In the Time of Butterflies (4 page)

“Yes, Sor Milagros,” we chorused.

She came up to me and took my face in her hands. “What’s your name?” she wanted to know.

I gave her my name, and she repeated it several times like she was tasting it. Then she smiled like it tasted just fine. She looked over at Sinita, whom they all seemed partial to, and said, “Take care of our dear Sinita.”

“I will,” I said, standing up straight like I’d been given a mission. And that’s what it turned out to be, all right.

A few days later, Sor Milagros gathered us all around for a little talk. Personal hygiene, she called it. I knew right away it would be about interesting things described in the most uninteresting way.

First, she said there had been some accidents. Anyone needing a canvas sheet should come see her. Of course, the best way to prevent a mishap was to be sure to visit our chamber pots every night before we got in bed. Any questions?

Not a one.

Then, a shy, embarrassed look came on her face. She explained that we might very well become young ladies while we were at school this year. She went through a most tangled-up explanation about the how and why, and finished by saying if we should start our complications, we should come see her. This time she didn’t ask if there were any questions.

I felt like setting her straight, explaining things simply the way Patria had explained them to me. But I guessed it wasn’t a good idea to try my luck twice in the first week.

When she left, Sinita asked me if I understood what on earth Sor Milagros had been talking about. I looked at her surprised. Here she’d been dressed in black like a grownup young lady, and she didn’t know the first thing. Right then, I told Sinita everything I knew about bleeding and having babies between your legs. She was pretty shocked, and beholden. She offered to trade me back the secret of Trujillo.

“What secret is that?” I asked her. I thought Patria had told me all the secrets.

“Not yet,” Sinita said looking over her shoulder.

It was a couple of weeks before Sinita got to her secret. I’d forgotten about it, or maybe I’d just put it out of my mind, a little scared what I might find out. We were busy with classes and making new friends. Almost every night someone or other came visiting under our mosquito nets or we visited them. We had two regulars, Lourdes and Elsa, and soon all four of us started doing everything together. It seemed like we were all just a little different—Sinita was charity and you could tell; Lourdes was fat, though as friends we called her pleasantly plump when she asked, and she asked a lot; Elsa was pretty in an I-told-you-so way, as if she hadn’t expected to turn out pretty and now she had to prove it. And me, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I had something to say.

The night Sinita told me the secret of Trujillo I couldn’t sleep. All day I hadn’t felt right, but I didn’t tell Sor Milagros. I was afraid she’d stick me in the sickroom and I’d have to lie in bed, listening to Sor Consuelo reading novenas for the sick and dying. Also, if Papa found out, he might change his mind and keep me home where I couldn’t have any adventures.

I was lying on my back, looking up into the white tent of the mosquito net, and wondering who else was awake. In her bed next to mine, Sinita began to cry very quietly as if she didn’t want anybody to know. I waited a little, but she didn’t stop. Finally, I stepped over to her bed and lifted the netting. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

She took a second to calm down before she answered. “It’s José Luis.”

“Your brother?” We all knew he had died just this last summer. That’s how come Sinita had been wearing black that first day.

Her body began to shake all over with sobs. I crawled in and stroked her hair like Mama did mine whenever I had a fever. “Tell me, Sinita, maybe it’ll help.”

“I can‘t,” she whispered. “We can all be killed. It’s the secret of Trujillo.”

Well, all I had to be told was I couldn’t know something for me to have to know it. So I reminded her, “Come on, Sinita. I told you about babies.”

It took some coaxing, but finally she began.

She told me stuff I didn’t even know about her. I thought she was always poor, but it turned out her family used to be rich and important. Three of her uncles were even friends of Trujillo. But they turned against him when they saw he was doing bad things.

“Bad things?” I interrupted. “Trujillo was doing bad things?” It was as if I had just heard Jesus had slapped a baby or Our Blessed Mother had not conceived Him the immaculate conception way. “That can’t be true,” I said, but in my heart, I felt a china-crack of doubt.

“Wait,” Sinita whispered, her thin fingers finding my mouth in the dark. “Let me finish.

“My uncles, they had a plan to do something to Trujillo, but somebody told on them, and all three were shot, right on the spot.” Sinita took a deep breath as if she were going to blow out all her grandmother’s birthday candles.

“But what bad things was Trujillo doing that they wanted to kill him?” I asked again. I couldn’t leave it alone. At home, Trujillo hung on the wall by the picture of Our Lord Jesus with a whole flock of the cutest lambs.

Sinita told me as much as she knew. I was shaking by the time she was through.

According to Sinita, Trujillo became president in a sneaky way. First, he was in the army, and all the people who were above him kept disappearing until he was the one right below the head of the whole armed forces.

This man who was the head general had fallen in love with another man’s wife. Trujillo was his friend and so he knew all about this secret. The woman’s husband was a very jealous man, and Trujillo made friends with him, too.

One day, the general told Trujillo he was going to be meeting this woman that very night under the bridge in Santiago where people meet to do bad things. So Trujillo went and told the husband, who waited under the bridge for his wife and this general and shot them both dead.

Very soon after that, Trujillo became head of the armed forces.

“Maybe Trujillo thought that general was doing a bad thing by fooling around with somebody else’s wife,” I defended him.

I heard Sinita sigh. “Just wait,” she said, “before you decide.”

After Trujillo became the head of the army, he got to talking to some people who didn’t like the old president. One night, these people surrounded the palace and told the old president that he had to leave. The old president just laughed and sent for his good friend, the head of the armed forces. But General Trujillo didn’t come and didn’t come. Soon, the old president was the ex-president on an airplane to Puerto Rico. Then, something that surprised even the people who had surrounded the palace, Trujillo announced he was the president.

“Didn’t anyone tell him that wasn’t right?” I asked, knowing I would have.

“People who opened their big mouths didn’t live very long,” Sinita said. “Like my uncles I told you about. Then, two more uncles, and then my father.” Sinita began crying again. “Then this summer, they killed my brother.”

My tummy ache had started up again. Or maybe it was always there, but I’d forgotten about it while trying to make Sinita feel better. “Stop, please,” I begged her. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“I can‘t,” she said.

Sinita’s story spilled out like blood from a cut.

One Sunday this last summer, her whole family was walking home from church. Her whole family meant all Sinita’s widowed aunts and her mother and tons of girl cousins, with her brother José Luis being the only boy left in the entire family. Everywhere they went, the girls were assigned places around him. Her brother had been saying that he was going to revenge his father and uncles, and the rumor all over town was that Trujillo was after him.

As they were rounding the square, a vendor came up to sell them a lottery ticket. It was the dwarf they always bought from, so they trusted him.

“Oh I’ve seen him!” I said. Sometimes when we would go to San Francisco in the carriage, and pass by the square, there he was, a grown man no taller than me at twelve. Mama never bought from him. She claimed Jesus told us not to gamble, and playing the lottery was gambling. But every time I was alone with Papá, he bought a whole bunch of tickets and called it a good investment.

José Luis asked for a lucky number. When the dwarf went to hand him the ticket, something silver flashed in his hand. That’s all Sinita saw. Then José Luis was screaming horribly and her mother and all the aunts were shouting for a doctor. Sinita looked over at her brother, and the front of his white shirt was covered with blood.

I started crying, but I pinched my arms to stop. I had to be brave for Sinita.

“We buried him next to my father. My mother hasn’t been the same since. Sor Asunción, who knows my family, offered to let me come to
el colegio
for free.”

The aching in my belly was like wash being wrung so tightly, there wasn’t a drop of water left in the clothes. “I’ll pray for your brother,” I promised her. “But Sinita, one thing. How is this Trujillo’s secret?”

“You still don’t get it? Minerva, don’t you see? Trujillo is having everyone killed!”

I lay awake most of that night, thinking about Sinita’s brother and her uncles and her father and this secret of Trujillo that nobody but Sinita seemed to know about. I heard the clock, down in the parlor, striking every hour. It was already getting light in the room by the time I fell asleep.

In the morning, I was shaken awake by Sinita. “Hurry,” she was saying. “You’re going to be late for Matins.” All around the room, sleepy girls were clapping away in their slippers towards the crowded basins in the washroom. Sinita grabbed her towel and soap dish from her night table and joined the exodus.

As I came fully awake, I felt the damp sheet under me. Oh no, I thought, I’ve wet my bed! After I’d told Sor Milagros that I wouldn’t need an extra canvas sheet on my mattress.

I lifted the covers, and for a moment, I couldn’t make sense of the dark stains on the bottom sheet. Then I brought up my hand from checking myself. Sure enough, my complications had started.