Trash (8 page)

I knew Jun – the little boy they called Rat. Jun would not call me Olivia – it was always ‘Sister’, and then it became ‘Mother’. I am stupidly soft-hearted – I will drip tears over a stray cat back in England. Little Jun had me wrapped round his finger in about two days, and I was forever giving him little bits of food, and little bits of money. I don’t know how else a boy like that survives.

We have a rest room in the school, where people can go when it all gets too much, and just lie down under a fan. We’ve got a small fridge in there too – and the housemothers use it as a base. Jun got into the habit of visiting me and trying to make things tidy, and I got into the habit of giving him things. So when he brought his two friends to see me, it was a nice surprise but I had no idea what I was getting involved in.

They asked if we could talk, and I assumed it was about what had happened the night before. Father Juilliard was resting, and I didn’t want to disturb him – he’d been up most of the night trying to find out where Raphael had been taken, and I think he was still badly shaken – the police had not been helpful. Then, of course, the child had simply come walking back to Behala, walking in as the sun rose. I wasn’t there, but I’d heard all about it – and I could see how badly he’d been beaten. His auntie had held him and held him, and wouldn’t let him go. The whole neighbourhood came out, apparently. Father Juilliard says the people here are like that. When one of their number is hurt, everyone feels the wound.

Now he smiled shyly at me, pulling back his hair. The bruising was terrible, and I remember wondering how an adult could possibly strike such a child. He saw me staring, and moved behind his friend. Gardo – the bald boy – put his hand very gently on his arm before turning back to me.

Jun said, ‘We don’t know what to do, Mother. We’ve got a big problem. You know Gardo, yes?’

Gardo sat down, looking at his knees. I could see that he had tried to dress up clean – he looked scrubbed and his T-shirt was fresh. He tried to smile, but he just looked nervous. I was jumping to the conclusion, of course, that he was about to ask for money – and I was bracing myself to refuse. One of Father Juilliard’s rules was that we did not give money away as gifts. The odd ten or twenty, yes – everyone did a little bit of that now and then. But I knew Gardo was building up to ask for a big sum. I was surprised, then – and a bit ashamed – when he said, ‘My grandfather’s in prison, ma’am, and I want to go and see him.’

I said, ‘I’m so sorry. Which prison?’

He told me the name, and as I knew nothing about the city’s prisons it didn’t mean much and I wondered why I’d asked the question.

‘Why is he in prison?’ I said.

Gardo looked away, and the bruised boy – Raphael – put his arm round his shoulders and said something in his own language. I realized I had touched on something personal, but I could hardly back-track now – and in any case, it was one of the logical questions.

‘They say he beat up someone,’ said Jun softly, ‘but it’s not true. It’s all corruption because there’s some men who want his house.’

Gardo, I saw, had started to cry. He wiped his eyes and said: ‘They’re trying to get him out of his house! They file a charge. They pay the police, the police arrest him. Now they’ve got his house.’

Gardo wiped tears away again. Raphael hugged him harder, and said something again – something reassuring, I assumed – in his own language.

Then he said to me: ‘Gardo needs to see him, Sister.’ The boy’s mouth was swollen, and his speech was awkward. ‘Can you help us get to the prison?’

I took a gulp of water, and Jun topped up my glass.

It was dawning on me that I had been right: this was going to be a request for money. They needed bus fares, or bribe money. I was surprised again, therefore, when Gardo said: ‘We need you to go with me, Sister. Please?’

‘Me?’

They all nodded.

‘You want me to go and see your grandfather?’ I said.

Gardo nodded.

‘How?’ I said. I was completely bewildered. ‘Why do I need to see him?’

‘We’ve got to get some information to him,’ said Gardo. ‘The police were asking questions about him – that’s why they beat my friend. Maybe they come for me next time!’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s a difficult situation, Mother,’ said Jun. I’d never seen him so grave. ‘The old man needs to know what is going on here. We need some information too, to help him. Or he loses the house.’

‘But your family, perhaps – your mother …’

Gardo shook his head. ‘No mother.’

‘Your grandfather must have sons,’ I said. ‘And there
must be visiting times – why can’t somebody just … visit? I’m not sure what good I can do, that’s the problem.’

Gardo said, ‘You don’t understand.’

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

‘The prisons here,’ said Jun. ‘A visit once a month. Mother, they’re going to lose their house – that’s everything here. You lose your house, you’ve got nothing. And you – you’re a social worker …’

Gardo said: ‘You take your passport. You sign your name. They let you inside.’

I was silent. At last we’d got to the bottom of it.

The boy said something I didn’t hear, and put his head in his hands. Jun put his hand on mine and said, ‘We ask you because it is so important and no one else can help.’

‘You’re the only foreigner we know,’ said Raphael. ‘And the prisons out here … they do what they want.’

‘You say you’re a social worker,’ said Jun. ‘You say you just want to see him for half an hour. They may keep you waiting, OK? They may say no at first. But in the end, if you just sit there … There’s a chance, yes?’

Gardo looked at me, and his eyes were still full of tears.

Jun said, ‘You’re the nicest, kindest mother we ever had here. He’s only asking because, without this, they maybe gonna lose the house.’

‘They beat me,’ said Raphael. ‘They think I got some papers, but I don’t have them.’

‘Please, Mother?’

*   *   *

That was how I found myself in a taxi heading for Colva Prison.

Vanity and stupidity, and the fact that three little boys could break my heart one minute and flatter me the next, all the time lying and lying. I took just Gardo with me, and the first thing we did was stop at a big store to get him some new clothes. He’d cleaned himself up, as I said, but his shorts and shirt were ingrained with so many months’ dirt they were stiff on his body.

The looks I got walking him into the boys’ clothing department were something I’ll never forget. And the time it took him to choose was also something I remember. I’d asked the taxi to wait, thinking,
Shorts and a shirt – five minutes of shopping
. Unfortunately it wasn’t like that. Gardo wanted to take his time, and he was the most intent, careful shopper I’d ever seen. He wanted jeans, and he wanted the most expensive kind. I could not pay western prices for something that I knew was probably made for peanuts in this very city, so I managed to talk him down to a cheaper pair. Then he wanted a long basketball shirt, which I thought was totally wrong for the impression we were hoping to create. I took him to a rack with formal shirts on it, and he turned his nose up at all of them. I was beginning to get flustered by now, so again we compromised. We chose a T-shirt, which he insisted must be too big. Then we chose a more formal shirt with a collar, to wear over the top.

He tried it all on, and we went to the checkout – or I thought we were heading that way, but suddenly I was in
the shoe section, and he was looking at trainers. Again, the prices stunned me, but I had to admit that a smartly dressed boy with bare feet – dirty bare feet – is not going to be convincing.

We chose a medium-priced pair, and when we got to the checkout I put it all on my credit card. The reward, of course, was that I had never seen a boy so happy in my life, and – I have to say – so handsome. He emerged from the changing room, and he was simply no longer a Behala dumpsite boy! He was taller, he was bursting with confidence and smiles … he was even walking differently. I could not resist kissing him, which made the shop assistants howl with laughter.

We got to the taxi. I gulped when I saw the meter. And on we went.

Father Juilliard.

I feel I ought to say that had I known what Olivia had agreed to do, I would have intervened and prevented it. I would have seen it for the scam that it was. The problem is, you never see them coming, and six years here in Behala have taught me that some of our children are the best liars in the world. I guess it is survival. It’s awful to say it, but … trust. You just shouldn’t put yourself in a position where trust could be betrayed.

I am the worst, though. While they were working on Olivia, they had very special plans for me.

Raphael and Gardo were smart. But little Jun … Rat. What he did took my breath away.

Things were about to get very dangerous indeed.

Olivia. And yes, I know. It was stupid.

The taxi took me into a part of the city that was more squalid than I’d ever seen. You may say that’s strange, coming from someone who works in Behala, but it’s not. Behala is a huge, monstrous, filthy, steaming rubbish dump and you cannot believe human beings are allowed to work there, let alone live there. Rubbish and shacks – it’s extreme, it’s horrible and I will never forget the stink.

Behala also makes you want to weep, because it looks so like an awful punishment that will never end – and if you have any imagination, you can see the child and what he is doomed to do for the rest of his life. When you see the old man, too weak to work, propped in a chair outside his shack, you think,
That is Raphael in forty years. What could possibly change?
These children are doomed to breathe the stink all day, all night, sifting the effluent of the city. Rats
and children, children and rats, and you sometimes think they have pretty much the same life.

Colva, however, was something else again.

We drove on cracked roads. The pavements were broken, and it looked as if there’d recently been an earthquake. We drove between low-rise flats, strewn with washing and electricity cables. There were people everywhere, mainly sitting as if they had nothing ever to do. The taxi’s air-con wasn’t working, and it was getting hotter and hotter. This was the dry season, but there was talk of a freak typhoon coming in from the sea. There was real heat in the breeze.

We turned, and on our right was a high concrete wall. Gardo said, ‘Prison,’ and pointed, but you did not need to be told. There were coils of barbed wire at the top, some of it straggling down where it had come loose from its moorings. There were guard towers every fifty paces, open to the sun and rain. We turned right and followed the next wall. On the left were huts of bamboo and straw, and more people – many of them tiny children. I always notice the tiny children, sitting in the dirt, playing with stones and sticks. I learned later that many of the families in these shacks had relatives as inmates on the other side of the wall. They had to live there and get food in, or the prisoner would starve.

We came round to the entrance and I paid off the taxi. Then I walked up to the guardhouse. It was a concrete box with a large window. Several guards sat inside. Beside it
was a red and white barrier to stop vehicles, and a man with a machine gun. I showed my passport and delivered the speech I had prepared.

They made a phone call. I noticed that Gardo was holding my hand, and I too was scared. We were kept waiting for no more than two minutes, and another officer came to the window and asked me to repeat what it was I wanted. I told the story twice because another person arrived, and then my passport was taken away. I was given a register to sign, and a visitor badge. Gardo got one too. Then we were led round the barrier and across a yard.

To walk into a prison is a very frightening thing, because you cannot help but think,
What if something goes wrong and they won’t let me out?
I was also thinking about that line – the line there has to be, and you have to cross – that separates freedom from complete incarceration. What door would it be that would swing open and shut again behind us?

We were taken past an office, and to what looked like a large waiting room. There were benches all the way round it, and we were invited to sit. Seconds later, a guard came to escort us out of the waiting room, down a corridor. At the end of the corridor was an iron gate made of bars. It was unlocked for us, and we all walked through, and it closed with that dreadful, clanging, ringing slam of metal on metal. We were shown to a smaller waiting room and asked to sit. We sat there for nearly an hour.

You don’t get anywhere in this country by showing
impatience – I learned that very quickly here. It is so much better to wait, and smile, and nod. Gardo said almost nothing. I could see his lips moving, as if he was saying a prayer.

Out of the blue, he said to me, ‘What is
in memoriam
?’

I said, ‘I think it’s Latin. When somebody dies, you write that and it means, “in memory of”.’ I asked him why he wanted to know.

He smiled at me and said, ‘Video game.’ Then he started muttering again, as if he was reciting the same long prayer.

Eventually the door opened and a man in a short-sleeved shirt came in. He had a very warm smile, and he shook my hand and introduced himself as Mr Oliva. I told him my name was Olivia, and it seemed to break the ice instantly. He assured me that Mr Oliva would help Miss Olivia if he possibly could. He had a photocopy of my passport in his hand, and he sat opposite me.

He was quietly spoken and so polite, and apologized for keeping me waiting.

‘I’m the social welfare officer,’ he said. ‘The governor is busy with some problems at the moment, or he would see you himself – we always try to accommodate these requests. The inmate you wish to see, he does get these requests quite often. You’ve given us his number, but it’s not the right number. Are you quite sure it’s Mr Olondriz that you want to see?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘Yes, please, sir,’ said Gardo. ‘Gabriel Olondriz.’

‘Like I say, he does get visitors and is always keen to see them. You know he’s a very sick man?’