In the Time of Butterflies (37 page)

Dedé convinced her. She used the same argument about the manicure set, the case with lipstick and face powder, the little bottle of Matador’s Delight. These little touches of luxury would raise the the girls’ spirits. How could Mama argue with that!

Tucked inside Mate’s prayerbook, I put some money and our note.

Dearest Minerva and Mate, we are petitioning at headquarters, and God willing, some door will open soon. The children are all well, but missing you terribly. Please advise us of your health and any other needs. Also, what of the men, and dear Nelson? Send any news, and remember you are in the hearts and prayers of Patria and Dedé, and your loving mother.

Mama wrote her own name. I couldn’t keep back my tears when I saw her struggling with the pen and then ruining her signature by running the ink with her tears.

After Mamá went to bed, I explained to Dedé who had brought the note over. I had been vague with Mama, so as not to open old wounds. “She looks like Mate,” I reported. “She’s quite pretty.”

“I know,” Dedé admitted. It turned out she knew a lot more.

“Back when Papa died, Minerva asked me to take out of her inheritance for those girls’ education.” Dedé shook her head, remembering. “I got to thinking about it, and I decided to put in half. It wasn’t all that much,” she added when she saw my face. I was a little hurt not to be included in this charitable act. “Now the oldest has her pharmacy degree and is helping out the others.”

“A fine girl,” I agreed.

“There isn’t any other kind of Mirabal girl,” Dedé said, smiling. It was a remark Papá used to make about his girls. Back then, we had assumed he was talking just about us.

Something wistful and sisterly hung in the air. Maybe that’s why I went ahead and asked her. “And you, Dedé, how are you doing?”

She knew what I meant. I could read a sister’s heart even if it was hidden behind a practiced smile. Padre de Jesus had told me about an aborted visit Dedé had made to his rectory. But since the girls’ arrest, we were all too numb to feel or talk of any other grief.

“Jaimito is behaving himself very well. I can’t complain,” she said. Behave? What a curious word for a wife to use about her husband. Often now, Dedé slept over at Mamá’s with the two younger boys. To keep an eye on us, so she said.

“Things are all right then?”

“Jaimito’s been great,” Dedé went on, ignoring my question. “I’m very grateful, since I know he didn’t want any part of this mess.”

“None of us did,” I observed. And then, because I could see her drawing in, I turned away from any implied criticism of Jaimito. Actually— unlike Minerva—I liked our blustery cousin. Under all his swagger, that man had a good heart.

I took her hand. “When all this is over, please get some counsel from Padre de Jesús. Faith can strengthen a marriage. And I want you both to be happy together.”

Suddenly she was in tears. But then, she always got weepy when I spoke to her that way. I touched her face, and motioned for us to go outside. “What’s wrong, you can tell me,” I asked as we walked up the moon-lit drive.

She was looking up at the sky. The big old moon of a few days back had shrunk to something with a big slice of itself gone. “Jaimito’s a good man, whatever anyone thinks. But he would have been happier with someone else, that’s all.” There was a pause.

“And you?” I prodded.

“I suppose,” she admitted. But if she had a ghost in her heart, she didn’t give out his name. Instead, she reached up as if that moon were a ball falling into her empty hands. “It’s late,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”

As we made our way back down the drive, I heard a distinct cough.

“We’ve got visitors again,” I whispered.

“I know,” she said, “ghosts all over the place.”

The minute Jaimito’s pickup turned onto the road in the mornings for daily mass, the little toy-engine sound of a VW would start up. All night, we smelled their cigarettes in the yard and heard muffled coughs and sneezes. Sometimes, we would call out, “God bless you!” As the days wore on, we began taking our little revenges on them.

There was a nook where one side of the house met another, and that was their favorite after-dark hiding place. Mama put some cane chairs out there along with a crate with an ashtray so they’d stop littering her yard. One night, she set out a thermos full of ice water and a snack, as if the three Kings were coming. They stole that thermos and glasses and the ashtray, and instead of using the path Mamá had cleared for them, they trampled through her flowers. The next day, Mama moved her thorn bushes to that side of the yard. That night when she heard them out there, she opened up the bathroom window and dumped Jacqueline‘s dirty bathwater out into the yard. There was a surprised cry, but they didn’t dare come after us. After all, they were top secret spies, and we weren’t supposed to know they were out there.

Inside, Dedé and I could barely contain our hilarity. Minou and Jacqueline laughed in that forced way of children imitating adult laughter they don’t really understand. Next morning, we found bits of fabric and threads and even a handkerchief caught on the thorns. From then on when they spied on us, they kept a respectful distance from the house.

Getting our packet to Margarita took some plotting.

The morning after her visit, we stopped at the pharmacy on the way back from daily mass. While the others waited in the pickup, I went in. I was holding Raulito in such a way that his blanket covered up the package. For once, that little boy was quiet, as if he could tell I needed his good behavior.

It was strange going into that pharmacy now that I knew she worked there. How many times in the past hadn’t I dropped in to buy aspirin or formula for the baby. How many times hadn’t the sweet, shy girl in the white jacket taken care of my prescriptions. I wondered if she’d known all along who I was.

“If it’s any problem—” I began, handing her the package. Quickly, she slipped it under the counter. She looked at me pointedly. I should not elaborate in this public place.

Margarita scowled at the large bill I pressed into her hand. In a whisper, I explained it was for the Lomotil and Trinalin and vitamins I wanted her to include in the package. She nodded. The owner of the pharmacy was approaching.

“I hope this helps,” Margarita said, handing me a bottle of aspirin to disguise our transaction. It was the brand I always bought.

That week, Mamá and Dedé came back elated from their weekly trip. They had seen a black towel hanging out of a window of La Victoria! Dedé couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a zigzag of something in the front, probably the monogram. And who else would have a black towel in prison?

“I know, I know,” Mama said. “I already heard it several times coming home.” She mimicked Dedé:
“See, Mamá, what a good idea it was to send that towel. ”

“The truth is,” Mamá continued—it was her favorite phrase these days—“I didn’t think it’d get to her. I’ve gotten so I suspect everyone.”

“Look at this!” Jaimito called us over to where he was sitting at the dining room table, reading the papers he’d bought in the capital. He pointed to a photograph of a ghostly bunch of young prisoners, heads bowed, as El Jefe wagged his finger at them. “Eight prisoners pardoned yesterday at the National Palace.” He read off the names. Among them, Dulce Tejeda and Miriam Morales, who, according to Mate’s note, shared a cell with her and Minerva.

I felt my heart lifting, my cross light as a feather. All eight pardoned prisoners were either women or
minors!
My Nelson had only turned eighteen a few weeks ago in prison. Surely, he still counted as a boy?

“My God, here’s something else,” Jaimito went on. Capitan Victor Alicinio Peña was listed in the real estate transactions as having bought the old González farm from the government for a pittance. “He stole it is what he did,” I blurted out.

“Yes, the boy stole the mangoes,” Dedé said in a loud voice to conceal my indiscretion. Last week, Tono had found a little rod behind Mama’s wedding picture—a telltale sign of bugging. Only in the garden or riding around in a car could we speak freely with each other.

“The truth is ...” Mamá began, but stopped herself. Why give out the valuable truth to a hidden microphone?

Peña owed me was the way I saw it. The next day, I put on the yellow dress I’d just finished and the black heels Dedé had passed on to me. I talcumed myself into a cloudy fragrance and crossed the hedge to Don Bernardo’s house.

“Where are you going, Mamá?” Noris called after me. I’d left her tending the children. “Out,” I said, waving my hand over my shoulder, “to see Don Bernardo.” I didn’t want Mamá or Dedé to know about my outing.

Don Bernardo really was our next door angel disguised as an old Spaniard with an ailing wife. He had come to the island under a refugee program Trujillo had instituted in the forties “to whiten the race.” He had not been much help to the dictator in that regard, since he and Dona Belén had never had any children. Now he spent most of his days reminiscing on his porch and tending to an absence belted into a wheelchair. From some need of his own, Don Bernardo pretended his wife was just under the weather rather than suffering from dementia. He conveyed made-up greetings and apologies from Dona Belén. Once a week, the old man struggled to get behind the wheel of his old Plymouth to drive Dona Belén over to Salcedo for a little checkup.

He was a true angel all right. He had come through for us as a god-father for all the little ones—Raulito, Minou, and Manolito—at a time when most people were avoiding the Mirabals.

Then, after the girls were taken, I realized that Jacqueline hadn’t been christened. All my children had been baptized the country way, within the first cycle of the moon after their birth. But Maria Teresa, who always loved drama and ceremony, had kept postponing the christening until it could be done “properly” in the cathedral in San Francisco with the bishop officiating and the girls’ choir from Inmaculada singing “Regina Coeli.” Maybe pride ran in more than one set of veins in the family.