In the Time of Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

  “Then why do you say there’s hope?”

  “Let them bring down the old man, and then we’ll take over.” Dr. Viñas grinned, his fat little cheeks lifting his glasses.

  “It’s not what we planned,” I reminded him.

  “One must have a left hand,” he said, showing me his left hand.

  I found I was wringing both of my hands, swallowing to keep the tickle in my throat from erupting into another coughing fit. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  He nodded, one sure, deep nod. “What you can do is keep our hopes up. You’re an example, you know. The whole country looks to you.”

  When I made a face, he frowned. “I’m quite serious,” he said.

  There was a knock at the door. We both jumped.

  “Amorcito,” a sweet voice called, “I have your little cafecito here.”

  And the world of diminutives closed in again on us.

  For Manolo, I lifted out the bad news like a fish bone, and gave him the promising tidbit—that the gringos were working with a group to slaughter the goat for the picnic.

  Manolo had not heard this. His face tensed up. “I don’t like it. The gringos will take over the revolution.”

  They’ll take over the country, I thought to myself. I didn’t say it out loud. No use depressing him any more than he already was. And at this point I didn’t care enough. I was so desperate for Trujillo to be gone. Like Vinas said, we could fix the future later.

  “Tell Viñas—” Manolo began.

  I rolled my eyes to indicate the guard approaching behind him. Out loud, I went on, “The children miss you so much. The other day I asked them what they wanted for Benefactor’s Day, and they said, ‘Bring Papi home!’ Manolo?” He was not listening, I could tell. His eyes had a faraway look I recognized from my own days in this horrible place.

  I touched his face to bring him back. “Mi amor, just remember, soon, soon... Monte Cristi.” I hummed the song.

  “No singing,” the guard announced. He had stopped in front of us.

  “Sorry, soldier.” I recognized Good Hair under the brim of his cap. I nodded at him, but his eyes were cold and flat, as if he did not know me. “We were just saying goodbye.”

  Today our interview was shorter than usual, since I was sharing my twenty minutes with Manolo’s mother, who had driven down from Monte Cristi. Just before I came upstairs, we spoke briefly in the warden’s office. She had a surprise she promised to tell me later.

  I waited alone in the car with the radio on low. (No music allowed.) Just being in the prison yard was bringing back waves of that old panic. To distract myself, I fiddled with the radio dials, hoping Rufino would get back soon so I’d have someone to talk to. He was making the rounds, distributing the cigarettes and pesos we always brought the guards to encourage them to treat our prisoners right.

  The visitors started filing past the checkpoint at the big exit door. Suddenly, Doña Fefita appeared, weeping, Mate and Patria on either side of her. My heart sank, remembering how depressed Manolo had been today.

  I hurried up to them. “What’s wrong?”

  Mate and Patria shrugged—they didn’t know—and before Doña Fefita could say, the guards shouted for us to move along.

  We were not allowed to “congregate” in the prison yard, but down the road we stopped both cars. Doña Fefita began crying again as she recounted what had happened. She had arranged to buy the little house Manolo and I had lived in. But instead of being pleased, Manolo had snapped at her. Didn’t she know that the only way he was going to come home was in a box?

  This made my legs go weak beneath me. But I couldn’t let my own devastation show. “Now Doña Fefita, he’s just worn out. That place—” I cast a glance over her shoulder.

  My sisters joined in with their reassurances. “We’ve got to keep our spirits up for the men.” But when our eyes met, it was not a look of optimism that we exchanged.

  Doña Fefita finally calmed down. “So, should I buy it, Minerva? Should I?”

  It was hard for me to go against Manolo’s wishes. We had always decided things together. “Maybe... you should wait.”

  She heard the hesitation in my voice and went on, more determined. “I’ll take it upon myself. I want you to have a place to go to when this is all over.”

  She had put my feeling in words exactly. A place to go to when this is all over.

  But her generosity was not allowed. A very short time later, I received notice to remove our possessions from the premises. The SIM were opening a new office in Monte Cristi.

  And so Dedé and I set out in the pickup on Monday morning to do as we were bid. Rufino was our driver, since Jaimito, short-handed, couldn’t take time off from the cacao harvest. He had not wanted Dedé to accompany me either, but she said she could not allow me to dismantle my house alone. We planned to be back Wednesday afternoon, in time for me to go with Mate and Patria to La Victoria the next day. Ah, the busy life of house arrest! Peña had immediately granted me permission for the trip to Monte Cristi. After all, as head of the Northern SIM, he knew exactly why my old house needed to be vacated. He was probably the mastermind.

  The drive north turned out to be one of those sunny moments that come even in the darkest days. My gloominess fell away as if we were on holiday. I hadn’t spent time alone with Dedé since we were cooped up in Ojo de Agua together, two young girls waiting for their lives to happen.

  I knew she had mustered up all her courage to come along, the way she kept looking behind us when we first hit that isolated stretch of highway. But she soon settled down and was lively and talkative—as if to distract us from the sad mission we were on.

  “Rufino,” I said, “wouldn’t Dedé make a great gavillera?” We were having a whistling contest, and Dedé had just won with a piercing trill.

  “Gavillera, me! Are you crazy.” Dedé laughed. “I wouldn’t have lasted a day up in those hills. I would have given myself up to those good-looking gringos.”

  “Gringos, good-looking? ¡Mujer!” I made a face. All I could think of was how they had deserted Viñas and his men. “They look like somebody stuck them in a bucket of bleach and forgot they were there. That goes for their passion, too!”

  “How would you know about their passion?” Dedé challenged. “You’ve never even known a gringo. Or have you kept something from me, my dear?” She gave her shoulders a saucy shimmy. Rufino looked away.

  “Why not let Rufino decide,” I said. “What do you think, Rufino? Are gringos good-looking?”

  He smiled. Lines deepened on either side of his mouth. “A man doesn’t know if another man is handsome,” he said at last.

  I found a way around that by invoking his wife. “Would Delisa say gringos are good-looking?”

  His jaw tightened. “She had better keep her eyes to herself!”

  Dede and I looked at each other and smiled.

  Feeling happy, I congratulated myself on asking Dedé to come along. Now she’d see that her fears were unfounded. The roads were not full of murderers. As unreal as it seemed in the midst of our troubles, that glorious ordinary life went on without us. There was a campesino with his donkey loaded down with charcoal. There was a truck with its flatbed full of girls giggling and waving at us. There under the blue sky was the turquoise sea, sparkling with holiday promises.

  Suddenly and incomprehensibly to us in our carefree state—just around a curve, a car was parked across the road. Rufino had to slam on the brakes, and Dedé and I were thrown against each other. Five calíes in dark glasses swarmed around the pickup and ordered us out of the cab.

  I will never forget the terror on Dedé’s face. How she reached for my hand. How, when we were asked to identify ourselves, what she said was—I will never forget this—she said, “My name is Minerva Mirabal.”

  In Monte Cristi we were taken into a dim little guardhouse in back of the fort. I could see why they needed new quarters. The nervous man with worried eyes apologized for any discomfort. The esc
ort had been a precaution. People had heard that Minerva Mirabal was coming to town today, and there were rumors that there might be some sort of commotion.

  “Which one of you is Minerva Mirabal?” he asked, watching us through his cigarette smoke. The little finger on his left hand had a long, clawlike nail. I found myself wondering what it was for.

  “I’m Minerva,” I said, looking firmly at Dedé. That old man at Missing Persons we’d met years back flashed through my head. If he could give all fifteen sons the same name, why not two Minervas in the Mirabal family?

  Our interrogator glanced suspiciously from one to the other, then, addressed Dedé. “Why did you tell my men you were Minerva?”

  Dedé could barely talk. “I... I ... She’s my little sister....”

  Little sister, indeed! I had never been Dedé’s little sister as far as character was concerned. It had always been the big problem between us.

  The man watched us, waiting.

  “She’s Minerva:‘ Dedé finally agreed.

  “You’re certain of this, now?” the man asked without humor. He had sat back down, and was nervously flicking a lighter that would not light. Sizing him up, I employed a skill I had acquired in prison with my interrogators. I decided this jumpy little man could be cowed. He was trying too hard.

  I pulled out our pass signed by Pena from my purse. As head of the Northern Division of the SIM, he was certainly this man’s superior. “Captain Pena has authorized this trip. I hope there will be no problems for us to report back to him.”

  The paroxysm of blinking made me pity the poor man. His own terror was a window that opened onto the rotten weakness at the heart of Trujillo’s system. “No problems, no problems. Just precautions.”

  As we waited outside for Rufino to bring the pickup around, I could see him through the door of his office. He was already on the phone—probably reporting our arrival to Pena. While he spoke, he was cleaning the wax out of his ear with his little finger. I felt somehow relieved to know what that nail was for.

  At the little house, Dedé had us all organized: this bunch of boxes to store at Doña Fefita’s; this bunch to take back with us; this pile to give away. I had to smile—she was still the same old Dedé, who stocked the shelves of the family store so neatly I always regretted having to sell anything.

  Now she was in the kitchen-living room, making a clatter with the pots and pans. Every once in a while she’d come in with something in her hand. Mama had given me some of her furnishings when she had moved to the new house.

  “I didn’t know you had this.” Dedé held up the dainty oil lamp, its pale rose chimney fluted like the petals of a flower. “Our old bedroom lamp, remember?” I had forgotten that Dedé and I once shared a room before Mate and I paired up.

  Reminiscing with Dedé was better than facing the flood of memories in the front room. Law books lay piled in a corner. Everything had been strewn on the floor—the porcelain donkey, our framed law degrees, the seashells Manolo and I had found on Morro Beach. I had not anticipated how hard this would be. I kept wishing the SIM had ransacked the place the way they had Patria’s and carted off everything. This way was much crueler, making me face the waste of my life before me.

  Here was the book of Martí’s poems Lío had dedicated to me. (“In memory of my great affection ...”) And the little ship I had stolen for Mate. (What was it doing among my things?) And here was a yellowing newspaper with a picture of Lina Lovatón captioned with a poem by Trujillo. And a holy card from our pilgrimage to Higüey the time Patria claimed to have heard a voice. And a Nivea tin full of smelly ashes, probably from some Ash Wednesday when Mama had dragged me to church. I went to the door for a swallow of fresh air.

  Early evening it was, the cool of the day. The little square looked like a tree full of crows. There must have been over a hundred people strolling, sitting on benches, idling in front of the little gazebo where rallies were held, and contests on holidays. It could have been Benefactor’s Day all over again except that everyone was dressed in black.

  As I stood at the door, not fully comprehending the sight, the trucks began to roll in. Guardias unloaded. The clicking of their boots as they went into formation was the only sound. They surrounded the square.

  I stepped out on the sidewalk. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. All strolling stopped. Suddenly, everyone faced me, and one totally quiet moment passed. Then almost as if at a signal, the crowd disbanded. Little groups began walking towards the side streets. In minutes the square was empty.

  Not a shot had been fired, not a word said. The guardias stood uselessly around the empty square for a while longer. Finally, they climbed back into their trucks and roared away.

  When I turned to go back inside, I was surprised to find Dedé at the door, a frying pan in her hand. I had to smile to myself. My big sister had been ready to march right out and bang a few heads if a massacre got started.

  Back inside, the rooms were getting too dark to see. We wandered through the house, bumping into boxes, trying light switches, hoping to get a little more packing done. But the electricity had been cut off, and the oil lamp that had once lit the dark between our beds had already been packed away.

  Wednesday evening when we got back, we found Mate in a bad state. She had had her bad dream from Papá’s death. But this time, when she opened the lid of the coffin, Leandro and Manolo and Pedrito were inside. Every time she recounted it, she began to sob.

  “You’re going to look awful tomorrow,” I warned, hoping to appeal to her vanity.

  But Mate didn’t care. She cried and cried until at last we were all spooked.

  To make matters worse, To Pepe appeared right after supper. His pickup was decked with paper flags and a banner proclaiming, WELCOME, JEFE, TO SALCEDO PROVINCE. The SIM let him right in.

  “Quite a getup you have there,” I noted.

  Tio Pepe nodded wordlessly. When the nieces and nephews began clamoring for the little flags on the pickup, he snapped at them. Their mouths dropped. They had never seen their jolly uncle cross.

  “Time for bed,” Mama said, ushering her brood of grandchildren towards the bedrooms.

  “Let’s get some air,” Tio Pepe suggested. Patria, Mate, and I grabbed our shawls and followed him outside.

  Deep in the garden where we always went to talk, he told us about the gathering he’d just come from. There had been a reception honoring El Jefe at the mayor’s house. A list of all the people that Trujillo wanted to see there had been published in the local paper. Tio Pepe’s name had been on it.

  “iEpa, tío!” I said. “Hobnobbing with the big guys.”

  “He wanted me there because he knows I’m related to you.” Tio Pepe’s voice was only a whisper above the trilling of the cicadas.

  From the house we could hear Mama getting the children ready for bed. “Put on your pajama bottoms right this minute!” No doubt she was scolding my little hellion. Without his father, that boy was growing up a handful.

  “He’s by the big punch bowl, surrounded by his flies—you know how shit attracts flies. Forgive my foul mouth, girls, but nothing else fits this devil in human form. Surrounded by those men—you know, Maldonado and Figueroa and Lomares, and that Peña fellow. They’re all saying, ‘Ay, Jefe, you’ve done so much good for our province.’ ‘Ay, Jefe, you’ve raised strong morale after sanctions.’ ‘Ay, Jefe,’” Tío Pepe crooned to imitate the cronies. “El Jefe keeps nodding at this pile of horse shit, and finally he says, looking right at me—I’m standing at my post by the Salcedo farmers, filling up on those delicious pastelitos Florin makes—and he says, ‘Well, boys, I’ve really only got two problems left. If I could only find the man to resolve them.’

  “Then he goes quiet, and I know and everyone else knows, we’re supposed to ask him what are those problems, and can we please be the men to resolve them. Sure enough, the biggest shit lover of all, Pena, says, Jefe, I am at your service. Just tell me your problems and I’ll give my life if need be�
��blah blah blah.‘ So El Jefe says, brace yourselves now. He says, looking straight at me, he says, ’My only two problems are the damn church and the Mirabal sisters.”‘

  I felt the hair rising on my arms. Mate began to cry.

  “Now, now, it’s no reason to get alarmed.” Tío Pepe tried to sound like his usual cheerful self. “If he was really going to do something, he wouldn’t have announced it. That’s the whole point. He was giving me a warning to deliver back to you.”

  “But we aren’t doing anything,” Mate said in a weary voice. “We’re locked up here all week except for visiting the men. And it’s not like we don’t have permission from Pena himself.”

  “Maybe—for a while, anyhow—you should think about not going out at all.”

  So Trujillo was no longer saying Minerva Mirabal was a problem, but that all the Mirabal sisters were. I wondered whether Dedé would be implicated now that I had dragged her with me to Monte Cristi.

  Patria hadn’t said a word the whole time. Finally she spoke up. “We can’t desert the men, Tío.”

  Just then, the light from the children’s bedroom that gave on the garden went out. As we stood in the dark a while longer, calming ourselves, I had this eerie feeling that we were already dead and looking longingly at the house where our children were growing up without us.

  The next morning, Thursday, we stopped as required at SIM headquarters on our way down to La Victoria. Rufino came back to the car without the papers. “He wants to see you.”

  Inside, Peña was waiting for us, the fat spider at the center of his web.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked the minute we sat down where he pointed. I should have kept my mouth shut and let Patria do the talking.

  “You don’t want to make a useless trip, do you?” He waited a long second for the grim possibilities of his statement to sink in.