Blog 8-Beginning to arrive

“Instead of the ferry moving toward Karaya, it looks like la Isla is moving toward us.” Franz pointed to the green crescent. The harbor began to narrow and it seemed we were entering a river. Later I learned the harbor was the mouth of the Rio Guacabon. “Not many born and bred here stay any more," Franz said. "Gone to the City where you're coming from. I don't think it ever feels like it's your City, though, does it?” He turned to Machi and they walked away. I snapped a photo of them talking, their heads close. Taina spun and chanted “Mi Papi, Mi Papi.“ Julia smiled at me. “Let's forget for one moment and be as joyful as Taina. Look how the sunlight makes the water clear as blue air.”
Taina claimed the ferry's deck for her playground. She ran and leapt in circles, celebrating our imminent arrival, and the few other passengers watched her like she too was a fish. Machi taught her and Franz to play slow motion tag, an indoor game I used to play with him and David. “What a good, good boy.” I said to Julia, “He's not the looter and rapist others see.” Julia nodded. “He turned into a man, built up and strong, the year he lived on the street.” I frowned. “A year in La Terraza.”
“Where's that?” Franz said as he was slow running past us and invited himself into our conversation. Julia answered. “It's the mushroom town on Moon Park, near where we live in South City.” He fixed his eyes on me. “A mushroom town, like Palenque?” I thought about it. Julia said, “Yes, but with nobody to free.” I shook my head. “With everybody to free, todos.”
“All this sunlight, water, air, heat remind me of the real place, the right place...” I whispered to Julia. She understood. “Ventura!," she touched my cheek and her tenderness almost brought me to tears. "Your birth country. To think that we are going to be so close to the part of Ventura still in the hands of the City, so close to that hell Base, that hell Camp...We'll be in Karaya just across the border from Ventura and yet so far away."
I broke into her thought, “Hard to believe Ventura, the revolutionary country, and Cayo Karaya the world's oldest remaining colony, have coexisted on one small mound of land for almost 50 years.”
“There they both are, coming at us,” she went on. “I remember you telling me years ago that the City never felt quite real to you. Not for me either. There's a part of me always longing for my Isla. I think it's the Taino in me they didn't kill....
“...that place always on the edge of my mind showing me that wherever I actually am, is elsewhere, wrong.”
“...Being the right place has to do with the light in our childhood, in our first homes, you in Ventura and me in Karaya...Place matters.”
“ Scorching bright light fell on trees, red dirt, rough concrete. Some childhood moment in the patio de abuela in Ventura was constructed by my mind into the emblem of the real...”
“....The City is never quite right except recently, on very sunny days, if the light reaches the sidewalk...that terrifying no ozone global warming brightness, that blinding wrongness, looks right. More right now that the atmosphere is so thin.”
“...and Here, approaching our Isla, the light is right. I remember that from when I was here when Machi was a boy, and then later with Ori for a Congreso del Partido, and from when I tried to live here for a few months when Ori and I were separated more than ten years ago.”
Taina sang out. "Karaya, Karaya, quiere decir Luna." She'd made up a song, a joyous melody. I took in a breath and was in tears.
“I'm feeling as if I myself were her age, six years old, forced to leave Ventura for the first time when my Father went to seminary. Everything in the City was wrong. And then I was just a bit younger than Machi when we moved to the City, supposedly not forever, but it turned into forever. The bad guys had won in Ventura, or rather the good guys my Father conspired with had turned into bad guys in his eyes, and so my father chose exile. Later when I met the unnameable cad, of course he wasn't the cad then, and my old lover Jimmy, and then Ori, I learned the bad guys were the good guys. My father had made a historic error. I learned my whole life in exile was a big mistake...”
She pressed into me.“....a sentence to life in the other place, the wrong place." I took both her hands. "I remember what I missed the most all the years we didn't speak, those times you understand exactly what I mean."
She turned toward Machi, “Look at him. He just looked at your tears and turned away, back to Taina.” I wiped my face. “He's tired of this sad and angry woman.” She shook her head. “Or he's trying to hide his own tears.” It had been a long time since I'd felt pride in my son. “Look at him take Taina's hand. He devotes himself to watching her, to keeping her safe.” I smiled. “Or he keeps himself safe by watching her.”
Franz took a break from slow tagging Taina, stepped closer to me. “Your son spent a year living in a park? Then he's ready for Palenque.” It was easy to want to talk to Franz and forget he was a Guardia. “Machi lived in La Terraza and god knows where else. I wish he'd told me more of where he was and what he did. Look at him now, almost a man's body. He just turned 17.” I let out a long breath. Franz raised his eyebrows. “I thought he was my age, 21. He was a runaway?” Franz studied me and finally couldn't stop himself from asking. “What were you thinking? How did you let him?” Julia laughed. “Let him? I'd like to see you stop either of our sons.” He laughed. "Aqui en Karaya ya tampoco respetan." Franz turned his attention to her. “Where is your son?” Julia thought before she answered him. “Machi, we, think he's hiding from the City Force in the Encampment.” Franz laughed again. "He wouldn't be the only one."
Just then Taina stopped chasing Machi and saw her chance to tag Franz. It again, he left us. I whispered, half to myself, “What am I doing telling a Guardia anything?” Julia shrugged, walked away, and sat down on one of the plastic deck chairs. Franz tagged Machi and returned to me. I turned away from the dolphins to face him. I didn't trust my impulse to trust him. “Where are you from?” He gave me a big smile. “Born and raised in Karaya. All I've known all my life is that base the Prison Camp they say doesn't exist exists in.” I grew less panicked about everything I'd told him about us. “Have you been deployed?” He nodded. “Last Island War. My Father fought in the first. Battle of Rio Tibio, the river we now call Guacabon. One of the guys who crossed the River. Know what I mean? We're entering the Guacabon's mouth, the desembocadura, right now."
He didn't wait for my answer. “Crossing the River, that's when the Rebeldes challenged the Guardias to stop fighting against their own best interests. The phrase came to be because the Rebels called across the river to the Guardias, with loudspeakers. They called across the water, yelling to them to cross the river, change sides, put down their weapons, take them up with the Rebeldes and not against them. Even some officers put down their arms. And even when their commanders didn't cross the river soldiers like my father walked with their weapons held over their head across the Rio Tibio. They were the ones who started calling it Rio Guacabon again. My father was a guata, that's what we call Guardias who cross the river.” The story brought tears to my eyes. He put his arm around my shoulder. “So why am I a Guardia? It's the only job they got. Well, they got three, prison guard, prisoner, and Guardia...”
Julia and Taina joined us. Taina looked at me and said, “Va a llorar.” Julia came close and put her arm around my waist. Machi stepped toward me. Had my tears softened him? He too put his arms around me. Held and sheltered by all three of them I felt safe, for just that moment. Julia let me go and pointed to the Island. “Tienen que estar ahi.”