Pieces of My Life

by Rachel Dann

  ‘Now, I must apologise,’ Liza blusters, indicating for us to follow her past their parked car and up some concrete steps. ‘The apartment isn’t quite ready yet, I’ve still got some tidying to do – Roberto! Please could you go and check that the packing is almost finished! – and I don’t want you to feel obligated, you know, just have a look, and see if you like it—’

  I think I notice Don Roberto and Gabi exchange eye-rolls as we follow Liza up the stairs. We climb up and around the house to reach a front door, set right in the side of the building. Don Roberto nods to excuse himself and disappears behind it, while to my surprise we continue on up the steps.

  ‘That’s our part of the house,’ Liza explains, ‘which I’ll show you later, once Roberto has… tidied.’ She puffs a little as she reaches the top step and another, almost identical, front door. ‘This is the apartment.’ She fusses with a set of keys, gives the door a good rattle, and swings it open.

  A spacious, light-filled room is spread out before us. There’s a small kitchenette at one end, and a comfy-looking sofa and coffee table combination at the other. It’s not very big, but what it lacks in size it makes up for by being immaculately clean, and one of its walls consisting entirely of a giant floor-to-ceiling window looking out over the valley. Shiny wooden boards cover the floor, and hanging above the sofa is a single, modest painting of the Quito skyline. No homicidal wall hangings. No pounding music coming from a bar right below our feet.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re only going to stay a short time,’ Liza says, as if reading my mind. ‘It’s been empty since… for a long time. So… we have finally decided to use it for something.’

  Harry is pacing about, lifting things up, peering around doors, examining the place as if he’s about to buy it, not just rent it for a month. At most. I feel embarrassed.

  Liza seems not to notice and bustles about, showing us the bedroom, bathroom and en-suite, all as immaculate as the main room. It really only takes a few moments as the place is so small, then she ushers us out again and back on to the stairs, to see the roof terrace.

  Puffing, we all follow her right out on to the roof of the house. It’s been levelled off into a concrete terrace with a washing line, small shed and garden furniture set.

  ‘I only come up here to hang out the washing,’ Liza says, ‘so it would be your space to use for as long as you’re here.’

  I go over to the edge of the terrace. More uneven rows of little square houses spread out below us, stretching down towards the bottom of the valley. They look like concrete and pastel-painted Tetris blocks which have fallen down and landed randomly on top of each other. A motorway is just about visible right at the bottom, snaking in and out of the mountainside, cars twinkling in the sunlight like tiny insects. On most of the roofs spanning out below us are little concrete terraces like this one, some with dogs running from corner to corner and yapping, or kids playing, or chubby, dark-haired ladies washing clothes – as far as the eye can see, a patchwork of colourful activity. On the other side of the valley, directly across from us, is pure woodland, almost untouched by civilisation except for a few clusters of concrete, unpainted, box-shaped houses, and beyond it all, on the horizon, rises up the striking, snow-capped Cotopaxi volcano.

  ‘Gabriela mentioned you two are only here for a short time. But we’d be very happy to have you, however long you choose to stay for, just paying by the week.’ Liza shyly mentions a figure that, spread out across a month, would still be less than our Council Tax bill back home. Gabriela hadn’t mentioned the price to me, but she had said they weren’t really doing it for the money, they just didn’t want to leave the apartment empty any more. I turn my head slightly to look at Harry. He’s grinning back at me. We don’t need to say a word to know we’re in agreement.

  ‘We’d love to take it.’ Harry turns his blue-eyed charm on Liza. ‘If you’re sure it’s okay on a short-term basis.’

  She looks overjoyed, and bounces over to give each of us a tight hug.

  ‘Will you be comfortable here?’ Harry takes me aside and frowns down at me, suddenly serious.

  ‘Yes! It’s lovely.’ I lean up to kiss him lightly on the lips, a feeling of optimism starting to creep its way through me. Okay, so we’re going to stay in Quito for a little while. That doesn’t mean we can’t still go to all the places on my list – we do have three whole months, after all. And I’m already getting the feeling that living with Liza and Roberto could be interesting…

  I smile back at Harry sweetly. ‘And it’s only for a month, remember?’

  ‘Of course, babe.’ As Harry leans in to kiss me again, Liza’s voice interrupts us piercingly from the other side of the terrace, sounding unnervingly like my mother.

  ‘Come on downstairs, you two, it’s time for a cup of tea!’

  ***

  Liza’s kitchen is chaos. Bulging, waist-high, nylon sacks are spread across the floor in all directions. There is a delicious frying smell coming from one end of the room where Roberto is standing at the hob flipping something in a pan.

  A large woman in a garish, lilac-print maxi dress is bent over one of the bags, wrestling with something that looks for all the world like a wooden gargoyle as she tries to get the bag closed around it. Finally she yanks the drawstring closed around its neck, then straightens up, wiping her brow and smiling at us.

  ‘Marion, this is Harry and Kristie. They’re going to rent the apartment upstairs from us for a while.’ Liza introduces us, and it takes me a few moments to get used to the sound of ‘Harry and Kristie’. Just that slight alteration to my name makes it sound like someone else altogether. I smile at Liza and the woman, Marion, realising I quite like that.

  ‘Kristie, Harry, Marion works with us in the Alma Libre charity – Gabi probably told you about it.’

  Alma Libre – Free Spirit. Gabi really hadn’t told me much, except that Roberto and Liza founded the charity and worked with a handful of other people, all volunteers. Despite being so outgoing about everything else, I’d got the impression she didn’t really want to talk about it until we met Roberto and Liza in person. Now that time has finally come, I can barely wait to hear more.

  We all step forward and take it in turns to kiss Marion on the cheek, then smile and make polite noises as she exclaims joyfully about how big Gabi is getting and how well she looks, all in a thick Southern US accent. She looks about mid-fifties, with a round, kindly face and sticking-up curly grey hair.

  ‘Oh, this darned heat,’ she says, fanning herself. ‘Sorry about the mess, we’re just finishing a batch of handicrafts, ready to take to the shop tomorrow.’ I look around at the bags and realise the gargoyle is actually a giant chess-piece, the king or queen, about a foot high and carved out of wood in the form of a native American warrior. Another bag is falling open and spewing out what looks like a giant red-and-yellow spider’s web.

  ‘Wow! Is that a… fishing net?’ I ask, trying to wonder what other function it could have.

  Marion starts to laugh and tugs the thing out of its bag. ‘No dear, it’s a hammock. Don’t you recognise it from the ones at Casa Hamaca?’ She smiles and holds it out for me to look at. It’s wider than the span of her arms and so long it trails on the floor. I realise it’s made from hundreds of strands of yellow, red and blue material all woven together, the colours of the Ecuadorian flag. ‘The ladies in the Quito prison make them by hand,’ she explains, bending to open another bag. ‘They can also do mosquito nets, blankets, and lately one of the Colombian girls has proved to be very talented with a—’

  ‘Yes, okay, Marion,’ Liza says sternly. ‘Our guests have a lot on their minds and I really wanted all this to be packed away before I got back down here.’ She frowns pointedly at Roberto. He ignores her and instead indicates for us to sit at the little kitchen table in the corner, loading a plate with the delicious-smelling fried things and putting it on the table.

  ‘Harry, Kristie, Marion, please sit down. Make y
ourselves at home, have a cheese empanada. Would you like tea or coffee?’

  Before any of us have a chance to answer, Liza looks completely scandalised. ‘Tea, of course!’ she hisses at him impatiently. ‘They’re English, of course they want tea!’

  I catch Roberto’s eye and try to speak. ‘Actually, I’d really like a cup of cof—’

  ‘It’s coming right up, a cup of genuine English breakfast tea, just sit down and have an empanada, dear,’ Liza orders.

  God, I thought my mum and Steve were bad… I sit down meekly next to Marion and wonder whether we’ll actually get any more peace and quiet in this place than in Casa Hamaca.

  It’s then I realise Harry is still standing in the doorway with Gabi, who has her car keys in her hand.

  ‘Actually, thank you very much for the offer,’ he addresses our hosts, ‘but I’m going to go back to the hotel with Gabi and pick up our stuff. Kirst, I’ll see you back here in a bit.’

  ‘Oh, er, okay – do you want me to come with you?’ I ask, widening my eyes meaningfully at him in a look that says please don’t leave me here with these potentially crazy people we’ve only just met.

  ‘Nah, it’s okay, babe. You stay here and talk about your prisoner stuff.’ He grins back, oblivious. ‘It’s only our two backpacks, let me go get them.’ As Harry says goodbye to the others, Gabi catches my eye and winks, leaning down to whisper quickly in my ear, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon.’

  I watch Harry leave, trying not to feel patronised but instead glad to have a boyfriend who is happy to lug my backpack around for me.

  ‘Tea’ is nothing like any tea I’ve ever drunk before. For a start, there’s no milk. Instead Roberto passes around a plate loaded with slices of fresh lime, and a bowl of powdery dark-brown sugar. I furtively try to copy what Marion does, and end up heaping my little cup of black tea with at least four spoonfuls of sugar and the juice of two limes. I take a sip and try not to wince at the mix of extreme sweet and sharpness. After a few more eye-scrunchingly strong sips, I start to think the flavour isn’t too bad. It’s not coffee, but it’s not too bad. And the cheese empanadas are delicious.

  ‘So, are these handicrafts actually made inside the prisons?’ I ask, unable to take my eyes off the piles and piles of bags surrounding us in the kitchen, and impatient to find a convenient interlude to ask more about the prison work.

  ‘These are from the women’s prison,’ Marion explains. ‘Alma Libre, our charity, buys them straight from the women and we take them to sell in a little shop in town. This is a particularly big batch, as we’ve been a bit thin on the ground recently and not able to go and pick them up…’ Marion looks grimly down into her teacup, and I remember Gabi telling me she hasn’t been able to help out much lately due to being so heavily pregnant.

  ‘And every week there are new arrests, meaning the prisons are getting even more cramped,’ comments Roberto.

  I think back to the newsflash I saw when we first arrived at Casa Hamaca, announcing the opening of new prisons and the possible release of many drugs criminals.

  ‘But… the government is releasing lots of prisoners, right?’ I ask, feeling the shudder of fear again at the memory of the news report.

  ‘May God will it so,’ Liza says gravely, crossing herself dramatically. Marion and Roberto both nod in solemn agreement.

  ‘Wait – you want them to be released?’ I can’t keep the disbelief from my voice. If my mum were here, she would be freaking out at this.

  Marion sighs. ‘Of course, some people are behind bars because they really, truly deserve to be. Or because they’re a danger to the rest of us.’ She pauses and stirs her tea, looking thoughtful. ‘But so many aren’t. So many of them, especially – I am sad to say – the women, are just victims of circumstance.’

  ‘You mean they’re innocent? They didn’t really do anything?’ I cast my mind back to the international law parts of my degree, and what we’d learnt about the varying levels of corruption in other justice systems abroad. We’d even been to visit a charity, Fair Trials International, and listened in sickened fascination as the caseworkers there told us horror stories about wrongly accused people going down for years, or even getting the death penalty, for crimes they didn’t commit.

  ‘Well, I’m sure there are some people in there for the wrong reasons, or for no reason at all,’ Marion continues. ‘But no, the vast majority of the girls we know definitely did commit the crime. Our British lady, for example, was caught with nearly two kilos of cocaine stuffed inside condoms in her stomach. You can’t really argue with that.’

  The lump of cheese empanada I’ve just bitten into curdles in my mouth and clogs in my throat. My eyes water as I struggle to swallow it without gagging.

  ‘What you must keep in mind, Kristie,’ Roberto says kindly, patting me on the back as my eyes stream, ‘is that until now the system was incredibly unfair. Not just here, but in most of Latin America and other parts of the developing world. There are people in prison with twelve-year sentences, for carrying a packet of cocaine through customs on holiday with their friends. No previous offences or intention to do it again. Meanwhile, other people, who have been involved in criminal organisations for years, right at the top, handling millions of dollars’ worth of drugs, get a sentence half that length. It all depends on the whim of the judge at the time of your trial.’

  ‘And who you know, who your family is, and how much you’re able to pay,’ Liza adds, bitterness in her voice.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ I say, before I can stop myself, and guiltily notice Marion and Liza’s looks of shock.

  ‘So this new criminal code aims to redress the balance, review the sentences of every drugs prisoner according to how much they were actually caught with, and whether they had any previous criminal record,’ Marion explains. ‘Ecuador is one of the first countries ever to make a move like this… the government is actually being quite pioneering. Despite all the criticism they’ve received from some members of the public for focusing so much time and investment on people in prison, when one could argue the country has many other pressing needs.’ She pauses to sip from her tea. ‘But we at Alma Libre think it’s a very positive step.’

  ‘There is a strict table of sentence lengths, crossed by quantity of drugs,’ explains Roberto. ‘And it’s retroactive, meaning many people’s sentences will be reduced by over half, practically overnight. And of course, if they’ve already served that time or more, they will go free immediately.’

  I sit in silence for a moment, absorbing the enormity of what the Ecuadorian government has undertaken. It seems to be well intentioned, but how on earth they’ll pull it off I don’t know.

  Marion seems to read my mind. ‘There are over five thousand people in prison for drugs in Ecuador,’ she tells me. ‘It’s pandemonium.’

  ‘What about the British woman?’ I ask. ‘How long has she been here?’

  ‘Oh, dear Naomi. She’s on her sixth year now. She has three to go, but she’s holding out all her hope they will reduce her sentence.’

  ‘And how old is she?’ For some reason I’m imagining a lonely older woman, some kind of desperate-housewife scenario.

  Naomi? Oh, she was so young when she got arrested,’ Marion says sadly. ‘How old would she be now… early thirties, I guess, at most.’

  A shiver runs down my spine – barely older than me. I try to imagine having spent the last six years of my life in an Ecuadorian jail. That’s basically the length of time I’ve known Harry.

  ‘In principle she could get a reduction,’ Marion says, ‘as the amount of drugs she was carrying equates to about five years, not eight. But there are so many people in the same situation, all the paperwork is taking ages. Lawyers up and down the country are swamped. Naomi is terrified her case won’t go through before… well, her father in England isn’t very well. She’s scared. That’s why we’re trying to visit her as much as possible at the moment. I’m going every Saturday, not
just to see Naomi but to talk to all the foreign ladies, take them the cash from the handicraft sales, and try to help them where we can with their sentence-reduction applications. Some of them don’t speak any Spanish, so they’re baffled by all the paperwork… and Alma Libre is all they have.’

  ‘Do you visit them, too?’ I turn to Roberto and Liza, and instantly regret my question. Liza has visibly paled under her beautiful, coffee-coloured skin, and in a reflex has raised her hands to cross herself, muttering some kind of supplication in Spanish. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. Roberto pushes his chair back abruptly and gets up to clear the table.

  ‘No. No, we do not,’ he says. ‘We help from the sidelines, but never go in.’ With that he lifts the plates from the table and disappears to the other end of the kitchen to start washing up.

  An awkward silence falls. I want to ask so many more questions. Like, how many foreigners are there, how do they get cash inside the prisons, why do they need it, and what the hell was that all about? Why has the temperature in the kitchen suddenly dropped by several degrees?

  Instead of all this I find myself asking Marion, ‘Can I come with you on your visit this Saturday?’

  She puts down her teacup and beams at me, and suddenly the tension in the room evaporates again. ‘Well, of course you can, my dear!’ she says. ‘The girls are always glad to see a friendly face, and Naomi in particular will be happy to meet someone from her homeland.’

  The spark of excitement tinged with fear I felt when Gabriela first mentioned the prisons flashes through me again. And only now do I realise in elation that, despite the last half an hour of conversation being in Spanish, I’ve understood everything. Without being confused by Liza and Roberto’s unfamiliar Quito accents, or Marion’s distinctive, thick, Southern US twang tarnishing her Spanish. Without asking any of them to repeat anything at all. Without Harry.