Patria
January to March 1960
I don’t know how it happened that my cross became bearable. We have a saying around here, the humpback never gets tired carrying his burden on his back. All at once, I lost my home, my husband, my son, my peace of mind. But after a couple of weeks living at Mama‘s, I got used to the sorrows heaped upon my heart.
That first day was the hardest. I was crazy with grief, all right. When Dedé and Tono walked me into the house, all I wanted to do was lie down and die. I could hear the babies crying far off and voices calming them and Noris sobbing along with her aunt Mate, and all their grief pulled me back from mine. But first, I slept for a long time, days it seemed. When I woke up, Dedé’s voice was in my ear, invoking the Lord’s name.
And on the third day He rose again…
I got up from bed ready to set up housekeeping at Mamá’s. I asked for a basin for the baby’s bath, and told Noris she had to do something about that hair in her eyes.
Mate and I moved into a front room with the crib for both our babies. I put Noris with Minou and Manolito in the spare room Minerva always used. Mamá, I thought, would do better by herself in her own room.
But past midnight, the sleepers began to shift beds, everyone seeking the comfort of another body. Manolito invariably crawled in with me, and soon after, Raulito would start bawling. That boy was jealous even in his sleep!
I’d bring him to my bed, leaving the crib empty for Jacqueline was already cuddled at her mother’s side. In the mornings, I’d find Noris and Minou in Mamá’s bed, their arms around each other, fast asleep.
And on the third day He rose again…
On my third day at Mamá‘s, instead of a resurrection, I got another crucifixion. The SIM came for Mate.
It was three months before I laid eyes on her or Minerva or our husbands.
Three months before I got to hold my Nelson.
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As I said, I recovered. But every now and then, I couldn’t get the pictures out of my head.
Over and over again, I saw the SIM approaching, I saw Nelson and Pedrito hurrying out the back way, Noris’s stricken face. I saw the throng of men at the door, I heard the stomping, the running, the yelling. I saw the house burning.
I saw tiny cells with very little air and no light. I heard doors open, I saw hands intrusive and ugly in their threats. I heard the crack of bones breaking, the thud of a body collapsing. I heard moans, screams, desperate cries.
Oh my sisters, my Pedrito, oh my little lamb!
My crown of thorns was woven of thoughts of my boy. His body I had talcumed, fed, bathed. His body now broken as if it were no more than a bag of bones.
“I’ve been good,” I’d start screaming at the sky, undoing the “recovery.”
And then, Mama would have to send for Dedé. Together Dedé and I would pray a rosary. Afterwards we played our old childhood game, opening the Bible and teasing a fortune out of whatever verse our hands landed on.
And on the third day He rose again…
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It was odd living in Mamá’s new house. Everything from the old house was here, but all rearranged. Sometimes I’d find myself reaching for a door that wasn’t there. In the middle of the night, however fearful I was about waking the children, I had to turn on a light to go to the sanitary. Otherwise, I’d end up crashing into the cabinet that never used to be in the hallway in the old house.
In the entryway hung the required portrait of El Jefe, except it wasn’t our old one of Trujillo as a young captain that used to hang next to the Good Shepherd. Mama had acquired this latest portrait and hung it all by itself, out as far as she could get it from the rest of the house. He was older now— heavier, his jowls thicker, the whole face tired out, someone who had had too much of all the bad things in life.
Maybe because I was used to the Good Shepherd and Trujillo side by side in the old house, I caught myself praying a little greeting as I walked by.
Then another time, I came in from outside with my hands full of anthuriums. I looked up at him, and I thought why not. I set up a vase on the table right under his picture.
It seemed natural to add a nice little lace cloth for the table.
I don’t know if that’s how it started, but pretty soon, I was praying to him, not because he was worthy or anything like that. I wanted something from him, and prayer was the only way I knew to ask.
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It was from raising children I learned that trick. You dress them in their best clothes and they behave their best to match them.
Nelson, my devil! When he was little, he was always tormenting Noris, always getting into things. I’d call him in, give him a bath. But instead of putting him in his pajamas and sending him to bed in the middle of the day
where he’d get bored and mean, I’d dress him up in his gabardine trousers and little linen guayabera I’d made him just like his father’s. And then I’d take him with me to Salcedo for an afternoon novena and a coconut ice afterwards. That dressed-up boy acted like an angel!
So, I thought, why not? Treat him like a spirit worthy of my attention, and maybe he would start behaving himself.
Every day I changed the flowers and said a few words. Mama thought I was just putting on a show for Peña and his SIM who came by often to check on the family. But Fela understood, except she thought I was trying to strike a deal with the evil one. I wasn’t at all. I wanted to turn him towards his better nature. If I could do that, the rest would follow.
Jefe, I would say, remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.
(That one never worked with him.)
Hear my cry, Jefe. Release my sisters and their husbands and mine. But most especially, I beg you, oh Jefe, give me back my son.
Take me instead, I’ll be your sacrificial lamb.
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I hung my Sacred Heart, a recent gift from Don Bernardo, in the bedroom. There I offered, not my trick prayers, but my honest-to-God ones.
I wasn’t crazy, after all. I knew who was really in charge.
I had let go of my hard feelings, for the most part, but there was some lingering bitterness. For instance, I had offered myself to El Jefe to do with as he wanted, but I hadn’t extended the same courtesy to God.
I guess I saw it as a clear-cut proposition I was making El Jefe. He would ask for what he always asked for from women. I could give that. But there would be no limit to what our Lord would want of Patria Mercedes, body and soul and all the etceteras besides.
With a baby still tugging at my breast, a girl just filling out, and my young-man son behind bars, I wasn’t ready to enter His Kingdom.
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In the midst of my trials, there were moments. I can’t say they were moments of Grace. But they were moments of knowing I was on the right track.
One day soon after Mate was taken, Peña showed up. That man gave me a creepy feeling, exactly the same as the one I’d felt in the presence of the devil in the old days, fooling with my hands at night. The children were out on the patio with me. They kept their distance from Pena, refusing the candies he offered them unless I took them from him, in my hands, first. When he reached for Minou to ride on his knee, all of them ran away.
“Lovely children,” he said, to mask the obvious rejection. Are they all yours?“
“No, the boy and the little girl are Minerva‘s, and the baby girl is María Teresa’s.” I said the names very clearly. I wanted it to sink in that he was making these children orphans. “The baby boy and the young girl are mine.”
“Don Pedrito must love those children of his.”
My blood went cold. “What makes you say so, Captain?” I tried to keep my voice even.
“The SIM made your husband an offer, but he wouldn’t take it.”
So, he was still alive! Three times, Dedé and Mama and Jaimito had been down to headquarters, only to be told that there was no record of our prisoners.
“Don’t you want to know what the offer was?” Peña seemed miffed. I had noted that he got some thrill out of having me plead for information.
“Yes, please, captain.”
“Your husband was offered his freedom and his farm back—” My heart leapt!
“—if he proved his loyalty to El Jefe by divorcing his Mirabal wife.”
“Oh?” I could feel my heart like a hand making a fist in my chest.
Peña’s sharp, piglike eyes were watching me. And then he had his dirty little say. “You Mirabal women must be something else”—he fondled himself—“to keep a man interested when all he can do with his manhood is pass water!”
I had to say two Glory Be’s to myself before I could speak aloud. Even so, my voice threw sparks. “Captain Pena, no matter what you do to my husband, he will always be ten times the man you are!” That evil man threw back his head and laughed, then picked up his cap from his lap and stood to leave. I saw the lump he’d gotten by working me up to this state.
I went in search of the children to calm myself down. I found Minou digging a hole in the ground and burying all the candies Pena had brought. When I asked her why she was wasting her candies, she said she was burying them like the box her Mama and Papá had buried in their yard that was bad to touch.
“This is bad candy,” she said to me.
“Yes, it is,” I said and got down on my knees to help her finish burying it.
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Pena’s mention of Pedrito was the first news we had had of any of our prisoners. Then, a few days later, Dedé and Mamá came back from another trip to the capital with the “good news” that the girls’ names, along with those of the men and my Nelson, had appeared on the latest list of three hundred and seventy-two detained. Oh, how relieved we were! As long as the SIM admitted they were in custody, our prisoners stood less of a chance of being disappeared.
Dark as it was, I went out into the garden with Mamá’s scissors. I cut by scent more than sight so that I didn’t know exactly what I had until I was back inside. I arranged his spray of jasmine and stems of gardenias in a vase on the little table, then took the rest of the flowers into my bedroom.
And on the third day, He rose again.
We were already working on the third week. Still, there were moments, like I said—resurrection gathering speed.
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Sunday, early, we packed ourselves in Jaimito’s pickup. Except for a few farm horses over at Dedé’s and the old mule at Mama‘s, it was the only transportation left us, now that all the cars had been confiscated. Mamá laid out an old sheet in the flatbed and put the children in back with me. She and Dedé and Jaimito rode in front. It was still early morning as we drove towards Salcedo for the first mass. The mist was rising all around us from the fields. As we passed the turnoff to our old house in Conuco, I felt a stab of pain. I looked at Noris, hoping she hadn’t noticed, but her pretty face was struggling to be brave.
No one knew that the Voice of God would speak from the pulpit that day. None of us would have expected it from Padre Gabriel, who was, we thought, a stooge substitute sent in after Padre de Jesus was arrested.
When it came, I almost didn’t hear it. Raulito was having one of his crying fits and Jacqueline, who is empathic when it comes to tears, had joined in. Then, too, Minou was busy “reading” my upside-down missal to Manolito. Dedé and I were having a time managing the lot, while Mama was doing her share, casting stem glances from the middle of our pew. As she’s all too fond of telling us, we are raising savages with all our new theories about talking, not spanking. “Fighting tyrants and meanwhile creating little ones.”
I was headed to the vestibule with the children when I heard what I thought I had misheard. “We cannot remain indifferent to the grievous blows that have afflicted so many good Dominican homes … Padre Gabriel’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“Hush now!” I said, so fiercely the children stopped their fussing and looked at me with full attention.
“All human beings are born with rights derived from God that no earthly power can take away.”
The sun was shining through the stained glass window of John the Evangelist, depicted in a loincloth some church ladies had complained was inappropriate, even in our tropical heat. I propped Raulito up on the baptismal font and gave the other children mints to keep them quiet.
“To deny these rights is a grave offense against God, against the dignity of man.”
He went on, but I wasn’t listening anymore. My heart was beating fast. I knew once I said it I couldn’t take it back. Oh Lord, release my son, I prayed. And then I added what I’d been holding back. Let me be your sacrificial lamb.
When Padre Gabriel was done, he looked up, and there was utter silence in that church. We were stunned with the good news that our Gabriel had delivered unto us. If the church had been a place to clap, we would have drowned out his “Dóminus vobíscum” with applause.
We stayed the whole day in Salcedo, sitting in the park between masses, buying treats for the kids as bribes for the next hour-long mass. Their church clothes were soiled by the time the last mass rolled around at six. With each service, the rumor spread, and the crowds grew. People kept coming back, mass after mass. Undercover agents also started showing up. We could spot them easily. They were the ones who knelt with their butts propped on the pew seats and looked about during the consecration. I caught sight of Peña in the back of the church, no doubt taking note of repeaters like me.
Later, we found out this was happening all over the country. The bishops had gathered together earlier in the week and drafted a pastoral letter to be read from every pulpit that Sunday. The church had at last thrown in its lot with the people!
That evening we rode home in high spirits, the babies fast asleep in the arms of the older children. It was already dark, but when I looked up at the sky, I saw a big old moon like God’s own halo hung up there as a mark of his covenant. I shivered, remembering my promise.
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We were worried about attending mass the following Sunday. All week we heard of attacks on churches throughout the island. Down in the capital, somebody had tried to assassinate the archbishop in the cathedral while he was saying mass. Poor Pittini was so old and blind he didn’t even realize what was happening, but kept right on intoning the Kyrie as the assassin was being wrestled to the ground.
Nothing as serious as that happened in our parish. But we had our own excitement. Sunday after the pastoral, we were visited by a contingent of prostitutes. When it was time for communion, there was such sashaying and swaying of hips to the altar rail you’d have thought they were offering their body and blood, not receiving His. They lined up, laughing, taunting Padre Gabriel by opening their mouths for the Sacred Host and making lewd gestures with their tongues. Then one of them reached right in his chalice and helped herself.
This was like a gunshot in our congregation. Ten or twelve of us women got up and formed a cordon around our priest. We let in only those we knew had come to the table for salvation, not sacrilege. You can bet those puticas lit in to us. One of them shoved me aside; but did Patria Mercedes turn the other cheek? Not on your life. I yanked that scrawny, done-up girl to the back of the church. “Now,” I said, “You want to receive communion, you recite the Credo first.”
She looked at me as if I had asked her to speak English. Then she gave me a toss of her head and marched off to the SIM to collect whatever her charge was for desecrating.
The following Sunday, we arrived for early mass, and we couldn’t get in the door for the stench inside. It took no time at all to find out what the problem was. ¡Sin vergüenzas! They had come into the church the night before and deposited the contents of latrines inside the confessional.
I sent the children home with Mama, afraid of some further incident with the SIM. Dedé, Noris, and I stayed to clean up. Yes, Noris insisted, though I fussed that I wanted her home safe with the others. God’s house was her house, too, she argued. My prayers to the Virgencita to bring her around had
been answered. I had to laugh. It was what Sor Asunción always used to tell us. Beware what you ask God. He might just give you what you want.
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One morning, close to a month after Mate and Minerva had been taken, I had another visitor. Dedé and Mamá had gone to the capital to make their rounds. Their habit was to drive down every week with Jaimito or with some other prisoner’s family. They refused to take me along. They were sure someone at the SIM headquarters would realize they had overlooked me and grab me on the spot.
Before heading home, they always drove out to La Victoria. Out of desperation, I suppose, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girls. Of course, they never saw them. But often there were sheets and towels hanging to dry through the bars of windows, and this touch of domesticity always gave them hope.
I was in the parlor, teaching Noris how to applique monograms just as I had once taught Mate. The children were busy building their block palaces on the floor. Tono came in and announced there was a visitor. Instantly, my heart sank, for I assumed it was Peña again. But no, it was Margarita, no last name given, wanting to see the dona of the house, though she couldn’t say in relation to what.
The young woman sitting on the stoop out back looked vaguely familiar. She had a sweet, simple face and dark, thick hair held back with bobby pins. The eyes, the brows, the whole look had Mirabal written all over it. Ay, no, I thought, not now. She stood up the minute she saw me, and bowed her head shyly. “Could we speak privately?”
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew Minerva had stayed in touch with them over the years, but I had always kept my distance. I did not want to be associated with the issue of a campesina who had had no respect for the holy banns of matrimony or for the good name of Mirabal.
I nodded towards the garden where no one could overhear our talk.
When we were a little ways down the path, she reached in her pocket and offered me a folded note.
My hands began to shake. “God be praised,” I said, looking up. “Where did you get this?”
“My mother’s cousin works in La Victoria. He doesn’t want his name mentioned.”
I unfolded the note. It was the label off a can of tomato paste. The back had been written on.
We’re in Cell # 61, Pavilion A, La Victoria—Duke, Miriam, Violeta, Asela, Delia, Sina, Minerva, and me. Please notify their families. We are well but dying for news of home and the children. Please send Trinalin as we are all down with a bad grippe & Lomotil for the obvious. Any food that keeps. Many kisses to all but especially to my little darling.
And then, as if I wouldn’t recognize that pretty hand in a million years, the note was signed, Mate.
My head was spinning with what needed to be done. Tonight with Mama and Dedé, I would write a reply and fix up a package. “Can we send something back with your relative?”
She nodded, lingering as if she had something else to say. I realized I had forgotten there was always a charge for such services. “Wait here, please,” I said, and ran to the house to get my purse.
She looked pained when I offered her the bills. “No, no, we wouldn’t take anything from you.” Instead, she handed me a card with the name of the pharmacy I always went to in Salcedo; her own name was written on the back. “Margarita Mirabal, to serve you.”
That Mirabal was something of a shock. “Thank you, Margarita,” I said, offering her my hand. Then I added the words I found hard to wrench from my prideful heart. “Patria Mercedes, to serve you.”
When she had left, I read Mate’s note over and over as if with each reading, new information would surface. Then I sat down on the bench by
the birds of paradise, and I had to laugh. Papa’s other family would be the agents of our salvation! It was ingenious and finally, I saw, all wise. He was going to work several revolutions at one time. One of them would have to do with my pride.
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That night, Dedé, Mama, and I stayed up late preparing the package. We made sweet potato biscuits with molasses, which would have a lot of nutrition, and filled a bag full of little things that wouldn’t spoil. We packed a change of underwear for each of them, and socks, and inside the socks I stuck a comb and brush for them to share. I couldn’t imagine how Mate was taking care of that long hair.
Our little pile of things grew, and we began arguing over what was necessary. Mama thought it would be a mistake to send Mate her good black towel she had made the week she was home—to save her nerves. She had finished appliqueing the M in gold satin, but had not gotten to the G yet. “The more you send the more chances someone along the way will steal the whole thing.”
“Ay, Mama, have a little faith.”
She put her hands on her hips and shook her head at me. “Patria Mercedes, you should be the first one to know .. We kept our sentences incomplete whenever we were criticizing the government inside the house. There were ears everywhere, or at least we imagined them there. ”That is no towel for a jail cell,“ Mamá finished, as if that was what she had been about to say from the start.
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.”
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
One afternoon when I was still a little crazy with grief, I ran out of Mamá’s house, barefoot, with Jacqueline in my arms. Don Bemardo was already at his door with his hat on and his keys in his hand. “So you’re ready to be a fish in the waters of salvation, eh, my little snapper?” He chucked Jacqueline under her little chin, and her tears dried up like it was July in Monte Cristi.
Now I was at Don Bemardo’s door again, but this time without a baby in my arms. “What a pleasure, Patria Mercedes,” he greeted me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have me drop in at any hour of the day or night, barefoot or dressed up, with a favor to ask.
“Don Bernardo, here I am bothering you again,” I said. “But I need a ride to Santiago to Captain Peña’s office.”
“A visit to the lion’s den, I see.”
I caught a glimpse of a smile in the curve of his thick, white mustache. Briefly, he entered the bedroom where Dona Belén lay harnessed in her second childhood. Then out he came, crooking his elbow as my escort. “Doña Belén sends her greetings,” he said.
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Captain Victor Alicinio Pena received me right away. Maybe it was my nerves, but his office had the closed-in feeling of a jail cell, metal jalousies
at the windows and fluorescence the only light. An air conditioner gave out a violent mechanical sound, as if it were about to give out. I wished I were outside, waiting under the almond trees in the square with Don Bernardo.
“It’s a pleasure to see you, Dona Patria.” Captain Peña eyeballed me as if he had to be true to his verb and see every part of me. “How can I be of help?” he asked, motioning for me to sit down.
I had planned to make an impassioned plea, but no words came out of my mouth. It wouldn’t have been exaggerating to say that Patria Mercedes had been struck dumb in the devil’s den.
“I must say I was a little surprised to be told you were here to see me,” Pena went on. I could see he was growing annoyed at my silence. “I am a busy man. What is it I can do for you?”
Suddenly, it all came out, along with the tears. How I had read in the papers about El Jefe excusing minors, how my boy had just turned eighteen in prison, how I wondered if there was anything at all Pena could do to get my boy pardoned.
“This matter is outside my department,” he lied.
That’s when it struck me. This devil might seem powerful, but finally I had a power stronger than his. So I used it. Loading up my heart with prayer, I aimed it at the lost soul before me.
“This came down from above,” he continued. But now, he was the one growing nervous. Absently, his hands fiddled with a plastic card on his key ring. It was a prism picture of a well-stacked brunette. When you tilted it a certain way, her clothes dropped away. I tried not to be distracted, but to keep right on praying.
Soften his devils heart, oh Lord. And then, I said the difficult thing, For he, too, is one of your children.
Pena lay down his pathetic key ring, picked up the phone, and dialed headquarters in the capital. His voice shifted from its usual bullying bark to an accommodating softness. “Yes, yes, General, absolutely.” I wondered if he would ever get to my petition. And then it came, so smoothly buttered, it almost slipped right by me. “There’s a little matter I’ve got sitting here in
my office.” He laughed uproariously at something said on the other end. “No, not exactly that little matter.”
And then he told what I was after.
I sat, my hands clutched on my lap. I don’t know if I was praying as much as listening intently—trying to judge the success of my petition from every pause and inflection in Pena’s voice. Maybe because I was watching him so closely a funny thing started to happen. The devil I was so used to seeing disappeared, and for a moment, like his tilting prism, I saw an overgrown fat boy, ashamed of himself for kicking the cat and pulling the wings off butterflies.
I must have looked surprised because as soon as he hung up, Pena leaned towards me. “Something wrong?”
“No, no,” I said quickly, bowing my head. I did not want to be pushy and ask him directly what he had found out. “Captain,” I pleaded, “can you offer me any hope?”
“It’s in the works,” he said, standing up to dismiss me. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“¡Gracias, ay, muchas gracias!” I kept saying, and I wasn’t just thanking Peña.
The captain held on to my hand too long, but this time I didn’t pull away. I was no longer his victim, I could see that. I might have lost everything, but my spirit burned bright. Now that I had shined it on him, this poor blind moth couldn’t resist my light.
It was time to tell him what I’d be doing for him. “I’ll pray for you, Captain.”
He laughed uneasily. “What for?”
“Because it’s the only thing I have left to repay you with,” I said, holding his gaze. I wanted him to understand that I knew he had taken our land.
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We waited, and weeks went by. A second, and then a third, pastoral was read from the pulpits. The regime responded with a full-force war against the church. A campaign began in the papers to cancel the concordat with the Vatican. The Catholic church should no longer have a special status in our country. The priests were only stirring up trouble. Their allegations against the government were lies. After all, our dictator was running a free country. Maybe to prove himself right, Trujillo was granting more and more pardons and visiting passes.
Every day or so, I stopped at the portrait with a fresh flower and a little talk. I tried to pretend he was my boy, too, a troubled one in need of guidance. “You know as well as I do that casting out the church won’t do you a bit of good,” I advised him. “Besides, think of your future. You’re no spring chicken at sixty-nine, and very soon, you’re going to be where you don’t make the rules.”
And then more personally, I reminded him of the pardon I’d asked for.
But nothing came through for us. Either Peña had forgotten or—God forbid!—something terrible had happened to Nelson. I started having bad days again and long nights. Only the thought of Easter just around the comer kept Patria Mercedes inching along. The blossoms on the flame trees were about to burst open.
And on the third day He rose again …
The little notes kept streaming in. From the few hints Mate could drop into them, I pieced together what the girls were going through in prison.
They asked for food that would keep—they were hungry. Bouillon cubes and some salt—the food they got had no flavor. Aspirin—they had fevers. Ephedrine—the asthma was acting up. Ceregen—they were weak. Soap— they were able to wash themselves. A dozen small crucifixes? That I couldn’t make out. One or two, yes, but a dozen?! I believed they were feeling more peace of mind when they asked for books. Martí for Minerva (the poems, not the essay book) and for Mate, a blank book and a pen. Sewing materials for both, plus the children’s recent measurements. Ay, pobrecitas, they were missing their babies.
I spent hours with Don Bernardo and Dona Belén next door, wishing my mind could fade like hers into the past. I would have gone all the way back, all the way back to the beginning of—I wasn’t sure of what.
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Finally, when I’d almost given up hope, Peña arrived at the house in his big showy white Mercedes, wearing an embroidered guayabera instead of his uniform. Oh dear, a personal visit.
“Capitán Peña,” I welcomed him. “Please come inside where it’s cool.” I made a point of stopping at the entryway so he could see the fresh flowers under the portrait. “Shall I make you a rum coke?” I was gushing shamelessly all over him.
“Don’t bother yourself, Doña Patria, don’t bother yourself.” He indicated the chairs on the porch. “It’s nice and cool out there.” He looked at the road as a car slowed, the driver taking in who had dropped in on the Mirabal family.
Right then and there, I realized this visit was as much for him as for me. I’d heard that he was having trouble at our place—I will never call that farm anything else. All the campesinos had run off, and there wasn’t a neighbor willing to lend a hand. (What could he expect? That whole area was full of González!) But being seen conversing with Doña Patria sent out the message—I didn’t hold him responsible for my loss. All he had done was buy a cheap farm from the government.
Mamá did, however, hold him responsible. She locked herself in her bedroom with her grandbabies and refused to come out. She would never visit with the monster who had torn her girls from her side. She didn’t care that he was trying to help us now. The truth was the devil was the devil even in a halo. But I knew it was more complicated than that. He was both, angel and devil, like the rest of us.
“I have good news for you,” Peña began. He folded his hands on his lap, waiting for me to gush a little more over him.
“What is it, Captain?” I leaned forward, playing my pleading part.
“I have the visiting passes,” he said. My heart sunk a little, I had wanted the pardon most of all. But I thanked him warmly as he counted out each one. “Three passes,” he concluded when he was done.
Three? “But we have six prisoners, Captain,” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Shouldn’t it be six passes?”
“It should be six, shouldn’t it?” He gave me little righteous nods. “But Manolo’s in solitary, and Leandro’s still deciding on a job for El Jefe. So! They’re both—shall we say—unavailable.”
A job for El Jefe? “And my Nelson?” I said right out.
“I talked with headquarters,” Pena spoke slowly, delaying the news to increase my anticipation. But I stayed unruffled, praying my Glory Be‘s, one right after the other. “Seeing as your boy is so young, and El Jefe has been pardoning most minors…” He swilled his drink around so the ice tinkled against the glass. “We think we can get him in with the next round.”
My first born, my little ram. The tears began to flow.
“Now, now, Doña Patria, don’t get like that.” But I could tell from Peña’s tone that he loved seeing women cry.
When I had controlled myself, I asked, “And the girls, Captain?” “The women were all offered pardons as well.”
I was at the edge of my chair. “So the girls are coming home, too?”
“No, no, no,” he said, wagging his finger at me. “They seem to like it in prison. They have refused.” He raised his eyebrows as if to say, what can I do about such foolishness? Then he returned us to the subject of his little coup, expecting more of my gratitude. “So, how shall we celebrate when the boy comes home?”
“We’ll have you over for a sancocho,” I said before he could suggest something rude.
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As soon as he was gone, I rushed to Mamá’s bedroom and delivered my good news.
Mama went down on her knees and threw her hands up in the air. “The truth is the Lord has not forgotten us!”
“Nelson is coming home?” Noris rushed forward. Since his imprisonment, Noris had moped horribly, as if Nelson were a lost love instead of “the monster” who had tortured her all her childhood.
The younger children began to chant, “Nelson home! Nelson home!” Mama looked up at me, ignoring the racket. “And the girls?”
“We have passes to see them,” I said, my voice dropping.
Mamá stood up, stopping the clamor short. “And what does the devil want in return?”
“A sancocho when Nelson comes home.”
“Over my dead body that man is going to eat a sancocho in my house.”
I put my hand on my lips, reminding Mamá that she had to watch what she said.
“I mean it, over my dead body!” Mamá hissed. “And that’s the truth!”
By the time she said it the third time, she and I both knew she was resigned to feeding Judas at her table. But there would be more than one stray hair in that sancocho, as the campesinos liked to say. No doubt Fela would sprinkle in her powders and Tono would say an Our Father backwards over the pot, and even I would add some holy water I’d bottled from Jacqueline’s baptism to give to her mother.
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That night as we walked in the garden, I admitted to Mamá that I had made an indiscreet promise. She looked at me, shocked. “Is that why you snuck out of the house a few weeks ago?”
“No, no, no. Nothing like that. I offered Our Lord to take me instead of my Nelson.”
Mama sighed. “Ay, m’ija, don’t even say so. I have enough crosses.” Then she admitted, “I offered Him to take me instead of any of you. And since I’m the mother, He’s got to listen to me first.”
We laughed. “The truth is,” Mama continued, “I have everything in hock to Him. It’ll take me another lifetime to fulfill all the promesas I’ve made once everybody comes home.
“As for the Pena promesa,” she added, “I have a plan.” There was that little edge of revenge in her voice. “We’ll invite all the neighbors.”
I didn’t have to remind her that we weren’t living among our kin anymore. Most of these new neighbors wouldn’t come, afraid of being seen socializing with the blackmarked Mirabals. That was part of Mama’s plan. “Peña will show up, thinking the sancocho is meant just for him.”
I started laughing before she was through. I could see which way her revenge was going.
“All those neighbors will look out their windows and kick themselves when they realize they slighted the head of the northern SIM!”
“Ay, Mamá,” I laughed. “You are becoming la jefa of revenge!”
“Lord forgive me,” she said, smiling sweetly. There wasn’t a bit of sorry in her voice.
“That makes two of us,” I said, hooking my arm with hers.
“Good night,” I called out to the cigarette tips glowing like fireflies in the dark.
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Monday, Pena telephoned. The audience with El Jefe was set in the National Palace for the next day. We were to bring a sponsor. Someone willing to give the young offender work and be responsible for him. Someone who had not been in trouble with the government.
“Thank you, thank you,” I kept saying.
“So when is my sancocho?” Pena concluded.
“Come on, Mamá,” I said when I got off the line and had given her our good news. “The man isn’t all that bad.”
“Humpf!” Mama snorted. “The man is smart is what he is. Helping with Nelson’s release will do what twenty sancochos couldn’t do. Soon the González clan will have him baptizing their babies!”
I knew she was right, but I wished she hadn’t said so. I don’t know, I wanted to start believing in my fellow Dominicans again. Once the goat was a bad memory in our past, that would be the real revolution we would have to fight: forgiving each other for what we had all let come to pass.
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We made the trip to the capital in two cars. Jaimito and I rode down in the pickup. He had agreed to sponsor his nephew, giving him his own parcel to farm. I always said our cousin had a good heart.
Mama, Tio Chiche and his son, Blanco, a young colonel in the army, followed in Don Bernardo’s car. We wanted a show of strength—our most respectable relations. Dedé was staying behind to take care of the children. It was my first excursion out of the Salcedo province in three months. My mood was almost festive!
At the last minute, Noris stole into the pickup and wouldn’t come out. “I want to go get my brother,” she said, her voice breaking. I couldn’t bring myself to order her out.
Somehow, in our excitement, our two cars lost each other on the road. Later we found out that Don Bemardo’s old Plymouth had a flat near the Constanza turnoff, and when Blanco went to change it, there was no jack or spare in the trunk. Instead, Mamá described a whole library that Don Bernardo confessed he had hidden there. In her forgetful rages, Dona Belen had taken it into her head to rip up her husband’s books, convinced there were love letters hidden in those pages.
Because we had backtracked, looking for them, we got to the National Palace with only minutes to spare. Up the front steps we raced—there must have been a hundred of them. In Dedé’s tight little heels, I suffered my Calvary, which I offered up to my Nelson’s freedom. At the entrance, there was a checkpoint, then two more friskings inside. Those were my poor Noris’s Calvary. You know how girls are at that age about any attention paid their bodies, and this was out and out probing of the rudest kind. Finally, we were escorted down the hall by a nervous little functionary, who kept checking his watch and motioning for us to hurry along.
With all the rushing around, I hadn’t stopped to think. But now I began worrying that our prize would be snatched away at the last minute. El Jefe was going to punish us Mirabals. Just like with Minerva’s degree, he would wait till I had my hands on my Nelson and then say, “Your family is too good to accept pardons, it seems. I’m so sorry. We’ll have to keep the boy.”
I could not let myself be overcome by fears. I hung on to the sound of my girl’s new heels clicking away beside me. My little rosebud, my pigs-eye, my pretty one. Suddenly, my heart just about stopped. ¡Ay, Dios mío! What could I be thinking, bringing her along! Everybody knew that with each passing year the old goat liked them younger and younger. I had offered myself as a sacrificial lamb for Nelson. Certainly not my darling.
I squeezed my Noris’s hand. “You stay by me every second, you hear! Don’t drink anything you’re offered, and it’s no to any invitation to any party.”
“Mamá, what are you talking about?” Her bottom lip was quivering. “Nothing, my treasure. Nothing. Just stay close.”
It was like asking the pearl to stay inside its mother oyster. All the way down that interminable hall, Noris held tight to my hand.
I needed her touch as much as she needed mine. The past was rushing down that long corridor towards me, a flood of memories, sweeping me back as I struggled to keep up with the little official. We were on our way to the fateful Discovery Day dance, Minerva and Dedé, Pedrito, Papa and Jaimito and I, and nothing bad had happened yet. I was climbing up to the shrine of the Virgencita in Higuey to hear her voice for the first time. I was
a bride, promenading down the center aisle of San Juan Evangelista twenty years back to marry the man with whom I would have our dear children, dearer than my life.
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The room was a parlor with velvet chairs no one would dream of sitting on even if invited, which we weren’t. Doors led in from three sides, and posted at each one was a fine-featured guard from El Jefe’s elite all-white corps. A few other families stood by, in clumps, looking solemn, the women in black, the men in suits or formal guayaberas. My yellow dress stood out like a shout I tried to quiet by draping my black mantilla over my shoulders. Still, I was glad I had worn it. I was going to greet my boy dressed in the sunshine he hadn’t seen in a month.
A crowd of journalists was let in one of the doors. A tall American draped with cameras approached and asked us in his accented Spanish what our feelings were today. We looked to the little man, who nodded his permission. The audience was as much for the press as for us. We were part of a stage show.
El Jefe entered in a wash of camera flashes. I don’t know what I thought I’d see—I guess after three months of addressing him, I was sure I’d feel a certain kinship with the stocky, overdressed man before me. But it was just the opposite. The more I tried to concentrate on the good side of him, the more I saw a vain, greedy, unredeemed creature. Maybe the evil one had become flesh like Jesus! Goosebumps jumped all up and down my bare arms.
El Jefe sat down in an ornate chair on a raised platform and spoke directly to the families of the prisoners to be released. We had better do a better job of controlling our young people. Next time, we shouldn’t expect such mercy. As a group, we thanked him in chorus. Then we were to name ourselves for him, one by one, and thank him again with little personalized comments. I couldn’t think of anything to add to my thank-you, but I was hoping that Jaimito would come up with something.
When our turn came, El Jefe nodded for me to speak first. I had a momentary cowardly thought of not giving him my complete name.
“Patria Mercedes Mirabal de González, to serve you.”
His bored, half-lidded eyes showed a spark of interest. “So you are one of the Mirabal sisters, eh?”
“Yes, Jefe. I’m the oldest.” Then, to emphasize what I was here for, I added, “Mother of Nelson González. And we’re very grateful to you.”
“And who is that little flower beside you?” El Jefe smiled down at Noris.
The journalists noted the special attention we were receiving and came forward with their cameras.
Once everyone’s particular thanks had been given, El Jefe turned and spoke to an aide beside him. A hush went through the room like a crack through a china cup. Then talk resumed. El Jefe moved closer to Noris to ask what flavor ice cream she liked. I kept her hand tight in mine while I scanned every door. This might be some sort of roulette game in which I had to guess correctly which one Nelson would come through in order to win his freedom. The American journalist threw out questions to El Jefe about his policies regarding political prisoners and the recent OAS charges of human rights abuses. El Jefe waved them away. He had managed to get out of Noris that she liked chocolate and strawberry if it wasn’t too strawberryish.
A door swung open. A cortege of guards in dress whites came through, followed by a handful of sorry-looking boys, their skulls visible under their shaven heads, their eyes big and scared, their faces swollen with bruises. When I saw Nelson, I cried out and dropped to my knees.
Lord, I remember praying, thank you for giving me my son again.
I didn’t need to remind Him what I had offered in return. Still, I didn’t expect Him to come right out and claim it. Later Jaimito said it was just Trujillo calling me to receive my prisoner. But I know a godly voice when I hear one. I heard Him all right, and He called my name.
Next day, we were famous. On the front page of El Caribe, the two photographs were side by side: Noris giving her hand to a smiling Jefe (Young Offender Softens El Jefe’s Heart); and me, kneeling, my hands clutched in prayer (Grateful Madre Thanks Her Benefactor).
