The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (25 page)

And just as the monkey who makes the effort is rewarded with a richer diet, so my persistence, it seemed, was about to reward me. I was at the end of a street I had tried several times now, knocking on a door I had tried at least once already. And this time, when it did open, it revealed a kindly face.

In front of me stood Consuela, the girl I used to see in San Antonio Park. One of the few ordinary people who ever smiled and said hello to me. She said hello now.

‘Well, I never. Pony Malta!’

I said a prayer of thanks that I had never thought to steal from her as she sat on the park bench, sewing clothes.

I smiled my best smile, which wasn’t difficult because I was so happy it was her. ‘Consuela,’ I said. ‘Hi!’

‘What are you doing round these parts?’ Consuela wanted to know. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Well, I was hoping that maybe you could help me.’

She looked a little less pleased to see me than a second earlier. ‘OK
…
’ she said slowly. ‘As long as you’re not here to ask for money.’

‘Oh, no, Consuela. I’m here because I want to help you. As a servant. As a housemaid. But for free.’

She looked surprised. ‘Why would you want to do that? You must surely want something
…
’

‘All I want,’ I said, ‘is not to be a street kid any more. Not to live on the streets any more. If you let me work for you and live in your house, that’s all I want.’

I didn’t know what else to say. But she could see I was sincere. ‘I promise I won’t get in the way,’ I added. ‘And I am a very hard worker.’

Consuela smiled. ‘I’m sure you are,’ she said, ‘but this is my parents’ house, Pony. I would have to ask them
…
’ She hovered for a moment, as if thinking about whether she ought to, and for a minute I thought she would send me away. Perhaps I would have to come back tomorrow. But then she seemed to decide. ‘Wait there,’ she said firmly, then shut the door.

I stood on the front step for a few minutes. It was a very grand house with a heavy, old-fashioned-looking door. It looked big, solid and substantial – not at all like Ana-Karmen’s shabby brothel. These people were clearly very respectable.

The door opened again, and a middle-aged man and woman were standing in the entrance. The man looked very grand – tall and elegant, like his house. He was well-groomed, with neat black-grey hair and a moustache, and a face that would have once been very handsome. The woman was less daunting, being short and a little plump. She had a face that reminded me of a hamster more than anything, and a plum dress. She wore lots and lots of jewellery.

‘These are my parents,’ Consuela explained.

‘Euwww, she looks dirty,’ the older woman said. They both looked me over, inspecting me as if I were a piece of fruit or a new car.

‘I could make her a dress,’ Consuela suggested. ‘And I have known her for a long time. She is called Pony Malta. She’s very nimble, and I know she’d work hard. And she’s not really that dirty. Not when you consider how she is forced to live.’

I could have hugged Consuela that day. She made such a strong case for me. She continued to have answers for all their objections, convincing them that I would be the perfect cleaner for their family and, best of all, they wouldn’t even have to pay me.

‘All right,’ the man said, in the end. ‘But only for a trial.’ He fixed his dark eyes on me, and the eyebrows above them gathered themselves together. ‘Just don’t steal anything. Promise?’

‘I promise,’ I said happily. ‘I promise not to steal. Oh, thank you, thank you.’

So, I thought, as Consuela led me inside, there are some good people in this city after all. And now I had a job and a home. I couldn’t have been happier.

‘What’s your name again?’ said the woman.

‘Pony Malta,’ I answered.

‘I told you,’ said Consuela. ‘Because she’s so small!’ She proudly placed her hand on my head, as if I were her new pet, to indicate just how small I was.

‘That’s not a name,’ the man said. He looked me over once again. ‘Hmm. I think we’ll call you Rosalba. Consuela, take Rosalba to the bathroom to get washed.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘I could smell her from the other room!’

*

Another name, another life change. By the end of that day, I had a freshly cleaned body and had settled into what I thought of as a higher way of living. Which it was, for at last I had clean clothes and a bed, and no longer had to steal in order to eat. I was also the new cleaner for a family called Santos, who had done me a great service by allowing me a place in their grand home.

It was a big home, housing a big family. As well as Mr and Mrs Santos, there were their five children: Juan, the oldest, who was around forty-five and very frightening; Alfonso, who was in his thirties, and Pedro, a little younger than the two girls; Estella, just a little older than Pedro, and finally, my saviour, Consuela, who I think must have been around thirty to thirty-two.

I was set to work straight away, and my first job was dusting. I was told to brush the steps and dust the big square brick patio out the back. It was a pretty place, full of potted plants and home to a couple of tame birds, but, open to the elements, it got very dusty. Cúcuta is a very dusty city, so it was a constant problem for those who lived there, but Consuela gave me tips for how to deal with the surplus. Before sweeping the floor I had to splash it with a little water, to prevent the dust escaping up into the air. It was such a good idea that I adopted it from that day on and still do it now in my own home.

For a shovel, she showed me how to use a newspaper, again wetting the edge so that it stuck to the floor, making it easier to collect every single particle.

My other duties were exactly the ones you’d imagine. I washed up, I cooked for them, and I cleaned and collected rubbish, just as had been agreed at the outset. In return, I had a bed – well, a mat under the porch table by the back entrance where the dogs slept. I had no pillow, bar the pile of newspapers I would collect, but I did have the company of the dogs, which was good, and I was fed as well as they were.

Yet, once again, within weeks, I was miserable. For all the advantages I had gained, I had lost something so important: the friendship and company of my street gang. I had become a ghost again – no one spoke to me, no one acknowledged me, no one seemed to want to have anything to do with me. They fed me and housed me, but I was every bit as invisible as I’d been when I was living at Ana-Karmen’s.

I was also, once again, a virtual prisoner. The door to the street was always locked and also barred. There was a heavy pole, set on two hooks, that rested horizontally against it, which, small as I was, I couldn’t have moved in a million years. So there was no way of getting out, except via one little glassless window up a short flight of stairs that led out, if you were small and sure-footed like I was, onto a branch of a large Mamoncillo tree.

The Mamoncillo tree produces fruit that look like limes on the outside and lychees on the inside, and has a sturdy spreading habit and glossy spear-shaped leaves. The one in the Santos garden was huge, and it soon became my favourite place of refuge. I would climb out there whenever I could and sit hidden in the boughs, enjoying the company of the many birds and insects. Being with nature was still the only place I felt I belonged and would always turn my thoughts back to my lovely monkey family: how they would sit and groom me and tease me – sometimes to distraction, so much so that I’d get cross with them and chase them away. How I longed for them now that my life was the very opposite and I lived among humans who didn’t even want to know me.

But, for all that, my resolve was still strong. I was grateful to them for giving me a chance to start again, and perhaps when they saw my dedication to being a good servant, maybe, bit by bit, things would change. Maybe one day soon they would ask me to come and sit with them at mealtimes, or greet me in the mornings.

Or maybe not. Maybe I would regret the day I ever came knocking, much less moving in with the Santoses. There are plenty of good people living in Colombia, so it was unlucky that I knocked on the door that I did. For the Santoses were one of the most notorious criminal families in the city.

As such, they were understandably secretive. What I learned, I learned slowly, by observation and by chance. I regularly saw expensively dressed businessmen coming and going, though I had no idea what kind of business they were involved in. They would carry expensive-looking briefcases and smoke fat cigars as they trooped back and forth from the office, part of the house that was strictly out of bounds.

Whatever the Santoses did to earn money, it was obviously successful. Evidence of their wealth seemed to be everywhere – their home dripped with it – and sometimes, if I was quietly cleaning in the hallway, I could pick up snatches of their conversations. The family thought I had less understanding of language than I did, because I hardly ever spoke. And when I did, I still had something of an imperfect way of speaking, having picked up my human language so late. But they underestimated me. I could understand so much more than they realised, and what I picked up, when eavesdropping on the men’s conversations, was often about money – great quantities of money – and what sounded like elaborate plots to get it from other people, including framing innocent bystanders. I even heard them mention the word ‘kill’.

I was not shocked by any of this. I’d been a street kid for long enough to know that lots of businesses in Colombia did bad things to make money – this was normal for Colombia at that time. But I was scared of their oldest son Juan, as I learned that he was involved with a powerful Colombian ‘mafia’ group. He therefore seemed the most powerful member of the family, his mafia associates being so dangerous that his parents would assist him in his crimes – they had no choice.

The whole family, it seemed, made their living through crime. Alfonso was a professional burglar and Pedro always seemed to come home with lots of jewellery. Even the women were involved, helping in any way they could with the spoils of their criminal activities. The Santos men would often come home at three in the morning and unload things they’d stolen – precious stones, long rifles, ammunition and watches. And one of my jobs, when they arrived, would be to quickly hide the guns, which would be stashed under the bins out on the patio.

Even compared to life as a street kid, this was frightening stuff. The more I learned about how they ran their business, the more scared I was for my own safety. They would burn down the homes of rivals and kill without a second thought, always planning everything carefully to ensure they’d get away with it – they were masters of making everything look like ‘an accident’.

So it was probably naive of me not to consider the fact that bad men did bad things in lots of areas of their lives. And that, just as had been the case at Ana-Karmen’s brothel, I was an adolescent girl with no home and no family, so when and if I was noticed by any of these men, it would be for entirely the wrong reasons.

It soon became obvious to me that life at the Santos house was no different from life at Ana-Karmen’s. What had I been thinking? I was treated like one of the family’s dogs, tied to a tree or to the washing pole on a regular basis, never really sure what I’d done. My meals consisted of the family’s leftovers: chewed bones, scraps of bread and vegetable skins. I’d fight over these with the dogs, too, and they were stronger than I was.

But in one respect I was different from the family pets. Within a couple of weeks of my being there, I saw a look in Mr Santos’ eye that chilled me to the bone. His gaze seemed to be on me all the time now, as if assessing me, which made me feel uncomfortable and defensive. It was a look I’d seen many times before.

Mr Santos mostly worked at night and slept during the day, so, as Mrs Santos and her children were usually out working – or doing whatever it was they did – the house was empty, bar the two of us, most days. On this day, it was late in the afternoon and I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when I became aware that he had come in and joined me.

I was by the stove, making arepas, and I could see his reflection in the shiny black tiles behind the hob. He was standing in the doorway, and I noticed he was wearing only underwear. I felt a shiver run up my spine, but I pretended I hadn’t seen him, only stiffening as he approached and crouched down slightly behind me. The next thing I felt was the rough and clammy touch of his hands sliding up and down my bare legs.

All too soon, the movement changed and I could hear his breathing quicken. His hands had started sliding even further up my thighs. Was this what was required of me now? That I must do every single thing the family wanted, including allowing Mr Santos to grope me – or worse? My street-kid anger was never buried deep and now it surfaced, my mind racing to consider if and where there might be an escape route. He was a big man, and strong, but I had the advantage of surprise. He didn’t know me, and of course he would expect me to acquiesce. But no one – not even powerful Mr Santos – was going to rape me. Not when I still had air in my lungs.

I looked down at the metal rack of cooling arepas, forcing myself not to flinch under his touch. As soon as I did, he might realise I planned to escape. I needed him to think I would let him have his way.

I slowly curled my fingers round the blackened metal cooling grid. It wasn’t the best weapon, but it was heavy, and if I hit him with sufficient force
…

I whirled around and slammed it down on him. He was kneeling behind me, so it hit him square across the head and shoulders, while the warm arepas flew everywhere, rolling across the stone floor. He let out a roar of shock and, unbalanced on his knees, toppled over sideways to the floor. I hit him again, then, and a third time, just for good measure. It wasn’t the heaviest of weapons but I made up for it in fury. Then I ran.

There was no real escape for me, of course. The doors were locked, the windows barred, the high wall topped with barbed wire and shards of glass. I could only run up the steps to the little glassless window and then climb out to bury myself in the boughs of the Mamoncillo. I wriggled out and launched myself into the tree boughs, hearing his voice bellowing behind me, ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard!’