In the Time of Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

  His eyes have a strange absence in them. “As well as can be expected,” he says. I notice he does not look directly at us when he answers.

  We already know from Dedé and Patria’s searches that Papa has been in the prison hospital. The diagnosis is “confidential,” but we all assumed his ulcers were acting up. Now we learn Papa suffered a heart attack in his cell the Wednesday after he was arrested, but it wasn’t till the following Monday that he was allowed to see a doctor. “I’m feeling much better.” His thin hands pleat his trousers as he talks. “Much much better. I just hope the music hasn’t spoiled the yuccas while I’ve been gone.”

  Mama and I look at each other and then at Papa. “How’s that, Enrique?” Mama asks gently.

  “Every time there’s a party, half the things in the ground spoil. We’ve got to stop feeding the hogs. It’s all human teeth anyhow.”

  It’s all I can do to keep up the pretense that Papá is making sense. But Mamá’s sweetness enfolds him and coaxes him back. “The hogs are doing very well on palm fruit, and we haven’t grown yuccas since this one here was a little girl. Don’t you remember, Enrique, how we used to be up till all hours on harvest days?”

  Papá’s eyes light up, remembering. “The first year you wanted to look pretty for me, so you wore a nice dress to the fields. By the time we finished, it looked like the sackcloth the yuccas were in!” He is looking directly at her, smiling.

  She smiles at him, her eyes glistening with tears. Her fingers find his hand and hold tight, as if she were pulling him up from an edge she lost him to years back.

  El Jefe does not bother to look up as we enter. He is going over a stack of papers with several nervous assistants, his manicured hands following the words being read out to him. He learned his letters late, so the story goes, and refuses to look at anything over a page long. In the offices around him, official readers go through thick reports, boiling the information down to the salient paragraph.

  Behind him on the wall, the famous motto: MY BEST FRIENDS ARE MEN WHO WORK. What about the women who sleep with you? I ask in my head.

  Manuel de Moya shows us our seats in front of the large mahogany desk. It is a disciplined man’s desk, everything in neat stacks, several phones lined up on one side beside a board with labeled buzzers. A panel of clocks ticks away. He must be keeping time in several countries. Right in front of me stands a set of scales like the kind Justice holds up, each small tray bearing a set of dice.

  Trujillo scribbles a last signature and waves the assistants out of the room, then turns to his secretary of state. Don Manuel opens a leather folder and reads El Jefe the letter of apology signed by the whole Mirabal family.

  “I see Señorita Minerva has signed this,” he notes as if I were not present. He reads off Mama’s name and asks if she is related to Chiche Reyes.

  “Why Chiche is my uncle!” Mama exclaims. Tio Chiche has always bragged about knowing Trujillo during their early days in the military. “Chiche worships you, Jefe. He always says even back then he could tell you were a natural leader.”

  “I have a lot of affection for Don Chiche,” Trujillo says, obviously enjoying the homage. He lifts a set of dice from his scales, upsetting the balance. “I suppose he never told you the story of these?”

  Mamá smiles indulgently. She has never approved of her uncle’s gambling. “That Chiche loves his gambling.”

  “Chiche cheats too much,” Papa blurts out. “I won’t play with him.”

  Mamá’s eyes are boring a hole in Papa. Our one lifeline in this stormy sea and Papa is cutting the rope she’s been playing out.

  “I take it you like to play, Don Enrique?” Trujillo turns coldly to Papa.

  Papá glances at Mama, afraid to admit it in her presence. “I know you like to gamble,” Mama squabbles, diverting attention by pretending our real predicament is her naughty husband.

  Trujillo returns to the dice in his hands. “That Chiche! He stole a piece of bone from Columbus’s crypt and had these made for me when I was named head of the armed forces.”

  Mamá tries to look impressed, but in fact, she’s never liked her trou blemaking uncle very much. Every month, it’s a knife fight or money trouble or wife trouble or mistress trouble or just plain trouble.

  Trujillo puts his dice back on the empty tray. It’s then I notice the sides don’t balance. Of course, my good-for-nothing uncle would give his buddy loaded dice.

  “Human teeth, all of it,” Papá mumbles. He looks at the small cubes of bone with a horrified expression on his face.

  Mama indicates her husband with a toss of the head. “You must excuse him, Jefe. He is not well.” Her eyes fill, and she dabs at them with the kerchief she keeps balling in her hand.

  “Don Enrique will be just fine as soon as he’s home for a few days. But may this teach you all a lesson.” He turns to me. The cajoling smile of the dance is gone. “You especially, señorita. I’ve asked that you check in every week with Governor de la Maza in San Francisco.”

  Before I can say something, Mama breaks in. “All my daughter wants is to be a good, loyal citizen of the regime.”

  El Jefe looks my way, waiting for my pledge.

  I decide to speak up for what I do want. “Jefe, I don’t know if you remember what we spoke of at the dance?” I can feel Mama giving me the eye.

  But El Jefe’s interest is piqued. “We spoke of many things.”

  “I mean, my dream of going to law school.”

  He strokes his short, brush mustache with his fingers, musing. His gaze falls on the dice. Slowly, his lips twist in a wily smile. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you toss for the privilege. You win, you get your wish. I win, I get mine.”

  I can guess what he wants. But I’m so sure I can beat him now that I know his secret. “I’ll toss,” I say, my voice shaking.

  He laughs and turns to Mamá. “I think you have another Chiche in the family.”

  Quickly I reach for the heavier set of dice and begin shaking them in my fist. Trujillo studies the wobbling scales. But without my set there, he can’t tell which are his loaded pair. “Go ahead,” he says, eyeing me closely. “Highest number wins.”

  I shake the dice in my hand for all they’re worth.

  I roll a double and look up at Trujillo, trying to keep the glee from my face.

  He stares at me with his cold, hard eyes. “You have a strong hand, that I know.” He strokes the cheek I slapped, smiling a razor-sharp smile that cuts me down to size. Then rather than using the remaining dice on the tray, he puts his hand out and takes my uncle’s set back. He maneuvers them knowingly. Out they roll, a double as well. “We either both get our wishes or we call it even, for now,” he adds.

  “Even,” I say, looking him in the eye, “for now.”

  “Sign their releases,” he tells Don Manuel. “My hellos to Don Chiche,” he tells Mamá. Then, we are banished with a wave of his hand.

  I look down at the lopsided scales as he puts his dice back. For a moment, I imagine them evenly balanced, his will on one side, mine on the other.

  It is raining when we leave the capital, a drizzle that builds to a steady downpour by the time we hit Villa Altagracia. We roll up the windows until it gets so steamy and damp in the car that we have to crack them open in order to see out.

  Dedé and Jaimito stayed on in the capital, making some purchases for the new restaurant they’ve decided to start. The ice cream business is a flop just as Dedé predicted privately to me some time back. Pedrito had to be back yesterday to see about stranded cattle in the flooded fields. He’s been taking care of his own farm and ours. So, it’s just me and Mama, and Patria and, of course, Papa mumbling in the back seat of the car.

  By Pino Herrado, the rain is coming down hard. We stop at a little cantina until it lets up. Mama doesn’t raise an eyebrow when Papá orders a shot of rum. She’s too worried about our audience with El Jefe to fuss at him. “You were asking for it, m‘ija,” she’s already told me. We sit silently,
listening to the rain on the thatched roof, a numb, damp, fatalistic feeling among us. Something has started none of us can stop.

  A soft rain is falling when we reach Piedra Blanca. Ahead, men repair a flooded bridge, so we stop and roll down the windows to watch. Marchantas come up to offer us their wares and, tempted by a sample taste of a small, sweet orange, we buy a whole sack of them, already peeled and cut in half. Later, we have to stop to wash our sticky hands in puddles on the roadside.

  At Bonao the torrential rains start again and the windshield wipers can’t keep pace with the waves of water washing over us. In my head, I start making plans about where we can spend the night if the rain is still this bad once it gets dark.

  We pass La Vega, and the rain is lighter now, but shows no sign of letting up. The whole spine of the country is wet. Towards the west, dark clouds shroud the mountains as far as Constanza and on through the whole cordillera to the far reaches of Haiti.

  Rain is falling and night is falling in Moca as we pass, the palm roofs sagging, the soil soggy with drowned seeds, the drenched jacarandas losing their creamy blossoms. A few miles after Salcedo, my lights single it out, the ancient anacahuita tree, dripping in the rain, most of its pods gone. I turn into the unpaved road, hoping we won’t get stuck in the mud I hear slapping against the underside of the car.

  It’s raining here, too, in Ojo de Agua. Eye of Water! The name seems ironic given the weather. North to Tamboril and the mountain road to Puerto Plata, the rain drives on, in every bohío and small conuco, and on out to the Atlantic where it is lost in the waves that rock the bones of martyrs in the deepest sleep. We’ve traveled almost the full length of the island and can report that every comer of it is wet, every river overflows its banks, every rain barrel is filled to the brim, every wall washed clean of writing no one knows how to read anyway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  María Teresa

  1953 to 1958

  1953

  Tuesday morning, December 15

  Fela says rain

  I feel like dying myself!

  I can’t believe she came to the funeral mass with her girls, adding four more slaps to her big blow. One of them looked to be only a few years younger than me, so you couldn’t really say, Ay, poor Papa, he lost it at the end and went behind the palm trees. He was bringing down coconuts when he was good and hardy and knew what he was doing.

  I asked Minerva who invited them.

  All she said was they were Papá’s daughters, too.

  I can’t stop crying! My cute cousins Raúl and Berto are coming over, and I look a sight. But I don’t care. I really don’t.

  I hate men. I really hate them.

  Wednesday evening, December 16

  Here I am crying again, ruining my new diary book Minerva gave me. She was saving it up for my Epiphany present, but she saw me so upset at Papá’s funeral, she thought it would help me most now.

  Minerva always says writing gets things off her chest and she feels better, but I’m no writer, like she is. Besides, I swore I’d never keep a diary again after I had to bury my Little Book years back. But I’m desperate enough to try anything.

  Monday, December 21

  I am a little better now. For minutes at a time, I forget about Papa and the whole sad business.

  Christmas Eve

  Every time I look at Papá’s place at the table my eyes fill with tears. It makes it very hard to eat meals. What a bitter end of the year!

  Christmas Day

  We are all trying. The day is rainy, a breeze keeps blowing through the cacao. Fela says that’s the dead calling us. It makes me shiver to hear her say that after the dream I had last night.

  We had just laid out Papa in his coffin on the table when a limousine pulls up to the house. My sisters climb out, including that bunch that call themselves my sisters, all dressed up like a wedding party. It turns out I’m the one getting married, but I haven’t a clue who the groom is.

  I’m running around the house trying to find my wedding dress when I hear Mamá call out to look in Papa’s coffin!

  The car hom is blowing, so I go ahead and raise the lid. Inside is a beautiful satin gown—in pieces. I lift out the one arm, and then another arm, then the bodice, and more parts below. I’m frantic, thinking we still have to sew this thing together.

  When I get to the bottom, there’s Papa, smiling up at me.

  I drop all those pieces like they’re contaminated and wake up the whole house with my screams.

  (I’m so spooked. I wonder what it means? I plan on asking Fela who knows how to interpret dreams.)

  Sunday afternoon, December 2 7

  Today is the feast day of San Juan Evangelista, a good day for fortunes. I give Fela my coffee cup this morning after I’m done. She turns it over, lets the dregs run down the sides, then she reads the markings.

  I prod her. Does she see any novios coming?

  She turns the cup around and around. She shows me where two stains collide and says that’s a pair of brothers. I blush, because I guess she can tell about Berto and Raúl. Again; she slowly rotates the cup. She says she sees a professional man in a hat. Then, a capitaleño, she can tell by the way he stands.

  I am at the edge of my seat, smiling in spite of these sad times, asking for more.

  “You’ll have to have a second cup of coffee, señorita,” she says, setting the cup down. “All your admirers can’t fit in one cup of fortune.”

  ¿Berto & Mate?

  ¿Mate & Raúl ?

  ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ forever??????????

  Ojo de Agua, Salcedo

  30 December 1953

  Twenty-third year of the Era of Trujillo

  Generalísimo Doctor Rafael L. Trujillo

  Benefactor of our Country

  Illustrious and well-loved Jefe,

  Knowing as I do, the high esteem in which my husband Enrique Mirabal held your illustrious person, and now somewhat less confounded by the irreparable loss of my unforgettable compañero, I write to inform Your Excellency of his death on Monday, the fourteenth day of this month.

  I want to take this opportunity to affirm my husband’s undying loyalty to Your Person and to avow that both myself and my daughters will continue in his footsteps as your loyal and devoted subjects. Especially now, in this dark moment, we look to your beacon from our troubled waters and count on your beneficent protection and wise counsel until we should breathe the very last breath of our own existence.

  With greetings from my uncle, Chiche, I am most respectfully,

  Mercedes Reyes de Mirabal

  Wednesday late afternoon, December 30

  Mamá and I just spent most of the afternoon drafting the letter Tío Chiche suggested she write. Minerva wasn’t here to help. She left for Jarabacoa three days ago. Tío Fello dragged her off right after Christmas because he found her very thin and sad and thought the mountain air would invigorate her. Me, I just eat when I’m sad and so I look “the picture of health,” as Tio Fello put it.

  Not that Minerva would have been much help. She is no good at the flowery feelings like I am. Last October, when she had to give her speech praising El Jefe at the Salcedo Civic Hall, guess who wrote it for her? It worked, too. Suddenly, she got her permission to go to law school. Every once in a while Trujillo has to be buttered up, I guess, which is why Tío Chiche thought this letter might help.

  Tomorrow I’ll copy it in my nice penmanship, then Mamá can sign it with her signature I’ve taught her to write.

  Sunset

  I ask Fela, without mentioning any names, if she has something I can use to spell a certain bad person.

  She says to write this person’s name on a piece of paper, fold it, and put the paper in my left shoe because that is the foot Eve used to crush the head of the serpent. Then bum it, and scatter those ashes near the hated person.

  I’ll sprinkle them all over the letter is what I’ll do.

  What would happen if I put the name in my right shoe? I ask Fela.
/>
  The right foot is for problems with someone you love.

  So, I’m walking around doing a double spell, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in one shoe, Enrique Mirabal in the other.

  Thursday night, December 31

  last day of this old sad year

  I can write the saddest things tonight.

  Here I am looking out at the stars, everything so still, so mysterious. What does it all mean, anyway?

  (I don’t like this kind of thinking like Minerva likes. It makes my asthma worse.)

  I want to know things I don’t even know what they are.

  But I could be happy without answers if I had someone to love.

  And so it is of human life the goal to seek, forever seek, the kindred soul.

  I quoted that to Minerva before she left for Jarabacoa. But she got down our Gems of Spanish Poetry and quoted me another poem by the same poet: May the limitations of love not cast a spell

  On the serious ambitions of my mind.

  I couldn’t believe the same man had written those two verses. But sure enough, there it was, José Marti, dates and all. Minerva showed me her poem was written later. “When he knew what mattered.”

  Maybe she’s right, what does love come to, anyway? Look at Papa and Mama after so many years.

  I can write the saddest things tonight.

  1954

  Friday night, January 1

  I have been awful really.

  I, a young girl de luto with her father fresh in the ground.

  I have kissed B. on the lips! He caught my hand and led me behind a screen of palms.

  Oh horror! Oh shamelessness! Oh disgust!