In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

  Dedé hesitates, but her mind is already racing backwards, year by year by year, to the moment she has fixed in her memory as zero.

  She remembers a clear moonlit night before the future began. They are sitting in the cool darkness under the anacahuita tree in the front yard, in the rockers, telling stories, drinking guanábana juice. Good for the nerves, Mama always says.

  They’re all there, Mamá, Papá, Patria-Minerva-Dedé. Bang-bang-bang, their father likes to joke, aiming a finger pistol at each one, as if he were shooting them, not boasting about having sired them. Three girls, each born within a year of the other! And then, nine years later, Maria Teresa, his final desperate attempt at a boy misfiring.

  Their father has his slippers on, one foot hooked behind the other. Every once in a while Dedé hears the clink of the rum bottle against the rim of his glass.

  Many a night, and this night is no different, a shy voice calls out of the darkness, begging their pardon. Could they spare a calmante for a sick child out of their stock of kindness? Would they have some tobacco for a tired old man who spent the day grating yucca?

  Their father gets up, swaying a little with drink and tiredness, and opens up the store. The campesino goes off with his medicine, a couple of cigars, a few mints for the godchildren. Dedé tells her father that she doesn’t know how they do as well as they do, the way he gives everything away. But her father just puts his arm around her, and says, “Ay, Dedé, that’s why I have you. Every soft foot needs a hard shoe.

  “She’ll bury us all,” her father adds, laughing, “in silk and pearls.” Dedé hears again the clink of the rum bottle. “Yes, for sure, our Dedé here is going to be the millionaire in the family.”

  “And me, Papá, and me?” Maria Teresa pipes up in her little girl’s voice, not wanting to be left out of the future.

  “You, mi ñapita, you’ll be our little coquette. You’ll make a lot of men‘s—”

  Their mother coughs her correcting-your-manners cough.

  “—a lot of men’s mouths water,” their father concludes.

  María Teresa groans. At eight years old, in her long braids and checkered blouse, the only future the baby wants is one that will make her own mouth water, sweets and gifts in big boxes that clatter with something fun inside when she shakes them.

  “What of me, Papá?” Patria asks more quietly. It is difficult to imagine Patria unmarried without a baby on her lap, but Dedé’s memory is playing dolls with the past. She has sat them down that clear, cool night before the future begins, Mamá and Papá and their four pretty girls, no one added, no one taken away. Papá calls on Mamá to help him out with his fortune-telling. Especially—though he doesn’t say this—if she’s going to censor the clairvoyance of his several glasses of rum. “What would you say, Mamá, about our Patria?”

  “You know, Enrique, that I don’t believe in fortunes,” Mamá says evenly. “Padre Ignacio says fortunes are for those without faith.” In her mother’s tone, Dedé can already hear the distance that will come between her parents. Looking back, she thinks, Ay Mamá, ease up a little on those commandments. Work out the Christian math of how you give a little and you get it back a hundredfold. But thinking about her own divorce, Dedé admits the math doesn’t always work out. If you multiply by zero, you still get zero, and a thousand heartaches.

  “I don’t believe in fortunes either,” Patria says quickly. She’s as religious as Mamá, that one. “But Papá isn’t really telling fortunes.”

  Minerva agrees. “Papá’s just confessing what he thinks are our strengths.” She stresses the verb confessing as if their father were actually being pious in looking ahead for his daughters. “Isn’t that so, Papá?”

  “Sí, señorita,” Papá burps, slurring his words. It’s almost time to go in.

  “Also,” Minerva adds, “Padre Ignacio condemns fortunes only if you believe a human being knows what only God can know.” That one can’t leave well enough alone.

  “Some of us know it all,” Mamá says curtly.

  Maria Teresa defends her adored older sister. “It isn’t a sin, Mamá, it isn’t. Berto and Raúl have this game from New York. Padre Ignacio played it with us. It’s a board with a little glass you move around, and it tells the future!” Everybody laughs, even their mother, for María Teresa’s voice is bursting with gullible excitement. The baby stops, suddenly, in a pout. Her feelings get hurt so easily. On Minerva’s urging, she goes on in a little voice. “I asked the talking board what I would be when I grew up, and it said a lawyer.”

  They all hold back their laughter this time, for of course, Maria Teresa is parroting her big sister’s plans. For years Minerva has been agitating to go to law school.

  “Ay, Dios mío, spare me.” Mama sighs, but playfulness has come back into her voice. “Just what we need, skirts in the law!”

  “It is just what this country needs.” Minerva’s voice has the steely sureness it gets whenever she talks politics. She has begun talking politics a lot. Mamá says she’s running around with the Perozo girl too much. “It’s about time we women had a voice in running our country.”

  “You and Trujillo,” Papá says a little loudly, and in this clear peaceful night they all fall silent. Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security. Don Enrique claims Trujillo needs help in running this country. Don Enrique’s daughter says it’s about

  time women took over the government. Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much.

  Now, as if drops of rain had started falling—though the night is as clear as the sound of a bell—they hurry in, gathering their shawls and drinks, leaving the rockers for the yardboy to bring in. María Teresa squeals when she steps on a stone. “I thought it was el cuco,” she moans.

  As Dedé is helping her father step safely up the stairs of the galería, she realizes that hers is the only future he really told. María Teresa’s was a tease, and Papá never got to Minerva’s or Patria’s on account of Mamá’s disapproval. A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn’t want to be the only one left to tell their story.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Minerva

  1938, 1941, 1944

  Complications

  1938

  I don’t know who talked Papá into sending us away to school. Seems like it would have taken the same angel who announced to Mary that she was pregnant with God and got her to be glad about it.

  The four of us had to ask permission for everything: to walk to the fields to see the tobacco filling out; to go to the lagoon and dip our feet on a hot day; to stand in front of the store and pet the horses as the men loaded up their wagons with supplies.

  Sometimes, watching the rabbits in their pens, I’d think, I’m no different from you, poor things. One time, I opened a cage to set a half-grown doe free. I even gave her a slap to get her going.

  But she wouldn’t budge! She was used to her little pen. I kept slapping her, harder each time, until she started whimpering like a scared child. I was the one hurting her, insisting she be free.

  Silly bunny, I thought. You’re nothing at all like me.

  It started with Patria wanting to be a nun. Mamá was all for having a religious in the family, but Papá did not approve in the least. More than once, he said that Patria as a nun would be a waste of a pretty girl. He only said that once in front of Mamá, but he repeated it often enough to me.

  Finally, Papá gave in to Mamá. He said Patria could go away to a convent school if it wasn’t one just for becoming a nun. Mamá agreed.

  So, when it came time for Patria to go down to Inmaculada Concepción, I asked Papa if I could go along. That way I could chaperone my older sister, who was already a grown-u
p señorita. (And she had told me all about how girls become senoritas, too.)

  Papa laughed, his eyes flashing proudly at me. The others said I was his favorite. I don’t know why since I was the one always standing up to him. He pulled me to his lap and said, “And who is going to chaperone you?”

  “Dedé,” I said, so all three of us could go together. He pulled a long face. “If all my little chickens go, what will become of me?”

  I thought he was joking, but his eyes had their serious look. “Papá,” I informed him, “you might as well get used to it. In a few years, we’re all going to marry and leave you.”

  For days he quoted me, shaking his head sadly and concluding, “A daughter is a needle in the heart.”

  Mama didn’t like him saying so. She thought he was being critical because their only son had died a week after he was born. And just three years ago, Maria Teresa was bom a girl instead of a boy. Anyhow, Mama didn’t think it was a bad idea to send all three of us away. “Enrique, those girls need some learning. Look at us.” Mamá had never admitted it, but I suspected she couldn’t even read.

  “What’s wrong with us?” Papá countered, gesturing out the window where wagons waited to be loaded before his warehouses. In the last few years, Papá had made a lot of money from his farm. Now we had class. And, Mama argued, we needed the education to go along with our cash.

  Papa caved in again, but said one of us had to stay to help mind the store. He always had to add a little something to whatever Mamá came up with. Mama said he was just putting his mark on everything so no one could say Enrique Mirabal didn’t wear the pants in his family.

  I knew what he was up to all right. When Papa asked which one of us would stay as his little helper, he looked directly at me.

  I didn’t say a word. I kept studying the floor like maybe my school lessons were chalked on those boards. I didn’t need to worry. Dedé always was the smiling little miss. “I’ll stay and help, Papá.”

  Papá looked surprised because really Dedé was a year older than me. She and Patria should have been the two to go away. But then, Papá thought it over and said Dedé could go along, too. So it was settled, all three of us would go to Inmaculada Concepción. Me and Patria would start in the fall, and Dedé would follow in January since Papá wanted the math whiz to help with the books during the busy harvest season.

  And that’s how I got free. I don’t mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I’d just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country.

  First time I met Sinita she was sitting in the parlor where Sor Asunción was greeting all the new pupils and their mothers. She was all by herself, a skinny girl with a sour look on her face and pokey elbows to match. She was dressed in black, which was odd as most children weren’t put in mourning clothes until they were at least fifteen. And this little girl didn’t look any older than me, and I was only twelve. Though I would have argued with anyone who told me I was just a kid!

  I watched her. She seemed as bored as I was with all the polite talk in that parlor. It was like a heavy shaking of talcum powder in the brain hearing all those mothers complimenting each other’s daughters and lisping back in good Castilian to the Sisters of the Merciful Mother. Where was this girl’s mother? I wondered. She sat alone, glaring at everybody, as if she would pick a fight if you asked her where her mother was. I could see, though, that she was sitting on her hands and biting her bottom lip so as not to cry. The straps on her shoes had been cut off to look like flats, but they looked worn out, was what they looked like.

  I got up and pretended to study the pictures on the walls like I was a lover of religious art. When I got to the Merciful Mother right above Sinita’s head, I reached in my pocket and pulled out the button I’d found on the train. It was sparkly like a diamond and had a little hole in back so you could thread a ribbon through it and wear it like a romantic lady’s choker necklace. It wasn’t something I’d do, but I could see the button would make a good trade with someone inclined in that direction.

  I held it out to her. I didn’t know what to say, and it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. She picked it up, turned it all around, and then set it back down in my palm. “I don’t want your charity.”

  I felt an angry tightness in my chest. “It’s just a friendship button.”

  She looked at me a moment, a deciding look like she couldn’t be sure of anybody. “Why didn’t you just say so?” She grinned as if we were already friends and could tease each other.

  “I did just say so,” I said. I opened up my hand and offered her the button again. This time she took it.

  After our mothers left, we stood on line while a list was made of everything in our bags. I noticed that along with not having a mother to bring her, Sinita didn’t own much either. Everything she had was tied up in a bundle, and when Sor Milagros wrote it out, all it took was a couple of lines: 3 change of underwear, 4 pair of socks, brush and comb, towel and nightdress. Sinita offered the sparkly button, but Sor Milagros said it wasn’t necessary to write that down.

  “Charity student,” the gossip went round. “So?” I challenged the giggly girl with curls like hiccups, who whispered it to me. She shut up real quick. It made me glad all over again I’d given Sinita that button.

  Afterwards, we were taken into an assembly hall and given all sorts of welcomes. Then Sor Milagros, who was in charge of the tens through twelves, took our smaller group upstairs into the dormitory hall we would share. Our side-by-side beds were already set up for the night with mosquito nets. It looked like a room of little bridal veils.

  Sor Milagros said she would now assign us our beds according to our last names. Sinita raised her hand and asked if her bed couldn’t be next to mine. Sor Milagros hesitated, but then a sweet look came on her face. Sure, she said. But when some other girls asked, she said no. I spoke right up, “I don’t think it’s fair if you just make an exception for us.”

  Sor Milagros looked mighty surprised. I suppose being a nun and all, not many people told her what was wrong and right. Suddenly, it struck me, too, that this plump little nun with a bit of her gray hair showing under her headdress wasn’t Mamá or Papá I could argue things with. I was on the point of apologizing, but Sor Milagros just smiled her gap-toothed smile and said, “All right, I’ll allow you all to choose your own beds. But at the first sign of argument”—some of the girls had already sprung towards the best beds by the window and were fighting about who got there first—“we’ll go back to alphabetical. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Sor Milagros,” we chorused.

  She came up to me and took my face in her hands. “What’s your name?” she wanted to know.

  I gave her my name, and she repeated it several times like she was tasting it. Then she smiled like it tasted just fine. She looked over at Sinita, whom they all seemed partial to, and said, “Take care of our dear Sinita.”

  “I will,” I said, standing up straight like I’d been given a mission. And that’s what it turned out to be, all right.

  A few days later, Sor Milagros gathered us all around for a little talk. Personal hygiene, she called it. I knew right away it would be about interesting things described in the most uninteresting way.

  First, she said there had been some accidents. Anyone needing a canvas sheet should come see her. Of course, the best way to prevent a mishap was to be sure to visit our chamber pots every night before we got in bed. Any questions?

  Not a one.

  Then, a shy, embarrassed look came on her face. She explained that we might very well become young ladies while we were at school this year. She went through a most tangled-up explanation about the how and why, and finished by saying if we should start our complications, we should come see her. This time she didn’t ask if there were any questions.

  I felt like setting her straight, explaining thing
s simply the way Patria had explained them to me. But I guessed it wasn’t a good idea to try my luck twice in the first week.

  When she left, Sinita asked me if I understood what on earth Sor Milagros had been talking about. I looked at her surprised. Here she’d been dressed in black like a grownup young lady, and she didn’t know the first thing. Right then, I told Sinita everything I knew about bleeding and having babies between your legs. She was pretty shocked, and beholden. She offered to trade me back the secret of Trujillo.

  “What secret is that?” I asked her. I thought Patria had told me all the secrets.

  “Not yet,” Sinita said looking over her shoulder.

  It was a couple of weeks before Sinita got to her secret. I’d forgotten about it, or maybe I’d just put it out of my mind, a little scared what I might find out. We were busy with classes and making new friends. Almost every night someone or other came visiting under our mosquito nets or we visited them. We had two regulars, Lourdes and Elsa, and soon all four of us started doing everything together. It seemed like we were all just a little different—Sinita was charity and you could tell; Lourdes was fat, though as friends we called her pleasantly plump when she asked, and she asked a lot; Elsa was pretty in an I-told-you-so way, as if she hadn’t expected to turn out pretty and now she had to prove it. And me, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I had something to say.

  The night Sinita told me the secret of Trujillo I couldn’t sleep. All day I hadn’t felt right, but I didn’t tell Sor Milagros. I was afraid she’d stick me in the sickroom and I’d have to lie in bed, listening to Sor Consuelo reading novenas for the sick and dying. Also, if Papa found out, he might change his mind and keep me home where I couldn’t have any adventures.

  I was lying on my back, looking up into the white tent of the mosquito net, and wondering who else was awake. In her bed next to mine, Sinita began to cry very quietly as if she didn’t want anybody to know. I waited a little, but she didn’t stop. Finally, I stepped over to her bed and lifted the netting. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.