The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (2 page)

The dried moss my father gave me didn't stop the violence, and it never could have prevented that officer from crushing my skull. In my pocket I also carried a travel-size icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which my mother had given to me three months ago, when I had moved from home to the university. She was a little Guadalupe, drenched in gold and red, boldly stepping over the horns of a demon and radiating light. Her eyes implied safety and love, but the protection I was supposed to receive from the icon never came to be. Even as I fell into a dark sleep and went deeper into shock, I remember feeling cheated by these useless objects, and though I don't like to admit this, I hated my mother and father for instilling this false sense of security in me. I hadn't realized how superstitious my parents were until I thought about how a dried piece of moss and a laminated photo of a virgin could be so utterly fucking useless. That was the hateful little thought that crept into my head, even as my vision burst into white stars and the officer fractured my bones. He shouted many words at me, and his other companions shouted too, words filled with hate and revulsion, for me and for the other thousands of people that had gathered at Millennium that day.

By my count, from the moment I lost Edgar until a SWAT officer split my face, four minutes elapsed. That in itself is a lifetime. That four-minute moment became one of the stars in the firmament of my life.

But that's all it was, just a tiny moment. To dwell on my escape would be as if I asked you to stare up at the sky and fixate on only one star or planet and expect you to understand the full scope of the galaxy that contains it. It wouldn't be fair to you, me, to those who perished in Millennium Park, or my story.

There were other moments in my life that had an impact on those four minutes. They were moments made of interdependency, like a spider's web.
 

Four days before the riots, I had celebrated my nineteenth birthday.

My parents had picked me up at the dorm in Rogers Park. My brother, José María, flipped me his middle finger from the backseat as I got into the station wagon, and we drove downtown. We ate pizza at Uno's, and I blew out nineteen candles on the cake. Afterward, we decided to walk off the meal. We walked east on Ohio Street until we reached an underpass. We crossed its length, and when we emerged, the dark waters of Lake Michigan greeted us.

It was much too late to be walking down the lakefront, but there we were, all four of us -- I, my parents, and my brother -- alone at the eastern edge of the city, where land meets water.

My father, the tallest member of our family, walked up in front, smoking a cigarette, and my mother walked between me and José María, our arms intertwined, her long straight hair brushing her shoulders. We walked north, along the bike path that ran up the shoreline of Lake Michigan. This part of Lake Shore Drive didn't close officially until 11 p.m., but even now, at 10:31, it was deserted. The lake's waves lashed the concrete wall next to our feet, and up on our right, we could see the tops of the cars as they rushed down Lake Shore Drive. The lake remained black tonight.

I dug in my pocket for my cell and pointed my camera toward the water. From up ahead, my father shouted, "Put it away, Clara. No photos."

His voice rumbled, and the sweetness of the chocolate birthday cake I had just eaten earlier tonight rose up to my throat in acid waves.
Why do you have to yell at me?
I thought. He was always yelling at me. He ignored this expression of rage in my face and squatted down, facing the lake a few feet ahead of us.

I felt a tug on my shoulder and a pat on my arm.

"Put the phone away," my mother whispered. "Do what he says.”
 

The lights that shone from Navy Pier turned my father's profile into a shadow. He sat down on the concrete and patted the ground for us to join him.

"Birthday girl, right here on my left," he said. I sat cross-legged on the cold surface, and we joined him on the other side. My father offered my mother a cigarette, but she shook her head.

"Not now, Adán," she said. "Let's not stay out here too long. We have be back to the car by around eleven; you know that."

It was important for us to run on time. Not only did I want to get back to the car in the parking lot, I also wanted to get back to the dorm as soon as possible. I wanted to celebrate all night. We had spent all week making big plans for the march at Millennium Park, and Edgar had borrowed an ID to buy beer and celebrate my birthday when I returned to campus.

I hadn't told my parents yet about Edgar. I hadn't even told José María, but then again, I knew what would happen if I told my little brother. He'd be sure to notify my parents, faster than the Internet.

During my first week at the dorms, Edgar had asked to borrow my screwdriver to fix his mini fridge, and that's how I had discovered he lived on my floor, on the other side of the dorm. Over the next few days, he kept cruising through my suite, and I kept on traveling to his. We were both freshmen, and both of us held political change high on our list of values. Now we were inseparable in our dorm, in the dining hall, in the two classes we shared, and in our ways of thinking about change for the world. His face was boyish, his voice was not. We both joined the Occupy Liberation Front on the same day.

The lake pummeled the breakers, and I noticed José María was starting to resemble my father more than ever before as the angles in his face grew sharper and his hair grew out thick, wavy and black.

My mother unfolded her shawl to free up her hands. From her purse she withdrew a small laminated image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which she placed on her lap as she genuflected. She kissed the image of the virgin, and then she put the image away. I couldn't see what my brother was up to behind her, but I could hear him tapping his hands on the concrete, drumming the beat to one of his favorite metal songs.

There we were, like hippies staring at the dim slice of moon through the clouds. Birthdays were starting to become more and more like this, as the lines in my parents' faces grew just a little deeper, and some of their weirdness got...well, weirder.

"In another part of the world, there is a lake where men once built a city," my mother said. "This city floated on top of the water, like a dream. Its towers reached toward the sky, and its architecture reflected the beauty of the natural world. The city’s surfaces were red, blue and gold, like the plumage of jungle birds."

José María leaned over behind my mother's back and twisted his face into a knot. "Here we go again..." he whispered to me.
Shush
,
I mouthed over to him.

"Tenochtitlán," I said, speaking loudly enough to make sure my father heard me, to make sure I had this knowledge etched into my memory. "That's the city Mom's talking about."

Tenochtitlán, or in other words, Mexico City. The place my parents were born. I was born there, too, but I only lived there for year. By the time I could walk, we were living here, in Chicago.

"We probably won't live in Mexico City ever again, but it's good to visit Lake Michigan and remember that we once did," my father said.
 

My father turned back toward all of us, and his face shone clear, despite the shadows cast by night. His skin was deeply grooved by lines and wrinkles, and his hairline had receded, but his eyes looked young to me. My uncles and cousins had always said that my father's eyes looked defiant. In my experience, his eyes were sometimes gentle, sometimes terrifying. Mostly terrifying.

"In any case," my father said, "before your mother interrupted me, I was going to tell you what you need to do when you come to this lake, Clara. You're nineteen -- almost old enough to be an adult."

"Dad, I work and I vote. I
am
an adult. I don't like being dismissed," I said.

"Fine," he said. "In this country you're an adult; I'll grant you that. But your adulthood in other terms is still a long time away. So we come here on your birthday to think about this for a minute and to put our hopes in your future."

José María stirred, crossed his skinny arms. "Mom, you always let him go on and on...I mean, are you listening to this?"

"As a general rule, your father's wrong about many things," my mother said, and I could see José María sit up straight from his own sense of validation. "But in this case, you do need to listen. You may not understand everything we're doing as a family, Clara, but it is your responsibility to grasp it. So, sit back and listen. Yes, this means you too, José María."

My father was a strange dude, and that meant he always carried strange stuff with him. He dug in his coat and pulled out a bundle of twigs and leaves.

"Pay special attention, birthday girl," my father said. Using his free hand, he pulled out a lighter from his trousers.

"I bring both of you here because the lake is a place you should respect. It's a place that's beautiful, but my mother always said that certain beautiful things should not be touched, by any means. Lake Michigan has been here longer than you, me, or the men who built this city behind me. And though the lake gives life, the lake also has also dealt out death over the years. Never dive into its waters. Understand?"

I nodded, so that we could just move on. Over the years, I nodded a lot this way. I got good at scurrying past these talks.

"We live about six miles from here," my father continued, "and that's just about the right distance to show our respect for these waters. If our house was any closer and we would be under its threat."

"Actually, that's not really true," José María said. "Clara lives by the lakefront, so she's really just a few hundred yards away from the shore--"

My mother smacked my brother on the back of the head, and he grinned as he shrugged his shoulders and chortled.

But José María was right. The dorms were very close to the water. But I kept my mouth shut. This was not the time for interruptions.

My father lit one end of the bundle of twigs, and it took a moment to catch fire. Soon its flames were leaping up its length as my father held it away from his jean jacket and over the concrete lip. His hand stayed poised over the water. He spoke no words. He just let it burn until the flames caressed the tips of his fingers and the fire lit our faces. He tossed the bundle into the waters, where the darkness swallowed it up in a hiss.

"Clara, you have to promise me you'll always stay away from this lake." My father said.

"Sure."

My father turned toward all three of us.

"So, that's what you do when you come to show respect to the water," my father said. "Learn it."
 

Another order for me.
 

I pressed my lips into a flat line. Impatience burned in my gut. I was feeling ready to leave this place. I wanted to be back in my dorm room, cracking open a PBR. I was over this spooky water and the hippie weirdness.
 

My mother was the first to stand up, and she reconfigured her shawl, adjusting its length and folds bending to suit her will and keep out the wind. She shooed us along the bike path, toward the parking lot. Pretty soon, we were inside the car, the engine running and the heater roaring to life, and on our way to the dorms. I stared out the window at Lake Shore Drive, and the water was blue, very blue now. Its former black appearance was gone.

Our family was not the most normal of families. I had always thought so, but as we walked back from the lakefront to the parking lot, I realized that not a single jogger, cyclist or even cop had crossed our path while we sat on the concrete in front of the lake’s waters. We had spent a half hour at the water's edge without a single interruption, as my father tossed flames into the lake.

Four days later, the Millennium Riot became a reality.

A PLACE CALLED MICTLÁN

"If I should paint my city in red, would you think that I bathed it in sacrificial blood?" – Sodium Chloride Veritas, "Bleed Like Me”,
Meditating on the Medusa
, 1995, 5AD Records.

"Nothing about the events that took place on October 4 made sense. For months, we tried to figure out how the riot started and who fired their weapons first. We investigated the question: How could a peaceful march turn so deadly? I was one of the first responders at Millennium Park. I still don't understand the savagery I witnessed." –Interview with Officer Michael Coleridge,
Super Cops: How Technology Changed the War on Terror,
by Haley Phair, Neo Press, 2016.

"The inequities of life: Parents are the first people to teach their sons and daughters shame." – Internet meme. Point of origin circa January 2011.

I fell into a darkness, something denser and thicker than sleep. When I awoke, pain crept down my back and through my jaw, my face and the top of my head. I was a thick knot of hurt, and each breath I took sent deeper pain coursing down my right leg. I tried to move my arms, but they were stiff, gnarled, determined to fight me.

Someone was dragging me along the ground.

The underpass beneath Lake Shore Drive lay before me, and it shrank away as I moved further away. I was moving swiftly, as if riding a sled.
 

A person draped in shadow dragged me through grass. If I craned my head toward the sky, I could see his or her head bobbing, like a black bowling ball. We crossed Columbus Drive, and pain ballooned inside me.

All the work I had done to run, to escape the tear gas and the shooting inside Pritzker, was now undone. I was being taken back toward the place where it all started.

We hit a bump on the ground, and my body shook. And then there was worse pain coursing all through my body, in my teeth and inside my guts.
 

Night was descending, and the orange glow of the streetlights swirled with the sky.

The person carrying me set me down on the ground on my back.

"Listen up!" He shouted into the distance. "No one gets moved until all EMTs move in. Bring the rest and put them here, next to this one. Careful with backs and necks!"

The person got down on his haunches next to me. He kept shouting orders as his gloved hands straightened out my legs beneath me. A hard black helmet and visor kept his face hidden.