by Linda Barnes
She wasn’t the same person. Nobody knew her story, so she could make it up as she went along. Lies sprang easily to her lips: She was an orphan; she’d grown up in Argentina. For a while it had been scary, and now it might be okay, because she had a skill, a valuable skill. She was a drummer.
She’d been too tired to think at first, too tired and scared even to sleep. She’d hung out in the square, but whenever she saw anyone—and the square was a lively place—she’d slip into the alley between the church and the bicycle repair shop. It turned out the church had a small bathroom, and the discovery filled her with delight because the church was almost always open. The bathroom wasn’t even filthy, just really old with yellowy tile and a warped board floor. The single tiny window was set too high for any pervert to peer through, the toilet flushed reassuringly, and the sink filled with rusty water if you waited long enough. There was no lock on the door, so she’d shoved a heavy bench in front of it, moving it back when she was done. She was careful.
She’d slept most of the first night in the bathroom of the church. The next morning, she’d gone outside to look around, and it had been like what that stupid teacher was always saying: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Today was nothing like yesterday, or any other day.
She’d sat on benches and stoops, listening to people talk, watching the buses dump their human cargo in the square, refill, and leave, pleased by the sheer number of people who traveled anonymously through the square. She was a speck of sand on a beach, unremarkable, unnoticed. A cow wandered the streets, tying up traffic. Too hungry to resist, she’d spent over a tenth of her fortune on gallina criolla, a small roasted hen, the specialty of one of the small shops that ringed the square, sort of like a Store 24, and sort of like a butcher shop. It reminded her of stores in Boston’s Chinatown, because the chickens and ducks dangled by their necks from a kind of awning in front.
She’d joined a soccer game. The kids didn’t ask questions as long as you made a real effort to score. She’d slept behind a cantina, wrapped in her blue ruana, hidden behind stacks of concrete blocks.
The second morning, she’d heard the band rehearsing in the square, a kids’ band. They traveled other places, and begged and passed the hat, but the square was their home base. The way they played they couldn’t earn much. Right off, she’d known that the trumpet was good, the guitar was bad, and the drummer was terrible. The guy on the accordion was amazing, good enough to front any band, but really ugly.
She’d started by hanging out, listening, not dancing like almost everybody else. The dances were amazing, with intricate footsteps. The music wasn’t salsa, that was for sure. She thought people called it cumbia. The melodies were different than the stuff she usually played, but the basic rhythm was a simple four/four beat. There were waltz beats, too, but those were called pasillo. After a while, she’d offered to pass the hat, which required both selflessness and courage; selflessness because she had to give the money to the band, courage because she had to keep other kids from stealing the pesos that made it into the hat. Then she’d found the top of a garbage can, round like a cymbal, and she’d started tapping, just tapping with her fingers. The accordion had noticed right away, and why wouldn’t he? They really needed somebody to keep the guitar steady, and their drummer wasn’t up to it.
The drummer and his pals were doing their best to drive her off. Last night, they’d waited for her in the dark, threatening her and laughing, telling her about the bad things that happened to girls on the streets. She hadn’t even joined the raggedy band yet, but the drummer could tell which way the wind was blowing. When the kid who played accordion tossed her some pesos from the hat last night, it was a declaration of war. The gift hadn’t even been enough to buy the gallina. She’d had to steal it. And now the drummer’s friends were eating it.
Those few carelessly thrown coins had practically burned the palm of her hand. The two-hundred-peso coin was the same size as a quarter. Quarters could be slotted into a pay phone and used to call home. Even if she didn’t have enough change, there had to be some kind of system, like collect calls in the States. But she hadn’t seen a pay phone. Ana and Jorge could be watching the pay phones. More than that, if she called home, someone would come, right away, right now. Carlotta would come, for sure, and that made her feel happy at first, safe and warm, but it also meant she wouldn’t be able to stay in Colombia. She wouldn’t be able to find her father.
Ana and Jorge had told her so many lies, but what if that part were true? What if her father really had been wounded? What if he were dying, waiting for her to come to him, to meet him before he slipped away? If she called home, she’d never get the chance to find him.
In one direction was the humedal, the marshland near the river. No shops there. She’d heard there was a military base in another direction. One of the nasty boys had advised her to go there and earn money like girls were supposed to earn it, pulling down her pants for the soldiers. She’d steal the money to phone home before she had to do stuff like that. She’d go to the American Embassy. She knew there was an American Embassy in Bogota. But Engativa didn’t look like Bogota. Maybe the bus had traveled farther than she thought. She’d been asleep. It was possible.
As soon as she entered the shop three blocks northwest of the square, the clerk started following her. When she didn’t immediately choose something to buy, he told her to get lost. It was like he could smell her hunger, see inside her empty pockets.
She’d thought ten thousand pesos would last, but it wasn’t very much money at all. The gallina cost more than a thousand pesos all by itself. How long could you go without eating? She trudged back to the square, heading for her place of refuge, the tiny bathroom in the rear alcove of the church. She didn’t need the toilet so much as she needed the privacy. She needed to count her small cache of pesos, decide whether she could pay for food or whether she’d have to go farther afield. She was feeling lightheaded and woozy, like she might be getting sick. Maybe it was hunger, but maybe it was the water from the fountain, or the strawberries she’d picked early in the morning, real strawberries growing wild on the other side of the river.
One thing about her foray into the shop, she was getting some idea of what stuff cost, of what was available. There wasn’t any packaged mac and cheese. Rice came in big sacks, not boxes. There were fruits she’d never seen before. Dammit, her mouth was watering again, and really she shouldn’t spend a single peso on food. She needed an instrument, some kind of drum. No way would they let her join the band if all she had to offer was a garbage can cover. What she wouldn’t give for her trap-set now, for the high-hat cymbal, and the deep bass drum.
Once she’d blocked the bathroom door with the bench, she found she needed the toilet after all. She had some kind of wicked diarrhea, a sudden, urgent need to void, and her stomach hurt really, really bad. She counted her pesos, only a thousand left. A thousand was nothing; if Engativa had a McDonald’s it wouldn’t buy a single Big Mac. She’d have to try the church. Maybe there were nuns. Nuns wouldn’t molest you or anything. Maybe they had a bed where she could sleep, with a warm, soft blanket. Maybe there were musical instruments for the congregation, a tambourine, like in a Salvation Army band.
She ran water into the sink, dipped her hand into the rusty stream, patted water on her face and neck. There was no mirror in the bathroom and she was glad. She must look like hell.
The knock on the door was sharp and staccato, a drumbeat.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” She’d gotten so used to this being her own place that the knock startled her, but there had to be other kids who used this place. The cafes sure didn’t want the kids using the bathrooms. The boys just peed in the river; no way would she drink from the river.
Maybe it was one of the priests, and he’d yell at her. But maybe it was a nun, a motherly smiling nun who’d ask her to share dinner with the sisters, give her some soup to settle her stomach. When she shoved the bench out of the way, the door burst op
en and the boys who’d stolen her dinner were inside in a flash.
“No,” she yelled. She threw the tin bucket in the corner at the biggest one, and she kept screaming. Always make noise. Keep screaming. It was like she could hear Carlotta’s voice in her ear. Scream and scream until someone comes. Never stop screaming.
“Fifty thousand pesos,” one of them shouted.
The sum confused her.
“Here! We got her,” the other yelled. “We got her over here!”
Ana smiled tremulously as she walked in the door.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “your father and I have been so worried.”
The funny thing was, Paolina thought, even as she kept on screaming, Ana said it as though she really meant it. The woman’s face was haggard, her eyes red. No way anyone would buy Ana as a kidnapper instead of a genuine mom.
She kept screaming until Jorge twisted her arm so hard that all she could do was gasp in pain.
“Shut up or I’ll break it,” he murmured lovingly in her ear.
CHAPTER 22
Thirsty. The first time I woke, or maybe the third, I had a long chat with my pillow. I wanted water, and while the pillow had control of all the spigots, it wasn’t giving the stuff away. I didn’t need water anyway, I confided; I had roots, long shiny green roots that burrowed deep into the earth. I could wait for rain. The pillow smiled and agreed so I slept some more, dreaming of thunderclouds scudding across ocean skies. When my Mojave-dry mouth woke me again, maybe for the fourth time, maybe the sixth, I licked my parched lips and tried to move my right hand to shove the prickly hair off my forehead. Pain shot like electric current across my shoulders and pried my eyes wide. Instead of the interior of my room at the Hotel del Parque, with its soft companionable pillow and the window that peered at the mountains, there was fluttery uneven light and a blur of lumpy wall. No pillow at all.
I probed the area and myself with tentative feelers, senses on full alert. My hands, bound at the wrist, were secured behind my back; no wonder my shoulders felt stretched and achy. I closed my eyes, reopened them. Not a dream. Definitely, not entirely a dream. And since it was more than a dream, I was bound hand and foot, lying in some sort of hammock suspended from uneven wooden poles. Movement made the hammock swing and my stomach lurch in woozy imitation. I was hungry as well as thirsty. Hungry and thirsty and ill. Drugged and slow and stupid, like a fish flopping on a wooden dock, trying to breathe out of water.
I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself I had to remember. I needed to recall what had come before, or how could I cope with this strange and unprecedented place? I’d been in a hotel room in Bogota. No, in a bar, the Zona Rosa, with a fat man. In a cab, flying down the side of a dark mountain. Each scene was like a puzzle piece. No narrative line connected one to the other. Then the bright shifting chunks started lining up in order, one image dissolving into the next in a montage of error and regret.
DAS. The Colombian secret police. Why the hell would DAS want to keep me from finding Paolina? I’d been forced into the black Jeep. I recalled the terrified eyes of Santos, the cabbie. Would he defy the secret police and go to the embassy? What were the chances that anyone knew I was here? Wherever here was.
A bird called out, a strange and piteous cry. I wasn’t gagged; I could cry out as well. I licked my dry lips and hesitated. They’d left me ungagged, therefore no one would come when I called, or possibly someone would come, but not anyone I wanted to see. I tried to lift my feet. My ankles were loosely tied, a hobble more than a restraint. If I swung the hammock vigorously, would I tumble out? If I tumbled out, how far would I fall?
The rough ceiling seemed to be made of sticks, with a kind of cross at the center surrounded by concentric circles of wooden poles that looked almost like bamboo. The hammock was made of rope and loosely woven cloth. What light there was entered through the roof, filtered through the poles. I was still wearing my jeans and T-shirt, but the blue ruana was gone. My shoulders felt bruised, my mouth tasted like copper, and I badly needed a drink.
With a convulsive jerk, I swung my legs over the side of the hammock and tried to sit up at the same time. I still felt like that fish on the dock, trying to breathe in viscous air, but my muscles obeyed, and I attained an awkward, upright position. My stomach lurched again, and I wondered what time it was, what day it was, as I glanced into the dark corners of what appeared to be a primitive hut. My knuckles were sore. I rubbed them gently against each other behind my back, wondering whether I’d skinned them punching somebody, whether I’d injured any cops in the struggle. Maybe I’d be charged with resisting arrest. Maybe DAS didn’t need to declare any charges.
DAS, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, Colombia’s intelligence agency, is often referred to as Colombia’s FBI, and frequently linked to human rights violations. There’s a DAS agency in every big city, each operating under slightly different rules. DAS is also Colombia’s Interpol connection, the go-to people for gun running, drug smuggling, art forgery, for any international agency needing a window into Colombia.
The man/woman team who’d gone over me with a fine-tooth comb at the Miami airport could have been DEA. DEA could have sicced DAS onto me. DAS, always interested in drugs, would be interested in Roldan. Maybe we could cooperate; I’d trade the man for Paolina any day.
Shit. It was possible I’d triggered DAS myself. Base Dieciocho. What the hell was Base Eighteen? I’d tried the number again from the hotel room. DAS could have a trace on every phone in Colombia for all I knew.
Stop theorizing before the facts, before breakfast, before dinner, I ordered myself sternly. I opened my mouth; I had only to call to get something to drink, but pride kept me from shouting. Stubbornness, too. Instead, I swung the hammock one way, my feet the other, and tumbled onto a dirt floor with a thud. My nose was filled with dust. Was this what the U.S. consulate meant by a substandard prison? What the hell was DAS thinking? No self-respecting FBI station kept prisoners in dirt-floored huts.
I waited, but the slam of my weight hitting the floor must have made less of a ruckus than I imagined. Maybe the agents were all busy torturing other prisoners. No one came.
The room was round as a doughnut. Empty hammocks hung from the rafters like drooping vines. I wasn’t sure I’d dignify the overhead sticks with the term “rafters.” The structure looked homemade, crafted out of tree branches and daubed mud, like a ramshackle hunting camp. I couldn’t picture this building in Bogota, and it suddenly occurred to me that this was not the first place in which I’d woken. Hadn’t there been a previous moment of consciousness, walking supported between two hulking men? Hadn’t there been a bumpy airstrip, a small skittery plane? I screwed my eyes shut again and felt nausea rise in my throat. Nothing to come up, I thought, and I seemed to remember that I’d been sick before. Where?
I crouched for a while, reestablishing equilibrium, then stood, hesitantly at first. The rope that bound my ankles had six inches of play, allowing an awkward hobbling gait, like a prisoner shuffling from bus transport to prison yard. My arms, secured behind my back, were useless for balance, but my stomach eventually stopped rolling, and I could move in a limited fashion. I could explore the hut, locate a window, a door, possibly find something to use as a weapon or a tool. I’d stay close to the lumpy walls until my balance adjusted to bound hands and feet. Hell, at least the floor was pretty soft. Volleyball players fall on harder floors every day. If I fell, I’d just get up. Right. I halted the pep talk and started to move in a slow circular pattern.
I’d been lucky. Much of the floor was stone, not dirt. If I’d tumbled onto one of the flat hard stones that covered the area nearer the walls, I could have broken an arm or worse. Thoughtful of my captors to place my hammock over dirt.
The noise was a cross between a cough and a snuffle, human, not animal. All my senses, which I’d thought were operating at maximum alert, ramped up a notch. My heartbeat increased, my hearing sharpened, and I froze against the wall, turning my head cautiously si
de to side. I couldn’t see anyone, and the noise had stopped. It wasn’t repeated. Again, I could have called out, but I didn’t want the other person, the other thing, to be able to site on my response. A shudder rippled across my aching shoulders.
One of the hammocks hung distinctly lower than the rest. I should have noticed it before, even in the dim, flickering light. I tried for a silent approach, but the rope between my ankles brushed against stones and earth.
At first I thought he was dead: I’ve never known anyone to sleep that quietly, breathe that softly, certainly not a full-grown hefty man. He slept like the dead. My thudding exit from the hammock hadn’t disturbed him; my shackled approach failed to alert him.
He was in his late twenties, possibly thirty. Hard to tell because his narrow face was filthy, his beard scruffy, his angular features pinched with pain. The area around one eye was bruised and a deep scratch scored the bridge of his nose. His mouth was partially open, and his chest expanded gently as he breathed. He wore the remnants of muddy, bloodstained military fatigues.
His right arm, below the elbow, was bandaged in clean white cloth. His left pantleg was ripped off high at the thigh, the leg roughly splinted and wrapped in strips of the same cloth. The bandages seemed recent. They were clean, for one thing. No blood had seeped through the immaculate cloth. A sharp smell hovered, not antiseptic, but green, leafy, a forest smell. I wondered if it came from the loosely thatched roof.
Eighteen inches on the other side of the wounded man’s hammock stood two earthenware vessels. Terra cotta in color, they looked as old as some of the pottery I’d seen at the Gold Museum. I bent to look inside, hoping for water, wondering how I’d drink with my hands behind my back even if the thing were filled to the brim. I backed off immediately. The largest was obviously a chamber pot; it begged no further investigation. The smaller held a colorless liquid. I sniffed cautiously, wondering if I could manipulate it between my chin and my chest. No need. I’d found the reason for the man’s deep slumber. The smell was heady, laced with some sort of opiate. Not at all tempting as drinking water.
