by Anna del Mar
Ash took that in, wearing the neutral expression he used to spare me from what I was sure wasn’t a stellar opinion of my father’s choices. “What happened when you got to Colombia?”
“We started with a one-room hut, a small garden and a field in a jungle clearing, where my father wanted to experiment with growing crops. My dad believed that people were inherently good and would welcome anybody working to bring prosperity to their communities. How wrong he was.”
Ash squeezed my hand. “And Ruiz Ramon Rojas?”
“Him.” My throat went suddenly dry. “He used to come around a lot.”
“Can you tell me how you first met him?”
“I can try.”
Neil lifted his head and whimpered.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said. “It’ll be okay.”
I raked my fingers through Neil’s fine fur. I could do this. I had to do this. There was no way I could verbalize what I felt, but as I spoke, I gave Ash dates, names, places, the information he needed. I’d tried hard to forget the past, but now the memories crystallized in my mind like a movie in high definition. I was back in the jungle, remembering the first time I ever saw Red.
Chapter Fourteen
The sweltering summer evening challenged my lungs’ attempts at processing the jungle’s humid air. We’d been in Colombia for quite a few months, and finally, some families from the nearby village had come to visit. My brother, Adam, was playing with the kids. My father and I were cooking dinner over the open fire. Sweat moistened the back of my cotton shirt and the wisps of hair that escaped my ponytail. Sweat also coated my skin and pooled above my mouth in salty drops that flavored my lips.
I loved shaping the corn flour mix into small flat cakes and dropping them on the griddle. It was like a game to me. We’d just finished a lesson on ancient Egyptian history and I pretended I was a pharaoh. I stacked the ready arepas in little pyramids at the edge of the grill, my very own Valley of the Kings. I’d just flipped the last lot when I looked up. A group of armed men oozed like leeches out of the jungle.
They were a violent-looking bunch wielding guns, machetes and knives. Some wore regular clothes. Some wore military fatigues, like their leader, who slung his AK-47 over his shoulder and trampled over the vegetable garden, squashing ripe gourds beneath his boots as he strutted to our fire.
I stared at him openmouthed. Fear kept me frozen in place. Was he the jungle’s dreaded Muan, the dark, twisted monster that, according to the locals, stole women and took them to his lair at the bottom of the Caquetá River? Tall, dark-haired and barrel-chested, he seemed fierce and enormous to me, and yet, when he moved, he reminded me of a jaguar—graceful, elegant and deadly.
The people from the village were no fools. “El diablo de Caquetá,” they murmured among themselves as they grabbed their children and scattered into the forest.
The Devil of Caquetá?
I could tell by my father’s expression that he was afraid too, but he pasted a smile on his face and rose to greet the strangers.
“Bienvenidos,” he said in his poor Spanish. “You’re welcome here. In the name of God, please, join us.”
The devil’s black eyes took in my father’s slight build and dismissed him instantly. His stare moved on, skimming the house and the cooking fire, before tripping over me. The darkness I spotted there shocked me. It was like staring into a black hole. His mouth twisted in a knowing smirk.
The men made themselves at home, helping themselves to the garden, digging with the point of their machetes into the fish we had on the grill and stealing the arepas from my pyramids. A one-eyed brute with yellow teeth grabbed my arm and tried to drag me into the jungle. I wrestled from his grasp and screamed. My father attempted to get to me, but the knife that flew through the air got to the one-eyed man first. He dropped to the floor. His blood soaked the ground.
Only the buzz of the mosquitoes interrupted the clearing’s silence. My sweat turned cold and my skin pebbled with the shivers racking my body. I’d never seen a dead person before. I’d never seen that much blood either. My fingers sank into the dirt, rooting me to the spot. I wanted to run, or at least crawl away from the rivulets of blood trickling my way. I couldn’t.
Everyone’s eyes were on the leader, who sauntered over with a smirk on his face to inspect his handiwork. He stood over the dead man, poked him with the tip of his boot and shook his head.
“Looking without my permission cost him an eye,” he said in a deep, silky, Spanish baritone. “Touching cost him his life.” He winked at me then turned to face his men. “The gringos stay. Nobody touches them.”
The men cheered and went back to eating and drinking. My father slumped with a look of relief. Other men might have interpreted the situation differently, but my father decided it was a breakthrough. These were the godless creatures he’d come to help. And now, they’d accepted us into their ranks.
“Hola, gringuita.” The leader helped me to my feet. “Como te llamas? Name?”
“R-rose?” I managed to say, shaking the dirt off my skirt.
“Rosa.” He tapped my nose playfully. “Rosita. Mi Rosita Americana. You scared?”
“No,” I lied.
He laughed, a set of distinctive cackles that sounded like caws.
“Me, Red,” he said in halting English. “How old you?”
“Almost thirteen.”
“Wow.” He nodded approvingly. “Almost woman. You make good arepas?”
“I make very good arepas,” I said. “Ask my dad.”
My father nodded eagerly.
“Que bonita.” Red’s smile beamed instant warmth. “You get Red a good arepa. Yes? Red give you—how do you say—prize?”
“A prize?” I smiled. “Cool!”
I rushed to fetch Red some arepas. When I returned with the food, I tugged on Red’s sleeve and thrust the plate before him. He grabbed an arepa and, black eyes on me, mauled a huge chunk out of it.
“My prize?” I asked.
“Prize, yes.” He leaned over my shoulder and lowered his voice. “You get to live.”
This time, the smile on his face chilled my heart.
* * *
For the next two years, Red visited with us almost every week. I told Dad that Red’s visits were a bad idea. He disagreed. He believed that Red needed a good role model and a mentor, and that having him around made us safer. In Dad’s mind, Red’s protection was key for our success.
Red spoke some English, but he wanted to speak like a native. My dad threw himself into the teaching effort with enthusiasm, procuring English books, encouraging Adam and me to talk and read to Red, so he could practice. Reading for Red was unnerving. He stared at me with those black eyes as if consuming my words.
Sometimes Red came with his men. Sometimes, he came alone. Sometimes he liked to surprise me when I was about, springing out of the jungle when I least expected, with a heart-stopping boo!
“Mi Rosita,” he would say. “You look so pretty when you’re scared.”
He became a regular around our fire, talking to my dad, asking lots of questions, about God, life in America, politics and growing up gringo. He was smart and curious. My father thought he was a fantastic student.
Sometimes Red brought me and my brother presents, pretty shells from the coast, sweets from the city and fruits he probably stole from the poor farmers at the market. One time he brought me a titi monkey, a stunning red-furred creature with enormous crystalline eyes. It had a broken leg and I did my best to heal it, but the poor little monkey was too hurt. It just slumped in its cage, refusing to eat. It died shortly after.
I felt uneasy around Red, but I took my cues from my father and acted politely. He always looked at me thoroughly, as if he wanted to know what I wore beneath my clothes. One day, I caught him going through the laundry
lines in the yard. He stuffed a pair of my panties in his pocket. From then on, I thought he was officially creepy.
* * *
Nothing was different on the night that changed my life forever. Red came, he drank my father’s Diet Coke reserves and talked until it got late and Dad sent us to bed. Adam and I climbed under the nets and lay sweating in our narrow cots, listening to the buzz of the mosquitoes and the murmurs of the conversation outside. The last thing I remembered before I fell asleep was the huge black moth perched on the beam above my bed.
I woke up to sounds of a grown man whimpering. It was my father, and he was strapped to a chair.
I knuckled my eyes. “Daddy?”
“Mi Rosita,” Red’s voice whispered, too close to my ear. “You’ve been a bud ripening on the vine, but now you’re a grown woman. The time has come for you to bloom.”
He raped me in my own bed, in front of my father and brother.
“You gringos think the world is such a wonderful place.” He taunted my father while he assaulted me. “In God you trust? Now you know better.”
The pain was excruciating, but I didn’t cry. I didn’t want to upset Adam and my dad, who sobbed despite the gag. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was caught in a nightmare and about to wake. But when I opened my eyes again, the ugly moth was still perched above me and so was Red.
“Now, children,” he said, when he was done with me. “If you ever try to escape, if one of you ever refuses to do what I say, this is what will happen.”
He ran the edge of his massive blade against my father’s throat. Adam buried his face in my shoulder and cried. I must have gone into shock. All that blood. I looked away, but Red clutched my chin painfully and forced me to watch in horror as my father died a slow, ugly death. God never came to his assistance. I’d turned fifteen years old the day before.
* * *
I sat on my bloodstained bed, chewing on my pinkie nail, barely dressed in my torn jammies, hugging Adam, watching Red. He went through our little house systematically, collecting all of my father’s papers, documents and books. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing or why, but then again, my mind was out of commission.
After a while, Red commanded us outside, where his men waited. With a flick of his lighter, he set fire to the thatch roof. His men did the same to the garden and the field. By the time Adam and I stumbled into the jungle, everything burned like hell and our Colombian existence had been wiped off the face of the earth.
At the other end of our grueling trek through the dark and bug-infested jungle was a dirt road and a fleet of Range Rovers. Despite my efforts to cling to Adam, my brother and I were separated and put into different cars. I rode with Red, who blasted the radio. He beeped the horn as he flew down the dirt road, scattering donkeys and poor peasants who jumped out of the way in fear for their lives.
Somewhere around midmorning, we arrived at a sprawling compound surrounded by tall walls and armed guards. Hacienda Dorada, a sign above the gate said. As the gates opened, I spotted numerous buildings in the compound, many houses with nice cars and children playing in the yards. After living in the jungle’s squalor for two years and surviving the night’s horrors, the place seemed surreal.
Red drove to the top of the hill, where a modern house built with straight lines and lots of glass overlooked the sprawling compound and the jungle. He wasn’t a poor peasant, like my father had believed. He wasn’t an uneducated, neglected child who’d grown up without love and affection either. On the contrary, he’d come from money, lots of it. He’d had a proper education. He went to church on Sundays. He had lots of people who worked for him, servants, relatives and business associates who circulated the halls of the expansive house on the hill.
I was locked in a room on the third floor, which was separated from the rest of the house by a private staircase and a massive set of alarmed, bulletproof, steel doors. It also contained Red’s private study and expansive suite. My room was nicely furnished, but I sat in a corner on the cold tile floor and shivered until the evening, when a couple of stone-faced maids arrived. They bathed me, combed my hair and dressed me in a festive sundress that contrasted with the gloom in my heart.
Dinner took place at a long table on the terrace with Red, his parents, brothers and sisters, their families, his wife—yes, wife—and even some of his children. Servants dressed in starched white uniforms carried silver trays piled with food to the table. Nobody but Red acknowledged my presence, nobody wondered who I was or how I’d come to be there, nobody asked any questions. They ate, drank and laughed. My take? They all suffered from communal insanity.
I struggled to comprehend this unreal reality. Had the man sitting next to me at the head of the table really killed my father? Was the linen-clad don presiding over this family meal the same brute who’d raped me the night before?
After dinner, he took me to his room.
“Mi Rosita.” He caressed my face and smiled. “You’re very dear to me, very dear indeed. You’re a rare species, one that needs to be cultivated, trimmed and pruned. I’m going to take good care of you. That stupid gringo kept you in the stinking jungle. But I’m no savage. I was patient. I waited until you grew up. Yes? Now I’ll give you everything. See? Nice house, nice dress, nice everything. If you do what I say, you’ll be a very happy woman. Understand?”
I nodded.
“Take off your dress, quickly now, do as I say.”
I just couldn’t.
“Be reasonable,” he said. “Do you want to see your brother again?”
Thus began a war of wills. He always won, of course, whereas I always lost. It was a struggle he relished, an endless negotiation that traded his pleasure for my pain, his gratification for my degradation.
My brother proved to be all the leverage Red needed to force me to cater to his needs, even if it took several levels of convincing. On the punishment side, there was the belt, which he enjoyed using liberally. For greater offenses, or just because he was in a foul mood, there were also restraints and beatings, some severe, resulting in serious injuries and broken bones. My face was out-of-bounds, because Red prized appearances above all else, and my appearance in particular. Extended stays locked in the cellar’s dark bunker were particularly terrifying. That’s when the madness came. God knew, I feared going mad every day I lived with Red.
On the reward side, there were assurances that terrible things wouldn’t happen to my brother if I complied, letters and visits, and even gifts for him if I excelled at pleasing Red. I was also allowed to read books, watch television and exercise daily, all of which I did voraciously. These activities became my lifeline and my only connection to the world outside. They kept me sane when nothing around me made sense.
Confined to my room except for when Red called on me, I lived alone even if I dwelled among lots of people. From the high windows, I watched other kids play in the yard. Sometimes, I even caught sight of my brother, playing with them. But I wasn’t allowed out. It was a measure of Red’s obsession that I was isolated and cut off, reserved for his exclusive use.
A maid who tried to help me escape was found drowned in the pool. A gardener who once offered me a rose in the garden was hung from the gates. One time, when I managed to find Adam and we escaped from the compound, a peasant gave us a ride to town. When Red’s caravan of Range Rovers caught up with us, Red hacked the kind man to pieces with a machete.
The doctor who tended to my injuries on a regular basis never asked me what happened or why I kept getting hurt. The private tutor who schooled me every day taught me the history of Martin Luther King Jr. but never discussed the terms of my slavery. I was the compound’s most visible invisible woman.
I learned a lot about Red in the early years, mostly by watching, listening and paying attention. The Devil of Caquetá was the most powerful drug lord in Southwest Colombia. He controlled
not only the region’s cocaine production, but also the distribution routes to North America.
He worked in tandem with the guerrillas and had an extensive network of politicians, attorneys and associates on his payroll. He used my father’s passport when he traveled abroad, something he began to do with more frequency. By now, his English was not only perfect, it was eloquent. All those nights listening to my father’s stories had served his purpose. He’d stolen my father’s identity to set up his next gig.
But I only began to comprehend the range of Red’s extraordinary ambitions on the day that the judge showed up at the house, the day after my eighteenth birthday. The maid insisted I wear a new dress, white lace trimmed with red roses. I disliked it instantly. The shouts of Red’s wife reached my room. After a while, the screams ended and I never saw her again.
The maid nudged me downstairs. Red waited at the bottom of the marble staircase, holding a small bouquet—roses, of course. He led me into the salon, where the judge handed me a pen and pointed to the blank line at the bottom of the document on the desk.
I looked to Red.
“Sign and your brother will get a new dirt bike,” he said.
I penned my signature and traded my life and whatever little remained of my dignity for a dirt bike.
“Today you become a Rojas and I become an American.” Red put his hand around my waist and posed for the photographer who appeared out of nowhere. “Smile for the consulate, querida. America, here we come.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ash’s hold didn’t waver as I told my story. He listened to every word I said, processing and absorbing the information with his usual intensity. It helped that I didn’t have to look at his face. Instead, despite the pain shredding my insides, I spoke factually, keeping my eyes focused on the lake and the black-capped chickadee hanging upside down from a nearby branch. Upside down with evil at the horizon. That’s what my world had been like. All that grief wanted to drown me.