by Rachel Dann
Oh no, wait… that’s The Green Mile.
Even so, I suddenly want nothing more than to leg it out of here, all thoughts of being independent and showing Harry how fearless I am totally forgotten.
‘Um, Marion, I’m not sure I want to…’ I realise I’m tugging at her sleeve in the pathetic way I’ve tried to resist doing all morning. ‘Surely we can’t just walk into the…’
Marion isn’t listening to me, as the two women who were leading the singing are waving at her and shouting something incoherent from the other end of the courtyard.
‘SEE YOU AT CHURCH!’ She yells back at them, waving manically. ‘DON’T FORGET TO BRING MY CAKE STAND!’
She turns back to me, smiling broadly. ‘What were you saying, dear? Oh, look, hurry up and follow Naomi, we don’t want to get left behind out here.’
Before I can protest any further, Marion is leading me by the arm across the corridor and through a narrow doorway, into one of the two main prison buildings. As soon as we’re out of the sunshine, we’re hit by a suffocating smell of cooking, body odour, and something else that is harder to place and even less pleasant.
Trying to breathe through my mouth, I follow Marion along narrow corridors, up two flights of spiralling stairs, past open doors to little offices where women in guard uniform are talking loudly on the phone and clacking away on typewriters – yes, typewriters – up more stairs, then along another corridor where we finally catch up with Naomi.
‘There you are – I thought you two had got kidnapped for a minute!’ she laughs loudly, clapping me on the back.
As my eyes become accustomed to the dim light, I realise we’re in a long corridor with doors branching off to either side, strangely reminiscent of my old dorms at university. The doors and corridor walls are all painted a horrible sludgy cream colour, probably called Magnolia Glow or something gross like that. Dirty fingerprints, muddy stains and illegible graffiti messages in biro dot the walls. A string of purple fairy lights is hung above our heads, taped to the wall with masking tape along the whole length of the corridor.
‘Let me just check it’s free, and we’ll go in.’ Naomi thumps her fist on a door to her left. ‘ANYONE HERE?’ she yells.
‘Sí! Yo! Vicky!’ A voice calls back from the other side of the door, and I recognise her Ecuadorian accent. ‘I’m naked! Hold on a minute!’
Naomi bawls back in perfect Spanish, ‘Put a towel on then! My missionary people are here!’
Before the other woman has a chance to reply, Naomi is swinging the door open and we’re met with the sight of a young woman scrambling to cover her naked body and bulging stomach with a towel, her dripping wet hair flying in all directions.
‘Naomi, you’re a nightmare!’ she shouts, still in Spanish, thumping Naomi affectionately on the arm as she clasps the towel behind her with her other hand. ‘I jumped in the shower while everyone was singing. It’s the only time you can get any peace – oh, hi, Marion! Good to see you.’ She leans forward to give Marion a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ll go get changed in the bathroom before everyone comes flooding back.’ Without even a glance at me, she squeezes past us and heads slowly off down the corridor, with the unmistakable awkward waddle of a woman just weeks away from giving birth.
I stare after her in amazement, my mind flooded with questions I don’t have the courage to ask.
‘Welcome… to my humble abode,’ Naomi says drily, motioning for us to enter the room behind her. ‘Don’t mind Victoria, my “roommate”.’ She chuckles ironically.
I realise why Victoria had to leave the room before we could enter. There would have barely been enough space for the three of us, even without Victoria’s bump. Marion and I can just about stand side by side in the tiny square of bare wooden floor in the centre of the room. Flashes of hot-pink painted walls are visible between the rickety metal bunk beds taking up most of the room, and other odd bits of furniture, photos, pictures and a calendar. I notice one of the photos is of Naomi, looking younger and happier, her arms around a small older couple, presumably her parents.
Naomi has slumped on the bottom bunk, all her previous swagger and cockiness evaporated as she buries her head in her hands, looking suddenly smaller.
‘The money from your mum arrived,’ Marion says, rummaging in her blouse, producing a small envelope from inside her bra and handing it to Naomi.
Naomi takes it wordlessly, then counts out eighty dollars and nods. ‘Thanks. Thank God, now I can pay back that sodding woman from room six,’ she mutters. ‘I need to get another data plan on my mobile. It works out even more expensive to keep borrowing other people’s internet – they know we’re desperate, us foreigners. They know it’s the only way we can speak to family back home. So they charge whatever the fuck they want. With interest.’
I’m staring back and forth between Marion and Naomi in silent astonishment. At this harmless old lady who can smuggle hard cash into a prison inside her bra without batting an eyelid. And even more so at Naomi’s talk of mobile phones, internet, and Skype. Again, my mind churns with questions that I feel unable to ask.
‘Your Spanish is really excellent,’ I say awkwardly to Naomi.
‘Huh, that’s the upside of prison here,’ she mutters from behind her hands. ‘Free Spanish lessons. All day, every day. To eat, to wash, to see the doctor. If you don’t speak Spanish, you die.’
Marion sits down on the side of the bed next to Naomi, having to duck her head under the top bunk, the whole mattress sagging beneath her weight.
I look around for somewhere else to sit, realise there isn’t anywhere, then curl up cross-legged on the floor opposite the bunks.
‘Not everyone learns Spanish like you, dear,’ Marion says, and something tells me this is a speech she’s given many times before. ‘Some foreign men and women get put in jail here, and sink into a despair of drink and drugs, leaving worse than when they arrived. Some never leave, at least not alive. You’ve used your time productively, achieved so much.’
‘Well, learning fluent Spanish isn’t much use if they won’t let me translate those fucking documents myself, is it?’ Naomi scowls, her voice full of bitterness. ‘We all know I’d probably do a better job than any of those stuck-up lawyers anyway. They just take your money then never come back.’
‘Naomi has not only learnt Spanish, but taken part in every workshop the prison has offered over the last eight years,’ Marion explains to me, ignoring Naomi’s negativity. ‘Sewing, IT skills, aerobics, dance, woodwork, painting. There’s actually a lot on offer from the prison authorities, if people want to take advantage of it. Most don’t. It’s far easier to fall into drugs and depression. But Naomi has kept incredibly busy.’
‘It’s the only way not to go completely insane,’ Naomi grumbles under her breath. ‘The problem is that having all these certificates of achievement, good conduct, blah blah blah…. is USELESS if they’re not recognised by the UK, too. It’s like being at bloody school again. Except you can never leave. And this time, I’m thirty-three and just want to get home and see my kids.’ Her voice wobbles and she turns away from us, scowling.
‘As I explained before, Naomi is one of the many prisoners applying for a sentence reduction under the new law,’ Marion continues explaining patiently to me. ‘She was caught at Quito airport with two kilograms of cocaine. If she were caught today, that would be a sentence of three to five years. But she’s already served six.’
‘With three to go… if everything goes smoothly.’ Naomi sighs.
‘The system is a lot fairer now,’ Marion explains. ‘So obviously everyone sentenced under the old law is applying for a reduction. As I told you, it’s chaos. The government is doing what they can to process them all, but it’s turning out that foreign prisoners are falling to the back of the line. Any participation in workshops and good conduct certificates stand in your favour. But foreign prisoners must have everything translated into their native language, and approved by their ho
me government as well, before Ecuador can grant them the reduction.’
At this, Naomi makes a kind of huffing, growling noise.
‘And it’s not as easy as it looks,’ Marion continues. ‘The embassies help to get the papers approved, but the actual translations have to be done by a professional lawyer, or at least a qualified translator with legal knowledge.’
As we all lapse into silence, the seed of an idea starts to take root in my mind.
‘Naomi, I really think we should give up on that last lady,’ Marion says gently. ‘I know it’s terribly disappointing, but I don’t think she’s coming back. We always knew there were con artists out there. I’ll call the embassy and ask for their help with finding someone else.’
The seed sprouts further into life, blossoming into genuine excitement.
Could I?
My heart starts beating faster, filling me with a real sense of purpose for the first time in as long as I can remember.
‘How are the kids?’ Marion is asking Naomi, clearly trying to change the subject. ‘Have you called home lately?’
Without answering Marion’s question, Naomi jerks her head up to look me straight in the eye. ‘Do you have children, Kirsty?’
Caught off guard, I’m hit full force with the old, familiar longing to be able to say ‘yes’ when someone asks me that question. To be able to light up and talk about my little ones, maybe get out a photo, tell a few funny stories about what they’ve been doing or their latest new words. I haven’t really thought about it since we arrived in Ecuador as there have been so many new things to see and experience. But I suppose it’s been lying dormant inside me all along, waiting for a moment like this to flood my heart and close up my throat with longing.
‘No,’ I say quietly. ‘No children. Hopefully one day.’
Something softens in Naomi’s face and she loses the intense, almost angry expression she’s been directing at me. ‘Hopefully one day you will,’ she says, sounding like she really means it. ‘Let me show you mine.’
She reaches down under the bottom bunk and pulls out what looks like an old pillowcase. Inside the case is a small metal box. Naomi stands up and rummages around on a shelf opposite the bed, knocking over perfume bottles and picture frames. From somewhere on the shelf she produces a tiny set of keys and crouches down in the cramped space on the floor next to me, opening the box. She pulls out an old, fake-leather diary with ‘KEEP CALM AND DRINK COFFEE’ emblazoned across the front in shiny brown letters.
Slowly, reverently, as if pulling the first golden relic from Tutankhamun’s tomb, Naomi slides a tatty little photo from the back of the diary, and holds it up to me.
It’s a picture of three grinning, blonde-haired kids, two boys and a girl, all slumped across a sofa, looking as if they’ve just disentangled themselves from a play-fight for long enough to be snapped in the photo. The eldest looks about twelve, his lanky arms and legs sprawled around his siblings. The next one is a couple of years younger, his face still chubby with puppy fat and lit up with a cheeky smile, his fingers making a ‘V’ sign behind his older brother’s head.
The little girl, no more than four, has one arm wrapped around her oldest brother’s leg, the other raised to her mouth, sucking her thumb, a bewildered expression in her bright-blue eyes at being taken by surprise by the camera.
‘They don’t look like that anymore,’ Naomi says quietly. ‘This was taken a couple of years after I… left. But it’s my favourite picture of them.’ Her thumb strokes the photo in a barely noticeable, instinctive caress.
‘The oldest is Dario. He’s just passed his driving test. Seventeen – the age I was when I had him – how is that even possible, for God’s sake?’ She chuckles, looking down at the photo, sharing a private joke with her eldest son, who can’t hear her. ‘The last time I saw him his voice hadn’t even broken.’
‘The next one is Leo. He got caught smoking in the playground last month. I thought my mother was going to kill him. She had to go into the school and everything… it should have been me. But he’s a good child, deep down, I know that.’
I notice silent tears are rolling down Naomi’s cheeks, which she bats away impatiently as she speaks, as if they were no more than an inconvenience.
‘And the baby… Maya… she’s not a baby any more, of course. She’s eight now. She nearly died last year. Rushed to hospital with appendicitis. It turned into blood poisoning, they only just caught it in time. The embassy came here and told me, all suits and briefcases and hushed voices. It was the worst moment of my life.’ The tears start rolling freely down Naomi’s cheeks now, and she no longer attempts to wipe them away.
‘She was only two when I came here. I still have no idea what I was thinking. Kirsty, believe me, you can regret something every minute of every day with every breath, until you want to eat yourself alive just to make the guilt and regret go away.’
I have no idea what to say.
‘They’re very beautiful children,’ I eventually manage, in a whisper.
‘My ex’s mother got custody of them, temporarily. But at least she lets them go to my mum’s house regularly, and I can see them when I Skype call my parents.’
Naomi takes a deep breath and slides the photo back into the diary, then lays the diary back in the box with immense care.
We all sit in silence for a few minutes, and I can’t help feeling as emotionally drained as if I’d just survived a shipwreck or plane crash.
‘And what about your father?’ Naomi suddenly breaks the silence, jerking her head to look at me, the intense expression back as her brown eyes bore into mine.
‘Honey, I don’t think you should—’ Marion tries to be diplomatic, but Naomi isn’t listening.
‘Your father – is he alive?’ she presses on.
I nod, unable to find the words.
‘Well, good for you,’ Naomi says dully, ‘mine’ll be dead soon. Stomach cancer.’
There’s a horrified silence as I swallow back my shock.
‘They’re supposed to be considering my case on a compassionate basis,’ she spits, looking at the floor. ‘They promised to carry out the review of my sentence promptly based on my father’s condition. But of course they need proof – medical documents, letters, statements from my poor dad himself. And, guess what? All that needs translating into Spanish before the authorities here will even look at it.’ She hangs her head and fiddles with the edge of the patchwork bed cover.
‘Is there… any more news?’ Marion asks tentatively.
‘Yeah.’ Naomi still doesn’t look up. ‘Spoke to Mum yesterday. Apparently he’s only got weeks left. The doctors have made it “official” now, and told him to “start getting his affairs in order”, whatever that means. So, unless some kind of miracle happens with my sentence appeal, I’ll never see him again.’
I want to say ‘I’m so sorry, that must be really hard, I can’t imagine what you’re going through’, or any number of other platitudes I’ve learnt over the years from the solicitors at work when faced with people in the midst of their own worst nightmares. I look at Naomi, a woman barely older than me yet with such a harrowing past behind her already – far away from the children she adores, and facing the loss of her beloved father at any moment. I think of the children I have always yearned for, the comfortable naivety with which I took for granted they would come along one day and never be separated from me. Then I think of my own father, and the distance between us that we ourselves have imposed, with no thought for the fragility of life or the briefness of the time available to us. Looking at Naomi’s face now and seeing the desperation in her eyes, a wave of shame and regret washes over me for the way I have deliberately distanced myself from my own father for so long.
I want to tell Naomi all this, explain to her how, after just this brief meeting, she has already changed me. I want to say many things, but something goes wrong in the connection between my brain and my voice, and what I find myse
lf saying is:
‘I’ll do your translations.’
Chapter Eight
Leaving the prison is, perhaps understandably, much harder than entering. By the time we finally depart Naomi’s cell it’s lunchtime for the inmates. The salty smell of cooking is even stronger as we make our way back out through the winding corridors and staircases, and it invades my nostrils and mingles nauseatingly with my own hunger. I follow Marion obediently, clasping against my chest the crumpled brown envelope Naomi had thrust into my hands as we left, containing an assortment of letters from her father and good conduct certificates issued to her by the prison. Four different guards stop us on our way out, asking who we are, who we came to visit, and insisting on seeing the ugly black ink stamps that were branded on to our wrists by the guard on the door when we entered, shortly before he stole our chocolate.
I try not to stop and imagine what would have happened if we had been unable to show them.
‘Visiting hours normally finish at eleven,’ explains Marion. ‘They’re naturally suspicious of two foreign women still lurking around long after that time.’
I realise in shock we have been inside the prison for over three hours.
We finally make it to the threshold and freedom, and I feel an almost overwhelming sense of relief as I step out of the black iron doorway on to the street. The sky is overcast, and I realise it’s the first time since we arrived in Ecuador that it has been anything other than clear sparkling blue. In just the few steps to the car it blackens even more, the premature darkness casting weird shadows around us as a rumble of thunder echoes close overhead.
‘Quick – it’s going to pour!’ As the first specks of rain fall, Marion does an awkward little trot to the car and hurriedly scrabbles for the lock, but I linger behind, actually wanting to feel the rain on my face. I can tell within seconds it’s going to become a torrential downpour, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to run down the street enjoying the freedom of the rainstorm in a way I have not done since childhood, and the women inside the prison maybe never will.