Diego, Run!

by Deborah Ellis

  Also by Deborah Ellis

  Parvana

  Parvana’s Journey

  Shauzia

  Looking for X

  A Company of Fools

  The Heaven Shop

  Diego’s Pride

  Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli children speak out

  Off to War: Soldiers’ children speak

  Children of War: Iraqi children speak

  This edition first published in 2007

  First published in Canada by Groundwood Books, 2006

  Copyright © Deborah Ellis, 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for i ts educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

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  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74175 155 0

  eISBN 978 1 74343 955 5

  This book was printed in December 2009 at McPherson’s Printing Group

  76 Nelson Street, Maryborough, Victoria 3465, Australia

  www.mcphersonsprinting.com.au

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  To those we keep in cages

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  December 31, 1999

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Mamá said.

  Diego looked around the tiny cell. Clothes and blankets were all piled together on the floor. Nothing could be left behind. They’d need every one of their few belongings to get started again in their new life.

  He spied Corina’s rag doll, momentarily abandoned while his three-year-old sister crawled under the bed to chase a ball of wool that had rolled away from their mother. In a flash, he tucked it into the pile.

  A screech from her told him he hadn’t moved quickly enough. She dove in, looking for her toy and messing up his work.

  ‘No, Corina, leave that there.’ Diego tried to pull his sister away from the pile, but she screeched again.

  ‘Shut up!’ yelled the crabby woman from the cell beside them.

  Diego dropped his sister’s arm. She shut up, giving him the defiant little smile she wore when things went her way.

  ‘Give her the doll,’ Mamá said.

  ‘But everything will go faster if I pack it now.’

  ‘Give her the doll,’ Mamá repeated. ‘I don’t want to be knitting for nothing again.’

  Mamá knitted to make money to buy food and pay rent on their cell. If Corina made too much noise or Diego misbehaved, Mamá had to appear before the Prison Discipline Committee. That meant paying a fine or doing an extra chore.

  Diego wanted to say it didn’t matter if they got fined. In a very short time they’d be out of there, far away from the prison, back to their bit of land where Corina could scream her lungs out among the coca bushes and no one would say anything. But he didn’t. He reached into the pile and pulled out the doll.

  Corina grabbed the rag toy out of his hands and turned her back on him.

  Oh, yes, be mad at me, Diego thought. Stay mad, for years and years. Stay mad and don’t bother me.

  He took another look around the cell. The narrow bed they all shared took up most of the space. That’s where his mother now sat, her multi-layered pollera skirts and petticoats spread out around her. It annoyed him that she looked so calm, her long dark plaits hanging smoothly against her shoulders.

  ‘Is there anything left to pack?’

  ‘Your common sense,’ Mamá said, clicking away on her knitting needles. Mamá knitted from morning to night, sometimes not even stopping to eat.

  ‘Why not pack your knitting now and save time later?’ Diego asked, without any hope that she’d actually take his suggestion. He got the old raised eyebrow for an answer. The needles kept clicking.

  Diego gave up. He only hoped she’d move fast enough when the time came. Corina he could carry, even if she was squawking and fighting him. He wouldn’t have to carry her far. Just a few steps.

  He bound up the pile of belongings in an aguayo and tied all the corners together. Could he carry it and his sister? He hefted the bundle over his shoulder, then bent down and grabbed Corina. She kicked and swung at him, hitting him in the face with her doll.

  He could manage both. He put Corina back down.

  ‘I’m going to say goodbye to the place,’ he said. He had too much energy tonight to stay in the cell. It was against the rules for children to be out of their mothers’ cells at night, but this was New Year’s Eve, and some of the rules were relaxed. ‘But don’t worry—I won’t get into trouble.’

  ‘See that you don’t,’ Mamá said.

  Diego popped his head back in the cell.

  ‘Don’t go to sleep,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Promise me?’

  His mother looked up at him and smiled. ‘I promise. But you’re wasting your time.’

  Diego darted out again. There was no point arguing with his mother, and if he hung around, Corina might forget she was angry with him and insist she go with him.

  Diego’s mother had a cell on the second floor of the San Sebastián Women’s Prison, where women arrested in Bolivia’s Altiplano came to serve their sentences. Officially the prison only had two floors, but the place was so full of women and children that more cells had been built on top of and behind the regular cells. The cell Diego shared with his mother and sister was tucked in behind other cells. This cushioned it a bit from the noise, but made it hard for a fresh breeze to find them in the summer.

  Diego reached the balcony and hung over the railing. As always, drying laundry stretched from one balcony to the next. Some of the prisoners earned money by doing laundry for people on the outside. Diego looked between the rows of clothes and sheets. Below, the courtyard was busy. The guards were relaxed, letting people enjoy the holiday. Some guards bent over plates of beans, rice and plantain, prepared at one of the prisoner-run restaurants. Diego was sure they hadn’t paid. Guards never paid.

  Women with bundles passed by him, heading for the staircase. Diego leaned farther over the railing so he could see the entranceway.

  It was packed! More than two hours to go until New Year’s Eve, and women and children were already lining up at the door.

  In a flash, he was back in his mother’s cell.

  ‘Come on!’ he urged. ‘They’re gathering at the main door. We have to go down there and get a space if we’re going to get through. The doors will be open for only five minutes!’ He picked up the bundle and lunged for his sister, but
she scurried under the bed.

  ‘Diego, that’s enough,’ his mother said. ‘The doors are not going to open. Things like that don’t really happen. And if they did happen, they wouldn’t happen to people like us.’

  ‘Maybe not usually,’ Diego said. ‘But tonight is different. It’s the new millennium. You’ve heard people talking. At midnight, the Angel Gabriel is going to unlock the prison doors everywhere, and keep them open for five minutes. Not even the strongest guards will be able to shut them, and then—’

  ‘Every prisoner who can get through those doors in those five minutes will be free,’ Mamá finished for him. ‘It’s not going to happen, and I don’t want you to be disappointed.’

  Diego knelt before his mother and put his hands on hers to stop her knitting.

  ‘But what if it does?’ he asked. ‘What if the Angel Gabriel does really come to Cochabamba and opens the doors, and we’re not there?’

  His mother smoothed the hair out of Diego’s eyes.

  ‘And how do you suppose the Angel Gabriel can go to all the prisons in the whole world in the same night, in the same moment?’

  ‘He’s the Angel Gabriel, isn’t he? What’s the point of being an angel if you can’t open a few prison doors?’

  Mamá looked at him for a long moment. Then she said, ‘Corina, come out from under the bed. We’re going downstairs to wait for the Angel Gabriel.’

  Once his mother decided to move, she moved fast. The knitting was put away, Corina was hauled out from under the bed, and within minutes, they were headed out of the cell.

  Mamá went first with Corina. Diego followed with the bundle. He stopped in the doorway and took one final look at what had been his home for nearly four years. It was small and dark, a naked bulb hanging from the low ceiling their only light—when the power was working. He could cross the cell in five steps.

  He’d grown in four years, but the cell hadn’t. He wouldn’t miss it. What was there to miss?

  He hurried after his mother, past the cell where the crabby woman lived, past the cell with the woman who cried all the time, and down the dark, narrow staircase to the courtyard.

  Mrs Sanchez waved them over. She wore blue jeans, not traditional clothes, and had been the first woman to be kind to them when they arrived at the prison. She was there for killing her husband, but that didn’t stop Diego from liking her.

  ‘I’ve saved you a spot,’ she said, moving her bundles so Diego and his family could sit on the floor behind her.

  The courtyard was filling up quickly. Diego counted ten families ahead of his. He couldn’t see behind him clearly enough to count the people who were there. They didn’t concern him, unless they moved a lot faster than his mother and sister and pushed them out of the way.

  ‘We’ll have to stick together,’ Diego said. ‘Mamá, maybe you should go first, with Corina. I’ll be right behind you with our things.’ It might be safer to push his sister than pull her. If she got mad later, he could claim someone else had shoved her.

  ‘Papá is going to meet us by the fountain,’ Diego reminded his mother. ‘I hope he’s packed and ready. I hope he’s in line already.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about your father,’ Mamá said. ‘If there’s a way out of prison tonight, he’ll find it.’

  ‘And what about after that?’ Mrs Sanchez asked. ‘What will you do when you meet up?’

  ‘We’ll go back to our farm,’ Diego said. He knew it wasn’t really their farm. They just lived on it and worked on it, but it felt like theirs. ‘Papá thinks the house will need some repairs since it hasn’t been looked after for so long. I’ll help him with that. Mamá will pull the weeds from the garden, and plant beans and potatoes, and Corina . . .’ It was hard to imagine what Corina would do. She’d never seen the farm. ‘Corina will stop annoying me,’ he said finally.

  ‘Keep that line straight,’ Guard López bellowed out, her sharply pressed green uniform in contrast to the rumpled clothes of the prisoners. ‘People still need to pass by, and I don’t want any problems.’

  ‘Guard López,’ he asked her, ‘you won’t try to stop us tonight, will you?’

  ‘No, Diego, we won’t,’ Guard López replied. ‘But we don’t like it one bit. Our job is to keep prisoners in, not let them out. But we have orders from the Bureau of Prisons in La Paz not to interfere with the Angel Gabriel.’

  ‘See, Mamá? Even the government thinks we’ll get out tonight.’

  ‘The government has been wrong before,’ Mamá said, but softly.

  ‘You have a fine son,’ the guard said. ‘Always polite. How old is he now? Nine?’

  ‘Twelve,’ Mamá said.

  ‘Nearly thirteen,’ Diego said.

  ‘Prison children are always small for their age.’ Guard López shouted out to the whole line. ‘When midnight comes, there will be order at this gate! Anyone who shoves will be yanked out of line, and you’ll lose your chance at freedom.’

  Mamá took out her knitting and settled down to wait. Corina crawled into Mamá’s lap, sucking on her doll’s foot. Diego was disgusted, but at least she was quiet.

  Not all the women in the prison were lining up to get out. Some had opened their little shops and restaurants around the courtyard. Diego smelled onions frying. A woman he often ran errands for was sitting by her big sack of coca leaves, hoping for customers. Other prisoners were hanging over the balcony, looking down at the scene below.

  ‘Here he comes! I see the angel!’ one of them jeered.

  ‘You think things are any better out there?’ another one called.

  Diego looked up at them, then realised something.

  ‘Mamá,’ he said, ‘we’re sitting in the same spot where we slept when we first came here!’

  Four years ago, Corina hadn’t been born yet, and Diego was only eight. He and his mother slept on a mat in the courtyard for the first year because Mamá didn’t have enough money to rent a cell.

  Diego closed his eyes. If he tried hard, he could still imagine the feel of the wind, cool and soft as it came down from the mountains. The green of the farm was so deep he could almost taste it. He’d helped to plant their small vegetable garden, plunged his fingers into the good, dark earth, and gathered eggs from their chickens. Up the hill from their small stone house were their coca bushes, whose little green leaves they chewed when food ran low, and sold for money for clothes and Diego’s school books.

  But the good memories were always pushed aside by the one bad memory—the day when everything changed.

  Diego and his parents had been riding the trufti to the Saturday market in Arani with other farmers, to sell their vegetables and dried coca leaves. The man across the aisle had a bag that kept squirming. He let Diego look at the guinea pigs inside. Diego was so absorbed in stroking their soft fur, he didn’t notice that the police had stopped the minibus until his arm was grabbed and he was dragged off.

  People and vegetables everywhere, chickens flapping out of banged-open cages, sacks of coca ripped open, the leaves swirling over the ground like green snow. For a long and terrible moment, Diego couldn’t find his parents. Then his father found him, and everything was okay again.

  But not for long. Small packets of coca paste were found taped under the seat where Diego’s family was sitting. It wasn’t their paste, but they were arrested anyway. His mother ended up in San Sebastián Women’s Prison in Cochabamba. His father was across the square in the men’s prison.

  ‘Ten minutes to go!’ someone called out. Diego opened his eyes. Everyone stood.

  ‘Come on, Mamá, put the knitting away!’ Diego picked up the bundle and tried to move forward.

  ‘No shoving!’ the guards yelled.

  Diego helped his mother stand up. Corina had fallen asleep and was dead weight in her mother’s arms.

  Around him, women started praying the rosary. Others sang ‘Ave Maria.’

  ‘Thirty seconds!’ someone yelled.

  The crowd moved forward.

  Then,
‘Twenty seconds!’

  ‘Goodbye, prison!’ someone yelled.

  ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven!’ Diego joined in counting down the seconds. ‘Three! Two! One!’

  The crowd surged forward again. But only a little.

  The prison doors did not open.

  ‘Maybe the time is wrong,’ someone suggested.

  The guards were laughing. One of them flipped on the radio in the guard station and turned up the volume.

  All of Bolivia was celebrating the New Year. ‘Welcome to the year 2000!’ the announcer exclaimed. ‘Happy New Year!’

  Still, the doors didn’t open.

  ‘I guess the Angel Gabriel passed you by,’ one of the guards said. ‘Party’s over. Go back to your cells.’ They herded the prisoners out of the courtyard.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mamá asked Diego quietly.

  Diego wiped his eyes. ‘Papá is probably out in the park, waiting for us by the fountain,’ he said. ‘The Angel probably didn’t know there are two San Sebastián prisons in Cochabamba.’

  ‘Then we can be happy for your father. And we can go to bed.’

  It took awhile to get all the women, their children and their bundles up the little staircase. Diego heard some of them crying. He just felt numb.

  ‘Unpack tomorrow,’ Mamá said. ‘Sleep now.’

  The three of them climbed onto the narrow single bed. Corina went against the wall so she couldn’t get out without Mamá knowing. Then Mamá went in the middle, and Diego on the outside.

  It took a long time for the prison to get quiet that night. Women were crying, and some were fighting with the guards. The night was all sobs and screams and anger.

  Diego slept, but woke up a few hours later. His mother was crying, very quietly.

  ‘Madre de Dios,’ she prayed, ‘how will we survive?’

  Diego kept still, so she wouldn’t know he’d heard her.

  TWO

  April, 2000

  ‘Taxi!’

  Diego’s feet took him out of the cell before his ears were completely sure what he’d heard. The thing to do was to move fast. He couldn’t run on the steps—that would mean a fine for his mother from the prison committee—so he walked down them as quickly as he could.