Santiago's Children by Steve Reifenberg

Author:Steve Reifenberg [Steve Reifenberg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

A HOME ON TUPUNGATO STREET

Once the initial shock wore off, we began the hard work of deciding where in Santiago to buy a house. Olga was interested in moving to an area with better schools and one that wasn’t so far out of the city.

“We’ve got to do this right. Can you imagine how much work it is going to be moving all these kids and stuff? I don’t want to have to pick up in a year and move again,” she said.

We looked for weeks. Even though the economic situation was dire and people were desperate to sell, our $14,800 would only get us so far. With the money we had in hand, unless we wanted to go into debt, we would likely be able to buy a slightly better house than we were renting. The big advantage was that we would not have to pay monthly rent, and for the first time the hogar would have a sense of permanence.

In March, I returned to my classes with the teachers at St. George’s, while Olga continued searching.

“It looks like we’ve found a house,” Olga said to me one day when I came home from classes. “It’s the nicest I’ve seen in our price range. The house is well built, with thick adobe walls, has a good roof and ventilation, and is in a relatively safe neighborhood. It has four bedrooms. There’s some space for the kids to play, but it’s not a farm.”

“It sounds fine to me,” I replied.

“It even has a little two-bedroom wooden structure on the same property with its own kitchen. It’s still in La Granja, just a lot closer to Santiago so there will be more choices for schools. There are grapevines, and, get this, gringo, it has a swimming pool.”

The swimming pool, it turned out, was made of three-foot-high cinder block walls painted turquoise. But there were two decent bathrooms and a walk-in pantry. It was definitely a step up from where we were living. We negotiated with the owner until the price exactly equaled every dollar raised in the United States for the purchase, and we bought the yellow adobe house on Tupungato Street.

For the move we rented a flatbed truck. We dismantled seven sets of bunk beds and moved crates of clothing and furniture, the stove and refrigerator. At the end of the afternoon, I stood in the empty room that had served as my bedroom for the past year and a half. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how badly the faded blue wallpaper was peeling. A few squares and rectangles on the wall were a slightly darker blue—where the kids’ crayon drawings had been tacked to the wall. Void of furniture, the room looked small, almost uninhabitable, more like an empty shed than a bedroom. As pitiful as it looked, leaving it and “the farm” still tugged at my heart.

That evening, Andrés and I sat on the concrete ledge of the empty swimming pool at the new house.

“The new house is real nice,” Andrés told me.

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