see, but, craning upwards, I could just about make out where we were headed. I froze in fear. We were skidding straight to the edge of the plateau, which was now mere yards away and getting closer by the second.

Marco, at least, seemed to sober up slightly and jumped back down into his seat to try to control the spinning car. I heard the girls scream and felt the ground disappear from beneath us. Could this really have happened? Was the car really in space now? Were we really going to plummet to our deaths?

I heard the sound of the siren fading, heard the girls’ screams snatched from their lips, heard the rush of air moving as the car knifed silently down through the air, to ground that was who knew how many miles beneath. I had no idea how far we would fall – from where I was I couldn’t see well enough. But in that instant I remember my mind being quite calm. It was going to happen: my life was going to end. All our lives, probably. This was back at a time before seatbelts and safety – what were the chances of any of us surviving this?

But my half-second’s worth of philosophising was brought to an abrupt halt as we suddenly smashed into something unseen and I hit my head so hard I thought it would explode. And now I saw a sight that would stay with me for ever: four of the other passengers, two of the men and both the women, being launched from their seats as if flung from an unseen giant hand – flying as far and fast as the pods would from the towering Brazil trees and just as surely destined to crack when they hit the ground.

I clung desperately to the seat mechanism, wedged in my footwell, listening to the screams of Elise and Lolita, which travelled with them. And then, finally, finally, the screaming faded. Silence. I strained my ears, but I didn’t hear them land.

All I could hear now was the creaking and squeaking of the car. I didn’t know what had stopped us or whether the car would fall now, too, but I was also aware of rustling and could see a mesh of branches. I tried to move to see better but without moving too much. We were wedged in the boughs of a sturdy-looking tree that had grown huge despite its crazily steep and inhospitable home.

I didn’t move far. Trapped in the car, the tree’s swaying was a terrifying feeling, but to climb out and trust my body to lead me to safety was impossible. I was clearly hurt – the smallest movement caused excruciating pain in my neck. But I could see enough anyway. I could see Marco, the driver. He was smashed against the windscreen, the car’s bonnet hanging vertically beneath him. I stared at him, appalled and yet fascinated by what had happened. He was completely broken and very obviously dead.

But I wasn’t. I remember making a mental inventory before passing out. I was trapped. I was in agony. My body hurt all over. I was still alive, I remember marvelling. But for how long?

It might have been hours or it might have been days. All I knew was that at some point I must have lost and then recovered consciousness, because one minute I was trapped in the car, staring at the body of a dead man, trying to clear my clouding vision, and the next there was the sense of pain crackling and sparking through my body, and a voice in my ear saying, ‘Hello?’

I tried to move, but the pain was like electricity inside me. Some deep instinctive sense told me to stop trying to do that. And where was I? In the car still? I tried to gather my thoughts and make sense of what had happened. Make sense of what was happening right now. But I couldn’t. I opened my eyes, but the vista was white and blurry. I blinked away a bright light and it began to clear a little. But the light was still above me. Was that the sun? And who was that speaking to me? A ghost?

‘Hello,’ the voice said again. It sounded high-pitched. A female. ‘Hello, young lady. Are you awake now? You know, you’re very lucky. Very lucky to be alive.’

I tried to focus. It was a female. Dressed in white. Wearing something on her head. Was she an angel? I’d heard about angels. They lived in heaven and they were good. Was I in heaven now? I was confused. She was saying I was alive, wasn’t she? Which meant I hadn’t gone to heaven. So where was I?

She seemed to know the answer even though I hadn’t yet asked the question. She moved closer. ‘You’re in hospital,’ she told me. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I hurt,’ I said. ‘Everything hurts. Where are the others? Did they die?’

Her expression changed. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said. ‘You’re the sole survivor. Like I said, you really are very lucky to be alive. Lucky to be awake, too. You hurt your head quite badly.’

I looked at her. Was I in hospital? If I was in a hospital then she must be a doctor. I had heard that doctors worked in hospitals and they made people better. I knew nothing of nurses. All I knew was that she had a kind voice. Perhaps she was an angel on the earth.

I tried to move again and found it hurt just as much as last time. ‘Will I die as well?’ I asked. Judging by the pain I felt, it definitely seemed as if I might.

She shook her head immediately. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to die.’ Her tone was clear. ‘You are going to be OK. You have lots of cuts and bruises, but they have done something called an X-ray and nothing’s broken. You just need time for your body to heal.’

She pulled a board from the end of my bed and then came around to the side of it. My face was close to a cabinet made of shiny metal. I could see my face in it. It didn’t look like mine any more. It was too big. Like a balloon. And all red and blotchy, with bandages wrapped around it. There were also bandages, I realised, on my arms and bottom.

The lady smiled. ‘You were lucky,’ she said again, ‘that there were police already there.’

I remembered the police suddenly, but I didn’t answer. It hurt to talk.

‘And when they saw the driver,’ she continued, ‘they called for help. And they got the car up from the ravine using a helicopter. And there you were!’ She grinned again, and I immediately decided that I liked her. ‘Tucked in the back, you were, wedged under the seat, which was what saved you. A complete surprise to everyone is what you were, young lady!’ She looked pleased. ‘And you’ve been sleeping since you got here, and no one knows where you came from. But now you’re awake. So we can find out who you are. We need to contact your parents, of course. Where can we find them?’

It was then that I realised the lady wasn’t alone. I turned my head and saw that there were two men in smart green uniforms standing at the end of my bed. They both had guns on their hips and one held a pen and a pad and was writing. I had no idea who they were or why they were there. The only thing that was clear was that, unlike the lady, they weren’t smiling. In fact, they looked cross. I didn’t like them.

‘Young lady?’ the woman said again. ‘Who can we contact? Who should we get in touch with to let them know you’re safe?’

My head filled with thoughts of the poor dead girls who’d been with me. I couldn’t quite take it in. I was the only one left alive. I then thought of Ana-Karmen. Her girls. Her girls were dead. Did she know yet? Had anybody told her what had happened? I thought what she might do to me. I shouldn’t have even been there. I would be in trouble. BIG trouble. I shook my head as much as I could bear to. Which wasn’t much. ‘No,’ I mumbled through cracked lips. ‘No. No one to contact.’

One of the men spoke then. The one holding the pad. He still looked angry. ‘How did it happen?’ he wanted to know. ‘And who were the others?’

‘Where do you live?’ said the other. ‘Are you local?’

They weren’t even giving me time to think how to answer. ‘Loma de Bolívar,’ I managed to get out. Then immediately regretted it. Would they now take me back to Ana-Karmen?

The nice lady leaned over me. ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said gently. ‘These two men are here to help you. Once you’re a bit better – in a couple of days or so – they’re going to take you home, OK?’

‘Loma de Bolívar,’ one of the men said, scribbling on his pad.

*

Of those couple of days, I recall almost nothing, bar the white walls of the hospital. The nurse (for it was a nurse, I later realised) tended to me. Other nurses came and went as well. I think I ate a little, drank a little, and my aches and pains subsided. What I mostly recall is a feeling of dull acceptance. I didn’t want to go back to Ana-Karmen’s, but what else could I do? I had nowhere and no one else to go to.

And so one day, perhaps a week or two later, the men in uniforms came to get me and took me away again in a jeep. I’d obviously been in a hospital in the city, because I remember them announcing when we arrived back in the village. And then, by a process of many questions – plus my finally getting out the word ‘Karmen’ – the men delivered me back to the hellhole I’d come from.

Seeing the house again filled me with dread. I stared morosely out, seeing the tatty cane fence, the tumbledown house, the wealth of weeds that sprouted defiantly from every crack in the broken pathway. Reluctantly, I pointed.

‘This is it?’ asked one of the men, half turning around.

‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘This is it.’

I was escorted up the path, my arrival heralded by the bleating of the goats. The door had already opened before we reached it.

I watched Ana-Karmen’s face as we approached. Her expression was one of first surprise and then anger.

‘Hello, madam,’ said the taller and more talkative of the two men. ‘We believe this young lady belongs to you.’

Ana-Karmen seemed momentarily at a loss for words. All she could splutter was, ‘I thought that dog was dead!’

The men looked shocked, which was understandable, because she lunged for me and grabbed me. ‘Get inside!’ she hissed, clapping me painfully around the back.

‘Isn’t she your daughter?’ the other man said. ‘We thought she was your daughter.’

‘My daughter?’ Ana-Karmen spat. ‘How could this animal be my daughter? Not in a million years would I have a daughter like that thing!’

She yanked me inside even so, which must have confused them. But not so much that they seemed worried about leaving me with her, because such rough treatment was quite common in Colombia. They talked for a while, but most of it passed over my head. I remember, though, that Ana-Karmen seemed upset. She clearly already knew about Elise and Lolita, and the men told her they were sorry for her loss. I also recall them saying I’d not quite recovered from my injuries. But I’m quite sure she couldn’t have cared less.

As the door shut behind the men and took the sunshine along with it, I cowered in the gloom, already anticipating the next storm.‘What have you said to those men?’ Ana-Karmen railed at me. ‘Have you told them my business?’

I shook my head and assured her I had not.

‘Don’t you dare open your mouth about what goes on here!’ she shouted anyway. ‘You hear me? This business is a secret!’

I continued to reassure her that I had said nothing to anyone. How could I have done? I had no idea what Ana-Karmen’s business even was. Looking back, it seems so obvious. They must have pieced things together, must have already worked out that the girls who had died were not Ana-Karmen’s daughters. And neither, it was now clear, was I. I didn’t understand why she was so anxious that I might have said anything to the men. It wasn’t as if they had come to charge her with any crime, just to return me to my ‘home’. That was the extent of it, and now they’d left. But it didn’t make any difference. Ana-Karmen wanted to punish me in any case. She grabbed a frying pan and whacked me with it, hard, on my back, just, I think, for still being alive.

I remember that strike so well. It was the hardest I’d ever received from her. I remember my vision going cloudy and the feeling I might be sick. But most of all I recall feeling this great sense of despair. I had gone back to her. What had I been thinking?

*

Returning to the house after the crash seemed to awaken something in me. I don’t know what, but I know that I began to see things with new eyes. Bit by bit, I began to build a clearer image of humans – how they did things, how they acted, how they liked to live their lives. It wasn’t the prettiest of pictures.

I began to make sense of what I’d been warned about by the mother I’d met – the one who’d told me that I was going to be turned into ‘the right meat’. I began to understand what that ‘meat’ was required to do, to understand that what Ana-Karmen was running was indeed a brothel. I didn’t know the term, of course – it was not a word I’d encountered – but the meaning was becoming clearer by the day. I lived in a house of women whose job it was to ‘entertain’ visiting men. Old men and young men, anonymous men and well-known men. I found out that among the ‘clients’ were even a couple of famous footballers – or so the girls said – men who played for Colombia’s finest teams.

I learned that the girls were only allowed to work at certain times of the month. At other times they needed to rub their stomachs a lot and drink herby water. I also realised that sometimes the girls would grow big and disappear. And I found out the reason, too – that they would go off to have babies. Like the woman in the jungle, they would have their babies in secret, but, unlike her, they would then give the babies away. There was a sign in the local shop that I saw more than once. ‘We sell babies,’ it said. I will never forget that. They would sell their own babies and people would buy them. It’s no wonder, perhaps, that I was developing the idea that humans were an unusual species.

Ana-Karmen, for all that, was very simple to understand. After the car accident, she seemed to hate me even more than before, and I began to harbour a dread that her whole purpose in life was to think up a way to be rid of me. I had thought it wasn’t possible for her to treat me more cruelly, but I was soon to be disabused of that notion. She mostly ignored me – a state of affairs that suited both of us fine – but if I did the slightest thing wrong, she would fly into a fury. Where she’d always been vicious and free with her punishments, now it seemed that when I angered her she lost all control, and I really began to fear for my life.

Yet on the day she nearly took my life, I had not seen it coming, which is perhaps why the incident is still etched so clearly in my mind.