In the Time of Butterflies (27 page)

I was the one who was going to be on the road. Mamá couldn’t believe it when I asked if she’d keep Manolito those four days. Why I was five months gone, Mamá exclaimed. I shouldn’t be traveling!

I explained that I’d be traveling with Padre de Jesús and the Salcedo group, and this retreat was important for renewing my faith. We were going up to Constanza. That mountain air would be good for my baby. And I’d heard the road was fairly good. I didn’t add from whom (Minerva) or why. Troops were patrolling up and down the cordillera just in case any would-be guerrillas inspired by the Cubans were thinking of hiding there.

“Ay,
Virgencita, you know what you do with my girls,” was all Mama said. She had become resigned to her daughters’ odd and willful ways. And yes, she would keep Manolito. Noris, too.

I had wanted my girl to go along on the retreat, but it was no use. Marcelino’s sister had invited Noris to her
quinceañera
party and there was too much to do between now and then.

“But it’s two weeks away, mi amor.” I didn’t add that we had already designed and cut her dress, bought her little satin pumps, and tried out how she would wear her hair.

“¡Ay, Mami!”
she wailed.
“Por favor.”
Why couldn’t I understand that getting ready for them was what made parties fun?

How different she was from me at that age! For one thing, Mamá raised us the old-fashioned way where we couldn’t go to dances until after our
quinceañeras.
But I was raising my girl modem where she wasn’t kept cooped up, learning blind obedience. Still, I wished she’d use her wings to soar up closer to the divine hem of our Blessed Virgin instead of to flutter towards things not worthy of her attention.

I kept praying for her, but it was like Pedrito having to let go of his son. If the Virgencita didn’t think it was time for my girl to magnify the Lord, I certainly couldn’t talk her into a retreat with “old ladies” and a bunch of bad-breath priests. (Lord forgive her!)

We were a group of about thirty “mature” women—that’s how Padre de Jesus described us, bless his heart. We had started meeting a few months back to discuss issues that came up in the gospel and to do Christ’s work in the
bohios
and
barrios.
Now we even had a name, Christian Cultural Group, and we had spread all over the Cibao area. Four priests provided spiritual guidance, Padre de ]esús among them. This retreat was our first, and Brother Daniel had managed to get the Maryknolls to let us use their motherhouse up in the mountains. The theme was the exploration of the meaning of Mary in our lives. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe Padre de Jesús or Brother Daniel or one of the others would have an answer for me now about what was required during these troubled times.

“Ha! Your church will keep mum till kingdom come,” Minerva was always challenging me. Religion was now my belonging she didn’t want any part of. “Not a peep to help the downtrodden.”

What could I say when I, too, was intent on keeping my own flesh safe. I’d written a letter to Padre Fabré down at Santo Tomás.

But Nelson found out about the letter from his little blabbermouth aunt in the capital. It was unfair, I wasn’t letting him become a man. But I stood firm. I’d rather have him stay alive, a boy forever, than be a man dead in the ground.

Maria Teresa was also hurt. One Saturday morning, she had come to take Nelson out for the weekend, and the director hadn’t allowed her. “Don’t you trust me?” she confronted me. Now I had two angry souls to appease with half-truths.

“It isn’t you, Mate,” I began. I didn’t add that I knew from Nelson’s remarks that Leandro and Manolo and Minerva were involved in a serious plot.

“Don’t worry, I can take care of your baby. I’ve got lots of experience now” Mate was holding pretty Jacqueline, nuzzling her baby’s head with little kisses. “Besides, there’s nothing happening in the capital Nelson could get into, believe me. The Jaragua’s empty. The Olympia has been showing the same movie for a month. No one goes out anymore.” And then I heard her say it: “Nothing to celebrate yet.” I looked her in the eye and said, “You too, Mate?”

She hugged her baby girl close and looked so brave. I could hardly believe this was our tenderhearted little Mate whom Noris resembled so much. “Yes, I’m with them.” But then, the hard look faded and she was my baby sister again, afraid of
el cuco
and noodles in her soup. “If anything should happen, promise me you’ll take care of Jacqueline.”

It seemed I was going to raise all my sisters’ babies! “You know I would. She’s one of mine, aren’t you,
amorcito?”
I took that baby in my arms and hugged her close. Jacqueline looked at me with that wonder the little ones have who still think of the world as a big, safe playroom inside their mother’s womb.

Our retreat had been planned for May, the month of Mary. But with the increased rumors of an invasion, El Jefe declared a state of emergency. All through May no one went anywhere without special permission from the SIM. Even Minerva stayed put in Monte Cristi. One day when we hadn’t seen his mother for almost a month, Manolito reached up to me from his crib and said, “Mamá, Mamá.” It was going to be hard to give him up once this hell on earth was over.

By mid-June, things had quieted down. It looked as if the invasion was not going to come after all. The state of emergency was called off, and so we went ahead with plans for our retreat.

When we got to Constanza, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had grown up in the greenest, most beautiful valley on the island. But you get used to close-by beauty, and Constanza was different, like the picture of a faraway place on a puzzle you hurry to put together. I kept trying to fit it inside me and I couldn’t. Purple mountains reaching towards angelfeather clouds; a falcon soaring in a calm blue sky; God combing His sunshine fingers through green pastures straight out of the Psalms.

The retreat house was a little ways out of the village down a path through flower-dotted hillsides.
Campesinos
came out of their huts to watch us pass. A pretty people, golden-skinned, light-eyed, they seemed wary, as if somebody not so kind had come down the road ahead of us. We greeted them and Padre de Jesus explained that we were on a retreat, so if they had any special requests they wanted us to remember in our prayers, please let us know. They stared at us silently and shook their heads, no.

We were each assigned a narrow cell with a cot, a crucifix on the wall, and a fount of holy water at the door. It could have been a palace, I rejoiced so in it all. Our meetings and meals were held in a big airy room with a large picture window. I sat with my back to the dazzling view so as not to be distracted from His Word by His Creation. Dawn and dusk, noon and night we gathered in the chapel and said a rosary along with the little nuns.

My old yearning to be in the religious life stirred. I felt myself rising, light-headed with transcendence, an overflowing fountain. Thank the Lord I had that child in my womb to remind me of the life I had already chosen.

It happened on the last day of our retreat.

The fourteenth of June: how can I ever forget that day!

We were all in that big room having our midafternoon cursillo. Brother Daniel was talking of the last moment we knew of in Mary’s human life, her Assumption. Our Blessed Mother had been taken up into heaven, body and soul. What did we think of that? We went around the room, everyone declaring it was an honor for a mere mortal. When it came my turn, I said it was only fair. If our souls could go to eternal glory, our hardworking motherbodies surely deserved more. I patted my belly and thought of the little ghost of a being folded in the soft tissues of my womb. My son, my Raulito. I ached for him even more without Manolito in my arms to stanch the yearning.

Next thing I knew, His Kingdom was coming down upon the very roof of that retreat house. Explosion after explosion ripped the air. The house shook to its very foundation. Windows shattered, smoke poured in with a horrible smell. Brother Daniel was shouting, “Fall to the ground, ladies, cover your heads with your folding chairs!” Of course, all I was thinking of was protecting my unborn child. I scrambled to a little niche where a statue of the Virgencita was standing, and begging her pardon, I knocked her and her pedestal over. The crash was drowned out by the thunderous blast outside. Then I crawled in and held my folding chair in front of me, closing the opening, and praying all the while that the Lord not test me with the loss of my child.

The shelling happened in a flash, but it seemed the chaos went on for hours. I heard moans, but when I lowered my chair, I could make out nothing in the smoke-filled room. My eyes stung, and I realized that in my fear I had wet my pants. Lord, I prayed, Lord God, let this cup pass. When the air finally cleared, I saw a mess of glass and rubble on the floor, bodies huddled everywhere. A wall had tumbled down and the tile floor was all torn up. Beyond, through the jagged hole where the window had been, the closest mountainside was a raging inferno.

Finally, there was an eerie silence, interrupted only by the sound of far-off gunfire and the nearby trickle of plaster from the ceiling. Padre de Jesus gathered us in the most sheltered comer, where we assessed our damages. The injuries turned out to look worse than they were, just minor cuts from flying glass, thank the Lord. We ripped up our slips and bandaged the worst. Then for spiritual comfort, Brother Daniel led us through a rosary. When we heard gunfire coming close again, we kept right on praying.

There were shouts, and four, then five, men in camouflage were running across the grounds towards us. Behind them, the same campesinos we’d seen on our walk and a dozen or more
guardias
were advancing, armed with machetes and machine guns. The hunted men crouched and careened this way and that as they headed towards the cover of the motherhouse.

They made it to the outdoor deck. I could see them clearly, their faces bloodied and frantic. One of them was badly wounded and hobbling, another had a kerchief tied around his forehead. A third was shouting to two others to stay down, and one of them obeyed and threw himself on the deck.

But the other must not have heard him for he kept on running towards us. I looked in his face. He was a boy no older than Noris. Maybe that’s why I cried out, “Get down, son! Get down!” His eyes found mine just as the shot hit him square in the back. I saw the wonder on his young face as the life drained out of him, and I thought, Oh my God, he’s one of mine!