Similarly I was flummoxed by the toilet. I had no inkling of what the toilet was for and had been making use of the bushes in the garden until one day I was caught in the act. A high-pitched scream was followed by a lot of babbling and the appearance of Ana-Karmen, who bellowed her disgust at me, gesticulating wildly. Sophia then thrust a pair of weird utensils in my direction, seeming to demand that I pick up my waste with them. I was appalled: not only frightened of Ana-Karmen’s crimson-faced fury but also disgusted that she should want me to do such vile thing — pick up my own excrement? Why would I do that?
In the end, I kicked soil over it and fled into the house, closely followed by Ana-Karmen, Sophia and Lolita. I was then dragged by the latter two to a tiny outside lean-to. Suspended by my armpits over the thing they called the toilet, it was made clear that this was where my business should be done.
I was so frightened as they did this that I could hardly draw breath, for beneath me, buzzing with flies, was a deep and stinking hole, the stench from it so strong it made me gag.
But the old toilet was as nothing compared to the ‘new’ one they also had, for, though it didn’t stink like the other, it was a hole filled with water, into which I was sure I could fall and die. I was even more terrified when they pulled a chain above my head and a sudden rush of new water gushed underneath me, accompanied by a loud roaring sound. Once again I bolted and, despite my fear of Ana-Karmen and her electrical cord, I continued to sneak out and secretly use the garden.
*
Within a few days, I was also given a new set of clothes. Whether they realised I would be less clumsy if I didn’t have to wear the enormous trousers I don’t know, but one day Elise came and measured my body. I struggled as she did it, as I had no idea what she was doing, but a couple of days later I was presented with the results of her efforts. I had been made another pair of itchy trousers, as thick and unappealing as the last pair, only this time they were the right size and stayed up on their own. I was also given a white short-sleeved blouse, which was decorated with bits of lace and within a day or two was spotted with bits of food, too.
I remained barefoot, but now my heels, already hardened by the forest floor, had begun to crack and were becoming very painful to walk on. It was in this that I saw my first glimmer of compassion. Sophia, on seeing them, found some sort of ointment and rubbed it into my feet, which helped a lot.
I liked Sophia. And I desperately wanted the girls to like me. I would listen to them chatting and try to understand what they were saying. Words began to stand out, and I unravelled their meaning. Then I started to pick up whole strings of words, making connections between them, and these glimpses into their world made me feel less alone. Eventually I noticed there was one word they used around me often and made the connection between the sound and them wanting my attention. They would say it, and then touch me, and then say it again, and it began to dawn on me that, just as with ‘table’ or ‘blanket’, this was the word they used for me. And so I learned the first name I ever remember having. The one they had given me. Gloria.
*
The weeks passed, and as I learned how to do things, my duties became more varied. I spent much of my day involved in food preparation. I couldn’t cook — I had no idea how to do anything so complex — but it was my job to prepare the ingredients. I peeled potatoes and carrots, yucca and arracacha, corncobs and plantains, and many more. I cut my hands often, as I had yet to learn how to use a knife properly. It seemed so crazy to do all this cutting and use all these tools when you had the hands and mouth and teeth nature had given you. But I wanted to fit in, so I persisted and eventually managed to master it.
I was also, after a time, sent on errands in the village. This gave the local villagers something new and strange to look at, and me — too intrigued myself to be bothered by their scrutiny — my first proper glimpse of my new home. I would walk the dusty streets, weaving between the equally dusty cars, my ears picking up snippets of unintelligible conversation from behind intriguingly open doorways, the call of birds, the cries of babies, the blare of strange music. I was also more aware here of the feeling of constant heat: a heat that seared into my scalp and made my skin prickle with moisture, and which made the metal on the cars and trucks untouchable.
Initially I’d go out with one or two of Ana-Karmen’s girls in attendance, to show me where to go and ask for what was needed, but as time went on and they trusted that I wouldn’t run away, I was sent alone, with a basket and a shopping list. And they were right to trust me not to stray, for my main preoccupation was being fed. I lived to eat: it was the only enjoyable part of my day. And how would I manage if I left? I would surely starve. This was so different from the jungle, where there was food to be collected or picked from trees and bushes around every turn. In this grey world of concrete and fences and cars, there was no food to be found anywhere.
And no friends, either. Once I had been living there a few weeks or months — I’m not clear — I began sneaking out if Ana-Karmen was distracted. Not to run away but just to follow my normal childish instinct whenever I heard the sound of other children playing.
I had no relationship with the children of the house. In fact, I hated them. There were several, mostly babies and toddlers, who cried and fussed and annoyed me. They were the children of the girls who lived and worked there. My only contact with any of them was when I was told I had to feed them, which made me cross. I had to shovel food into their ungrateful mouths when I was given barely anything and was so hungry.
Outside the walls of the house, though, it seemed different. So beguiling. I would hear children that seemed so much more like me, playing and laughing. But nobody wanted to be friends with me. I was only just becoming aware of the concept of friendship, but the absence of warmth was something I felt keenly. The affectionate way the monkeys in the jungle had interacted with me was not something I had ever really thought about before. But it was as natural a thing to me as the squabbles and play-fights, and the isolation I now felt upset me.
But why would the other children in the street want to play with me? I had no human language, I made strange noises and looked different. I was only just learning to move around as they did and still had lots of monkey behaviours such as snatching at food, scratching myself constantly and pulling exaggerated faces to express my emotions.
I would watch them playing with their toys and, having none of my own, I would try to indicate my desire to join in. But if I was granted a few moments with a precious plaything of some sort, they would just snap at me or laugh at me for holding things strangely, stripping every ounce of pleasure I might have got from it.
The other children could do so many things that I still couldn’t. They could run around on their confident legs, even kick balls while doing so, play games with counters and draw pretty pictures. I could do none of these things, so any time I had spare, I would increasingly retreat to my world of plants and animals, decorating the boughs of the trees in the garden with flowers and the skins of papaya and bananas, just as I’d done in my old home. My friends were the animals — they seemed to accept my presence unquestioningly, allowed me to get close to them and even entertained me, especially the goats, who made me laugh with all their antics such as nibbling at the clothes drying on the washing line.
I also found a new source of pleasure: making mischief. And in a village that had shunned me, there was great fun to be had in picking fruit and, having climbed the boughs of one of the trees in the garden, lobbing it into other gardens, aiming squarely at the villagers who were hanging out their washing.
Perhaps it was that, or perhaps just the odd way I went about things, but very soon I became an object not just of ridicule but of fear. Ana-Karmen clearly picked up on the sense of unease that the villagers were feeling about my presence — and perhaps she felt the same way herself — as another clear memory of that time was the appearance of two Catholic priests at the house. I was bewildered by their chanting and splashing of
holy water, the waving of burning branches of incense, but I now realise they must have been performing some kind of exorcism. With most of the villagers being superstitious Catholics, it’s not hard to imagine that they might have believed that this strange, animal-like girl who suddenly appeared in their presence was possessed by some kind of demon.
While this was clearly not the case, evil was a word that would come to have great meaning for me. And rather than a pair of chanting priests bearing incense, I only needed eyes and ears to see it all around me.
19
With little to compare it to, I didn’t question the set-up at Ana-Karmen’s. I just kept my head down and did my best not to displease her. But as the weeks turned into months and I adapted to my new environment, my expanding vocabulary meant I was better able to take in more of what was going on around me.
The house was always busy. There seemed to be girls who lived there all the time, such as Sophia, Imelda, Elise and Lolita, and other girls who would be around for a few nights in a row and then seemed to disappear for weeks. I struggled to understand why these girls lived in such a wicked, unfriendly home. Out of choice?
La Bobita, the cowering child I’d first met trembling in the corner of the kitchen, was more like me — she had no choice but to stay. But where I was beginning to master human language and could both understand and be understood, I had never once heard a proper word come out of her mouth. Something told me she was different in other ways too. She moved oddly and slowly, with a shambling gait, and cowered every time Ana-Karmen came near her. Which wasn’t surprising, as Ana-Karmen hit her very hard and very often, and when not hitting her, shouted at her constantly.
Today, I look back and I wonder — was she Ana-Karmen’s daughter? I can think of no other reason why Ana-Karmen would continue to take care of her — although ‘take care of’ is entirely the wrong expression.
There were also men. Men would visit the house every single day. A continual stream of them would come and go. And there was one who sometimes lived there, like some of the girls, for days at a time, though I never saw him very much. He was called Rufino, and when I did see him, it would be when he was sitting on the patio, drinking beer, peering over his giant belly and smoking cigarette after cigarette. When he was in the house at night, he would sometimes sleep in the same bed as Ana-Karmen but sometimes on the bed out on the patio — close to where I slept — and his snoring on these nights, presumably due to alcohol, was so loud and so constant it drove me crazy.
I was still, at this time, a little monkey. Having not yet had the cheekiness beaten out of me by Ana-Karmen, I would get up to mischief on many occasions, with a complete lack of thought for the consequences. And one night, having had enough of the man’s terrible rumblings, I decided I would teach him a lesson by getting some ice cubes from the freezer and throwing them over him — anything to stop the noise.
It would prove to be a shock for both of us. For me, because when I crept out onto the patio it was to find him completely naked, and for him, because what other response could there be when you are fast asleep and someone chucks a cup of ice at you?
Rufino’s roar was so loud it seemed to make the very walls shake, the freezing cold hitting him like a jolt of electricity. But I was quick and thought I had got away with it. It was dark and I was back in my bed in an instant, but he rightly worked out that no one else in the house would be as reckless and stupid as to do such a thing. I got a beating with his belt minutes later.
*
I was learning all the time, though. The months rolled by and I continued to absorb the ways of humans. Both by watching and copying, and also by making mistakes — for which I would get beaten but from which I would also learn. I still had no thought of trying to run away. The outside world, where, if possible, people seemed to hate me even more than Ana-Karmen did, held no kind of promise or appeal. One constant — which was sometimes a curse, sometimes a blessing — was that when I wasn’t being set to work, or shouted at, or beaten for something, I was mostly left alone and ignored.
And then, at some indefinable point, the situation changed. I don’t remember when it first became evident what was happening, but I seemed to go from being treated like the goats in the yard to a creature in need of tuition. I was, in short, becoming an object that was starting to be of interest. Both Ana-Karmen and the girls started taking an interest in my manners, teaching me ways of doing things more ‘nicely’ and behaving more calmly at the table. They also seemed determined to get me cleaned up and groomed. And perhaps I should have liked that.
I had certainly missed the daily communal grooming of my former life. I so missed the monkeys: missed the physical closeness of being with them. I missed their silky fur, missed their gentle touch, missed their warmth and cuddles. But this new attention wasn’t like that. The girls were always so rough with me, so irritable and unfriendly. Where the monkeys would gently tease bugs from my hair, Ana-Karmen’s girls would yank and pull, dragging their vicious brushes through it and moaning about all the food I habitually got lodged in it from my repeated head scratching with sticky, dirty fingers. It was the same with my lice, which were just a fact of life in the jungle. Where else were lice to live? It was just normal. But here they were despised, and on seeing them the girls would always shout at me, calling me a filthy old rat, which I found incomprehensible.
I found it very difficult to adjust to being pulled and pushed around in this way. I had spent my formative years working out my own way to do things, so resisted all efforts to ‘civilise’ me. Naturally, this led to more beatings. But slowly I came to accept that if I could modify how I did things, my life would be more pleasant.
I was also opening up my eyes to the people around me. I had worked out that I lived in a house full of females who lived a life very different from that of the women in the Indian camp. Some of them had children — there always seemed to be babies and toddlers coming and going — but it was as if we inhabited different worlds. They certainly felt alien to me, especially the little ones, and what I mostly remember of them — the details are quite hazy — was that I envied them the love and care that I didn’t have, not to mention all the toys they were given. There was no connection — I’m quite sure their mothers wanted it that way — so I saw them as just an irritating presence (especially when they cried) and continued to feel great anger when they refused to eat their food.
But this wasn’t a house that nurtured little ones, not really. Regardless of whether they had children or not, Ana-Karmen’s girls, it seemed to me, spent most of their time getting ‘dolled up’, as Elise called it, painting their eyes and lips and tirelessly styling their hair. There were lots of beds, and lots of men, who’d disappear into the girls’ bedrooms, spend an hour or two there, then disappear again.
I had no idea what this meant back then. I was a child and still naive about the ways of the adult world. Perhaps even if I hadn’t spent those years in the jungle it might still have passed way over my head. And as it did so, I was still very much Ana-Karmen’s slave anyway. Though I was about to graduate — to be trained for a new purpose.
*
Increasingly, going out — getting a chance to escape the fetid, oppressive atmosphere of the house — would be the highlight of my day. Though the man at the local shop still didn’t understand my garbled attempts at language, at least I wasn’t being beaten or yelled at. And it also gave me an opportunity to steal food.
Stealing food was completely natural to me, and I still had no concept that doing so was a crime. I sometimes got caught stealing little things — a piece of fruit, a bread roll — but they never banned me because I was also a paying customer. Food was still the biggest treasure in my life.
These excursions gave me a window on the human world that I didn’t get from being stuck inside Ana-Karmen’s. I had no education, obviously — while the older children in the house went to school, I cleaned and prepared food — and though the girls would sometimes name things a
nd try to make me copy them, formal learning, as in learning to read and write and count, was something to which I had no access. So what I knew I learned mostly from getting out and observing, taking in what I could of my surroundings.
Though a few were painted white, most of the houses in Loma de Bolívar were grey. They were crammed in together, in narrow concrete huddles, and the pavements outside them were dusty and dirty, the grey only broken up by the cars that were parked and the green shade of the Matarratones trees.
The village was a sociable place. At around six o’clock every day, most people would take chairs out onto the street to sit and chat, to swap the heat of the dark interior of their homes for the relative cool of the open evening air. Only Ana-Karmen, it seemed to me, was different in this respect, though I had yet to understand quite why she was shunned.
I would walk downhill, Ana-Karmen’s house being up a slight incline, passing the tall scary building I’d been told was a hospital, and, if I was going down late with my basket and list, would pass the gaggles of seated people, most of whom completely ignored me.
The shop — la tienda — was the only one locally, the village, though packed with dwellings, being small. One afternoon, I had arrived at the shop with my basket and list when I spotted a woman I knew. She was a mother with three children, and I liked her. Of all the people I encountered whenever I left Ana-Karmen’s, she was one of the few who treated me kindly, rather than as if I were some kind of filthy animal.
She was outside her house, just down from the store, and had been cleaning her windows, but when she saw me she stopped and beckoned to me. ‘Gloria,’ she called. ‘Come over here a moment.’
There being no hurry to get back, I immediately did so. Where I baulked about being given orders at Ana-Karmen’s, this was different. I knew she meant me no harm. I also trusted her. I don’t know why — was it the fact that she had children? Probably, with my persistent sense of motherhood meaning ‘goodness’.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys Page 14