Before We Were Free (10 page)

Anita’s Diary

June
3,
1961,
Saturday, time of day, hard to say

We are finally settled in and Mami has said, go ahead, write in your
diary as much as you want, we’re in trouble already, maybe you can
leave a record that will help others who are in hiding, too.

Mami now speaks in spurts of panic instead of sentences. I tell her
that all I want to do is keep a diary, not save the world.

I don’t want any freshness here, Anita, I’ve just about had it, I’m
up to four Equanil a day, that’s sixteen hundred milligrams, I can’t take
it.

You see why I need this diary.

June
5,
1961,
Monday morning—Mami’s showering in the bathroom
next door

I can only write a little bit at a time, as I don’t get much privacy
around here, even though it’s just me and Mami in the walk-in closet in
the Mancinis’ bedroom. When the Mancinis lock their bedroom door,
we can visit with them in their room and do things like take a shower.
Otherwise, we have to stay in the closet.

Last night in the middle of the night, Mrs. Mancini shook us awake
and whispered, I don’t know which one of you is doing it, but I’m afraid
you don’t have the luxury of snoring in this house.

Our sounds have to sound like their sounds.

June
6,
1961,
Tuesday, early—or so it seems from the light streaming
in the bathroom window

Mrs. Mancini says it’s a good thing she has always been in the habit
of locking their bedroom door in order to get some privacy. Also, she has
always cleaned the master bedroom herself, as the help have enough to
do what with five kids. Besides, she doesn’t trust anyone since she
learned of the undercover training at the Domestic Academy. So the
Mancinis’ habits make their bedroom as safe a hiding place as any private residence can be right now.

The Mancinis have this kind of strange house like an apartment.
The first floor is basically a large garage and laundry room and kitchen.
They live on the second floor, since it’s cooler up here with a gallery running all along the back and stairs going down to the garden.

From their bathroom window, I have a bird’s-eye view of the
grounds of the embassy. But unlike a bird, I can’t fly free . . . except in
my imagination.

Later, evening

According to Mr. Mancini, loads of people are being arrested. The
whole town of Moca was imprisoned because one of the conspirators
comes from there! El Jefe’s son, Trujillo Junior, says he will not rest
until he has punished every man, woman, and child associated with the
assassination of his father. Actually, Mr. Mancini says that people are
secretly calling it an
ajusticiámiento,
which means
bringing to justice,
the way criminals have to face the consequences of their evil deeds.

I feel so much better thinking that Papi and Tío Toni were doing justice, not really murdering killing hurting someone. But still . . . just the
thought of my own father—

Have to go. One of the little Marías is calling at the bedroom door.

June
7,
1961,
Wednesday afternoon, a cloudy day, I can tell rain is
coming

Once the Mancinis go out, we have to stay quietly in the closet and
can’t move around or use the bathroom. (We have a chamber pot, but
you’d be surprised how noisy peeing is, and how messy in the dark.)

Only two human beings in the house know we are here, Tío Pepe
and Tía Mari (they insist I call them that now), and their two teensy
Yorkshire terriers. Thank goodness Mojo and Maja remember me from
school and Mami from the times the canasta group met here, so they
don’t bark at us. No one else knows. Tía Mari says it’s going to be a job
keeping a secret in this curious family. But it’s just too dangerous right
now to tell anyone where we are.

It is so strange to be in the very same house as Oscar, and he doesn’t
even know! Every time Tía Mari or Tío Pepe mentions his name, I can
feel my face burn. I wonder if they notice my special interest?

The emergency procedure is, if the SIM start a search or anyone
comes into the bedroom (besides the Mancinis), we slip into the bathroom, where there are two narrow closets; Mami goes in one and I go in
the other, all the way to a crawl space in back, and we stay there and
pray we are not discovered.

June
8,
1961,
Thursday, right after supper, in bathroom

During supper tonight, Tía Mari turned on Radio Caribe kind of
loud. Meanwhile, Tío Pepe tuned his shortwave radio to Radio Swan
real low since that station is still illegal, and he and Mami and Tía Mari
leaned forward listening closely to the “real” news. It was like night and
day, what each station was reporting.

CARIBE: The OAS is here to help the SIM maintain stability.

SWAN: The OAS is here investigating human rights abuses.

CARIBE: Prisoners praise treatment to OAS investigation committee.

SWAN: Prisoners complain of atrocities to OAS investigation
committee.

CARIBE: Consul Washburn has been recalled.

SWAN: Consul Washburn has been airlifted by helicopter to protect his life.

Both stations agreed on one thing: The plot did not work. Pupo, the
head of the army, just wasn’t there to announce the liberation over the
radio, and instead, Trujillo Junior has taken over, and it’s a bloodbath out
there. The SIM are doing house-to-house searches. Over 5,000 people
have been arrested, including family members of the conspirators.

I wanted to block my ears and not listen to this stuff!

Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s
another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.

So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough,
Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me
be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.

It took her saying so for me to realize it’s true.

The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing
them out of forgetfulness, one by one.

June
9,
1961,
Friday—evening

Mami has heard from Tío Pepe that Mr. Washburn is back in Washington and pushing to get Papi and Tío Toni on the OAS list of prisoners
interviewed, as their lives are then much safer. Once the OAS has a
name on record, it’s harder for the SIM to get rid of that individual.

Mami and Tía Mari have begun praying a rosary to the Virgin Mary
every night to take care of all the prisoners, but most especially to take
care of Papi and Tío Toni.

I always kneel with them. But even though I’m talking again, I can’t
seem to fish the words for an Our Father or Hail Mary out of my brain.

June
10,
1961,
Saturday, late night

The electricity goes on and off all the time. Tía Mari bought Mami
and me little flashlights. Tonight, a total blackout again. So I’m writing
by the light of this tiny beam.

I never know exactly what time it is anymore—except when the
siren sounds at noon and then again at 6 for curfew. The Mancinis don’t
have an electric clock in their bedroom because it would never tell the
right time anyhow. The kind you wind drives Tía Mari crazy because it
tick-tocks too loud. She says she feels like someone is timing her life.

The truth is, when you live in such close quarters, you find out the
most private things about people—like Tío Pepe always having to wear
white socks to bed or Tía Mari tweezing little hairs from her upper lip.

I wonder what they’ve noticed about me? How I stroke a spot on my
left cheek whenever I’m feeling scared or lonely?

June
11,
1961,
after supper, second Sunday in hiding

Sundays are especially hard, as that was always the day of our big
family gathering. But we were reduced to just the Garcías and us, then
just us, then just us minus Lucinda, and now it’s even less than a
nuclear family, just Mami and me, like survivors after a bomb drops, a
fallout family.

Every day, I ask Mami about Papi and Tío Toni. But on Sundays, I
probably ask her more than once. (No, not “countless times,” like she
accuses me of!)

Today, I promised myself I wouldn’t ask her even once. But by evening, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Mami, I said, just tell me if they’re okay.

She hesitated. They’re alive, she said, and started crying.

Tía Mari pulled her into the bathroom, and meanwhile I was left
alone in the bedroom with Tío Pepe. We were quiet for a while and then
he said, Anita, one must think positively. That is how the greatest minds
in history have survived tragedy.

I felt like reminding him I’m not one of the greatest minds, but Tío
Pepe is so smart, maybe his advice is worth a try?

I close my eyes and think positively. . . . After a while, a picture
pops into my head of Papi and Tío Toni and me walking on the beach.
I’m real little, and they’re holding me between them and swinging me
out over the waves like they’re going to throw me into the sea, and I’m
giggling and they’re laughing, and Papi is saying, fly,
mi hijita,
fly, like
I am a little kite that is catching the wind!

Then, like on a birthday, I make a wish: that Papi and Tío Toni will
soon be free and that we will all be together again as a family.

June
12,
1961,
Monday night, bathroom, about ten o’clock

Sometimes, I try to think of my life in hiding as a movie that will
be over in three hours. It makes it a lot easier to put up with Mami’s
nerves!

So here’s the scene every night when I want to write after lights-out:

SETTING: Dark inside of closet. Mother on her mat, not the most
comfortable of beds, but a lot better than sleeping in prison or in a coffin!

ACTION: Girl feels for diary and flashlight under her pillow.
Absolutely silently,
she begins to slip out of the closet.

MOTHER: (whispering, loud enough to wake up sleeping couple in
bedroom beyond closet) Remember, the Mancinis are asleep!

GIRL: I know. (Rolls her eyes in the dark, makes disgusted face,
which, of course, mother can’t see. Girl goes into bathroom, props flashlight on back of the toilet, and begins writing. Screen goes blurry and
scene of what she’s writing unfolds before our very eyes!)

Back to my diary—

I want to write down everything that happened the night that Tío
Pepe rescued us from the compound—not that I’m likely to forget. I
don’t think I’ve ever been so scared!

Mami and I crouched down in the back of Tío Pepe’s Pontiac with
some sacks over us. Good thing, too, since the streets were crawling
with tanks. When we got to the Italian embassy, Mundín was already
there, and though Mami had sworn that she was going to kill him, she
was so pleased to see him alive and well and biting his nails that she just
hugged him and kept touching his face and hair. Poor Mundín looked
like he had suddenly turned from fifteen to fifty, his eyes glazed over with
the horrible news of Papi and Tío Toni being taken away.

Meanwhile, Tío Pepe and the Italian ambassador came up with
a plan.

Since Mundín was most at risk, being a guy, he’d stay at the
embassy, as it’s off-limits to the SIM if they’re obeying rules anymore. But the place was so packed with refugees seeking protection, we
couldn’t all stay there. So Mami and I were moved next door to the
Mancinis’, which is not as safe. (Private residences do not have immunity privileges.) The plan is to get us all out of the country as soon as a
way can be found. Meanwhile, we have to lay low, not a peep from us,
as the SIM close in with their house-to-house searches.

When we got to the Mancinis’ bedroom that first night, Tía Mari
showed us “the accommodations.” Here is the dining room, she said,
pointing to her bedside table with magazines, and here is your bedroom,
she added, showing us the walk-in closet, then crossing the narrow hallway, here is your bathroom–living room–patio. She was trying to make
us smile.

I started unpacking, and what a surprise to find my diary among my
things! Then I remembered Chucha scooping it up and stuffing it in my
laundry bag.

Ay, how I miss Chucha!

June
13,
1961,
Tuesday evening