‘And when they saw the driver,’ she continued, ‘they called for help. And they got the car up from the ravine using a helicopter. And there you were!’ She grinned again, and I immediately decided that I liked her. ‘Tucked in the back, you were, wedged under the seat, which was what saved you. A complete surprise to everyone is what you were, young lady!’ She looked pleased. ‘And you’ve been sleeping since you got here, and no one knows where you came from. But now you’re awake. So we can find out who you are. We need to contact your parents, of course. Where can we find them?’
It was then that I realised the lady wasn’t alone. I turned my head and saw that there were two men in smart green uniforms standing at the end of my bed. They both had guns on their hips and one held a pen and a pad and was writing. I had no idea who they were or why they were there. The only thing that was clear was that, unlike the lady, they weren’t smiling. In fact, they looked cross. I didn’t like them.
‘Young lady?’ the woman said again. ‘Who can we contact? Who should we get in touch with to let them know you’re safe?’
My head filled with thoughts of the poor dead girls who’d been with me. I couldn’t quite take it in. I was the only one left alive. I then thought of Ana-Karmen. Her girls. Her girls were dead. Did she know yet? Had anybody told her what had happened? I thought what she might do to me. I shouldn’t have even been there. I would be in trouble. BIG trouble. I shook my head as much as I could bear to. Which wasn’t much. ‘No,’ I mumbled through cracked lips. ‘No. No one to contact.’
One of the men spoke then. The one holding the pad. He still looked angry. ‘How did it happen?’ he wanted to know. ‘And who were the others?’
‘Where do you live?’ said the other. ‘Are you local?’
They weren’t even giving me time to think how to answer. ‘Loma de Bolívar,’ I managed to get out. Then immediately regretted it. Would they now take me back to Ana-Karmen?
The nice lady leaned over me. ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said gently. ‘These two men are here to help you. Once you’re a bit better – in a couple of days or so – they’re going to take you home, OK?’
‘Loma de Bolívar,’ one of the men said, scribbling on his pad.
*
Of those couple of days, I recall almost nothing, bar the white walls of the hospital. The nurse (for it was a nurse, I later realised) tended to me. Other nurses came and went as well. I think I ate a little, drank a little, and my aches and pains subsided. What I mostly recall is a feeling of dull acceptance. I didn’t want to go back to Ana-Karmen’s, but what else could I do? I had nowhere and no one else to go to.
And so one day, perhaps a week or two later, the men in uniforms came to get me and took me away again in a jeep. I’d obviously been in a hospital in the city, because I remember them announcing when we arrived back in the village. And then, by a process of many questions – plus my finally getting out the word ‘Karmen’ – the men delivered me back to the hellhole I’d come from.
Seeing the house again filled me with dread. I stared morosely out, seeing the tatty cane fence, the tumbledown house, the wealth of weeds that sprouted defiantly from every crack in the broken pathway. Reluctantly, I pointed.
‘This is it?’ asked one of the men, half turning around.
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘This is it.’
I was escorted up the path, my arrival heralded by the bleating of the goats. The door had already opened before we reached it.
I watched Ana-Karmen’s face as we approached. Her expression was one of first surprise and then anger.
‘Hello, madam,’ said the taller and more talkative of the two men. ‘We believe this young lady belongs to you.’
Ana-Karmen seemed momentarily at a loss for words. All she could splutter was, ‘I thought that dog was dead!’
The men looked shocked, which was understandable, because she lunged for me and grabbed me. ‘Get inside!’ she hissed, clapping me painfully around the back.
‘Isn’t she your daughter?’ the other man said. ‘We thought she was your daughter.’
‘My daughter?’ Ana-Karmen spat. ‘How could this animal be my daughter? Not in a million years would I have a daughter like that thing!’
She yanked me inside even so, which must have confused them. But not so much that they seemed worried about leaving me with her, because such rough treatment was quite common in Colombia. They talked for a while, but most of it passed over my head. I remember, though, that Ana-Karmen seemed upset. She clearly already knew about Elise and Lolita, and the men told her they were sorry for her loss. I also recall them saying I’d not quite recovered from my injuries. But I’m quite sure she couldn’t have cared less.
As the door shut behind the men and took the sunshine along with it, I cowered in the gloom, already anticipating the next storm.‘What have you said to those men?’ Ana-Karmen railed at me. ‘Have you told them my business?’
I shook my head and assured her I had not.
‘Don’t you dare open your mouth about what goes on here!’ she shouted anyway. ‘You hear me? This business is a secret!’
I continued to reassure her that I had said nothing to anyone. How could I have done? I had no idea what Ana-Karmen’s business even was. Looking back, it seems so obvious. They must have pieced things together, must have already worked out that the girls who had died were not Ana-Karmen’s daughters. And neither, it was now clear, was I. I didn’t understand why she was so anxious that I might have said anything to the men. It wasn’t as if they had come to charge her with any crime, just to return me to my ‘home’. That was the extent of it, and now they’d left. But it didn’t make any difference. Ana-Karmen wanted to punish me in any case. She grabbed a frying pan and whacked me with it, hard, on my back, just, I think, for still being alive.
I remember that strike so well. It was the hardest I’d ever received from her. I remember my vision going cloudy and the feeling I might be sick. But most of all I recall feeling this great sense of despair. I had gone back to her. What had I been thinking?
*
Returning to the house after the crash seemed to awaken something in me. I don’t know what, but I know that I began to see things with new eyes. Bit by bit, I began to build a clearer image of humans – how they did things, how they acted, how they liked to live their lives. It wasn’t the prettiest of pictures.
I began to make sense of what I’d been warned about by the mother I’d met – the one who’d told me that I was going to be turned into ‘the right meat’. I began to understand what that ‘meat’ was required to do, to understand that what Ana-Karmen was running was indeed a brothel. I didn’t know the term, of course – it was not a word I’d encountered – but the meaning was becoming clearer by the day. I lived in a house of women whose job it was to ‘entertain’ visiting men. Old men and young men, anonymous men and well-known men. I found out that among the ‘clients’ were even a couple of famous footballers – or so the girls said – men who played for Colombia’s finest teams.
I learned that the girls were only allowed to work at certain times of the month. At other times they needed to rub their stomachs a lot and drink herby water. I also realised that sometimes the girls would grow big and disappear. And I found out the reason, too – that they would go off to have babies. Like the woman in the jungle, they would have their babies in secret, but, unlike her, they would then give the babies away. There was a sign in the local shop that I saw more than once. ‘We sell babies,’ it said. I will never forget that. They would sell their own babies and people would buy them. It’s no wonder, perhaps, that I was developing the idea that humans were an unusual species.
Ana-Karmen, for all that, was very simple to understand. After the car accident, she seemed to hate me even more than before, and I began to harbour a dread that her whole purpose in life was to think up a way to be rid of me. I had thought it wasn’t possible for her to treat me more cruelly, but I was soon to be disabused of that notion. She mostly ignored
me – a state of affairs that suited both of us fine – but if I did the slightest thing wrong, she would fly into a fury. Where she’d always been vicious and free with her punishments, now it seemed that when I angered her she lost all control, and I really began to fear for my life.
Yet on the day she nearly took my life, I had not seen it coming, which is perhaps why the incident is still etched so clearly in my mind.
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.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys Page 16