The Uniform

Otto loved playing soccer, so he thought joining the school team would be a good idea. A few weeks after he started training, the coach told him he needed to pay a fee for the team uniform. At that moment Otto thought:

Where am I supposed to get money, when there's barely enough at home as it is?

That urgent need for money wasn't new; it went back further than that. Otto was eight when his father fell for another woman and walked out. His mother took on raising the kids alone, leaving for work before sunrise and coming home after dark — which meant that, in practice, Otto and his sister had to fend for themselves.

Monday through Friday they got up at six a.m., got ready, and walked together to a school on the other side of the river. Halfway there, a ravine cut across their path. There was no bridge, only boards and sheets of tin that people from the neighborhood had laid over the rocks — a makeshift crossing they took every morning and every afternoon, risking their lives with quick, calculated jumps. Some days the current ran too strong to cross, and with no money for the bus, they had no choice but to walk the six kilometers back home.

One time, crossing the ravine, Otto slipped and his foot got wedged between two rocks. He pulled hard and managed to free it, but his shoe flew off, and by the time he noticed, it was already floating downriver. He didn't make it to school that day and was marked with an unexcused absence. The next day he showed up in the only pair of shoes he had left: blue sneakers his father had left behind, which didn't meet the dress code and were too big besides. At school, he was written up in front of his classmates and lost conduct points for not wearing the full uniform. And Otto said nothing, too ashamed to admit he didn't have what he needed.

And on top of that, since his mother left very early and came home very late — she worked full-time as a housekeeper for an important politician — it took her two months to find out about Otto's absences. She spoke with the teacher, who told her there was nothing to be done: her son had failed the year because, under the rules, he'd missed too many days. She could enroll him again the following school year, sure, but he'd have to commit to his studies.

Between the reprimand, the money he owed for the uniform, and his struggle to understand what they taught him, he lost all desire to go to class. Even so, he kept walking with his sister every day to keep her safe crossing the river, even once he'd stopped going into the classroom himself. Desperate, he sought out "the corner boys" and offered himself up for whatever they needed, because he had to earn a little cash. Once he joined them, the money started coming in a steady flow.

While everything at school was complicated, things were different with "the corner boys." He felt at ease with them because he didn't have to pretend — he was finally with people like himself. He felt a deep relief in realizing how easily he understood the dynamics of the street, when at school he'd always felt stupid.

That closeness with the group only grew over time. When he turned thirteen, "the corner boys" gave him a gun, but he always kept it unloaded — he couldn't picture himself using it against anyone.

We were just doing dirt, he'd say.

It was in the middle of that life that he turned fifteen. To celebrate, his friends took him out to a bar. That was the Friday before everything happened. Otto would remember every detail of that night for a long time: they drank, laughed, and let loose; they even stuck a candle in a plate of mashed potatoes and sang him "Happy Birthday." They were doubled over laughing. They took pictures, and after the applause, María — a girl in the neighborhood he had a crush on — came up to him. They talked. After a while, she wrapped both arms around his shoulders, locking her hands behind his neck, and whispered something in his ear. Otto felt a chill run through him. She turned her head to face him, nose to nose, eyes locked on his, and finished it off with a smile. They danced, talked, and laughed until they got kicked out of the bar. Then Otto walked María home, they said goodbye, and agreed to meet again two days later, because he had a job to do with "the corner boys." If it hadn't been for that, he would have told her he'd see her the very next day.

That night everything went wrong, and a guy ended up dead, he'd say.

Now Otto earns a little something cleaning the administrative offices at the prison, because even though his mother works ten hours a day at the politician's house, the family is still poor.

Being locked up this long wears on you, he'd say.

At first, having nothing to do left him restless; he didn't know how to handle that kind of desperation, and it got him into fights with other inmates — that's how he earned the scar that runs from his temple to his jaw.

Little by little he calmed down, with help from Rivotril, which he got through one of his cellmates, paying him back by doing his laundry. And in the middle of that forced calm, he didn't go back to school either: he didn't enroll during his first years of incarceration — he still remembered, with bitterness, how stupid he'd felt walking with his sister to school every morning.

Sometimes, sitting in his cell, Otto thinks about all of it and realizes it was never just about the money, or the uniform, or the reprimands. It was his father, who vanished from his life. It was his mother, who went out before he woke and came home after he'd fallen asleep. It was his sister, who he looked after because he had no other choice. It was the teacher who never asked. And it was "the corner boys" too, who made him feel, for the first time, like he was part of something.

Today his mother and sister visit him once a month. There are days, locked up in his cell, when Otto remembers the boy he used to be, and wonders what would have happened if the river had never carried that shoe away.