Another Day rev 1

Water gathering gutter and barrel with spout
"tricking" Julia and Taina into going to say goodbye to D in mt
Meeting w Manuel
rescuing O
millions outside pres palace

[Roz: introduce people when name them: a lot of names... hard when throw names without id...off putting...a while to relax into listening
do the stories have a different tone? different style
what's happening politically in each plane PE/stories?

short story is her nightmare, what she fears
related to psychic drama]
as got used to different characters could feel more involved..not wanting to lose my place, easy to lose place..she's disassociated..use feeling inside the reader not so much make the person disconnect].

SILVIA looked at the BROWN BRINDLED PITBULL Thug curled up on the floor close to the radiator. He raised his head, caught Silvia's eye. She was glad to have another set of eyes to gaze into, glad HER TEENAGE SON Cheito left the dog behind WHEN HE WENT AWAY FROM HOME. She was afraid to look around,see her bedstand WITH THE BLACK GOOD PEN HER DISAPPEARED HUSBAND ERNESTO GAVE HER FOR HER 50TH BIRTHDAY ENSHRINED UNUSED AND THE PILES OF NOTEBOOKS AND DREAM JOURNALS THREATENING TO AVALANCHE AND ENGULF HER. Her gaze rested an instant on THE SELF PORTRAIT Cheito PAINTED IN HIS high school ART CLASS, THE ONLY THING HE LOVED IN THE DETENTION CENTER THEY CALLED SCHOOL. HER GAZE RESTED FOR A SECOND ON CHEITO'S self portrait on the wall, his face FUNHOUSE MIRROR ELONGATED emergED from the darkness, achingly vulnerable. She closed her eyes then opened them again ONTO THE OBJECTS IN HER ROOM, odd, the way they'll look after Ernesto's dead, after she's dead. THE THOUGHT Ernesto might be dead STOPPED HER BREATHING FOR A MOMENT. By not thinking of him she usually erased the image of him in a prison. This morning her mind wanted to suppress an image of Ernesto dead.
Today was the day she said she would go back to the Special Office set up to track down the disappeared. ANOTHER DAY WHEN NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN. Did they only track those who had been detained without trial or even a record of arrest? ALMOST BY DEFINITION THEY WERE UNTRACKABLE. Did they track those who got themselves swallowed into the mushroom towns growing in parks, by highways, on the edges of every city, this city, where D had told her just last month that Cheito had gone. (PILED ON THE FLOOR CLOSE TO THE WINDOW WAS THE PILE OF NOTEBOOKS LEFTOVER FROM THE SCHOOL CHEITO ORGANIZED FOR HIMSELF IN THEIR LIVING ROOM AFTER HE SIMPLY REFUSED TO EVER GO BACK TO SCHOOL. WHERE WERE ALL THE BOYS FROM THE LIVING ROOM SCHOOL? D WAS another of theM going to hell.)
She was afraid to get out of bed, afraid to go outside. SHE RECOGNIZED THIS FEELING FROM HER CHILDHOOD. FOR A LONG TIME SHE'D BELIEVED EVERYONE WAS TERRIFIED OF THE DAY, EVERYONE STARTED THE DAY BY RUNNING TO THE BATHROOM TO VOMIT. GROWING UP IN VENTURA SHE AND HER BROTHER HAD RACED EACH OTHER TO THE BATHROOM AND OFTEN FOUND THEIR MOTHER ALREADY THERE, HEAD HANGING OVER THE TOILET BOWL. An emotional astigmatism, a reversal of life imagery, had happened when she was a child. Terrifying stuff was happening at home. BEATINGS IN THE DAY AND TOUCHINGS IN THE DARK. To survive it HER MIND HAD made the badness good. Home became a force field of false safety. Going into the outside world as a little girl had made her dizzy. AT TWELVE, NOT LONG BEFORE THEY LEFT VENTURA AND WENT INTO EXILE she'd figured out how to get her hands on the copies of uncensored issues of Sucesos magazine her father hid in his bottom dresser drawer. She found out from the photographs in Sucesos that there were worse tortures going on in Ventura than those she reversed at home, eyes were being gouged, finger nails plucked, breasts cut off, vaginas douched with acid, bodies stacked into empty water cisterns, thrown by roads, or into the harbor to feed the sharks.
Was Ernesto being tortured this very moment? In some room in the City right now someone was being tortured. THESE WERE THINGS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO UNKNOW BECOME INURED TO SWIM IN AS IF THEY WERE THE WATER OF LIFE. She knew Ernesto terror thoughts were the prelude to the barely thinkable thoughts about Cheito. How did you find someone WHO WENT OFF THE GRID WILLINGLY SUBMERGED HIMSELF in a mushroom city without actual streets let alone named streets? How did he live? How will he live? Will he survive? What will become of him? Will he ever stop drinking and drugging? SHE HAD RUINED HIS CHILDHOOD WITH HER MISTAKES HER FOOLISH IDEA THAT A LOVE AFFAIR WOULD FIX HER LIFE. Will he end up like the homeless sleeping man in the middle of the subway platform yesterday morning?. He lay bundled in a sleeping bag with the book Current Trends in Marxism by his side. Next, on schedule, came the terrors about her own old age. ALONE, blind, incontinent, unaware, homeless, stinking, demented, one of the many street dwellers in the mushroom cities, the favelas, swept by the tidal waves. All along have her tidal wave nightmares described over and over in her dream journal been prophetic? WHEN SHE STILL MANAGED TO WRITE IN IT, BEFORE THE DREAMS AND WAKING LIFE MERGED, HER SLEEP SHALLOW AND HER WAKING LIFE BLURRED She pushed away images of the underwater planet, of favelas, of the billions drowning, among them Cheito and herself. Maybe Ernesto was the lucky one, dead for his cause, dead while he still believed that by dying he was ensuring the revolution; dead before he knew we are all already dead, knew capitalism already killed us all. Before he knew it was too late and we have destroyed the planet, destroyed each other in small ways in our little lives and destroyed everything altogether in huge ways as the one huge organism that we are. An organism split against itself, its thinking confused by greed, its might out of control. We are the genocidal suicidal beast.
Cheito may survive in his little life only to be drowned by the big death.
Would the revolution be made in time for Cheito? Was it already too late?

AQUI

She managed to get herself out of bed. She moved slowly not to disturb the field. This was how she moved as a child after her beatings and his overlove, hoping to not enter either of their spheres, as if by disappearing herself she could avoid the rules of annihilation. She dressed quietly in the dark as if Ernesto was still with her and she was protecting his sleep. She pulled on a black t shirt, black sweater and black jeans, bundled herself into her down coat, wrapped her head and face into her scarf, and leashed Thug. It was a good thing Cheito left his dog behind,to make her get up and get outside.

Taped onto the tree in front of the house was a wanted poster, the words REWARD printed in big red letters. The photograph was a bad likeness of D who'd come by the house drunk out of his mind at three am just last month, the day after he came back from the Island War, looking for Cheito, shocked Cheito had been gone from home almost three months, that Big D had been stabbed and stomped to death just up the block, that the lives of the other living room school boys had not stayed still while he was away.
He'd stood by this same tree telling her as he sobbed how in the Island War he'd had to shoot at other Islanders. "You wouldn't believe what they could do with barely any weapons, making their bodies the weapon. They believe in what they are fighting for. I wanted to go over to their side." He'd come back a week later after he found Cheito. He gave her Cheito's email address and told her he was living in the mushroom town erupting in Bliss park, where he and Cheito played as boys. He was the only one of the living room school boys willing to tell her where her son was. She pulled off the poster and read it as she walked Thug toward the avenue. It said D had crashed a stolen car and "inflicted life threatening injuries" on someone else in the car. She folded the poster and rammed it into her coat pocket. D's glassy eyes stared straight at her from every street light on the avenue. No surprise if D went back to stealing cars. She pushed away the thought that this might not have happened if she hadn't been afraid to let him come inside that night, if she had listened longer, if she had helped him. D was another mother's son. Her own son could one day be on such a poster. She couldn't even help her own son, let alone another Mother's.

Here was D's mother approaching her on the avenue, taking D's daughter to school. Julia kept going and Silvia stepped in front of her to stop her. Julia pushed past her, waved at a poster. "Las malas companias." Silvia kept up with her. Whose son was bad company for the other? "There's no room for our sons." Silvia looked hard into Julia's eyes, ringed with shadows. "They're targeted for destruction." Julia raised her hand. "Thinking he's a victim of society doesn't lead David to better choices. It's his excuse for the crazy shit he does. Look at Juan or Carlitos. They have jobs, they're in night school." Julia believed those were the successes from the living room school. Silvia grabbed Julia's arm. "They're working as prison guards! That's what our sons get to be, prisoners or prison guards."
Taina broke away from her grandmother's hand, ran to the closest poster, yanked it off, ran ahead to the next one, yanked it off. Julia ran after her. Silvia watched Julia slap the little girl's hand. She caught up to them. "Call me if there's anything I can do. If you need help finding a lawyer." Julia yanked Taina's hand and walked away. "Fuck you. You and your son are David's problem." Silvia caught up to her. She watched herself say "Io fuckedmother I've been trying to be your friend since I moved into this neighborhood when our boys were a year and a half. Just because you choose not to know who your real enemy is doesn't mean I have to put up with you thinking it's me or my son."
Julia kept walking. Silvia let her walk away and let Thug pull her as far as her own door and into the house. She no longer felt scared. Outrage beat out terror. She found among the stacks of notebooks by her bed the one she'd kept just after Ernesto got taken and scanned the names of lawyers scribbled on the back page. Nothing good had come of Ernesto's vanishing except she was well connected to left wing lawyers. If Julia thought that Silvia was going to do nothing for D just because Julia chose to blind herself to the truth, she was wrong.

On the train to the Special Office Silvia studied the list of lawyers. A couple of them she'd interpreted for in court owed her the favor. To get a good lawyer first she'd have to go find Manuel. The first rush hour was almost over and she pushed her way to a window seat. She'd called in sick and hoped she didn't run into anybody from her job. The train emerged from the tunnel onto the bridge on the track closest to the railing. It was good to get a good look at the river. Steel, sky, water. How many different shades of gray could there be?
When had things gone bad with Julia? When the boys were barely five years old and she came to pick up David but he didn't want to leave, perched himself on top of the wooden climbing toy in the middle room between her bedroom and Cheito's? The day a few months years later when David put his fist through the glass door of the summer house in the yard? Not long after that Ernesto tore it down so the boys had more room to play. It wasn't until after the subway disaster that same summer that Julia stopped letting David sleep over, although once he got to be 10 or 11 he started sleeping over again. He just lied. The day of the subway disaster Silvia had finally convinced Julia to go to a demonstration against the Island War. She'd talked her into bringing David. There was going to be a contingent of children in the front of the march with a banner they'd painted on her floor the night before: We Want a Future.
They were in a thick crowd of people standing close to the door of the train. The car got more and more crowded as they neared the midtown rally point. At the stop where the Partido de La Felicidad's contingent was gathering the group pressed out of the train, a thick mass of people barely able to get through the door. Silvia and Julia were pulled apart and the boys were pulled apart from each of them. The two women were on the platform and the boys were left behind on the train. Silvia could see Cheito through the glass. She mouthed to him to get out at the next stop and wait for her. David she couldn't see. Julia was screaming. They got themselves outside. There was no way to get a taxi, the streets were filled with people, the sidewalks were jammed. Silvia told Julia that the boys should be waiting at the next stop. They pushed their way the ten blocks, down into the hole in the ground against the tide of demonstrators climbing up. There were no boys waiting. Their train had long come and gone.
Julia was speechless, following Silvia. Silvia told the token seller, told the transit cop. The cop told them to go back to their contingent. Someone from their group might have gotten left behind on the train as well, and taken the boys to the rally point. Silvia didn't know how she was moving, stepping one foot in front of the other, how she was breathing, her heart was racing and her lungs were stopped. How did she make it back? What if the group had already begun marching?
The boys were there. Each boy clung to one hand of a Partido militant Silvia barely knew. Each mother flung herself onto her knees and clutched her boy and sobbed. Silvia and Cheito stayed with the demonstration. Julia yanked David's hand, pulled him away, plunged into the train without saying a word.

Silvia walked outside. It had turned into a garish sunny day. She was done at the Special Commission much earlier than she expected. The man had no information on Ernesto. She'd asked him about both her missing men and when he told her she could ask about only one case she had decided to use her turn to ask about Ernesto. About Cheito there was even less likelihood they would know anything at all. He punched keys and stared at a computer screen. Of course the man knew nothing. They'd taken Ernesto. Put him wherever they put people they didn’t want found. Why would they tell her anything? Cheito believed they’d taken him to the Camp, the clandestine City prison on one of the Island's offshore keys. There was no way short of seizing the state to find anybody there until they were good and ready to release them. With the moat act there were no civil liberties left.

She kept walking to not think. She thought of her long ago yoga teacher who called meditation parking the mind. From that ancient time before the Party, Ernesto or Cheito, her mantra floated into her consciousness. She let the syllables repeat themselves inside her mind, matching them at times to her breath at times to her gait. She had some idea where she was heading but she didn’t want to fully know, wanted not to decide. She found herself on the south east corner of the park, or what used to be the park and was now a mushroom town. Cheito called them mushroom towns, in one of his spoken songs.
If he was in there, and D said he was, she would find Cheito.
The place had a fascination. She stood a few yards into the path wondering which way to walk. She counted on the simmering rage inside her to keep her safe. Nobody would dare mess with her. She decided to walk uphill and bear left because long ago she and Cheito had walked the dog Thug to the meadow that used to be there. Now the meadow was a maze of structures built out of cardboard boxes and pieces of billboard. She saw a room made from the middle of a car. She stood and looked until she made out paths among the clustered structures. Nobody was out. Maybe they went out of the park to work, or maybe they slept in the day. She walked to what was once the high spot on the meadow. The shelters hid the view of the City on the other side of the river. She braced herself and knocked on a door. The woman who came to the door was older than Silvia, dressed like Silvia, for an office, and she didn’t look annoyed.
“Who are you looking for? Your son?” Was the park full of desperate mothers? Silvia burst into tears.
"His name is Cheito." The woman shrugged. "Who knows his mushroom town name?" Silvia closed her eyes and pictured her son. "He's a head taller than I am, darker skinned. He has an oval face and deep set eyes." She opened her eyes and saw the woman was gazing at her, listening. "He usually shaves his head but if he's grown it out his hair is dark brown and very curly. He's got a deep loud voice and has to try not to sound like he's yelling. If you've seen his right arm, he has a tattoo on his inner forearm that says, La Historia Me Alsolvera." Now the woman nodded. Silvia felt her knees give way. The woman opened her arms and Silvia let herself be held. She sobbed. "They're trying to destroy our sons."
The woman whispered into Silvia's ear. "We won't let them get away with genocide." She led Silvia inside and they sat together on a park bench around which the shack was built. "What if I never stop crying?" The woman smiled. "Let yourself cry now. It's just what you need." Silvia had no idea how long she let herself sob in the stranger's arms. By the end of the tears she was no longer a stranger. She was Alma. She'd come to the mushroom town following her two sons. She had no immediate plans of leaving, at least not until the winter. She knew Cheito but she wouldn’t tell Silvia where he was. “I don't want to break his trust. But I can tell you he’s fine. He’s got good friends who have his back.” She promised she’d tell him Silvia had come looking for him.
Silvia watched Alma walk down hill to her job as a visiting nurse. She stayed. She found a place where a park bench wasn’t inside anybody’s house and she sat there. Between two mushroom houses through a space left as a passage she could see a bit of river, a bit of skyline. She sat and waited for her son. She thought she might just sit there for ever until he manifested on his own, or someone told him she was there, willing him to come see her. She would not move. She would go on a hunger strike. She would dare challenge society or god. So much injustice couldn’t go on with impunity. She couldn't keep on dragging herself to work, sitting at her desk, looking out the window at the mirror building across the way. Why didn’t everyone simply stop where they were, refuse to make another move or take another step until there was justice? She would sit there until god responded and made something happen.

She sat and parked her mind and let a voice in her head repeat the mantram. She felt at peace, relieved. She would never move again until either Ernesto himself came and got her or Cheito turned up.

Just about nightfall Cheito came and sat beside her. She beamed at him. He took her hand. She put her head on his shoulder. She tried to keep her tears silent. She was afraid to open her mouth, say anything that might make him go away. He made the first move, pulled on her arm and walked out with her, walked with her all the way to their house. Thug knocked him down at the door. He went with him into the shower and they showered together, master and dog. She cooked Cheito’s childhood favorite macaroni and cheese. They sat together to eat. Was she dreaming?
“I got word about Pa. He’s in the Camp.”
“How?”
“Everybody sooner or later turns up at Bliss. There was a guy who'd gotten out who'd seen Pa there. I'm pretty positive it was Pa he saw. He had our tattoo.”
Silvia was afraid to breathe for fear she’d conjure Cheito away just as she’d somehow conjured him to her.
“D’s there.”
She nodded. It was obvious that was where D would have gone. Where else was there to go completely off the grid?
“He’s not hanging around for this one.”
She understood. The rest of the living room school guys had turned their backs on him. Blamed him for Sapo’s being as good as dead, if not dead already. But Cheito had a different sense of loyalty. If only it included her. Or was his presence here a sign that maybe now it did include her? Had she been good enough for him? Had her seres de luz prayers healed them both? Healed her enough?
He said he’d stay the night but would go away next morning.
Before he went to bed he enlisted Silvia in his plan for them to get to the Island, then the Camp, and demand to see Ernesto.

She woke up, jumped out of bed and ran to Cheito's room. Had she dreamt everything? He was in his bed with his down blanket wound around his head, under his neck, between his legs. Her knees gave way from tenderness. Love for her son made her liquid inside. She couldn't bear his going again. She watched him sleep,looking like her little boy. She called in sick a second day so she could stay and watch him as long as he was there. She'd end up on the list of people with time and leave problems, maybe lose her job.
She couldn’t stop him from leaving but she could stay till he did. Always in her life there had been a man who was leaving. First her Father, then her lovers, then Ernesto, now her son. It couldn’t help her son for her to be feeling about him the way she felt about Ernesto being gone. But she didn’t, actually. Her son being gone nothing had prepared her for. Unendurably bereft she watched him from the window, heading uphill. Now she knew where he was and she could find him again. But why did becoming a man mean he had to leave her? And how had it come to be she had almost no life beyond him?
He said he’d be back after he took care of getting D out of town. He didn’t want to tell her where he was sending him or taking him. “If you don’t know you can’t answer when they ask you.” Already her son knew more about the world than she did. Or more about the world that men had set up. Hers was a different world.
She had no idea what to do next. What to do now. She noticed that she was sobbing. Racking, loud sobs. She shouldn’t be crying alone. She put the leash on Thug and went outside and let the dog drag her wherever he wanted. She imagined the dog would track Cheito, lead her to him without her having to decide to chase her son. But Thug walked the opposite way, down the hill, toward the river. He walked to the Partido's storefront. She tied the dog to a meter and walked inside. A crowd was gathered by the coffee machine. She knew at once from his absence it was Manuel she'd come to see. There was a bang on the front window and there he was. She opened the door to let him in. He scowled, barely glanced at her, as if he no longer knew her. "The door was locked." She'd somehow locked it when she walked in. He walked through her, past her and hugged each of the coffee drinkers. She stood to the side assuming he'd get around to hugging her but he didn't. Invisible. She felt slapped, pushed back tears, went numb so she could follow him into the back room. He leaned over the desk into his hands, his face close to the front page of Redencion, reading the cover story with his bad eyes. "Manuel." He turned to face her. Now he smiled. She couldn't count on holding his attention so she went to the point: "Ernesto's in the Camp. You have to tell me how I find him. What I have to do to get him out."
It had been a long time. She had no favors to call in with Manuel. He resented her disappearing from the Party after Ernesto was expelled although they'd never bothered with expelling her. They'd simply let her disappear into motherhood. But she could see Manuel was listening. She could offer him Ernesto as a cause, a front page story, a documentable disappeared who had been traced to the Camp. First she'd have to prove to him that he was there. And how could she be certain? She was going on what Cheito said. She believed it. She'd always known it. Manuel said he'd look into it and agreed to meet with her again next day.

This time she led Thug to Bliss Town, back to Alma's shack. She sat inside Alma's hut on her bench with Thug at her feet waiting for Alma to come home. The hut was sturdy enough. One wall was made from an old billboard and she could make out from the torn off bits of paper a huge human eye. The roof was made out of a car hood. She saw a barrel with a spout with water in it and saw the pipe that fed it joined a rain gutter. There was a narrow bed built from a slab of plywood propped on cinder blocks. The mattress was inch thick foam. The sheet was clean and the quilt was soft and Silvia longed for a moment to go to sleep. Alma didn't seem surprised to see her. She offered her half of the carne con papas she brought in a stacked cantina.
"I found him. He came to me where I was sitting on the bench at the top of the hill."
Alma took her hand. Silvia saw a tear run down Alma's face. Alma's voice was soft. "They're not going to kill our sons. Not all of them. Each one we save lives on for the ones we've lost." Silvia let herself sob.
"Why is it so easy to cry with you? All these months of Cheito being gone, the two years that Ernesto's been gone, I'd never gotten around to crying."
The two women walked outside, up the hill,into the uphill maze of shacks. Silvia kept Thug's leash tight. The dog recognized Cheito before she did. He surged ahead. Cheito stood by a bonfire with his back to her. Crouched beside him was D, holding over the flame a piece of meat skewered onto a wire. She didn't want to know what meat it was they were eating. D stood up and hugged her with one arm holding the dripping meat away from her. He looked deep into her eyes. Cheito motioned Silvia and Julia toward a nearby tree. On the ground by the roots was a big round stone. David knelt and touched the stone. "A marker for Big D." Cheito crouched by the stone. "We buried his cross. Now he's joined the Seres de Luz." David closed his eyes. "Another one who died so we could live." They walked together back to the fire. Cheito put his arm around Silvia. "You can't keep coming here you know. You're going to lead the jara here. I'm cool but D..." He dragged crates to the fire and the women sat.
D crouched over the flame and turned the meat on the wire. "You remember that camping trip? You and Ernesto took the boys from the living room school to the mountains. We cooked over the fire and hiked in the woods and slept in tents."
Cheito laughed. "Who knew it was our military training?"
Silvia hesitated for a breath before she spoke.
"Your mother would give anything to see you. To know where you are."
He turned away. "She wants me to give myself up. She'd turn me in herself if she knew where I was."
He squatted again. "I'm going back to the Island. To do what I told you I wanted to do."
Cheito shook his head. "You shouldn't know that much but since you do, might as well know I'm going with him. If you're targetted for genocide might as well choose to get killed for something."

Silvia almost ran down the hill letting the dog drag her. She found herself outside Julia's door. Taina flung the door open and Julia stood behind her. Silvia beamed at her friend. She was washed of blaming her for her confusion. Julia stepped aside and led her in.
"If you found D, if he came back here, would you turn him in?"
Julia shook her head. "I'd never do that. He knows I'd never do that."
Taina rolled on the floor with Thug. Julia made a move to pull her away but Silvia held her back.
"What if we go outside, like the old days with our boys, take Taina for a long walk."
"The park is hardly a park any more."
"There's still the old dog run, I'm sure."
Taina took the leash and walked ahead, half pulled by Thug. Silvia gave Julia a hard look when she hesitated at the park steps. Maybe Julia understood. She let herself be led.
The boys stood by the bonfire where Silvia last saw them, their heads together, talking so intensely they didn't see the women, the child, the dog until Thug nuzzled his snout into Cheito's hand.
There was just one second of reproach in Cheito's eyes and then D and Julia and Taina were in each other's arms by turns, one by one. D raised Taina into the air. He squatted and spoke softly with her face to face.
"You can't stay long. If you were followed you know we're fucked."
In a few minutes Silvia told Julia they must go.
"After this visit you know we have to go. They can't make you tell them what you don't know." Silvia hugged her son hard to her chest. "They could take us anyway, no matter what we know or don't know."
They stopped at Alma's to catch their breath. She boiled them tea and the three women with Taina on Julia's lap, sat together on Alma's bench."Why is each parting more painful than the last?" Silvia shook. Julia sat on the edge of the bench and rocked herself. "Last night I had the nightmare again. Our two boys left behind in the train. I see David through the window. He can't hear me. We can't hear each other. The train is pulling away." Silvia took Julia's hand. "I have those nightmares too. Over and over." Alma took both their hands. "The train of their lives is taking them to worlds we will never see or understand." Julia clung to Silvia. They held each other. Silvia spoke into Julia's chest. "They're leaving us behind and there's nothing we can do for them anymore." Alma stood over and put her arms around both women. "As long as we love them and hold them in our minds there is something we are always doing for our sons." The women held each other and sobbed hard, never as hard as genocide required, were there enough tears for that? But as hard as they could.

Manuel was waiting for her in the back room of the Partido storefront. This time he hugged Silvia the moment she walked in, a real hug, heart to heart, and looked at her as if he remembered her, as if they had a past after all. Or was this all coming from her, because she smiled at him, because she was happy to see him and wasn't consumed with resenting him for his confusion? He offered her cafe con leche and after he mixed it on the back counter they sat down by his desk. "Things might go better for Ernesto, for finding Ernesto after the new Commissioner." Silvia tried not to look like she didn't know anything about Commissioners, tried not to look surprised that Manuel knew about Commissioners. In the old days he had only scorn for City officials. "Did you know Yolanda has been appointed to head the Special Commission for the Disappeared?" Silvia made the smallest motion with her head, neither a nod nor a shake. Why did she care if Manuel thought her uninformed on City politics or discovered how pathetic she thought it was that he and Yolanda had come to this, they were burocrazies, collaborators, supplicants, while Ernesto was on his way to being a martyr. And she had to come to them for help as if in making their ascent up the digestive tract of the beast's belly it had been possible not to be digested, transmuted into beast matter or beast shit.
"What does it mean for Ernesto? Does Xiomara have any influence or authority or is she..."
"One of "them"?" Manuel let out a belly laugh and doubled over in his chair. "You don't get to pick the fronts, you just get to figure out the strategies, you just get to keep thinking. She's going to get Ernesto out."
"If he's still there to be gotten out."
"How does a person get out of the Camp? How do I find that out?

the dead are smiling at us [C & D show S x' grave]

I just beam at him because I know it's just internalized oppression and if he'd had a chance to discharge it I wouldn't look scary to him. [After taking big session w visiting nurse in the park, she beams at J]

I had to have done all the sessions about wanting to kill white men

That's where we buried xxx [c& d show x' grave]

One of the things I know about me at this point in my life is I am never alone [S' realization after w in park, Manuel, Julia]

Camping trip, bonfire, cook, ride horses Culebra?? [memory D shares while looking t x grave]

those who are christian and those who are not: not: genocide issue use alchohol, crime, suicide by crime or cop
christian go to church and pray (Julia)original missionaries ousted culture

system ridden with colonial patterns racist attitudes they say these young people aren't going to make it laugh and spout

I know in my heart I am already changing the world just by sitting at the same table they do, and I just beam at them
Our native intelligence is one of flexibility I have a grasp of two languages two ways of thinking two value systems and I command them both

I discharge deeply on being a target of genocide

they work together when someone dies

we are intelligent, powerful, creative, zestful, lovable human beings hurt in ways that seemed insurmountable but are not...we discharge, discharge, discharge

Show where they are and what the places actually look like and what the people look like. As if the writer was actually looking and paying attention...Instead of trying to get a session by writing the story...What if the writer had her attention oooouuuuttt and wrote with attention outside the distresssssss!!! There's a good goal!!!