The Story of My Name

It seems fitting that I began with a story, a pseudo tragicomedy. For my life has been made of cuentos, imagination mixed with fact, magic realism, but it is all my truth.

1987, in Albuquerque, a twenty-six year old man struts down the sidewalk stumbling upon my name. Camila. Camila with one l, i that sounds like e, Latin root name. The six letters from the billboard catch his eye, the title of a foreign film, and without stopping to witness my namesake, he takes the name home to my mother and they gift me the name Camila. Camila, the rolls like a wave across your tongue name, the sounds like the title of a Spanish lullaby name, the dip me to the earth like a Tango step name. Camila.

The knowledge of my namesake's tale never reached my parents' ears until I saw it 20 years later, my hands busily wrapping black-bean filled masa with corn husks, tying the ends with knots, making tamales for Dia de los Muertos. They never knew of young Argentine Camila O'Gorman, of 1800s love yearning to conquer 1800s Catholic fanaticism, of the priest standing beside her, of the child clinging to her womb as the bullets tore her flesh.

They didn't know her story.

They didn't know they named me after a girl who really lived, who fell mutually in love with a man who happened to be a priest, who ran away with him to the countryside. Camila. The name of innocence lost, of conceptions of sin, of love. They didn't know that the church pursued her and her lover for their blasphemy, religion committing them to death by firing squad. She was only 20, her belly already ripe from pregnancy, her soul still loving the man beside her.

So it goes.

Camila the sound of our resonating names. Camila the name of her. Camila the name of I. Story built upon story like this world. Each story intertwining, weaving, leaving a hint, a taste of our humanity upon the air. I began with a name.