Blog 10-Telling Franz About Finding Machi

On that deck, on the ferry, full of the recollection of having lost Machi on the train, I walked up close to where Machi and Franz stood watching Cayo Karaya coming at us. Franz smiled at me, pointed to La Isla and repeated, “Before we were leaving, and now we are arriving.” I returned his warm smile. He was one of those people that made everyone feel safe. I stood as close as I could get to Machi. There was so much I wanted to say to him. The thought formed in my mind. 'I lived to fight for you (with you) another day. Maybe we can string together enough days to keep you alive until we make the revolution and set up a world with room for you and your friends.' But of course I couldn't say those things out loud. Did I ever tell the truth? He caught me smiling and said, “What's so funny?” I said, “Conversations I have with you in my own head.” He grinned. “Don't wanna know.”
I'd wanted to tell him, “I'd almost given up on ever getting you back when I found you just last month. You don't know how many times that year you were gone I thought I would die from losing track of you, not even a sighting on the street. How many times had I screamed and torn my hair and hit myself with my fists? For a year I lived in hell with you gone and Ori gone. And then to think after all the times I went looking and all your friends I asked, that I found you only because your friend David, Julia's boy, was running from the cops, and his face was on wanted posters all over Moon Park.
I imagined telling you the story you won't let me tell you. This thing that happened to both of us, that we were apart for a year, still feels like it happened to each of us because you refuse to talk to me.
I wanted to tell you how that morning after I called in sick from Julia's phone, I promised her I'd go into La Terraza, that terrifying mushroom town in Moon Park, where I believed you had been living, to see what I could find. I'd gone in there dozens of times looking for you and not once found even a sign. I went to Moon Park every morning for a week looking for David, and on the seventh day I found you.'
He had his arm around me and we were looking at the water, in silence, me talking to him inside my own head. I had a realization, and even though Franz was with us, or maybe because I imagined Franz was a little on my side, I spoke. “I just realized it was you who found me. That morning in La Terraza when I thought I found you, it was you who decided to let yourself be found.” He didn't step away, but he didn't look at me. Franz looked at me, interested, and I went on. “You appeared. You emerged from the maze of smoky shelters. I saw you running toward me, you with a beard! I had waited forever for that moment, and when it happened it went by so quickly I barely experienced it. I rose from where I slumped on that bench, my bench on the top of Moon Park hill, where I'd sat every morning for a week wondering which path among the shacks to take.”
Having Franz listening was making room for me to talk to Machi and his interest was keeping Machi from walking away. I took a chance and went on. “I stood and you were almost beside me. You ran into my arms. After an entire year gone there you were running toward me. This moment I'd longed for and given up on was here and I couldn't believe it, take it in. You burst out of the smoke that always rose from those pieced together homes of the Moon Park tent city. We fell into each other and sank down onto the bench arm in arm. I sobbed. I forgot I wanted to kill you for making me crazy. I was dizzy with happiness.”
He glanced toward Karaya, where the pier and the fishing boats were now distinct, then turned and looked at me. He wiped a tear. He said nothing but I felt his full attention. Tears ran down my face but Machi didn't walk away. And now, for the first time, my son spoke about the morning we found each other. “It was funny how I picked up the conversation right where I broke it off when I left. Where I broke it off the night a year ago when I punched my fist through my bedroom wall and said, "I'm going to go find Pa. I'm not waiting for you. I walked out." I wanted to apologize for my passivity but he didn't let me interrupt. He seemed to be telling the story both for me and Franz.
“In the park, I could feel you sobbing and shaking. I said, 'Ma, don't cry like a baby.”
“You were laughing. You held me.”
"I pretty much told you why I let you find me. Remember, I told you I 'd heard you were helping Julia look for David..”
“You said you were sure he'd gone to the encampment in Cayo Karaya. I asked you how you knew David was there and you told me I already knew more than I needed to know.”
“And I told you I was sure Pa is in the prison Camp in the Base.”
“You said, “I 'm going to Karaya to look for Pa, and you can come with me if you want."
I turned to Franz, “I could barely believe Machi wanted me with him. I could barely contain my joy.” Franz nodded, “There it was, your future delivered to you by your son. I wish I had that with my Mami.”
Telling Franz was letting me tell Machi. “And so I followed Machi to Karaya. We followed him, Julia and I and David's little girl Taina. But not David's sister Liani. Up until the last day of screaming fights with Julia, David's younger sister refused to come with us. Julia made herself leave her behind with Arturo, his most recent Babymama, and his three year old twins.” Machi pointed to where Julia sat with Taina, momentarily still, on her lap. “Maybe Julia left her because Liani's like a middle aged woman, more careful than anybody, and because although Julia made us break up last year, and made Liani get an abortion, and there's no way after that Liani would ever be with me, she still thinks she has to keep us apart.” Taina jumped from Julia's lap and joined us. She hung onto the railing, counting the vanishing dolphins, and called out ,“Quedan cinco delfines. Como nosotros con Franz, cinco. Our little pod of four plus one..”