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

by Marina Chapman

  And I did adapt to life in the convent, in that I found ways to make the time pass a little quicker. It might be difficult to imagine, if you’ve never been a prisoner yourself, just how mind-crushingly boring it is to be locked up all day. Yes, I was fed and cared for, and nobody beat me, and I was grateful for that, really grateful. But I still had no freedom. I saw the same view each day, ate the same food, saw the same faces … It was a predictable routine with no end in sight, and I was beginning to find it unbearable.

  I was still trying to make the most of it in the early weeks of hope, because that’s what Maruja had asked me to do, but as the time passed I felt my will shrink within me. What was the point of living if this was to be my existence: one of a huge number of invisible kids — no more than numbers — who were so unwanted and unloved that they had been locked away?

  I’d seen more life in a day on the streets, I recall thinking. I’d eaten lobster and steak, seen more sights, smelled more smells, lived more life. I’d been raised in the jungle, lived each day with the thrill of the unknown, seen animals and plants I might never see again and survived. Here, I felt I was dying.

  Perhaps predictably, I found refuge in being naughty. At first cheeky — it felt so good to make people laugh, for them to notice me — and gradually just downright bad. With the life I’d led so far, I had no tolerance for rules and regulations, and couldn’t understand why such strictures were even necessary. But breaking rules — which I did for the sake of my sanity — had consequences. I didn’t mind being caught and told off by the nuns, though. To me, this meant attention. It meant I existed. Which, in a perverse kind of way, meant I mattered.

  And I definitely became something of a comedian, very quickly adopting the role of ringleader and class clown, which gave me a degree of notoriety. I was also an endless source of ideas of mischief. We girls would often lie in bed late, whispering to one another. We had always been curious about the fusty old nuns and one of the perennial topics of our night-time conversations was what they might wear under their clothes. One night, I decided we should find out.

  Only the bravest of the girls were up for ‘operation underwear’, the aim of which was to discover what went on behind closed doors — to find out where the nuns bathed and washed their clothes. This was one of the great mysteries that needed solving at La Casita, and we were determined to be the ones to do it.

  So we made a plan. We stuffed our beds carefully with our pillows, to stump any night patrols, and set off in a flurry of suppressed giggles. I was partly responsible. As we left the dorm, I announced that ‘Sister Ramona must have the biggest, ugliest knickers ever! And let’s not even go there with Sister Dolores — woof!’

  We searched the convent, high and low, over a period of an hour, climbing up to see in windows and peering through cracks beneath doors. It was fun, but it wasn’t exactly fruitful. But then I spotted a high window that appeared to be out of reach — a narrow pane of glass above a tall wooden door. It stood to reason — this was their living quarters, so this must surely be the place, and at this time they’d all be busy praying.

  My monkey skills now came into their own. No other girl could shimmy up things the way I could, and with a leg-up, and to the amazement of all the girls below me, I hit the jackpot. This was indeed the place. Beyond the window was a sitting room, and in the middle of the sitting room was a row of identical, not to mention enormous, beige knickers, all hanging drying on an airing stand. But they weren’t all identical; some sported frills, a most un-nun-like thing, to my mind.

  ‘Whooaa!’ I said. ‘Whooaa! You should see this!’ I whooped.

  ‘Rosalba!’ hissed Janette. ‘We can’t!’

  So, one by one, I helped each girl climb up and peer into the room, and finally our curiosity was satisfied.

  But as there were many girls who’d still not witnessed the giant knickers for themselves, we planned another raid, which was even more audacious. There were a few times each day when the coast would be clear and, crucially, the door would be unlocked. Armed with this information, Janette and I set off a couple of days later and this time managed to pinch several pairs of the enormous pants off the airing stand.

  It was perhaps an indicator of how dull and uneventful our lives were that prancing around with Sister Ramona’s enormous frilly knickers over my clothes was the best fun I’d had for a long time. And it was true for all of us: we laughed till we had no breath left for laughing, and our sides ached so much we were in real pain.

  But it was nothing to the pain I had coming. Naturally, Sister Ramona reported her missing knickers to Sister Elvira, and Sister Elvira, quite sure who the ringleader must be, accused me of the crime. Which, of course, my teenage mind found extremely galling. She had no evidence it was me. She just made the assumption and acted accordingly.

  ‘Rosalba!’ she barked at me, her eyes ablaze with suppressed fury. ‘I know it is only you who could be so un-holy that you’d steal a sister’s private undergarments!’

  She was right on this occasion, but I wasn’t about to own up to it, especially when I heard the other girls trying to suppress their chuckles.

  ‘You can’t prove it,’ I argued. ‘And I’ve been here all along!’

  My defiance sent Sister Elvira’s anger into overdrive. She actually gasped. ‘In the presence of God, you lie!’ she cried dramatically. ‘Child, you have much coming to you!’ She glowered at me. ‘When will you learn? Now stand over there, by that wall, and turn to face it. And wipe that stupid smile right off your face!’

  She then swept from the dormitory only to return moments later with a pair of building bricks, one in each hand. She transferred them to my hands after barking her instructions. I was to stand with my arms held above my head — I was on no account to bend them — and I was to stay like that, as punishment, for thirty minutes. ‘If the bricks drop, they hit your head,’ she explained, her tone waspish. ‘And that, Rosalba, will teach you a lesson!’

  Easy, I thought defiantly. I can do this. It will be easy. But it wasn’t. After five minutes, all the blood had drained from my arms, and after ten both my elbows began quivering. But I did it. I held out. I would not drop those bricks. Which made it a victory. But, of course, it really wasn’t that at all. It was just evidence that I was turning into someone I didn’t want to be. A bad girl. A rude girl. A girl who didn’t care. I was slipping back into the mindset of a cynical, bitter street kid. The only solution? To get out of there, and fast.

  *

  The weeks in the convent soon rolled into months, and, as a prisoner, each day felt like something I needed to tick off. It was either that or become like poor Francisca. I was desperate to see Maruja and find out what had happened. I thought of her all the time and couldn’t allow myself to believe that she’d abandoned me of her own free will. She just couldn’t have.

  But, once again, I would need to think carefully. The convent worked on a simple principle: it was locked at all times. (Locked to keep the nuns secure in their chosen vocation, and locked to keep the outside world away.) In the middle of all this, there were all of us — the orphans — responsibility for whom the nuns took very seriously. Charged with our care — which was actually a part of their vocation — they could not let us wander, or we might run away, and then their work to keep us safe would have been pointless.

  It would first be necessary, therefore, to make a thorough inspection of the place, to see where there might be a chink in the convent’s armour — some security failing that I could exploit. It was on one such inspection of the inner walls, having snuck out of the refectory, that I came upon Imelda, washing up. She was an old fat woman who lived at the convent, not a nun herself but just someone who had found refuge among them. She was disabled, with two walking sticks, and had to sit down a lot.

  ‘You want to escape, don’t you?’ she asked me, eyeing the dry roll I was holding and had been nibbling from.

  I blinked at her, shocked. ‘How do you know?’

&n
bsp; ‘San Antonio told me,’ she explained, as if the saints regularly engaged her in idle gossip. ‘I can pray to him, if you want,’ she added. ‘And the Virgin Mary, too. If I ask them, they’ll set you free. It will happen.’ She screwed her eyes up a little against the glare of the sun. ‘But there’s a condition. You must give me all your breakfasts for a week.’

  I was worried now. Imelda might tell the nuns what I was planning, and then they’d keep an even closer eye on me than they were doing already. I couldn’t have that. I screwed my own eyes up a little, to match hers, and, since she was sitting and I was standing, tried to look menacing.

  ‘I don’t need you,’ I told her. ‘I can do it on my own. And if you say one word to the nuns, I’ll cut your tongue out.’ I thrust the roll towards her. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘take this and pray for my escape. And if nothing happens, I will kill you in the morning.’

  It was never my intention to harm a hair on Imelda’s head, but it might at least stop the fat lady from singing.

  When I returned to the refectory, Sister Elvira pounced on me. ‘Rosalba!’ she hissed. ‘Where have you been? What are you doing walking away from breakfast?’

  ‘Please, Sister Elvira,’ I said, ‘I just felt so ashamed of all the bad things I’ve been doing that I decided not to eat breakfast and instead to fast, pray to the Virgin Mary and ask for forgiveness from God.’

  Sister Elvira glared at me, not buying my story for an instant. ‘Open your mouth!’ she commanded, then inspected it carefully, to see if there was any trace of bread in there.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, finally. ‘Well, I suppose this is good. All right. I will allow you to continue, child.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ I said politely, and continued on my way, silently thanking the Virgin Mary as I went.

  And perhaps Imelda’s prayers, in the end, did bear fruit. Because it was only the next day that I found exactly the thing I’d been looking for: a means to scale the high convent walls.

  It was another tree that was to be my salvation. Looking back, trees have played such an important role in my life. There was my special tree in the jungle, the tree in the garden of the brothel, the trees in San Antonio Park, the Santoses’ Mamoncillo and this time the tree was another mango. It was a big, spreading one that grew just outside the convent wall, and some of its boughs leaned over it, above the lavaderos. These deep concrete sinks had been built against the wall, and the branches of the mango tree provided shade above them, a boon for anyone out there washing clothes.

  And also a boon for me. If I could just climb high enough to reach the branches, I could then crawl across them, above the wall, and climb back down on the other side. At which point, I realised with mounting excitement, I would be free.

  I made a closer inspection around the lavaderos, albeit a sneaky one. There was hardly any time of day when the sinks weren’t in use, and this morning was no exception.

  But I didn’t need to look for long to see that there were some potential hand- and footholds available as well. There were a number of metal protrusions above a couple of the sinks, which had perhaps been put there in order to hang a washing line up. This would be it, I decided happily. This would be my escape route. All I had to do now was think of a way that I could arrange to have the area to myself.

  Once again I thought hard, and over a period of days a plan began to form in my mind. My first idea was to start a small fire in another part of the convent — perhaps the church, because I hated it so much. But I soon dismissed the idea. How would I feel if it got out of control and in my haste to escape I caused harm to my friends, maybe even somebody’s death? No, I decided, I would have to think of something safer. But before long I returned to my original idea. Why not just pretend there was a fire in the church? If I made enough fuss, then surely everyone would run there to see what was going on? Shouting fire alone would create enough panic, surely? And I was nimble and fast. I was confident that I could be up the tree and over the wall in seconds.

  I would do it, I decided, in the middle of the morning, while everyone was busy and preoccupied with work. It would be the last thing they expected. They would have to stop what they were doing, and, with luck, the whole place would be full of squawking headless chickens. Except me. I would be on my way to freedom.

  *

  ‘FIRE!!!’ Even to me, my voice sounded strange and desperate. ‘Fire!’ I bellowed. ‘Help! There’s a fire!!!!’

  It was around eleven-thirty in the morning, and I had made sure to look the part. I had upset my hair — which took little doing, for it was a mass of wild curls anyway — and adopted the expression I had been practising for days now — wide eyes, unfocused and terrified. I had also left nothing to chance. There was a girl in the convent who was something of an artist and would do face painting on the children for fun. She was very talented, and her speciality was to paint on realistic cuts and bruises. I had asked her to paint some bruises on my neck and shoulders so I could tell Maruja, when I found her, that the nuns beat me. It was a wicked lie, but I was just so terrified she’d send me straight back that I needed a convincing reason why she shouldn’t.

  My plan was at long last in action. I had bellowed my warning from the steps of the church and now ran, arms flailing, to the lavaderos. Shocked faces greeted me. ‘Fire!’ I screamed again. ‘The church is on fire! Oh, please come!!’

  Sopping clothes were thrown down, hands wiped hastily on aprons, and nuns and orphans alike began running towards the church. Watching them go — and still yelling, just to keep up the momentum — I was shocked at just how simple it had been.

  I hadn’t just chosen the church in a fit of pique, either. It was the place furthest away from where I now stood and was also out of sight of the branches of the mango.

  But I had no time to waste. I hauled myself up onto the lavaderos, then up the wall and, by stretching as far as I could, got my hand around a sturdy mango branch.

  Now I was in my natural territory it was only a matter of a few more seconds before I was high up in the tree, on top of the wall and on my way to liberation just below me.

  I allowed myself to breathe out. I could hear confused voices by the church, as, one by one, everyone wondered quite where the fire was. But I was safe. The dense foliage shielded me from view, and, besides, who’d even think to look up?

  I looked down, then, to see the best place to climb over, and realised it might be slightly trickier than I had thought. The top of the wall was studded aggressively with little shards of broken glass. Very God-like, I thought. I had purposely left my alpargatas (the thin sandals we were made to wear) in the dormitory, as I’d known they’d hinder my climbing, but how would my bare feet cope with such mean and treacherous terrain?

  I didn’t have very long to ponder. I had perhaps been optimistic about how long everyone would be duped before realising it was me who had raised the alarm and coming to find me and discipline me. And I had perhaps been naive about how likely the nuns would be to work out the reason why I’d done it. Had Imelda shopped me? I didn’t know. But I did know one thing. The nuns were running back and, yes, they were looking up. I had to get on the other side of this wall, fast.

  There was no time to edge along and down to other lower branches, no time to consider and plan a sensible route onto the street. There was nothing for it. I would simply have to jump from where I was — a drop of what looked like about twelve feet.

  So I jumped, landing hard on the stubbly grass below the tree, and felt a searing pain shoot up both legs. But there was very little time to sit yelping and rubbing them. Assuming they weren’t snapped, I had to move them, and quickly, because along the street I just knew that the convent gates were opening. I could hear the familiar sound of the big plank behind the convent door being lifted up.

  I staggered up just as the convent gate began to open. Desperate to get away before any of the nuns saw me, I plunged into the road, causing cars and trucks to swerve around me and their drivers to swear at
me — ‘Estúpido gamina!’ ‘Estúpido!’ ‘Estúpido!’ — before diving into some trees on the other side of the road and scrambling up them, panting hard.

  The trees were known locally as Matarratones, which translates literally as ‘rat killer’, because the berries are poisonous, but for me, a little monkey, they were a lifesaver. Within seconds I was once again looking down on the street. I saw a few nuns come out, including Sister Elvira, but as none of them had seen me climb into the bushes, it obviously never occurred to them that that’s where I might be. I would run away, surely? That’s what they’d be thinking. And even though the convent security man looked around for a bit, it never occurred to him to look up. After several minutes, he swore, slapped his leg and walked away. The job was done. I had escaped. I was free again. And one step closer to my beloved Maruja.

  29

  It took several hours to find my way back to Maruja. I stayed in the Matarratones for a good half an hour. I wanted to be sure I could get away without anybody seeing me, and I didn’t put it past the nuns to have posted a watch by the convent entrance. It seemed ridiculous: surely they would have been glad to get rid of me? But from the way I’d seen Sister Elvira powering up the pavement, I was pretty sure they didn’t see things like that. They’d been told to take care of me, and my escape meant they’d failed.

  Once I felt safe, I slipped back down to the street and made my way, bit by bit, across the city. My route was uncertain. I didn’t know this part of Cúcuta well, but, using lorries and buses to catch free rides when they were stopped at traffic lights, eventually, having zigzagged my way around several times, I saw places and landmarks I recognised.

  By the time I reached the district where I’d lived with the Santoses, my weary feet hurt as much as my legs. I was also nervous. Supposing one of the family was out and about and spotted me? I decided it would be safer to keep my distance a little and find someone else to get a message to Maruja.