Blog 12-Patria and I huddled by the dying fire, talking, talking, talking

That first night in Palenque I ran into Patria. Or she ran into me. After we ate the fish to the bone Machi left to go god knows where with Lagarto and Robles. Julia took Taina into our just built lean-to. "Voy a dormirla." I watched them lie down. Julia spooned around Taina. Both of them crashed to sleep. I was alone, wired. I trembled, stared at the red ashes of the banked fire and tried to slow down my breathing. What if Machi was gone again?
I sensed someone watching me. I looked up and there was Patria. She came and found me! Just moments after Machi left and Patria and Taina fell asleep she turned up where the Hillside path closest to our shelter came to a dead end by our fire. She handed me two blue tin cups and a jar full of cafe con leche. “A lean-to warming gift." I filled the cups and set them to warm on the campfire Machi banked before he left. Right away I recognized her from twelve years ago. Why was she calling herself Patria now when she'd been Irma then? Did she want to be someone else in Palenque? Did she have a different name because she was underground here? I didn't let on I recognized her from twelve years ago, but I was sure I'd known her then, during my first attempt to return to Karaya. I'd moved here with Machi right after Ori and I separated for the first time. I packed in a hurry, just the necessary things, grasped my chance at realizing el mito del retorno. I 'd lasted in Karaya a few months.
"I'm Lagarto's mother." She sat alongside me by the fire. That had to mean Lagarto had been Machi's friend a dozen years ago, the little boy we'd known as Elpidio. "I'm a tracker and he told me to come help you find your Desaparecidos. He said you're buena gente."
I handed her one of the blue tin cups. "I think we were neighbors twelve years ago. But you had a different name." I was afraid I'd made a Palenque faux pas, but she was laughing now. “Back then I used to go by Irma, my middle name. I never liked my first name Patria until I got rid of my husband, and got his thinking out of my brain. You remember skinny Elpidio the teniente? When I got rid of him I stopped being pro statehood. I realized I'd been pro-statehood mainly to please him. I reclaimed my family's nationalism. Then I loved it that my parents named me Patria. Although I would have preferred Matria if only the word existed.” I laughed with her. "I thought taking a new name was a secret Palenque ritual I had to pretend to know about. Lagarto has a new name too. He showed up like a miracle as we arrived yesterday and helped us build our lean-to. I wonder if Machi's figured out Lagarto is his little playmate Elpidio from when they were both five.”
She asked to see a photo of Machi. I leaned toward where she was sitting beside me by the dying campfire. “Mira.” I moved my phone closer to her face and showed her a video of our ferry crossing. In the tiny phone image five year old Taina jumped on the ferry's deck. A dolphin leapt out of the sea. My 17 year old son Maceo chased the girl. The camera zoomed on Machi's face and I froze the screen.“My Machi.”
I'd paused the image just as right behind Machi Taina's grandmother Julia reached her arms toward the child. Patria squinted at the image of my son. By the dim light of the banked campfire I could see she was now vivid and distinct. Twelve years ago she'd often looked sad and absent. Now she looked pleased. Fine lines around the eyes and lips and a softer chin were the only signs of age, apart from the salt and pepper hair cut short. Before, she'd worn her hair long and dyed it blonde.
“You look just like happy tourists.” She returned my phone. I laughed. “Same thing Julia said." I pointed to my friend asleep under the blue tarp. “You don't think we look like we're on a half-crazy journey to find our Desaparecidos?” Patria waved her hand in a circle at the maze around us. “We may be living in lean-tos and tents, in odd shacks made of anything we find, wood scraps and scavenged sheets of plywood. We may have reclaimed cabins long abandoned by the shut down EcoPark, after evicting the little carablanca monkeys, but we are finally not crazy. We're here until we find our Desaparecidos inside that Camp. Hasta que Karaya sea libre.”
We both stared at the steel mesh fence of the City Navy Cayo Karaya Base, clearly visible now as the searchlight swung over it. Patria made a fist and and waved it at the fence. "The fucking Base."
My gaze followed her hand. "Twelve years ago I never heard you curse." She laughed again, a deep, warm laugh I didn't remember. "Except when I was raging at my older son Tomas for drinking and drugging. Better to curse at the Base than at Tomas." She hugged me. "Here we are, crying from laughing." I touched my cheek. "My God. You're right. It feels so good to cry from laughing!"
“I can barely take in I'm living a la intemperie by that Base. Are we crazy?" The terror rose again. She held me and I trembled.
"What's crazy is that Base." She spoke softly into my ear, the way I would soothe Machi from his nightmares. "That there could be in the 21st Century an island that is half socialist and half a colony, 90 miles from the metropolis; and that smack in the middle of it is a base that straddles both colonized Karaya and La Republica Socialista de Ventura, one base, with a border crossing somewhere in its bowels; none of that would not exist in a rational world."
I let myself be held and sobbed into her chest. "Those are old tears." She stroked my cheek. "It's time to let them go." I'd barely known her as Irma and barely knew this new Patria, and maybe that made it easier to let the tears come.
"The City, that world I just left, feels like another planet, and Colonized Karaya feels like another planet than my birth country La Republica Socialista de Ventura." I tried to push away and she held me closer, and spoke sweetly into my ear. "Two planets and yet they share this tiny Caribbean island, small enough you could drive around it in 6 hours...”
My tears shifted to laughter. “Sure, if you could get through the checkpoints and survive the land mines.” She let me go and shook her fist again. “And there the Base stands, the last fucking domino. It was there long before the Revolution and remains as if by some bizarre divine decree, unmovable, straddling both the colony and the revolutionary state. Its eagle holds our Isla by the neck.”
I pointed to the glistening mesh. “Divine until we stop worshiping the City as our god, until we stop giving the City our consent."