In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

  But without a plan Dedé’s courage unraveled like a row of stitches not finished with a good, sturdy knot. She couldn’t bear reading in the papers how the police were rounding up people left and right. She couldn’t bear hearing high-flown talk she didn’t understand. Most of all she couldn’t bear having her head so preoccupied and nothing useful to do with her hands.

  One night, she asked Lío right out: “How is it you mean to accomplish your goals?”

  Thinking back, Dedé remembers a long lecture about the rights of the campesinos, the nationalization of sugar, and the driving away of the Yanqui imperialists. She had wanted something practical, something she could use to stave off her growing fears. First, we mean to depose the dictator in this and this way. Second, we have arranged for a provisional government. Third, we mean to set up a committee of private citizens to oversee free elections. She would have understood talk like that.

  “Ay, Lío, ”she said at last, weary with so much hope, so little planning. “Where is it you get your courage?”

  “Why, Dedé,” he said, “it’s not courage. It’s common sense.”

  Common sense? Sitting around dreaming while the secret police hunted you down! To keep from scolding him, Dedé noted that she liked his shirt. He ran his hand down one side, his eyes far away, “It was Freddy‘s,” he said in a thick voice. Freddy, his comrade, had just been found hanging in his prison cell, a supposed suicide. It seemed weird to Dedé that Lío would wear the dead man’s shirt, and even weirder that he would admit it. In so many ways, Lío was beyond her.

  Lio’s name started to appear regularly in the papers. His opposition party had been outlawed. “A party for homosexuals and criminals,” the papers accused. One afternoon, the police came to the Mirabal residence, asking after Virgilio Morales. “We just want him to clear up a little matter,” the police explained. Mama, of course, swore she hadn’t seen Virgilio Morales in months, and furthermore, that he wasn’t allowed in her house.

  Dedé was scared, and angry at herself for being so. She was growing more and more confused about what she wanted. And uncertainty was not something Dedé could live with easily. She started to doubt everything—that she should marry Jaimito and live in Ojo de Agua, that she should part her hair on the left side, that she should have water bread and chocolate for breakfast today like every day.1

  “Are you in your time of the month, m‘ija?” Mama asked her more than once when Dedé set to quarreling about something.

  “Of course not, Mamá,” Dedé said with annoyance in her voice.

  She decided not to read the papers anymore. They were turning her upside down inside. The regime was going insane, issuing the most ludicrous regulations. A heavy fine was now imposed on anyone who wore khaki trousers and shirts of the same color. It was against the law now to carry your suit jacket over your arm. Lio was right, this was an absurd and crazy regime. It had to be brought down.

  But when she read the list to Jaimito, she did not get the reaction she expected. “Well?” he said when she was through and looked up at him.

  “Isn’t it ridiculous? I mean, it’s absurd, insanely ridiculous.” Unlike her golden-tongued sister, Dedé was not eloquent with reasons. And my God, what reasons did she need to explain these ridiculous insanities!

  “Why are you so worked up, my love?”

  Dedé burst into tears. “Don’t you see?”

  He held her as she cried. And then in his bossy, comforting voice, he explained things. Same-color khaki outfits were what the military wore, and so a dress distinction had to be made. A jacket over the arm could be hiding a gun, and there had recently been many rumors about plots against El Jefe. “See, my darling?”

  But Dedé didn’t see. She shut her eyes tight and wished blindly that everything would turn out all right.

  One night not long after that, Lio told them that as soon as his contact in the capital could arrange for asylum, he and several others would be going into exile. Minerva was deathly quiet. Even Jaimito, who wouldn’t give a rotten plantain for risky politics, felt Lío’s plight. “If he’d just relax, and stop all this agitating,” he argued later with Dede, “then he could stay and slowly work his changes in the country. This way, what good is he to everyone far away?”

  “He doesn’t believe in compromise,” Dedé defended Lío. The anger in her voice surprised her: She felt somehow diminished by Lio’s sacrifice. Ay, how she wished she could be that grand and brave. But she could not be. She had always been one to number the stars.

  Jaimito tried convincing Dedé to his way of thinking. “Don’t you see, my heart, all life involves compromise. You have to compromise with your sister, your mother has to compromise with your father, the sea and land have to compromise about a shoreline, and it varies from time to time. Don’t you see, my life?”

  “I see,” Dedé said at last, already beginning to compromise with the man she was set to marry.

  She remembers the night Lio went into hiding.

  It was also the night she finally agreed to marry Jaimito.

  They had been to a gathering of the Dominican party in San Francisco—Jaimito’s idea. Belonging to the party was an obligation unless, of course, like Lio you wanted trouble for yourself and your family. Needless to say, Lío had not come along. Minerva had reluctantly chaperoned Dedé and Jaimito and brought her cedula to be stamped.

  The evening was deadly. There were readings by high-ranking women in the party from Moral Meditations, an awful book just published by Doña Maria. Everyone knew the dictator’s wife hadn’t written a word of it, but the audience clapped politely. Except Minerva. Dedé prodded her with an elbow and whispered, “Think of it as life insurance.” The irony of it—she had been practicing for her future profession!

  They came directly home, sobered by the travesty in which they had participated. The three of them sat on the galería with the gas lamp off to keep the bugs down. Jaimito began what Minerva called her “interrogation.”

  “Has your friend invited you to go with him?” Jaimito had sense enough not to mention Lío’s name out loud in Mama’s house.

  There was a pause before Minerva spoke up. “Lío”—and she mentioned the name distinctly without a cowardly lowering of her voice—“is just a friend. And no, he hasn’t invited me to leave with him, nor would I go.”

  Again Dedé wondered over her sister’s reserve about Lío. Here was Minerva risking her life for this young man, why not just admit she was in love with him?

  “They were looking for him today at my house,” Jaimito whispered. Dedé could feel her own shoulders tightening. “I didn’t want to worry you, but they took me down to the station and asked me a bunch of questions. That’s why I wanted us to all go tonight. We’ve got to start behaving ourselves.”

  “What did they want him for?” This time Minerva did lower her voice.

  “They didn’t say. But they did want to know if he had ever offered me any kind of illicit materials. That’s what they called it.”

  Jaimito paused a long moment so that the two women were beside themselves. “What did you say?” Dedé’s voice broke from a whisper.

  “I told him he had.”

  “You what?” Minerva cried out.

  “I confess.” Jaimito’s voice was playful. “I told them he’d given me some girlie magazines. Those guards, you know how they are. They all think he’s a queer from what the papers have been saying. If nothing else, he climbed a little in their regard today.”

  “You are too much!” Minerva sighed, getting up. There was tiredness but also gratitude in her voice. After all, Jaimito had stuck his neck out for a man whose politics he considered foolhardy. “Tomorrow, we’ll probably read in the papers how Virgilio Morales is a sex maniac.”

  Dedé remembers a sudden stillness after Minerva left, different from their usual silences. Then Jaimito returned to the topic of Minerva and Lio. It was almost as if they had become for Jaimito, too, a shadow couple by which he could talk of his own deepes
t, most hidden wishes.

  “Do you think she’s hiding something?” Jaimito asked Dede. “Do you think they have crossed the Rio Yaque?”

  Ai, Jaimito!“ Dedé chastised him for suggesting such a thing about her sister.

  “They haven’t exactly been discussing Napoleon’s white horse in the back seat!” Jaimito was now lifting up her hair for access to the pale, hidden parts of her neck.

  “Neither have we been discussing Napoleon’s white horse in the front seat,” Dedé reminded him, pushing him gently away. The kissing was bringing on waves of pleasure she feared would capsize her self-control. “And we haven’t crossed the Rio Yaque, and we aren’t going to!”

  “Ever, my sky, ever?” he asked, putting on a hurt voice. He was patting his pockets for something. Dedé waited, knowing what was coming. “I can’t see in this dark,” he complained. “Light the lamp, will you, my own?”

  “And wake up everyone, no!” Dedé felt her heart fluttering. She wanted to delay his asking. She had to think. She had to make sure that she was choosing right.

  “But I have something I want you to see, my love.” Jaimito’s voice was full of excitement.

  “Let’s go out back. We can get in Papa’s car and turn on the inside light.” Dedé could never bear to disappoint him.

  They stumbled down the driveway to where the Ford was parked, a big black hulking shape in the dark. Mama would not be able to see them from her front bedroom window. Dedé eased open the passenger door and turned on the ceiling light. Across from her, Jaimito was grinning as he slid into the driver’s seat. It was a grin that carried Dedé all the way back to the day her naughty cousin had put a lizard down her blouse. He had been grinning like that when he approached her, his hands behind his back.

  “My lamb,” he began, reaching for her hand.

  Her heart was beating loud. Her spoiled, funny, fun-loving man. Oh, what a peck of trouble she was in for. “What have you got there, Jaimito Fernández?” she said, as he slipped the ring on her hand. It was his mother’s engagement ring that had been shown to Dedé on numerous visits. A small diamond set at the center of a gold filigree flower. “Ay, Jaimito,” she said, tilting it to catch the light. “It’s lovely.”

  “My heart,” he said. “I know I have to ask your father for your hand. But no matter what Minerva says, I’m modem. I believe the woman should be asked first.”

  That’s when they heard the alerting little cough from the back of the car. She and Jaimito looked at each other in shock. “Who’s there?” Jaimito cried out. “Who?” He had turned himself around so he was kneeling on the front seat.

  “Relax, it’s just me.” Lio whispered from the back of the car. “Turn off the light, will you?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Jaimito was furious, but he did turn off the light. He sat down again, facing the front as if he and his girl were alone, talking intimacies.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Lio explained. “The heat’s on. Mario’s house is surrounded. My ride to the capital is stopping at the anacahuita tree at dawn. I have to hide out till then.”

  “So you come here and endanger this whole family!” Jaimito twisted around in his seat, ready to throttle this reckless man.

  “I was hoping to get this to Minerva.”

  A hand slipped an envelope between Jaimito and Dedé. Before Jaimito could grab it, Dedé had it. She put it away in her pocket. “I’ll take care of it,” she promised.

  “Now you’ve done what you came to do, you’re not staying here. I’ll give you a goddamn ride.” Jaimito’s father’s Chevy was parked in front of the house by the gate.

  “Jaimito, be smart, listen.” Lío’s whispers were eerie, a disembodied voice from the dark interior of the car. “If you’re on the road in the middle of the night, of course you’ll be stopped, and your car searched.”

  Dedé agreed. When Jaimito was finally convinced, she walked him down the drive to his car. “So what do you think, my love?” he asked as she was kissing him goodbye.

  “I think you should go home, and let him catch the ride he’s already arranged.”

  “I’m talking about my proposal, Dedé.” Jaimito’s voice was that of a hurt little boy.

  It wasn’t so much that she had forgotten as it was the inevitability of that proposal. They had been headed for it since they had patted mud balls together as toddlers in the backyard. Everyone said so. There was no question—was there?—but that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

  He kissed her hard, his body insisting that her body answer, but Dedé’s head was spinning away with questions. “Yes, my love, of course, but you must go. I don’t want you to be stopped on the road.”

  “Don’t worry about me, my darling,” Jaimito said bravely, emboldened by her concern. But he left soon after a last lingering kiss.

  Alone, Dedé breathed in the cool air and looked up at the stars. She would not count them tonight, no. She twisted the ring around and around her finger, glancing towards the car at the bottom of the drive. Lio was there, safe! And only she knew it, only she, Dedé. No, she would not tell Minerva. She wanted to hold the secret to herself just this one night.

  In the bedroom she had once shared with Patria, the lamp was bum ing low. Dedé took out the letter from her pocket and stared at the poorly sealed envelope. She toyed with the flap and it came easily undone. Slipping the letter out, she read haltingly, telling herself after each paragraph she would stop.

  Lío was inviting Minerva to take asylum with him! She should drive down to the capital on the pretense of seeing the exhibit at the Colombian embassy and refuse to leave. What a risk to ask her sister to take! Why, the embassies were surrounded these days, and all the recent refugees had been intercepted and put in prison where most of them had disappeared forever. Dedé could not expose her sister to this danger. Especially if, as Minerva claimed, she did not even love this man.

  Dedé took the chimney off the lamp, and with a trembling hand, fed the letter to the flame. The paper lit up. Ashes fluttered like moths, and Dedé ground them to dust on the floor. She had taken care of the problem, and that was that. Looking up at the mirror, she was surprised by the wild look on her face. The ring on her finger flashed a feverish reminder. She brushed her hair up into a tight ponytail and put on her nightgown. Having blown out the light, she slept fitfully, holding her pillow like a man in her arms.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Minerva

  1949

  What do you want, Minerva Mirabal?

  Summer

  I know the rumor that got started once I’d been living at home a few years. That I didn’t like men. It’s true that I never paid much attention to the ones around here. But it wasn’t that I didn’t like them. I just didn’t know I was looking at what I wanted.

  For one thing, my nose was always in a book. Love was something I had read would come. The man I’d love would look like the poet in a frontispiece, pale and sad with a pen in his hand.

  For another thing, Papa discouraged boyfriends. I was his treasure, he’d say, patting his lap, as if I were a girl in a jumper instead of a woman of twenty-three in the slacks he objected to my wearing in public.

  “Papá,” I’d say. “I’m too old for that.”

  One time he offered me anything if I would sit on his lap. “Just come here and whisper it in my ear.” His voice was a little thick from drinking. I sat right down and swooped to my prize. “I want to go to the university, Papa, please.”

  “Now, now,” he said as if I were all worked up about something. “You wouldn’t want to leave your old Papa, would you?”

  “But Papa, you’ve got Mamá;‘ I argued.

  His face went blank. We both listened for Mama stirring in the front of the house near where we sat. Maria Teresa was off at school, Dede was newly married, Patria two times a mother. And here I was, a grown woman sitting on my father’s lap. “Your mother and I ...” he began, but thought better of continuing. Then he added, “We need you around.”
>
  Three years cooped at home since I’d graduated from Inmaculada, and I was ready to scream with boredom. The worse part was getting newsy letters from Elsa and Sinita in the capital. They were taking a Theory of Errors class that would make Sor Asunción’s hair stand on end even under her wimple. They had seen Tin-Tan in Tender Little Pumpkins, and been to the country club to hear Alberti and his band. And there were so many nice-looking men in the capital!

  I’d get restless with jealousy when Papa brought their letters back from the Salcedo post office. I’d jump in the Jeep and roar off into the countryside, my foot pressing heavily down on the gas as if speed could set me free. I’d drive further and further out, pretending to myself that I was running away to the capital. But something always made me turn the car around and head back home, something I’d seen from the corner of my eye.

  One afternoon, I was on one of these getaway rampages, racing down the small side roads that spiderweb our property. Near the northeast cacao groves, I saw the Ford parked in front of a small, yellow house. I tried to figure out what campesino family lived there, but I couldn’t say I had ever met them.

  So I made it my business to take that back road frequently, keeping an eye out. Every time I drove the Ford, these raggedy girls came running after me, holding out their hands, calling for mints.

  I studied them. There were three that ran to the road whenever they heard the car, a fourth one sometimes came in the arms of the oldest. Four girls, I checked, three in panties, and the baby naked. One time, I stopped at the side of the road and stared at their Mirabal eyes. “Who is your father?” I asked point blank.

  They had been bold, clamoring kids a moment before. Now, spoken to by a lady in a car, they hung their heads and looked at me from the comers of their eyes.

  “Do you have a brother?” I asked more gently.