Diego, Run!

by Deborah Ellis

  ‘If you’re going to keep filling a seat, you’ll have to keep filling your belly,’ the chupe seller said, not so friendly now that she wanted to clear the way for other customers.

  Diego slipped off the seat and smiled goodbye. He didn’t mind. He understood about customers. He headed back to San Sebastián Square, and into the prison.

  ‘Do you go in and out this much every day?’ the new guard asked, annoyed. ‘Can’t you do all your little jobs at once?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Diego promised. Jobs came as they came. It was better for him if he had a lot to do on one trip instead of going back and forth, but it didn’t often work out that way.

  Diego walked through the inner prison doors and into screaming. He stood at the doorway, out of the way of angry women and flying chairs. The guards were sitting back and laughing, waiting for the fighters to calm down. In the men’s prison, physical fights were common and dangerous. People had been stabbed, even killed. Arguments in the women’s prison lasted longer—for weeks, bitterness would rise and break the surface of the drab daily routine—but they rarely got physical.

  Diego tried to figure out why the fight was happening, but it was too far gone. The original quarrel had been forgotten, and now they were angry at everything.

  The two most angry women paused to catch their breath, and the guards took advantage of the moment. They hauled the two fighters out of the courtyard and down a hallway to the punishment cells in the basement. Diego had seen the tiny cells once before. He had talked back to a guard, who took him down there and threatened to lock him away if he ever did it again. He didn’t know then that children were never put in those cells.

  He made a mental note to try to smuggle some juice or something down to the two women. That would ensure he’d be given their taxi jobs in the future.

  The courtyard seemed quiet, now that the fight was over. Diego gave the coca seller the coca leaves and legia, and the piece of paper stating the price. She had some change coming, and they counted it out together.

  His mother was pleased with the jumpers, and with the money he’d earned.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him.

  ‘I had a bowl of chupe in the market.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll just take Corina down for her supper, then, and give you some quiet time.’

  Every day, Mamá made sure Diego had time to himself in the cell. She said that everyone needed quiet time, especially when they were growing. Usually he did his homework. Sometimes he just stretched out on the bed and let his mind go wherever it wanted.

  His own homework was already done, but he picked up some extra money doing homework for some of his classmates, too. He was just finishing this when Mamá and Corina came back.

  ‘There’s a football game tonight,’ Diego said, putting his schoolwork into his book bag and putting the bag up high where Corina couldn’t reach it.

  ‘Do you want to go see your Papá?’ Mamá asked Corina. ‘You don’t mind taking her, do you?’

  He liked being asked. ‘We’ll have a run in the park first,’ he said.

  Corina wiggled away from having her face wiped. Mamá handed Diego a shirt of his father’s that she had mended. She went down with them to the main door. Corina tried to pull her along with them.

  ‘Mamá, you come, too,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t go with you this time, my precious one,’ Mamá said. ‘Diego, go on, take her out.’

  Diego left quickly. Lingering just made both his mother and Corina cry, even though they’d see each other again in a very short time.

  There was still some daylight left, so Diego made monster noises and chased Corina from one corner of the square to the other. They looked for fish in the big pond. He kept her from patting the park dogs. They were too lazy to bite, but Mamá said they could carry disease and fleas.

  Going into the men’s prison was the same as going into the women’s prison. Two sets of doors, two sets of guards.

  The guard on the inside door smiled at Diego and his sister and announced their father’s name over the loudspeaker. Diego hoped his father could hear it. There were many more prisoners here than in the women’s prison, and most of the men were noisier. The women were usually only noisy when they were arguing.

  Corina clung to Diego’s leg at the sight of all the loud, big men. He gave her soft hair a bit of a tug so she’d know he knew she was there. Then their father appeared, and she broke away from Diego and into Papá’s arms.

  Papá cooed over Corina and put his free arm around Diego’s shoulders.

  ‘How are you, son?’

  ‘I’m well, Papá.’ His father was covered in wood dust, and he felt thin as Diego hugged him. ‘Mamá sent your shirt back.’

  ‘Your Mamá is well?’

  ‘She is well.’

  ‘Does she know how much I miss her? Does she know how much I miss all of you?’

  Diego hated it when his father’s eyes teared up, and he looked away.

  ‘I sold a doghouse,’ his father said, changing his tone. ‘A man who runs a car dealership bought one for his daughter’s new pet.’ He pressed a handful of folded Bolivianos into Diego’s hand. The money was covered in sawdust.

  ‘Did you keep some for yourself?’ Diego asked, because he knew his mother would want to know. His father shrugged. Diego took some of the money and handed it back to his father. ‘Have you eaten?’ He didn’t wait for Papá to answer. He bought a plate of rice and beans from the diner. ‘We’ll go up to the balcony and watch the football game.’

  Many of the men in the prison had formed football teams. A committee drew up a schedule of matches. This evening, the Narcos were playing the Saints. Diego was going to cheer for the Saints. Juan, one of the players, worked in the prison’s jewellery shop, and he sometimes gave Diego taxi jobs.

  When his father and sister were settled on the balcony, Diego went looking for Mando. The men’s prison was set up like the women’s, only it was bigger. It was officially only two stories high, but overcrowding meant that prisoners had added three more floors of ramshackle cells and makeshift ladders. There was a cell in every possible corner—some too small to stand up in, some with only scraps of cardboard for walls. There were places in the prison, Mando told him, where the guards wouldn’t go.

  There were women in this prison, too. Some of the men had their wives and children living with them, if they had no place else to go. There were no husbands in the women’s prison, though.

  Diego checked the woodworking shop on the first floor. Mando sometimes got the job of sweeping up at the end of the day. The machines were quiet now, and the room was empty. Next to it was the shoe shop, smelling strongly of the glue the prisoners used to turn old car tires into sandals and shoes. It was empty, too.

  He gave up and went back to his family. Corina was sitting on his father’s lap, helping herself to his rice and beans. His father was smiling at her and singing her a little song.

  The Saints were in the lead when Mando slid into the seat Diego had saved for him. He was carrying a plastic bag half full of chicha, the corn liquor made in the prison’s chichería. He took a long swallow.

  ‘Want some?’ he offered Diego.

  ‘No, thanks.’ He didn’t like the taste, and it gave him a headache. Plus, he didn’t like the way men behaved when they drank a lot of it. ‘Does your father mind you drinking it?’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it? He’s in prison.’

  Diego changed the subject. ‘You’ve missed some good plays. I think the Saints are going to win.’

  ‘I’ve been talking business.’

  Diego shoved him. ‘Big tycoon.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, big tycoon. You and me both.’ He looked over at Diego’s father and lowered his voice. ‘Some of the men in here have contacts on the outside. Contacts who can help us make real money.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘You and me.’ Mando’s breath smelled bad from the drink, and Diego had
to turn away to inhale. He saw Mando raise the bag of booze in a salute to someone on the other balcony. ‘Major money.’

  ‘There’s only one thing that earns major money for people like us, and that’s liable to land us right back in here.’

  ‘Only if you’re not smart. And you and I are smart.’ Mando’s father came up and sat beside his son. ‘I’ll tell you more later,’ Mando whispered. Diego tried to concentrate on the game and ignore the argument that erupted between the two of them over the chicha.

  It was touch and go between the Saints and the Narcos. One of the Narcos hurt himself when he fell on the hard cement courtyard. Diego cheered his team and checked his father now and then to be sure he was eating.

  The bare lightbulbs hanging down over the balcony came on—Diego’s signal to head back. The game wasn’t over, but if he didn’t leave now, the doors of the women’s prison would be closed for the night. He and Corina could always bunk in with his father—his father didn’t have his own cell, but his cellmates would make room for them. He stayed over with his father sometimes. But Corina would miss Mamá and her doll.

  ‘We have to go,’ he said, standing up. Corina was asleep in Papá’s arms. They all went down to the entrance. Papá handed Corina over to Diego.

  ‘Is she too heavy for you?’

  ‘No, I’ve got her,’ Diego said. He didn’t have to carry her very far.

  Their father reached out and cradled their heads in his hands.

  ‘Be well,’ he said.

  Diego went past the guards and out into the street. Whenever he left his father, he felt empty. Whenever he left his mother, he felt empty.

  He got back inside the doors of the women’s prison just as the guards were preparing to lock up. ‘One moment longer, and you both would have had to sleep in the park.’

  Diego thought of the tinkling of the fountains and the coolness of the breeze, the scent of the flowers and the softness of the grass, comparing them with the stuffy cell and the tiny bed.

  Then he remembered the street gangs. No place was all good.

  FOUR

  The morning buzzer was harsh and loud and yanked Diego out of the deep sleep he’d finally sunk into. Corina’s restlessness and Mamá’s bad dreams had given him a rough night.

  The guards banged on the cell walls and doors.

  ‘Everybody up! Down for the count!’

  His sister started to cry, as she did every morning. It was more like a whine than a cry, more out of habit than real distress.

  ‘It’s the shock of waking up,’ Mamá had explained to him many times.

  ‘Can’t she just get used to it like the rest of us?’

  Mamá bundled Corina up in her arms, holding her in her lap while her feet searched the cell floor for her thongs.

  Diego found his own sandals and pulled on some trousers and a shirt to go over his underwear. Little kids and women could go down to the courtyard in their nightclothes, but he was too old for that.

  The children in the prison weren’t officially prisoners, but they joined the women in the line-up anyway. The prisoners lined up in the order that they had come to the prison. For awhile, Diego and his family had been at the new end of the line. Now they were about in the middle.

  ‘Presente,’ each woman yelled out when her name was called. The guards imposed a fine if the reply wasn’t loud enough.

  Roll call was followed by a rush to the bathrooms. There were always line-ups for the latrines and for the showers. The problem was worse when the water stopped running, as it often did. The reservoir dried up, or there were mechanical problems in the pumping station. Diego read about such things in the newspapers. The bathrooms stank, too, no matter how much time the prisoners spent cleaning them.

  ‘The stink is in the pipes,’ his mother said. ‘Nothing we can do about it. We’ll have to get used to it.’

  He had been there for almost four years, and he wasn’t used to it yet.

  Diego got himself ready for school while Mamá got Corina ready for daycare. Across the square was a centre for children who lived at the prisons. Little kids could go in the morning, and older kids could go after school. Diego sometimes went to play games or do his homework, and to get a free snack of fruit and buns. Mostly, though, he worked as a taxi.

  He took his little sister out through the doors and left her with the childcare workers who gathered up children from both prisons before taking them all to the centre.

  The school Diego went to was fifteen blocks away from the prison. The only uniform they required was a white shirt, which his mother had fresh and clean for him each new school day. He didn’t know how she managed it, since there were so few washing sinks and so much competition for them, but his shirt was always ready, along with a clean cloth handkerchief. He used to go to a school that was closer, where other prison kids went, but whenever anything went missing, it was the prison kids who were suspected. Diego was always getting into fights, defending the little ones. One of the workers at the childcare centre helped him change schools.

  Diego bought a saltena from a sidewalk stand and ate the meat-filled pastry on the way. Although he hurried, he still had to run the last few blocks to make it on time.

  ‘Where is it?’ One of his classmates stood outside the school fence, waiting for him. The stocky boy with the expensive running shoes blocked his way at the gate.

  ‘Where’s my money?’ Diego asked in return.

  The classmate gave him five Bolivianos, and Diego handed over his arithmetic homework.

  ‘There are three mistakes in the multiplication, and one of the fraction problems is wrong,’ Diego told him.

  ‘What? Give me my money back!’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. If you get it all right, she’d know you didn’t do it.’

  The classmate nodded and smiled. ‘Good thinking. And my composition?’

  Diego handed it over. ‘You wrote about why you like to play football. Better read it over in case she asks you about it. And your spelling is improving—she’ll like that.’

  ‘It’s a little messy.’

  ‘I wrote it with my left hand. It looks better than your usual handwriting.’

  ‘I oughta pound you.’

  ‘Go ahead, but first give me five more Bs for the essay.’

  The classmate dug into his pocket and gave Diego another crumpled note. ‘The guy last year only charged me three.’

  ‘And last year you almost failed.’ Diego put the money into his deep pocket and walked away. The classmate was a customer, not a friend. With business concluded, there was nothing more to say.

  School was school. Diego kept to himself and did his work. During lunch, he ate the quínoa and beans provided by the school. He propped a book from the school library up in front of his plate and tried not to hear kids complaining about their hardships during the protests.

  ‘Our maid didn’t even show up! My mother’s going to fire her today.’

  ‘We were going to fly to La Paz to see my uncle, but the protesters shut down the airport. It ruined our holiday.’

  Most of the students at this school were of European descent, and they looked down on people like Diego, but his homework skills were valuable, so they left him alone.

  ‘Can you take Corina with you this afternoon?’ Mamá asked him when he got back from school. ‘I have committee meetings, then chores.’

  The prison was run by prisoner committees that managed everything from cleaning to settling most disputes. Mamá was on the Welcoming Committee, which helped new prisoners settle in, and the Younger Children’s Program Committee, which organised parties for the little ones and tried to get the prison to set aside a space for a playroom. The Works Committee gave out chores to the other prisoners. This week, Diego’s mother had to keep the staircases clean.

  ‘All the guards do is keep us locked in,’ he’d heard Mamá tell the newcomers. ‘Everything else is up to us.’ Except for a serving of bread and milk every morning for prison childre
n, the government provided nothing—not food, not blankets, not even cells. Everybody had to work. Women who couldn’t earn money would do chores for women who could.

  Corina was straining at her mother’s hand. She was in one of those moods when she didn’t know what she wanted.

  ‘Yes, I can take her,’ Diego said. He lifted the box of completed baby clothes off a high shelf. When his mother turned away to put Corina’s sandals on, he dropped a length of string into the box as well.

  ‘Don’t stay out too late,’ Mamá said. ‘There will always be another day.’

  He liked that she said that, but he knew how much they needed the money.

  Corina decided she would like to go out with her brother, and she cooperated with Mamá. After a trip to the latrine, and with most of the dirt washed off her face, she was ready.

  They walked out of the prison. There were no teen gangs around today. Even if there were, they tended not to bother Diego when he was with his sister. They could see she was still a baby. They might jeer him, but from a distance.

  He took Corina for a run in the park first, to burn off some of her energy. He made sure they avoided the glue sniffers, a ragged bunch of young men and women heaped together on the grass, passing around a fist-sized plastic pot of glue. They were too dazed from the glue-poison in their brains to be dangerous, but Diego didn’t want Corina getting any bad ideas.

  Before leaving the square, he bought some toffees from the Aymara woman with the little stand—four toffees for one Boliviano.

  ‘You can have one of these if you’re good,’ he told his sister.

  She reached up her little hand for one. ‘I’m good now.’

  ‘As soon as we’re settled,’ he promised.

  Diego didn’t have a permit to sell things on the street, so he had to watch out for police. They could take his money and his goods, and even give him a fine. There was a spot outside the large indoor market on Avenida 25 de Mayo where he’d had luck before, and he headed in that direction.