In the Time of Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

  But Minerva acted unconcerned about her safety. She could not desert the cause, she’d argue with Dedé, and she would not stay holed up in Ojo de Agua and let the SIM kill her spirit. Besides, Dedé was giving in to her exaggerated fears. With the OAS clamoring about all the jailings and executions, Trujillo was not going to murder a defenseless woman and dig his own grave. Silly rumors.

  “Voz del pueblo, voz del cielo,” Dedé would quote. Talk of the people, voice of God.

  One time, towards the end, Dedé broke down in tears in the middle of one of their arguments. “I’m losing my mind worrying about you, don’t you see?” she had wept. But instead of caving in to Dedé’s tears, Minerva offered her an exercise.

  “I made it up in La Victoria whenever they’d put me in solitary,” she explained. “You start with a line from a song or a poem. Then you just say it over until you feel yourself calming down. I kept myself sane that way.” Minerva smiled sadly. “You try it, come on. I’ll start you off.”

  Even now, Dedé hears her sister, reciting that poem she wrote in jail, her voice raspy with the cold she never got rid of that last year. And the shades of night begin to fall, and the traveler hurries home, and the campesino bids his fields farewell....

  No wonder Dedé has confused Minerva’s exercise and her poem about the falling of night with that sleepless night before their first trip to the capital. A dark night was falling, one of a different order from the soft, large, kind ones of childhood under the anacahuita tree, Papa parceling out futures and Mama fussing at his drinking. This one was something else, the center of hell maybe, the premonition of which made Dedé draw closer to Jaimito until she, too, finally fell asleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Patria

  January to March 1960

  I don’t know how it happened that my cross became bearable. We have a saying around here, the humpback never gets tired carrying his burden on his back. All at once, I lost my home, my husband, my son, my peace of mind. But after a couple of weeks living at Mama‘s, I got used to the sorrows heaped upon my heart.

  That first day was the hardest. I was crazy with grief, all right. When Dedé and Tono walked me into the house, all I wanted to do was lie down and die. I could hear the babies crying far off and voices calming them and Noris sobbing along with her aunt Mate, and all their grief pulled me back from mine. But first, I slept for a long time, days it seemed. When I woke up, Dedé’s voice was in my ear, invoking the Lord’s name.

  And on the third day He rose again...

  I got up from bed ready to set up housekeeping at Mamá’s. I asked for a basin for the baby’s bath, and told Noris she had to do something about that hair in her eyes.

  Mate and I moved into a front room with the crib for both our babies. I put Noris with Minou and Manolito in the spare room Minerva always used. Mamá, I thought, would do better by herself in her own room.

  But past midnight, the sleepers began to shift beds, everyone seeking the comfort of another body. Manolito invariably crawled in with me, and soon after, Raulito would start bawling. That boy was jealous even in his sleep! I’d bring him to my bed, leaving the crib empty for Jacqueline was already cuddled at her mother’s side. In the mornings, I’d find Noris and Minou in Mamá’s bed, their arms around each other, fast asleep.

  And on the third day He rose again...

  On my third day at Mamá‘s, instead of a resurrection, I got another crucifixion. The SIM came for Mate.

  It was three months before I laid eyes on her or Minerva or our husbands. Three months before I got to hold my Nelson.

  As I said, I recovered. But every now and then, I couldn’t get the pictures out of my head.

  Over and over again, I saw the SIM approaching, I saw Nelson and Pedrito hurrying out the back way, Noris’s stricken face. I saw the throng of men at the door, I heard the stomping, the running, the yelling. I saw the house burning.

  I saw tiny cells with very little air and no light. I heard doors open, I saw hands intrusive and ugly in their threats. I heard the crack of bones breaking, the thud of a body collapsing. I heard moans, screams, desperate cries.

  Oh my sisters, my Pedrito, oh my little lamb!

  My crown of thorns was woven of thoughts of my boy. His body I had talcumed, fed, bathed. His body now broken as if it were no more than a bag of bones.

  “I’ve been good,” I’d start screaming at the sky, undoing the “recovery.”

  And then, Mama would have to send for Dedé. Together Dedé and I would pray a rosary. Afterwards we played our old childhood game, opening the Bible and teasing a fortune out of whatever verse our hands landed on.

  And on the third day He rose again...

  It was odd living in Mamá’s new house. Everything from the old house was here, but all rearranged. Sometimes I’d find myself reaching for a door that wasn’t there. In the middle of the night, however fearful I was about waking the children, I had to turn on a light to go to the sanitary. Otherwise, I’d end up crashing into the cabinet that never used to be in the hallway in the old house.

  In the entryway hung the required portrait of El Jefe, except it wasn’t our old one of Trujillo as a young captain that used to hang next to the Good Shepherd. Mama had acquired this latest portrait and hung it all by itself, out as far as she could get it from the rest of the house. He was older now—heavier, his jowls thicker, the whole face tired out, someone who had had too much of all the bad things in life.

  Maybe because I was used to the Good Shepherd and Trujillo side by side in the old house, I caught myself praying a little greeting as I walked by.

  Then another time, I came in from outside with my hands full of anthuriums. I looked up at him, and I thought why not. I set up a vase on the table right under his picture.

  It seemed natural to add a nice little lace cloth for the table.

  I don’t know if that’s how it started, but pretty soon, I was praying to him, not because he was worthy or anything like that. I wanted something from him, and prayer was the only way I knew to ask.

  It was from raising children I learned that trick. You dress them in their best clothes and they behave their best to match them.

  Nelson, my devil! When he was little, he was always tormenting Noris, always getting into things. I’d call him in, give him a bath. But instead of putting him in his pajamas and sending him to bed in the middle of the day where he’d get bored and mean, I’d dress him up in his gabardine trousers and little linen guayabera I’d made him just like his father’s. And then I’d take him with me to Salcedo for an afternoon novena and a coconut ice afterwards. That dressed-up boy acted like an angel!

  So, I thought, why not? Treat him like a spirit worthy of my attention, and maybe he would start behaving himself.

  Every day I changed the flowers and said a few words. Mama thought I was just putting on a show for Peña and his SIM who came by often to check on the family. But Fela understood, except she thought I was trying to strike a deal with the evil one. I wasn’t at all. I wanted to turn him towards his better nature. If I could do that, the rest would follow.

  Jefe, I would say, remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.

  (That one never worked with him.)

  Hear my cry, Jefe. Release my sisters and their husbands and mine. But most especially, I beg you, oh Jefe, give me back my son.

  Take me instead, I’ll be your sacrificial lamb.

  I hung my Sacred Heart, a recent gift from Don Bernardo, in the bedroom. There I offered, not my trick prayers, but my honest-to-God ones.

  I wasn’t crazy, after all. I knew who was really in charge.

  I had let go of my hard feelings, for the most part, but there was some lingering bitterness. For instance, I had offered myself to El Jefe to do with as he wanted, but I hadn’t extended the same courtesy to God.

  I guess I saw it as a clear-cut proposition I was making El Jefe. He would ask for what he always asked for from women. I could give that. But there
would be no limit to what our Lord would want of Patria Mercedes, body and soul and all the etceteras besides.

  With a baby still tugging at my breast, a girl just filling out, and my young-man son behind bars, I wasn’t ready to enter His Kingdom.

  In the midst of my trials, there were moments. I can’t say they were moments of Grace. But they were moments of knowing I was on the right track.

  One day soon after Mate was taken, Peña showed up. That man gave me a creepy feeling, exactly the same as the one I’d felt in the presence of the devil in the old days, fooling with my hands at night. The children were out on the patio with me. They kept their distance from Pena, refusing the candies he offered them unless I took them from him, in my hands, first. When he reached for Minou to ride on his knee, all of them ran away.

  “Lovely children,” he said, to mask the obvious rejection. Are they all yours?“

  “No, the boy and the little girl are Minerva‘s, and the baby girl is María Teresa’s.” I said the names very clearly. I wanted it to sink in that he was making these children orphans. “The baby boy and the young girl are mine.”

  “Don Pedrito must love those children of his.”

  My blood went cold. “What makes you say so, Captain?” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “The SIM made your husband an offer, but he wouldn’t take it.”

  So, he was still alive! Three times, Dedé and Mama and Jaimito had been down to headquarters, only to be told that there was no record of our prisoners.

  “Don’t you want to know what the offer was?” Peña seemed miffed. I had noted that he got some thrill out of having me plead for information.

  “Yes, please, captain.”

  “Your husband was offered his freedom and his farm back—”

  My heart leapt!

  “—if he proved his loyalty to El Jefe by divorcing his Mirabal wife.”

  “Oh?” I could feel my heart like a hand making a fist in my chest.

  Peña’s sharp, piglike eyes were watching me. And then he had his dirty little say. “You Mirabal women must be something else”—he fondled himself—“to keep a man interested when all he can do with his manhood is pass water!”

  I had to say two Glory Be’s to myself before I could speak aloud. Even so, my voice threw sparks. “Captain Pena, no matter what you do to my husband, he will always be ten times the man you are!” That evil man threw back his head and laughed, then picked up his cap from his lap and stood to leave. I saw the lump he’d gotten by working me up to this state.

  I went in search of the children to calm myself down. I found Minou digging a hole in the ground and burying all the candies Pena had brought. When I asked her why she was wasting her candies, she said she was burying them like the box her Mama and Papá had buried in their yard that was bad to touch.

  “This is bad candy,” she said to me.

  “Yes, it is,” I said and got down on my knees to help her finish burying it.

  Pena’s mention of Pedrito was the first news we had had of any of our prisoners. Then, a few days later, Dedé and Mamá came back from another trip to the capital with the “good news” that the girls’ names, along with those of the men and my Nelson, had appeared on the latest list of three hundred and seventy-two detained. Oh, how relieved we were! As long as the SIM admitted they were in custody, our prisoners stood less of a chance of being disappeared.

  Dark as it was, I went out into the garden with Mamá’s scissors. I cut by scent more than sight so that I didn’t know exactly what I had until I was back inside. I arranged his spray of jasmine and stems of gardenias in a vase on the little table, then took the rest of the flowers into my bedroom.

  And on the third day, He rose again.

  We were already working on the third week. Still, there were moments, like I said—resurrection gathering speed.

  Sunday, early, we packed ourselves in Jaimito’s pickup. Except for a few farm horses over at Dedé’s and the old mule at Mama‘s, it was the only transportation left us, now that all the cars had been confiscated. Mamá laid out an old sheet in the flatbed and put the children in back with me. She and Dedé and Jaimito rode in front. It was still early morning as we drove towards Salcedo for the first mass. The mist was rising all around us from the fields. As we passed the turnoff to our old house in Conuco, I felt a stab of pain. I looked at Noris, hoping she hadn’t noticed, but her pretty face was struggling to be brave.

  No one knew that the Voice of God would speak from the pulpit that day. None of us would have expected it from Padre Gabriel, who was, we thought, a stooge substitute sent in after Padre de Jesus was arrested.

  When it came, I almost didn’t hear it. Raulito was having one of his crying fits and Jacqueline, who is empathic when it comes to tears, had joined in. Then, too, Minou was busy “reading” my upside-down missal to Manolito. Dedé and I were having a time managing the lot, while Mama was doing her share, casting stem glances from the middle of our pew. As she’s all too fond of telling us, we are raising savages with all our new theories about talking, not spanking. “Fighting tyrants and meanwhile creating little ones.”

  I was headed to the vestibule with the children when I heard what I thought I had misheard. “We cannot remain indifferent to the grievous blows that have afflicted so many good Dominican homes ... Padre Gabriel’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.

  “Hush now!” I said, so fiercely the children stopped their fussing and looked at me with full attention.

  “All human beings are born with rights derived from God that no earthly power can take away.”

  The sun was shining through the stained glass window of John the Evangelist, depicted in a loincloth some church ladies had complained was inappropriate, even in our tropical heat. I propped Raulito up on the baptismal font and gave the other children mints to keep them quiet.

  “To deny these rights is a grave offense against God, against the dignity of man.”

  He went on, but I wasn’t listening anymore. My heart was beating fast. I knew once I said it I couldn’t take it back. Oh Lord, release my son, I prayed. And then I added what I’d been holding back. Let me be your sacrificial lamb.

  When Padre Gabriel was done, he looked up, and there was utter silence in that church. We were stunned with the good news that our Gabriel had delivered unto us. If the church had been a place to clap, we would have drowned out his “Dóminus vobíscum” with applause.

  We stayed the whole day in Salcedo, sitting in the park between masses, buying treats for the kids as bribes for the next hour-long mass. Their church clothes were soiled by the time the last mass rolled around at six. With each service, the rumor spread, and the crowds grew. People kept coming back, mass after mass. Undercover agents also started showing up. We could spot them easily. They were the ones who knelt with their butts propped on the pew seats and looked about during the consecration. I caught sight of Peña in the back of the church, no doubt taking note of repeaters like me.

  Later, we found out this was happening all over the country. The bishops had gathered together earlier in the week and drafted a pastoral letter to be read from every pulpit that Sunday. The church had at last thrown in its lot with the people!

  That evening we rode home in high spirits, the babies fast asleep in the arms of the older children. It was already dark, but when I looked up at the sky, I saw a big old moon like God’s own halo hung up there as a mark of his covenant. I shivered, remembering my promise.

  We were worried about attending mass the following Sunday. All week we heard of attacks on churches throughout the island. Down in the capital, somebody had tried to assassinate the archbishop in the cathedral while he was saying mass. Poor Pittini was so old and blind he didn’t even realize what was happening, but kept right on intoning the Kyrie as the assassin was being wrestled to the ground.

  Nothing as serious as that happened in our parish. But we had our own excitement. Sunday after the pastoral, we were visited by a contingent
of prostitutes. When it was time for communion, there was such sashaying and swaying of hips to the altar rail you’d have thought they were offering their body and blood, not receiving His. They lined up, laughing, taunting Padre Gabriel by opening their mouths for the Sacred Host and making lewd gestures with their tongues. Then one of them reached right in his chalice and helped herself.

  This was like a gunshot in our congregation. Ten or twelve of us women got up and formed a cordon around our priest. We let in only those we knew had come to the table for salvation, not sacrilege. You can bet those puticas lit in to us. One of them shoved me aside; but did Patria Mercedes turn the other cheek? Not on your life. I yanked that scrawny, done-up girl to the back of the church. “Now,” I said, “You want to receive communion, you recite the Credo first.”

  She looked at me as if I had asked her to speak English. Then she gave me a toss of her head and marched off to the SIM to collect whatever her charge was for desecrating.

  The following Sunday, we arrived for early mass, and we couldn’t get in the door for the stench inside. It took no time at all to find out what the problem was. ¡Sin vergüenzas! They had come into the church the night before and deposited the contents of latrines inside the confessional.

  I sent the children home with Mama, afraid of some further incident with the SIM. Dedé, Noris, and I stayed to clean up. Yes, Noris insisted, though I fussed that I wanted her home safe with the others. God’s house was her house, too, she argued. My prayers to the Virgencita to bring her around had been answered. I had to laugh. It was what Sor Asunción always used to tell us. Beware what you ask God. He might just give you what you want.