He found a spot on a clean bit of pavement between a newsstand and someone selling sunglasses. The first thing he did was take the long piece of string out of the box.
‘Time for your special bracelet,’ he said. He tied one end around his sister’s ankle. The other end he tied around his own ankle. Corina didn’t always sit still the way she was supposed to. This way, if she tried to go anywhere, he’d know.
Corina patiently held out her foot for him. She’d been through this before.
‘A special bracelet for a special sister.’ He got to work setting the baby clothes out on top of the upturned box. He let Corina help, after making sure her hands were clean. Mamá’s work was delicate. She turned the old jumpers he found into tiny sleepers, booties and blankets. Diego hoped the people passing by could see how beautiful the work was.
When everything was ready, he gave Corina one of the candies. She settled down to eat it. Diego stood by the clothes and waited.
Business was slow at first, but it picked up. Diego sold three pairs of booties, a hat and the fanciest of the blankets. Mamá would be pleased.
‘Hey, tycoon!’ Mando appeared in front of him. ‘Did you make these doll clothes yourself?’
‘Laugh if you want. I made more money in the last hour than you probably made all day.’ Diego patted his pocket.
Mando had a box of wooden toys with him, made out of scraps from the woodworking shop. The two boys often sold their things together on the street. It was less lonely, and they could watch out for each other. Mando set up his toys on the bottom of his upturned cardboard box, the way Diego set up the baby clothes.
Mando had a quick sale right off the bat—some northern tourist who wanted toys for her children back in the United States. He tucked the Bolivianos away and said, ‘I’m tired of this—one Boliviano, two Bolivianos. Like I told you, I have a plan to make a lot of money very fast.’ Mando leaned in close to Diego, although no one on the street was paying attention to them.
‘Some of the guys at the prison have friends who are looking to hire boys like us.’
‘What do you mean, boys like us?’
‘Boys who need money. You and me, we could do it together.’
‘These aren’t some kind of creeps, are they? I hear things, you know. Men with big cars hunting for boys.’
‘No, no, nothing like that. Real work. Honest work.’
‘There is no honest work that pays a lot of money in a short time, not in Bolivia,’ Diego said. ‘There is only smuggling or stealing, and that lands people in jail.’ He could have added, ‘Just like your father,’ but didn’t. His fingers felt the Boliviano notes in his pocket. Even though business had been good today, they didn’t amount to much. It cost a lot of money to rent a cell, and every month it had to be earned again. ‘What would we have to do?’ he asked, trying not to sound too interested.
‘Run errands, I guess. Does it matter? It’s money. Plus, we’d get away from here for a few weeks.’
‘Away?’
‘Do you have to talk in questions? It’s just a couple of weeks. Then you’ll be right back with your Mamá, only with a whole lot of money in your pocket.’
Diego gave Corina another candy to give himself a moment to think. ‘I don’t see how it would help if I went away,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you afraid of breaking the law?’
‘Laws are made by people with money to keep people like us poor,’ Mando said. He recited it like it was something he’d learned at school, although Diego didn’t think Mando went to school anymore.
‘You sound like a protester.’
‘Nah. They’re out for each other. I’m out for myself.’
‘What does your father say?’
‘He’ll be glad to be rid of me for awhile.’
That told Diego two things. One, that Mando hadn’t told his father. Diego had seen Mando and his father together. Even though they argued, his father’s face only looked happy when Mando was around. The other was that Mando himself wasn’t entirely sure of the whole thing. He was acting like he was trying to talk himself into something.
‘I don’t know,’ Diego said. ‘Things are hard enough as it is. My parents would worry, and Mamá would have to hire someone else to run errands for her.’
‘Think about it,’ Mando said. ‘I don’t leave for a few days, and we’d have fun. I’m tired of earning just a couple of Bolivianos at a time. I’m tired of living at the prison. I’m tired of everything. It will be like a holiday.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Diego promised, but there was nothing to think about. Only one type of work paid a lot of money in Bolivia, and that was work connected with cocaine. Diego heard the talk. The women in his mother’s prison didn’t discuss it much, but the men in his father’s prison did. They talked about how much they made, how clever they were, what big plans they had for when they got out. Sometimes fights broke out—someone stabbing someone else over what they did or didn’t do on the outside.
Mando grinned and punched Diego on the arm. ‘Okay, tycoon, we won’t talk any more about it today. Instead, I am going to have all of my toys sold before you even think about selling another piece of your doll clothes.’
They shifted into high gear, calling for and hustling customers, and business picked up for the next half hour. An appearance of the police at the other end of the street prompted them to pack up their illegal stands in a hurry and close down shop for the day.
It was time to go home. Diego raised the box of clothes into his arms, took Corina’s hand and started to walk.
‘Diego, my bracelet!’
He’d forgotten they were still tied together. He untied the string, dropped it in the box, and they were on their way again.
He and Mando—with Corina scampering between them—played football in the park with an old glue bottle. Then it was time to go in.
‘Think about it,’ Mando reminded him. ‘Unless you expect to get rich some other way.’
‘I’ll be a millionaire before you,’ Diego said. ‘And when I am, I certainly won’t talk to you anymore. I’ll have bodyguards in dark glasses, and a car as long as a bus with dark windows, and you’ll bang on the window for centavos, but I will completely ignore you.’
‘It will be me in that car ignoring you,’ Mando laughed. ‘See you tomorrow, tycoon.’
Diego watched his friend go into the men’s prison. Just before he disappeared through the doors, Mando turned and called out, ‘Playtime’s over, Diego. We’re men now.’ Then he was gone.
Men. Mando was barely fourteen. It was a challenge, though, and Diego knew it. He needed to think.
The evening sun felt good. He sat with Corina on a bench, watching the cars go by, wondering where all the people in the cars were going. Home to supper, probably, to sit in their homes and be with their families, and shut their doors on the rest of the world, like Diego’s father once did when he was free and strong. When their work day was behind them, Diego’s father would help him with his homework and laugh with Diego’s mother about secret jokes between them.
Men. If he were a man, he would not walk back behind the hundred-year-old prison walls. He would hold out his arm, flag down a passing bus or truck, and go wherever it was going—to a place without guards, without morning counts, and without women crying and screaming.
But what would he do with Corina? Leave her sitting alone on the bench? A man took care of his obligations. He took care of his family.
It would be easy, though. Corina couldn’t run very fast. He’d be on the back of a truck and away before she climbed off the bench. It wasn’t as though he even liked her all that much. She was whiny and demanding and a whole lot of trouble.
She leaned against him and he realised she’d fallen asleep. He woke her up gently and they went back behind the walls.
The whole prison seemed to be in a bad mood. An argument had broken out among the women in his mother’s cooking group. Cooking wasn’t allowed in the cells, so several women usually pooled t
heir food and cooked it together. Mice had gotten into a sack of corn and no one wanted to put in money to replace it. Even Diego’s mother was yelling.
He finally got his supper, eating with his mother and sister at one of the plastic tables in the courtyard. The only seats available were at the same table with the woman who talked to herself all the time. She kept up a steady stream of one-way conversation while Mamá asked him about school, told him how the committee meetings had gone and tried to look pleased at how much he’d sold. He could tell she was still upset about the argument. A fight broke out between two of the women at the next table, and the guards had to be called in. And while he and his mother were distracted by that, the crazy lady swooped Corina away.
‘Call me Mamá!’ the crazy lady screeched in Corina’s face. ‘Call me Mamá!’
‘Her own baby died, and she gets confused,’ Mamá had explained to him once. This wasn’t the first time she had gone after Corina.
Two prisoners grabbed Corina and two guards grabbed the crazy woman, managing to pull them apart. A guard hustled the woman down to the punishment cells, and Mamá held Corina tightly.
‘You should have been watching her!’ she yelled at Diego, then turned her back to him to comfort Corina.
In all the chaos, Diego’s supper plate had fallen on the floor. He scooped the food back onto it and ate it anyway. To throw away food would be like tossing Bolivianos into the trash.
It really was an ordinary evening at the prison, but maybe it was Mando talking about going away that made Diego notice these things more. He almost asked Mamá if she remembered their old house, but he stopped himself in time. Of course she remembered. Diego knew she remembered the red flowers that she watered every morning by the front door. She remembered going in and out of that door any time she wanted, without having to depend on an unreliable angel to open it. She remembered having her own kitchen where she could go in the middle of the night for a snack, or just because she felt like wandering. Corina didn’t remember any of those things because she’d been born in the prison, but Mamá remembered, and so did Papá, and so did Diego.
His parents had to stay in jail thirteen more years. As he sat at the table, the remains of his dinner in front of him, Diego wrote the number thirteen in nice, tidy numbers in a notebook in his mind. Then he added twelve, his age now, and drew a line under the sum. He added them both together, and stared at the total in his mind for a long, long time.
FIVE
‘Can you watch Corina for awhile?’ Mamá asked the next evening. ‘I need a break.’
The three of them were in the cell. Diego was stretched out on the bed.
‘I have homework,’ he said.
‘There’s no school tomorrow. You can do your homework later.’
‘I don’t want Diego to watch me,’ Corina whined.
‘Please, Diego. It’s been a long day. I won’t be long. I’ll just go downstairs and have some juice and play some cards.’
‘I want juice!’ Corina demanded.
‘All right, all right, I’ll watch her.’ It was the last thing Diego wanted to do, but if he said no, his mother would sit in the cell and make him feel guilty.
Mamá didn’t wait around for him to change his mind, or for Corina to complain some more. She lifted Corina onto the bed where she couldn’t get down easily and left the cell.
Corina whined and started hitting Diego.
‘Quit it!’
But she wouldn’t. Diego ignored her as long as he could, tried to push her away, and finally gave up. She’d be less annoying if he entertained her.
‘Want me to draw some pictures for you?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me what you want, and I’ll draw it.’
‘Cat.’
Diego drew a cat, then all the other animals Corina knew, then a tree, a bird, a car. Then she wanted to draw her own pictures, so he put her on the floor with a paper and pencil. She chattered for a bit, but finally fell quiet, so Diego was able to concentrate on his own work again.
His own homework was done, and now he was working on a math assignment for someone two grades ahead of him. It was more complicated than the work he usually did in class. He had to concentrate hard to figure it out, but he was enjoying himself. The math was a puzzle, a mystery, and he was unravelling it. It took awhile, but at last it was done.
‘Okay, Corina, now we can play,’ he said, tucking the arithmetic into his book bag.
There was no reply. Diego looked down from the bed to the spot on the floor where Corina had been sitting. The paper and pencil were there, but Corina wasn’t.
She was probably under the bed, expecting him to crawl under there and drag her out. Let her stay.
He opened his book bag and got out a small rubber ball he’d found that day in the street. He turned it around in his hands. One of the sides was a little chewed up, and it looked like there were teeth marks on it. Some dog was missing its toy.
He wished they allowed pets in the prison. If he had a dog instead of a little sister, it could sleep on a blanket by the bed, and he could reach down during the night and it would lick his hand. He could take it out with him on taxi runs, and throw the ball for it in the park. He’d keep it away from the park dogs, so it wouldn’t catch their diseases, and it would keep the gangs from bothering him.
Diego tossed the ball up in the air and bounced it against the wall.
‘You’re being awfully quiet, Corina,’ he said. ‘Too bad you can’t be like this all the time.’
There was no answer. She was probably asleep. Diego was tempted to leave her there, but Mamá would not be pleased if she came back and saw that he hadn’t done his job properly. Mamá didn’t think the floor was clean enough for Corina to sleep on, no matter how many times she washed it down.
Diego pounded on the wall. ‘Hey, Corina, wake up!’
There was no reply. Diego sighed and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
‘You are so much trouble,’ he said. ‘Why can’t you grow up?’
He stood up, then crouched down to peer under the bed. He saw boxes and bags storing their belongings, but no Corina.
Children—especially little children—were not allowed to wander around the prison on their own. It was the most important rule. Some of the prisoners were crazy, like the one who went after Corina. Others didn’t like children. It was even more serious in the men’s prison, where some of the men were violent, especially to children, and there were tools and machines that children could break or be hurt by.
Parents who didn’t supervise their children weren’t allowed to keep them in the prison. Government people would come and take the children away.
Diego’s panic grew. He wanted to run out into the hall and scream Corina’s name, but he couldn’t, because then everybody would know she was missing. He made himself pause for a moment and leave the room slowly. He hoped he looked normal, and that no one could hear his heart pounding.
There was no sign of Corina in the hallway. Diego popped his head into the cells near his mother’s on his way to the balcony. Corina was small. She could be anywhere.
If she was bored, she’d probably go looking for Mamá. She’d wanted some juice. If she found her way safely down the stairs to their mother, Mamá would be angry at Diego for not watching her more closely, but nothing worse than that would happen.
Diego couldn’t see his sister on the balcony. He peered over the railing. Mamá was below, at one of the tables in the courtyard, drinking juice and talking with her friends. Corina was not there. He leaned over to try to see more of the courtyard. Directly below him was a woman cooking a pot of chupe, but no Corina.
He leaned over a little farther. Maybe Corina was with one of the prisoners who ran a little shop. Corina was always begging for candy.
He hadn’t even realised he was still holding the ball. Somehow, it slipped from his hand. It fell right into the pot. The soup splattered up, the woman jumped, lost her balance, and knocke
d the whole pot over onto the cement floor.
And Diego lost all hope of being able to get through this crisis with nobody knowing.
Mamá understood immediately. She was up the stairs and standing beside Diego before he’d gotten over the shock of dropping the ball. She gave him one look, then checked their cell.
‘Where have you looked?’ she asked when she came out.
‘I just started,’ he said. ‘She can’t be far.’
Mamá went one way, he went another.
The prison was a small world. News travelled almost instantly. The good part was that everyone joined in the search. The bad part was that everyone knew Diego hadn’t done his job, and that meant Mamá hadn’t done her job. Mamá’s friends were sympathetic and kind. The women who weren’t so nice said Mamá was a bad parent and Diego was too stupid to ever be hired as a taxi again.
Diego heard it all as he moved through the prison, looking high and low for his missing little sister.
‘I always thought you were a good kid,’ Guard López told him, as he searched under the shelves near the prison doors. ‘I guess I was wrong. I guess you’re in the right place after all.’
Nothing anyone said could make Diego feel worse than he already did.
‘She didn’t go outside, did she?’ he asked Guard López.
Guard López was in the middle of saying she wasn’t a babysitter when Diego heard a shout.
‘I found her!’
The call sounded across the courtyard. An inmate ran out of a hallway on the main floor, holding a crying Corina. Mamá took her and went upstairs.
No one said anything to Diego. He sat by himself at one of the plastic tables until the lights-out buzzer sounded.
As he passed the woman whose food he had ruined, he heard her say, ‘I’ll let your mother know how much she owes me for the soup.’
Diego didn’t reply. Slowly, he climbed the stairs, and because he didn’t want to get his mother into any more trouble, he went into their cell and went to bed.
Diego, Run! Page 4
