The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (21 page)

It was a few weeks after I had been returned to the brothel, and the atmosphere following the loss of both the girls and a big client remained dismal, unsettled and very low. I remember I was scrubbing, removing some stain from the patio floor. Perhaps tree-sap, perhaps beer but definitely the remnants of something sticky, because, still weak from my bruising, I was struggling to get it off.

We were alone in the house for once, and I felt Ana-Karmen’s eyes on me. This in itself was unusual because she barely acknowledged me, and when she spoke my name and I looked up at her, it was to see a rare smile on her face. She also had one hand behind her back – concealing what? I wondered. Used to her cruelty as I was, I still had a child’s hopeful mind. Could it be that she had some treat to give me?

She beckoned me with a finger and motioned that I sit down on the floor. And then, before I could begin to comprehend what was happening, she produced a length of rope from behind her and swiftly tied my ankles together.

She was a big, strong woman and was now suddenly furious, and, despite my wriggling, it was impossible to escape her. By some clever manoeuvre she soon had my wrists tied as well and had dragged me a couple of feet to where a drainpipe climbed the house and managed to tether me to it. She then pulled a piece of old leather from her pocket and stuffed it firmly in my mouth, making my stomach heave. I wasn’t getting a treat from Ana-Karmen; I was going to die. I felt as sure of that as anything I’d ever felt.

Ana-Karmen turned around then and opened one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out what looked like a long fabric pouch. It was tied with string and it was only when I watched her untie and unravel it that I could see what was in it. It was a collection of knives and what looked like other weapons. I felt myself choking. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. So I was going to die. And I was soon to know why.

Ana-Karmen chose a knife – not the biggest but not the smallest – and began to wave it in my face while she barked out my list of crimes. ‘No one wants you!’ she spat at me. ‘None of my clients want you, and you’re no use to me. Because of you, two of my best girls have DIED! All you do is cause trouble – trouble in the house, trouble in the village. And everyone wants rid of you – do you hear me? So now you GO!’

I watched horrified as the flailing knife reflected the sun at me. Ana-Karmen, always aggressive, seemed almost to have lost her mind.

‘I’ll go!’ I tried to entreat. But the leather in my mouth wouldn’t let me get the words out.

She looked at me with eyes that seemed unfocused and unseeing anyway, gabbling on as if deranged. ‘Ayee!’ she said, almost to herself rather than me. ‘You’ve no parents. You have no one. No one will even know you’ve gone. No one will ask, either. You will be such an easy kill.’

My body, steeped in terror now, took matters into its own hands. As I sat and trembled beneath her, I felt a heat spread around me and realised I’d urinated on the floor. But Ana-Karmen didn’t notice. Her eyes were still unfocused. They had an odd look about them, a greedy look almost. As if she was locked in the moment, losing all sanity and control. All her attention seemed to be on the knife in her hand and where best to place it so she could finish me.

I braced my body for the impending stab, swinging my head frantically from side to side, trying to plead with her not to kill me. But with the gag in my mouth, all that came out were strangled grunts. She was still shrieking at me, waving the knife around, but I had no idea what she was saying. What had I done? Why did I deserve this fate? I didn’t know but I kept trying to say sorry for it anyway, sobbing the words out as best I could through the gag, while my heels scrabbled on the urine-soaked floor beneath me.

Ana-Karmen seemed oblivious. I could see she was preparing herself to stab me. She raised her arm, all her attention now focused on my face. But then there was a creak – the door opening – closely followed by a loud masculine roar. It was Rufino – her man. The same man I’d tortured with the ice cubes and who hated me almost as much as she did. Yet it seemed he was now my saviour. He roared again at Ana-Karmen, who, clearly incensed at his intrusion, flung the knife across the floor.

So it seemed it wasn’t my day to die, after all. Soon the pair of them were locked in a furious screaming argument, while Rufino leaned down, roughly unbound me and ordered me to my feet. I needed little persuasion to do as he ordered. I scrambled up, slipping on the puddle of urine beneath me, and scuttled out to seek refuge in the garden with the goats.

But he wasn’t done with me. ‘Get back here right now!’ he ordered. ‘Get back here and clear up your filthy stinking mess!’

Quivering all over but terrified that he’d change his mind and let Ana-Karmen kill me after all, I ran back in to grab the mop and start doing as he said, but I was shaking so uncontrollably that it kept slipping from my hands.

‘Can’t you even do that?!’ he roared, the vibrations from his shouting reverberating in my bones. ‘You idiot! Pick it up and finish it! Do not even think of stopping till every trace is gone!’

And with that, he took a still gabbling Ana-Karmen by the arm and shoved her roughly through the door, while I continued to move the mop around, my throat burning and choking with sobs that wouldn’t fall. It took hours for my shakes to subside.

I am still not quite sure what happened that day. I wonder now if Ana-Karmen might have had some sort of mental illness and on that day had a breakdown. That she meant to kill me – and cold-bloodedly, not in a moment of passion – I remain sure. But perhaps I am being kind. Perhaps she’d always intended to kill me, but as the house was never empty she had just never had a chance. And perhaps the man’s wish wasn’t to rescue me in order to spare me; rather it was to spare them both from committing a crime that could so easily be found out – at least till they’d worked out what to do with my body.

That was what I thought then, though it really never occurred to me to analyse. It’s only now I question my own sanity that night. Why didn’t I run? Whatever might be out there, why didn’t I run? Yet I didn’t. I was terrified but at the same time mentally paralysed. I was in danger, I knew. I was living on borrowed time. Yet I left things to fate. I don’t know why.

Ana-Karmen, after that day, at least kept her distance. And I was aware of how the man had begun hanging around more, watching for that mad glint in her eyes. It was reassuring to have him there, but I still lived in terror. I kept out of her way as much as I could, and, once my panic subsided, I tried desperately to figure out what to do. I wanted so much to run away, but my fear was still too great. A greater fear, clearly, than I had of Ana-Karmen’s murderous intentions, despite my years in the jungle. Fear of where to go and how to survive.

But it seemed events were about to outrun me anyway. It was nearing the end of a hot day. It was still sticky and humid but with the sun low in the sky when I heard a sharp knock from outside. The front door was often open in this sort of weather, but now the doorway was darkened by the bulk of a big man who had just rapped his knuckles on the wood.

I heard Ana-Karmen’s voice. ‘Come, Sergio,’ she greeted him. ‘Come in. Welcome.’

‘Thank you, Ana-Karmen,’ he said politely. ‘How are you?’

I glanced up from where I was cleaning a door in the kitchen. I could see the man himself, who was wearing a suit and a tie, and beyond him, parked outside, was what looked like a taxi.

I kept quiet as I polished and listened in to their conversation. ‘So who’s your youngest?’ I heard him asking her. ‘Do you have any in today?’

I glanced across again and saw him pull out first a large pocketknife, which he transferred to his other hand, and, following that, a fat wad of notes. By now I knew exactly what he meant by her ‘youngest’. Ana-Karmen’s youngest girls were around fourteen years old. It was a fact that consoled me. I was only around eleven – surely too small and too young to be the right meat for her clients. And she’d already told me, hadn’t she? None of them wanted me in any case.

There was a silence, and then Ana-Karmen mumbled something I didn’t catch and raised an arm to point in my direction. Horrified, I saw the man then start to turn towards me. I bobbed back behind the door, mortified, but too late. He’d seen me, and his mouth had formed a smile.

I then heard Ana-Karmen’s voice again. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to some query of his that I hadn’t managed to hear. ‘She’ll follow you to the car if you give her a handful of
patatas fritas
.’

I froze, my hand gripping the doorknob I was supposed to be polishing. It was me. It was my turn. I had finally become the right meat. I had spent so long putting the whole terror of it out of my mind that I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. But the man’s smile had told me anyway. I was going to be his meat and he would turn me into sausages.

I pulled the door open, crossed the hallway and scampered into one of the other rooms – the one with three beds in a row. Here I scrambled, terrified, under the first and then the second one. Under the third – which would have been best – there were too many boxes. I could still hear Ana-Karmen muttering at him about how much I liked crisps – had she gone into the kitchen to fetch some? I presumed so. She’d give the man the crisps and the man would offer them to me. And then, in Ana-Karmen’s mind, clearly, I would meekly follow him to his car.

I watched the two pairs of legs disappear into the kitchen and gave thanks for the encounter I’d had with the woman who had warned me that this dreadful day would come. ‘Run, Gloria,’ she had told me. ‘Run as fast as you can.’

This, I now realised, might be my only chance to run. Where I’d run to, I had no idea, but that didn’t seem to matter. Just ‘away’. That was all I could think. Run away.

I wriggled my body from the cobwebby space beneath the bed. Then, barefoot, I bolted for the open doorway.

I ran as I had never run before, with fear snapping at my naked heels. Was I being followed? I had no idea, but I didn’t dare turn to look. I was too frightened I’d stumble and be caught. So I pushed on with no thought but to keep my legs moving.

I ran for what seemed like hours. The sky grew dark and my legs began to quiver with tiredness. I had come such a long way and had no idea where I was going. I’d passed the silent houses of Loma de Bolívar, where the slumbering residents were indoors having their siestas, past rows of shops, playing children, animals. And as I’d run, the sound of the traffic had grown louder, the cars denser, the street corners more populated, and the lights of shops had grown correspondingly brighter, shining their synthetic glow up into the night sky. Though I had never been there, I realised I must be heading into the centre of Cúcuta.

Eventually, I slowed and risked a glance back. Had I seen a raging Ana-Karmen lumbering along in my wake, I would probably have been paralysed by shock. But there was no one there, and as I looked around my eyes latched onto a patch of trees and bushes. I would later learn that this was San Antonio Park, the violent heart of the city, but at this point, as far as I was concerned, it was just a big open space with a fountain that I ran to and drank from gratefully, splashing water over my head as well, to cool me down.

The sight of such a welcome patch of greenness sent a wave of relief flowing through me. I jogged across to the bushes that surrounded the park and, seeing there would be no place in the low canopy that I could sleep in and remain hidden, I curled up under an old mango tree.

For some minutes, I lay curled there, focused wholly inwards. As well as my tired feet, my leg muscles were burning, and for a time I could concentrate on nothing else. But soon the noise of the city began to infiltrate my thinking, and then I noticed different, closer sounds. I looked up and around, my eyes now adjusted to the relative darkness, and what I saw made me catch my breath. I was not alone. Far from it. I was surrounded! Under almost every other tree and bush lay the curled-up, whispering forms of other children just like me.

My brain whirred with questions about who they were and how they had come to be here, seemingly homeless. I wondered if they had been through a similar experience to mine at Ana-Karmen’s. I didn’t know, but I had the immediate sense that we were all in the same boat. My eyes met other eyes – wide eyes that were full of sad stories. Nothing was said, but there seemed to be an immediate understanding, a sympathetic welcome to their world.

For all my terror of leaving and my fear of the future, seeing those children made me feel so much better. I had felt alone at Ana-Karmen’s. I had felt alone running away from her. Now I wasn’t so alone. This was the start of a new life for me. I didn’t know it yet, but I was to become a street child of Colombia, just like the children all around me. I fell asleep in seconds, and I slept very well.

*

When the sun rose the next morning and I gazed on my new ‘home’, I realised I was back in the jungle, though it was a very different kind of jungle and perhaps even deadlier than the one I’d known before. I would soon learn that the streets of the city were riddled with violent criminal gangs, and where before I had learned to flee from predators, how to find food and how to prosper, I would now have to acquire a new set of skills to avoid being gang-raped or beaten, and to avoid being shot or getting caught by the police.

Cúcuta was a typical Colombian city. The houses had tiled roofs and were usually one-storey affairs – in a land of earthquakes, you don’t build very high. The buses were yellow and old-looking, and most other types of transport also looked ancient and as if bought from a scrap yard. There were few visible signs of wealth in the city.

The markets sold all kinds of fruit, vegetables and meat. And much of the meat was still alive. I remember seeing rows of chickens hanging upside down with their legs tied, and goats, pigs and other animals tied to stakes in the ground. Customers would take them home and kill them to feed their families. There was food for free, too – mangoes grew on the trees in the parks – which was just as well, as many people lived in great poverty.