The next day a five-year-old girl was brought in. They’d found her in the street with a man and woman who weren’t her parents; she was dirty and very tired. She was going to stay at the shelter until her real parents were found or some other legal decision was made. The girl wasn’t cagey and sullen like most of the children who passed through the home. She laughed at the TV until her belly hurt. She talked a lot, and she told them about the games of make-believe she’d played in the street. She talked about a boy-cat she’d met in the botanical gardens, for example, a boy who lived there among the other animals and who had yellow eyes and could see in the dark. She loved cats and wasn’t afraid of him: he was her friend. The girl also talked about her mother and said she’d lost her. She didn’t know where she lived, only that she got to her house by train. But she couldn’t remember which line it was, and when she described the station she mixed up details of the two largest ones in the city. Paula and her colleagues were sure her family would be found soon.
The following Friday, Paula was alone on duty at the shelter all night. Miguel hated it when that happened, but she’d promised it was only until they found a replacement—and she wasn’t lying, she didn’t like the night shift either. The only children at the shelter were the friendly little girl and an eight-year-old boy who spoke very little but was well behaved. Paula arrived at ten at night to relieve Andrés. The children were already asleep. Andrés, who’d had a hard time of it that week—he also worked at a night service that patrolled the streets in search of children—invited her to share a beer and smoke a joint. Paula accepted. They turned on the radio, too. Later she was told that it was very loud, that even the neighbors had heard it, but at the time it seemed like the volume was normal and she’d be able to hear the doorbell or the phone or the kids if they woke up. They spent a couple of hours drinking and laughing and chatting, that part she conceded. At the time she didn’t think she was doing anything wrong: she knew it was incorrect, but she felt like they needed to relax after a difficult week. They were two colleagues having a good time.
She would never forget the look on the supervisor’s face when she came into the kitchen, unplugged the radio with a yank, and yelled: “What the fuck are you doing? What the hell are you motherfuckers doing?” Especially that “you motherfuckers”; it had been so heartfelt, so sincere. Things happened quickly; they had to absorb the information half drunk and high, absolutely guilty. A neighbor had called the supervisor—he had her home number—because he heard a child crying in the shelter. The supervisor thought it was strange because she knew Paula was on duty, as she told the neighbor, but he’d insisted that there was a girl crying and the music was turned up very loud. The part about the music convinced the supervisor, who immediately thought of thieves, of something serious. When she arrived, there was in fact something serious happening, but not what she’d expected. The little girl had simply fallen from her bunk and was crying and wailing on the floor, her ankle broken. The other boy, the silent one, was watching her from his bed but hadn’t gone for help. And the music coming from the kitchen was very loud, as if someone was having a party. When she opened the door, she was surprised and angrier than she’d ever been when she saw Paula and Andrés with two empty beer bottles and a smoldering joint in the ashtray, laughing like idiots while a homeless girl who trusted them was screaming in pain from the floor where she’d been lying for at least half an hour.
When the legal proceedings began, the supervisor was merciless. She testified and recommended they both be fired. She was an experienced woman, respected; she got them thrown out almost immediately with no right to appeal. What were they going to say? That they were under stress? And the girl, who had lost her mother in the street, and the mute boy they’d found hidden in a train car—what about them? Were they having a good time? Miguel always told her he understood, that they’d been excessive, they’d been exploiting her; he went with her to the hearings and never judged her aloud. But she knew what he was thinking, because it was the only thing anyone could have thought: she deserved to be fired. She deserved contempt. She had acted irresponsibly, like a cynic, like a brute.
The depression came after she was fired. Unable to get out of bed, unable to sleep or eat or bathe, she cried and cried. A typical depression that had gone too far only once, when she’d mixed pills with alcohol and slept for almost two days straight. But even the psychiatrist recognized that the episode didn’t qualify as a suicide attempt. He didn’t even suggest admitting her. He enlisted Miguel’s help, asked him to keep an eye on when and how much she drank, at least for a while. Miguel did it reluctantly, as if it were a difficult, demanding task. And for him it was, thought Paula. But he was exaggerating; the depression had been intense, but normal. Now she was over it. And he treated her like the crazy woman she had never been, for a different reason: because he’d never forgiven her for abandoning that little girl. He’d never been able to get that image out of his mind: the sobbing in the night, the broken ankle. Or the image of Paula laughing, her mouth reeking of beer. That was why he no longer desired her. Because he’d seen a side of her that was too dark. He didn’t want to have sex with her, he didn’t want to have children with her, he didn’t know what she was capable of. Paula had gone from being a saint—the social worker who specialized in at-risk children, so maternal and selfless—to being a sadistic and cruel public employee who neglected the children while she listened to cumbia and got drunk; she’d become the evil directress of a nightmare orphanage.
Fine: what they’d once had was over, then. But she could still do something. She could save the chained-up boy. She was going to save him.
—
Miguel didn’t come back that night. The boy didn’t show himself, not even his chain. Paula sat on the terrace looking down at the flagstones. From there she heard her husband leave a message on the machine saying that he was at his mother’s house, would she please call him, they had to talk, but he needed a few days before he could come back. Fine, whatever, thought Paula. It was hot. Elly stayed with her all night long; they slept curled up together on some blankets until the burning morning sun woke them up. Elly wanted water for breakfast, as always, and Paula turned on the tap so she could drink from it; like all cats she loved fresh, running water. Paula almost started crying as she watched her cat, so beautiful, black with her little white feet, sticking out her rough tongue. She loved her more than she loved Miguel, she was sure.
The boy wasn’t in the yard, but Paula heard the neighbor’s door slam; she ran across the terrace and watched the man, her neighbor, head off toward the avenue. Was he the boy’s father? Or had he enslaved the child?…She didn’t want to think about it too much. She made a demented decision: she would go into the house. She could jump from the terrace into the courtyard. She’d been studying it all night. She’d have to be smart, like a cat: jump onto the dividing wall, and from there onto an old container she could see in the yard—a water heater? something like that, a metal cylinder—and she’d be in. She could call the police from the house once she found the boy.