Minerva
August to November 25, 1960
House Arrest August and 3eptember
All my life, I had been trying to get out of the house. Papá always complained that, of his four girls, I should have been the boy, born to cut loose. First, I wanted to go to boarding school, then university. When Manolo and I started the underground, I traveled back and forth from Monte Cristi to Salcedo, connecting cell with cell. I couldn’t stand the idea of being locked up in any one life.
So when we were released in August and put under house arrest, you’d have thought I was getting just the punishment for me. But to tell the truth, it was as if I’d been served my sentence on a silver platter. By then, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to stay home with my sisters at Mamá‘s, raising our children.
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Those first few weeks at home took some getting used to.
After seven months in prison, a lot of that time in solitary, the overload was too much. The phone ringing; a visitor dropping by (with permission from Peña, of course); Peña himself dropping by to see about the visitor;
Don Bemardo with guavas from his tree; rooms to go in and out of; children wanting their shoelaces tied; the phone ringing again; what to do with the curdled milk.
In the middle of the day when I should have been out soaking up sun and getting good country air in my infected lungs, I would seek the quiet of the bedroom, slip out of my dress and lie under the sheets watching the sun speckling the leaves through the barely opened jalousies.
But as I lay there, the same overload would start happening in my head. Bits and pieces of the past would bob up in the watery soup of my thoughts those days—Lío explaining how to hit the volleyball so there was a curve in its fall; the rain falling on our way to Papá’s funeral; my hand coming down on Trujillo’s face; the doctor slapping her first breath into my newborn baby girl.
I’d sit up, shocked at what I was letting happen to me. I had been so much stronger and braver in prison. Now at home I was falling apart.
Or, I thought, lying back down, I’m ready for a new life, and this is how it starts.
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I grew stronger gradually and began taking part in the life of the household.
None of us had any money, and the dwindling income from the farm was being stretched mighty thin across five families. So we started up a specialty business of children’s christening gowns. I did the simple stitching and seam binding.
The pneumonia in my lungs cleared up. I got my appetite back and began to regain the weight I’d lost in prison. I could wear again my old clothes Dona Fefita had brought down from Monte Cristi.
And, of course, my children were a wonder. I’d swoop down on them, showering them with kisses. “Mami!” they’d shriek. How lovely to be called mother again; to have their little arms around my neck; their sane, sweet breath in my face.
And pinto beans—were they always so colorful? “Wait, wait, wait,” I’d cry out to Fela before she dunked them in the water. I’d scoop up handfuls just to hear the soft rattle of their downpour back in the pot. Everything I had to touch. Everything I had to taste. I wanted everything back in my life again.
But sometimes a certain slant of light would send me back. The light used to fall just so at this time of day on the floor below my top bunk.
And once, Minou got hold of a piece of pipe and was rattling it against the galería rail. It was a sound exactly recalling the guards in prison running their nightsticks against the bars. I ran out and yanked the pipe from her hand, screaming, “No!” My poor little girl burst out crying, frightened by the terror in my voice.
But those memories, too, began to fade. They became stories. Everyone wanted to hear them. Mate and I could keep the house entertained for hours, telling and retelling the horrors until the sting was out of them.
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We were allowed two outings a week: Thursdays to La Victoria to visit the men, and Sundays to church. But for all that I was free to travel, I dreaded going out of the house. The minute we turned onto the road, my heart started pounding and my breathing got shallow.
The open vistas distressed me, the sense of being adrift in a crowd of people pressing in on all sides, wanting to touch me, greet me, wish me well. Even in church during the privacy of Holy Communion, Father Gabriel bent down and whispered “iviva la Mariposa!”
My months in prison had elevated me to superhuman status. It would hardly have been seemly for someone who had challenged our dictator to suddenly succumb to a nervous attack at the communion rail.
I hid my anxieties and gave everyone a bright smile. If they had only known how frail was their iron-will heroine. How much it took to put on that hardest of all performances, being my old self again.
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My best performances were reserved for Peña’s visits. He came often to supervise our house arrest. The children got so used to his toad face and grabby hands, they began calling him Tío Capitán and asking to hold his gun and ride on his knee horse.
I myself could not get used to him. Whenever that big white Mercedes turned into our narrow driveway, I ran to my bedroom and shut the door to give myself time to put on my old-self face.
In no time, someone was sent back there to get me. “It’s Peña. You’ve got to come!” Even Mamá, who once refused to receive him, now buttered him up whenever he was over. After all, he had let her have her babies back.
One afternoon I was out trimming the laurel in the front yard. Manolito was “helping” me. After cutting the branches, all but a sliver, I held him up to pull them off. From his perch on my shoulders, he reported all he saw out on the road. “Tío’s car!” he cried out, and sure enough, I saw the flash of white through a break in the hedge. It was too late to tune up for my performance. I went directly to the carport to receive him.
“What a rare occasion, Dona Minerva. The last few times I’ve come you haven’t been well.” In other words, I’ve noticed your rudeness. All of it is filed away. “You must be feeling better,” he observed, without a question mark.
“I saw your car, I saw your car,” sang Manolito.
“Manolito, my boy, you are all eyes. We could use men like you in the SIM.”
Oh God, I thought.
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“Ladies, it’s nice to have you all here,” Pena noted, when Mate and Patria joined us on the patio. Dedé had appeared with her shears to work on the
hedge and keep her eye on “things.” Whenever she didn’t like my tone, she would clip the crown of thorns violently, scattering a spray of leaves and red petals in the air.
For the umpteenth time, Pena reminded us how lucky we were. Our five- year sentence had been commuted to house arrest. Instead of the restrictions of prison, we had only a few rules to obey. (We called them Peña’s commandments.) He rehearsed them each time he came: No trips, no visitors, no contact with politicals. Any exceptions only by his permission. “Clear?”
We nodded. I was tempted to bring out the broom and set it by the door, the country way to tell people it was time to go.
Peña dunked the bobbing ice cubes with a fat finger. Today he had come for more than the recital of his rules. “El Jefe has not visited our province for a while now,” he began.
Of course not, I thought. Most families in Salcedo had at least one son or daughter or husband in prison.
“We are trying to get him to come. All loyal citizens are writing letters.”
Clip-clip went Dedé’s shears, as if to drown out anything I might be thinking.
“El Jefe has been very generous to you girls. It would be nice if you composed a letter of thanks for his leniency.”
He glanced at me and Mate, resting his eyes on Patria last. We gave him nothing with our faces. Poor nervous Dedé, who had edged up the patio towards us and was rewatering all the plants, said that yes, that would be wise. “I mean nice,” she corrected herself quickly, and Patria, Mate, and I bowed our heads to hide our smiles.
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After Pena left there was a fight. The others wanted to go ahead and write the damn letter. But I was against it. Thank Trujillo for punishing us!
“But what harm can a little letter do?” Mate argued. It was no longer so easy for me to talk that one into anything.
“People look to us to be an example, we’ve got a responsibility!” I spoke so fiercely, they looked a little sheepish. My old self was putting on quite a show.
“Now, Minerva,” Patria reasoned. “You know if he publishes the silly thing everyone will know why we wrote it.”
“Just go along with us this one time,” Mate pleaded with me.
It reminded me of that time in Inmaculada when I had not wanted to perform for Trujillo with my friends. But I had given in to them, and we had almost met our end, too, with Sinita’s bow-and-arrow assassination attempt.
What finally convinced me was Patria’s argument that the letter might help free the men. A grateful note from the Mirabal sisters might just soften El Jefe’s heart towards our husbands.
“Heart?” I said, making a face. Then, sitting down to our task, I made it perfectly clear: “This is against my better principles.”
“Someone needs to have less principles and more sense,” Dedé murmured, but without much fight in her voice. I think she was relieved to see a little spark of the old Minerva again.
Afterwards I felt small with what I’d done. “We’ve got to do something,” I kept muttering.
“Calm down, Minerva. Here,” Dedé said, pulling down Gandhi from the shelf. Elsa had given me this book when I first got out of prison to show me, she said, that being passive and gentle could be revolutionary. Dedé had approved wholeheartedly.
Today, Gandhi would not do. What I needed was a shot of Fidel’s fiery rhetoric. He would have agreed with me. We had to do something, soon!
“We have to accept this cross is what we have to do,” Patria said. “Like hell we do!” I said. I was on a rampage.
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It lasted only until the end of that day.
We were already in bed when I heard them talking loudly on the porch. They were everywhere—the dark glasses, the ironed pants, the pomaded hair. They stayed on the road until night, when they drew close to the house like moths drawn towards the light.
Usually I covered my head with my pillow and after a while fell asleep. But tonight I couldn’t ignore them. I got up from bed, not even bothering to throw a shawl over my nightgown.
Dedé caught me going out the door. She tried to hold me back, but weak though I still was, I pushed her aside easily. Dedé was still Dedé, without much conviction in her fighting.
Two SIM agents were sitting on our rockers as comfortable as you please. “Compañeros,” I said, startling them in mid-rock with the revolutionary greeting. “I’m going to have to ask you to please keep your voices down. You’re right under our bedroom windows. Remember, you are guards, not guests here.”
Neither of them said a word.
“Well, if there’s nothing else, good night then, compañeros.”
I had turned back towards the door when one of them called out, “iViva Trujillo!” the “patriotic” way of beginning and closing the day. But I wasn’t going to invoke the devil’s name in my own yard.
After a short pause in which she was probably waiting to see if I’d answer, Dedé called from inside the house, “¡Viva Trujillo!”
“¡Viva Trujillo!” Mate took it up.
And then a couple of more voices added their good wishes to our dictator, until what had been a scared compliance became, by the exaggeration of repetition, a joke. But I could feel the men listening specifically for my loyalty call.
“Viva—” I began and felt ashamed as I took a deep breath and pronounced the hated name.
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Just in case I should go on a rampage again, Mama confiscated the old radio. “What we need to know, we’ll know soon enough!” And she was right, too. Little bits of news leaked in, sometimes from the least likely people.
My old friend Elsa. She had married the journalist Roberto Suárez, who was assigned to the National Palace and, though critical of the regime, wrote the flowery feature articles required of him. One night long ago, he had kept Manolo and me, as well as Elsa, in stitches with tales of his journalistic escapades. He had been held in prison once for three days for printing a picture in which Trujillo’s bare leg showed between the cuff of his pants and the top of his sock. Another time, in a misprint he hadn’t caught, Roberto’s article had stated that Senator Smathers had delivered an elegy, instead of a eulogy, of Trujillo before the joint members of the United States Congress. That time Roberto was put in jail for a month.
I had thought for sure the Suarezes would join our movement. So when Leandro moved to the capital to coordinate the cells there, I mentioned the Suarezes to him as a likely couple. Elsa and Roberto were contacted and declared themselves “friendly,” but did not want to join.
Now, in my hard times, my old friend sprang to my side. Every week since our release in August, Elsa had driven up from the capital to visit her elderly grandfather in La Vega. She would then swing up to Santiago, butter up Pena (she was good at this), and get a pass to come see me. Knowing we were in straitened circumstances, she brought bags of “old” clothes that looked fairly new to me. She claimed she couldn’t fit into anything after her babies had been born and she’d gotten big as a cow.
Elsa… always exaggerating. She had the same good figure as always—as far as I could tell. “But look at these hips, please, just look at these legs!” she’d remind me.
Once she asked me, “How do you stay so trim?” Her eyes ran over my figure in an appraising way.
“Prison,” I said flatly. She didn’t mention my figure again.
Elsa and Roberto owned a boat, and every weekend they took it out. “To fish.” Elsa winked. At sea they picked up Swan broadcasts from a little island south of Cuba as well as Radio Rebelde in Cuba and Radio Rumbos from Venezuela. “It’s a regular newsroom out there,” said Elsa, every visit catching me up on the latest news.
One day Elsa appeared, her face flushed with excitement. She couldn’t sit down for a minute, not even for her favorite pastelito snack. She had news to tell me that required an immediate walk in the garden. “What is it?” I said, clutching her arm when we were halfway down the anthuriums.
“The OAS has imposed sanctions! Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela,” Elsa counted them off with her fingers, “even the gringos. They’ve all broken relations!” She and Roberto had been out on the boat Sunday and seen an American warship on the horizon.
“The capital is like this!” Elsa rubbed her fingers together. “Roberto says by next year—”
“Next year!” I was alarmed. “By then, who knows what can happen.”
We walked a little while in silence. Far off, I could hear the shouts of the children playing with the big, bright beach ball their Tía Elsa had brought them from the capital. “Dedé tells me I shouldn’t talk to you about all this. But I said to her, Dedé, it’s in Minerva’s blood. I told her about that time you almost shot Trujillo with a toy arrow, remember? I had to step in and pretend it was part of our play.”
I wondered which of us had revised the past to suit the lives we were living now. “Ay, Elsa, that’s not how it happened.”
“Well, anyhow, she told me about the time you freed your father’s rabbits because you didn’t think it was right to have them caged.”
That story was remembered my way, but I felt diminished hearing it. “And look at me now.”
“What do you mean? You’ve gained a little weight. You’re looking great!” She ran her eyes over me, nodding in approval. “Minerva, Minerva, I am so proud of you!”
How much I wanted at that moment to unburden myself to my old friend. To confess that I didn’t feel the same as before prison. That I wanted my own life back again.
But before I could say a thing, she grabbed my hands. “¡Viva la Mariposa!” she whispered with feeling.
I gave her the bright brave smile she also required of me.
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Our spirits were so high with the good news we couldn’t wait for Thursday to tell the men. The night before, we were almost festive as we rolled our hair in the bedroom so it would curl for our men the next day. We always did this, no matter how gloomy we were feeling. And they noticed it, too. It was a fact—we had all compared notes—that our men got more romantic the longer they were in prison. Patria claimed that Pedrito, a man of few words if there ever was one, was composing love poems for her and reciting them during visiting hours. The most embarrassing part, she admitted, was that this made her start feeling that way right there in the middle of the prison hall surrounded by guards.
Dedé sat by, watching our preparations with displeasure. She had gotten into the habit of staying over the nights before our visits. She said she had to be at Mamá’s early the next day anyhow to help with all the children once we left. But really, she was there to convince us not to go.
“You’re exposing yourselves to an accident by going down all together,” Dedé began, “that’s what you’re doing.”
We all knew what kind of accident she meant. Just a month ago Mar rero had been found at the foot of a cliff, having supposedly lost control of his car.
“Bournigal’s drivers are very reliable,” Patria reassured her.
“Think of how many orphans you’d be leaving behind, how many widowers, a mother de luto for the rest of her life.” Dedé could really pour on the tragedy.
I don’t know if it was nerves or what, but all three of us burst out laughing. Dedé stood up and announced she was going home. “Come on, Dedé,” I called as she headed out the door. “There’s a curfew. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable!” Her voice was seething with anger. “If you think I’m going to sit by and watch you all commit suicide, you’re wrong.”
She didn’t make it past the front gate. The SIM sent her back. She slept on the couch and the next morning wouldn’t talk to us all through breakfast. When she turned away as we went to kiss her goodbye, I decided to use her own fears on her. “Come on, Dedé. Think how sorry you’d be if something should happen to us and you didn’t say goodbye.” She stiffened with resistance. But the second the driver turned on the engine, she ran to the car, sobbing. She blurted out the one loss she hadn’t mentioned the night before, “I don’t want to have to live without you.”
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The atmosphere in prison was bright with hope. The voices in the visitors’ hall had a lift to them, now and then there was laughter. The news had spread there already: sanctions had been imposed, the gringos were closing down their embassy.
Only Manolo, like Dedé, was not convinced. He seemed gloomier than ever.
“What is it?” I asked between passings of the guard. “Isn’t it good news?”
He shrugged. Then seeing my worried face, he smiled, but it was a smile for my benefit, I could tell. I noticed for the first time that some of his front teeth were broken off.
“We’ll be home soon!” I always tried to raise his spirits with the thought of our little nest in Monte Cristi. The owners, old friends of Manolo’s parents, were allowing us to keep our things there until the day they should find a new tenant. Strangely enough, it gave me hope to know our little house, the only home we’d ever shared, was still intact.
Manolo leaned towards me, his lips grazing my cheek. A kiss to mask what he had to say. “Our cells, are they ready?”
So that’s what was worrying him. He didn’t know that the revolution was out of our hands. Others were now in charge.
“Who?” he persisted.
I hated to tell him I didn’t know. That we were totally disconnected at Mamá’s. The guard was passing by, so I remarked instead about the plantain fritters we’d eaten the night before. “Nobody knows who they are,” I mouthed when the guard was safely down the row.
Manolo eyes grew big in his pale face. “This could be a plant. Find out who’s left.” His grip tightened until my hands felt numb, but I would never tell him to let go.
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We were watched around the clock, our visits supervised, even food vendors had their baskets checked at the gate. When and how and whom was I to contact? And if I tried, I’d only be risking more lives.
But it was more than that. I had put on too good a show for Manolo as well. He didn’t know the double life I was leading. Outwardly, I was still his calm, courageous compañera. Inside, the woman had got the upper hand.
And so the struggle with her began. The struggle to get my old self back from her. Late in the night, I’d lie in bed, thinking, You must gather up the broken threads and tie them together.
Secretly, I hoped that events would settle the matter for me and, along with everyone else, I honestly believed we were seeing the last days of the regime. Shortages were everywhere. Trujillo was doing all the crazy things of a trapped animal. In church in a drunken stupor, he had seized the chalice and dispensed communion to his frightened attendants. The pope was talking about excommunication.
But with everyone against him and no one left to impress, Trujillo didn’t have to hold himself back anymore. One morning, soon after sanctions went into effect, we woke up to the sound of sirens on the road. Trucks were roaring by, full of soldiers. Dedé did not appear that morning, and since that one was like clockwork, we knew something was wrong.
The next day Elsa brought the very news we’d been waiting for, with the conclusion we had dreaded. Two nights ago after dark, a group of young men had run through Santiago, distributing leaflets under doors, urging an uprising. Every last one of them had been caught.
“‘They will find out what it is to run a comb through tangled hair,’ ” Elsa quoted Trujillo’s reaction to the young rebels’ capture.
Peña came by late that afternoon. All further visits to La Victoria were cancelled.
“But why?” I blurted out. And then bitterly I added, “We wrote the letter!”
Pena narrowed his eyes at me. He hated to be asked questions that implied he wasn’t in charge of things. “Why don’t you write another letter to El Jefe and ask him to explain himself to you!”
“She’s just upset. We all are,” Patria explained. She made a pleading face for me to be nice. “Aren’t you just upset, Minerva?”
“I’m very upset,” I said, folding my arms.
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It was the end of September before visiting days were reinstated at La Victoria, and we got to see the men. That morning when we picked up our passes, Peña gave us a warning look, but we were all so relieved, we answered him with smiles and too many thank-yous. All the way down in the car we rented with a driver, we were giddy with anticipation. Mate told some of her favorite riddles we all pretended not to know so she could have the pleasure of answering them herself. The thing Adam had in front that Eva had in back was the letter A. The thing that’s put in hard and comes out soft were the beans in the boiling water. That one had gotten a taste for spicy humor in prison.
Our mood changed considerably when we were finally ushered into that dim, familiar hall. The men looked thinner, their eyes desperate in their pale faces. Between passings of the increased guardia patrol, I tried to find out from Manolo what was going on.
“It’s over for us.” Manolo clutched my hands.
“You can’t think like that. We’ll be back in our little house before the year is up.”
But he insisted on goodbyes. He wanted me to know how deep was his love for me. What to say to the children. What kind of burial he wanted if I got a body, what kind of memorial service if I didn’t.
“Stop this!” I said in an annoyed voice. My heart was in my mouth.
On the drive home, we all wept, unable to console each other, for my sisters had heard the same grim news from Pedrito and Leandro. The men in their cells were being taken out at night in small groups and killed.
The driver, a man about our age who had already driven us down twice, looked in his rearview mirror. “The butterflies are sad today,” he noted.
That made me sit up and dry my tears. The butterflies were not about to give up! We had suffered a setback but we had not been beaten.
In the long days that followed, we expected Pena to appear every morning with the horrible news. Now I was the one waiting out on the galeria to intercept him if he came. I did not want anyone else to have to bear the first blow.
Clearly, the tide had turned. The failed uprising plunged the whole country into despair again. At home, everyone walked around with the look of people at a funeral. “We cannot give up,” I kept saying.
They marveled at my self-control—and so did I. But by now in my life I should have known. Adversity was like a key in the lock for me. As I began to work to get our men out of prison, it was the old Minerva I set free.
3aving the Men October
We could see them, chugging along behind us in their little Volkswagen. They would have a heyday reporting to Pena that we had visited another political. “Rufino,” I said, “turn down Pasteur, quick.”
Rufino had become our favorite driver. Every time we rented from Boumigal, we asked for him. Ever since the trip home from our last visit to the prison, we had felt his unspoken allegiance to us. Just this morning, when Dedé had worried about us leaving the house, Rufino had spoken up. “A Dio’, Dona Dedé, you think I’ll let anything happen to the butterflies? They’ll have to kill me first.”
“And they will, too!” she had muttered.
He was peering into the rearview mirror. “We’ve lost them.”
I checked out the back window myself. Then I turned to my sisters as if to say, See, you didn’t believe me.
“Maybe this’ll be just the excuse they need.” Mate was tearful. We had just come from seeing the men. Leandro and Manolo had been told they would be going on a little trip—what all the prisoners were told before they were killed. They were desperate, grim, taking the Miltown we had smuggled in to them, and still not sleeping.
“They’re in God’s hands.” Patria made the sign of the cross.
“Now listen to me, you two. We have a good excuse,” I reminded them. “Delia is a female doctor and we have plenty of reason to see her.” Neither Mate nor I had had a period for months.
Delia was nervous as she let us into her small office, her eyes full of signals. Before I could say a thing, she held up her hand to her lips and gestured towards the wall where her diplomas hung. We cannot talk here.
“We came about our cycles,” I began, searching the wall for the telltale little rod. Wherever it was, all the SIM got at first was an earful about our women problems. Delia relaxed, thinking that was truly why we were here. Until I concluded a little too unmetaphorically, “So is there any activity in our old cells?”
Delia gave me a piercing look. “The cells in your systems have atro phied and are dead,” she said sharply.
I must have looked stricken, for Delia’s manner softened, “A few of them are still active, to be sure. But most importantly, new cells are filling in all the time. You need to give your bodies a rest. You should see menstrual activity by the beginning of next year.”
Next year! I reached for the prescription pad on her desk and wrote down Sina’s name with a big question mark.
“Gone. Asylum,” she wrote back.
So Sina had abandoned our struggle. But then, I reminded myself, I had too, in effect, under house arrest for the last two months.
I listed six more names of members I knew had been released. Then I watched Delia draw a line through each one.
Finally I wrote, Who’s left in our area?
Delia bit her lip. Throughout our meeting her manner had been guarded, as if we were being watched as well as bugged. Now she wrote down a name hurriedly, held it up for us to read, then tore all the used pages in half, over and over again. She stood, eager to have us gone.
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The name Delia held up for us to see was unknown to us, a Dr. Pedro Viñas. When we got home, we asked Mama, who went through a whole family tree of Viñas, only to declare she didn’t know this particular one. We grew suspicious, for a stranger in our midst probably meant a SIM plant with a fabricated name. But Don Bernardo banished our doubts. Dr. Pedro Vinas was a urologist in Santiago, a very good one, who had attended Doña Belén several times. I called up and made an appointment for early next week. The woman’s voice on the other end spoke to me as if I were a young child. “What is the little problem we’re having?”
I had to think what a urologist was for. The only doctors I knew were Delia, Dr. Lavandier, and the doctor in Monte Cristi who had delivered my babies. “Just a little problem,” I said, stalling.
“Oh, that,” she said. And gave me a time.
Permission from Peña was next. That was not going to be easy. The morning after our unauthorized detour, he appeared at the house. We could tell by the bang of his car door that we were in for it.
For a full minute he shouted threats and obscenities at us. I sat on my hands as if they were extensions of my mouth. It took all my self-control not to order him and his filthy mouth out of our house.
Finally Peña calmed down enough to ask us what we had been up to. He was looking straight at me, for I was usually the one to do the talking.
But we had already settled it among us. I was to keep my mouth shut, and Patria, his favorite, was to do the explaining. “We had to see the doctor about a private matter.”
“¿Qué mierda privado?” Peña’s face was so red, it looked ready to explode.
Patria blushed at the obscenity. “We had to consult about some women’s problems.”
“Why didn’t you just ask my permission?” Pena was softening. By now, Patria had got him to sit down in a rocker and at least accept a glass of guanábana juice—good for the nerves, Mama always said. “I wouldn’t keep you from medical care. But you know very well”—he looked straight at me
—“that Delia Santos is on the political list. The rules clearly state, no contact with politicals.”
“We weren’t seeing her in her political capacity,” I protested. Patria coughed a reminder of our agreement. But once I got started, it was hard to shut me up. “In fact, Captain, I’m glad to hear that you wouldn’t stand in the way of our medical care—”
“Yes,” Patria swiftly cut in. “You have been very kind to us.” I could feel her eyes scouring me.
“I have been referred to Dr. Viñas in Santiago—”
“And you would be very grateful for the captain’s leniency in allowing you to go,” Patria reminded me, embedding my request in her scold.
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Patria and Mate dropped me off in front of the small house on their way to El Gallo. A black Volkswagen was already parked across the street. It was hard to believe this was a doctor’s office, but the sign in the window insisted. The lawn was overgrown, not in that neglected way that makes a place look shabby, but with nice abandon, as if to say, there’s room in this house for everything, even a lot of grass.
How Patria had managed this was beyond me. Mama always said Patria’s sweetness could move mountains, and monsters, obviously. Not only had she gotten Pena to grant me permission for this visit, she had also secured a pass for herself and Mate to go shopping for supplies in the meanwhile. Our little dressmaking business was doing well. We were already working on November’s orders and here it was only the middle of October. We couldn’t sleep nights, so we sewed. Sometimes Patria started a rosary, and we all joined in, stitching and praying so as not to let our minds roam.
The genial little man who met me at the door seemed more like an uncle than a professional man or, Lord knows, a revolutionary. “We’re having a little problem,” he chuckled. Some chickens had gotten into the office from his house next door, and the maid was chasing them out with a broom. Dr.
Viñas entered into the fun, teasing the maid to the delight of several small children who seemed to be his. He had gotten hold of some eggs and kept pulling them out of unlikely places, the children’s ears, his own underarms, the boiler for his syringes. “Look what the hens left me,” he said each time. His children screamed with delight.
Finally, the hens were out of view and the children were sent along with the maid to tell their Mamita to bring over a cafecito for the señorita. The diminutives were killing me. Lord, I thought, so this is what we’ve come to. But the minute Dr. Viñas closed the door of his consulting room, he was a different man, intent, serious, down to business. He seemed to know exactly who I was and why I had come.
“This is an honor,” he said, motioning for me to sit down. He turned on the raspy air conditioner—the place was not bugged, he was pretty sure— but just in case. We spoke in whispers.
“The boys,” I began, “we believe they’re all about to be killed.” I heard myself strangely demoting our men to the more helpless boys. Another diminutive—and from me.
Dr. Viñas sighed. “We tried our best. The problem was getting the ingredients for the picnic—” He looked at my face for a moment to see if I understood. “We were all set to go, the whole party assembled. But the gringos pulled out on their promise of pineapples. Some of the boys went ahead anyway.” He made a gesture of broadcasting pamphlets.
“Why did the gringos pull out?” I wanted to know.
“They got cold feet. Afraid we’re all communists. They say they don’t want another Fidel. They’d rather have a dozen Trujillos.”
I could feel dread rising in my chest. The men were not going to be saved after all. My old prison cough started up. Dr. Viñas reached for a thermos and poured me iced water in a glass cup that had measurement marks on the side. When my coughing had subsided, he went on, “The gringos are flirting with another group now.”
That was hopeful news. “The MPDs?”
Dr. Viñas laughed, and briefly I saw the family doctor inside this toughened revolutionary. “No, they’re idealists, too, and all of us idealists are dirty communists. These are people the gringos feel are safer. Some of Trujillo’s old cronies who are tired of the old man. Their only ideology is, well, you know.” He patted his pockets.
“Then why do you say there’s hope?”
“Let them bring down the old man, and then we’ll take over.” Dr. Viñas grinned, his fat little cheeks lifting his glasses.
“It’s not what we planned,” I reminded him.
“One must have a left hand,” he said, showing me his left hand.
I found I was wringing both of my hands, swallowing to keep the tickle in my throat from erupting into another coughing fit. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
He nodded, one sure, deep nod. “What you can do is keep our hopes up.
You’re an example, you know. The whole country looks to you.” When I made a face, he frowned. “I’m quite serious,” he said. There was a knock at the door. We both jumped.
“Amorcito,” a sweet voice called, “I have your little cafecito here.” And the world of diminutives closed in again on us.
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For Manolo, I lifted out the bad news like a fish bone, and gave him the promising tidbit—that the gringos were working with a group to slaughter the goat for the picnic.
Manolo had not heard this. His face tensed up. “I don’t like it. The gringos will take over the revolution.”
They’ll take over the country, I thought to myself. I didn’t say it out loud. No use depressing him any more than he already was. And at this point I
didn’t care enough. I was so desperate for Trujillo to be gone. Like Vinas said, we could fix the future later.
“Tell Viñas—” Manolo began.
I rolled my eyes to indicate the guard approaching behind him. Out loud, I went on, “The children miss you so much. The other day I asked them what they wanted for Benefactor’s Day, and they said, ‘Bring Papi home!’ Manolo?” He was not listening, I could tell. His eyes had a faraway look I recognized from my own days in this horrible place.
I touched his face to bring him back. “Mi amor, just remember, soon, soon… Monte Cristi.” I hummed the song.
“No singing,” the guard announced. He had stopped in front of us. “Sorry, soldier.” I recognized Good Hair under the brim of his cap. I
nodded at him, but his eyes were cold and flat, as if he did not know me.
“We were just saying goodbye.”
Today our interview was shorter than usual, since I was sharing my twenty minutes with Manolo’s mother, who had driven down from Monte Cristi. Just before I came upstairs, we spoke briefly in the warden’s office. She had a surprise she promised to tell me later.
I waited alone in the car with the radio on low. (No music allowed.) Just being in the prison yard was bringing back waves of that old panic. To distract myself, I fiddled with the radio dials, hoping Rufino would get back soon so I’d have someone to talk to. He was making the rounds, distributing the cigarettes and pesos we always brought the guards to encourage them to treat our prisoners right.
The visitors started filing past the checkpoint at the big exit door. Suddenly, Doña Fefita appeared, weeping, Mate and Patria on either side of her. My heart sank, remembering how depressed Manolo had been today.
I hurried up to them. “What’s wrong?”
Mate and Patria shrugged—they didn’t know—and before Doña Fefita could say, the guards shouted for us to move along.
We were not allowed to “congregate” in the prison yard, but down the road we stopped both cars. Doña Fefita began crying again as she recounted what had happened. She had arranged to buy the little house Manolo and I had lived in. But instead of being pleased, Manolo had snapped at her. Didn’t she know that the only way he was going to come home was in a box?
This made my legs go weak beneath me. But I couldn’t let my own devastation show. “Now Doña Fefita, he’s just worn out. That place—” I cast a glance over her shoulder.
My sisters joined in with their reassurances. “We’ve got to keep our spirits up for the men.” But when our eyes met, it was not a look of optimism that we exchanged.
Doña Fefita finally calmed down. “So, should I buy it, Minerva? Should I?”
It was hard for me to go against Manolo’s wishes. We had always decided things together. “Maybe… you should wait.”
She heard the hesitation in my voice and went on, more determined. “I’ll take it upon myself. I want you to have a place to go to when this is all over.”
She had put my feeling in words exactly. A place to go to when this is all over.
But her generosity was not allowed. A very short time later, I received notice to remove our possessions from the premises. The SIM were opening a new office in Monte Cristi.
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And so Dedé and I set out in the pickup on Monday morning to do as we were bid. Rufino was our driver, since Jaimito, short-handed, couldn’t take time off from the cacao harvest. He had not wanted Dedé to accompany me either, but she said she could not allow me to dismantle my house alone. We planned to be back Wednesday afternoon, in time for me to go with Mate
and Patria to La Victoria the next day. Ah, the busy life of house arrest! Peña had immediately granted me permission for the trip to Monte Cristi. After all, as head of the Northern SIM, he knew exactly why my old house needed to be vacated. He was probably the mastermind.
The drive north turned out to be one of those sunny moments that come even in the darkest days. My gloominess fell away as if we were on holiday. I hadn’t spent time alone with Dedé since we were cooped up in Ojo de Agua together, two young girls waiting for their lives to happen.
I knew she had mustered up all her courage to come along, the way she kept looking behind us when we first hit that isolated stretch of highway. But she soon settled down and was lively and talkative—as if to distract us from the sad mission we were on.
“Rufino,” I said, “wouldn’t Dedé make a great gavillera?” We were having a whistling contest, and Dedé had just won with a piercing trill.
“Gavillera, me! Are you crazy.” Dedé laughed. “I wouldn’t have lasted a day up in those hills. I would have given myself up to those good-looking gringos.”
“Gringos, good-looking? ¡Mujer!” I made a face. All I could think of was how they had deserted Viñas and his men. “They look like somebody stuck them in a bucket of bleach and forgot they were there. That goes for their passion, too!”
“How would you know about their passion?” Dedé challenged. “You’ve never even known a gringo. Or have you kept something from me, my dear?” She gave her shoulders a saucy shimmy. Rufino looked away.
“Why not let Rufino decide,” I said. “What do you think, Rufino? Are gringos good-looking?”
He smiled. Lines deepened on either side of his mouth. “A man doesn’t know if another man is handsome,” he said at last.
I found a way around that by invoking his wife. “Would Delisa say gringos are good-looking?”
His jaw tightened. “She had better keep her eyes to herself!”
Dede and I looked at each other and smiled.
Feeling happy, I congratulated myself on asking Dedé to come along. Now she’d see that her fears were unfounded. The roads were not full of murderers. As unreal as it seemed in the midst of our troubles, that glorious ordinary life went on without us. There was a campesino with his donkey loaded down with charcoal. There was a truck with its flatbed full of girls giggling and waving at us. There under the blue sky was the turquoise sea, sparkling with holiday promises.
Suddenly and incomprehensibly to us in our carefree state—just around a curve, a car was parked across the road. Rufino had to slam on the brakes, and Dedé and I were thrown against each other. Five calíes in dark glasses swarmed around the pickup and ordered us out of the cab.
I will never forget the terror on Dedé’s face. How she reached for my hand. How, when we were asked to identify ourselves, what she said was— I will never forget this—she said, “My name is Minerva Mirabal.”
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In Monte Cristi we were taken into a dim little guardhouse in back of the fort. I could see why they needed new quarters. The nervous man with worried eyes apologized for any discomfort. The escort had been a precaution. People had heard that Minerva Mirabal was coming to town today, and there were rumors that there might be some sort of commotion.
“Which one of you is Minerva Mirabal?” he asked, watching us through his cigarette smoke. The little finger on his left hand had a long, clawlike nail. I found myself wondering what it was for.
“I’m Minerva,” I said, looking firmly at Dedé. That old man at Missing Persons we’d met years back flashed through my head. If he could give all fifteen sons the same name, why not two Minervas in the Mirabal family?
Our interrogator glanced suspiciously from one to the other, then, addressed Dedé. “Why did you tell my men you were Minerva?”
Dedé could barely talk. “I… I … She’s my little sister ”
Little sister, indeed! I had never been Dedé’s little sister as far as character was concerned. It had always been the big problem between us.
The man watched us, waiting.
“She’s Minerva:‘ Dedé finally agreed.
“You’re certain of this, now?” the man asked without humor. He had sat back down, and was nervously flicking a lighter that would not light. Sizing him up, I employed a skill I had acquired in prison with my interrogators. I decided this jumpy little man could be cowed. He was trying too hard.
I pulled out our pass signed by Pena from my purse. As head of the Northern Division of the SIM, he was certainly this man’s superior. “Captain Pena has authorized this trip. I hope there will be no problems for us to report back to him.”
The paroxysm of blinking made me pity the poor man. His own terror was a window that opened onto the rotten weakness at the heart of Trujillo’s system. “No problems, no problems. Just precautions.”
As we waited outside for Rufino to bring the pickup around, I could see him through the door of his office. He was already on the phone—probably reporting our arrival to Pena. While he spoke, he was cleaning the wax out of his ear with his little finger. I felt somehow relieved to know what that nail was for.
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At the little house, Dedé had us all organized: this bunch of boxes to store at Doña Fefita’s; this bunch to take back with us; this pile to give away. I had to smile—she was still the same old Dedé, who stocked the shelves of the family store so neatly I always regretted having to sell anything.
Now she was in the kitchen-living room, making a clatter with the pots and pans. Every once in a while she’d come in with something in her hand. Mama had given me some of her furnishings when she had moved to the new house.
“I didn’t know you had this.” Dedé held up the dainty oil lamp, its pale rose chimney fluted like the petals of a flower. “Our old bedroom lamp, remember?” I had forgotten that Dedé and I once shared a room before Mate and I paired up.
Reminiscing with Dedé was better than facing the flood of memories in the front room. Law books lay piled in a corner. Everything had been strewn on the floor—the porcelain donkey, our framed law degrees, the seashells Manolo and I had found on Morro Beach. I had not anticipated how hard this would be. I kept wishing the SIM had ransacked the place the way they had Patria’s and carted off everything. This way was much crueler, making me face the waste of my life before me.
Here was the book of Martí’s poems Lío had dedicated to me. (“In memory of my great affection …”) And the little ship I had stolen for Mate. (What was it doing among my things?) And here was a yellowing newspaper with a picture of Lina Lovatón captioned with a poem by Trujillo. And a holy card from our pilgrimage to Higüey the time Patria claimed to have heard a voice. And a Nivea tin full of smelly ashes, probably from some Ash Wednesday when Mama had dragged me to church. I went to the door for a swallow of fresh air.
Early evening it was, the cool of the day. The little square looked like a tree full of crows. There must have been over a hundred people strolling, sitting on benches, idling in front of the little gazebo where rallies were held, and contests on holidays. It could have been Benefactor’s Day all over again except that everyone was dressed in black.
As I stood at the door, not fully comprehending the sight, the trucks began to roll in. Guardias unloaded. The clicking of their boots as they went into formation was the only sound. They surrounded the square.
I stepped out on the sidewalk. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. All strolling stopped. Suddenly, everyone faced me, and one totally quiet moment passed. Then almost as if at a signal, the crowd disbanded. Little groups began walking towards the side streets. In minutes the square was empty.
Not a shot had been fired, not a word said. The guardias stood uselessly around the empty square for a while longer. Finally, they climbed back into their trucks and roared away.
When I turned to go back inside, I was surprised to find Dedé at the door, a frying pan in her hand. I had to smile to myself. My big sister had been ready to march right out and bang a few heads if a massacre got started.
Back inside, the rooms were getting too dark to see. We wandered through the house, bumping into boxes, trying light switches, hoping to get a little more packing done. But the electricity had been cut off, and the oil lamp that had once lit the dark between our beds had already been packed away.
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Wednesday evening when we got back, we found Mate in a bad state. She had had her bad dream from Papá’s death. But this time, when she opened the lid of the coffin, Leandro and Manolo and Pedrito were inside. Every time she recounted it, she began to sob.
“You’re going to look awful tomorrow,” I warned, hoping to appeal to her vanity.
But Mate didn’t care. She cried and cried until at last we were all spooked.
To make matters worse, To Pepe appeared right after supper. His pickup was decked with paper flags and a banner proclaiming, WELCOME, JEFE, TO SALCEDO PROVINCE. The SIM let him right in.
“Quite a getup you have there,” I noted.
Tio Pepe nodded wordlessly. When the nieces and nephews began clamoring for the little flags on the pickup, he snapped at them. Their mouths dropped. They had never seen their jolly uncle cross.
“Time for bed,” Mama said, ushering her brood of grandchildren towards the bedrooms.
“Let’s get some air,” Tio Pepe suggested. Patria, Mate, and I grabbed our shawls and followed him outside.
Deep in the garden where we always went to talk, he told us about the gathering he’d just come from. There had been a reception honoring El Jefe at the mayor’s house. A list of all the people that Trujillo wanted to see there had been published in the local paper. Tio Pepe’s name had been on it.
“iEpa, tío!” I said. “Hobnobbing with the big guys.”
“He wanted me there because he knows I’m related to you.” Tio Pepe’s voice was only a whisper above the trilling of the cicadas.
From the house we could hear Mama getting the children ready for bed. “Put on your pajama bottoms right this minute!” No doubt she was scolding my little hellion. Without his father, that boy was growing up a handful.
“He’s by the big punch bowl, surrounded by his flies—you know how shit attracts flies. Forgive my foul mouth, girls, but nothing else fits this devil in human form. Surrounded by those men—you know, Maldonado and Figueroa and Lomares, and that Peña fellow. They’re all saying, ‘Ay, Jefe, you’ve done so much good for our province.’ ‘Ay, Jefe, you’ve raised strong morale after sanctions.’ ‘Ay, Jefe,’” Tío Pepe crooned to imitate the cronies. “El Jefe keeps nodding at this pile of horse shit, and finally he says, looking right at me—I’m standing at my post by the Salcedo farmers, filling up on those delicious pastelitos Florin makes—and he says, ‘Well, boys, I’ve really only got two problems left. If I could only find the man to resolve them.’
“Then he goes quiet, and I know and everyone else knows, we’re supposed to ask him what are those problems, and can we please be the men to resolve them. Sure enough, the biggest shit lover of all, Pena, says, Jefe, I am at your service. Just tell me your problems and I’ll give my life if need be—blah blah blah.‘ So El Jefe says, brace yourselves now. He says, looking straight at me, he says, ’My only two problems are the damn church and the Mirabal sisters.”‘
I felt the hair rising on my arms. Mate began to cry.
“Now, now, it’s no reason to get alarmed.” Tío Pepe tried to sound like his usual cheerful self. “If he was really going to do something, he wouldn’t have announced it. That’s the whole point. He was giving me a warning to deliver back to you.”
“But we aren’t doing anything,” Mate said in a weary voice. “We’re locked up here all week except for visiting the men. And it’s not like we don’t have permission from Pena himself.”
“Maybe—for a while, anyhow—you should think about not going out at all.”
So Trujillo was no longer saying Minerva Mirabal was a problem, but that all the Mirabal sisters were. I wondered whether Dedé would be implicated now that I had dragged her with me to Monte Cristi.
Patria hadn’t said a word the whole time. Finally she spoke up. “We can’t desert the men, Tío.”
Just then, the light from the children’s bedroom that gave on the garden went out. As we stood in the dark a while longer, calming ourselves, I had this eerie feeling that we were already dead and looking longingly at the house where our children were growing up without us.
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The next morning, Thursday, we stopped as required at SIM headquarters on our way down to La Victoria. Rufino came back to the car without the papers. “He wants to see you.”
Inside, Peña was waiting for us, the fat spider at the center of his web. “What’s wrong?” I asked the minute we sat down where he pointed. I
should have kept my mouth shut and let Patria do the talking.
“You don’t want to make a useless trip, do you?” He waited a long second for the grim possibilities of his statement to sink in.
My nerves were worn thin after the bad night we’d spent. I leapt up—and thank God, Peña’s desk was in the way, for I could have slapped the fat,
smug look off his face. “What have you done to our husbands?”
The door opened, a guard peeked in. I recognized Albertico, our village mechanic’s youngest boy. The look of concern was for us, not Pena. “I heard shouts,” he explained.
Peña whirled about at that. “What do you think, pendejo?, That I can’t manage a bunch of women by myself?” He shouted obscenities at the scared boy, and ordered him to close the door and to pay attention to his business or he’d have business on his hands he wouldn’t want to pay attention to.
The door closed immediately in a flurry of apologies.
“Sit, sit.” Peña motioned me impatiently towards the bench where my two sisters already sat, rigid, clutching their hands in silent prayer.
“You have to understand,” Patria said in a placating voice. “We’re worried about our husbands. Where are they, Captain?”
“Your husband”—he pointed to her—“is at La Victoria, I have your pass right here.”
With a trembling hand Patria took the paper he offered her. “And Manolo and Leandro?”
“They are being moved.”
“Where?” Mate asked, her pretty face perking up with ridiculous hope. “To Puerto Plata—”
“Why on earth?” I confronted Peña. I felt Patria squeezing my hand as if to say, watch that tone of voice, girl.
“Why, I thought you would be pleased. Less distance for the butterflies to travel.” Peña spoke with sarcastic emphasis. I wasn’t all that surprised he knew our code name the way people were bruiting it about. Still, I didn’t like the sound of it in his mouth. “Visiting days in Puerto Plata are Fridays,” Peña was explaining to the others. “If you women want to see your men more often, we can arrange for other days as well.”
Certainly there was something suspicious in his granting us these privileges. But all I felt was numb, resigned, sitting in that stuffy office. Not only was there nothing in the world we could do to save the men, there was nothing in the world we could do to save ourselves either.
Talk of the people, Voice of God November 25, 1960
The soldier was standing on the side of the road with his thumb out, dressed in a camouflage uniform and black, laced-up boots. The sky was low with clouds, a storm coming. On this lonely mountain road, I felt sorry for him.
“What do you say?” I asked the others.
We were evenly divided. I said yes, Mate said no, Patria said whatever.
“You decide,” we told Rufino. He was fast becoming our protector and guide. None of Bournigal’s other drivers would take us over the pass.
Mate had grown suspicious of everyone since Tio José’s visit. “He is a soldier,” she reminded us. On my side of the argument I added, “So? We’ll be all the safer.”
“He’s so young,” Patria noted as we approached the shoulder where he stood. It was just an observation, but it tipped the scales, and Rufino stopped to offer the boy a ride.
He sat in front with Rufino, twisting his cap in his hands. The uniform was too large, and the starched shoulders stuck out in crisp, unnatural angles. For a minute, it worried me that he seemed so uncomfortable, maybe he was up to something. But as I studied the closely cropped head and the boyish slenderness of his neck, I decided he was just not used to
riding around with ladies. So I made conversation, asking him what he thought of this and that.
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He was headed back to Puerto Plata after a three-night furlough to meet his newborn son in Tamboril. We offered him our congratulations, though I thought he was much too young to be a father. Or a soldier, for that matter. Someone was going to have to take in that uniform. Maybe we could do alterations in our new shop.
I remembered the camouflage fatigues I’d sewn for myself last November. Ages ago, it seemed now. The exercises I used to do to get in shape for the revolution! Back then, we believed we’d be in these mountains as guerrillas before the year was over.
And here it was late November, a year later, and we were riding over the pass in a rented Jeep to visit our husbands in prison. The three butterflies, two of them too skittish to sit next to the windows facing the steep drop just inches from the slippery road. One of them, just as scared, but back to her old habits of pretending there was nothing to fear, as el señor Roosevelt had said, but being afraid.
I made myself look down the side of the mountain at the gleaming rocks below. The dangerous possibilities, the fumes from the bad muffler, the bumpiness of the road—I felt a queasiness in my stomach. “Give me one of those Chiclets, after all,” I asked Mate. She’d been chomping on hers ever since we started to climb the mountain on this curving stretch of road.
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It was our fourth trip to see them since their transfer to Puerto Plata. We had left the children home this time. They’d already been on the previous Friday to see their daddies, and every one of them had gotten car sick on the way there and back. This mountain road made everyone queasy.
“Tell me something,” I asked the young soldier in the front seat. “What’s it like being posted in Puerto Plata?” The fort there was one of the biggest, most strategic in the country. Its walls stretched out gray and ominous for miles, and its spotlights beamed even into the Atlantic. It was a popular coast for invasions, therefore heavily guarded. “Have you seen any action yet?”
The young soldier half turned in his seat, surprised that a woman should interest herself in such things. “I just joined last February when the call went out. So far I’ve only done prison detail.”
I exchanged a glance with my sisters in the back seat. “You must get some important prisoners from time to time?”
Patria dug her elbow in my ribs, biting her lip so as not to smile.
He nodded gravely, wanting to impress us with his own importance as their guard. “Two politicals came just this last month.”
“What’d they do?” Mate asked in an impressed voice. The boy hesitated. “I’m not really sure.”
Patria took both Mate’s and my hands in her own. “Are they going to be executed, you think?”
“I don’t believe so. I heard they were going to be moved back to the capital in a few weeks.”
How odd, I thought. Why go to all the trouble of transferring the boys up north only to ship them back in a month? We had already decided on moving to Puerto Plata and opening a store, and this news would ruin that plan. But then, this was just a boy in a too-big uniform. What did he know?
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The storm started up about then. Rufino let down the canvas flaps and told the soldier how to do his side. We snapped the back panels in place. The inside of the Jeep grew dark and stuffy.
Soon the downpour was upon us. The heavy rain hit the canvas top with the sound of slaps. I could barely hear Patria or Mate talking, much less Rufino and the young soldier up front.
“Maybe we should think it over,” Patria was saying.
Before our prison visit today, we had planned to look at some rental houses Manolo’s friend Rudy and his wife Pilar had lined up for us. It had all been decided. We would be moving to Puerto Plata with the children by the first of December, opening up a little store at the front of the house. The reaction to our traveling had finally become too disturbing. Every time we left the house, people came out on the road and blessed us. When we got back, we felt obliged to blow the horn, as if to say, “We’re here, safe and sound!”
Dedé and Mamá got weepy every time we started out. “Those are just rumors,” I’d say, trying to comfort them.
“Talk of the people, voice of God,” Mama would answer, reminding me of the old saying.
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“Rufino, if it’s too bad, and you want to stop—” Patria had come forward in her seat. We could see that there was nothing to be seen out the front but sheets of water. “We can wait till the storm’s over.”
“No, no, don’t preoccupy yourselves.” Rufino was almost shouting to be heard above the pounding rain. Somehow, a yelled reassurance did not sound very reassuring. “We’ll be in Puerto Plata by noon.”
“Si Dios quiere,” she reminded him. “Si Dios quiere, he agreed.
It was reassuring to see the young soldier’s head nod in agreement—until he added, “God and Trujillo willing.”
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This was Patria’s first visit to see Manolo and Leandro since they’d been moved. Usually, on Thursdays, she was headed down to La Victoria to visit Pedrito with a regular ride that didn’t return until Friday midday. By that time Mate and I had already left for Puerto Plata, accompanied by one or the other of our mothers-in-law. Since the rumors had gotten so bad, both of them had virtually moved in with us. Their sons had made them promise they wouldn’t let us out of their sight. Those poor women.
The night before, Mate and I had been readying ourselves for our trip today, talking away, just the two of us. Patria was still in the capital, and Dedé’s little one was sick, and so she was home, taking care of him. Mate was doing my nails when we heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. Mate’s hand jerked, and I could see that she had painted the whole top of my thumb red.
We both tiptoed down the hall to the living room and found Mamá angling the jalousie just so. We all sighed with relief when we heard Patria’s voice, thanking her ride.
“And what are you doing traveling at this time of night!” Mama scolded before poor Patria was even in the door.
“I got a ride back tonight with Elsa,” Patria explained. “There were five already in the car. But she was nice enough to squeeze me in. I’ve been wanting to go see the boys.”
“We’ll discuss that in the morning,” Mamá said in her nonnegotiable voice, herding us out of the room by flipping off the lights.
In our bedroom, Patria was full of talk about Pedrito. “Ay, Dios mío, that man was so romantic today.” She raised her arms over her head and stretched in that full-bodied way of cats.
“iEpa!” Mate egged her on.
She smiled a pleased, dreamy smile. “I told him I wanted to see the boys tomorrow, and he gave me his permission.”
“Patria Mercedes!” I was laughing. “You asked for his permission? What can he do from prison to stop you?”
Patria gave me a quizzical look, as if the answer were obvious. “He could have said, no, you can’t go.”
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Next morning, we had Mama almost convinced that the three of us would be just fine traveling by ourselves when Dedé rushed in, breathless. She looked around at the signs of our imminent departure. Her eye fell on Patria, putting on her scarf. “And what are you doing here?” she asked. Before Patria could explain, Rufino was at the door. “Any time you ladies are ready. Good day,” he said, nodding towards Mama and Dedé. Mama murmured her good days, but Dedé gave the chauffeur the imperious look of a mistress whose servant has disobeyed her wishes.
“All three of you are going?” Dedé was shaking her head. “What about Dona Fefita? Or Dona Nena?”
“They need a rest,” I said. I didn’t add that we’d be house-hunting today. We hadn’t told our mothers-in-law or Mama or—Lord knows!—Dedé about our plans yet.
“Why, Mama, with all due respect, are you mad to let them go alone?” Mamá threw up her hands. “You know your sisters,” was all she said. “How handy,” Dedé said with heavy sarcasm, pacing the room. “How
very very handy for the SIM to have all three of you sitting pretty in the
back seat of that rundown Jeep with a storm brewing in the north. Maybe I should just give them a call. Why not?”
Rufino was at the door again.
“We should go,” I said, to spare him having to say it again.
“La bendición,” Patria called, asking for Mama’s blessing.
“La bendicón, mis hijas. Mama turned abruptly, as if to hide the worry on her face. She headed towards the bedrooms. As we went out, I could hear her scolding the children, who were wailing with disappointment at not being taken on our outing.
Dedé stood by the Jeep, blocking our way. “I’m going crazy with worrying. I’ll be the one locked up forever, you’ll see. In the madhouse!” There was no self-mockery in her voice.
“We’ll come visit you, too,” I said, laughing. But then seeing her teary, unhappy face, I added, “Poor, poor Dede.” I took her face in my two hands. I kissed her goodbye and then climbed into the Jeep.
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We were at the counter paying for the purses. The very correct young salesclerk was taking his time, and the manager had already been by once to hurry him along. With infinite patience the clerk folded the straps just so, located each purse at the center of the brown parcel paper he painstakingly tore from the roll, and commenced creasing the edges. I watched his hands working, mesmerized. This must be how God does things, I thought, as if He has all the time in the world.
We had asked permission for this brief detour to El Gallo on our way to Puerto Plata today. Our sewing supplies were low again, and we needed thread in several colors, seam bindings, and ribbons to complete November’s orders. The drive over the mountain was long. If our nerves cooperated, we could catch up on some of the hand sewing today.
When we went to pay, the salesclerk showed us a new shipment of Italian purses. Mate mooned over one in red patent leather with a snap in the shape of a heart. But of course, she wouldn’t think of such an extravagance. “Unless—” She looked up at us. Patria and I were also examining the display case. There was a practical black bag with innumerable zippered pockets and compartments just perfect for Patria’s goodwill supplies. Then I spotted a smart leather envelope that would be exactly the thing for a young lawyer to carry. An investment in hope, I thought.
“Shall we?” We looked at each other like naughty schoolgirls. We hadn’t bought ourselves a single thing since before prison. We should, Mate decided. She did not want to be the only one splurging. I didn’t need much talking into, but at the last minute, Patria desisted. “I just can’t. I don’t really need it.” I felt a flicker of anger at her for her goodness that I didn’t want—at this moment—to live up to.
As he wrapped Mate’s first, the man kept his head bowed. But for one fleeting instant, I caught his eyes on us and a look of recognition dawning on his face. How many people—on the street, in church, on the sidewalks, in shops like this one—knew who we were?
“New purses. A sign of good luck coming!” Somebody else waiting for the future, I thought. I felt a flush of embarrassment to be caught shopping when I should have been plotting a revolution.
Rufino came in the store from the sidewalk where he was parked. “We better get started. The rainstorm looks like it’s coming and I want to be over the worse part of the pass by then.”
The young man looked up from his wrapping. “You aren’t planning to go over the pass today, are you?”
My stomach clenched. But then, I thought, the more people know, the better. “We always go Fridays to Puerto Plata to see the men,” I told him.
The floor manager came forward, smiling falsely at us, but throwing meaningful looks his attendant’s way. “Finish up there, you don’t want to delay the ladies.” The young man hurried off and was back momentarily with our change. He finished wrapping my purse.
As he handed it over, the attendant gave me an intent look. “Jorge Almonte,” he said, or something like that. “I put my card in your purse if there should ever be any need.”
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The rain let up just as we came upon La Cumbre, the lonely mountain village that had grown up around one of Trujillo’s seldom-used mansions.
Too isolated, some people said. El Jefe’s two-story concrete house sat on top of the mountain above a cluster of little palm huts that seemed to be barely holding on to the cliff. We craned our necks every time we went by. What did we think we’d see? A young girl brought here for a forced rendezvous? The old man himself walking around his grounds, beating the side of his shiny boots with a riding crop.
The iron gateway blazed its five stars above the gleaming T. As we passed, our young soldier passenger saluted, though no guards were in sight.
We drove by shabby palm huts. The one time we had stopped here to stretch our legs the whole little village had gathered, offering to sell us anything we might want to buy. “Things are bad,” the villagers complained, looking up towards the big house.
Rufino pulled over and rolled up the side flaps. A welcome breeze blew in, laden with the smells of damp vegetation. “Ladies,” Rufino asked us, before climbing back in, “if you’d like to stop?”
Patria was sure she did not want to stop. This was her first time, and the road was a little spooky until you got used to it.
Just as we were rounding the curve—on that stretch where the house shows the most from the road, I glanced up. “Why, look who’s there!” I said, pointing to the big white Mercedes that sat by the front door.
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All three of us knew at the same instant what it meant. An ambush lay ahead! Why else was Pena at La Cumbre? We had seen him just this morning in Santiago when we picked up our permissions. Patria’s chatty friend had made no mention of being headed in our direction.
We could not turn around now. Were we being followed? We stuck our heads out the window to see what lay behind as well as ahead.
“I give myself to San Marco de León,” Patria intoned, repeating the prayer for desperate situations. I found myself mouthing the silly words.
Panic was rising up from my toes, through my guts, into my throat. The thunder in my chest exploded. Mate was already wheezing, searching through her purse for her medication. We sounded like a mobile sanatorium.
Rufino slowed. “Shall we stop at the three crosses?” Up ahead on a shoulder were three white crosses marking the casualties from a recent accident. Suddenly, it loomed in my head as the place for an ambush. The last place we should stop.
“Keep on going, Rufino ;‘ I said, and I took great swallows of the cool air that was blowing in on us.
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To divert ourselves, Mate and I began moving the contents of our old purses into our new ones. The card of Jorge Almonte, Attendant, EL GALLO, found its way to my hand. The gold rooster logo crowed from the upper right-hand comer. I turned the card over. The words were written in big block letters in a hurried hand: “Avoid the pass.” My hand shook. I would not tell the others. It could only make things worse, and Mate’s asthma had just begun to calm down.
But in my own head I was working it all out: it was a movie scene that became suddenly, terrifyingly real. This soldier was a plant. How foolish we’d been, picking him up on this lonely country road.
I began chatting him up, trying to catch him in a lie. What time was he due at the fort and why had he hitched rather than caught a ride in an army truck? Finally, he turned around halfway in his seat. I could see that he was afraid to speak.
I’ll coax it out of him, I thought. “What is it? You can tell me.”
“You ask more questions than mi mujer when I get home,” he blurted out.
His color deepened at the rude suggestion that I could be like his wife.
Patria laughed and tapped my head with a gloved hand. “That coco fell right on your head.” I could see she, too, felt surer of him now.
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The sun broke through the clouds, and shafts of light shone like blessings on the far valley. The arc of His covenant, I thought. I will not destroy my people. We had been silly, letting ourselves believe all those crazy rumors.
To entertain us, Mate began telling riddles she was sure we hadn’t heard. We humored her. Then Rufino, who collected them, knowing how much Mate loved them, offered a new one to her. We began to descend towards the coast, the roadside growing more populous, the smell of the ocean in the air. The isolated little huts gave way to wooden houses with freshly painted shutters and zinc roofs advertising Ron Bermúdez on one side, Dios y Trujillo on the other.
Our soldier had been laughing loudly at the riddles he always guessed wrong. He had one of his own to contribute. It turned out to be much nastier than any of Mate‘s!
Rufino was indignant. “A Dio’, are you forgetting there are ladies in the car?”
Patria leaned forward, patting a hand on each man’s shoulder. “Now, Rufino, every egg needs a little pepper.” We all laughed, glad for the release of the pent-up tension.
Mate crossed her legs, jiggling them up and down. “We’re going to have to stop soon unless you quit making me laugh.” She was famous for her tiny bladder. In prison, she’d had to practice holding it in since she didn’t like going out to the latrine with strange guards in the middle of the night.
“Everybody serious,” I ordered, “because we sure can’t stop here.”
We were at the outskirts of the city now. Brightly colored houses sat prettily in their kempt plots, side by side. The rain had washed the lawns, and the grasses and hedges shone emerald green. Everything was a fresh joy to see. Groups of children played in puddles on the street, scattering as the Jeep approached, so as not to be sprayed. An impulse seized me. I called out to them, “We’re here, safe and sound!”
They stopped their play and looked up. Their baffled little faces did not know what to make of us. But I kept waving until they waved back. I felt giddy, as if I’d been granted a reprieve from my worse fears. When Mate needed a piece of paper for her discarded Chiclet, I pulled out Jorge’s card.
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Manolo was upset at his mother for letting us come alone. “She promised me she wouldn’t let you out of her sight.”
“But, my love,” I said, folding my hands over his, “reason it out. What could Doña Fefita do to protect me even if I were in danger?” I had a brief, ludicrous picture of the old, rather heavy woman banging a SIM calie over the head with her ubiquitous black purse.
Manolo pulled and pulled at his ear, a nervous habit he had developed in prison. It moved me to see him so nakedly affected by his long months of suffering. “A promise is a promise,” he concluded, still aggrieved. Oh dear, there would be words next time, and then Doña Fefita’s tears all the way home.
Manolo’s color had started to come back. This was definitely a better prison, brighter, cleaner than La Victoria. Every day, our friends Rudy and Pilar sent over a hot meal, and after they ate, the men were allowed to walk around in the prison yard for a half hour. Leandro, the engineer, joked that he and Manolo could have mashed at least a ton of sug arcane by now if they’d been rigged up with a harness like a team of oxen.
We sat around in the little yard where they usually brought us during our visits if the weather was good. Unaccountably, after the bad storm, the sun had come out in the late afternoon. It shone on the barracks, painted a pea- green, amoeba-shaped camouflage that looked almost playful; on the storybook towers with flags flying in a row; on the bars gleaming brightly, as if someone had taken the time to polish them. If you didn’t let yourself think what this place was, you could almost see it in a promising light.
Tentatively, Patria brought up the topic. “Have you been told anything about being moved back?”
Leandro and Manolo looked at each other. A worried look passed between them. “Did Pedrito hear something?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Patria soothed them. And then she looked to me to bring up what the young soldier had reported in the car, that two “politicals” would be going back to La Victoria in a few weeks.
But I did not want to worry them. Instead I began to describe the perfect little house we’d seen earlier. Patria and Mate joined in. What we didn’t tell the men was that we had not rented the house, after all. If they were going to be moved back to La Victoria, there was no use. The big white Mercedes parked at the door of La Cumbre crossed my mind. I leaned forward, as if to leave its image physically at the back of my mind.
We heard the clanging of doors in the distance. Footsteps approached, there were shouted greetings, the click and slap of gun salutes. The guard was changing.
Patria opened her purse and withdrew her scarf. “Ladies, the shades of night begin to fall, the wayfarer hurries home …”
“Nice poetry.” I laughed to lighten the difficult moment. I had such a hard time saying goodbye.
“You’re not going back tonight?” Manolo looked shocked at the idea. “It’s too late to start out. I want you to stay with Rudy and Pilar and head back tomorrow.”
“I touched his raspy cheek with the back of my hand. He shut his eyes, giving himself to my touch. ”You mustn’t worry so. Look how clear that sky is. Tomorrow we’ll probably have another bad storm. We’re better off going home this evening.“
We all looked up at the deepening, golden sky. The few low-lying clouds were moving quickly across it—as if heading home themselves before it got too dark.
I didn’t tell him the real reason why I didn’t want to stay with his friends. Pilar had confided in me as we drove around looking at houses that Rudy’s
business was about to collapse. She did not have to say it, but I guessed why. We had to put more distance between us, for their sake.
Manolo held my head in both his hands. I wanted to lose myself in his sad dark eyes. “Please, mi amor. There are too many rumors around.”
I reasoned with him. “If you gave me a peso for every premonition, dream, admonition we’ve been told this month, we’d be able to—”
“Buy ourselves another set of purses.” Mate held hers up and nodded for me to hold up mine.
Then, there was the call, “Time!” The guards closed in, their flat, empty faces showing us no consideration. “Time!”
We stood, said our hurried goodbyes, our whispered prayers and endearments. Remember … Don’t forget … Dios te bendiga, mi amor. A final embrace before they were led away. The light was falling quickly. I turned for a last look but they had already disappeared into the barracks at the end of the yard.
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We stopped at the little restaurant-gas pump on the way out of town. The umbrellas had all been taken down in preparation for night, and only the little tables remained. Since Mate and Patria were thirsty and wanted a refreshment, I went and made the call. The line was busy.
I paced back and forth in front of the phone the way one does to remind someone ahead that others are waiting. But neither Mamá nor Dedé could know that I was waiting for them to get off the line.
“Still busy,” I came back and told my sisters.
Mate picked up her new purse and mine from the extra chair. “Sit with us, come on.” But I couldn’t see how I could sit. I guess it was getting to me, listening to everyone’s worries.
“Give it another five minutes,” Patria suggested. It seemed reasonable enough. In five minutes whoever was on would be off the line. If not, it was
a sure sign that one of the children had left the phone off the hook and who knew when Tono or Fela would discover it.
Rufino leaned against the back of the Jeep, his arms crossed. Every so often, he’d look up at the sky—checking the time.
“I think maybe I will have a beer,” I said at last.
“iEpa!” Mate said. She was drinking her lemonade through a straw, daintily like a girl, trying to make the sweet pleasure last. We would be stopping at least once more on the road. I could see that.
“Rufino, can I get you one?” He looked away, a sign that indeed he would like a cold beer but was too shy to say so. Off I went to the bar for our two Presidentes. I tried the number again while the obliging proprietor dug up his two coldest ones from the bottom of the deep freeze.
“Still busy,” I told our little table when I got back.
“Minerva!” Patria shook her head. “That wasn’t five minutes.”
The afternoon was deepening towards evening. I felt the cooler air of night blowing off the mountain. We had not brought our shawls. I imagined Mama just now seeing them, draped brightly on the backs of chairs, and going to the window once again to watch for car lights.
Undoubtedly, she would pass the phone. She would see it was off the hook. She would heave a sigh and replace it in its cradle. I went back to try one more time.
“I give up,” I said when I came back. “I think we should just go.”
Patria looked up at the mountain. Behind it was another one and another one, but then we would be home. “I feel a little uneasy. I mean that road is so—deserted.”
“It’s always that way,” I informed her. The veteran mountain-pass traveler.
Mate finished the last of her drink and sucked the sugar through the straw, making a rude sound. “I promised Jacqui I’d tuck her in tonight.” Her voice had a whiny edge. Mate had not been separated from her baby overnight since we’d come home from prison.
“What do you say, Rufino?” I asked him.
“We can make it to La Cumbre before dark, for sure. From there, it’s all downhill. But it’s up to you,” he added, not wanting to express a preference. Surely, his own bed with Delisa curled beside him was better than a little cot in the tiny servant’s room at the back of Rudy and Pilar’s yard. He had a baby, too. It struck me I had never asked him how old the child was, boy or girl.
“I say we go,” I said, but I still read hesitancy in Patria’s face.
Just then, a Public Works truck pulled into the station. Three men got out. One veered off behind the building to the smelly toilet we had been forced to use once and swore never again. The other two came up to the counter, shaking their legs and pulling at their crotches, the way men getting out of cars do. They greeted the proprietor warmly, giving him half-arm abrazos over the counter. “How are you, compadre? No, no, we can’t stay. Pack us up a dozen of those pork fries over there—in fact, hand us a couple to eat right now.”
The proprietor talked with the men as he filled their order. “Where you headed at this hour, boys?”
The driver had taken a large bite of the fried rind in his hand. “Truck needs to be in Tamboril by dark.” He spoke with his mouth full, licking his greasy fingers when he was done and then tweezing a handkerchief out of his back pocket to wipe himself. “Tito! Where is that Tito?” He turned around and scanned the tables, his eye falling on us. We smiled, and he took his cap off and held it to his heart. The flirt. Rufino straightened up protectively from his post next to the car.
When Tito came running from behind the pumps, his buddies were already inside the truck, gunning the motor. “Can’t a man shit in peace?” he called out, but the truck was inching forward, and he had to execute a tricky mount on the passenger’s running board. I was sure they had performed the maneuver before for a lady or two. They honked as they pulled out into the road.
We looked at each other. Their lightheartedness made us all feel safer somehow. We’d be following that truck all the way to the other side of the
mountains. Suddenly, the road was not so lonesome.
“What do you say?” I said, standing up. “Shall I try one more time?” I looked towards the phone.
Patria closed her purse with a decisive snap. “Let’s just go.”
We moved quickly now towards the Jeep, hurrying as if we had to catch up with that truck. I don’t know quite how to say this, but it was as if we were girls again, walking through the dark part of the yard, a little afraid, a little excited by our fears, anticipating the lighted house just around the bend—
That’s the way I felt as we started up the first mountain.
