Blog 16-Wife of a City Teniente

I leaned into my tree and Patria squeezed herself beside me. I said, “I can't believe you of all people are here, wife of a City Teniente...” She rolled her eyes. “Haven't been his wife for years.” Patria put her hand on my arm. “I barely knew you all those years ago. I remember you wore that long black skirt in this heat, your jaw was always tight and it was hard to get you to smile. You were trying so hard to make a life in Karaya for you and your little boy even though you were clueless. You looked panicked. ” She laughed. I looked into her eyes. They weren't hard anymore, nor ringed with blue eyeshadow, black eyeliner and clumps of black mascara the way they'd been when she was Irma. Her gaze was soft and easy to hold and without all that make up her eyes seemed bigger. “It's true. I didn't know what I was doing. After Ori and I broke up I didn't know how to be alone, or single, or a single mother. I used to cross the street if I saw you. You were the wife of an officer.” I looked away, ashamed.
She pressed my hand and waited till I looked at her. “Scared as you looked, I envied you, a woman who was independent of any man. Watching you helped give me the courage to end things with my husband. When the time came and he wanted to come back to me again, I was able to say no.” I felt my tears coming and didn't try to stop them. “And not much later Ori and I got back together.” She leaned toward me. “And now he's Desaparecido. Que cosas tiene la vida...”
“Now I'm the one who envies you. I hope your resolve is contagious. I can barely sleep from doubt and terror.” I turned my gaze toward the beach. “Machi's by the Base. Doing what? Where is he now?”
Patria sipped from the blue tin cup with cafe con leche she'd been warming in the dying fire. “He's with my boy Elpidio, Lagarto, and they'll be fine. They keep each other safe. They keep all of us safe from Guardias and from the human predators that sadly still remain. Be careful in Palenque. Most of us are benign, but some of us have been hurt in terrible ways that make us hurt others. Just last night one of the young women who works at El Comedor was raped on her way back to Las Barraquitas, an older part of the encampment closer to the Base. I was just hearing at the Comedor today that last night los muchachos stopped another rape over by the storm shelters in the Hillside caves.”
I felt a shudder of terror. “Rapes, storm shelters. There's no end to danger here. What have I done to my son?”
“Save his life. That's what we're doing here, saving each other's lives.” She leaned in closer. “Think of this. Here it isn't like the street. There's real work for los muchachos to do. They've spent hundreds of hours expanding the natural caves Hillside, digging a warren of hurricane shelters. They smuggled across the border and then installed the storm dome Ventura gave us last year after huracan Rosa nearly washed everything into the Caribbean. They rebuild what the City and the storms try to destroy.”