Blog 31-Procesion

Procesión
Today I walked to Coral by myself even though I didn't like to walk there without Patria. I waited for her because she said she wanted us to go together but she hadn't come by mid-morning. I gave up on her. The Palenque Encampment felt far removed from everyplace, but I'd discovered Coral was only a 20 minute walk away. I set myself up to write at the fonda Migajas (That sad name, Crumbs; what was Dulce thinking?) They liked me sitting here for hours, sipping cafe con leche, then having the daily special (rice, beans, meat: Monday beef, Tuesday pork, Wednesday Chicken, Thursday and Friday, fish), and then sipping another cafe, black for after lunch. They let me charge my laptop, so this had been a double find.
On the way here I walked past the Justice Works storefront. Not open. It seemed every time I came here they were closed. I looked at the wall of photos of the Desaparecidos, found Ori's had been covered with new faces, and retaped it back on top. Maybe I was becoming a woman of action! I didn't want to hope or expect. People could hurt me, or I could hurt them, those were the only two things that could happen between people. Groups would do onto you or they would stand by and allow it to be done. Patria created an expectation and then she disappointed it. Nothing good could happen between people. I heard my own thoughts and almost laughed out loud. So that was how I went through life! I could almost hear Patria saying back to me: 'Self-fulfilling, Marina, self-fulfilling. You have to change the recordings in your head.'
Dulce refilled my cafe negro and because all the lunch customers but me were gone she joined me for a cup herself. Migajas coffee was thin and very sweet. I said, “Your coffee brings good memories for me. It's like the coffee I would get as a little girl in La Casa Feliz, in Todos Santos, where I grew up in Ventura. I called it that because the Moreno family who lived there would say yes more often than not when I asked them to let me do things. I was happy there! Mami y Papi barely let me taste the strong cafe Mami made in the flannel drip coffee maker that looked like an old sock, much as I loved her cafe and begged to taste it. The Morenos made watery coffee just for me by running hot water through the grounds after the grown up coffee was done.”
Dulce laughed. “I run the coffee through my flannel funnel twice too, to stretch the grounds. You know there's very little coffee anymore in the Karaya Hills. There's almost no agriculture left except for backyard plantings. I grow yuca and platano. Growing crops to sell has become almost impossible not only because we're mostly mountains, beach and mangrove, but because the City wants us as consumers. My husband, before he left for the City, was a pescador. But in the last few years the Base's escalated bombing maneuvers offshore have made fishing almost impossible too.”
Before I thought better about it I said, “Who was the green fatigue Guardia I saw on one of my early morning excursions to Migajas?”
“You saw him in the kitchen?'
I nodded. I'd seen him give Dulce a huge sack of coffee from the Base. I'd tried to look like I hadn't seen the handover of the coffee at the time and now I didn't say anything about it to Dulce and neither did she. “I thought he was the Guardia I met on the Isla Caiman Ferry coming here, named Franz, you know him. So I waved hello. But he didn't wave back and when he sat at the table by the door across from me I saw it wasn't Franz.”
Dulce smiled, “That's what the uniform and the shaved heads are for, to make them look alike.” She drained the cortadito. “That's Doug. He's enamorando my daughter Rita.”
I had watched him at the table by the door, just across from mine. He may have looked like Franz,who was born in Karaya but when this Doug spoke to Dulce's daughter Rita after she served him eggs and rice and beans, I heard the accent of a City boy. His close cropped light hair was bleached almost white from the sun and his light skin was sun red. He had his looks from being a colonizer, descendant of an ancient rapist, and Franz from being colonized, descendant of an ancient rape. Anacaona was right when she told me, to explain why so many young Karayans who looked to be of European descent chose to identify as Taino, “You don't base identity just on phenotype”.
“So that young man Doug gave you coffee to court Rita?” Again I spoke before I thought and I was sorry. Dulce rose fast. I'd gone too far, presentá, and assumed an intimacy that wasn't there. She walked away. Now how would I repair this metida de pata? How would I make amends? Migajas was my best writing hangout yet, second best after I'd discovered La Fabrica.
I looked up from my notebook and as if I'd conjured him, here was Doug striding up the steps and through the always open double door of Migajas. This time he waved to me and smiled. He too had a favorite table, it seemed, the one across from mine on the other side of the double doors. Rita appeared instantly at his side. She had his cafe con leche and pan con mantequilla on a round tin tray. She didn't need to take his order. The courtship must be going well. He was correspondido.
She set down the tray and took two steps toward the open double door. “Mira, mira, Doug, la procesión.” He smiled and blushed and ran to the door. Dulce and I joined them. Coming toward us was a procession, led by the priest in brown, followed by a group of women. I recognized some of the Señoras de los Frijoles, and saw Julia was among them. They carried posters of faces and names on long sticks. Julia marched by us chanting, “Libertad para los presos secretos,” I saw David's photo on the poster she carried stapled to a stick. I waved but she was marching close to the Plaza all the way across the street and didn't see me. I saw Ori's photo and Orestes Mercado in block letters on the back of Julia's sign. Ori. Why didn't she tell me this was happening? Mi marido's name was on her sign. All the photos on their signs were of the disappeared, swallowed by the Camp or lost inside Palenque or the Territorio Libre. Even Julia was leaving me behind. She'd gone into the world of action and left me in the world of words.
I asked Dulce what date this was on the Christian calendar and she shrugged, still not friendly. Rita shook her head. Doug rolled his eyes. “Obviously the procession is a cover for a demonstration to demand prisoners in the Camp be released outright, finally tried or maybe even just acknowledged.”
“Why don't you join them,” Dulce said. “Aren't you here to find your husband?” (Was she trying to get me to leave?)
Doug looked at me. “Do you have his photograph?”
I pulled out one of my crumpled xeroxes of Ori's headshot from his old column in Verdad.
Doug studied him. He shook his head. “He's looking like...you'd have to drop a good 30 pounds...Don't want to frighten you...But he looks to me like one of the hunger strikers.” I didn't tell him he'd maybe just confirmed what I thought I already almost knew.
I stared at the procession demonstration until the last row of women turned the corner, saying nothing, and then I sat back down to my eggs and rice and beans. I pushed them away. No way I could eat them. I forced myself to look at documents on my flashdrive hoping my brain would stop banging into my skull and my mind would resettle into my being.