‌CHAPTER SIX

Minerva

1949

‌khat do you want, Minerva Mirabal?

‌3ummer

I know the rumor that got started once I’d been living at home a few years. That I didn’t like men. It’s true that I never paid much attention to the ones around here. But it wasn’t that I didn’t like them. I just didn’t know I was looking at what I wanted.

For one thing, my nose was always in a book. Love was something I had read would come. The man I’d love would look like the poet in a frontispiece, pale and sad with a pen in his hand.

For another thing, Papa discouraged boyfriends. I was his treasure, he’d say, patting his lap, as if I were a girl in a jumper instead of a woman of twenty-three in the slacks he objected to my wearing in public.

“Papá,” I’d say. “I’m too old for that.”

One time he offered me anything if I would sit on his lap. “Just come here and whisper it in my ear.” His voice was a little thick from drinking. I sat right down and swooped to my prize. “I want to go to the university, Papa, please.”

“Now, now,” he said as if I were all worked up about something. “You wouldn’t want to leave your old Papa, would you?”

“But Papa, you’ve got Mamá;‘ I argued.

His face went blank. We both listened for Mama stirring in the front of the house near where we sat. Maria Teresa was off at school, Dede was newly married, Patria two times a mother. And here I was, a grown woman sitting on my father’s lap. “Your mother and I …” he began, but thought better of continuing. Then he added, “We need you around.”

 

 

Three years cooped at home since I’d graduated from Inmaculada, and I was ready to scream with boredom. The worse part was getting newsy letters from Elsa and Sinita in the capital. They were taking a Theory of Errors class that would make Sor Asunción’s hair stand on end even under her wimple. They had seen Tin-Tan in Tender Little Pumpkins, and been to the country club to hear Alberti and his band. And there were so many nice- looking men in the capital!

I’d get restless with jealousy when Papa brought their letters back from the Salcedo post office. I’d jump in the Jeep and roar off into the countryside, my foot pressing heavily down on the gas as if speed could set me free. I’d drive further and further out, pretending to myself that I was running away to the capital. But something always made me turn the car around and head back home, something I’d seen from the corner of my eye.

 

 

One afternoon, I was on one of these getaway rampages, racing down the small side roads that spiderweb our property. Near the northeast cacao groves, I saw the Ford parked in front of a small, yellow house. I tried to figure out what campesino family lived there, but I couldn’t say I had ever met them.

So I made it my business to take that back road frequently, keeping an eye out. Every time I drove the Ford, these raggedy girls came running after

me, holding out their hands, calling for mints.

I studied them. There were three that ran to the road whenever they heard the car, a fourth one sometimes came in the arms of the oldest. Four girls, I checked, three in panties, and the baby naked. One time, I stopped at the side of the road and stared at their Mirabal eyes. “Who is your father?” I asked point blank.

They had been bold, clamoring kids a moment before. Now, spoken to by a lady in a car, they hung their heads and looked at me from the comers of their eyes.

“Do you have a brother?” I asked more gently.

It was a delicious revenge to hear them murmur, “No, señora.” Pap.A was not going to get the son he wanted, after all!

A little later the woman came sauntering from her house, her hair just combed out from rollers and too much of something on her face. When she saw me, her face fell. She scolded the kids as if that was what she’d come for. “I told you not to bother the cars!”

“They’re not bothering anything,” I defended them, caressing the baby’s cheek.

The woman was looking me over. I suppose she was taking inventory, what I had, what she didn’t have, doing the simple arithmetic and, perhaps a few days later, exacting some new promise from Papa.

Everywhere I looked, I kept seeing those four raggedy girls with Papá’s and my own deep-set eyes staring back at me. “Give me, give me!” they cried. But when I asked them, “What do you want?” they stood, mute, their mouths hanging open, not knowing where to start.

 

 

Had they asked me the same thing, I would have stared back, mute, too.

What did I want? I didn’t know anymore. Three years stuck in Ojo de Agua, and I was like that princess put to sleep in the fairy tale. I read and

complained and argued with Dedé, but all that time I was snoring away.

When I met Lío, it was as if I woke up. The givens, all I’d been taught, fell away like so many covers when you sit up in bed. Now when I asked myself, What do you want, Minerva Mirabal? I was shocked to find I didn’t have an answer.

All I knew was I was not falling in love, no matter how deserving I thought Lío was. So what? I’d argue with myself. What’s more important, romance or revolution? But a little voice kept saying, Both, both, I want both. Back and forth my mind went, weaving a yes by night and unraveling it by day to a no.

As always happens, your life decides for you anyway. Lío announced he was seeking asylum out of the country. I was relieved that circumstances would be resolving things between us.

Still, when he left, I was hurt that he hadn’t even said goodbye. Then I started worrying that his silence meant he had been caught. Out of the comers of my eyes, I kept seeing Lio himself! He was not a pretty sight. His body was bruised and broken as if he had endured all the tortures in La Fortaleza he had ever described to me. I was sure I was having premonitions that Lio had not escaped after all.

Mama, of course, noticed the tightening in my face. My bad headaches and asthma attacks worried her. “You need rest,” she prescribed one afternoon and sent me to bed in Papá’s room, the coolest in the house. He was off in the Ford for his afternoon review of the farm.

I lay in that mahogany bed, tossing this way and that, unable to sleep. Then, something I hadn’t planned. I got up and tried the door of the armoire. It was locked, which wasn’t all that strange as the hardware was always getting stuck. Using one of my bobby pins, I popped the inside spring and the door sprang open.

I ran my hand along Papá’s clothes, releasing his smell in the room. I stared at his new fancy guayaberas and started going through the pockets. In the inside pocket of his dress jacket, I found a packet of papers and pulled them out.

Prescriptions for his medicines, a bill for a Panama hat he’d been wearing around the farm, a new, important look for him. A bill from El Gallo for seven yards of gingham, a girl’s fabric. An invitation from the National Palace to some party. Then, four letters, addressed to me from Lio!

I read them through hungrily. He hadn’t heard from me about his proposal to leave the country. (What proposal?) He had arranged for me to come to the Colombian embassy. I should let him know through his cousin Mario. He was waiting for my answer—next letter. Still no answer, he complained in a third letter. In the final letter, he wrote that he was leaving that afternoon on the diplomatic pouch plane. He understood it was too big a step for me at the moment. Some day in the future, maybe. He could only hope.

It seemed suddenly that I’d missed a great opportunity. My life would have been nobler if I had followed Lío. But how could I have made the choice when I hadn’t even known about it? I forgot my earlier ambivalence, and I blamed Papa for everything: his young woman, his hurting Mamá, his cooping me up while he went gallivanting around.

My hands were shaking so bad that it was hard to fold the letters into their envelopes. I stuffed them in my pocket, but his bills and correspondence I put back. I left the doors of the armoire gaping open. I wanted him to know he had been found out.

 

 

Minutes later, I was roaring away in the Jeep without a word to Mamá. What would I have said? I’m going to find my good-for-nothing father and drag him back?

I knew where to find him all right. Now that Papa was doing so well, he had bought a second car, a Jeep. I knew damn well he wasn’t reviewing the fields if he had taken the Ford, not the Jeep. I headed straight for that yellow house.

When I got there, those four girls looked up, startled. After all, the man they always expected was already there, the car parked in back where it

couldn’t be seen from the road. I turned into the dirt path and crashed into the Ford, making the bumper curl up and shattering the window in back. Then I came down on that horn until he appeared, shirtless and furious in the doorway.

He took one look at me and got as pale as an olive-skinned man can get. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. “What do you want?” he said at last.

I heard the little girls crying, and I realized my own face was wet with tears. When he came forward, I gave a warning honk and wildly backed out of the path and into the road. A pickup coming around the curve veered and ran into the ditch—plantains, oranges, mangoes, yucca spilling all over the road. That didn’t stop me, no. I stepped on the gas. From the comer of my eye I saw him, a figure growing smaller and smaller until I left him behind me.

 

 

When I got home, Mama met me at the door. She eyed me, and she must have known. “Next time, you don’t leave this house without saying where you’re going.” We both knew her scold was meaningless. She hadn’t even asked where I’d been.

Papa returned that night, his face drawn with anger. He ate his supper in silence as if his review of the farm had not gone well. As soon as I could without making Mama more suspicious, I excused myself. I had a throbbing headache, I explained, heading for my room.

In a little while, I heard his knock. “I want to see you outside.” His voice through the door was commanding. I threw water on my face, combed my hands through my hair, and went out to Papa.

He led me down the drive past the dented Ford into the dark garden. The moon was a thin, bright machete cutting its way through patches of clouds. By its sharp light I could see my father stop and turn to face me. With his shrinking and my height, we were now eye to eye.

There was no warning it was coming. His hand slammed into the side of my face as it never had before on any part of my body. I staggered back, stunned more with the idea of his having hit me than with the pain exploding in my head.

“That’s to remind you that you owe your father some respect!”

“I don’t owe you a thing,” I said. My voice was as sure and commanding as his. “You’ve lost my respect.”

I saw his shoulders droop. I heard him sigh. Right then and there, it hit me harder than his slap: I was much stronger than Papá, Mamá was much stronger. He was the weakest one of all. It was he who would have the hardest time living with the shabby choices he’d made. He needed our love.

“I hid them to protect you,” he said. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I realized he must have discovered the letters missing from his coat pocket.

“I know of at least three of Virgilio’s friends who have disappeared.”

So he was going to pass this off as my fury over his taking my mail. And I knew that in order to go on living under the same roof, I would have to pretend this was our true difference.

 

 

That fancy invitation I found in Papá’s pocket caused another uproar—this time from Mamá. It was an invitation to a private party being thrown by Trujillo himself in one of his secluded mansions three hours away. A handwritten note at the end requested that la señorita Minerva Mirabal not fail to show.

Now that Papá had become rich, he got invited to a lot of official parties and functions. I always went along as Papa’s partner since Mamá wouldn’t go. “Who wants to see an old woman?” she complained.

“Come on, Mamá,” I argued. “You’re in your prime. A mujerona of fifty- one.” I snapped my fingers, jazzing up Mamá’s life. But the truth was,

Mama looked old, even older than Papa with his dapper new hat and his linen guayaberas and his high black boots, and a debonair cane that seemed more a self-important prop than a walking aid. Her hair had gone steel gray, and she pulled it back in a severe bun that showed off the long-suffering look on her face.

This time, though, Mama didn’t want me to go either. The note at the end scared her. This wasn’t an official do but something personal. In fact, after the last big party, a colonel friend had visited Jaimito’s family asking after the tall, attractive woman Don Enrique Mirabal had brought along. She had caught El Jefe’s eye.

Mama wanted to get me a medical excuse from Doctor Lavandier. After all, migraines and asthma attacks weren’t against the law, were they?

“Trujillo is the law,” Papa whispered, as we all did nowadays when we pronounced the dreaded name.

Finally, Mama relented, but she insisted Pedrito and Patria go along to take care of me, and Jaimito and Dedé go to make sure Patria and Pedrito did their job. María Teresa begged to go, too. But Mama wouldn’t hear of it. Expose another young, single daughter to danger, ¡No, señorita! Besides, Maria Teresa couldn’t go to night parties until her quinceañera next year.

Poor Mate cried and cried. As a consolation prize, I offered to bring her back another souvenir. Last time at the party at Hotel Montana, we all got paper fans with the Virgencita on one side and El Jefe on the other. I kept making Maria Teresa turn the fan around when she sat in front of me, fanning herself. Sometimes it was El Jefe’s probing eyes, sometimes it was the Virgin’s pretty face I couldn’t stand to look at.

 

 

With the party a week away, Papá had to get the Ford fixed. The president of our local branch of Trujillo Tillers couldn’t very well arrive at El Jefe’s house in a Jeep. It seemed pretty appropriate to me, but having banged up Papá’s beauty it wasn’t for me to disagree.

While the Ford was at the shop, I drove Papá to his doctor’s appointments in San Francisco. It was sad how the richer he got, the more his health deteriorated. He was drinking too much, even I could see that. His heart was weak and his gout made it painful sometimes for him to move around. Doctor Lavandier had him on treatments twice a week. I’d drop him off, then visit with Dedé and Jaimito at their new ice cream shop until it was time to pick him up.

One morning, Papa told me to go on home. He had some errands to run after his appointment. Jaimito would drive him back later.

“We can run them together,” I offered. When he looked away, I guessed what he was up to. Several days ago, I had driven out to the yellow house and found it all boarded up. Of course! Papá hadn’t broken with this woman but merely moved her off the grounds and into town.

I sat, facing forward, not saying a word.

Finally, he admitted it. “You have to believe me. I only go to see my children. I’m not involved with their mother anymore.”

I waited for things to settle down inside me. Then I said, “I want to meet them. They’re my sisters, after all.”

I could see he was moved by my acknowledging them. He reached over, but I was not ready yet for his hugs. “I’ll be back to pick you up.”

We drove down narrow streets, past row on row of respectable little houses. Finally we came to a stop in front of a pretty turquoise house with the porch and trim painted white. There they were, awaiting Papá, four little girls in look-alike pale yellow gingham dresses. The two oldest must have recognized me, for their faces grew solemn when I got out of the car.

The minute Papá was on the sidewalk, they darted towards him and dug the mints out of his pockets. I felt a pang of jealousy seeing them treat Papá in the same way my sisters and I had.

“This is my big girl, Minerva,” he introduced me. Then, putting a hand on each one’s head, he presented them to me. The oldest, Margarita, was about ten, then three more with about three years’ difference between them down to the baby with her pacifier on a dirty ribbon round her neck. While

Papá went inside the house with an envelope, I waited on the porch, asking them questions they were too shy to answer.

As we were leaving, I saw the mother peeking at me from behind the door. I beckoned for her to come out. “Minerva Mirabal,” I said, offering her my hand.

The woman hung her head and mumbled her name, Carmen something. I noticed she was wearing a cheap ring, the adjustable kind that children buy at any street corner from the candy vendors. I wondered if she was trying to pass herself off as a respectable married lady in this, one of the nicer barrios of San Francisco.

As we drove back to Ojo de Agua, I was working out what had been happening ten years back that might have driven Papa into the arms of another woman. Patria, Dedé, and I had just gone away to Inmaculada Concepción, and Maria Teresa would have been all of four years old. Maybe, I told myself, Papa had missed us so much that he had gone in search of a young girl to replace us? I looked over at him and instantly he looked my way.

“That was very fine of you,” he said, smiling hesitantly.

“I know the clouds have already rained,” I said, “but, Papa, why did you do it?”

His hands gripped his cane until his knuckles whitened. “Cosas de los hombres,” he said. Things a man does. So that was supposed to excuse him, macho that he was!

Before I could ask him another question, Papa spoke up. “Why’d you do what you just did?”

Quick as my reputation said my mouth was, I couldn’t come up with an answer, until I remembered his own words. “Things a woman does.”

And as I said those words my woman’s eyes sprang open.

All the way home I kept seeing them from the comers of my eyes, men bending in the fields, men riding horses, men sitting by the side of the road,

their chairs tipped back, nibbling on a spear of grass, and I knew very well I was looking at what I wanted at last.

‌Discovery Day Dance October 12‌

By the time we find the party, we’re an hour late. All the way here Papá and Pedrito and Jaimito have been working out the details of their story. “You say how we started out early this morning to give us plenty of time, and then you say we didn’t know the way.” Papa assigns the different facts to his sons-in-law

“And you”—he looks around at me in the back seat—“you keep quiet.” “You don’t have to plan anything when you’re telling the truth,” I remind

them. But no one listens to me. Why should they? They’re probably

thinking I got them into this.

Here is the truth. We arrived in San Cristóbal late this afternoon and got a room at the local hotel and changed. By then, our dresses were a mess from riding around on our laps all day. “The worse you look, the better for you,” Patria said when I complained that I looked like I’d gotten here on a donkey.

Then we climbed back in the car and drove forever. As a man who always knows where he’s going, Jaimito couldn’t very well stop to ask for directions. Soon we were lost on the back roads somewhere near Baní. At a checkpoint, a guardia finally convinced Jaimito that we were going the wrong way. We headed back, an hour late.

Jaimito parks the Ford at the end of the long driveway, facing the road. “In case we have to take off quickly,” he says in a low voice. He’s been a bundle of nerves about this whole outing. I guess we all have.

It’s a hike to the house. Every few steps we have to stop at a checkpoint and flash our invitation. The driveway is well lit, so at least we can see the

puddles before we splash into them. It’s been raining on and off all day, the usual October hurricane weather. This year, though, the rains seem more severe than ever, everyone says so. My theory is that the god of thunder Huracán always acts up around the holiday of the Conquistador, who killed off all his Taino devotees. When I suggest this to Patria as we walk up the drive, she gives me her pained Madonna look. “Ay, Minerva, por Dios, keep that tongue in check tonight.”

Manuel de Moya is pacing back and forth at the entrance. I recognize him from the last party, and of course his picture is always in the papers. “Secretary of state,” people say, winking one eye. Everyone knows his real job is rounding up pretty girls for El Jefe to try out. How they get talked into it, I don’t know. Manuel de Moya is supposed to be so smooth with the ladies, they probably think they’re following the example of the Virgencita if they bed down with the Benefactor of the Fatherland.

Papa starts in on our explanation, but Don Manuel cuts him off. “This is not like him. The Spanish ambassador has been waiting.” He checks his watch, holding it to his ear as if it might whisper El Jefe’s whereabouts. “You didn’t see any cars on the way?” Papa shakes his head, his face full of exaggerated concern.

Don Manuel snaps his fingers, and several officers rush forward for instructions. They are to keep a sharp lookout while he escorts the Mirabals to their table. We wonder at this special attention, and Papa begs Don Manuel not to go to so much bother. “This,” he says, offering me his arm, “is all my pleasure.”

We go down a long corridor, and into a courtyard hung with lanterns. The crowd hushes as we enter. The band leader stands up but then sits back down when he realizes it’s not El Jefe. Luis Alberti moved his whole orchestra from the capital just to be on call at Casa de Caoba. This is supposed to be El Jefe’s favorite party mansion, where he keeps his favorite of the moment. At the last few parties the excited gossip in the powder rooms has been that at present the house is vacant.

Only one reserved table is left in front of the dais. Don Manuel is pulling out chairs for everybody, but when I go to sit down next to Patria, he says,

“No, no, El Jefe has invited you to his table.” He indicates the head table on the dais where a few dignitaries and their wives nod in my direction. Patria and Dedé exchange a scared look.

“It is really quite an honor,” he adds when he notes my hesitation. Across the table Papa is still standing. “Go on, my daughter. You are keeping Don Manuel waiting.”

I give Papa an angry look. Has he lost all his principles?

From my vantage point at the raised table, I look around. In keeping with Discovery Day, the whole courtyard has been outfitted like one of Columbus’ ships. On each table there is a clever centerpiece—a little caravel with tissue sails and lighted candles for masts, a perfect souvenir for Mate. I size it up but decide it won’t fit in my purse.

Dedé catches my eye, smiling only after a lag of a second, for we have to seem pleased. She touches her glass and gives me the slightest nod. Don’t drink anything you are offered, the gesture reminds me. We’ve heard the stories. Young women drugged, then raped by El Jefe. But what could Dedé be thinking? That Trujillo is going to drug me right here in front of a crowd?! Then what? Manuel de Moya will drag me off to a waiting black Cadillac. Or will there be two waiting black Cadillacs, one with a leering look-alike? That’s another story. Security has introduced a double as a protective measure to confuse any would-be assassins. I roll my eyes at Dedé, and then, as she glares at me, I lift my glass in a reckless toast.

As if it were a signal, everyone rises to their feet, lifting their glasses. There is a stir at the entrance, newspapermen swarming, flashbulbs popping. A crowd presses around him, and so I don’t see him until he’s almost at our table. He looks younger than I remember him from our performance five years ago, the hair darkened, the figure trim. It must be all that pega palo we hear he’s been drinking, a special brew his brujo cooks up to keep him sexually potent.

After the toast, the Spanish ambassador presents this illustrious descendant of the great Conquistador with yet another medal. There is some question about where to pin it on the cluttered sash that crosses his chest. Chapita, the underground boys call him. Lío has told me that the nickname

comes from El Jefe’s childhood habit of stringing bottle caps across his chest to look like medals.

At long last, we settle down to our plates of cold sancocho. Surprisingly, El Jefe does not sit next to me. I feel more and more puzzled as to my role this evening at this table. To my left, Manuel de Moya commences reminiscing about his New York modeling days. The story is Trujillo met him on one of those shopping trips he periodically makes to the States to order his elevator shoes, his skin whiteners and creams, his satin sashes and rare bird plumes for his bicorn Napoleonic hats. He hired the model right on the spot. A tall, polished, English-speaking, white Dominican to decorate his staff.

My right-hand partner, an aging senator from San Cristóbal compliments the stew and points to an attractive, blond woman seated to Trujillo’s left. “My wife,” he boasts, “half Cuban.”

Not knowing what to say, I nod, and lean over to pick up the napkin I dropped when I stood up for El Jefe’s entrance. Under the tablecloth, a hand is exploring the inner folds of a woman’s thigh. I work it out and realize it is Trujillo’s hand fondling the senator’s wife.

 

 

The tables are pushed back and the music starts, though I wonder that they don’t just move the party indoors. There is a strong breeze, announcing rain. Every once in a while, a gust topples a glass or caravel, and there’s a loud crash. The soldiers patrolling the edges of the party reach for their guns.

The floor remains empty as it must until El Jefe has danced the first dance.

He rises from his chair, and I am so sure he is going to ask me that I feel a twinge of disappointment when he turns instead to the wife of the Spanish ambassador. Lío’s words of warning wash over me. This regime is seductive. How else would a whole nation fall prey to this little man?

God help him! Where is he right now? Was he granted asylum by the embassy or was he caught and locked up in La Fortaleza as my premonitions keep telling me? My head throbs as my imagination dashes here and there, trying to find him safe haven.

“Could I have the honor?” Manuel de Moya is standing at my side.

I shake my head. “Ay, Don Manuel, what a headache I have.” I feel a little glee at being able to legitimately refuse him.

A cloud of annoyance crosses his face. But in a flash, he is all good manners. “We must get you a calmante then.”

“No, no,” I wave him off. “It will pass if I sit here quietly.” I stress quietly. I do not want to make conversation with Don Manuel about my headache.

When he goes off, I look over at our table. Patria lifts her eyebrows as if asking, “How are you holding up?” I touch my forehead and close my eyes a moment. She knows how I am suffering from headaches these days. “Tension,” Mama says, and sends me away from the store for extra naps.

Patria comes up to the platform with a whole packet of calmantes. Always the mother, that one. She’s got a handkerchief in that purse should someone sneeze, a mint to keep a child happy, a rosary in case anyone wants to pray.

I start to tell her about the hanky-panky I saw under the table, but the pervasive Manuel de Moya is beside us again. He has brought a waiter with a glass of water and two aspirin on a little silver tray. I open my hand and disclose my own pills. Don Manuel’s face falls.

“But I do need more water,” I say to show some gratitude. He presents the glass with so much ceremony, my gratitude dissolves like the pills in my stomach.

Later, at the table, I listen to him make idle conversation with the old senator about the various ailments they have both suffered. Every once in a while he checks to see if my headache is any better. Finally, after the third time, I answer him with what I know he wants. “Let’s try the country cure,”

I say, and I verify that he is not a man to trust when he asks, “What cure is that?”

 

 

We dance several sets, and sure enough, as the campesinos say, Un clavo saca otro clavo. One nail takes out another. The excited rhythm of Alberti’s “Fiesta” overwhelms the pulsing throb of my headache. And whatever else he is, Manuel de Moya is a terrific dancer. I keep throwing my head back and laughing. When I look over at our table, Patria is studying me, not quite sure what to make of my pleasure.

Everything happens very fast then. A slow bolero starts, and I feel myself being led towards where Trujillo is now dancing with the attractive, blond wife of the old senator. When we are abreast of them, Manuel de Moya lets go of my hand and opens up our couple. “Shall we visit?” he asks me, but it is El Jefe who nods. The blond woman pouts as she is whisked away. “A visit is not a long stay,” she reminds El Jefe, flashing her eyes at him over Manuel de Moya’s shoulder.

I stand a moment, my arms at my sides, feeling the same stagefright of five years back. El Jefe takes my hand. “May I have the pleasure?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, but pulls me to him. The smell of his cologne is overpowering.

His hold is proprietary and masculine, but he is not a good dancer. All firmness, and too many flourishes. A couple of times, he steps on my foot, but he does not excuse himself. “You dance very well,” he says gallantly. “But then women from El Cibao make the best dancers and the best lovers,” he whispers, tightening his hold. I can feel the moisture of his breath on my ear.

“And your last partner, was she from El Cibao?” I ask, encouraging conversation so he has to draw back a little. I have to check myself from saying, A visit is not a long stay, you know.

He holds me out in his arms, his eyes moving over my body, exploring it rudely with his glances. “I am speaking of the national treasure in my

arms,” he says, smiling.

I laugh out loud, my fear dissipating, a dangerous sense of my own power growing. “I don’t feel very much like a national treasure.”

“And why not, a jewel like you?” His eyes sparkle with interest. “I feel like I’m wasting my life in Ojo de Agua.”

“Perhaps we can bring you down to the capital,” he says archly.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to convince Papa to do. I want to go to the university,” I confess, playing this man against my own father. If El Jefe says he wants me to study, Papa will have to let me. “I’ve always wanted to study law.”

He gives me the indulgent smile of an adult hearing an outrageous claim from a child. “A woman like you, a lawyer?”

I play on his vanity, and so, perhaps, become his creature like all the others. “You gave the women the vote in ‘42. You encouraged the founding of the women’s branch of the Dominican party. You’ve always been an advocate for women.”

“That I have.” He grins a naughty grin. “A woman with a mind of her own. So you want to study in the capital, eh?”

I nod decisively, at the last minute softening the gesture with a tilt of my head.

“I could see our national treasure then on a regular basis. Perhaps, I could conquer this jewel as El Conquistador conquered our island.”

The game has gone too far. “I’m afraid I’m not for conquest.”

“You already have a novio?” This can be the only explanation. Even so, engagement, marriage—such things make a conquest more interesting. “A woman like you should have many admirers.”

“I’m not interested in admirers until I have my law degree.”

A look of impatience crosses his face. Our tête-à-tête is not following its usual course. “The university is no place for a woman these days.”

“Why not, Jefe?”

He seems pleased by my referring to him by his affectionate title of Chief. By now, we are so immersed in conversation we are barely dancing. I can feel the crowd watching us.

“It’s full of communists and agitators, who want to bring down the government. That Luperón mess, they were in back of it.” His look is fierce

—as if the mere mention had summoned his enemies before him. “But we’ve been teaching those teachers their lessons all right!”

They must have caught him! “Virgilio Morales?” I blurt out. I can’t believe my own ears.

His face hardens, suspicion clouds the gaze. “You know Virgilio Morales?”

What a complete idiot I am! How can I now protect him and myself? “His family is from El Cibao, too,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I know the son teaches at the university.”

El Jefe’s gaze is withdrawing further and further into some back room of his mind where he tortures meaning out of the words he hears. He can tell I’m stalling. “So, you do know him?”

“Not personally, no,” I say in a little voice. Instantly, I feel ashamed of myself. I see now how easily it happens. You give in on little things, and soon you’re serving in his government, marching in his parades, sleeping in his bed.

El Jefe relaxes. “He is not a good person for you to know He and the others have turned the campus into a propaganda camp. In fact, I’m thinking of closing down the university.”

“Ay, Jefe, no,” I plead with him. “Ours is the first university in the New World. It would be such a blow to the country!”

He seems surprised by my vehemence. After a long look, he smiles again. “Maybe I will keep it open if that will draw you to our side.” And then literally, he draws me to him, so close I can feel the hardness at his groin pressing against my dress.

I push just a little against him so he’ll loosen his hold, but he pulls me tighter towards him. I feel my blood burning, my anger mounting. I push away, a little more decidedly, again he pulls me aggressively to his body. I push hard, and he finally must let me go.

“What is it?” His voice is indignant.

“Your medals,” I complain, pointing to the sash across his chest. “They are hurting me.” Too late, I recall his attachment to those chapitas.

He glares at me, and then slips the sash over his head and holds it out. An attendant quickly and reverently collects it. El Jefe smiles cynically. “Anything else bother you about my dress I could take off?” He yanks me by the wrist, thrusting his pelvis at me in a vulgar way, and I can see my hand in an endless slow motion rise—a mind all its own—and come down on the astonished, made-up face.

 

 

And then the rain comes down hard, slapping sheets of it. The table-cloths are blown off the tables, dashing their cargo onto the floor. The candles go out. There are squeals of surprise. Women hold their beaded evening bags over their heads, trying to protect their foundering hairdos.

In a minute, Manuel de Moya is at our side directing guards to escort El Jefe indoors. A tarp is extended over us. “Qué cosa, Jefe,” Don Manuel laments, as if this inconvenience of nature were his fault.

El Jefe studies me as attendants dab at his dripping pancake. Annoyed, he pushes their hands away. I brace myself, waiting for him to give the order. Take her away to La Fortaleza. My fear is mixed oddly with excitement at the thought that I will get to see Lío if he, too, has been captured.

But El Jefe has other plans for me. “A mind of her own, this little cibaeña!” He smirks, rubbing his cheek, then turns to Don Manuel. “Yes, yes, we will adjourn indoors. Make an announcement.” As his private guards close around him, I break away, struggling against the sea of guests

rushing indoors out of the rain. Ahead, Dedé and Patria are turning in all directions like lookouts on the mast of a ship.

“We’re going,” Patria explains, grabbing my arm. “Jaimito’s gone to get the car.”

“I don’t like this one bit,” Papá is saying, shaking his head. “We shouldn’t go without El Jefe’s permission.”

“His designs are so clear, Papá.” Patria is the oldest, and so in Mamá’s absence, her words carry weight. “We’re exposing Minerva by staying here.”

Pedrito looks up at the blowing lanterns. “The party is breaking up anyway, Don Enrique. This rain is a perfect excuse.”

Papá lifts his shoulders and lets them fall. “You young people know what you do.”

We make a dash for the covered entryway, passing a table with a caravel still standing. No one will miss it, I think, hiding the little ship in the folds of my skirt. That’s when I remember. “Ay, Patria, my purse. I left it at the table.”

We run back to get it, but can’t find it anywhere. “Probably somebody already took it in. They’ll send it to you. Nobody is going to steal from El Jefe’s house,” Patria reminds me. The caravel goes heavy in my hand.

By the time we run back to the entryway, the Ford is idling at the door and the others are already inside. Out on the highway, I recall the slap with mounting fear. No one has mentioned it, so I’m sure they didn’t see it. Given everyone’s nerves already, I decide not to worry them with the story. Instead, to distract myself—One nail takes out another—I go over the contents of my purse, trying to assess exactly what I’ve lost: my old wallet with a couple of pesos; my cédula, which I will have to report; a bright red Revlon lipstick I bought at El Gallo; a little Nivea tin Lío gave me with ashes of the Luperón martyrs not killed at sea.

And then, I remember them in the pocket of the lining, Lío’s letters!

All the way home, I keep going over and over them as if I were an intelligence officer marking all the incriminating passages. On either side of me, my sisters are snoring away. When I lean on Patria, wanting the release of sleep, I feel something hard against my leg. A rush of hope goes through me that my purse is not lost after all. But reaching down, I discover the little caravel sunk in the folds of my damp dress.

‌Rainy 3pell

The rain comes down all morning, beating against the shutters, blurring the sounds inside the house. I stay in bed, not wanting to get up and face the dreary day.

A car comes splashing into the driveway. Grim voices carry from the parlor. Governor de la Maza is just now returning from the party. Our absence was noted, and of course, leaving any gathering before Trujillo is against the law. El Jefe was furious and kept everyone till well after dawn— perhaps to show up our early departure.

What to do? I hear their worried voices. Papa takes off with the governor to send a telegram of apology to El Jefe. Meanwhile, Jaimito’s father is calling on his colonel friend to see how the fire can be put out. Pedrito is visiting the in-laws of Don Petán, one of Trujillo’s brothers, who are friends of his family. Whatever strings can be pulled, in other words, are being yanked.

Now all we can do is wait and listen to the rain falling on the roof of the house.

When Papa returns, he looks as if he has aged ten years. We can’t get him to sit down or tell us what exactly happened. All day, he paces through the house, going over what we should do if he is taken away. When hours pass, and no guardias come to the door, he calms down a little, eats some of his favorite pork sausages, drinks more than he should, and goes to bed exhausted at dusk. Mama and I stay up. Every time it thunders we jump as if guards had opened fire on the house.

 

 

Next day, early, while Papa is out seeing what damage this last storm has done on the cacao crop, two guardias arrive in a Jeep. Governor de la Maza wants to see Papa and me immediately.

“Why her?” Mama points to me. The officer shrugs.

“If she goes, I go,” Mama asserts, but the guard has already turned his back on her.

At the governor’s palace, we are met right away by Don Antonio de la Maza, a tall, handsome man with a worried face. He has received orders to send Papa down to the capital for questioning.

“I tried to handle it here”—he shows us his palms—“but the orders have come from the top.”

Papa nods absently. I have never seen him so scared. “We… we sent the telegram.”

“If he goes, I go.” Mamá pulls herself up to her full bulk. The guardias finally had to let her come this morning. She stood in the driveway refusing to get out of the way.

Don Antonio takes Mama by the arm. “It will be better all the way around if we follow orders. Isn’t that so, Don Enrique?”

Papa looks like he’ll agree to anything. “Yes, yes, of course. You stay here and take care of things.” He embraces Mama, who breaks down, sobbing in his arms. It’s as if her years and years of holding back have finally given way.

When it’s my turn, I give Papá a goodbye kiss as we’ve gotten out of the habit of hugs since our estrangement. “Take care of your mother, you hear,” he whispers to me and in the same breath adds, “I need you to deliver some money to a client in San Francisco.” He gives me a meaningful look. “Fifty pesos due at the middle and end of the month until I’m back.”

“You’ll be back before you know it, Don Enrique,” the governor assures him.

I look over at Mama to see if she’s at all suspicious. But she is too upset to pay attention to Papa’s business dealings.

“One last thing,” Papá addresses the governor. “Why did you want to see my daughter, too?”

“Not to worry, Don Enrique. I just want to have a little talk with her.”

“I can trust her then to your care?” Papa asks, looking the governor squarely in the eye. A man’s word is a man’s word.

Absolutely. I make myself responsible.“ Don Antonio gives the guardias a nod. The audience is over. Papa is taken out of the room. We listen to their steps in the corridor before they’re drowned by the sound of the rain outside, still coming down hard.

Mamá watches Don Antonio like an animal waiting to attack if her young one is threatened. The governor sits down on the edge of his desk and gives me a befriending smile. We have met a couple of times at official functions, including, of course, the last few parties. “Señorita Minerva,” he begins, motioning Mama and me towards two chairs a guard has just placed before him. “I believe there is a way you can help your father.”

 

 

“¡Desgraciado!” Mamá is going on and on. I’ve never heard such language coming out of her mouth. “He calls himself a man of honor!”

I try to calm her. But I’ll admit I like seeing this spunk in Mama.

We are driving around in the rain in San Francisco, getting our last- minute errands done before we leave for the capital this afternoon to petition for Papá’s release. I drop Mama off at the clínica to get extra doses of Papá’s medication, and I head for the barrio.

But the turquoise house with the white trim isn’t where it used to be. I’m turning here and there, feeling desperate, when I catch a glimpse of the

oldest girl, holding a piece of palm bark over her head and wading through the puddles on the street. The sight of her in her wet, raggedy dress tears my own heart to shreds. She must be on an errand, a knotted rag in her free hand, a poor girl’s purse. I honk, and she stops, terrified. Probably, she’s remembering the time I rammed into our father’s car, blowing the horn.

I motion for her to come in the car. “I’m trying to find your mother,” I tell her when she climbs in. She stares at me with that same scared look Papa wore only a couple of hours ago.

“Which way?” I ask her, pulling out on the street. “That way.” She motions with her hand. “Right?”

She looks at me, not understanding. So, she doesn’t know directions. Can she read, I wonder? “How do you spell your name, Margarita?” I test her.

She shrugs. I make a mental note that once I’m back, I’m going to make sure these girls are enrolled in school.

In a few turns we are at the little turquoise house. The mother runs out on the porch, clutching the collar of her dress against the rain blowing in. “Is Don Enrique all right?” A doubt goes through my head as to whether my father’s assurances that he’s no longer involved with this woman are true. That cleaving look in her eye is not just memory.

“He’s been called away on urgent business,” I tell her more sharply than I meant to.

Then, softening, I hand her the envelope. “I’ve brought you for the full month.”

“You are so kind to think of us.”

“I do want to ask you for a favor,” I say, though I hadn’t meant to ask her now.

She bites her lip as if she knows what I’m going to ask her. “Carmen Maria, at your orders,” she says in the smallest of voices. Her daughter

looks up quizzically. She must be used to a much fiercer version of her mother.

“The girls are not in school, are they?” A shake of her head. “May I enroll them when I get back?”

The look on her face is relieved. “You’re the one who knows,” she says. “You know as well as I do that without schooling we women have even

fewer choices open to us.” I think of my own foiled plans. On the other

hand, Elsa and Sinita, just starting their third year at the university, are already getting offers from the best companies.

“You are right, señorita. Look at me. I never had a chance.” She holds out her empty hands, then looking at her eldest, she adds, “I want better for my girls.”

I reach for her hand, and then it seems natural to continue the gesture and give her the hug I’ve refused Papa all month.

 

 

Luckily, the rain lets up for our drive to the capital. When we get there, we stop at each of the three hotels Don Antonio de la Maza wrote down. If no official charge has been made, Papá won’t be jailed but put under house arrest at one of these hotels. When we’re told at the final stop, Presidente, that no Enrique Mirabal has been registered, Mamá looks as if she is ready to cry. It’s late, and the palace offices will be closed, so we decide to get a room for the night.

“We have a special weekly rate,” the man offers. He is thin with a long, sad face.

I look over at Mamá to see what she thinks, but as usual, she doesn’t say a word in public. In fact, this afternoon with Don Antonio was the first time I ever saw Mama stand up for herself, or actually, for me and Papa. “We don’t know if we’ll need it for a whole week,” I tell the man. “We’re not sure if my father is being charged or not.”

He looks from me to my mother and back to me. “Get the weekly rate,” he suggests in a quiet voice. “I’ll return the difference if you stay a shorter time.”

The young man must know these cases are never quickly resolved. I write out the registration card, pressing down hard as he commands. The writing must go through all four copies, he explains.

One for the police, one for Internal Control, one for Military Intelligence, and one last one the young man sends along, not sure where it goes.

 

 

A day made in hell, sitting in one or another office of National Police Headquarters. Only the steady pounding of rain on the roof is gratifying, sounding as if old Huracán were beating on the building for all the crimes engineered inside.

We end up at the Office of Missing Persons to report what is now being described as the disappearance of Enrique Mirabal. The place is packed. Most people have been here hours before the office opened to get a good place in line. As the day wears on, I overhear case after case being described at the interrogation desk. It’s enough to make me sick. Every so often, I go stand by the window and dab rainwater on my face. But this is the kind of headache that isn’t going to go away.

Finally, towards the end of the day, we are the next in line. The petition right before ours is being filed by an elderly man reporting a missing son, one of his thirteen. I help him fill out his form since he isn’t any good at his letters, he explains.

“You are the father of thirteen sons?” I ask in disbelief.

“Sí, señora,” the old man nods proudly. At the tip of my tongue is the question I burn to ask him, “How many different mothers?” But his troubles make all other considerations fall away. We get to the part where he has to list all his children.

“What’s the oldest one’s name?” I ask, pencil poised to write.

“Pablo Antonio Almonte.”

I write out the full name, then it strikes me. “Isn’t this the name of the missing son, and you said he’s number three?”

In confidence, the old man tells me that he gave all thirteen sons the same name to try to outwit the regime. Whichever son is caught can swear he isn’t the brother they want!

I laugh at the ingenuity of my poor, trapped countryman. I put my own ingenuity to work, coming up with a dozen names from my reading, because, of course, I don’t want to give the sons any real Dominican names and get someone in trouble. The head officer has a time reading them. “Fausto? Dimitri? Pushkin? What kind of a name is that?” I’m summoned to help since the old man can’t read what I wrote. When I finish, the suspicious officer points to the old man, who is nodding away at the names I’ve read off. “You say them now.”

“My memory,” the old man complains. “There are too many.”

The officer narrows his eyes at him. “How do you call your sons, then?”

“Bueno, oficial,” the cagey old man says, turning and turning his som brero in his hands, “I call them all, mijo.” Son, that’s what he calls them all.

I smile sweetly, and the decorated chest puffs out. He wants to get on to new game. “We’ll do what we can, compay,” he promises, stamping the form before him and readily accepting the “fee” of rolled-up pesos.

Now it’s our turn, but unfortunately, the head officer announces that the office is closing in five minutes. “We’ve waited so long,” I plead to my guard.

“Me, too, all my life to meet you, señorita. So don’t break my heart. Come back tomorrow.” He looks me up and down, flirting. This time I do not smile back.

I’ve shot myself in the foot is what I’ve done by helping out the old Don Juan. Prolonging his audience, I lost us ours today.

Mama sighs when I tell her that we have to come back tomorrow. “Ay, m’ijita,” she says. “You’re going to fight everyone’s fight, aren’t you?”

“It’s all the same fight, Mamá,” I tell her.

 

 

Early next morning, we wake up to a banging at our room door. Four heavily armed guards inform me that I am to be taken to headquarters for questioning. I try to calm Mama, but my own hands are shaking so bad I can’t button up my dress.

At the door, Mama informs the guards that if I go, she goes, too. But these are a meaner breed than the ones up north. When she tries to follow me out, a guard blocks her way with a thrust of his bayonet.

“No need for that,” I say, lifting the bayonet. I reach over and kiss my mother’s hand. “Mamá, la bendición,” I say, the way I used to as a child before going off to school.

By now, Mamá is sobbing. “Dios te bendiga,” she sniffles, then reminds me, “Watch your you-know-what!” I realize she no longer means just my mouth.

 

 

I am back at the National Police Headquarters, an office we did not see yesterday. The room is breezy and light, a top floor. Someone in charge.

A courtly, white-haired man comes forward from behind his desk. “Welcome,” he says, as if I were here for a social call.

He introduces himself, General Federico Fiallo. And then indicates someone behind me I did not notice when I walked in. I don’t know how I could have missed him. He is as close to a toad as a man can look. A heavy- set mulatto with mirrored dark glasses that flash my own scared look back at my face.

“Don Anselmo Paulino,” the general introduces him. Everyone knows about Magic Eye. He lost an eye in a knife fight, but his remaining good

eye magically sees what everyone else misses. In the last few years, he’s risen to be Trujillo’s right-hand man by the dirty “security” work he’s willing to do.

My empty stomach is churning with dread. I steel myself, recalling face after suffering face I saw yesterday just downstairs. “What do you want with me?”

The general smiles in a kindly way. “I’m keeping you standing, señorita,” he apologizes, ignoring my question. The kindness gives way a moment when he snaps his fingers and curtly admonishes the guardias for not putting out chairs for his guests. Once the toad and I are seated, the general turns back to his desk. “You must look on me as your protector. Young ladies are the flowers of our country.”

He opens the file before him. From where I sit, I can see the pink registration slip from the hotel. Then a number of sheets of paper I recognize as Lío’s letters from my purse.

“I am here to ask you some questions about a young man I believe you are acquainted with.” He looks squarely at me. “Virgilio Morales.”

I feel ready—as I wasn’t before—to risk the truth. “Yes, I know Virgilio Morales.”

Magic Eye is at the edge of his chair, the veins on his neck showing. “You lied to El Jefe. You claimed you didn’t know him, didn’t you?”

“Now, now, Don Anselmo,” the elderly general soothes. “We don’t want to scare the young lady, now do we?”

But Magic Eye doesn’t observe such fine distinctions. “Answer me,” he orders. He has lit a cigar. Smoke pours from his nostrils like a dark nosebleed.

“Yes, I denied knowing him. I was afraid”—again I choose my words carefully—“of displeasing El Jefe.” It is just short of an apology. All I will give.

General Fiallo and Paulino exchange a significant glance. I wonder how there can be any communication between those ancient milky eyes and

those dark glasses.

The general picks up a page from the folder and peruses it. “What is the nature of your relationship with Virgilio Morales, Senorita Minerva?”

“We were friends.”

“Come, come,” he says, coaxing me as if I were a stubborn child. “These are love letters.” He holds up a sheaf of papers. Dios mío, has everyone in this country been reading my mail except me?

“But you must believe me, we were just friends. If I’d been in love with him, I would have left the country as he wanted me to.”

“True,” the general concedes. He looks over at Magic Eye, who is stubbing his cigar on the sole of his boot.

“Were you not aware, Senorita Minerva, that Virgilio Morales is an enemy of state?” Magic Eye intervenes. He has put the extinguished cigar back in his mouth.

“I wasn’t involved in any treasonous activity if that’s what you’re asking.

He was just a friend, like I said.”

“And you are not in communication with him now?” Magic Eye again is taking over the interview. The general raises a perturbed eyebrow. After all this is his breezy office, his top floor, his pretty prisoner.

The truth is that I did write to Lio after I found his letters. But Mario couldn’t deliver my note as no one really knows to this day where Lio is. “No, I am not in communication with Virgilio Morales.” I address my remark to the general even though the question came from Magic Eye.

“That’s what I like to hear.” The general turns to Magic Eye. “We have another little matter to discuss, Don Anselmo. Not relating to security.” He smiles politely, dismissing him. Magic Eye flashes his dark glasses at the general a second, then stands, and sidles to the door. I notice he has never given his back to us.

General Fiallo now begins chatting about the days he spent posted in El Cibao, the beauty of that region, the lovely cathedral in the square. I am wondering where all this is going, when a door opens across from the one

we entered by. Manuel de Moya, tall and dapper, sporting a Prince of Wales ascot.

“Good morning, good morning,” he says cheerfully as if we’re all about to go on safari. “How are things?” He rubs his hands together. “Don Federico, how are you?” They exchange pleasantries a moment, and then Don Manuel looks approvingly at me. “I had a word with Paulino in the hall as he was leaving. It seems Señorita Minerva has been quite cooperative. I am so glad.” He addresses me sincerely. “I hate to see ladies in any kind of distress.”

“It must be difficult for you,” I acknowledge. He does not catch the sarcasm in my voice.

“So you thought you might be displeasing El Jefe by admitting to a friendship with Virgilio Morales?” I nod. “I’m sure it would mean a great deal to our Benefactor to hear that you have his pleasure in mind.”

I wait. I can tell from hanging around these guys that there is bound to be more.

“I believe Don Antonio has already spoken to you?” “Yes,” I say, “he did.”

“I hope you will reconsider his offer. I’m sure General Fiallo would agree”—General Fiallo is already nodding before any mention has been made of what he is agreeing to—“that a private conference with El Jefe would be the quickest, most effective way to end all this nonsense.”

“Sí, sí, sí,” General Fiallo agrees.

Don Manuel continues. “I would like to bring you personally to him tonight at his suite at El Jaragua. Bypass all this red tape.” He gestures towards the general, who smiles inanely at his own put-down.

I stare at Manuel de Moya as if pinning him to the wall. “I’d sooner jump out that window than be forced to do something against my honor.”

Manuel de Moya plunges his hands in his pockets and paces the room. “I’ve tried my best, señorita. But you must cooperate a little bit. It can’t all be your way.”

“What I’ve done wrong, I’m willing to acknowledge, personally to El Jefe, yes.” I nod at the surprised secretary. “But surely, my father and mother can come along as fellow sufferers in my error.”

Manuel de Moya shakes his head. “Minerva Mirabal, you are as complicated a woman as … as …” He throws up his hands, unable to finish the comparison.

But the general comes up with it. “As El Jefe is a man.”

The two men look at each other, weighing something heavy in their heads.

 

 

Since I am not bedding down with him, it is three more weeks before El Jefe can see us. As far as we can tell, Mama and I are under arrest since we aren’t allowed to leave the hotel to go home and wait there. Pedrito and Jaimito have come and gone a dozen times, petitioning here, visiting a friend with pull there. Dedé and Patria have taken turns staying with us and arranging for our meals.

When the day of our appointment finally arrives, we are at the palace early, eager to see Papa, who has just been released. He is such a pitiful sight. His face is gaunt, his voice shaky; his once fancy guayabera is soiled and hangs on him, several sizes too large. He and Mamá and I embrace. I can feel his bony shoulders. “How have they treated you?” we ask him.

His eyes have a strange absence in them. “As well as can be expected,” he says. I notice he does not look directly at us when he answers.

We already know from Dedé and Patria’s searches that Papa has been in the prison hospital. The diagnosis is “confidential,” but we all assumed his ulcers were acting up. Now we learn Papa suffered a heart attack in his cell the Wednesday after he was arrested, but it wasn’t till the following Monday that he was allowed to see a doctor. “I’m feeling much better.” His thin hands pleat his trousers as he talks. “Much much better. I just hope the music hasn’t spoiled the yuccas while I’ve been gone.”

Mama and I look at each other and then at Papa. “How’s that, Enrique?” Mama asks gently.

“Every time there’s a party, half the things in the ground spoil. We’ve got to stop feeding the hogs. It’s all human teeth anyhow.”

It’s all I can do to keep up the pretense that Papá is making sense. But Mamá’s sweetness enfolds him and coaxes him back. “The hogs are doing very well on palm fruit, and we haven’t grown yuccas since this one here was a little girl. Don’t you remember, Enrique, how we used to be up till all hours on harvest days?”

Papá’s eyes light up, remembering. “The first year you wanted to look pretty for me, so you wore a nice dress to the fields. By the time we finished, it looked like the sackcloth the yuccas were in!” He is looking directly at her, smiling.

She smiles at him, her eyes glistening with tears. Her fingers find his hand and hold tight, as if she were pulling him up from an edge she lost him to years back.

 

 

El Jefe does not bother to look up as we enter. He is going over a stack of papers with several nervous assistants, his manicured hands following the words being read out to him. He learned his letters late, so the story goes, and refuses to look at anything over a page long. In the offices around him, official readers go through thick reports, boiling the information down to the salient paragraph.

Behind him on the wall, the famous motto: MY BEST FRIENDS ARE MEN WHO WORK. What about the women who sleep with you? I ask in my head.

Manuel de Moya shows us our seats in front of the large mahogany desk. It is a disciplined man’s desk, everything in neat stacks, several phones lined up on one side beside a board with labeled buzzers. A panel of clocks ticks away. He must be keeping time in several countries. Right in front of

me stands a set of scales like the kind Justice holds up, each small tray bearing a set of dice.

Trujillo scribbles a last signature and waves the assistants out of the room, then turns to his secretary of state. Don Manuel opens a leather folder and reads El Jefe the letter of apology signed by the whole Mirabal family.

“I see Señorita Minerva has signed this,” he notes as if I were not present. He reads off Mama’s name and asks if she is related to Chiche Reyes.

“Why Chiche is my uncle!” Mama exclaims. Tio Chiche has always bragged about knowing Trujillo during their early days in the military. “Chiche worships you, Jefe. He always says even back then he could tell you were a natural leader.”

“I have a lot of affection for Don Chiche,” Trujillo says, obviously enjoying the homage. He lifts a set of dice from his scales, upsetting the balance. “I suppose he never told you the story of these?”

Mamá smiles indulgently. She has never approved of her uncle’s gambling. “That Chiche loves his gambling.”

“Chiche cheats too much,” Papa blurts out. “I won’t play with him.”

Mamá’s eyes are boring a hole in Papa. Our one lifeline in this stormy sea and Papa is cutting the rope she’s been playing out.

“I take it you like to play, Don Enrique?” Trujillo turns coldly to Papa.

Papá glances at Mama, afraid to admit it in her presence. “I know you like to gamble,” Mama squabbles, diverting attention by pretending our real predicament is her naughty husband.

Trujillo returns to the dice in his hands. “That Chiche! He stole a piece of bone from Columbus’s crypt and had these made for me when I was named head of the armed forces.”

Mamá tries to look impressed, but in fact, she’s never liked her trou blemaking uncle very much. Every month, it’s a knife fight or money trouble or wife trouble or mistress trouble or just plain trouble.

Trujillo puts his dice back on the empty tray. It’s then I notice the sides don’t balance. Of course, my good-for-nothing uncle would give his buddy loaded dice.

“Human teeth, all of it,” Papá mumbles. He looks at the small cubes of bone with a horrified expression on his face.

Mama indicates her husband with a toss of the head. “You must excuse him, Jefe. He is not well.” Her eyes fill, and she dabs at them with the kerchief she keeps balling in her hand.

“Don Enrique will be just fine as soon as he’s home for a few days. But may this teach you all a lesson.” He turns to me. The cajoling smile of the dance is gone. “You especially, señorita. I’ve asked that you check in every week with Governor de la Maza in San Francisco.”

Before I can say something, Mama breaks in. “All my daughter wants is to be a good, loyal citizen of the regime.”

El Jefe looks my way, waiting for my pledge.

I decide to speak up for what I do want. “Jefe, I don’t know if you remember what we spoke of at the dance?” I can feel Mama giving me the eye.

But El Jefe’s interest is piqued. “We spoke of many things.” “I mean, my dream of going to law school.”

He strokes his short, brush mustache with his fingers, musing. His gaze falls on the dice. Slowly, his lips twist in a wily smile. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you toss for the privilege. You win, you get your wish. I win, I get mine.”

I can guess what he wants. But I’m so sure I can beat him now that I know his secret. “I’ll toss,” I say, my voice shaking.

He laughs and turns to Mamá. “I think you have another Chiche in the family.”

Quickly I reach for the heavier set of dice and begin shaking them in my fist. Trujillo studies the wobbling scales. But without my set there, he can’t

tell which are his loaded pair. “Go ahead,” he says, eyeing me closely. “Highest number wins.”

I shake the dice in my hand for all they’re worth.

I roll a double and look up at Trujillo, trying to keep the glee from my face.

He stares at me with his cold, hard eyes. “You have a strong hand, that I know.” He strokes the cheek I slapped, smiling a razor-sharp smile that cuts me down to size. Then rather than using the remaining dice on the tray, he puts his hand out and takes my uncle’s set back. He maneuvers them knowingly. Out they roll, a double as well. “We either both get our wishes or we call it even, for now,” he adds.

“Even,” I say, looking him in the eye, “for now.”

“Sign their releases,” he tells Don Manuel. “My hellos to Don Chiche,” he tells Mamá. Then, we are banished with a wave of his hand.

I look down at the lopsided scales as he puts his dice back. For a moment, I imagine them evenly balanced, his will on one side, mine on the other.

 

 

It is raining when we leave the capital, a drizzle that builds to a steady downpour by the time we hit Villa Altagracia. We roll up the windows until it gets so steamy and damp in the car that we have to crack them open in order to see out.

Dedé and Jaimito stayed on in the capital, making some purchases for the new restaurant they’ve decided to start. The ice cream business is a flop just as Dedé predicted privately to me some time back. Pedrito had to be back yesterday to see about stranded cattle in the flooded fields. He’s been taking care of his own farm and ours. So, it’s just me and Mama, and Patria and, of course, Papa mumbling in the back seat of the car.

By Pino Herrado, the rain is coming down hard. We stop at a little cantina until it lets up. Mama doesn’t raise an eyebrow when Papá orders a shot of rum. She’s too worried about our audience with El Jefe to fuss at him. “You were asking for it, m’ija,” she’s already told me. We sit silently, listening to the rain on the thatched roof, a numb, damp, fatalistic feeling among us. Something has started none of us can stop.

A soft rain is falling when we reach Piedra Blanca. Ahead, men repair a flooded bridge, so we stop and roll down the windows to watch. Marchantas come up to offer us their wares and, tempted by a sample taste of a small, sweet orange, we buy a whole sack of them, already peeled and cut in half. Later, we have to stop to wash our sticky hands in puddles on the roadside.

At Bonao the torrential rains start again and the windshield wipers can’t keep pace with the waves of water washing over us. In my head, I start making plans about where we can spend the night if the rain is still this bad once it gets dark.

We pass La Vega, and the rain is lighter now, but shows no sign of letting up. The whole spine of the country is wet. Towards the west, dark clouds shroud the mountains as far as Constanza and on through the whole cordillera to the far reaches of Haiti.

Rain is falling and night is falling in Moca as we pass, the palm roofs sagging, the soil soggy with drowned seeds, the drenched jacarandas losing their creamy blossoms. A few miles after Salcedo, my lights single it out, the ancient anacahuita tree, dripping in the rain, most of its pods gone. I turn into the unpaved road, hoping we won’t get stuck in the mud I hear slapping against the underside of the car.

It’s raining here, too, in Ojo de Agua. Eye of Water! The name seems ironic given the weather. North to Tamboril and the mountain road to Puerto Plata, the rain drives on, in every bohío and small conuco, and on out to the Atlantic where it is lost in the waves that rock the bones of martyrs in the deepest sleep. We’ve traveled almost the full length of the island and can report that every comer of it is wet, every river overflows its banks, every

rain barrel is filled to the brim, every wall washed clean of writing no one knows how to read anyway.