They Rummaged Through The Trash Every day, and what they Found would Change Their Lives Forever – Touching Story

In Spain, as in all the countries of the world, fortune does not shine on everyone with the same intensity. Some never even get to see it. This was the case of Marcella’s parents, who, due to a lack of opportunities, had to scavenge every day for their livelihood among the garbage.

Marcella was a very thin girl. She was just eight years old and had just recovered from the rickets she had suffered in her childhood. Her parents did not know how the girl had been saved. For them, there was no other explanation than a miracle. Just when Marcella reached a point where it seemed that there was no return, she began to improve and live to tell the tale.

Her life was the same every day. Her work schedule was between midnight and 7 am—the time they had between when people took out the garbage and the truck would come to pick it up. Then the three of them would split up, and each would go to a different sector to search through the garbage for something to eat.

Of course, Marcella’s family was not the only one in this condition, and the streets at that hour became a silent battlefield where everyone wanted to be the first to go through the containers or the piled-up garbage. All this went on completely oblivious to the people who were at that hour were sleeping peacefully in their homes.

Marcella was looking not only for her food or objects that could be sold, but also for books for herself. Ever since her parents had taught her to read and write, she had been obsessed with books. To the little girl’s delight, many people discarded books in good condition. Thanks to this, she had become a great avid reader and had been able to learn many things on her own because her parents did not have the resources to send her to school.

What she liked most were adventure novels, and since she had read Tom Sawyer, she had become a great fan. But she also had books on physics, chemistry, biology, and history, and they were her greatest treasure.

The first time her parents saw Marcella arrive with a book, they were a little disappointed as it was something they couldn’t sell or eat. However, when they saw that it made her happy, they said nothing. At least there was something the girl could enjoy since they could not give her everything they wanted to give her.

So it was on one of these workdays that Marcella met Lupe. She was a girl about her own age whom she had never seen before. This was strange to her because all the collectors knew each other, but Lupe was new. She had come from another country with her parents, but her relationship with them was not good. She was the only one who had to go out and scavenge what she could in the garbage while they slept all day.

Lupe was very tired, but she was not able to abandon her parents, even when they had abandoned her in terms of care from a very young age. They became good friends. Lupe had also learned to read and write thanks to a friend she had in her native country, but she, however, could not spare any of her work time to look at the books in the trash because she had to look for things that would allow her to support her parents.

Marcella then wanted to invite Lupe to her humble little house, and so she told her parents, who were delighted that their little daughter had a friend. When Lupe saw Marcella’s library, her eyes watered with excitement. Many of those books had no covers, had been wet or broken, but for her, it was almost a vision of paradise.

From then on, the evenings before work were spent reading together as two girls, which had never felt better. She was learning new things thanks to her friend Marcella, who acted as a teacher when there was something she didn’t understand.

Two months went by until one day Lupe didn’t show up for the reading session. Marcella knew that she would not miss on her own initiative, so something had happened to her. She thought that maybe she would see her at work, and then she would explain why she had missed her reading session, but she didn’t show up either the next day.

Marcella, frightened, asked her parents to accompany her to where Lupe had told her that her parents were all day, and there she found them sleeping. She knew she would find them when they woke them up to ask about the girl; they only received snorts in response.

But at their insistence, they told her that she had been sent to a sector far away from where she had been the last few months because Lupe seemed to be focused not on getting food for them but in other imaginary worlds. They did not know that the girl was constantly imagining herself in the scenarios of the books she read to escape from her reality.

Marcella and her parents went to look for her, and when Lupe saw them, she cried with impotence. They convinced her to return to her usual place and that, in exchange, they would work together from then on to raise enough for her parents. Then the girls could continue their reading days, and everyone would be happy.

Everything went back to the way it was before for the happiness of Lupe and Marcella. They both started to go the same way when it came to work, and so helping each other, they got more things than each one could get separately. They could also look for books.

It was also in one of their searches that they found something that dazzled them. It was a book, and it seemed to them that whoever had thrown it away would have to be crazy to want to get rid of something like that. It was in very good condition; the cover seemed to have been hand-carved in leather and was of a beauty that the girls’ eyes had never seen. But inside, it was even better. The pages were full of arabesques drawings and calligraphy that looked like it was from another era. The whole book was beautiful.

The girls carefully put the book away and took it with them. The other books in the library seemed to be no match for their new acquisition, but they had not yet finished admiring it when they heard on the radio about a major theft of gold pieces from an important museum. They also heard that it was strange that in the midst of a theft that seemed to be only after objects that could be melted down for resale, a priceless book that compiled the most important myths and legends of Native American communities and that had been written by a monk more than 400 years ago was also lost.

The girls knew immediately that the lost book was the one they had. The thieves probably, in their eagerness, had taken the book by mistake and, as soon as they saw that it was of no use to them, had thrown it away.

Lupe and Marcella, who already loved the book, knew they were not in a position to take proper care of it and decided to return it. The story of the two girls who searched for books in the trash to learn on their own and had returned the most valuable and important book in the museum soon became a national sensation.

From then on, the girls and their parents never missed a thing again. They received numerous offers for education, and all the libraries wanted them to be their advertising image. Thus, Lupe and Marcella gained

access to the world they had always dreamed of belonging to—one that revolved around books and their care.

Life kept them together. Thanks to reading, they were bridesmaids at their respective weddings and worked together until the end of their days in a bookstore they founded, where they displayed with honor all those books they had once rescued from the trash.