Ingenio

Pituca murmured. Hearing her own voice reminded her she was still alive. "Do you know where I heard that name before? Not a where... Except when Abi speaks it in his dreams. I am not really careening... The wind is not really blowing through me. I am in a cave, waiting out the hurricane. For five days I've lived in an alleyway. Abi and I sleep curled up together in a narrow passage deep inside the cave. In his sleep he has just spoken her name, Diana. His martyred novia haunts us. Diana la nina bien. Sobrina de la Alcaldesa Concha Galvez. We are surrounded by hundreds of people but I only hear Abi. I find his voice in the white noise made from all their breaths and murmurs. Knowing the individual is not the same as knowing the crowd."
The wind blew open the metal panels that sealed the cave. Unas luces aparecieron a lo lejos. The lights appeared in the distance and all of them stared. Were they to understand those private policemen had come home? Had Guille found the private policemen, the paramilitares? Had he got them to cross the river?" Abi whispered, "The lights are red. This must be Guille coming back with the paramilitares he turned." Guille and his men reached the cave. Guille stepped inside. He fell onto his knees and began crying. The men stood around him. "El Pico esta calvo. All the trees are bare. The birds are quiet. They've flown into the wind, into the eye. Or they have been killed. We saw hundreds of dead blackbirds. Listen to Pachamama screaming. She's being killed."
Abi reached into his pocket for his tiny notebook. He wrote: Guille, dirigente organico. Nos influye. Pituca stroked his face, still beardless even though he hadn't shaved for days. "Siempre el periodista. I'm proud of how you're always making and writing the revolution in your mind. Guille truly is an organic leader. He brushes out the cobwebs inside our heads. He can turn even the mercenaries. Who ever got mercenaries to cross the river? Not now when their numbers are skyrocketing and in Coral there's now one weapon per adult, but just a few people own them. The paramilitares."
Guille stood and strode into the cave with his new escolta behind him.
"I saw rain falling for hours between the trailers. Most of the trailers were turned over and blown away. I walked all the way to the beach. Desastre total."

"A ocupar el Ingenio Dulzura." Guille pointed to the paramilitares. "We've got protection. We can brave the march there." Guille shook his fist in the air. His threadbare yellow guayabera moved on him like a bandera. He was dark, tall, skinny and towered over most of the Palenqueros crowded into the cave. "Afuera siguen los vientos. Listen to the wind. Who would have thought it would be wind that would kill us? Los storm surges. Ya saben, yo no le meto al ingles. Don't make me talk English."
Guille looked around. Rapt faces looked up at him in the darkness of the cave, lit only by a few linternas hanging from the cave dome, and most heads nodded. He liked having a big audience for his discursos. He liked the feeling of leading. He'd captured the sense of the group and stated it, or better still he was just ahead of the group and he was telling them the thought that was just edging into their consciousness. "Algunos llevamos mas de una decada en Palenque. We've already survived more than a dozen hurricanes, fought our way through more than a dozen reconstructions. Docenas! The caves are not enough. We need to get away from the sea, get another home inland. Tenemos que crear una base tierra adentro. And Dulzura is abandoned. Ocupemos el Ingenio Dulzura."
The Asamblea rang out. "Let's occupy Ingenio Dulzura."

Abi pulled Pituca's hand and she half skipped to keep pace with him as he pushed his body into the crowd. They fought their way in. Pituca clung to him and made herself breath in slowly, deeply. With her gaze fixed on his back, on his red t-shirt, she tried to not feel the panic that overtook her in big crowds. Hundreds were gathered in what once had been the big room of the casa principal Dulzura and stood there waiting for Guille. In that room Abi's martyred novia Diana had a huge ball for her quince. Guille climbed on a chair in the middle of the room, just under the chandelier, unlit. The crowd shone their flashlights on each other's faces, on the walls, on him.
Abi and Pituca, side by side, made their way to the wall and kept pushing until they reached the far doorway. They stepped through into the empty hallway. In the big room the group were figuring out the process they would use to decide who went into which of the dozens of bedrooms. Abi bounded up the stairs. Pituca caught up to him. They faced a long dark hallway illuminated through a tall window at the end by the full moon. He led Pituca down the hallway toward the moonlight and into one of the two rooms that flanked the window. They stood at the door. He stepped inside and opened floor to ceiling shutters. Moonlight washed over the four poster bed, the chiforober.
"This was Diana's bedroom. Many times I snuck in here at night through this window." Pituca joined him and they stood on a very narrow balcony against the rusted railing and looked out over the moonlit wind sheared trees and bushes of the garden. "There used to be a tree here and I used to climb my way into her room but then Diana's mother got wind of my visits from Diana's tata who knew Diana better than her own blood mother because she'd raised her. Tata warned Diana she would step in to protect her honra. They chopped down my tree. So Diana left home. Diana era rebelde, antiautoritaria."
Three generations of one family stepped into the room. Abuela, madre, una hembrita. It was la hembrita who spoke for them. "Nos toca este cuarto. This room is our room." They were followed by another family, madre y padre y dos varones. The first trio colonized the bed. The second family took the corner by the chiforober and began to spread their bedrolls. The thin wiry abuela pounded the mattress and raised a cloud of dust.
She turned away from the bed and ran to where Pituca and Abi staked out the spot by the french window and its little balcony. She raised her fist and pounded Abi on the chest. She was tiny. Fully extended her arm couldn't reach his face. "Asesino, asesino, asesino. You're a murderer." In that moment Abi knew her. "Dona Erotida, usted no sabe las veces que pense lo mismo. I have that same thought every day. I might as well have killed Diana myself. Fui you quien mato a Diana."
Pituca and the other mother grabbed Erotida's hands. Pituca clamped her arms around the elder and held her tight. "No Abi. No senora. Usted es la tata de Diana y tiene que saber, porque la conocia muy bien que ella quiso ser revolucionaria. Fue su decision." Pituca looked hard first into Abi's eyes, then down into the elder woman's. "You both know, because you both knew Diana very well that she chose. Nobody made her. It was her choice to be a revolutionary. She left the privileges of her own class and threw her lot con los pobres de la tierra. She took the side of the wretched of the earth." Dona Erotida shook and flailed her arms and screamed. "Pero fue el quien le comio el cerebro. He brain washed my little girl. Una nina que lo tenia todo. She went to a girl's school. Her story was written with a different end. She was born to have everything. Que tenia que ir a buscar con la revolucion? Why did you have to come and turn her head?"
Pituca held the elder. Erotida screamed and flailed. Abi watched them. Tears ran down his long, black face. The little girl clutched her abuela's waist. "Diana soy yo. Quien es esa otra Diana?"
Erotida spoke softly. "Diana siempre fue rebelde. One afternoon she came home from the school her father set up for the Ingenio's girls, for his little girl and also for the poor ones. She was crying because el profesor whipped her friend's hands. She refused to eat or go to school. "Papi, haz justicia. I want justice." Neither her mother nor I could move her, not until her father fired el profesor. One night Diana and I were standing right on that balcony looking at the moon. We heard a piercing cry. We saw a pygmy owl pounce on a baby rabbit. It was a terrible cry. She was maybe 10 years old. She turned to me. She was already almost as tall as I was. I could see into her light brown eyes. It was possible to see right into Diana's soul. She said. 'Porque es que la naturaleza es tan injusta? No quiero que el mundo sea asi. She couldn't bear it that not even nature was just. This was not the world she wanted to live in."
Pituca eased her clasp and the two women collapsed onto the bed. Erotida curled up into the tall woman's lap and rested her head against her chest. She sobbed quietly. "I knew you couldn't win against nature. Diana didn't want the world to be the way it is. In the end it turned out you and Diana were the ones who were right. Resulta que son tu y Diana los que tenian razon." Without lifting her head she waved her hand. "Mira este desastre. The world is a catastrophe. Aquel mundo se acabo. There's nothing left of Diana's world."
Abi climbed on the bed behind the women and embraced them both. "Truly, the time has come when we have nothing to lose but our chains. Diana's world is just getting born."
In that moment young Diana jumped and reached for the other boys whose family had crowded around the bed. "Me llamo Romualdo. Me llamo Reinerio." The boys spoke at once. The children took each others' hands, stretched their arms fully, leaned away from each other and spun faster and faster. They laughed and as they laughed they sang a song that Diana started. "A la rueda rueda de pan y canela, We're gonna beat this hurricane Olga. A la rueda rueda, La huracana Olga no puede mas na."