The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys (32 page)

In those days you needed little in the way of documentation to fly anywhere internally. No passport, no identity papers, no birth certificate, nothing. Which was just as well, because I didn’t own anything that proved I was alive.

No sooner had Maruja taken me up to the desk to get my ticket checked than I was heading through to the other side of the airport – the side she couldn’t enter.

‘Be careful,’ she kept whispering to me. ‘Be careful. Look at no one.’ Her nervousness had completely transmitted itself to me now, and were it not for the fact that it was Maruja telling me to do this, I think I might have just turned around and run when she told me she had to leave me on my own. I had only the small case she had packed for me, my ticket and the little photo of the woman Maruja had told me was her daughter.

I studied the black-and-white photograph. The lady looked nice, with pale hair and pale eyes. Blue, I decided. They would probably be blue, like my dress.

I had been unable to find words that could ever match up to how I was feeling when I left Maruja. I could say thank you, and I had, but it felt too inadequate. I wanted to say so much, to tell her how grateful I was to her for giving me a chance, for trusting me, for believing I could make something of myself. But I couldn’t. I could only tell her with my eyes and by my actions. I would show her my gratitude by making her and her family proud.

I tried very hard not to look back, because she had expressly told me not to. Keep your head down, look straight ahead, don’t wave, don’t draw attention to yourself. I was still staring straight ahead when I boarded the plane.

It was only then that I risked a quick backward glance, but I couldn’t see her. There were just too many people, all milling around. And, given her anxiety about us being seen, perhaps she’d hurried away anyway. Now would I be safe from harm? I hoped so. I certainly couldn’t imagine any mafia boarding the plane and felt myself relax a little bit. If they were going to get me, then surely they would have got me by now, wouldn’t they?

Even so, as I was shown to my seat by the window, I couldn’t help but try to scan the airport for her face, and when I couldn’t see it, my heart sank. Now I really was on my own. As yet, anyway – there was still the question of the empty seat beside me. Who would fill it? Perhaps one of the mafia might come and get on the plane after all.

The cabin gradually filled and was soon bustling with people, and as each new person passed and my seat remained empty, I began to think – and to hope – that it would remain so. But then I saw a man – quite a young man – begin to approach. He was clutching a ticket stub, and as I watched him he seemed to count in his head and then fix his gaze on my row. I watched him carefully, as carefully as I used to observe things in the jungle. He was a tall man, fit-looking, and as he got nearer I began to focus. How would I escape if he turned out to have been sent by the Santoses? Where were the exits? How would I defend myself if he attacked?

Looking back, it sounds so foolish, but at the time I was deadly serious. Maruja’s fear had got to me. My hands were clammy, and, as he finally took the seat beside me, I kept my face directed outward, towards the window.

The take-off itself transfixed me completely. I gripped the armrests of my seat as tightly as I had ever grabbed a tree trunk I was climbing, because it seemed a physical impossibility that something as heavy as an aeroplane could ever find the power to glide straight up into the sky. I could see how it was possible for birds: birds weighed almost nothing. But the weight of the plane and all its passengers was almost too scary a thing to contemplate. Yet here we were, up in the sky, the city of Cúcuta growing ever tinier beneath us, and finally I was able to unclasp my hands from the armrests and risk a glance towards my silent fellow passenger. He had a bible in his lap, but that meant nothing in Colombia. He could have half a dozen bibles in his lap and it would tell me nothing useful. Mr Santos had a bible. Everyone did. But even so, just seeing it there made me feel better.

He must have seen me looking at it. Must have been aware of my furtive glances, as he said, ‘Hello.’

I mumbled some sort of response. He picked up the bible then. It was covered in blue leather and all the pages were edged with gold. The man smiled. ‘I’m a priest,’ he said, by way of explanation.

They were the very best words I could have heard.

We didn’t speak again, the priest and me, for the rest of the two-hour flight. He read his bible and I spent the time staring out of the window, sipping the glass of juice the air hostess had given me and, once I’d calmed down enough to believe we wouldn’t fall from the sky until we wanted to, marvelling at the rainforest carpet below me. The clouds, too – I couldn’t believe how different they looked from our vantage point up here in the sky. But just before we landed, growing aware of the task ahead of me, I plucked up the courage to speak to him again.

‘I have to meet this lady,’ I explained to him, showing him Maria’s picture. ‘But I don’t know where to go to find her. Can you show me?’

‘Of course,’ he reassured me. And though he was in a hurry to be somewhere, he got off the plane with me and led me to an important-looking lady in a suit, who promised she would make sure I found the person in the photograph. I sometimes think of that priest today and wonder where he is and what he’s doing, and whether he might find it amusing to know that when I first saw him I thought he could be a mafia contract killer.

Bogotá airport seemed enormous; it was like an ocean of humanity. Everyone seemed to hurry here, not just the young priest, and I became more aware than ever of just how small and insignificant I really was. Without the help of the lady, who I think was some sort of airport security official, I could have got lost in an instant – I could have been swallowed up and no one would ever know or care. Except I realised that was no longer true. Someone would care. Maruja would. It was a wonderful feeling.

In the end, it didn’t take long to find Maria. ‘Is that her?’ asked the lady, glancing at another woman in the distance, then back at the photo she now held for me.

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. But she looked like she might be. And then she waved, which answered the question. We had found her.

Maria wore three things on the day I first met her: a smart suit (she was so elegant, just like the lady who had brought me to her), a wide smile that immediately reminded me of Maruja, and something else – an impish-looking blond boy, who was wrapped around her leg. ‘This is Edgar,’ she told me. ‘He’s four, aren’t you, Edgar? Don’t be shy. Say hello to Rosalba.’

Edgar wouldn’t. He was shy. And I didn’t really blame him. I felt shy too, in my pretty dress, walking with this fine lady, a million miles from the street kid I never wanted to be again. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you home to meet the family, shall we?’

I had to pinch myself to believe this was really happening. I felt such awe and respect for Maria. I still do. It was an incredible thing she and her husband Amadeo had done by taking in a stranger, a young girl with a less than commendable background, and accepting her into their lives so unselfishly. How many people would do that? They were very special, I decided.

On the way home, Maria told me a little more about her family. Amadeo was the manager of a hotel, and they had five children altogether, of whom little Edgar was the third. And though they weren’t poor, there was not a lot of money to go round, as much of what they had went on paying for the children’s education, which was apparently very expensive.

Maria also told me lots about her children – what they liked and what they didn’t – and that though she couldn’t afford to send me to school, she would do her best to teach me numbers and letters herself. To read and write! I couldn’t wait to get started. She also told me I’d be sharing a room with Nancy, who, at seven or eight, was the closest to my age. Well, what passed for my age, anyway; I was still not entirely sure of it. I looked about nine, I was so tiny, but I knew that I couldn’t be. So I’d been happy, at Maruja’s suggestion, given everything we knew, to suppose I was now somewhere around thirteen or fourteen.

*

I settled in with the Forero family very quickly, the first few days passing in a blur of new experiences. But much as I relished my new life and family, the past kept on coming back to haunt me.

I began having terrible nightmares. Every time I closed my eyes I was transported back into the Santos house, being beaten, whipped and abused. It got so bad that I was too terrified to close my eyes and go to sleep, and when I did sleep, Nancy told me she could hear me crying and whimpering. Concerned for me, she told Maria.

‘You know what?’ Maria said to me one morning, a few days later. ‘I’ve been thinking, and there’s something that it seems to me might help you.’

‘What?’ I asked, wondering if she might give me some medicine.

‘Your name,’ she said. ‘Who gave it to you?’

‘Mr Santos,’ I told her.

‘And before that?’

‘Before that I was known as Pony Malta.’

‘The name of a drink! What a thing!’ She laughed. ‘And before that?’

‘Before that, I was given the name Gloria.’

‘And who named you that?’ Maria wanted to know.

‘A lady.’ I frowned. ‘She was horrible to me.’ I didn’t want to tell her anything about Ana-Karmen and the brothel. Now I knew what it had been, I was so ashamed of having lived there.

‘You poor thing,’ she said. ‘What a life you have led. And before that?’

I shook my head. I didn’t have an answer for that one. I shrugged. ‘I didn’t have a name,’ I said.

Maria nodded. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Perhaps this is the problem. The only names you’ve ever known have been slave names.’ She smiled again now, and it was the smile of a woman who had a plan. I knew that kind of smile. I’d often find myself wearing it. I liked plans. And Maria’s was unquestionably a good one. ‘What you need, my dear,’ she said, ‘is to have a name all of your own. A name that you’ve chosen for yourself.’

So it was that I thought about what might most suit me and after a few days finally decided on one that felt right. Maria then spoke to the priest, who baptised me as part of their family, and I came out of the church that day, aged fourteen or thereabouts, with my own name, Luz Marina, which translates as ‘light’ and ‘sea’.

I loved that ‘Luz’; loved the concept of finding the light after so many years in the darkness. But the choice of Marina was an interesting one. Would I have chosen it if I’d known that it referred to water? Perhaps not. But what I do know is that I chose it because I just loved the sound of it. It was a name that for some reason felt connected to me. I still wonder whether it came from a comforting past. Had it perhaps been my mother’s name? My own?

I don’t know. All I know is that I walked out of that church feeling like a human being, like an individual – no longer like an animal.
This is me. This is my identity. I belong to a family,
I remember thinking.
My name is Luz Marina, and I am not an orphan.

With that knowledge came a sense that I was now a new person. And, more importantly, a someone – a free human being. I couldn’t wait to start the rest of my life.

I first met Marina in the summer of 2011. Together with her daughter Vanessa, she had travelled down from Bradford to my agent’s offices in London so that we could meet and decide if we ‘fitted’.

For me, as a ghostwriter, that ‘fit’ is crucial. And I trust my instincts. If I don’t click with the person I’ve been asked to work with, I know there is no point in moving forward. And I don’t doubt the same applies in reverse. It’s such an intense relationship, after all – such an intimate, frank and close one – that if trust isn’t present, it cannot work.

And here was a poser. Of the many books I have been asked to consider ghosting, this one was singular – the story of a woman who’d been raised, in part, by monkeys. Or so they said. Did I believe it? I wasn’t sure. I had read some of the material – there was a great deal of material – as well as glanced through two previous incarnations of the outline, both trying a different approach to make this vast and sprawling story work.

But the one thing that would clinch it was that face-to-face meeting, and, in the event, it was only the work of a few seconds for me to both trust in the truth of Marina’s incredible story and to feel that magic – and non-negotiable – sense of ‘fit’. Marina is very much the living embodiment of the little girl you have read about in this book. Now a petite Bradford housewife and indefatigable supergran, she still retains such an aura of mischief and wildness that it takes no leap of faith to marry up the two. Her beautiful daughter, Vanessa (the younger of her two children), has clearly inherited her mother’s verve and lust for life. And since it was with Vanessa with whom I knew I would mostly be working (given her childhood, Marina’s written English is obviously shaky), it was delightful that we clicked in an instant.

Even so, having signed on the proverbial dotted line, I read the entire manuscript with a growing sense of anxiety, so much so that I almost pulled out. It’s a huge, unwieldy story, and this was a huge, unwieldy document. No matter that it intrigued, appalled and excited me in equal measure, no matter that it was packed full of drama and pathos, it was still as wild a child as the subject at its heart. Painstakingly created by Vanessa, over several years of intense mother-and-daughter interviews, it was a labour of love, clearly, but what was also clear was that there was so much more to relate than could realistically be contained within a single, linear narrative. It was like the vastness of the rainforest, teeming with light and life and colour, and my job – once I fixed on the solution to the problem – was to weave a coherent path through it.

So my first task was to chop it in half. Brutal though that seemed, it felt an obvious solution: to focus more tightly on Marina’s childhood journey, from the day she lost her home and loved ones – but most of all, her identity – to the day, at the age of fourteen or thereabouts, when she was once again a girl with a name.