Chapter 2

He checked my chart and signed it before he left, leaving me to ponder my fate. Well, someone had been through my knapsack! As I continued to think, I realised that I was unlikely to be in a prison hospital because this countries’ police would have just finished me off with a brick to the head before announcing that I had been dead on arrival; and then splitting my haul and my savings between them. This made it more curious but left the question of why was I here?

There wasn’t much that I could do about things so just accepted the intravenous goodies, the morphine and the indignity of any waste I produced being removed through tubes. I spent a long while wondering about his statement about my penis being repaired or removed. If I was castrated but kept it I would be a total nothing. However, if I lost both my nuts and my cock, what would I be then? It never crossed my mind that I could live as a girl; that would be too much to expect. I did not have the body or the mind for that and, anyway, to go along that path was so expensive I realised that my final path may just be as a nothing but also as an exposed thief.

On the fourth day of my being back in the world I was starting to get visits from a physio who got me to move my limbs around and work on my breathing. I was sat up a bit more in bed when the door opened and a man came in. I had never seen him before and I would have remembered him if I had. He was tall, elegantly dressed and had an air of wealth and responsibility that you could never miss. He told me not to speak until he was finished with what he wanted to say and then began with his speech, that’s what it sounded like.

“Aiden Gomez, you sir, are a vagabond, thief and hero. Someone filmed your actions in saving my grandson from being trampled to death by the riot police and it has gone viral. Your actions have shown them up to be the bullies they are and the protest has gained ground because of it. At the moment, all details about you are being kept quiet despite the clamour to show you to your adoring followers. All that has been released has been that you were severely injured and now recovering in a private clinic. That part is true. My name is Edmondo Gabriel Clavijo and I am a very wealthy man. A wealthy man who is very grateful to you for saving my grandson.”

“Luckily, it was one of my men who was with my son who claimed you and your belongings after the police had moved on. Otherwise, you may have been already buried in a paupers’ grave, you were so close to death from a punctured lung. He made arrangements to bring you here and contacted me. I went through your knapsack and came to the understanding that you are one of the dregs of society who live by your wits in this city. I do not consider that a bad thing as a man has to live by any means he can.”

“Your gun has been disposed of. It would not have done you any good if you had resorted to it. I can tell that you have never used it because it has never been properly cleaned and the action had frozen solid. Your takings from that day have been returned to their rightful owners, less any cash, as being found in the street. Now, I can make sure that you can move again, as expected of a grateful man; but the doctor tells me that the testicular cancer will kill you inside a year.” I absorbed all this information with terror.

“I can, however, offer you another way out, one which will ensure that you live but it will not be as you expected to live. My youngest daughter was kidnapped a couple of years ago and I refused to pay the exorbitant ransom they wanted. I made a lower offer which they accepted but only returned her head. This was quietly buried in the garden and my wife has never forgiven me. By an odd co-incidence, you look a little like her as she was not what you would call exceedingly beautiful. We never declared her missing so all her paperwork is current. She was born just a month after you, here in the city, just as you were.”

“My offer to you, Aiden, is to pay all the costs in doing the operations that would allow you to live. Of course, they would also turn you into a reasonable facsimile of my daughter and you would be expected to come and live in my house, as Julieta Elena Clavijo. I can assure you that your previous life as a thief will come in handy, considering my own business. Don’t say anything now, I will be back in a couple of days and I will need an answer. The doctor tells me that we only have another week before he needs to operate.”

I just nodded and he left the room. Later in the day the doctor was back. He said “Aiden, I know that Edmondo will be back for your answer but I would like some idea of what you will do. There are preparations to be made because if you accept his offer, we need to bring in surgeons that are more expert. Now, I know you have questions so ask away.”

My first question was if he was certain that I would die soon and he told me that a year might be optimistic. “In any case” he said “once you fall ill down under the railway bridges, there is a very short lifespan before your compatriots see an opportunity and take everything before they drop you into the harbour.” My next question was if the transformation would be successful and if I could really pass as the daughter.

“That one is an easy question to answer. With the people we can bring in, not even a doctor could tell you are not the daughter without taking a DNA test. The bloods I took show that you share the same blood group and, more importantly, showed that you have not taken drugs. That is important as it was drugs that caused Julieta to be the way she was. She was not the one to take them; it was her mother who tried them while she was expecting and poor Julieta was born a little simple. Edmondo has put out the story that she has been sent to a special school overseas to get her to act more like her age. If you can’t answer any questions it will just be taken that you simply cannot remember.”

I wanted to see a photo so he pulled one up on his phone, taken not long before she was taken. It looked like one of my sisters and I could see why the idea was hatched. He then went on to say that once I had all the operations I would be several months getting better, as well as getting intensive training in acting the part. I then asked about the family business.

“Ah!” he said. “That one is difficult. I think the only one who really knows is Edmondo. He was doing a little drug running at the time that Julieta was born but stopped when he saw the effects it had on her. I know that he is heavily into smuggling and a bit of gun running. He has a pretty big organisation; the guy who got you here is a bodyguard for his son and family. The daughter-in-law is a very pretty girl but a little vapid. Her best part is being from one of the other big families in the city.”

My last question was whether the kidnap gang would know about the dramatic return from the dead and come back for another try. “If they could know that” he said “they would have tried it themselves. I don’t think that anyone has seen them appearing out of the bridge pylons they are probably encased in. They were part of Los Rastrojos and Edmondo helped the authorities clean up the last of the gang. No, you’re safe from them.”

I absorbed this information and thought about what I would do. Stay as me and die or become Julieta and live, no doubt in some luxury. Of course, it was a no brainer so I told him that I would accept and to start making his arrangements.

When Edmondo came to see me he told me just to nod if I agreed as he only wanted me to speak to him if I was his daughter. I nodded and he said “Good” before leaving again. Next time I saw the doctor was when I was transferred to another clinic, in the dead of night. He told me that he had acquired a suitable body from out of the harbour who would be cremated in my place and that Aiden Gomez was no longer in the land of the living. I asked if my parents could be told and he wrote down the address, saying that they would get a message, as well as some clippings about my bravery and a video of my last actions.

Before I was put under again I asked what he would be doing and he said that I would come out of it with a working vagina and that, while they were working in the groin area, he would split my pelvis and extend it with a spacer. He then told me about my new breasts-to-be and my new voice. He was getting on to the cosmetic surgery on my face when I said ‘Enough!!”

They must have kept me under for another extended period because, when I did wake up again, I no longer had the casts on my arm and leg. I still was in a hospital bed connected to machines and drips and the waste disposal system so that was almost a comfort. As I moved I saw a new nurse beside me who mopped my brow and gave me some water to sip. When I asked if everything went well it was in a girls voice which shocked me at first.

She assured me that I was well on the way to recovery and that the team had done wonders on my little problems. After a few days of bed physio and some solids, they took me off the life-support systems and I was allowed to sit up. I was given a mirror and when I looked it was either the girl in the photo or one of my sisters looking back at me. I also had the odd feeling of extra weight on my chest but was happy that I could now breathe easily.

A few days after that they were helping me out of bed and giving me a wonderful shower, before taking away the hospital gown and giving me a nightdress to put on. When I was able to walk around on my own I was given an intensive course in what I needed to know. There were days of how to sit, how to walk, how to eat, how to talk and express myself with my hands. Then there was the personal grooming – hair, make-up, creams, scents and lotions. And all the while there were the lessons in wearing female attire, knowing what every bit was called, why you wore it and when you wore it.

All the time I was called Julieta or Miss Clavijo and all the time I was on an intensive hormone treatment and the dilation was starting to become a little like sex. Eventually, my trainers considered that I could go anywhere and get away with being a natural born woman and the odd thing was that I now felt as if I was. To support my new identity I had a full set of sessions on my growing up. I found out who I had gone to school with, any pets I had owned, saw videos of my mother Juliana and family films with me in them where I looked a bit like the village idiot. There was a boy who I hung on to in the final video and I found out his name and that he had been the contact with the gang. I gathered that he was now doing his patriotic duty somewhere, helping to support a railway line.

Marianne G © 2021

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

Chapter 4

Of course, you don’t invent a new and legal business as easily as pulling a rabbit out of a top hat. No, there has to be a lot of thought and not a few meetings. We first talked through what we did do as a family and, once you took away the prostitution, money laundering, stand-over tactics, and smuggling there wasn’t a lot that we could turn out hand to and still keep our self-respect.

If you looked at what we owned and operated there were several ships, a fleet of trucks and a team of people sourcing armaments and highly wanted designer products. We had a market consisting of criminal gangs, militia, off-the-radar government organisations and just about every price conscious wealthy family in the country. After two weeks of going round in circles the answer was so simple we all had a good laugh. All we had to do was carry on as we were but legitimise it!

It was a straight-forward matter to put things into a reasonable order. Firstly we needed to get import authorisations from the various government departments and that was simple, but costly. We then needed the paperwork to openly deal in armaments which was even quicker because the bottom line of all of this was that the bottom line would be a little thinner than previously. The profit margin would shrink without all of the extra dangers and subterfuge that smuggling needed. We would have to pay import duties but these were passed on to the customers anyway. The government was happy because they paid less for their guns and raked in the fees as well

For a lot of the gang it was a shock to be signing documents in front of customs officers in regard to the cargo they had in the holds, be it designer dresses to machine guns. We now had the means to bring in the cartons of clothing that Isabella had bought and setting up her shop was very easy once my father had decided to support the project, no-one slacked on a job for the Clavijo family!

Isabella did get to put on some dinners and parties but they were strictly controlled by the family now and some left the events saying that Isabell had lost some of her gloss. The Festival went off well and I joined the huge crowd of dancers on the Sunday as well as taking a lot of notes about the ‘Death of Joselito Carnaval’ on Shrove Tuesday. I had an idea that it may be something to do next year for fun, as long as I could pull some other crazy people into my scheme.

I did go and see Isabellas’ friend Valeria and found her to be totally charming. I helped her out by putting the Clavijo name about as a supporter of her and she started to get things done. She wanted to set up a new LGTBQ network that catered more for the lesbian groups and part of that was a clinic where they would be welcome and well looked after, something that not all clinics in the country were happy with. Her float was to promote the idea and maybe raise some money. I spoke to Edmondo and we donated a rambling building near the docks (but not too near) that we had never been able to find a use for before.

This became one of my own pet projects and it gave me a new access to the city society that ‘Crazy Julieta’ would never have had. It was during the preparations for our opening ceremony that I met Pablo Marknez, a young doctor who had come up from Cali, in the south of the country, to join us because his sister had died recently after not being properly looked after, being classed as a puta lesbiana. Pablo was almost fanatical about the project and we spent a lot of time together.

I invited him to my home for dinner one day, the week before the big opening, and he and Edmondo got on famously. Pablo may have come up from Cali but he had come from a good family and knew his manners. As far as he was concerned, we were a rich family of merchants and traders. Like everyone else in the country, it did not matter to him how you made your way as long as you made it.

Life and love took its course and we started going out together to various balls and parties. The good folk of Barranquilla slowly came to the conclusion that ‘Crazy Julieta’ had blossomed and I had more than one query about the ‘special school’ that I had attended. I usually said that it was very experimental and some of the treatments were finding it hard to get authorisation. I usually grinned and told them that it was not known just how long any changes I have had may last but that I was enjoying my time as a normal person as long as I could.

The day before the Grand Opening I was inspecting the new premises with Pablo and we decided to try out one of the private bedrooms. I was still dilating occasionally and always carried some lube in my bag, just in case. He took me to a place that I never thought would exist; a place where I was pinned to a bed by his weight and his love and thoroughly lost myself in the moment until I had the best feeling that started in my groin and spread through my whole body. It was if I had been re-energised and then gave all that energy up in a huge shudder and spasms of ecstasy. I knew I loved Pablo and he knew he loved me so we kissed, told each other what we felt and then used the ensuite to clean up before going back out into the world.

I went through the opening day in a daze. I was no longer the person I was. I had started out as a gang member, lived on the streets as a petty crook and, although I had been reborn as Julieta, I still was my own person and made my own decisions. Now I was one of a loving couple with my decisions sometimes being made for me. I deferred to Pablo in a lot of things and he took his place as the man in our relationship. He was my man but, by the same virtue, I was very much his woman. We made love whenever we could and it got better every time. The Clavijo family already had us pencilled in and it was not a surprise when we were told that it was time to set a date.

In this society nothing was immediate except death. The date was set a year into the future and it did not matter to me because I was not going to get pregnant in the meantime. As the clinic prospered, so did Pablo and he took extra courses which led him to be promoted within the organisation. I was really just the owner of the property and Valeria was the clinic manager so I did not have anything to do with the process and was happy that he had done so well.

The problems started when he started talking about the children he wanted. When I told him that I was unable to bear him a child he did not get angry but assured me that anything can be fixed and wanted me to undergo tests. Of course, not having any female internals that was never going to happen and I refused. He could not understand it and then he started to become angry with me not allowing him to fix my ‘little problems’. In the end he took himself, and part of my heart, back to Cali.

With him leaving me I lost no standing with the social set. They considered him a fool for going home and leaving a cushy marriage with a good family name. I did, after a while, bring myself back to the level of determined woman I had been before. I had lost my heart and had it broken but there was no way he could ever have looked at my body to find that although I may have looked like a woman, there was nothing internal to back it up.

I carried on as a social butterfly, dancing with every eligible man in my circle and quietly bedding a few now that my sexuality had been awoken. The family business took up a lot of my time as it grew. Edmondo was amazed at just how much business we were now putting through as a legitimate enterprise and the lower bottom line ended up not being a factor at all. We did the deals, we made the money and I enjoyed my life as best I could.

Then came the fateful day that Edmondo had a severe stroke; leaving him almost a vegetable. It took some days to sort things out but the men that worked for us were generally dealing with me by now so I just seemed to take over running the business. Eduardo was not happy at this because he now considered a legitimate business to be something he should be head of, not wanting to be part of an illegal operation now forgotten. He demanded to be given his rightful place as the head of the family but my mother resisted him, as did I but I was not going to be open about it.

It took the local government six months to come down on my side. The Business Council was adamant that it had been my work that put the family where it now was and that Eduardo was nothing more than waste of space. Eduardo could not take this without trying something and he took out a contract on my life. Unfortunately for him, as he did not know how the underworld worked, he promised money on completion with the expectation that then he would have the funds to pay for my murder. I, on the other hand, was well versed in staying alive and knew of his offer the day he put it out. One of my men went and saw him, saying that he would do the job easily but wanted half up front.

Eduardo, of course, could not come up with any cash and put up Isabellas’ business as collateral. When this information was brought back to me we had a gathering of the main partners in our enterprises and the upshot, without me being asked what I thought, was that Eduardo needed to be shown his place. My guy went back and said he would do the job but needed the deeds to the shop in order to start planning. Of course Eduardo could not present the deeds as they were hidden away in our family safe. He then went to Isabella to see if she could get the deeds from me so that they had them in their own safety deposit box.

When she came to see me I explained the situation to her. Her husband wanted the deeds to pay for my death and the person doing the killing would end up as the owner of her shop and her business which she was working hard at bringing to the top ten percent of couture outlets in the city. She was incensed and wanted me to give her a gun so that she could go home and shoot him. I told her that I could arrange a little ‘accident’ which would look completely natural and keep her from going to jail and she was all for it.

Two weeks later she sent him to Europe on a buying trip and he, sadly, became a victim in a terrorist outrage. This was a surprise to me because I had organised something a little less public for the next day which I still had to pay for even though he did not show up at the place of his arranged demise. Isabella was amazed that I could organise an event that killed dozens just to remove her husband and was very careful towards me from that time on.

I did not let on that I had nothing to do with it and it did serve to bolster my standing within the gang that remained. Many of our employees were now ordinary people leading ordinary lives and working with us for a wage. Isabella had insured Eduardo heavily, considering his love of fast cars and ocean-going yachts so came out of it very well off, even more when I gave her the shop deeds as a present.

Marianne G © 2021

Chapter 5

It came as no surprise to anyone when Edmondo eventually died. He had not enjoyed his last few months, being trapped in a body he could not control. I could see his anger in his eyes and tried to talk to him about good things to keep him happier.

The funeral was lavish, to say the least. It was held in the biggest church in the city and there were people outside after the place was filled. The front row was set aside for Juliana, Isabella, her child and I. It was strange sitting there, grieving for a man who had given me everything so that he could maintain his status, next to a woman who now was certain I was her long dead daughter. Me, a street urchin gangster who now controlled a multi-million company, and who regularly dined with the members of the government; grieving for a rogue and a murderer who I now loved more than my proper father.

The wake lasted three days. There were so many who wanted to pay their respects we needed to allocate times they could visit. One such visitor was the elderly patriarch of a previously rival gang that had seen what we had done and gone a similar route. He was attended by his youngest son, a strapping, handsome but shy boy around my own age. While his father spoke to my mother, I spoke to him. He was also called Pablo but I was not superstitious about names.

After a few minutes Juliana said that she would like to continue her conversation and asked us if we could take a walk. Pablo and I went out into a secluded garden and chatted. He told me that he had three brothers who ran their business and that his father was really only a figurehead these days. He wanted to know how I, as a woman, managed to hold my own in what was considered a man’s world. I put on my best pout and he apologised. It was then I said “You just backed down; round one to me” and we laughed.

We were in mourning for a month and I came to like how I looked in black and started to wear it more often, especially in the evenings. Pablo started to squire me around to the parties and balls and I must say we made a good looking couple. Eventually we became lovers as well as good friends; my life was looking up again. This time did not go the way of the other Pablo; this Pablo had no desire to create a family or a dynasty. He was happy with me as I was and it was good. He was kind and gentle and complimented me when I looked good. We married in the biggest church in town and, again, there were people outside after the doors had shut.

Our honeymoon was just as a honeymoon should be. We made love in fifteen countries at night and, by day, looked at the sights and weighed up any opportunity we could see. We came home to a separate building in my old home that had been used as a guest accommodation. It was big enough for us and near enough to the action to keep us interested. And Pablo got very interested after I had started showing him the scope of our enterprise. He was even more interested in Isabellas’ shop and spoke to her, quite knowledgably, about design and fabrics.

That was when I wondered about his secrets and asked him straight out one day. Was he a closet gay, was I just a trophy wife? We still had good sex and lived very naturally as husband and wife but I just had to know. That’s when he delved into an old box of his toys and pulled out some sketchbooks to show me. From a very early age he had been drawing dresses. He told me that the circles that he grew up in were filled with fashionable ladies in gorgeous clothes and he had become engrossed in how the dresses flowed, shimmered and hung. He did say that he was turned on by them as he got into his teens and drawing sexy outfits generally brought him to satisfaction.

This did answer another thing that I had wondered about; his ardour after we had been to an event when I was in a particularly good gown was something special. I told him that I would, from now on, wear things that he liked and also asked him if he could make up some of his designs. We went to see Isabella and she directed us to a couple of her trusted seamstresses and Pablo spoke to them, showed the designs he had picked out and they made three dresses in my size with me having some input with the colours that worked best with me. One, of course, while not black, was a midnight blue creation that would look good on a red carpet and that was where it made its debut

The affair was the first night of a film about Simon Bolivar and it took place at the main theatre in town on July 20th, the Independence Day holiday. I was photographed and interviewed and, when I was asked who supplied my gown, I told them that it was made locally and the designer was my husband who stood beside me. I then said that if there was enough interest people could order their own through Isabella at her shop.

That was the beginning of his career as a designer to the society doyens of Barranquilla and then beyond. A Pablo gown became the thing to wear if you could afford it as we made sure that they were only worn by the very rich. Isabella needed to move to bigger premises so I looked at the places we still owned and moved an import/export office to a modern warehouse that I bought at the docks. The location was ideal as being just out of the city and had a big warehouse attached which could be redecorated. The import/export business was much closer to where it did its main work and they were happy that I thought enough of them to give them a new home.

Where they had been, however, was subjected to a total make-over. Where Isabella had previously worked from a shop-front with a small storage room out back; in a main street location where she could have walk-in customers; she was now a bit more out of the way and there was just one bullet-proof window with the outfit of the day showing. To view her new lines customers needed to either phone ahead for an appointment or else be contacted by Isabella who told them that she had something they should see.

For an extra substantial fee, a customer could ask for Pablo to design something unique and we guaranteed that no others would be made like it. Pablo was in seventh heaven, I was being well serviced and Isabella was doing very well. She was then becoming more of a social butterfly than she had been with Eduardo. A couple of years later she was out with a man that she was seeing when they went into a corner on the coast road too fast and ended up crashing head-on into a large lorry. Both were killed outright. The guy had always been considered a good driver previously, much better than Eduardo had been and it may have been that, when they were pulled out of the wreck, the paramedics noticed that she had no panties on and his hand was under her skirt.

In her will she left the business to Pablo and he spent a lot of time there, drawing and being the couturier of note that he should have been a long time earlier. I was busy with the rest of the business and also with Ademir, the baby I had saved all those years ago. He had been growing up being looked after by a nanny more than his mother and I had sat with him many times as he played. He really considered me more of his mother than Isabella, the gad-about. Pablo and I adopted him as our son and heir. He had more connection to the family than anyone else, being the grandson of Edmondo. I made sure that his schooling was good and that he was good at his studies. As he grew into his teens he became a very handsome young man and certainly looked every inch a Clavijo as he stood with me and Pablo, and what remained of the original gang at his grand-mother Julianas’ funeral. Here we were, back in the biggest church in town, saying goodbye to yet another wonderful person who had accepted me as her daughter and had used me to rid herself of her original guilt.

As he entered his twenties Ademir was well versed in the family business. He did not know that I was anything other than Julieta, his aunt. He had been told about the day he was saved from being trampled and, on his twenty-first birthday, the three of us went to the grave of Aiden Ademir Gomez, the person who had saved his life, and laid flowers on it. I had been making sure that the gravesite had been looked after and every time I went there I thanked the unknown person who had given their body to be buried in my place.

Pablo always thought that I was doing this to honour the person who saved my nephew and there was now no-one left alive who could say any different. When he was thirty I passed the entire business over to Ademir, moving out of the family compound to a villa overlooking the sea where I could entertain the cream of society and also entertain older men of wealth with wives who no longer interested them. Pablo, by now, had succumbed to the need to wear his own creations in private and had converted part of the shop to his own accommodation where he also began to entertain husbands of rich wives who bought their gowns there. Ademir met, and married, a lovely girl from one of the other rich families. I thought it funny that I was sometimes entertaining her father while Pablo was entertaining her brother. Sometimes society is too self-contained.

I did, in the end, put together enough men to take part in the ‘Joselito se va con las Cenizas’ competition that had caught my imagination so many years before. I planned it meticulously as I was in hospital, my lung damage from my youth coming back to see me off. The whole group of crying widows will be men dressed in black by a now aging Pablo. It will be the final event of the years’ Carnival of Barranquilla and my coffin will be consumed by a big bonfire. It took a lot of string-pulling and a little bit of bribery to pull it off, but, unfortunately, I will only be there in spirit. The body in the coffin will be mine, dressed, in the end, as a man depicting Joselito Carnaval. It will be only fitting that I was going to be farewelled as someone other than Julieta as even Julieta had never been who everyone thought she was.

Marianne G © 2021