Chapter 3

They finally chose one of the male orderlies to take me out for a meal to get me through the initial fright of being out as a woman. I think that I must have done well as I was looked at with a few admiring eyes and the waiter pulled out my chair and fussed around me as if I was royalty.

The thing that did surprise me was that it had been over five months since my foolish rush across the road and that I was now in Bogota. I had lost the last part of 2020 and some of 2021. I had an enjoyable meal with my escort and he even held my hand in the taxi back to the hospital annex where I was now living. That was the first of many trips out. I went to the cinema, the theatre and for meals with some of the nurses and a few of the men. I learned to be natural but not too bright, as befitting someone who had been given an experimental treatment for arrested development. I also became Julieta Elena Clavijo in my own mind. Finally, the time came when I was deemed ready to face the family again and the date of my return to Barranquilla was the date of my new twenty-first birthday.

My bags were packed and I was taken to the airport. The deal was that I would arrive in Barranquilla as if I had come home, via Bogota. It seemed straightforward and it was. When I emerged from the skybridge I was enveloped by my brother and his wife, as well as my father. My mother seemed unsure of herself so I said “Hello, Mummy” and hugged her. She finally broke down and acted as if I was her daughter, something that she did not have to act at after a few days. She accepted me as a reincarnation of her lost one and we bonded as if I truly was. At the house I had a birthday party where I got to open presents and a lot of it was expensive jewellery. I got to kiss my Daddy on the cheek several times.

So I settled into my new life in my new home. Did I say home? It was an estate of sizable proportions with servants and gardeners and security guys around the clock. We lived well here and I had to stop myself eating too much or else I would be getting fat. I did arrange with a couple of the security guys to go with them on exercise jogs around the perimeter and then around the locality. After all my time in bed I felt a need to regain some of my fitness and that did start coming back to me.

My mother and I started to be seen around the city, especially in the high end clothing stores, and I allowed my new knowledge to direct my choices and to appreciate just how much fun it is to shop when you don’t have to ask the price. Sometime I would join my father on business trips and was slowly learning about the breadth of his dealings. He had been right when he said my time as a thief would be helpful as I warned him about signals that a few of those he dealt with were showing, a couple of times he held off long enough for the faults in the deal to appear.

Where I was a real help was not when he was dealing with his opposition or with new contacts; no, it was when he met up with old friends who had known me before I ‘went away’. These guys had been able to say anything in front of ‘Crazy Julieta’ and did so again when my father left the room. This allowed me to hear things that they really should not have said and, by the end of that year a few of them had become staunch railway supporters.

I applied for and was given a new passport and my father said that I was to accompany him to America to see a couple of his arms suppliers. Up to now I had been talking and thinking in Spanish for some years and picked up English language newspapers to lift my comprehension back to a good level. I realised that I had only spoken about my parents in Oakland to the kind Doctor and everyone else thought that I was a local street urchin. I let my father know that I spoke American before we left and we decided to keep that between us, still working with an interpreter while we were there. It did help out a few times when I was left in the room while my father went outside to take a call and it allowed us to avoid a few ‘sticky’ situations.

One of the things that became clear to me was that my brother Eduardo was not interested in the business at all; he was just interested in living the high life with his trophy wife, Isabella. She came to visit me one day, a most unusual occurrence, and I made time to speak with her. She wanted me to help her with the organisation of her part of the next Carnival of Barranquilla. This was to be held in the next February and, as she told me about it, appeared to be a fantastic affair. I had stayed away for the one I had been in the city for as a very large police contingent that was there to keep the visitors safe meant the pickings would have been lean.

As she explained it, I became more interested. The first part of the Carnival had already happened; the Carnival Queen had been picked. I was amazed as she told me that the Queen was always from one of the twenty or so wealthy families in the city; mainly because she had to be a very good dancer across a range of genres, but also because the Queen had to provide her own costume and these had become so complicated and lavish that only the very rich could afford it.

The Carnival started on a Friday evening with a simple night parade of coloured lanterns and candles as well as a bit of dancing. The Saturday was called the Battle of The Flowers, something that went back to a time when two opposing districts tried to outdo each other with their displays. These days it was a big parade down the Via 40 with heavily decorated floats, loud amplified music and lots of dancers. It was followed by lots of parties.

Sunday was far more traditional with unamplified music and dancers, lots of dancers. She told me that more than three hundred dancing groups took part in this parade, also along the Via 40. Monday was called the Great Fantasy Parade and was an almighty free for all with a lot of diverse groups walking and dancing. The odd day was Shrove Tuesday, when the ‘body’ of Joselito Carnaval was ‘buried’ until next year. This allowed the Carnival to rest before being reborn. One aspect of the day was that there was a competition with each entrant showing their own interpretation of his passing. I gathered that in order to have enough crying ‘widows’ a lot of men took the opportunity to dress up. Actually, a thought crossed my mind that this would be a good opportunity to dispose of an unwanted body in full view.

Isabella wanted my help on two fronts. She said that she knew I couldn’t dance or sing but she did want me to help out with the Fantasy Parade because a friend of hers, from way back, had come out as a lesbian and, although she could not sully her own reputation being involved, she felt that I would have no qualms. The other thing was that she wanted me to see if Edmondo would chip in a bit of cash to help with her own float on the big parade Saturday. She did say that it would also be a help if he could host a couple of parties.

I did agree to meet her friend and that I would talk to my father about some involvement. I did know that the family had supported one of their own queens some years ago but Edmondo had not yet been involved. We did have a little while to get something going and I suggested to him that this may be a good time to create a little business that was above board. We certainly had the logistics already to import anything we desired so it would not take much to open a store. All we had to decide on was the product.

The other thing we had was property. One of the side-effects of helping disloyal compatriots shed their mortal coil was that we had a number of small to medium sized buildings around the place. Edmondo said that we should have a family meeting and one Saturday afternoon we gathered in the meeting room in the complex where he did a lot of meetings. The room was shielded from electronic emissions and was soundproof when we shut the doors.

Eduardo and Isabella, Edmondo, me and my mother and Julio, my fathers trusted money man sat around the big table. I had organised a pitcher of cool drink as well as notepads and pens, should anyone say something that needed to be really remembered. Edmondo thanked us all for being there and then dropped a bombshell that no-one else had any inkling of. “As of this moment” he said “I will no longer fund your lavish and pointless lifestyle, Eduardo. The money tap is turned off. You have two choices; the first is to come and work in the family business with me, the second is to find something else to earn you some money. I am sick of the parties, the flash cars, the yacht and the mansion that I have paid for. No more! I will, however, put aside a trust fund for my grand-child.”

Eduardo and Isabella went white as the words sunk in. Neither had done a stroke of work in their lives and they were unlikely to be suitable for any employment other than event planners, as long as someone else was paying. Eduardo spluttered and complained, saying that the family business disgusted him and that he had no wish to work with my father. Edmondo then dropped the other shoe.

“All right, I have an alternative scenario. I will put up the cash to start you in any business you wish. I will lease you one of the empty buildings we own and pay for fit-out. After that it is up to you. If you need money you can always sell one of your cars. I do have a suggestion for you, though. Isabella is well known for her style and grace. I think that she would be able to find enough customers among her friends if she was to import very high end fashions from Europe. There are the big stores that carry the big names but I am sure there are many small manufacturers she could deal with that no-one else will stock. We already have the import systems set up. If you do this, we can organise a few parties for the Carnival and, perhaps, put something towards a float. Julio will be able to see to the books for you.”

Eduardo and Isabella left us to discuss the situation and the Edmondo turned to me and asked “Julieta, you have a good brain on you, can grasp the logistics of what we do and the dirty side of staying ahead of the rest does not seem to bother you. With my son not interested in taking over when I am gone, would you be my successor. Should you marry it could be your husband that takes the mantle so you had better choose wisely.” My mother said that she was certain that a woman could not be the head of a criminal gang so my father then said “Well, we will have to go about seeing if we can turn it into a proper business.”

Marianne G © 2021