She was named for Claudia’s paternal grandmother. Sofía, the ventello singer. She was swaddled, baptized, showered with affection from the small circle of people allowed to know of her existence.
For a time, brief and fleeting, Galina allowed herself to relax and luxuriate in the peculiar pleasures of being an abuela. When she visited Fortul, baby toys in hand, she was like anyone else visiting their grandchild. She pretended that Claudia lived in Fortul because her husband worked for one of the refineries there. That Claudia never made the return trip because the baby wasn’t ready to travel. That they always stayed inside because the weather was nasty or because Sofía was sensitive to the sun.
Then it became impossible to pretend.
Salma returned from the market one day looking nearly anemic. She told Claudia that people were asking questions. Someone was showing a picture around. Claudia remembered her first days of captivity when Riojas had interrogated her, when he’d posed her naked in various positions intended for maximum humiliation. Even with her eyes swollen shut, she could see bursting flashbulbs shooting out of the black like Roman candles.
They had to move them.
Another family resource was contacted and imposed upon. And it was an imposition. Whoever hid them was keenly aware they were putting themselves in the line of fire. A kind of ad hoc system developed. Claudia and Sofía were shuttled. Back and forth and back between whichever relatives and friends were momentarily able to swallow their fear and provide them with a temporary home.
It wasn’t easy for Claudia to be passed around like an unwanted relative. But that’s what she was. A burden, an albatross. Albatrosses meant death; so might Claudia. She’d spend a few weeks to several months at each house or apartment before leaving. Usually in the middle of the night. She became adept at packing quickly, bringing just enough from one place to another to make each new stop seem remotely like home.
Slowly, pressure eased. Stories of paramilitares inquiring after a beautiful girl with a small baby became more sporadic, then stopped altogether. Claudia’s stays lengthened, routine replaced fear. Sofía grew from infant to toddler—in an instant, it seemed to Galina, who only saw her in carefully parceled-out increments. Claudia seemed to grow as well, regaining pieces of herself that had been taken away from her in that hacienda. She began venturing outside, baby in tow, disguised in sunglasses and an enormous straw hat.
Galina accompanied her on some of these walks. She let herself imagine that life might reach some kind of normalcy. It had been four years. If one read the papers correctly, Riojas had more than enough to keep him occupied. They were threatening to extradite him to the United States for narcotics trafficking. Maybe he’d forgotten about Claudia. About them. Maybe he no longer cared.
When the three of them strolled hand in hand—lifting a begging Sofía over the curb by both arms—it was easy to imagine this was true.
Later Galina would understand that’s what he’d wanted them to think. So they’d begin to believe it was over. Become a little more carefree, even careless. So they’d stop peeking around corners.
She never knew how it happened.
Not exactly how it happened. She would never know that. She would have to imagine it, which was worse than knowing. Because the imagination can conjure up every nightmare never dreamed.
Someone spotted Claudia. That much she knew.
Galina received a panicked call from her daughter. Or rather, her answering machine did. For the rest of her life she would admonish herself for going shopping that day. For opening the refrigerator and somehow seeing the necessity for food. She would have hours and days and weeks and years to imagine what was being done to her daughter while she performed the mundane tasks of daily living. To ponder a single question. If she’d been home to take Claudia’s call, would she have been able to save her?
When Galina did get home, when she casually pressed the button on her answering machine and heard her daughter’s clearly terrified voice, she knew it was already too late.
She buried her panic, did what you’re supposed to do when someone calls you. Call back. Claudia’s uncle—the one she’d been staying with for the last month and a half—answered the phone. He didn’t know where she was, he said. Her or the baby. They must’ve gone for a walk.
Someone saw me at the market. That’s what Claudia had whispered into the phone.
She hadn’t waited for her uncle to return home. Out of self-preservation, out of the desire to protect him, she’d gathered up Sofía and run. Later they’d notice some of her things were missing. Not everything; some of Sofía’s clothes and a small picture of the three of them—grandmother, mother, and baby—she’d managed to tote from one hiding place to another.
Claudia had been spotted in the market, and in a near panic she’d called the one person she trusted most in the world.
Galina wasn’t there. She was out shopping.
Claudia had decided she needed to leave then.
After that, who knows?
After that, you’re left with the clinical police reports and a few eyewitnesses who may or may not have seen anything.
Mostly, you’re left with the body.
She was found on the edge of a barrio.
No one was aware it was a she at first. It was an amalgam of flesh and bone, a jigsaw puzzle that took two police pathologists a solid week to piece together before proclaiming it was her. They knew this much. What had been done to her had taken time and patience. There were traces of rope found around her neck. What once was her neck. There were acid burns everywhere. Every inch of her skin. That’s what the police report said. It was supposed to be kept confidential to spare the family, but it was leaked to a newspaper, which printed it as a small item on the weather page. She’d been burned and mutilated. The report didn’t mention if she was alive and conscious during the ordeal.
It didn’t tell Galina who did it either.
It was another unsolved homicide. To be added to the thousands of other unsolved murders in Colombia.
Had Riojas been there in person?
Had he gotten another one of those calls in the middle of a dinner, coolly whispered in his wife’s ear that he had urgent business to attend to? Had he smiled, rolled up his sleeves, walked in on a bound and terrified Claudia, just like he had four years before? It’s impossible to say.
But Galina saw him there.
When she pictured it, as she did over and over and over again, dulled by alcohol, pumped full of whatever pills she’d managed to wheedle from yet another doctor, Riojas was always there. Wielding the knife. Spilling the acid. Choking the life out of her daughter.
He was always there.
WHEN GALINA FINISHED, JOANNA COULDN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO say. She sat in stunned silence.
It wasn’t until Galina stood up to leave, till she whispered good-bye and turned to the door, that Joanna realized there was a missing piece of the story.
“Sofía?” Joanna said, hesitant to ask because she was afraid to hear Galina’s answer. “What happened to your granddaughter?”
Galina stopped just before the door. “Dead,” she said without turning around. “Like her mother.”
There were other questions—how had their deaths led Galina to FARC? But Joanna didn’t ask. If she thought about it hard enough, she could probably fill in the blanks herself.