Yeny and the Children for Peace (2 page)

This city house was made of concrete and had the kitchen indoors. The only thing anyone did outside was the washing. From this house, Yeny couldn't hear the chirping of cicadas, the grunts of pigs, the clucking of chickens, or the sound of the wind. Instead she heard street vendors shouting about what they were selling—peas, arepas, juice, radios, lottery tickets—and the blare of car horns. It was hotter here, too, than it was in the mountains, and even the food was new.

“Are two arepas enough for you, dear?” Yeny's aunt slid two corn pancakes from the frying pan onto Yeny's blue plastic plate. The hot, toasty smell made Yeny's mouth water, and she could hardly wait to sink her teeth through the crusty surface into the soft, hot middle. “We make them with cheese inside,” Aunt Nelly said, “so they'll taste different from the pure corn ones that you're used to, but I'm sure you'll like them. We have plenty, so don't be shy.”

The breakfast table was crowded. Yeny's parents, Carlitos, and Elena, as well as Yeny's aunt and three cousins—Sylvia, Rosa, and Juan—all crowded around. Yeny's Uncle Alfredo hadn't been home for a long time. He'd been kidnapped by one of the
grupos armados
, armed groups, the year before. For weeks after Alfredo disappeared, no one knew if he was alive, and then one day a letter arrived. A group was holding him prisoner, and the only thing his family could do was wait and hope that
the kidnappers were not the kind who torture people. Waiting and hoping was very hard. Juan often woke up screaming from nightmares.

This morning, everyone at the table was eating arepas and
huevos pericos
, scrambled eggs with tomato and onion. The older ones drank coffee, but Yeny was glad that no one offered her any. She much preferred hot water with
panlea
, a sweet brown cube made from sugar cane juice that dissolved to make a delicious drink.

Yeny hurried through her meal and raced off to collect her notebook and pencil. Juan was right behind her. “We don't want to be late, Mamá,” he said. “Yeny has a lot of people to meet.”

But getting out of the house took much longer than they'd hoped. Two mothers fussing take longer than one. “Now I know you're excited, Yeny Clara,” her mother said, fiddling with Yeny's collar and smoothing her uniform blouse, which was already smooth. “But make sure you pay attention to your teacher, and make sure you stick with Juan on the way there. It's a big city, and—”

“She'll be fine, Gloria,” Nelly said. “She's only going for a short time, not for a year, and Juan will take good care of her.”

“I know he will,” Mamá said, but of course Juan could never protect Yeny entirely. In most families at least one person had been killed or kidnapped. It was impossible to say goodbye
without wondering,
Will we see each other again?
“Be good,” Mamá said, “and enjoy being back at school, Yeny. I'm sure you'll make friends in no time.”

Yeny smiled up at her mother and gave her a hug. “I'll tell you all about it when I get home.”

As soon as she and Juan burst free onto the city streets, Yeny's excitement turned to nervousness. At home, going to school had meant saying
Hola!
, hello, to her neighbors who were on the way to the fields, or outside washing clothes, or chopping vegetables. María Cristina would come running from the house next door, shaking off her little sister who always wanted to go to school too.

Here in the city, Yeny knew no one and nothing was familiar. The houses were side by side, with no space between them, and each was a different color. Few had gardens, and several had round white scars like the ones she had seen in pictures in the newspapers that her father had sometimes brought from the city. Elena said the marks were bullet holes, but Yeny thought her sister was only trying to scare her. Their parents had said they would be safer here in the city, so how could there be guns here too?

Before moving into Juan's house a few weeks earlier, Yeny had been to the city only once, when she was little. Juan had come to stay with her family in the mountains a few times,
though, especially last year, when his father went missing and his mother had to work throughout the school holidays. The first time Juan came, Yeny couldn't believe that he'd never climbed a papaya or mango tree, or packed a horse, or swum in a river.

Actually, at first she thought he was a bit stupid for not knowing how to do those things, but her mother explained that no one could do stuff like that in the city. Now Yeny could see why. Everywhere she looked, there were buildings—some of them two stories high—and street after dusty street of houses and stores. Little groups of men stood talking along the edge of the road, but no one looked at them as they went by. Certainly no one called out, Hola!, as they always did in the village. She'd have a lot to learn in this new life. As she and Juan made their way to school, she concentrated extra hard so she could remember every detail to tell María Cristina.

They passed an old lady with flyaway white hair who was selling limes and oranges from a big, wheeled cart on the side of the street. Next to her, a boy called out to people passing on their way to work, offering them hot fried snacks called
buñuelos
. The boy seemed about the same age as Yeny and Juan, but he looked so busy that he probably wouldn't be able to get to school any time soon.

Yeny breathed deep, trying to tell if the buñuelos were the big savory balls with bursts of melted white cheese in the middle,
or the sweet kind that were filled with caramel. To her delight, she smelled both. Why hadn't she asked her mother for a coin or two? Of course they didn't have much money at the moment, but surely a few coins for something delicious on the way to school . . .

Suddenly, Juan grabbed Yeny's arm and pulled her toward the woman selling fruit. He scooped up an orange. “How much is this one?” he asked the old woman.

“But Juan,” Yeny said, “how . . .”

She was going to ask how they could buy an orange without money, but her cousin cut her off. “Shhhh.
Disculpe, señora”
he whispered to the woman. “I just saw a boy from our school who is really mean, and I don't want him to see us. We don't have any money to buy your fruit—I'm sorry—but if you could look like you're talking to us for a while, maybe he'll leave us alone.”

The old lady's face softened into a smile. “Stay as long as you like,” she said. “I don't mind the company. That boy, is he armed?”

“No,” Juan said. “He's not in one of the gangs, if that's what you mean. He's just mean.”

Gangs? Yeny had never heard that word before, but she knew what “armed” meant. The men who came to her village with guns were part of an armed group. Her father said that there were many grupos armados, each one taking orders from
different people who wanted more land, more money, and more power. The groups were fighting each other, but they were also hurting people who just wanted a peaceful life.

She was happy to hear that the boy they were hiding from wasn't part of such a group. She'd heard of children carrying guns and joining a grupo because they were poor and the grupos armados would feed them. She turned to sneak a glance at the boy, and when she spotted him she almost laughed. Tall, skinny, and with hair that stuck out every which way, he looked no older than her and Juan. He walked in a swinging kind of way, as though he was trying to take up as much space as possible. He didn't look very mean. The older boys in her village had looked far scarier.

Juan chatted to the old woman for what seemed like forever. By the time they stepped away from the cart, and said
adios
to her, the mean boy was long gone, and Yeny was certain that they were going to be late for school.

“We'll go the back way,” Juan said, grabbing her hand. “If we run, we can still get there before the bell. But watch your step. The road's pretty bumpy.”

Yeny laughed. She'd spent her whole life running on trails much rougher than the wide, treeless streets here in the city, and she took off like a firecracker. She would have raced Juan, if she'd known where they were going.

They arrived at school running. As they ran, Yeny had been trying to memorize their route, but Juan had turned up and down so many streets that her head was spinning by the time they reached the big blue concrete building. It was huge—at least five times as big as Yeny's old wooden schoolhouse—and the buildings nearby all looked the same. She missed the little clearing in the trees where she used to play with her friends before class.

“That's our classroom,” her cousin shouted as they ran past one of the windows.

Yeny wanted to stop and look inside, but she didn't want to lose Juan. They came to the end of the building and turned the
corner. The entire dusty schoolyard was filled with children. Yeny had never seen so many in one place. She wondered if Juan knew every one, and how he could possibly remember so many names.

“Come meet my friends,” Juan said, before she could ask any questions. He guided her to two boys close to the main doors of the school. One boy wore a backward baseball cap, and the other had dark, springy hair. A little way off, a knot of girls stood talking, but none of them looked in her direction. She wondered what her old friends were doing at that moment, especially María Cristina.

“This is my cousin, Yeny,” Juan said, still a little out of breath. “We were running from Joaquin.”

David, the boy with springy hair, nodded. “You got away from him, I think. I saw him go over there, to the other side of the yard.”

“Is he really so bad?” Yeny asked.

“Yup,” said Beto, adjusting his baseball cap. “He's the meanest boy in grade four. No one likes him, but everyone listens to him because he's scary. If he tells people to ignore you, they will, and you could have no friends at all.”

“But that's crazy,” Yeny said. “Would you three stop talking to each other if he told you to?”

The boys shrugged and looked uncomfortable, and Yeny decided that Joaquin must be worse than she thought. She'd never heard of a whole class turning against one person. It would have been impossible in her village, anyway. Everyone was a neighbor, and you couldn't help talking to each other. Here in the city, everything seemed different. But so far, it didn't feel much safer than the village.

Colombian kids playing games in the schoolyard, just as they might at Yeny's school.

“Joaquin won't pick on
you
, though,” Juan said. “You're lucky you're a girl.”

“Yeah,” said David, “you don't have to worry about him. And I'm sure everybody will be nice to you, since you're new and everything.” He asked where Yeny was from, and she told him about the grupos armados kicking her family off their land.

Beto nodded. “My family moved here from the mountains too. The groups are always shoving people around there. But the city's not so bad. You'll see.”

She asked him where his village was, but it didn't seem to be anywhere near hers. The men with guns must have gone to more places than she had thought.

Yeny still had nightmares about the day they had come to her village. She and María Cristina were outside washing clothes when the men arrived. Yeny heard shouting. Then María Cristina grabbed her arm and dragged her under the table. From behind the pots and pans, Yeny saw a man in a green uniform jab a machine gun into her mother's stomach. He forced her against a
wall and shouted that they'd all better be gone before tomorrow. Someone yelled, and Yeny clapped her hand over her mouth as the man shoved her mother to the ground—a terrible
thwack
of skull against stone—and then he was gone.

Papá rushed to Mamá so quickly that Yeny realized he must have seen everything. And he was crying so hard that she was sure her mother was dead. The sound of crying grew. Louder, closer. Huge, scraping sobs filled Yeny's ears until she couldn't think, and then the whole world went black.

It wasn't until she felt comforting arms around her that she realized the sobbing was her own. She couldn't believe her eyes when she saw her mother alive, holding her, saying that everything would be okay. Her father had his worried look, but he too said they would be okay. If they hurried. There was no time to lose.

They packed up as quickly as they could. They tied as much they could onto their backs and to their horses, and they began to walk. They walked for days, until they arrived at a camp for displaced people, people like them who had been forced from their homes. The camp had a little wooden church, a few houses, and space for more buildings. Yeny's parents told her that the grupos armados were kicking many farmers off their land, and that soon this camp would be full.

María Cristina's family decided to stay in the camp. But Yeny's
father had a sister in the city, and that was how her family had wound up here with Aunt Nelly. They knew they were lucky to be alive. The armed men had killed Papá's best friend, an entire family that lived at the edge of the village, and even the mayor. In lots of neighboring villages, they had killed everybody.