The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys

by Marina Chapman

  Or maybe not. Maybe I would regret the day I ever came knocking, much less moving in with the Santoses. There are plenty of good people living in Colombia, so it was unlucky that I knocked on the door that I did. For the Santoses were one of the most notorious criminal families in the city.

  As such, they were understandably secretive. What I learned, I learned slowly, by observation and by chance. I regularly saw expensively dressed businessmen coming and going, though I had no idea what kind of business they were involved in. They would carry expensive-looking briefcases and smoke fat cigars as they trooped back and forth from the office, part of the house that was strictly out of bounds.

  Whatever the Santoses did to earn money, it was obviously successful. Evidence of their wealth seemed to be everywhere – their home dripped with it – and sometimes, if I was quietly cleaning in the hallway, I could pick up snatches of their conversations. The family thought I had less understanding of language than I did, because I hardly ever spoke. And when I did, I still had something of an imperfect way of speaking, having picked up my human language so late. But they underestimated me. I could understand so much more than they realised, and what I picked up, when eavesdropping on the men’s conversations, was often about money – great quantities of money – and what sounded like elaborate plots to get it from other people, including framing innocent bystanders. I even heard them mention the word ‘kill’.

  I was not shocked by any of this. I’d been a street kid for long enough to know that lots of businesses in Colombia did bad things to make money – this was normal for Colombia at that time. But I was scared of their oldest son Juan, as I learned that he was involved with a powerful Colombian ‘mafia’ group. He therefore seemed the most powerful member of the family, his mafia associates being so dangerous that his parents would assist him in his crimes – they had no choice.

  The whole family, it seemed, made their living through crime. Alfonso was a professional burglar and Pedro always seemed to come home with lots of jewellery. Even the women were involved, helping in any way they could with the spoils of their criminal activities. The Santos men would often come home at three in the morning and unload things they’d stolen – precious stones, long rifles, ammunition and watches. And one of my jobs, when they arrived, would be to quickly hide the guns, which would be stashed under the bins out on the patio.

  Even compared to life as a street kid, this was frightening stuff. The more I learned about how they ran their business, the more scared I was for my own safety. They would burn down the homes of rivals and kill without a second thought, always planning everything carefully to ensure they’d get away with it – they were masters of making everything look like ‘an accident’.

  So it was probably naive of me not to consider the fact that bad men did bad things in lots of areas of their lives. And that, just as had been the case at Ana-Karmen’s brothel, I was an adolescent girl with no home and no family, so when and if I was noticed by any of these men, it would be for entirely the wrong reasons.

  25

  It soon became obvious to me that life at the Santos house was no different from life at Ana-Karmen’s. What had I been thinking? I was treated like one of the family’s dogs, tied to a tree or to the washing pole on a regular basis, never really sure what I’d done. My meals consisted of the family’s leftovers: chewed bones, scraps of bread and vegetable skins. I’d fight over these with the dogs, too, and they were stronger than I was.

  But in one respect I was different from the family pets. Within a couple of weeks of my being there, I saw a look in Mr Santos’ eye that chilled me to the bone. His gaze seemed to be on me all the time now, as if assessing me, which made me feel uncomfortable and defensive. It was a look I’d seen many times before.

  Mr Santos mostly worked at night and slept during the day, so, as Mrs Santos and her children were usually out working – or doing whatever it was they did – the house was empty, bar the two of us, most days. On this day, it was late in the afternoon and I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when I became aware that he had come in and joined me.

  I was by the stove, making arepas, and I could see his reflection in the shiny black tiles behind the hob. He was standing in the doorway, and I noticed he was wearing only underwear. I felt a shiver run up my spine, but I pretended I hadn’t seen him, only stiffening as he approached and crouched down slightly behind me. The next thing I felt was the rough and clammy touch of his hands sliding up and down my bare legs.

  All too soon, the movement changed and I could hear his breathing quicken. His hands had started sliding even further up my thighs. Was this what was required of me now? That I must do every single thing the family wanted, including allowing Mr Santos to grope me – or worse? My street-kid anger was never buried deep and now it surfaced, my mind racing to consider if and where there might be an escape route. He was a big man, and strong, but I had the advantage of surprise. He didn’t know me, and of course he would expect me to acquiesce. But no one – not even powerful Mr Santos – was going to rape me. Not when I still had air in my lungs.

  I looked down at the metal rack of cooling arepas, forcing myself not to flinch under his touch. As soon as I did, he might realise I planned to escape. I needed him to think I would let him have his way.

  I slowly curled my fingers round the blackened metal cooling grid. It wasn’t the best weapon, but it was heavy, and if I hit him with sufficient force …

  I whirled around and slammed it down on him. He was kneeling behind me, so it hit him square across the head and shoulders, while the warm arepas flew everywhere, rolling across the stone floor. He let out a roar of shock and, unbalanced on his knees, toppled over sideways to the floor. I hit him again, then, and a third time, just for good measure. It wasn’t the heaviest of weapons but I made up for it in fury. Then I ran.

  There was no real escape for me, of course. The doors were locked, the windows barred, the high wall topped with barbed wire and shards of glass. I could only run up the steps to the little glassless window and then climb out to bury myself in the boughs of the Mamoncillo. I wriggled out and launched myself into the tree boughs, hearing his voice bellowing behind me, ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard!’

  I knew he’d come after me now, wielding his fat leather belt. So what to do next? I sat, panting heavily, in the fragrant green shade, nausea rippling through me as my pulse started to slow. What should I do? How could I deal with this situation? Should I try to escape? Try to lift the huge pole behind the door? But I knew I couldn’t. I could barely reach it, not without climbing on something. By which time Mr Santos would be there to stop me anyway.

  The thought made me want to weep with frustration. But then I thought some more. What would be out there for me anyway? I’d just be a street kid again. And was that going to be a better life than this? I had so little now, but at least more than I’d had as a street kid. How could I go back to that? That dead end of a future. At least I had hope now. If I could work, I had a chance of a future. And the thought of losing that made me even angrier. How dare he, with his filthy lust, try to take that away! If I tried to escape, what would happen to me? Would the Santoses come after me? Would they worry that I knew too much about their business to let me live? It seemed terrifyingly simple to answer that – of course they would.

  And then I hit upon an answer: Mrs Santos. I would simply stay in my tree till I saw her come home. Only then would I show myself, and I would tell her the truth about what had happened. Mr Santos would lie to her – I knew that for certain. But something told me she would believe me when I told her the truth. My hunch was that she knew her husband and the sort of thing he got up to. And perhaps she would put a stop to it and I’d have my chance back.

  When she arrived home, Mr Santos got to speak to her before me, and I could tell by her expression that he had already told her tales. I hadn’t heard what they said, but I didn’t need to. I could tell by the sour expression on her face, and my hopes that she’d
back me were immediately dashed. ‘Where have you been?’ she snapped as she entered the kitchen. ‘Mr Santos tells me you’ve been hiding and that you’ve not done your work!’

  She threw a slipper at me then, which I didn’t try to dodge. ‘Mrs Santos,’ I said. ‘Please … I need to speak to you.’

  ‘Then speak, Rosalba! Speak!’ She stood and glared at me, hands on hips.

  ‘Mr Santos,’ I whispered, flinching as the words left my mouth. ‘He tried to have sex with me. He had his hands up my legs –’ I stopped and mimed it. ‘Like this. But I hit him with the grid and I ran away.’

  Mrs Santos fixed a look of dismissal on her face. ‘What?’ she said. ‘You think he would want to have sex with a little rat like you? I don’t think so! Stop trying to get attention and just do your job!’ She stabbed a finger in my direction. ‘You’d better be careful, Rosalba. Do not get in our way. Do not make him angry, or you will pay for it, you hear me?’

  She turned her back on me then, but before she stomped off she turned again. ‘And do not tell a soul about any of this, you hear me? Or I shall drown you.’

  I stood for several seconds, trying to take her words in. I had misjudged her. She knew. I was so sure she knew. But she obviously didn’t want to know. Not about her husband. I thought back to what I’d been told and why I’d left Ana-Karmen’s. Now I was going to be meat after all.

  *

  The cruelty from Mrs Santos now escalated. And with no fear of his wife’s wrath, Mr Santos held the power. He never raped me, but I knew his intentions were sexual. Every time Mrs Santos went to work or even just nipped out to the shops, I would feel traumatised knowing we were alone in the house together. He even offered me money, which I refused, but he only tried to force himself on me once more. That time I went for his eyes with such ferocity that he never tried to put his hands on me again. Sometimes I think it was to my advantage that people still thought I was a wild animal.

  Both husband and wife, however, had no compunction about regularly beating me. Mr Santos, I think, because he was a sadist, a monster, and Mrs Santos perhaps because she knew he had his eye on me and hated me for that, on top of despising me in general. Whatever the reason, I was beaten all the time.

  Looking back, I wonder if I was in the middle of a big marital breakdown. Or perhaps it was just because I was such a poor, inefficient slave. I still did most things wrong, was clumsy and cack-handed. I did the washing wrong – forever leaving soap on the clothing – and my washing-up was hopeless: nothing was ever properly clean. When I ironed shirts, I was always putting the lines in the wrong places. I’d sweep rubbish under cupboards instead of picking it up. Oh, I was a pretty poor slave. I know I was.

  Compared to Ana-Karmen, the Santoses were more sophisticated. Being part of a criminal fraternity, they were experienced in violence. They understood how much electrical cable hurt. They also knew that with a plug attached, it could unleash even more pain, so that was their preferred tool to use on me. Sometimes the pain would make me pass out completely, and I would wake to find myself in a puddle of blood and urine. And, like Ana-Karmen, they would beat me for creating that, too. My only place of safety was my branch in the Mamoncillo tree, where I would crawl once my body had been discarded for the day, and I would be forgotten till the next day’s chores began.

  I would sit out there and often wonder about Consuela. She had been so kind to me, befriended me, and where was she now? I hardly saw her, and when I did, it seemed as though she could hardly meet my eye. If she had, then perhaps she’d take more notice of all my bruises, but it was as if she no longer wanted to know me. Did she even really know what they did to me? Perhaps not. I also felt sure Mrs Santos had poisoned her against me with tales of goodness knows what transgressions just when I so badly needed a friend.

  I would think of the monkeys – of Grandpa, bold Rudy, little Mia – and of my street gang. How was Bayena doing now? Was she safe? I missed them all. I missed them so much that it was like a physical ache in me. Right then, I felt as alone as it was possible to feel.

  But the Mamoncillo tree didn’t just bear clusters of glossy green fruit. It brought me a friend.

  *

  The Santos house was situated on a fairly wide street. The fences were high, but from my branch in the Mamoncillo I could easily see into the next garden. The neighbour from that house was middle-aged, a little younger than Mrs Santos, and there was something about her face and manner that made me like her. It was like the day when I’d watched the Indian lady looking for a place to have her baby. There was just something that drew me to her – a gut instinct that I’d learned to trust. I didn’t show myself, however; life in Cúcuta had beaten that out of me. But I would watch her often from my eyrie in the tree.

  She had several children: older ones, who helped with washing dishes, and younger ones – a little younger, I judged, than I was – who would play and laugh together in a way that reminded me of my monkey family. This was a family, too. This was where I wanted to be. I would watch her endlessly, noting all the time how loving she was towards her children. How she’d smile at them, even when they weren’t looking in her direction, and how she’d instinctively stroke their hair whenever they streaked past her in play. The children looked so happy, so content, that I couldn’t help but wonder. Did children in the city often live like this? Happily, free of fear? Was I the one who was odd?

  Eventually, my need for her acknowledgement grew too strong to resist, and one day I changed position. I moved slightly lower in the tree and slightly closer to her garden, and the rustling this created made her look up. Our eyes met, and once again I could see compassion and sympathy. I felt safe, so I risked showing myself a little more.

  She smiled at me then, and it was a smile of warmth and understanding. But she must have known the Santoses, I imagine, and known the kind of people they were, because her silence, together with the way she glanced around nervously, made it clear that she knew I might be in danger. She then lifted a finger and pointed towards their house, shaking her head to indicate that she was aware of my situation.

  Then she pointed to me and put her other hand over her ear. I mustn’t speak. I mustn’t be heard, or we could both get into trouble. Which made me sure that she had heard – heard my cries, heard the beatings, heard my sadness.

  She put her hand on her chest next and whispered her name: ‘Maruja’. I did the same, for at last I knew I might have found a friend.

  ‘Rosalba,’ I excitedly whispered back to her.

  Knowing Maruja was there gave me hope and courage. I had become truly isolated, no longer allowed out of the house in case I talked about the family’s business. So the only company I had was of the animal kind. And why wouldn’t it be? To them I was an animal. And a badly bruised one, which might make people talk.

  But every day now I had the solace of my lair up in the tree and my new friend Maruja to soothe my hurt away. We would meet regularly, and if I couldn’t see her once I’d climbed the Mamoncillo tree, I would shake the branches a little to attract her attention. She would always come, and then we’d chat – her down on the ground, me up in my branches, developing a way of communicating that didn’t require either of us to speak.

  It was a whole new language, in fact – a mix of sign language and miming – a language all of our own that would one day be my saviour. I loved Maruja from the day I met her. I still love her today. Finding Maruja was like stumbling upon precious treasure. It was almost as if there were another angel walking the earth now and I’d been the one lucky enough to find her. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but, of course, I could not. I knew if the Santos family found out that Maruja had befriended me, her whole family could be in danger.

  *

  I was very soon to be in danger myself. I had been with the Santoses for around a year or so when one day two men visited the house to have a meeting with Juan. I no longer had any desire to listen in to the family’s business affairs, but on that afternoon I
was working in the downstairs rooms, cleaning, when I couldn’t help but overhear what sounded like a row.

  The men were in the living room – not the office, for whatever reason – and they were all shouting loudly. And, despite not wanting to know – what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me – it was impossible not to catch words that made me go cold. Unable to resist, I stopped my polishing and approached the living room, which had double doors. There was a sliver of a crack down the middle, through which I could see a chink of light and movement.

  Juan’s voice was the loudest, and they were talking about some plan. A plan, it seemed, to kill a wealthy couple. I knew they must be wealthy because of the words they were using – stealing their possessions was apparently going to make the firm rich.

  ‘It’s too dangerous, Rico,’ I heard Juan say. ‘I don’t want to get involved with this. We just don’t know. It might be them trying to frame us for murdering those people. They might be the police, and then we’ll never see the money.’

  I tried to make sense of this – so other people were going to pay them for committing murder? I listened on, clutching my rag and bottle of cleaning fluid to my chest.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Juan,’ another man said, presumably the one called Rico. ‘But just think about it – it’s such a lot of money!’

  ‘I know,’ said Juan. ‘And I’m very, very tempted. But something just doesn’t feel right. And I always trust my instincts. Besides, there’s something else we should be concentrating on right now, don’t you think?’

  There was a short silence and then a sigh. ‘Fabio? Yes, you’re right. He is a problem.’

  The third man spoke. ‘He’s getting to be big trouble. He’s just not moving with the group’s rules any more. Betraying his family.’ Someone let out a sound of great disgust at this idea. ‘He could be a danger, too.’ Another silence. ‘We can’t let this get any worse.’