Blog 6-Almost remembering Losing the Boys

Looking at the turquoise Caribbean Sea from the ferry's deck I remembered two years ago complaining to Ori about our never victorious revolution as we walked home after a rally that almost no one came to, outside a prison with a supposedly secret detention center right in Moon Park, close to the river, just blocks from our home. He said to me, “Every moment of liberation, even one minute long, is the revolution.”
Taina twirled and twirled on the ferry's deck. She seized her liberations.
The ferry crossing of the 90 seamiles between the City and Cayo Karaya was six year old Taina's first time on a boat. Machi watched her jump with the dolphins and run on the deck. He said to Julia the same thing I'd said. “You give your grandchild more room than you used to give your son.” I remembered how much I'd wanted to have been a mother who gave her son moments of liberation. He didn't hide his resentment. How much damage had it done to him and to David, that force field separating me and Julia ever since we lost them on the train on Grito Day more than a decade ago. How had I ever accepted her unspoken decree that the boys not see each other after that? And now, what? How did you fix the past?
He kept his voice low, made it clear he was choosing to sit on his rage. “For years you didn't let David play with me, you set us up to be rebels, break laws. And now here you are needing me to help you find him.” He had more of a sense than I did of things that must be talked about in order to move forward. Maybe he'd learned that on the street. I nodded and didn't manage to bite my tongue. “Taina's safe with Machi, let her play.” Julia gave me her hard look and this time she didn't hold back. “What would you know about keeping a child safe?” She walked away, followed Taina who had run to the other side of the Ferry where the dolphins were now gathering.
I was sorry to have spoken. I went after her, my arms held out for balance as the ferry rode a swell. “I know you don't want to lose children. Well, neither do I.” Her hard look made me feel erased, slapped, the way I'd felt after my Mother hit me. She stepped away again but I stayed with her. “On the ferry you can't cross the street or slam the door in my face.” That was when I realized the Guardia had my phone camera pointed at us again. I got embarrassed, and grabbed the phone away from him.
Maybe if I hadn't been hungry and irritated I would have stayed quiet. Mostly I stayed quiet except when I went oppressor, and attacked, said too much. With Julia I'd been quiet for over a decade. Time to say too much. “Don't we have enough problems with what's happening now? Your son and my husband both disappeared? How can you still blame me because we both lost the boys on the train?” Even after all these years, just saying the words out loud sent a quiver up my windpipe, made my hands wet and cold. I relived the moment when the huge crowd pushed us onto the train station platform and parted us from the boys left behind on the train. The subway doors closed and the boys were gone. My body remembered, reproduced the state: short breath, sweaty palms, heart racing, mind wanting to go under, screaming with no voice,“Help me, help me, help me,” and then hearing myself screaming out loud. Why didn't it matter to Julia that when we reached the gathering point for the march, after pushing, screaming through the crowds, desperately looking for the boys, they were already there, they had been found, others of the demonstrators rescued them, knew they were ours, brought them to us?
On the sunlit ferry deck Julia ignored me, stepped toward Taina and took her by the hand away from Machi, bribing her to part from her favorite with an offer of a hot dog from the snack bar. I could see the Guardia Franz, leaning on the railing, watching us. He looked amused. Machi walked toward Franz and I stood alone on the ferry's deck, not happy anymore. I could tell he believed by being with Franz he was already making moves to find his Desaparecido father. My one move was to follow Machi so I did and stood beside him and Franz at the railing gazing at the clear, turquoise water. Machi looked bereft without Taina.