The Coconut Latitudes: Secrets, Storms, and Survival in the Caribbean

by Rita M. Gardner

  I start shaking and can’t stop. Why didn’t I notice this before? Maybe we could have fixed him up if I’d paid more attention. I guess I just took him for granted—my little wiggling dog, happy to walk the finca trails with Daddy, or beg for meat scraps from Mama, or patiently sit for me to remove ticks. Daddy has always been gentle with Bobby and never yells at him. If I want to think any good thoughts about Daddy, I just imagine him sitting in his chair after lunch, reading a book while Bobby snoozes in his lap. Sometimes Daddy falls asleep too. When he gets up he says they both needed their siestas. It’s as if Daddy softens up around Bobby; our dog is the only member of our family that we can all love all the time. He gets the hugs and pats I rarely experience, but I don’t mind that because he is such a good dog.

  Daddy says, “We’ll take care of Bobby.” His eyes are red too. Mama thanks the doctor, wiping tears from her eyes. The next day Pedro, one of Daddy’s workers, comes by the house, his machete, as always, dangling in a sheath from his belt. Daddy and he walk out to the pier to talk. At first I think the man is here on finca business. I rub Bobby behind his ears, which usually elicits little “woofs” of pleasure. He wags his tail, and my eyes sting with tears. “I love you,” I whisper. “I love you. We’ll make you better. You’ll see.” I don’t believe my own words but I say them anyway, over and over. Then Daddy and Pedro walk back into the house.

  “It’s time to say good-bye to Bobby.” Mama’s tone is soft and sad. I don’t have to ask what’s going to happen. I try not to look at the machete, so sharp it can slice through a coconut in one blow. I hold Bobby one last time. His eyes are bright, and he tries to lick the salt tears from my face. I can’t say good-bye. I can only whimper and touch his fur very gently, so it doesn’t hurt him. My heart is thumping and I think I’ll break apart. No, no, no! I scream inside and then I’m wailing out loud, harder even than when I cried for Berta, and I don’t care, I don’t try to hold anything inside. I realize I’m screaming when I see Bobby looking at me, startled, and I stop. Don’t scare Bobby, I think. I grab Mama’s hand and she holds it tightly. Daddy now has his arm around Mama and pulls me to him. He’s shaking too. I can hardly breathe.

  For a while we just stand there, as if we can stop what is coming, then Pedro finally clears his throat and gets down on his knees. He cradles Bobby in a towel, his cracked brown fingers holding him like a baby in its blanket. Bobby doesn’t resist. Mama and Daddy walk with him as far as the beach path, then turn back, holding hands. Daddy wipes his eyes and blows his nose. The worker walks out of sight, headed towards the mouth of the Yeguada, where the current flows swiftly out into the bay. I run to my room and shut the curtain. I don’t want to see him returning, empty-handed, the belt with its hanging knife wiped clean by river water.

  I DRIFT THROUGH THE DAYS in a gray haze, doing my schoolwork, walking the four kilometers to Cocoloco every few days with Mama as Daddy buries himself in work at the finca. Now I can see the pain in Mama’s eyes and in Daddy’s downturned mouth. It’s like we couldn’t or wouldn’t mourn for Berta, but the shock of Bobby’s loss is so great it has awakened a mountain of grief in all of us. It’s too big to talk about, but somehow it’s made Daddy slow down his drinking. I can see him trying to curb his temper by taking more long swims at the end of the day instead of long swigs of rum. Sometime Mama strokes my head when I’m near, like she used to pat Bobby. But we still have to keep up the fake stories to everyone in town. I’m getting better now at answering questions about Berta. My lies slip out automatically, like a song I know the words to by heart. But the toothaches I used to get when I was younger have come back, and I catch the gripe twice in three months. I have a low constant pain in my gut, especially at night when I cradle a pillow and moan—silently, so as not to wake anyone up. I dream Bobby is snoring next to me with his paws clawing my arms, but it’s my own fingers digging and I wake up with scratch marks and a cloud of dread.

  I want a storm to come and destroy everything, to tear the house apart and sweep me out to sea in a tidal wave. I think I’ll get my wish when a hurricane lashes us at the end of summer, whipping up the harbor like egg whites. Winds churn the palm fronds into a fever and waves thunder all day and night. Trembling clouds of spume fly through the air, coating fences and houses and leaving lacy ghosts that dry up and disappear. I stand in the stinging rain, mouth open to receive its punishment. But of course Casalata survives the hurricane. When we hear it has reached Florida, the eye a hundred miles across, I wish I could be worrying about Berta—as if she’s still living there, as if she’s still living.

  Instead, I try to stow away my feelings, those thoughts that want me to drown in the ocean or a storm or get hit by lightning—or to hit something really hard. I don’t dare think about what or whom I’d want to hit—just that I want to hurt something. But those are bad thoughts, so I stuff them inside until they’re just a block of hardness behind my belly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Butterflies and Ambushes

  In the daytime I immerse myself in the local paper. Trujillo’s generosity to the hurricane victims makes the headlines. There is other news, too, of suspected plots against El Jefe. The plotters are named and jailed swiftly, the editorials report. I’m pulled in by a story of a car accident involving three sisters whose pictures I’ve seen before in the paper. Four young women—the Mirabal sisters—were once part of Ciudad Trujillo’s elite, but now are enemies of the state. Several of them have been jailed before because their husbands are accused of plotting against Trujillo. The sisters are referred to as Las Mariposas—The Butterflies—and yesterday three of them died in an automobile accident on a mountain road. The paper shows a photograph of their jeep after it crashed to the bottom of a cliff. It looks like a crushed insect, wheels upturned and doors splayed open like broken wings. The report says the sisters were on their way to the prison where their husbands were incarcerated because El Jefe, in his goodness, had granted them permission to visit their spouses in prison.

  When Daddy reads the story, he mutters to Mama that this was no accident. One of their friends says he heard the sisters were dead before the vehicle tumbled over the cliff—that they were waylaid on the mountain road and strangled. The victims were shoved back in their jeep and it was pushed off the cliff. The next week this is confirmed by the newspaper. Now Trujillo makes frequent public speeches about how a special team is investigating this awful crime against these poor, helpless “Mariposas.”

  In Miches, people whisper that Trujillo himself ordered the assassination. The Mariposas are now on everyone’s lips. Three women have been murdered, but they’ve unleashed thousands of rumors that flit like butterflies all across the countryside. The murmurings grow louder every day, as if a hurricane of gossip is circling this island and it’s not going to blow away any time soon.

  The story makes me think of Berta. Was she murdered? She wasn’t anyone’s enemy. She was just my sister. “Was,” I say to myself. I don’t know, I tell myself. Maybe she’s still alive. Maybe it’s someone else that washed ashore like a piece of driftwood. No, don’t think that either. If she is alive, why doesn’t she write? Stop thinking. I try to forget about the butterflies in my stomach and the ones flying through the air around us.

  I distract myself by reading the latest US magazines that the Breedens send us, Newsweek and Time. The articles about the Dominican Republic are completely different than anything written in El Caribe. I feel like I’m reading something dangerous, forbidden.

  Daddy is working at the finca this week, so Mama and I trudge up to Cocoloco to bring him supplies and spend the night. I’m drifting off to sleep when voices in English break the quiet. From the direction of the beach we hear loud yells: “Yoohoo, Jesse? Emily? Surprise!”

  Flashlight beams flicker in our general direction, like large fireflies, as the night visitors find the path to the house. Shouldering knapsacks, two figures emerge into the circle of lamplight, shaking off sand and saltwater. It’s the Breedens.

/>   “Bet you’re shocked to see us!” Norma cackles, catching her breath at the same time. “We wrote you a couple of weeks ago that we’d be coming. Guess you didn’t get it. Anyway, when we got to Miches and saw Casalata all closed up, we figured oh hell, we can make it up the damn beach to Cocoloco before dark.”

  Ed eases the pack off and rolls his eyes. “We were dead wrong.” Norma shakes her wet hair like a dog. “And I fell in both rivers—but hey, we made it!” They seem awfully cheerful about their ordeal, and then I see the half-empty vodka bottle Norma is waving as she talks. Mama brings towels and finds them dry clothes. We all sit at the picnic table downstairs while Mama puts leftover spaghetti in a pan to heat on the Coleman stove. The Breedens know about Berta, so that’s a relief. No lies needed here. Norma gives me a vodka kiss and Ed offers me a damp hug. He reminds me of an old dog with his wobbly jowl and sad, droopy eyes. Norma is thin, like one of those skinny greyhounds, all nervous energy and sharp teeth. I think that I’d like Ed as a father; he’s kind and talks to me like I’m worth listening to.

  “Hoo-boy, things are bad in the capital,” Ed says as he towels off his hair. He says the US has severed diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic and sent the ambassador packing. He hands the towel to Mama and sits down heavily.

  “The CIA has taken over the American Consulate in Ciudad Trujillo.”

  Norma interrupts. “Hell yes, and the secret police are everywhere. Was it last week, Ed, when they killed four people on Avenida Gomez?”

  Ed nods. That’s the street in the capital where most of the foreign embassies have their offices. “The Goat denies it”—that’s what they call Trujillo—“but it’s true. He says everything’s under control. Of course you’ve heard about the Mirabal girls?” He shakes his head. “I’m guessing something big is up, and it will affect all of us.”

  I shiver a little. Norma leans forward and stabs her cigarette in the air like a weapon. “I’d sure get out if we goddamn could.” She emphasizes the “goddamn” and glares at Ed briefly, then smiles. “But I guess we’re all in it for the long haul. What the hell, let’s have another drink.”

  Ed looks at her and says, “Now, honey, don’t get started.”

  Mama says let’s forget about politics now and the Breedens finish their meal. Daddy brings the old Victrola down from upstairs and cranks it up. I climb the stairs to the crooning of Frank Sinatra. Eventually everyone else stumbles up to sleep. I dream of butterflies and spiderwebs and cars smashed like insects.

  The next day we all hike back to Miches. I’m sent to sleep over at my friend Daisy’s house so Ed and Norma can have my bedroom in Casalata. Daisy lives in a small wooden house with a porch and outside kitchen. The wallboards are warped and let slivers of light in from the street. We share a bed under a drooping mosquito net. We giggle at her mother’s snores in the other room and stay up late looking at American fashion magazines. After she switches off the light, Daisy wraps her arm around me and we nestle together like two spoons in a kitchen drawer. I find tears spilling out of my eyes and wonder why, until I remember that the only people who hug me are Dominicans. Daddy used to, when I was really little and he liked to hold me in his lap. He still kisses me goodnight, but his lips are big and wet and smell like cigarettes or rum or both. It makes me sick. Mama gives me dry little kisses at bedtime—reminding me of bird pecks. I can’t remember her arms around me, ever, at all. I stare at the patterns of the streetlight coming through the cracks until I fall asleep.

  For my fifteenth birthday Mama lets me have a party, and Daddy says I’m old enough to have beer if I want to. My parents will go to the Candelarios’ house for dinner so we kids are alone. Daddy’s left one bottle of Bermudez rum on the kitchen counter for the older boys, but I hide it in a cupboard when he’s not looking. There’s a light shower just after dusk. The rain brings out the macos, black frogs that climb out of the laguna to feed on insects along the path. I pick them up, one at a time, and fling them out of the way. Daisy’s aunt Rebeca will come with the rest of the girls as chaperone, but she’s just nineteen and likes to dance, so we don’t mind.

  I hold the glass of beer carefully so I don’t ruin my new dress, which everyone says makes me look muy seňorita, very grown-up. The beer is cold and I drink it all down right away. It makes me dizzy; I fumble over to the edge of the laguna and throw up. Across the pond a frog croaks and a small silver fish jumps out of the water, making the surface flutter in the moonlight. I slink back inside to sponge off my soiled dress and brush my teeth. Stupid, I say to the mirror. Zuleica’s boyfriend Bienve pulls me aside after I join the group. He says he’d just gone to pee over in the bushes, and he heard a noise at the other side of the fence. There are men over there.

  “They’re watching the house. I think they’re cascas blancas—I could see the helmet on one of them.”

  “No!” He must be joking. The cascas blancas are some sort of special government forces who spy on people. I’ve read about them in the paper, but there can’t possibly be any of those in Miches.

  “Ven, ven,” he whispers. Come, come, I’ll show you. We peer through a hole in the shrubbery and see lumpy shapes, four or five men, all lined up in a row. Maybe it’s the lingering effect of the beer, but it occurs to me how little I know about this country. How many nights have we been spied upon? I don’t worry that anyone will think Daddy is a Yanqui imperialista or that our family is in any kind of danger. We’ve been here too long, and Daddy’s reputation—embarrassing as it is—stretches far beyond Miches. We learned once from a stranger in San Pedro, clear on the other side of the country, that yes, they knew about the Americano loco in Miches, with his little metal house and a farm he named Cocoloco.

  Someone must have sent spies to make sure my friends aren’t turning into hidden revolutionaries. That makes no sense, either. I’m lost in thought when Bienve tugs at my hand and we back out of the bushes quietly. Word gets around to all but the party proceeds as if everything is normal. Which I guess it is, really. Matilde switches off the lights and Bienve stops a record in mid-play as everyone sings “Feliz cumpleaños”—Happy birthday. I close my eyes and take a big breath and I wish the spies away; I wish Daddy will stop drinking; I wish Berta were alive and here; then I blow out the candles.

  I wait until breakfast to tell Mama and Daddy about the strangers in the bushes. Daddy puts down his coffee cup with a frown. “Well, I guess it isn’t that surprising,” he says. “It must be outsiders. But, Chrissakes, why now? Like we have state secrets? Oh, well, another reason to keep our lips zipped.” Mama nods her head and takes a long drag from her cigarette, her eyes gazing at some far off point on the horizon.

  THE BREEDEN’S PREDICTION that “something big” is going to happen finally comes true when His Excellency Generalísimo Rafael Molinas Trujillo, the Supreme Benefactor, El Líder, El Jefe, is assassinated. On his way to visit a favorite mistress outside of Ciudad Trujillo, his motorcade is ambushed by a group of men who have been planning his killing for a long time. We first hear the news when one of Daddy’s workers comes running to our back gate, ringing the bell over and over and shouting.

  “Goodness,” Mama says at the clamor, opening the front door. It is still early morning, much too soon for finca business or even the milk vendors. Daddy is in the bathroom shaving and I’m still in bed.

  When she comes back, her face is gray. “Trujillo’s dead.” Daddy whistles, low, and plugs in the portable radio. A solemn newsman on Radio Caribe is lamenting the inconceivable loss of the supreme leader, brought down by scum, by cowards. Then we hear “CIA,” and they’re saying it’s a plot from the Yanqui imperialistas. Another reporter says there are many rumors that it isn’t even true—there’s been no assassination at all. It might just be a plot to see who his traitors are. El Jefe is really still alive and he’s sailed to Puerto Rico on the presidential yacht, Angelina. It’s a cruel joke—it has to be—but finally the assassination is confirmed. No one says a word against El Jefe—not out
loud, anyway, and not for a long time. Daddy says we’ll ride this storm out just fine. He says things will actually improve in time. “We’ll just sit tight, although it’s going to be a bouncy ride.”

  What does he think we’re on, a roller coaster? I know all about their surviving the great hurricane of 1938 in New England. I know Daddy froze almost to death on an engineering assignment in Russia one winter before the war. So I guess I can understand why we’ll stay put—this is just another crisis that will go away. As we wait for news of who’s going to run the country, we hear the US is sending ships and troops to protect American interests in the republic. Daddy says President Kennedy is just trying to be sure no Commies try to take over, like Castro did in Cuba. We don’t need help anyway, he says; we just have to keep making copra. Joaquín Balaguer is installed as President, and he manages to withstand the Trujillo family’s attempts at taking over. Former Trujillo mourners topple monuments and statues of El Jefe throughout the country. The capital’s name is changed from Ciudad Trujillo to its former name, Santo Domingo. I stop trying to understand what’s happening; it’s all very confusing. Daddy is right. Life does continue much the same as always. I guess we’re too far from all the action here in our faraway village.

  We stay away from the capital because there it’s different. Anti-American sentiment is growing larger every day, like a thundercloud building off on the horizon. In Miches, people say bad things about the Yanquis, but since we’ve been part of this community for over a decade already we know they don’t mean us. Daddy isn’t drinking as much as he used to, although he still flares up every now and then. I tell myself it’s only one more year before I get to escape to Florida and a new life. But now I dread it as much as I long for it. Berta won’t be there waiting for me. No one will be.