Trash - Andy Mulligan [16]
‘What’s the question?’ I said. They looked blank, so I said, ‘For your quiz? What question are you answering?’
Raphael said, ‘It’s about history, sir.’ Then he was talking in his own language, which I am ashamed to say I hardly speak, despite the length of time I’ve been out here. The second boy, Gardo, was shaking his head. Whatever they were looking at seemed to be a serious business.
Jun, meanwhile, took a sandwich in a hand that was so dirty it made me wince. The boy bites his nails right down to the quick, and his fingers remind me of skeletons. He promises and promises to come to class, but he so rarely does – he must have the strangest mix of ideas from the ones he’s attended! It’s become a joke between us. I always say, ‘So – you’ll be in school tomorrow?’ He assures me that he will, and I know he won’t. I will never forget the sight of him the first time he took a shower here. He had a towel wrapped round himself, and was dancing with the cold and the excitement of the spurting water – and maybe the amazement of seeing his own flesh looking clean. I gave him one of our school uniforms, but I never saw him wear it.
Sister Olivia fell in love with him too, and asked me about adoption. A twenty-two-year-old girl from England, wanting to adopt! I told her not to think of it. The machinery for adoption out here is slow, for one thing. In six years I’ve known one successful case for a foreigner. No government is going to give away its children, I understand that – and yet you look around at the thousands who cannot be taken care of and it breaks your heart. You look at the mountains of garbage, and the children on them, like so much more garbage, and it’s easy to think what you do in a school like this is of absolutely no consequence or good to anyone. More and more children. When I walk around the shanties, I see the babies, and I am always asked to hold them. And while we’re smiling and laughing, I am thinking, in the back of my mind: This tiny child – as soon as it can crawl, it will be crawling through trash.
The boys finished on the computer soon after I came back with the tray, and they turned and had a sandwich, and drank their lemonade. They were polite, as the children here always are, but they wanted to go.
I said, ‘So. School tomorrow? All three of you?’
Jun laughed. ‘Definitely!’
Raphael said, ‘I want to come, po. But I’m working.’ He pushed his hair back and smiled his dazzling smile.
I reminded him that he could work and also do a morning class. I reminded him that the school was set up for exactly that purpose: to let the children work while providing education. If they attend five days, they get two kilos of rice and a few bits and pieces extra, depending on what’s been donated – that is the incentive. Raphael looked at me, and I wondered if he was thinking that obvious thought: And what use is an education to me?
He said, ‘I will come, po.’
Then Jun took the plate and glasses into my kitchen. He insisted on washing them, and setting them in the drying rack. Then he gave me a hug and I slipped him fifty pesos.
The other boys were waiting for him outside, and they ran away together – I never saw them again. It was a few weeks later that I discovered they’d been lying. There had been no quiz, of course. They were finding out everything they could about Mr José Angelico, the man whose ID they’d found. They’d also been researching Gabriel Olondriz, who at that time was serving his twenty-third year in the city’s biggest prison.
Rat had been up to something too, which he will reveal in due course. They had all got what they wanted, and had deceived me beautifully.
2
This is Raphael again, and now it gets serious.
The police came that night, just like Gardo said they would, and searched our house. I was arrested.
Four van-loads came, and everyone in the block was ordered out. They had flashlights and batons, and they moved through fast while more and more people gathered, up from the other neighbourhoods. The