Blog 30-Sometimes I Hide Away

We found Machi and Taina on the beach, playing in a shallow pool left behind by high tide in a hollow made in the sand by last nights churning surf. “The beach at dusk is the best time.” Franz ran to the water and joined them. I took my small notebook from my purse and sat on the dune to try to write what had just happened with me and Franz.
What was that? After whatever that was I could see my life hadn't been a mistake, an accumulation of exponentiating error, starting with my Father's decision to leave revolutionary Ventura, to raise me in the metropolis, the godforsaken City; starting from that moment when my Father took me from the future back into the past. I realized that I was smiling. I had an image of the gorgeous pollution tinted sunsets in the City, neon orange skies over steel skyscrapers, and even the City in this new light wasn't as godforsaken as I thought. How could I be so transformed, after almost dying in Franz' arms and almost beating him to death? How long would it last? I laughed out loud. Taina called to me from the water. She was a hand reaching into the sinkhole. I put the notebook back inside my bag and carried my possessions to the shore. You never knew who might be lurking in the seagrapes that anchored the dune, ready to steal my secrets.
“I splashed in the water with Taina while Machi and Franz swam in the deep. They swam back to us and crawled on all fours in the surf, following Taina who crawled in the shallow water pretending to swim. With her my Machi was like the boy he once was, the boy who climbed onto my lap and threw himself into my arms and called me Mami; the boy I took long walks with to the donut place, bought roller blades with. We learned to roller blade together on the river walk or he learned and I tried. The boy whose best friend I was, with whom I stayed up until two in the morning watching rock bands on tv. The boy who told me the names and adventures of his imaginary friends (Bullet, Bwocket, Black, Nick, Skyman and Jingle Bell), that vast collection of people with their big and little and good and bad alters. The boy who fiercely turned to me from where he hunched over his little desk, drawing, and said, "You don't understand, I have to be an artist." And here he was restored, returned. Let him play even for a few moments freed from the burdens of manhood, more than that, the burdens of men targeted for destruction by the City.
I went back on the dune, restored to the present. Thank God for children. What a burden it must be for them to save adults from our terror again and again. Maybe theirs was the hardest job on earth. I reached into my sack for my notebook and my pen.
Taina ran to me from the water, lifting her knees, calling out, “I fly, I barely touch the sand.” She threw her wet body against me, dripped on my small notebook. I saw that she was crying. I asked her why and she said, "Because I can't fly." After she was done sobbing in my arms she sat up.“That's a mini notebook.” She peered at my scribbles in green ink. She gave me her brilliant grin. “The ink is making a beach where I wet it.” She laughed and was gone back to the shallow pool, and my journal had a watercolor of the sea. I watched her, so much more interesting than writing, or making myself read old journals.
She challenged Machi and Franz and they raced into the surf. The young men's knees pumped up and down. They raced until the water came to Taina's waist and no further because that was as far as she would go. The water was flat and clear and blue green all the way to where the sand bar made a yellow stain. Beyond the sand bar it was a deep blue stripe and there the sky met the sea. So many blues. The sun was a huge red orb sliding away to the other side of the planet.
I heard a loud whistle coming from the seapines just behind me, and Lagarto and Robles erupted onto the beach, running, their knees bouncing. They jumped into the water, jumped on Franz, dragged him onto the sand and pinned him. Lagarto pounced on him. “Where the fuck have you been? You can go awol from the City Force but not from us.” If Franz hadn't been laughing, laughing, laughing, even as he growled to break away from the young men, one pinning each of his limbs, and had he not just pretended to almost kill me so I could remember how to fight to live, I would have thought they were really trying to kill him. They kept this odd play fight going for a while, suddenly stood up, and engulfed Franz in a weave of arms. I saw him let himself collapse into those arms, sobbing. “Sometimes I just can't do one more thing. Sometimes I go to Beatricita and just hide away.” They began a dance of turns and kicks and jabs and feints, a martial game.