The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (28 page)

My plan involved a request to go to the shop to get kerosene, and with only Consuela to contend with I thought I had more chance of being allowed to go. But first I needed to create a need for kerosene, which, with a half-f bottle, we currently didn’t have.

I didn’t have long, so I wasted no time in pulling apart the cooker on which I had just begun cooking lunch. The fuel was dispensed from an assemblage of pipes at the back, consisting of an inner bottle that hung upside down within another larger fuel bottle, the kerosene being dispensed via a wick. As the level of fuel in the outer bottle dropped, so air could enter the smaller bottle and allow more kerosene to be dispensed. The fuel would then travel along a pipe to perforated rings on the hob itself and so provide a flame on which to cook.

All I had to do was disconnect the kerosene supply bottle and carefully tip the contents down the sink. And since I’d disconnected and refilled the bottle scores of times before, it was a job – were my fingers not shaking quite so badly – that I could almost do with my eyes closed. It was soon done, shakes or otherwise, and once the now empty bottle was re-attached, all I had to do was to relight the stove and wait for the flame to peter out.

‘Consuela!’ I called, as I watched it slowly splutter into nothingness. ‘There’s no flame. I think we must be out of kerosene!’

I pulled the kitchen door open slightly and made a big show of cursing and moaning about the time and wondering how on earth I’d cook everyone’s lunch. But Consuela was clearly more engrossed in whatever she was listening to than I thought, as she took no notice of me whatsoever.

I went into the living room. ‘Consuela,’ I whined again. ‘No fuel! There’s no fuel. I need to go get some so I can cook the lunch.’

This finally produced a response. And it was even better than I could have hoped for. With an irritable sigh, she pulled her bag onto her lap and began rummaging for her keys.

‘Right,’ she said, thrusting a note into my hand as she got up. ‘Come on, then. I’ll open up the door.’

I needed no further invitation. Time was short. Perhaps too short. Consuela unlocked the door – the heavy bar was currently propped at the side of it – and I was out of it, clutching the gallon drum, in seconds.

It was as if I had wings. Dumping the drum, I sprinted barefoot all the way to the park. My feet could have been torn to ribbons on the way – I didn’t care. I was running for the biggest chance of my life, and I was terrified I’d miss Maruja. Nothing would have stopped me that day.

I entered the park minutes later, my lungs almost bursting from the effort of getting there and also from elation. I had done it! I had escaped the Santoses! I was free! There was just one problem. I couldn’t see Maruja.

I glanced left and right, anxiously scanning the people all around me. Where was she? Why wasn’t she here? She had promised, and I’d trusted her. I still completely trusted her. Which made a horrible thought surface. Had Mr Santos got to her? Was that why he and Juan had gone out earlier on? I sat down on the kerb side, dejected and now frightened. Had I got here too late after all?

Moments later, a taxi rolled to a stop beside me and I tensed for the door to open, expecting the worst. But it wasn’t Juan or Mr Santos. It was Maruja! And she was beckoning me to hurry and climb in.

Once again, I needed no further invitation. I got to my feet, opened the door and slid onto the seat beside her. And met her properly for the very first time.

‘Well done,’ she said quietly, indicating that I should put my head down so no one could see me. ‘Well done for getting out.’

‘Hello,’ I said, wriggling down, my heart leaping with happiness. This was it, I thought. I was at last going to have a better life. This, in fact, was the very best day of my life.

Maruja smiled. ‘Hello, Rosalba,’ she said more formally, smiling down at me. ‘I’m Maruja. You’re safe now.’

Although my prayers were answered that day, I never felt drawn to God. Yes, I had the same sense of wonder as any child would; I wondered as much as anyone where I had come from and what had made me, and how the beauty of nature had come about. But even if such an all-powerful creator did exist, I would be angry with him. What sort of God gave little children lives such as the one he’d given me?

In Colombia, a Catholic country, almost everyone is a Catholic – it’s just not normal to turn away from religion as I did at that time. It’s as much a tradition as it is a faith – if not more so. But, for all that, I could never have imagined where Maruja was taking me. I certainly never expected the next stage of my life to be located among people for whom a creature such as me would be as far from their ideals as it was possible to be. Yet it soon became clear that this was going to be the case. Maruja was delivering me to a convent.

We travelled in the taxi for around twenty minutes, to a part of the city I was unfamiliar with, Barrio Blanco. It looked different from the parts of the city that I did know: cleaner, less scruffy, perhaps a place for high-class people. Finally, we pulled up outside a large, clean white building – perhaps indicative of the good souls inside.

The metal entry gates, too, were clean of rust and painted white, though as we walked up to the entrance it was on cracked burgundy tiles. Maruja, perhaps sensing my innate distrust of this fine place, held on to my hand as we approached the oak door.

She clasped the knocker – a heavy-looking cast-iron ring – and banged it down twice on its plate. She also read the sign for me. ‘“Barrio Blanca,”’ she read. ‘“La Casita”, which means “the white district, little house” in Spanish. This is a safe place,’ she explained to me. ‘Do you understand, Rosalba? Nothing can harm you here. You are safe.’

I thanked her shyly but also sadly. I didn’t want her to leave me. But it seemed she was going to, even so. I had tears in my eyes as the huge door swung open to reveal a lady with greying hair, wearing a baggy black dress and a headscarf, who introduced herself as Sister Elvira.

Maruja explained who I was and how she’d come to bring me here. ‘Her life is in danger,’ she added, when she’d finished telling the nun about the Santoses. ‘So will you please take her in and keep her safe?’

Sister Elvira reassured Maruja that she could definitely do that. ‘No one can enter here to harm her,’ she reassured her. ‘And no one,’ she added, looking at me, ‘can escape from here either. Don’t worry. We will educate her and feed her.’

I couldn’t help but screw my face up at Sister Elvira’s words. They made the convent sound more like a prison. A friendly prison, but a prison even so.

‘Come, child,’ the nun said, as Maruja was obviously anxious to leave. ‘Let me show you where you will be sleeping.’

Sister Elvira beckoned me to step into the building. So this was it. I’d met Maruja, and she was already leaving me. She’d been my salvation, and the price I had to pay was our parting. I had no idea if I’d ever see her again. Fresh tears began to flow down my cheeks.

‘Don’t worry, Rosalba,’ Maruja whispered as we parted at the convent gate. ‘I will come back every Saturday to see how you are doing, I promise.’ She paused. ‘Please be good. Please behave. This is your chance now, OK? I know you won’t be used to this, but try. Please do try for me, won’t you?’

I told her I would. I promised. And it was a promise I aimed to keep. I would do it for Maruja.

*

I had never set foot in a convent before and it felt unlike anywhere I had ever been. I knew nothing about convents or churches or nuns. I’d seen nuns in the street, but I didn’t know what they were, only that their white habits and metal crosses were a kind of uniform. Arriving at the convent was confusing and also frightening, albeit briefly, as the only connection I could make was with the priests at Ana-Karmen’s who’d attempted the exorcism. I had this sudden idea that nuns might be a kind of witch.

The convent itself was a big, echoing place. It was very spacious, with tiled floors laid in an intricate pattern. The words La Casita were painted in big letters on an arch above our heads, though, as I couldn’t read, this obviously meant nothing. A flight of stone stairs ran up one wall to a big galleried landing, which led, Sister Elvira told me, to the dormitories above, from where I could hear the sounds of children laughing. I felt better.

The convent was apparently home to many orphans, street kids and abandoned little ones – anyone who needed a home, the Sister told me. We walked up the staircase and along the balcony corridor to the dormitory that housed the girls.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said once we’d entered the huge room. ‘Attention, please!’

‘Good afternoon, Sister Elvira,’ they chorused back, in unison.

‘This is Rosalba,’ she continued, ‘who has just joined us today. She’ll be staying with us now, so please make her feel part of our family and help her wherever you can. Now,’ she said, clapping her bony hands together, ‘let’s all welcome her in, shall we?’

And with that, every girl in the room started clapping, which made me feel odd, exposed and slightly anxious. I had never been welcomed anywhere, much less been clapped at and stared at, and I was relieved when the noise finally died down.

‘There,’ said Sister Elvira, beaming and placing a hand around my shoulder. ‘Welcome. Now, then, let’s get you some clothes.’

*

We were sent to bed at nine o’clock that night and every night from then on. To bed. It felt strange. I had never had a proper bed before. As beds went, it was probably a pretty poor specimen. It had a stained mattress and was covered in a pair of thin grey sheets, which matched the pale grey of the dormitory walls. But it was still a bed, which made it better than the tatty mat I was used to, and far, far better than sleeping in drains on the streets.

No one really spoke to me that night, but I was happy to be left alone. From my bed I could see the tiny square window at the end of the dormitory. It was too little for all but the smallest child to squeeze through but had iron bars across it even so. I thought about the Santoses and the beating that I wouldn’t get tonight, and wondered if they were out there somewhere, looking for me. I feared for Maruja and what might happen to her if they found out she’d helped me escape. I worried terribly about her family as well. Saturday couldn’t come too soon.

It took me a long time to fall asleep, because I was frightened of having nightmares, but once I did, I slept soundly and deeply. So deeply that when the sound of a whistle woke me in the blackness, it took some moments to figure out where I was. And what time it was as well, which was four in the morning – time to get up as far as La Casita was concerned.

‘Time to pray,’ the nun bearing the whistle commanded. ‘Half an hour,’ she explained to me, as the new girl. ‘You have half an hour. Prepare yourself, wash and dress, and then make your way down to church.’

Still confused and bleary-eyed, I did as I was told and followed the rest of the girls. The church was on the second floor and was entered via double wooden doors. It was full of bibles and rosary beads, big statues and fancy crosses – to someone like me, a big assault on the senses. We sat in things called pews, which were high-backed wooden benches set out in rows facing the front, and sometimes, instead of sitting, we knelt in front of them to pray. It was all terribly confusing and a bit scary.

Unlike the dormitory, the windows in the church were tall and massive, and made of pieces of coloured glass that, come the daylight, would create pretty patterns on the stone floor. The church also housed a big machine that made music and which one of the girls told me was called an organ. Soon I would hear it and be amazed at the sound all around me, so powerful it would seem to make the air and floor vibrate. But for now all was silent and still dark, apart from the ranks of candles that flickered in tall holders and a giant centre light that seemed to drip crystal droplets.

I had no idea how to pray, what to say or how to act, so that morning I just watched what the other children did and tried to copy them as best I could. After we prayed, a priest in robes came and spoke to us. I didn’t understand what he said, and as his voice was so monotonous, I didn’t really care what it was anyway.

The service went on for what seemed like several hours, though in reality perhaps only an hour and a half. There was more praying, more talking, some chanting of strange words and something else called Holy Communion.

‘Say you’ve taken it,’ the girls around me all urged once it started. ‘They’ll ask you, so just say you’ve taken it, and they’ll feed you.’ I didn’t understand what ‘it’ was, but when we were all told to line up, I could see a little better what was happening. The priest was leaning down and giving each child something to eat and drink, and I definitely wanted some of that.

Then it was my turn. ‘Have you worn a white dress and taken your first Holy Communion?’ he asked me.

I eyed the bread and wine that he and the nun by him were holding. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ve done that.’

Church, I soon realised, was about following the crowd. As was almost every aspect of living at the convent. Within a matter of days, I realised that, though I wasn’t being beaten, much of life would simply continue as before. After church there came breakfast – a dry roll and a glass of water – and after breakfast came the inevitable work. I was first assigned to clean the toilets, which felt a particularly bad start. In time I’d do every cleaning job that needed to be done there. But for now I was on toilets, which I scrubbed until lunchtime, when the whistle blew to call us for our next meal of the day: a watery soup with something green floating in it.

I saw the nuns tucking into meals of roast meat, and it occurred to me that my first impression had been an accurate one. I had definitely ended up in yet another kind of prison. We were being punished – that’s what it felt like – with meagre meals and endless drudgery, and, most importantly, none of us could escape. But we could steal, and, being hungry, that’s what many of the kids did. Most were street children anyway, so it was already in their nature, and soon, when I was ravenous, I would steal too.