Julia Alvarez

by In the Time of Butterflies (v5)

  And at night, sitting on their private balcony, with Jaimito’s arm around her and his promises in her ear, Dedé gazed up at the stars. Recently, in Vanidades, she had read how starlight took years to travel down to earth. The star whose light she was now seeing could have gone out years ago. What comfort if she counted them? If in that dark heaven she traced a ram when already half its brilliant horn might be gone?

  False hopes, she thought. Let the nights be totally dark! But even that dark wish she made on one of those stars.

  The roundup started by the end of the following week.

  Early that Saturday Jaimito dropped off Dedé at Mamá’s with the two youngest boys. Mama had asked for Dedé’s help planting a crown-of-thorns border, so she said, but Dedé knew what her mother really wanted. She was worried about her daughter after her panicked visit a week ago. She wouldn’t ask Dede any questions—Mama always said that what went on in her daughters’ marriages was their business. Just by watching Dedé lay the small plants in the ground, Mama would know the doings in her heart.

  As Dedé walked up the driveway, assessing what still needed to be done in the yard, the boys raced each other to the door. They were swallowed up by the early morning silence of the house. It seemed odd that Mama had not come out to greet her. Then Dedé noticed the servants gathered in the backyard, and Tono breaking away, walking briskly towards her. Her face had the burdened look of someone about to deliver bad news.

  “What, Tono, tell me!” Dedé found she was clutching the woman’s arm.

  “Don Leandro has been arrested.”

  “Only him?”

  Tono nodded. And shamefully, in her heart Dedé was thankful that her sisters had been spared before she was frightened for Leandro.

  Inside, Maria Teresa was sitting on the couch, unplaiting and plaiting her hair, her face puffy from crying. Mama stood by, reminding her that everything was going to be all right. By habit, Dedé swept her eyes across the room looking for the boys. She heard them in one of the bedrooms, playing with their baby cousin Jacqueline.

  “She just got here,” Mamá was saying. “I was about to send the boy for you.” There were no phone lines out where the old house was—another reason Mamá had moved up to the main road.

  Dedé sat down. Her knees always gave out on her when she was scared. “What happened?”

  Mate sobbed out her story, her breath wheezy with the asthma she always got whenever she was upset. She and Leandro had been asleep just a couple of hours when they heard a knock that didn’t wait for an answer. The SIM had broken down the door of their apartment, stormed inside, roughed up Leandro and carried him away. Then they ransacked the house, ripped open the upholstery on the couch and chairs, and drove off in the new Chevrolet. Mate stopped, too short of breath to continue.

  “But why? Why?” Mamá kept asking. “Leandro’s a serious boy, an engineer!” Neither Mate nor Dedé knew how to answer her.

  Dedé tried calling Minerva in Monte Cristi, but the operator reported the line was dead. Now Mamá, who had stood by accepting their shrugs for answers, levelled her gaze at each of them. “What is going on here? And don’t try to tell me nothing. I know something is going on.”

  Mate flinched as if she knew she had misbehaved.

  “Mamá,” Dedé said, knowing the time had come to offer their mother the truth. She patted a space between them on the couch. “You’re going to have to sit down for this.”

  Dedé was the first to rush out when they heard the commotion in the front yard. What she saw made no sense at first. The servants were all on the front lawn now, Fela with a screaming Raulito in her arms. Noris stood by, holding Manolito’s hand, both of them crying. And there was Patria, on her knees, rocking herself back and forth, pulling the grass out of the ground in handfuls.

  Slowly, Dede pieced together the story Patria was telling.

  The SIM had come for Pedrito and Nelson who, alerted by some neighbors, had fled into the hills. Patria had answered the door and told the officers that her husband and son were away in the capital, but the SIM overran the place anyway. They scoured the property, dug up the fields, and found the buried boxes full of their incriminating cargo as well as an old box of papers. Inflammatory materials, they called it. But all Patria saw were pretty notebooks written in a girlish hand. Probably something Noris had wanted to keep private from her nosey older brother, and so hidden away in the grove.

  They tore the house apart, hauling away the doors, windows, the priceless mahogany beams of Pedrito’s old family rancho. It was like watching her life dismantled before her very eyes, Patria said, weeping—the glories she had trained on a vine; the Virgencita in the silver frame blessed by the Bishop of Higüey; the wardrobe with little ducks she had stenciled on when Raulito was born.

  All of it violated, broken, desecrated, destroyed.

  Then they set fire to what was left.

  And Nelson and Pedrito, seeing the conflagration and fearing for Patria and the children, came running down from the hills, their hands over their heads, giving themselves up.

  “I’ve been good! I’ve been good!” Patria was screaming at the sky. The ground around her was bare, the grass lay in sad clumps at her side.

  Why she did what she did next, Dedé didn’t know. Grief driving her to salvage something, she supposed. Down she got on her knees and began tamping the grass back. In a soothing voice, she reminded her sister of the faith that had always sustained her. “You believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and eanh ..

  Sobbing, Patria fell in, reciting the Credo: “Light of light, who for us men and for our salvation...”

  “—came down from heaven,” Dedé confirmed in a steady voice.

  They could not get hold of Jaimito, for he had gone off to a tobacco auction for the day. The new doctor could not come out from San Francisco after they had explained why they needed him. He had an emergency, he told Dedé, but being a connoisseur of fear, she guessed he was afraid. Don Bernardo kindly brought over some of Doña Belén’s sedatives, and indiscriminately, Dedé gave everyone a small dose, even the babies, even Tono and Fela, and of course, her boys. A numbed dreariness descended on the house, everyone moving in slow motion in the gloom of Miltown and recent events. Dedé kept trying to call Minerva, but the line was truly, conclusively down, and the operator became annoyed.

  Finally Dedé reached Minerva at Manolo’s mother’s house. How relieved Dedé felt to hear her voice. It was then she realized that after all her indecisiveness, she had never really had a choice. Whether she joined their underground or not, her fate was bound up with the fates of her sisters. She would suffer whatever they suffered. If they died, she would not want to go on living without them.

  Yes, Manolo had been arrested last night, too. Minerva’s voice was tight. No doubt Doña Fefita, Manolo’s mother, was at her side. Every once in a while Minerva broke into a fit of coughing.

  “Are you all right?” Dedé asked her.

  There was a long pause. “Yes, yes,” Minerva rallied. “The phone’s been disconnected but the house is standing. Nothing but books for them to steal.” Minerva’s laughter exploded into a coughing fit. “Just allergies,” she explained when Dedé worried she was ill.

  “Put on Patria, please,” Minerva asked after giving the grim rundown. “I want to ask her something.” When Dedé explained how Patria had finally settled down with a sedative, that maybe it was better if she didn’t come to the phone, Minerva point blank asked, “Do you know if she saved any of the kids’ tennis shoes?”

  “Aγ, Minerva,” Dedé sighed. The coded talk was so transparent even she could guess what her sister was asking about. “Here’s Mamá,” Dedé cut her off. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Mamá kept pleading with Minerva to come home. “It’s better if we’re all together.” Finally, she handed the phone back to Dedé. “You convince her.” As if Minerva had ever listened to Dedé!

  “I am not going to run scared,” Minerva stated be
fore Dedé could even begin convincing. “I’m fine. Now can’t Patria come to the line?”

  A few days later, Dedé received Minerva’s panicky note. She was desperate. She needed money. Creditors were at the door. She had to buy medicines because (“Don’t tell Mama”) she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. “I hate to involve you, but since you’re in charge of the family finances .. Could Dedé advance her some cash to be taken out of Minerva’s share of the house and lands in the future?

  Too proud to just plain ask for help! Dedé took off in Jaimito’s pickup, avoiding a stop at Mamá’s to use the phone since Mamá would start asking questions. From the bank, Dedé called Minerva to tell her that she was on her way with the money, but instead she reached a distraught Doña Fefita. Minerva had been taken that very morning, the little house ransacked and boarded up. In the background Dedé could hear Minou crying piteously.

  “I’m coming to get you,” she promised the little girl.

  The child calmed down some. “Is Mama with you?”

  Dedé took a deep breath. “Yes, Mama is here.” The beginning of many stories. Later, she would hedge and say she meant her own Mama. But for now, she wanted to spare the child even a moment of further anguish.

  She rode out to the tobacco fields where Jaimito had said he’d be supervising the planting of the new crop. She had wondered as she was dialing Minerva what Jaimito would do when he came home and found his wife and his pickup missing. Something told her he would not respond with his usual fury. Despite herself, Dede had to admit she liked what she sensed, that the power was shifting in their marriage. Coming home from Río San Juan, she had finally told him, crying as she did, that she could not continue with their marriage. He had wept, too, and begged for a second chance. For a hundredth chance, she thought. Now events were running away with them, trampling over her personal griefs, her budding hopes, her sprouting wings.

  “Jaimito!” she called when she saw him from far off.

  He came running across the muddy, just-turned field. How ironic, she thought, watching him. Their lives, which had almost gone their separate ways a week ago, were now drawing together again. After all, they were embarking on their most passionate project to date, one they must not fail at like the others. Saving the sisters.

  They drove the short distance to Mamá‘s, debating how to break the news to her. Mamá’s blood pressure had risen dangerously after Patria’s breakdown on the front lawn. Was it really less than a week ago? It seemed months since they’d been living in this hell of terror and dreadful anticipation. Every day there were more and more arrests. The lists in the newspapers grew longer.

  But there was no shielding Mamá any longer, Dedé saw when they arrived at her house. Several black Volkswagens and a police wagon were pulled into the drive. Captain Peña, head of the northern division of the SIM, had orders to bring Mate in. Mamá was hysterical. Mate clung to her, weeping with terror as Mama declared that her youngest daughter could not leave without her. Dedé could hear the shrieks of Jacqueline calling for her mother from the bedroom.

  “Take me instead, please.” Patria knelt by the door, pleading with Captain Peña. “I beg you for the love of God.”

  The captain, a very fat man, looked down with interest at Patria’s heaving chest, considering the offer. Don Bemardo, drawn by the commotion from next door, arrived with the bottle of sedatives. He tried to coax Patria back on her feet, but she would not or could not stand up. Jaimito took the captain aside. Dedé saw Jaimito reaching for his bill-fold, the captain holding up his hand. Oh God, it was bad news if the devil was refusing to take a bribe.

  At last, the captain said he would make an exception. Mamá could come along. But out on the drive, after loading the terrified Mate in the wagon, he gave a signal and the driver roared away, leaving Mama standing on the road. The screams from the wagon were unbearable to hear.

  Dedé and Jaimito raced after María Teresa, the small pickup careening this way and that, swerving dangerously around slower traffic. Usually, Dedé was full of admonitions about Jaimito’s reckless driving, but now she found herself pressing her own foot on an invisible gas pedal. Still, they never managed to catch up with the wagon. By the time they reached the Salcedo Fortaleza and were seen by someone in authority, they were told the young llorona with the long braid had been transferred to the capital. They couldn’t say where.

  “Those bastards!” Jaimito exclaimed once they were back in the pickup. He kept striking the vinyl seat with his fist. “They’re not going to get away with this!” This was the same old violence Dedé had cowered under for years. But now instead of fear, she felt a surge of pity. There was nothing Jaimito or anyone could do. But it touched her that he had found his way to serve the underground after all—taking care of its womenfolk.

  Watching him, Dedé was reminded of his fighting cocks which, in the barnyard, appeared to be just plain roosters. But put them in a ring with another rooster, and they sprang to life, explosions of feathers and dagger claws. She had seen them dazed, stumbling, eyes pecked out, still clawing the air at an attacker they could no longer see. She remembered, too, with wonder and some disgust and even an embarrassing sexual rush, how Jaimito would put their heads in his mouth, as if they were some wounded part of him or, she realized, of her that he was reviving.

  On the way back to Mamá‘s, Dedé and Jaimito made plans. Tomorrow early, they would drive down to the capital and petition for the girls, not that it would do any good. But doing nothing could be worse. Unclaimed prisoners tended to disappear. Oh God, Dedé could not let herself think of that!

  It was odd to be riding in the pickup, the dark road ahead, a slender moon above, holding hands, as if they were young lovers again, discussing wedding plans. Dedé half expected Minerva and Lío to pop up in back. The thought stirred her, but not for the usual reason of lost opportunity recalled. Rather, it was because that time now seemed so innocent of this future. Dedé fought down the sob that twisted like a rope in her gut. She felt that if she let go, the whole inside of her would fall apart.

  As they turned into the driveway, they saw Mama standing at the end of it, Tono and Patria at her side, trying to hush her. “Take everything, take it all! But give me back my girls, por Dios!” she was shouting.

  “What is it, Mama, what is it?” Dedé had leapt out of the pickup before it had even come to a full stop. She already guessed what was wrong.

  “Minerva, they’ve taken Minerva.”

  Dedé exchanged a glance with Jaimito. “How do you know this, Mamá?”

  “They took the cars.” Mama pointed to the other end of the drive and, sure enough, the Ford and the Jeep were gone.

  Some of the SIM guards left behind had asked her for the keys. They were confiscating the two vehicles registered under a prisoner’s name. Minerva! No one had ever bothered to change those documents since Papa’s time. Now they were SIM cars.

  “Lord.” Mama looked up, addressing those very stars Dedé had already discounted. “Lord, hear my cry!”

  “Let’s go talk to Him inside,” Dedé suggested. She had seen the hedges move slightly. They were being spied upon and would be from now on.

  In Mamá’s bedroom, they all knelt down before the large picture of the Virgencita. It was here that all the crises in the family were first addressed—when Patria’s baby was born dead, when the cows caught the pinkeye, when Papa had been jailed, and later when he died and his other family had come to light.

  Now, in the small room, they gathered again, Patria, Noris, Mama, even Jaimito, though he hung back sheepishly, unaccustomed to being on his knees. Patria led the rosary, breaking down every now and then, Dedé filling in those breaks with a strong, full voice. But really her heart was not in it. Her mind was thinking over all she must do before she and Jaimito left in the morning. The boys had to be dropped off at Dona Leila‘s, and Minou had to be sent for in Monte Cristi, and the pickup had to be filled with gas, and some bags packed for the girls in whatever prison h
eld them, and a bag for her and Jaimito in case they had to stay overnight.

  The praying had stopped. Everyone was crying quietly now, touching the veil of the Virgin for comfort. Looking up at the Blessed Mother, Dedé saw where Minerva’s and Mate’s pictures had been newly tucked into the frame that already held Manolo, Leandro, Nelson, Pedrito. She struggled but this time she could not keep down her sobs.

  That night as she lay beside Jaimito, Dede could not sleep. It was not the naughty insomnia that resulted from a trip out to the shed to listen to the contraband station. This was something else altogether. She was feeling it slowly coming on. The dark of a childhood closet, the odor of gasoline she never liked, the feel of something dangerous pawing at her softly to see what she would do. She felt a tickling temptation to just let go. To let the craziness overtake her before the SIM could destroy all she loved.

  But who would take care of her boys? And Mama? And who would coax Patria back if she wandered away again from the still waters and green pastures of her sanity?

  Dedé could not run away. Courage! It was the first time she had used that word to herself and understood exactly what it meant. And so, as Jaimito snored away, Dedé began devising a little exercise to distract her mind and fortify her spirit.

  Concentrate, Dedé! she was saying. Remember a clear cool night a lot like this one. You are sitting under the anacahuita tree in the front yard.... And she began playing the happy memory in her head, forcing herself to imagine the scent of jasmine, the feel of the evening on her skin, the green dress she was wearing, the tinkle of ice in Papa’s glass of rum, the murmured conversation.

  But wait! Dedé didn’t make up that memory game the night of the arrests. In fact, she didn’t invent it at all. It was Minerva who taught her how to play it after she was released from prison and was living those last few months at Mamá’s with Mate and Patria and the children.