Arriving on Isla Caiman
Day 1 at the Encampment
I was given two weeks notice to wage emancipation and here I am living on a beach. My whole life screeched to a halt. (Or got reborn.)
I'm writing in the middle of the night sitting by the Fire (red branch shaped embers now), on my rolled up sleeping bag. Scared and euphoric, at once. I'm alone, in the middle of a maze of shacks and tarp lean-to's, swallowed up by the smell from a dozen campfires, the thrum of congas, radios, voices, and every so often in the lulls, the roaring surf. One moment I recognize a face, the person waves hello, I feel safe. The next moment I feel terror. Is this the group that will kill me?
Only (last week) yesterday I left my house, my block, the City. Now I live in the Encampment, outdoors on a beach with more than a thousand strangers. Am I crazy? It's sometime late at night, our first night here, and my 17 year old son Machi who got me here, is gone. He left just after we ate, with the two young men who saw Machi, Julia and I struggle with poles and a tarp and came over to help us set up our lean to against the dune, build our fire, and shared the fish Machi bartered matches for. Lagarto is tall light brown skinny with fuzz on his chin and a raspy voice; Robles is dark brown with jet black hair plaited into one braid down his back and talks fast. Machi is almost as tall as Lagarto and as dark skinned as Robles. Standing beside them I see my boy is a man. With his Father disappeared he had to become a man too soon. All three boys, young men, wore caqui shorts with lots of pockets and wifebeaters (what Machi calls white sleeveless undershirts ). They left together in the direction of the Camp. I heard Lagarto ask Machi if he played soccer and heard Robles tell him he knew where to charge his phone. (Maybe he can charge my laptop?)
Moved up to here I am writing by the fire that Machi, Lagarto and Robles built, red embers now. My friend Julia is asleep in the shelter the boys built from a blue tarp Machi bartered matches for. From here I can see her sleeping granddaughter Taina's small foot move side to side, bang up and down. She began the night inside the sleeping bag and now she's kicked herself on top. Her black bangs are stuck to her face with sweat.
Where is Machi? How long has he been gone? No way for me to tell time here, no familiar television sounds, no cues from the unfamiliar light. Machi took my watch when he left. But there's a cue now. I see two of the Senoras de los Frijoles, (what Julia calls her new friends, the ladies who sort beans and clean rice every morning and cook enormous pots of food to sell). They are returning from the beach carrying between them a huge pot of beans they've washed in one of the shower heads left over from what used to be the Isla Caiman Eco Preserve Natural Park Public Beach. They do this every morning around 4 AM just before dawn.
Where would he go heading to the Camp that he'd need a watch? Are Lagarto and Robles able to steal power from the Camp? Or do they pirate the lightposts close to the abandoned ticket booth at the access road to the old EcoPreserve the Encampment has invaded? Lagarto and Robles know where to find power, here in the intemperie. Machi must have his phone. He can't go long without texting someone. At 17 he thinks he's a man. He is a man! Pobrecito. Where did his childhood go?
Did I believe his thinking or was I just grateful he was willng to let me be with him after being gone for a whole year? I would have followed him anywhere just to be with him. I followed him here to Isla Caiman to this Encampment of people, more arriving every day, who are not supposed to be here, who filled up this EcoPreserve that is no longer preserved, and mushroomed around a secret prison Camp that is not supposed to exist. I feel raw, rootless, crazy for a second. I followed my son into the street. What was I thinking: that if I followed him into the street I would keep him? That Machi wouldn't have anyplace further away from me to go than the street? And now he's gone. There are recesses in the Encampment, between the Encampment and the Camp, that are further from me than the street, the Camp is the street's street. And he found himself his first two guides. He left after we'd just finished eating a dinner like we might have had at home, in the good days at home when Ori was still with us and Machi still slept in his own bed every night. We ate the fish he managed to get for us that he cooked on the fire he built, and rice and beans he bought from the Senoras. Here the things I know how to do are worthless. Here's a place I need to rely on my street kid. And where is he?