María Teresa

1953 to 1958

‌1953

Tuesday morning, December 15 Fela says rain

I feel like dying myself!

I can’t believe she came to the funeral mass with her girls, adding four more slaps to her big blow. One of them looked to be only a few years younger than me, so you couldn’t really say, Ay, poor Papa, he lost it at the end and went behind the palm trees. He was bringing down coconuts when he was good and hardy and knew what he was doing.

I asked Minerva who invited them.

All she said was they were Papá’s daughters, too.

I can’t stop crying! My cute cousins Raúl and Berto are coming over, and I look a sight. But I don’t care. I really don’t.

I hate men. I really hate them.

Wednesday evening, December 16

Here I am crying again, ruining my new diary book Minerva gave me. She was saving it up for my Epiphany present, but she saw me so upset at Papá’s funeral, she thought it would help me most now.

Minerva always says writing gets things off her chest and she feels better, but I’m no writer, like she is. Besides, I swore I’d never keep a diary again after I had to bury my Little Book years back. But I’m desperate enough to try anything.

Monday, December 21

I am a little better now. For minutes at a time, I forget about Papa and the whole sad business.

Christmas Eve

Every time I look at Papá’s place at the table my eyes fill with tears. It makes it very hard to eat meals. What a bitter end of the year!

Christmas Day

We are all trying. The day is rainy, a breeze keeps blowing through the cacao. Fela says that’s the dead calling us. It makes me shiver to hear her say that after the dream I had last night.

We had just laid out Papa in his coffin on the table when a limousine pulls up to the house. My sisters climb out, including that bunch that call themselves my sisters, all dressed up like a wedding party. It turns out I’m the one getting married, but I haven’t a clue who the groom is.

I’m running around the house trying to find my wedding dress when I hear Mamá call out to look in Papa’s coffin!

The car hom is blowing, so I go ahead and raise the lid. Inside is a beautiful satin gown—in pieces. I lift out the one arm, and then another arm, then the bodice, and more parts below. I’m frantic, thinking we still have to sew this thing together.

When I get to the bottom, there’s Papa, smiling up at me.

I drop all those pieces like they’re contaminated and wake up the whole house with my screams.

(I’m so spooked. I wonder what it means? I plan on asking Fela who knows how to interpret dreams.)

Sunday afternoon, December 2 7

Today is the feast day of San Juan Evangelista, a good day for fortunes. I give Fela my coffee cup this morning after I’m done. She turns it over, lets the dregs run down the sides, then she reads the markings.

I prod her. Does she see any novios coming?

She turns the cup around and around. She shows me where two stains collide and says that’s a pair of brothers. I blush, because I guess she can tell about Berto and Raúl. Again; she slowly rotates the cup. She says she sees a professional man in a hat. Then, a capitaleño, she can tell by the way he stands.

I am at the edge of my seat, smiling in spite of these sad times, asking for more.

“You’ll have to have a second cup of coffee, señorita,” she says, setting the cup down. “All your admirers can’t fit in one cup of fortune.”

¿Berto & Mate?

¿Mate & Raúl ?

¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ forever??????????

Ojo de Agua, Salcedo 30 December 1953

Twenty-third year of the Era of Trujillo

Generalísimo Doctor Rafael L. Trujillo Benefactor of our Country

Illustrious and well-loved Jefe,

Knowing as I do, the high esteem in which my husband Enrique Mirabal held your illustrious person, and now somewhat less confounded by the irreparable loss of my unforgettable compañero, I write to inform Your Excellency of his death on Monday, the fourteenth day of this month.

I want to take this opportunity to affirm my husband’s undying loyalty to Your Person and to avow that both myself and my daughters will continue in his footsteps as your loyal and devoted subjects. Especially now, in this dark moment, we look to your beacon from our troubled waters and count on your beneficent protection and wise counsel until we should breathe the very last breath of our own existence.

With greetings from my uncle, Chiche, I am most respectfully, Mercedes Reyes de Mirabal

Wednesday late afternoon, December 30

Mamá and I just spent most of the afternoon drafting the letter Tío Chiche suggested she write. Minerva wasn’t here to help. She left for Jarabacoa three days ago. Tío Fello dragged her off right after Christmas because he found her very thin and sad and thought the mountain air would invigorate her. Me, I just eat when I’m sad and so I look “the picture of health,” as Tio Fello put it.

Not that Minerva would have been much help. She is no good at the flowery feelings like I am. Last October, when she had to give her speech praising El Jefe at the Salcedo Civic Hall, guess who wrote it for her? It worked, too. Suddenly, she got her permission to go to law school. Every

once in a while Trujillo has to be buttered up, I guess, which is why Tío Chiche thought this letter might help.

Tomorrow I’ll copy it in my nice penmanship, then Mamá can sign it with her signature I’ve taught her to write.

Sunset

I ask Fela, without mentioning any names, if she has something I can use to spell a certain bad person.

She says to write this person’s name on a piece of paper, fold it, and put the paper in my left shoe because that is the foot Eve used to crush the head of the serpent. Then bum it, and scatter those ashes near the hated person.

I’ll sprinkle them all over the letter is what I’ll do.

What would happen if I put the name in my right shoe? I ask Fela. The right foot is for problems with someone you love.

So, I’m walking around doing a double spell, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in one shoe, Enrique Mirabal in the other.

Thursday night, December 31 last day of this old sad year

I can write the saddest things tonight.

Here I am looking out at the stars, everything so still, so mysterious. What does it all mean, anyway?

(I don’t like this kind of thinking like Minerva likes. It makes my asthma worse.)

I want to know things I don’t even know what they are.

But I could be happy without answers if I had someone to love.

And so it is of human life the goal to seek, forever seek, the kindred soul.

I quoted that to Minerva before she left for Jarabacoa. But she got down our Gems of Spanish Poetry and quoted me another poem by the same poet:

May the limitations of love not cast a spell On the serious ambitions of my mind.

I couldn’t believe the same man had written those two verses. But sure enough, there it was, José Marti, dates and all. Minerva showed me her poem was written later. “When he knew what mattered.”

Maybe she’s right, what does love come to, anyway? Look at Papa and Mama after so many years.

I can write the saddest things tonight.

‌1954

Friday night, January 1

I have been awful really.

I, a young girl de luto with her father fresh in the ground.

I have kissed B. on the lips! He caught my hand and led me behind a screen of palms.

Oh horror! Oh shamelessness! Oh disgust! Please make me ashamed, Oh God.

Friday evening, January 8

R. dropped in for a visit today and stayed and stayed. I knew he was waiting for Mama to leave us alone. Sure enough, Mama finally stood up, hinting that it was time for people to be thinking about supper, but R. hung on. Mama left, and R. lit into me. What was this about B. kissing me? I was

so mad at B. for telling on us after he promised he wouldn’t. I told R. that if I never saw his face or his silly brother’s again, it was perfecto with me!

Sunday afternoon, January 10

Minerva just got back with a very special secret.

First, I told her my secret about B. and she laughed and said how far ahead of her I am. She says she has not been kissed for years! I guess there are some bad parts to being somebody everybody respects.

Well, maybe she has more than a kiss coming soon. She met somebody VERY special in Jarabacoa. It turns out, this special person is also studying law in the capital, although he’s two years ahead of her. And here’s something else he doesn’t even know yet. Minerva is five years older than he is. She figured it out from something he said, but she says that he’s so mature at twenty-three, you wouldn’t know it. The only thing, Minerva adds, real breezy and smart the way she can be so cool, is the poor man’s already engaged to somebody else.

“Two-timer!” I still hurt so much about Papá. “He can’t be a very nice man,” I tell Minerva. “Give him up!”

But Minerva’s already defending this gallant she just met. She says it’s better he look around now before he takes the plunge.

I guess she’s right. I know I’m taking a very good look around before I close my eyes and fall in true love.

Thursday, January 14

Minerva is up to her old tricks again. She wraps a towel around the radio and lies under the bed listening to illegal stations.

Today she was down there for hours. There was a broadcast of a speech by this man Fidel, who is trying to overturn their dictator over in Cuba.

Minerva has big parts memorized. Now, instead of her poetry, she’s always reciting, Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me!

I am so hoping that now that Minerva has found a special someone, she’ll settle down. I mean, I agree with her ideas and everything. I think people should be kind to each other and share what they have. But never in a million years would I take up a gun and force people to give up being mean.

Minerva calls me her little petit bourgeois. I don’t even ask her what that means because she’ll get on me again about not continuing with my French. I decided to take English instead—as we are closer to the U.S.A. than France.

Hello, my name is Mary Mirabal. I speak a little English. Thank you very much.

Sunday afternoon, January 17

Minerva just left for the capital to go back to school. Usually I’m the one who. cries when people leave, but this time, everyone was weepy. Even Minerva’s eyes filled up. I guess we’re all still grieving over Papa, and any little sadness brings up that bigger one.

Dedé and Jaimito are staying the night with Jaime Enrique and Baby Jaime Rafael. (Jaimito always brands his boys with his own first name.) Tomorrow we’ll head back to San Francisco. It’s all settled. I’m going to be a day student and live with Dede and Jaimito during the week, then come home weekends to keep Mama company.

I’m so relieved. After we got in trouble with the government and Papa started losing money, a lot of those nose-in-the-air girls treated me awfully. I cried myself to sleep in my dormitory cot every night, and of course, that only made my asthma worse.

This arrangement also helps Dede and Jaimito, too, as Mama is paying them for my boarding. Talk about money troubles! Those two have had back luck twice already, what with that ice cream business, now with the restaurant. Even so, Dedé makes the best of it. Miss Sonrisa, all right.

Saturday night, February 6 Home for the weekend

I’ve spent all day getting everything ready. Next Sunday, the day of lovers, Minerva comes to visit and she’s bringing her special someone she met in Jarabacoa!!!

Manolo wants to meet you, Minerva wrote us, and then added, For your eyes only: You’ll be pleased to know he broke off his engagement. Since I’m the one who reads all our mail to Mama, I can leave out whatever Minerva marks in the margin with a big EYE.

I’m probably messing up our whole privacy system because I’m teaching Mamá to read. I’ve been after her for years, but she’d say, “I just don’t have a head for letters.” I think what convinced her is Papá’s dying and me being away at school and the business losing money and Mamá having to mind the store pretty much by herself. There was talk at the dinner table of Dedé and Jaimito moving back out here and running things for Mamá. Dedé joked that they’ve got a lot of experience with ailing businesses. Jaimito, I could tell, didn’t think she was one bit funny.

There’s going to be a scene when we get back to San Fran.

Sunday morning, February 14

We’re expecting Minerva and Manolo any minute. The way I can’t sit still, Mamá says, you’d think it was my own beau coming!

Dinner is all in my hands. Mama says it’s good practice for when I have my own house. But she’s begged me to stop running everything by her as she’s losing her appetite from eating so many imaginary dinners in her head.

So here’s my final menu:

(Bear in mind today is the Day of Lovers and so red is my theme.)

Salad of tomatoes and pimientos with hibiscus garnish Pollo a la criolla (lots of tomato paste in my San Valentin version)

Moors and Christians rice—heavy on the beans for the red-brown color Carrots—I’m going to shape the rings into little hearts

Arroz con leche

—because you know how the song goes—

Arroz con leche wants to marry a clever girl from the capital

who sews who dams who puts back her needle

where it belongs!

Night

Manolo just loved my cooking! That man ate seconds and thirds, stopping only long enough to say how delicious everything was. Mama kept winking at me.

His other good qualities, let’s see. He is tall and very handsome and so romantic. He kept hold of Minerva’s hand under the table all through the meal.

As soon as they left for the capital, Dedé and Mama and Patria started in making bets about when the wedding would be. “We’ll have it here,” Dedé said. Ay, si, it’s final, Dedé and Jaimito are going to move back to Ojo de Agua. Mama’s told them they can have this house as she wants to build a more convenient “modern” one on the main road. That way she won’t be so

isolated when all her little chickens have flown. “Just my baby left now,” she says, smiling at me.

Oh, diary, how I hate when she forgets I’m already eighteen.

Monday night, February 15 Back in San Fran

I keep hoping that someone special will come into my life soon. Someone who can ravish my heart with the flames of love. (Gems of Mate Mirabal!)

I try to put together the perfect man from all the boys I know. It’s sort of like making a menu:

Manolo’s dimples Raúl’s fairytale-blue eyes Berto’s curly hair & smile Erasmo’s beautiful hands Federico’s broad shoulders

Carlos’s nice fundillos (Yes, we girls notice them, too!)

And then, that mystery something that will make the whole—as we learned in Mathematics—more than the sum of these very fine parts.

Monday night, March 1 San Fran

As you well know, diary, I have ignored you totally. I hope this will not develop into a bad habit. But I have not been in a very confiding mood.

The night after Manolo came to dinner, I had the same bad dream about Papá. Except when I pulled out all the pieces of wedding dress, Papá’s face shifted, and it wasn’t Papá anymore, but Manolo!

That started me worrying about Manolo. How he went after Minerva while he was still engaged. Now he’s this wonderful, warm, loving man, I say to myself, but will that change with time?

I guess I’ve fallen into suspicion which Padre Ignacio says is as bad as falling into temptation. I went to see him about my ill feelings towards Papá. “You must not see every man as a potential serpent,” he warned me.

And I don’t really think I do. I mean, I like men. I want to marry one of them.

Graduation Day!!! July 3

Diary, I know you have probably thought me dead all these months. But you must believe me, I have been too busy for words. In fact, I have to finish writing down Tía’s recipe on a card so I can start in on my thank-you notes. I must get them out soon or I shall lose that proper glow of appreciation one feels right after receiving gifts one does not need or even like all that much.

Tía Flor’s made a To Die Dreaming Cake for my graduation party. (It’s her own special recipe inspired by the drink.) She hauled me into my bedroom to have me write it down, so she said. I had praised it over and over, in word and—I’m afraid—in deed. Ay, sí, two pieces, and then some. My hips, my hips! Maybe I should rechristen this To Die Fat Cake?!

In the middle of telling me about beating the batter until it’s real foamy (make it look and feel like soap bubbles, she told me) suddenly, straight out, she says, We’ve got some talking to do, young lady.

Sure, Tia, I say in a little voice. Tía is kind of big and imposing and her thick black eyebrows have scared me since childhood. (I used to call them her mustaches!)

She says Berto and Raúl aren’t like brothers anymore, fighting all the time. She wants me to decide which one I want, then let the other one go eat tamarinds. So, she says, which one is it going to be?

Neither one, I blurt out because suddenly I see that what I’m headed for with either one is this mother-in-law

Neither one! She sits down on the edge of my bed. Neither one? What?

Are you too good for my boys?

Wednesday afternoon, July 7

Thank-yous not yet written:

Dede and Jaimito—my favorite perfume (Matador’s Delight). Also, an

I.O.U. for the new Luis Alberti record when we next go to the capital.

Minerva—a poetry book by someone named Gabriela Mistral (?) and a pretty gold ring with an opal, my birthstone, set inside four cornerstone pearls. We have to get the size fixed in the capital. Here’s a drawing of it:

 

 

Manolo—an ivory frame for my graduation picture. “And for your final beau when the time comes!” He winks. I’m liking him a lot more again.

Tio Pepe and Tia Flor, Raúl, Berto—the cutest little vanity table with a skirt the same fabric as my bedspread. Tío made the vanity & Tía sewed the skirt for it. Maybe she’s not so bad, after all! As for Raúl, he offered me his class ring & wanted us to be novios. Soon after, Berto cornered me in the garden with his “Magnet Lips.” I told them both I wanted them as friends, and they both said they understood—it was too soon after Papá’s death. (What I didn’t tell either of them was that I met this young lawyer who did my

inheritance transfer this Friday, Justo Gutierrez. He’s so kind and has the nicest way of saying, Sign here.)

Patria and Pedrito—a music box from Spain that plays four tunes. The Battle Cry of Freedom, My Little Sky, There Is Nothing Like a Mother, and another I can’t pronounce—it’s foreign. Also a St. Christopher’s for my travels.

Tío Tilo and Tía Eufemia, María, Milagros, Marina—seashell earrings and bracelet set I would never wear in a thousand years! I wonder if Tía Eufemia is trying to jinx me so her three old maid daughters stand a better chance? Everyone knows seashells keep a girl single, everyone except Tía Eufemia, I guess.

Mamá—a monogrammed suitcase from El Gallo for taking to the capital. It’s settled. I’m going to the university in the fall with Minerva. Mama also gave me her old locket with Papá’s picture inside. I haven’t opened it once. It spooks me on account of my dream. She has transferred my inheritance to my name. $10,000!!! I’m saving it for my future, and of course, clothes & more clothes.

Even Fela gave me a gift. A sachet of magic powders to ward off the evil eye when I go to the capital. I asked if this also worked as a love potion. Tono heard me and said, “Somebody has a man in her life.” Then Fela, who delivered me and knows me in and out, burst out laughing and said, “A man?! This one’s got a whole cemetery of them in her heart! More heartbroken men buried in there than—”

They’ve both grown careful since we found out about the yardboy Prieto. Yes, our trusted Prieto has been reporting everything he hears in the Mirabal household down at Security for a bottle of rum and a couple of pesos. Tio Chiche came and told us. Of course, we can’t fire him or that would look like we have something to hide. But he’s been promoted, so we told him, from the yard to the hogpen. Now he hasn’t much to report except oink, oink, oink all day.

Friday night, full moon, July 9

Justo María Gutiérrez

Don Justo Gutiérrez and Doña Maria Teresa Mirabal de Gutiérrez Mate & Justico, forever!!!

Saturday night, September 18

Tomorrow we leave for the capital.

I’m debating, diary, whether to take you along. As you can see, I haven’t been very good about writing regularly. I guess Mama’s right, I am awfully moody about everything I do.

But there will be so many new sights and experiences and it will be good to have a record. But then again, I might be too busy with classes and what if I don’t find a good hiding place & you fall into the wrong hands?

Oh diary dear, I have been so indecisive about everything all week! Yes, no, yes, no. I’ve asked everyone’s opinion about half a dozen things. Should I take my red heels if I don’t yet have a matching purse? How about my navy blue scalloped-neck dress that is a little tight under the arms? Are five baby dolls and nightgowns enough, as I like a fresh one every night?

One thing I was decisive about.

Justo was kind and said he understood. I probably needed time to get over my father’s death. I just kept quiet. Why is it that every man I can’t love seems to feel I would if Papa hadn’t died?

Monday afternoon, September 27 The capital

What a huge, exciting place! Every day I go out, my mouth drops open like the campesino in the joke. So many big elegant houses with high walls

and guardias and cars and people dressed up in the latest styles I’ve seen in

Vanidades.

It’s a hard city to keep straight, though, so I don’t go out much unless Minerva or one of her friends is with me. All the streets are named after Trujillo’s family, so it’s kind of confusing. Minerva told me this joke about how to get to Parque Julia Molina from Carretera El Jefe. “You take the road of El Jefe across the bridge of his youngest son to the street of his oldest boy, then turn left at the avenue of his wife, walk until you reach the park of his mother and you’re there.”

Every morning, first thing, we turn to El Foro Público. It’s this gossip column in the paper signed by Lorenzo Ocumares, a phony name if I ever heard one. The column’s really written over at the National Palace and it’s meant to “serve notice” to anyone who has been treading on the tail of the rabid dog, as we say back home. Minerva says everyone in the whole capital turns to it before the news. It’s gotten so that I just close my eyes while she reads me the column, dreading the mention of our name. But ever since Minerva’s speech and Mama’s letter (and my shoe spell) we haven’t had any trouble with the regime.

Which reminds me. I must find you a better hiding place, diary. It’s not safe carrying you around in my pocketbook on the street of his mother or the avenue of his little boy.

Sunday night, October 3

We marched today before the start of classes. Our cédulas are stamped when we come back through the gates. Without those stamped cédulas, we can’t enroll. We also have to sign a pledge of loyalty

There were hundreds of us, the women all together, in white dresses like we were his brides, with white gloves and any kind of hat we wanted. We had to raise our right arms in a salute as we passed by the review stand.

It looked like the newsreels of Hitler and the Italian one with the name that sounds like fettuccine.

Tuesday evening, October 12

As I predicted, there is not much time to write in your pages, diary. I am always busy. Also, for the first time in ages, Minerva and I are roommates again at Doña Chelito’s where we board. So the temptation is always to talk things over with her. But sometimes she won’t do at all—like right now when she is pushing me to stay with my original choice of law.

I know I used to say I wanted to be a lawyer like Minerva, but the truth is I always burst out crying if anyone starts arguing with me.

Minerva insists, though, that I give law a chance. So I’ve been tagging along to her classes all week. I’m sure I’ll die either of boredom or my brain being tied up in knots! In her Practical Forensics class, she and the teacher, this little owl-like man, Doctor Balaguer, get into the longest discussions. All the other students keep yawning and raising their eyebrows at each other. I can’t follow them myself. Today it was about whether—in the case of homicide—the corpus delicti is the knife or the dead man whose death is the actual proof of the crime. I felt like shouting, Who cares?!!!

Afterwards, Minerva asked me what I thought. I told her that I’m signing up for Philosophy and Letters tomorrow, which according to her is what girls who are planning to marry always sign up for. But she’s not angry at me. She says I gave it a chance and that’s what matters.

Wednesday night, October 13

This evening we went out for a walk, Manolo and Minerva, and a friends of theirs from law school who is very sweet, Armando Grullón.

When we got down to the Malecón, the whole area was sealed off. It was that time of the evening when El Jefe takes his nightly paseo by the seawall. That’s how he holds his cabinet meetings, walking briskly, each minister

getting his turn at being grilled, then falling back, gladly giving up his place to the next one on line.

Manolo started joking about how if El Jefe gets disgusted with any one of them, he doesn’t even have to bother to send him to La Piscina to be fed to the sharks. Just elbow him right over the seawall!

It really scared me, him talking that way, in public, with guards all around and anybody a spy. I’m just dreading what we’ll find in El Foro Público tomorrow.

Sunday night, October 17

¡El Foro Privado!

Seen walking in El Jardín Botánico unchaperoned

Armando Grullón and

María Teresa Mirabal Mate & Armando, forever!!!

He put his arms around me, and then he tried to put his tongue in my mouth. I had to say, NO! I’ve heard from the other girls at Doña Chelito’s that one has to be careful with these men in the capital.

Monday morning, October 18

I had the dream again last night. I hadn’t had it in such a long time, it upset me all the more because I thought I’d gotten over Papá.

This time Armando played musical faces with Papá. I was so upset I woke up Minerva. Thank God, I didn’t scream out and wake up everyone in the house. How embarrassing that would have been!

Minerva just held my hands like she used to when I was a little girl and was having an asthma attack. She said that the pain would go away once I found the man of my dreams. It wouldn’t be long. She could feel it in her bones.

But I’m sure what she’s feeling is her own happiness with Manolo.

‌1955

Sunday afternoon, November 20 Ojo de Agua

Diary, don’t even ask where I’ve been for a year! And I wouldn’t have found you either, believe me. The hiding place at Doña Chelito’s was too good. Only when we went to pack up Minerva’s things for her move, did I remember you stashed under the closet floorboards.

Today is the big day. It’s been raining since dawn, and so Minerva’s plan of walking to the church on foot like Patria did and seeing all the campesinos she’s known since she was a little girl is out. But you know Minerva. She thinks we should just use umbrellas!

Mamá says Minerva should be glad, since a rainy wedding is suppose to bring good luck. “Blessings on the marriage bed,” she smiles, and rolls her eyes.

She is so happy. Minerva is so happy. Rain or no rain, this is a happy day Then why am I so sad? Things are going to be different, I just know it,

even though Minerva says they won’t. Already, she’s moved in with

Manolo at Dona Isabel‘s, and I am left alone at Dona Chelito’s with new boarders I hardly know.

“I never thought I’d see this day,” Patria says from the rocking chair where she’s sewing a few more satin rosebuds on the crown of the veil. Minerva at twenty-nine was considered beyond all hope of marriage by old- fashioned people like my sister Patria. That one married at sixteen, remember. “Gracias, Virgencita,” she says, looking up at the ceiling.

“Gracias, Manolo, you mean,” Minerva laughs.

Then everyone starts in on me, how I’m next, and who is it going to be, and come on, tell, until I could cry.

Sunday evening, December 11 The capital

We just got back from marching in the opening ceremony for the World’s Fair, and my feet are really hurting. Plus, the whole back of my dress is drenched with sweat. The only consolation is that if I was hot, “Queen” Angelita must have been burning up.

Imagine, in this heat wearing a gown sprinkled with rubies, diamonds, and pearls, and bordered with 150 feet of Russian ermine. It took 600 skins to make that border! All this was published in the paper like we should be impressed.

Manolo didn’t even want Minerva to march. She could have gotten a release, too, since she’s pregnant—yes! Those two are not waiting until she’s done. But Minerva said there was no way she was going to let all her compañeras endure this cross without carrying her share.

We must have marched over four kilometers. As we passed Queen Angelita’s review stand, we bowed our heads. I slowed a little when it was my turn so I could check her out. Her cape had a fur collar that rode up so high, and dozens of attendants were fanning her left and right. I couldn’t see anything but a little, pouty, sort of pretty face gleaming with perspiration.

Looking at her, I almost felt sorry. I wondered if she knew how bad her father is or if she still thought, like I once did about Papá, that her father is God.

‌1956

Friday night, April 27 The capital

My yearly entry. I cannot tell a lie. If you look considerably slimmer, diary, it’s only because you have been my all-purpose supply book. Paper for letters, shopping lists, class notes. I wish I could shed pounds as readily. I am on a vast diet so I can fit into my gown for the festivities. Tomorrow I go over to Minerva’s to work on my speech.

Saturday afternoon, April 28 The capital

Honorable Rector, Professors, Fellow Classmates, Friends, Family, I’m really very touched from the bottom of my heart—

Minerva shakes her head. “Too gushy,” she says.

I want to express my sincere gratitude for this great honor you have conferred on me by selecting me your Miss University for the coming year

—

The baby starts crying again. She’s been fussy all afternoon. I think she has a cold coming on. With rainy season here, everyone does. Of course, it could be that little Minou doesn’t like my speech much!

I will do my very best to be a shining example of the high values that this, the first university in the New World, has instilled in its Jour hun dred years of being a beacon of knowledge and a mine of wisdom to the finest minds that have been lucky enough to pass through the portals of this inspired community—

Minerva says this is going on too long without the required mention of you-know-who. Little Minou has quieted down, thank God. It’s so nice of Minerva to help me out—with as much as she has to do with a new baby and her law classes. But she says she’s glad I came over. It’s kept her from missing Manolo, who couldn’t make it down from Monte Cristi again this weekend.

But most especially, my most sincere gratitude goes to our true benefactor, El jefe Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, Champion of Education, Light of the Antilles, First Teacher, Enlightener of His People.

“Don’t overdo it,” Minerva says. She reminds me it’s going to be a hard crowd to address after this Galindez thing.

She’s right, too. The campus is buzzing with the horror story. Disappearances happen every week, but this time, it’s someone who used to teach here. Also, Galindez had already escaped to New York so everyone thought he was safe. But somehow El Jefe found out Galindez was writing a book against the regime. He sent agents offering him a lot of money for it

—$25,000, I’ve heard—but Galindez said no. Next thing you know, he’s walking home one night, and he disappears. No one has seen or heard from him since.

I get so upset thinking about him, I don’t want to be a queen of anything anymore. But Minerva won’t have it. She says this country hasn’t voted for anything in twenty-six years and it’s only these silly little elections that keep the faint memory of a democracy going. “You can’t let your constituency down, Queen Mate!”

We women at this university are particularly grateful for the opportunities afforded us for higher education in this regime.

Minerva insists I stick this in.

Little Minou starts bawling again. Minerva says she misses her papi. And almost as if to prove her mother right, that little baby girl starts up a serious crying spell that brings Dona Isabel’s soft tap at the bedroom door.

“What are you doing to my precious?” she says, coming in. Doña Isabel takes care of the baby while Minerva’s in class. She’s one of those pretty women who stay pretty no matter how old they get. Curly white hair like a frilly cap and eyes soft as opals. She holds out her hands, “My precious, are they torturing you?”

“What do you mean?” Minerva says, handing the howling bundle over and rubbing her ears. “This little tyrant’s torturing us!”

‌1957

Friday evening, July 26 The capital

I have been a disaster diary keeper. Last year, only one entry, and this year is already half over and I haven’t jotted down a single word. I did thumb through my old diary book, and I must say, it does all seem very silly with all the diary dears and the so secretive initials no one would be able to decipher in a million years!

But I think I will be needing a companion—since from now on, I am truly on my own. Minerva graduates tomorrow and is moving to Monte Cristi to be with Manolo. I am to go home for the rest of the summer— although it’s no longer the home I’ve always known as Mama is building a new house on the main road. In the fall, I am to come back to finish my degree all on my own.

I’m feeling very solitary and sad and more jamonita than a hog. Here I am almost twenty-two years old and not a true love in sight.

Saturday night, July 27 The capital

What a happy day today looked to be. Minerva was getting her law degree! The whole Mirabal-Reyes-Fernández-González-Tavárez clan

gathered for the occasion. It was a pretty important day—Minerva was the first person in our whole extended family (minus Manolo) to have gone through university.

What a shock, then, when Minerva got handed the law degree but not the license to practice. Here we all thought El Jefe had relented against our family and let Minerva enroll in law school. But really what he was planning all along was to let her study for five whole years only to render that degree useless in the end. How cruel!

Manolo was furious. I thought he was going to march right up to the podium and have a word with the rector. Minerva took it best of all of us. She said now she’d have even more time to spend with her family. Something in the way she looked at Manolo when she said that tells me there’s trouble between them.

Sunday evening, July 28 Last night in the capital

Until today, I was planning to go back to Ojo de Agua with Mamá since my summer session is also over. But the new house isn’t quite done, so it would have been crowded in the old house with Dedé and Jaimito and the boys already moved in. Then this morning, Minerva asked me if I wouldn’t come to Monte Cristi and help her set up housekeeping. Manolo has rented a little house so they won’t have to live with his parents anymore. By now, I know something is wrong between them, so I’ve agreed to go along.

Monday night, July 29 Monte Cristi

The drive today was horribly tense. Manolo and Minerva kept addressing all their conversation to me, though every once in a while, they’d start discussing something in low voices. It sounded like treasure hunt clues or something. The Indian from the hill has his cave up that road. The Eagle

has nested in the hollow on the other side of that mountain. I was so happy to have them talking to each other, I played with little Minou in the back seat and pretended not to hear them.

We arrived in town midafternoon and stopped in front of this little shack. Seriously, it isn’t half as nice as the house Minerva showed me where Papa kept that woman on the farm. I suppose it’s the best Manolo can do, given how broke they are.

I tried not to look too shocked so as not to depress Minerva. What a performance that one put on. Like this was her dream house or something. One, two, three rooms—she counted them as if delighted. A zinc roof would be so nice when it rained. What a big yard for her garden and that long storage shed in back sure would come in handy.

The show was lost on Manolo, though. Soon after he unpacked the car, he took off. Business, he said when Minerva asked him where he was going.

 

 

Thursday night, August 15 Monte Cristi

Manolo has been staying out till all hours. I sleep in the front room that serves as his office during the day, so I always know when he comes in. Later, I hear voices raised in their bedroom.

Tonight, Minerva and I were sewing curtains in the middle room where the kitchen, living, dining room, and everything is. The clock struck eight, and still no Manolo. I don’t know why it is that when the clock strikes, you feel all the more the absence of someone.

Suddenly, I heard this wracking sob. My brave Minerva! It was all I could do not to start crying right along with her.

From her playpen Minou reached out, offering her mother my old doll I’d given her.

“Okay” I said. “I know something is going on,” I said. I took a guess. “Another woman, right?”

Minerva gave me a quick nod. I could see her shoulders heaving up and down.

“I hate men,” I said, mostly trying to convince myself. “I really hate them.”

Sunday afternoon, August 25 God, it gets hot in M.C.

Manolo and Minerva are on the mend. I mind the baby to give them time together, and they go out walking, holding hands, like newlyweds. Some nights they slip away for meetings, and I can see lights on in the storage shed. I usually take the baby down to Manolo’s parents and spend the time with them and the twins, then walk home, accompanied by Manolo’s brother, Eduardo. I keep my distance from him. First time I’ve ever done that with a nice enough, handsome enough young man. Like I said, I’ve had enough of them.

Saturday morning, September 7

A new warm feeling has descended on our little house. This mom ing, Minerva came into the kitchen to get Manolo his cafecito, and her face was

suffused with a certain sweetness. She wrapped her arms around me from behind and whispered in my ear, “Thank you, Mate, thank you. The struggle’s brought us together again. You’ve brought us together again.”

“Me?” I asked, though I could as easily have said, “What struggle?”

Saturday before sunrise, September 28

This will be a long entry … something important has finally happened to me. I’ve hardly slept a wink, and tomorrow—or really, today, since it’s almost dawn—I’m heading back to the capital for the start of fall classes. Minerva finally convinced me that I should finish my degree. But after what happened to her, I’m pretty disillusioned about staying at the university.

Anyhow, as always before a trip, I was tossing and turning, packing and unpacking my bags in my head. I must have finally fallen asleep because I had that dream again about Papá. This time, after pulling out all the pieces of the wedding dress, I looked in and man after man I’d known appeared and disappeared before my eyes. The last one being Papá, though even as I looked, he faded little by little, until the box was empty. I woke up with a start, lit the lamp, and sat listening to the strange excited beating in my heart.

But soon, what I thought was my heartbeat was a desperate knocking on the front shutter. A voice was whispering urgently, “Open up!”

When I got the courage to crack open the shutter, at first I couldn’t make out who was out there. “What do you want?” I asked in a real uninviting way.

The voice hesitated. Wasn’t this the home of Manolo Tavárez?

“He’s alseep. I’m his wife’s sister. Can I help you?” By now, from the light streaming from my window, I could see a face I seemed to recall from a dream. It was the sweetest man’s face I’d ever seen.

He had a delivery to make, he said, could I please let him in? As he spoke, he kept looking over his shoulder at a car parked right before our

front door.

I didn’t even think twice. I ran to the entryway, slid the bolt, and pushed open the door just in time for him to carry a long wooden crate from the trunk of the car to the front hall. Quickly, I closed the door behind him and nodded towards the office. He carried the box in, looking all around for a place to hide it.

We finally settled on the space under the cot where I slept. It amazed me even as it was happening how immediately I’d fallen in with this stranger’s mission, whatever it was.

Then he asked me the strangest thing. Was I Mariposa’s little sister? I told him I was Minerva’s sister. I left out the little, mind you.

He studied me, trying to decide something. “You aren’t one of us, are you?”

I didn’t know what us he was talking about, but I knew right then and there, I wanted to be a part of whatever he was.

After he left, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about him. I went over everything I could remember about him and scolded myself for not having noticed if there was a ring on his hand. But I knew that even if he was married, I would not give him up. Right then, I began to forgive Papa.

A little while ago, I got up and dragged that heavy box out from under. It was nailed shut, but the nails had some give on one side where I could work the lid loose a little. I held the light up close and peered in. I almost dropped that lamp when I realized what I was looking at—enough guns to start a revolution!

Morning-leaving soon—

Manolo and Minerva have explained everything.

A national underground is forming. Everyone and everything has a code name. Manolo is Enriquillo, after the great Taino chieftain, and Minerva, of

course, is Mariposa. If I were to say tennis shoes, you’d know we were talking about ammunition. The pineapples for the picnic are the grenades. The goat must die for us to eat at the picnic. (Get it? It’s like a trick language.)

There are groups all over the island. It turns out Palomino (the man last night) is really an engineer working on projects throughout the country, so he’s the natural to do the traveling and deliveries between groups.

I told Minerva and Manolo right out, I wanted to join. I could feel my breath coming short with the excitement of it all. But I masked it in front of Minerva. I was afraid she’d get all protective and say that I could be just as useful sewing bandages to put in the supply boxes to be buried in the mountains. I don’t want to be babied anymore. I want to be worthy of Palomino. Suddenly, all the boys I’ve known with soft hands and easy lives seem like the pretty dolls I’ve outgrown and passed on to Minou.

Monday morning, October 14 The capital

I’ve lost all interest in my studies. I just go to classes in order to keep my cover as a second-year architecture student. My true identity now is Mariposa (# 2), waiting daily, hourly, for communications from up north.

I’ve moved out of Doña Chelito’s with the excuse that I need more privacy to apply myself to my work. It’s really not a lie, but the work I’m doing isn’t what she imagines. My cell has assigned me, along with Sonia, also a university student, to this apartment above a little comer store. We’re a hub, which means that deliveries coming into the capital from up north are dropped off here. And guess who brings them? My Palomino. How surprised he was the first time he knocked, and I opened the door!

The apartment is in a humble part of town where the poorer students live. I think some of them can tell what Sonia and I are up to, and they look out for us. Certainly some must think the worst, what with men stopping by at all hours. I always make them stay for as long as a cafecito to give the

illusion that they are real visitors. I’m a natural for this, really. I’ve always liked men, receiving them, paying them attention, listening to what they have to say. Now I can use my talents for the revolution.

But I have eyes for one man only, my Palomino.

Tuesday evening, October 15

What a way to spend my twenty-second birthday! (If only Palomino would come tonight with a delivery.)

I have been a little mopey, I admit it. Sonia reminds me we have to make sacrifices for the revolution. Thank you, Sonia. I’m sure this is going to come up in my critica at the end of the month. (God, it seems like I’ll always have a Minerva by my side being a better person than I am.)

Anyhow, I’ve got to memorize this diagram before we burn the master.

 

 

Thursday night, November 7

Today we had a surprise visitor. We were in the middle of making diagrams to go with the Nipples kits when there was a knock at our door.

Believe me, Sonia and I both jumped like one of the paper bombs had gone off. We’ve got an escape route rigged up a back window, but Sonia kept her wits about her and asked who it was. It was Doña Hita, our landlady dropping in from downstairs for a little visit.

We were so relieved, we didn’t think to clear off the table with the diagrams. I’m still worried she might have spotted our work, but Sonia says that woman has a different kind of contraband in mind. She hinted that if Sonia and I ever get into trouble, she knows someone who can help us. I blushed so dark Dona Hita must have been baffled that this you-know-who was embarrassed at the mention of you-know-what!

Thursday afternoon, November 14

Palomino has been showing up frequently and not always with a delivery to make. We talk and talk. Sonia always makes an excuse and goes out to run an errand. She’s really a much nicer person than I’ve made out. Today she left a little bowl of arroz con leche—Ahem!—for us to eat. It’s a fact, you’ll marry the one you share it with.

The funniest thing. Doña Hita bumped into Palomino on the stairs and called him Don Juan! She assumes he’s our pimp because he’s the one who comes around all the time. I laughed when he told me. But truly, my face was burning at the thought. We hadn’t yet spoken of our feelings for each other.

Suddenly, he got all serious, and those beautiful hazel eyes came closer & closer. He kissed me, polite & introductory at first—

Oh God—I am so deeply in love!

Saturday night, November 16

Palomino came again today. We finally exchanged real names, though I think he already knew mine. Leandro Guzmán Rodriguez, what a pretty

ring it has to it. We had a long talk about our lives. We laid them side by side and looked at them.

It turns out his family is from San Francisco not far from where I lived with Dedé while I was finishing up secondary school. Four years ago he came to the capital to finish a doctorate. That’s just when I had come to start my studies! We must have danced back to back at the merengue festival in ‘54. He was there, I was there.

We sat back, marveling. And then our hands reached out, palm to palm, joining our lifelines.

Sunday night, December 1

Palomino stayed last night—on a cot in the munitions room, of course! I didn’t sleep a wink just knowing we were under the same roof.

Guess whose name was in my right shoe all day?

He won’t come again for a couple of weeks—training up in the mountains, something like that—he can’t really say. Then his next delivery will be the last. By the end of the month this location has to be vacated. There have been too many raids in this area, and Manolo is worried.

The munitions room, by the way, is what we’ve started calling the back room where we keep all deliveries and where, by the way, I keep you, wedged between a beam and the casing of the door. I better not forget you there when we move out. I can just see Doña Hita finding you, opening your covers, thinking she’ll discover a whole list of clients, and instead— Lord forbid!—snapping her eyes on the Nipples bomb. Maybe she’ll think it’s some sort of abortion contraption!

For the hundredth time in the last few months I’ve wondered whether I shouldn’t burn you?

Sunday afternoon, December 15

This weekend has been harder than the last two months put together. I’m too nervous even to write. Palomino has not appeared as I expected. And there is no one to talk to as Sonia has already left for .La Romana. I’ll be going home in a few days, and all deliveries and pickups have to be made before I leave.

I suppose I’m getting cold feet. Everything has gone without a scrape for months, and I’m sure something will happen now. I keep thinking Dona Hita reported the grenade diagrams we left out in the open that time she surprised us. Then I worry that Sonia’s been nabbed leaving town, and I’ll be ambushed when my last delivery comes.

I’m a bundle of nerves. I never was any good at being brave all by myself.

Monday morning, December 16

I wasn’t expecting Palomino last night, and so when I heard a car pulling up in front of the building, I thought, THIS IS IT! I was ready to escape out the back window, diary in hand, but thank God, I ran to the front one to check first. It was him! I took the stairs two at a time and rushed into the street and hugged and kissed him like the kind of woman the neighbors think I am.

We piled up the boxes he’d brought in the back room, and then we stood a moment, a strange sadness in our eyes. This work of destruction jarred with what was in our hearts. That’s when he told me that he didn’t like the idea of my being alone in the apartment. He was spending every moment too worried about me to pay careful enough attention to the revolution.

My heart stirred to hear him say so. I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle. I would never be able to give up Leandro to some higher ideal the way I feel Minerva and Manolo would each other if they had to make the supreme sacrifice. And so last night, it touched me, Oh so deeply, to hear him say it was the same for him, too.

‌1958

The Day of Lovers, February 14 Cloudy morning, here’s hopingfor rain.

Blessings on my marriage bed, as Mama always says.

Doña Mercedes Reyes Viuda Mirabal announces the wedding of her daughter Maria Teresa Mirabal Reyes

to

Leandro Guzmán Rodriguez son of

Don Leandro Guzmán and Doña Ana Rodriguez de Guzmán on Saturday, February fourteenth

this nineteen hundred and fifty-eighth year of Our Lord Twenty-eighth year of the Era of Trujillo

at four o‘clock in the afternoon San Juan Evangelista Church Salcedo

Mariposa and Palomino, for now! Maria Teresa and Leandro, forever!

‌CHAPTER EIGHT

Patria

1959

Build your house upon a rock, He said, do my will. And though the rain fall and the floods come and the winds blow, the good wife’s house will stand.

I did as He said. At sixteen I married Pedrito González and we settled down for the rest of our lives. Or so it seemed for eighteen years.

My boy grew into a man, my girl long and slender like the blossoming mimosa at the end of the drive. Pedrito took on a certain gravity became an important man around here. And I, Patria Mercedes? Like every woman of her house, I disappeared into what I loved, coming up now and then for air. I mean, an overnight trip by myself to a girlfriend‘s, a special set to my hair, and maybe a yellow dress.

I had built my house on solid rock, all right.

Or I should say, Pedrito’s great-grandfather had built it over a hundred years back, and then each first son had lived in it and passed it on. But you have to understand, Patria Mercedes was in those timbers, in the nimble workings of the transoms, she was in those wide boards on the floor and in that creaky door opening on its old hinges.

 

 

My sisters were so different! They built their homes on sand and called the slip and slide adventure.

Minerva lived in a little nothing house—or so Mate had described it to me—in that godforsaken town of Monte Cristi. It’s a wonder her babies didn’t both die of infections.

Mate and Leandro had already had two different addresses in a year of marriage. Renters, they called themselves, the city word for the squatters we pity here in the country.

Dede and Jaimito had lost everything so many times, it was hard to keep up with their frequent moves. Now they were in our old house in Ojo de Agua, and Mama had built her up-to-date cottage on the main road from Santiago, complete with aluminum jalousies and an indoor toilet she called “the sanitary.”

And me, Patria Mercedes, like I said, I had settled down for life in my rocksure house. And eighteen years passed by.

 

 

My eighteenth year of marriage the ground of my well-being began to give a little. Just a baby’s breath tremor, a hairline crack you could hardly see unless you were looking for trouble.

New Year’s Eve we gathered in Mamá’s new house in Conuco, the sisters and all the husbands, a first since Maria Teresa’s wedding a year ago this February. We stayed late, celebrating being together more than the new year, I think. There wasn’t much talk of politics so as not to worry Mamá. Also Jaimito had grown adamant—he didn’t want Dedé involved in whatever trouble Minerva and the others were cooking up.

Still, all of us were praying for a change this new year. Things had gotten so bad, even people like me who didn’t want anything to do with politics were thinking about it all the time. See, now I had my grown son to nail me to the hard facts. I assigned him to God’s care and asked San José and the Virgencita to mind him as well, but still I worried all the time.

It was after one in the morning when Pedrito and Noris and I started back to our house. Nelson had stayed at Mamá‘s, saying he was going to bring in the new year talking to his uncles. As we rode home, I saw the lamp at the window of the young widow’s house, and I knew he’d be bringing it in with more than talk. Rumor had it my “boy” was sowing wild oats along with his father’s cacao crop. I had asked Pedrito to talk to our son, but you know how the men are. He was proud of Nelson for proving himself a macho before he was even a grown man.

We hadn’t been asleep but a couple of hours when that bedroom was blazing with light. My first thought was of angels descending, their burning brands flashing, their fierce wings stirring up things. But as I came fully awake, I saw it was a car aiming its lights at our bedroom window. iAy, Dios mío! I shook Pedrito awake and flew out of that bed terrified that something had happened to my boy. I know what Pedrito says, that I’m overly protective. But ever since I lost my baby thirteen years ago, my deepest fear is that I will have to put another one in the ground. This time I don’t think I could go on.

It was Minerva and Manolo and Leandro and, yes, Nelson, all very drunk. They could hardly contain their excitement till they got inside. They had just tuned into Radio Rebelde to hear the New Year’s news, and they had been greeted by the triumphant announcement. Batista had fled! Fidel, his brother Raúl, and Ernesto they call Che had entered Havana and liberated the country. ¡Cuba libre! ¡Cuba libre!

Minerva started singing our anthem and the others joined in. I kept hushing them, and they finally sobered up when I reminded them we were not libre yet. The roosters were already crowing as they left to spread the news to all their friends in the area. Nelson wanted to go along, but I put my foot down. Next year when he was eighteen, he could stay out till the cacao needed picking. But this year—he was too dead tired to argue. I walked him to his room and, as if he were still a child, undressed him and tucked him in.

But Pedrito was still wanting to celebrate. And you know him, strong emotion takes him and he knows only one way to express it if I’m close by.

He entered me, and it took some weeks before I realized. But I’d like to think, since my cycles stopped in January, that Raúl Ernesto began his long campaign into flesh the first day of this hopeful new year.

 

 

When I told Pedrito I’d missed two months already, he said, “Maybe you’re going through the change early, you think?” Like I said, it’d been thirteen years and I hadn’t borne fruit. “Let me go in there and see what I can find,” he said, leading me by the hand into our bedroom. Our Nelson grinned. He understood now about siestas.

I went on like this another month, and I missed again. “Pedrito,” I said, “I’m pregnant, I’m sure of it.”

“How can that be, Mami?” He teased. “We’re ready for our grandchildren.” He indicated our grown son and daughter, playing dominoes, listening in on our secrets.

Noris leapt out of her chair. “Ay, Mami, is it true, really?” Fourteen going on fifteen, she had finally outgrown her dolls and was two, three, who knows, ten years away from her own babies. (The way young women wait these days, look at Minerva!) But Noris was like me, she wanted to give herself to things, and at her tender age, she could only imagine giving herself to children.

“Why don’t you have one of your own?” Nelson teased, poking his sister where she’d already told him a thousand times it hurt to be poked. “Maybe Marcelino wants to be a daddy?”

“Stop that!” Noris whined.

“Stop that,” Nelson mimicked her. Sometimes, I wondered how my son could be with a woman and then come home and nag his sister so miserably.

Pedrito scowled. “That Marcelino gets near you and he won’t know what hit him.”

“Help me think of a name,” I suggested, using the baby to distract them from a silly argument.

I looked down at my belly as if Our Lord might write out the name on my cotton housedress. And suddenly it was as if His tongue spoke in my mouth. On my own, I would never have thought of naming my son after revolutionaries. “Ernesto,” I said, “I’m going to name him Raúl Emesto.”

“Ernesto?” Noris said, making a face.

But Nelson’s face lit up in a way that made me nervous. “We’ll call him Che for short.”

“Che!” Noris said, holding her nose. “What kind of a name is that?”

 

 

Like I said, it must have been the Lord’s tongue in my mouth because back then, I was running scared. Not for myself but for those I loved. My sisters

—Minerva, Mate—I was sick sometimes with fear for them, but they lived at a distance now, so I hid the sun with a finger and chose not to see the light all around me. Pedrito didn’t worry me. I knew he would always have one hand in the soil and the other somewhere on me. He wouldn’t wander far into trouble if I wasn’t along. But my son, my first born!

I had tried to shelter him, Lord knows. To no avail. He was always tagging along behind his Tío Manolo and his new Tio Leandro, men of the world who had gone to the university and who impressed him more than his country father. Any chance he got, he was off to the capital “to see Tía Mate and the baby Jacqueline,” or to Monte Cristi “to visit Tia Minerva and Minou and the new baby Manolito.” Yes, a whole new crop of Mirabals was coming up. That was another possible explanation for my pregnancy— suggestion. After all, whenever we were together for a while under the same roof, our cycles became as synchronized as our watches.

I knew my boy. He wanted to be a man outside the bedroom where he had already proven himself. That widow woman could have started a school in there, the way I understood it. But I didn’t resent her, no. She delivered

my son gently into manhood from his boyhood, something a mother cannot possibly do. , And so I thought of a way for Nelson to be in the capital, under supervision so he wouldn’t be running wild with women or his rebel uncles. I talked to Padre de Jesus López, our new priest, who promised to talk to Padre Fabré about letting Nelson enroll in Santo Tomás de Aquino in the capital. It was a seminary, but there was no obligation to the priesthood.

At first Nelson didn’t want to go to a school of pre-priest sissies. But a couple of weeks before the start of classes during the heavy plantings in the yucca field, he had a change of heart. Better to abstain from the gardens of delectable delights than to be stuck planting them, dawn to dusk.

Besides, his weekends would be his own to spend at his aunt Maria Teresa and his uncle Leandro’s house.

Besides, some of those pre-priests were no sissies at all. They talked about pudenda and. cunnilingus as if they were speaking of the body and blood of Christ. How do I know? Nelson came home once and asked me what the words meant, assuming they were liturgical. Young people don’t bother with their Latin these days.

Next step was to convince his father, and that was the hardest of all. Pedrito didn’t see why we should be spending money sending Nelson to a boarding school in the capital. “His best school is right here beside me learning about his patrimonio.”

I didn’t have the heart to suggest that our son might not want to be a farmer like his father. Recently, Nelson had begun talking to me about going to the university. “It’s just for a year, Papi,” I pleaded. “It’ll be a good finish to his education.”

“Besides,” I added, “right now, the seminary is the best place for him.” It was true. Johnny Abbes and his SIM were dragging young men off the streets, and farms, and from offices, like Herod the boy babies in all of Judea. The church, refusing as it did to get involved in temporal matters, remained the only sanctuary.

Pedrito folded his arms and walked off into his cacao fields. I could see him pacing among the trees. That’s where he always went to think, the way I have to get down on my knees to know my own mind. He came back, put

his big hands on either side of the door frame his great-grandfather had built over a hundred years ago, and he nodded. “He can go.” And then with a gesture indicating the green fields over his shoulders that his great- grandfather, his grandfather, and his father had farmed before him, he added, “If the land can’t keep him, I can’t make him stay.”

So with the help of good Padre de Jesus, Nelson entered Santo Tomás de Aquino last September. Out of harm’s way, I thought.

And for a while, you might have said that he was as I was—safe in God’s love.

 

 

I’ll tell you when I panicked. Around Easter my Nelson began to talk about how he would join the liberators once the rumored invasion from Cuba hit our shores.

I sat him down and reminded him what the church fathers were teaching us. God in his wisdom would take care of things. “Promise me you’ll stay out of trouble!” I was on my knees before him. I could not bear the thought of losing my son. “Por Dios,” I pleaded.

“Ay, Mamá, don’t worry!” he said, looking down at me, embarrassed. But he gave me a lukewarm promise he’d stay out of trouble.

I did worry all the time. I went to Padre de Jesús for advice. He was straight out of seminary and brimming with new ideas. He would have a young way of explaining things I could bring home to my son.

“Padre,” I said, kissing the crucifix he offered me, “I feel lost. I don’t know what the Lord requires of us in these hard times.” I dared not get too critical. We all knew there were priests around who would report you to the SIM if you spoke against the regime.

Still, I hadn’t given up on the church as Minerva and Maria Teresa had. Ever since I’d had my vision of the Virgencita, I knew spirit was imminent, and that the churches were just glass houses, or way stations on our road through this rocky life. But His house was a mansion as big as the sky, and

all you had to do was pelt His window with a pebble-cry, Open up! Help me, God! and He would let you inside.

Padre de Jesus did not intone vague pronouncements and send me home with a pat on the head. Not at all. He stood and I could see the travail of his spirit in how he took off his glasses and kept polishing them as if they’d never come clean. “Patria, my child,” he said, which made me smile for he couldn’t have been but five, six years older than my Nelson. “We must wait. We must pray.” He faced me. “I, too, am lost so that I can’t show you the way.”

I was shaking like when a breeze blows through the sacristy and the votive candles flicker. This priest’s frankness had touched me more than a decree. We knelt there in that hot little rectory, and we prayed to the Virgencita. She had clung to Jesus until He told her straight out, Mamá, I have to be about My Father’s business. And she had to let him go, but it broke her heart because, though He was God, He was still her boy.

 

 

I got braver like a crab going sideways. I inched towards courage the best way I could, helping out with the little things.

I knew they were up to something big, Minerva and Manolo and Leandro. I wasn’t sure about Maria Teresa, caught up as she was with her new baby Jacqueline. But those others, I could feel it in the tension and silence that would come over them when I walked in on one of their conversations. I didn’t ask questions. I suppose I was afraid of what I would find out.

But then Minerva came to me with her six-month-old Manolito and asked me to keep him. “Keep him?” I, who treasured my children more than my own life, couldn’t believe my sister would leave her son for anything. “Where are you going?” I asked, alarmed.

That tense silence came upon her, and then haltingly, as if wanting to be sure with each step that she was not saying more than she had to, she said,

“I’m going to be on the road a lot. And I’ll be coming down here for some meetings every week.”

“But Minerva, your own child—” I began and then I saw it did hurt her to make this sacrifice she was convinced she needed to make. So I added, “I’d love to take care of my little godson here!” Manolito smiled and came readily to my arms. How delicious to hold him like my own baby five months ahead of time. That’s when I told Minerva I was pregnant with a boy.

She was so glad for me. So glad! Then she got curious. “Since when are you a fortune teller to know it’s a son?”

I shrugged. But I gave her the best reason I could. “I’ve got a name all picked out for a boy.”

“What are you going to name him?”

I knew then I had brought it up as a way of letting her know I was with her—if only in spirit. “Raúl Emesto,” I said, watching her face.

She looked at me a long moment, and very simply, she said, “I know you want to stay out of trouble, and I respect that.”

“If there should come a time—” I said. “There will,” she said.

 

 

Minerva and Manolo began coming down every week to Ojo de Agua from Monte Cristi, almost from one end of the island to the other. Now, whenever they were stopped at the interrogation stations, they had a good excuse for being on the road. They were visiting their sickly son at Patria González’s house in Conuco. Monte Cristi was too hot, desert really, and their doctor had prescribed healthier air for the little boy.

Every time they came, Leandro drove up from the capital, and this curly- headed man Nino and his pretty wife Dulce came over from San Francisco.

They met up with Cuca and Fafa and one named Marien—though sometimes they called each other different, make-believe names.

They needed a place to meet, and so I offered them our land. There was a clearing between the cacao and the plátano groves. Pedrito had put some cane chairs and hammocks under a thatched roof, a place for workers to rest or take a siesta during the hot part of the day. Minerva and her group would sit out there for hours, talking. Once or twice when it was raining, I’d invite them to come into the house, but they’d refuse, knowing it was just politeness on my part. And I was thankful to them for sparing me. If the SIM came, Pedrito and I could always swear we knew nothing about these meetings.

It was a problem when Nelson was home from school. He’d go out there, eager to take part in whatever his uncles were plotting. In deference to me, I’m sure, they kept him at a distance. Not in any way that could hurt his young man’s pride, but in a comradely way. They’d send him for some more ice or cigarrillos or please Nelson, hombre, couldn’t he take the car down to Jimmy’s and see what was up with that radiator since they had to make it back to the capital this very night. Once, they sent the poor boy all the way to Santiago to pick up batteries for the short wave.

When he came back from delivering them, I asked him, “What’s going on out there, Nelson?” I knew, but I wanted to hear what he knew.

“Nothing, Mamá,” he said.

Then the secret he was keeping became more than he could contain. When it was almost June, he finally confided in me. “They’re expecting it this coming month,” he whispered. “The invasion, yes!” he added when he saw the excited look on my face.

But you know why that look was there? I’ll tell you. My Nelson would be in school in the capital until the very end of June, out of harm’s way. He had to study hard if he expected to graduate in time to attend the university in the fall. We had our own little plot cooked up to present to his father— the day before university classes started.

 

 

I was the one who was going to be on the road. Mamá couldn’t believe it when I asked if she’d keep Manolito those four days. Why I was five months gone, Mamá exclaimed. I shouldn’t be traveling!

I explained that I’d be traveling with Padre de Jesús and the Salcedo group, and this retreat was important for renewing my faith. We were going up to Constanza. That mountain air would be good for my baby. And I’d heard the road was fairly good. I didn’t add from whom (Minerva) or why. Troops were patrolling up and down the cordillera just in case any would-be guerrillas inspired by the Cubans were thinking of hiding there.

“Ay, Virgencita, you know what you do with my girls,” was all Mama said. She had become resigned to her daughters’ odd and willful ways. And yes, she would keep Manolito. Noris, too.

I had wanted my girl to go along on the retreat, but it was no use. Marcelino’s sister had invited Noris to her quinceañera party and there was too much to do between now and then.

“But it’s two weeks away, mi amor.” I didn’t add that we had already designed and cut her dress, bought her little satin pumps, and tried out how she would wear her hair.

“¡Ay, Mami!” she wailed. “Por favor.” Why couldn’t I understand that getting ready for them was what made parties fun?

How different she was from me at that age! For one thing, Mamá raised us the old-fashioned way where we couldn’t go to dances until after our quinceañeras. But I was raising my girl modem where she wasn’t kept cooped up, learning blind obedience. Still, I wished she’d use her wings to soar up closer to the divine hem of our Blessed Virgin instead of to flutter towards things not worthy of her attention.

I kept praying for her, but it was like Pedrito having to let go of his son. If the Virgencita didn’t think it was time for my girl to magnify the Lord, I certainly couldn’t talk her into a retreat with “old ladies” and a bunch of bad-breath priests. (Lord forgive her!)

We were a group of about thirty “mature” women—that’s how Padre de Jesus described us, bless his heart. We had started meeting a few months

back to discuss issues that came up in the gospel and to do Christ’s work in the bohios and barrios. Now we even had a name, Christian Cultural Group, and we had spread all over the Cibao area. Four priests provided spiritual guidance, Padre de ]esús among them. This retreat was our first, and Brother Daniel had managed to get the Maryknolls to let us use their motherhouse up in the mountains. The theme was the exploration of the meaning of Mary in our lives. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe Padre de Jesús or Brother Daniel or one of the others would have an answer for me now about what was required during these troubled times.

“Ha! Your church will keep mum till kingdom come,” Minerva was always challenging me. Religion was now my belonging she didn’t want any part of. “Not a peep to help the downtrodden.”

What could I say when I, too, was intent on keeping my own flesh safe.

I’d written a letter to Padre Fabré down at Santo Tomás.

Dear Father,

Greetings in the Lord’s name from the mother of one of your charges, Nelson González, completing his fourth year, a smart boy on the whole, as you yourself wrote in your last report, but not always the best with self-control. To make sure he studies hard and stays out of trouble, please, do not let my son off the grounds except to come home. He is a country boy not used to the city temptations, and I do not want him getting mixed up with the wrong people.

May this letter be in the strictest of your confidences, Father. Most faithfully yours, his mother,

Patria Mercedes

But Nelson found out about the letter from his little blabbermouth aunt in the capital. It was unfair, I wasn’t letting him become a man. But I stood firm. I’d rather have him stay alive, a boy forever, than be a man dead in the ground.

Maria Teresa was also hurt. One Saturday morning, she had come to take Nelson out for the weekend, and the director hadn’t allowed her. “Don’t you

trust me?” she confronted me. Now I had two angry souls to appease with half-truths.

“It isn’t you, Mate,” I began. I didn’t add that I knew from Nelson’s remarks that Leandro and Manolo and Minerva were involved in a serious plot.

“Don’t worry, I can take care of your baby. I’ve got lots of experience now” Mate was holding pretty Jacqueline, nuzzling her baby’s head with little kisses. “Besides, there’s nothing happening in the capital Nelson could get into, believe me. The Jaragua’s empty. The Olympia has been showing the same movie for a month. No one goes out anymore.” And then I heard her say it: “Nothing to celebrate yet.” I looked her in the eye and said, “You too, Mate?”

She hugged her baby girl close and looked so brave. I could hardly believe this was our tenderhearted little Mate whom Noris resembled so much. “Yes, I’m with them.” But then, the hard look faded and she was my baby sister again, afraid of el cuco and noodles in her soup. “If anything should happen, promise me you’ll take care of Jacqueline.”

It seemed I was going to raise all my sisters’ babies! “You know I would. She’s one of mine, aren’t you, amorcito?” I took that baby in my arms and hugged her close. Jacqueline looked at me with that wonder the little ones have who still think of the world as a big, safe playroom inside their mother’s womb.

 

 

Our retreat had been planned for May, the month of Mary. But with the increased rumors of an invasion, El Jefe declared a state of emergency. All through May no one went anywhere without special permission from the SIM. Even Minerva stayed put in Monte Cristi. One day when we hadn’t seen his mother for almost a month, Manolito reached up to me from his crib and said, “Mamá, Mamá.” It was going to be hard to give him up once this hell on earth was over.

By mid-June, things had quieted down. It looked as if the invasion was not going to come after all. The state of emergency was called off, and so we went ahead with plans for our retreat.

When we got to Constanza, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had grown up in the greenest, most beautiful valley on the island. But you get used to close- by beauty, and Constanza was different, like the picture of a faraway place on a puzzle you hurry to put together. I kept trying to fit it inside me and I couldn’t. Purple mountains reaching towards angelfeather clouds; a falcon soaring in a calm blue sky; God combing His sunshine fingers through green pastures straight out of the Psalms.

The retreat house was a little ways out of the village down a path through flower-dotted hillsides. Campesinos came out of their huts to watch us pass. A pretty people, golden-skinned, light-eyed, they seemed wary, as if somebody not so kind had come down the road ahead of us. We greeted them and Padre de Jesus explained that we were on a retreat, so if they had any special requests they wanted us to remember in our prayers, please let us know. They stared at us silently and shook their heads, no.

We were each assigned a narrow cell with a cot, a crucifix on the wall, and a fount of holy water at the door. It could have been a palace, I rejoiced so in it all. Our meetings and meals were held in a big airy room with a large picture window. I sat with my back to the dazzling view so as not to be distracted from His Word by His Creation. Dawn and dusk, noon and night we gathered in the chapel and said a rosary along with the little nuns.

My old yearning to be in the religious life stirred. I felt myself rising, light-headed with transcendence, an overflowing fountain. Thank the Lord I had that child in my womb to remind me of the life I had already chosen.

 

 

It happened on the last day of our retreat.

The fourteenth of June: how can I ever forget that day!

We were all in that big room having our midafternoon cursillo. Brother Daniel was talking of the last moment we knew of in Mary’s human life, her Assumption. Our Blessed Mother had been taken up into heaven, body and soul. What did we think of that? We went around the room, everyone declaring it was an honor for a mere mortal. When it came my turn, I said it was only fair. If our souls could go to eternal glory, our hardworking motherbodies surely deserved more. I patted my belly and thought of the little ghost of a being folded in the soft tissues of my womb. My son, my Raulito. I ached for him even more without Manolito in my arms to stanch the yearning.

Next thing I knew, His Kingdom was coming down upon the very roof of that retreat house. Explosion after explosion ripped the air. The house shook to its very foundation. Windows shattered, smoke poured in with a horrible smell. Brother Daniel was shouting, “Fall to the ground, ladies, cover your heads with your folding chairs!” Of course, all I was thinking of was protecting my unborn child. I scrambled to a little niche where a statue of the Virgencita was standing, and begging her pardon, I knocked her and her pedestal over. The crash was drowned out by the thunderous blast outside. Then I crawled in and held my folding chair in front of me, closing the opening, and praying all the while that the Lord not test me with the loss of my child.

The shelling happened in a flash, but it seemed the chaos went on for hours. I heard moans, but when I lowered my chair, I could make out nothing in the smoke-filled room. My eyes stung, and I realized that in my fear I had wet my pants. Lord, I prayed, Lord God, let this cup pass. When the air finally cleared, I saw a mess of glass and rubble on the floor, bodies huddled everywhere. A wall had tumbled down and the tile floor was all torn up. Beyond, through the jagged hole where the window had been, the closest mountainside was a raging inferno.

Finally, there was an eerie silence, interrupted only by the sound of far- off gunfire and the nearby trickle of plaster from the ceiling. Padre de Jesus gathered us in the most sheltered comer, where we assessed our damages. The injuries turned out to look worse than they were, just minor cuts from flying glass, thank the Lord. We ripped up our slips and bandaged the worst.

Then for spiritual comfort, Brother Daniel led us through a rosary. When we heard gunfire coming close again, we kept right on praying.

There were shouts, and four, then five, men in camouflage were running across the grounds towards us. Behind them, the same campesinos we’d seen on our walk and a dozen or more guardias were advancing, armed with machetes and machine guns. The hunted men crouched and careened this way and that as they headed towards the cover of the motherhouse.

They made it to the outdoor deck. I could see them clearly, their faces bloodied and frantic. One of them was badly wounded and hobbling, another had a kerchief tied around his forehead. A third was shouting to two others to stay down, and one of them obeyed and threw himself on the deck.

But the other must not have heard him for he kept on running towards us. I looked in his face. He was a boy no older than Noris. Maybe that’s why I cried out, “Get down, son! Get down!” His eyes found mine just as the shot hit him square in the back. I saw the wonder on his young face as the life drained out of him, and I thought, Oh my God, he’s one of mine!

 

 

Coming down that mountain, I was a changed woman. I may have worn the same sweet face, but now I was carrying not just my child but that dead boy as well.

My stillborn of thirteen years ago. My murdered son of a few hours ago.

I cried all the way down that mountain. I looked out the spider-webbed window of that bullet-riddled car at brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, one and all, my human family. Then I tried looking up at our Father, but I couldn’t see His Face for the dark smoke hiding the tops of those mountains.

I made myself pray so I wouldn’t cry. But my prayers sounded more like I was trying to pick a fight.

I’m not going to sit back and watch my babies die, Lord, even if that’s what You in Your great wisdom decide.

 

 

They met me on the road coming into town, Minerva, Maria Teresa, Mama, Dedé, Pedrito, Nelson. Noris was weeping in terror. It was after that I noticed a change in her, as if her soul had at last matured and begun its cycles. When I dismounted from that car, she came running towards me, her arms out like a person seeing someone brought back from the dead. All of them were sure I had been singed to nothing from what they’d heard on the radio about the bombing.

No, Patria Mercedes had come back to tell them all, tell them all.

But I couldn’t speak. I was in shock, you could say, I was mourning that dead boy.

It was all over the papers the next day. Forty-nine men and boys martyred in those mountains. We had seen the only four saved, and for what? Tortures I don’t want to think of.

Six days later, we knew when the second wave of the invasion force hit on the beaches north of here. We saw the planes flying low, looking like hornets. And afterwards we read in the papers how one boat with ninety- three on board had been bombed before it could land; the other with sixty- seven landed, but the army with the help of local campesinos hunted those poor martyrs down.

I didn’t keep count how many had died. I kept my hand on my stomach, concentrating on what was alive.

 

 

Less than a month before I was due, I attended the August gathering of our Christian Cultural Group in Salcedo. It was the first meeting since our disastrous retreat. Padre de Jesus and Brother Daniel had been down in the capital throughout July conferring with other clergy. To the Salcedo gathering, they invited only a few of us old members whom—I saw later—

they had picked out as ready for the Church Militant, tired of the Mother Church in whose skirts they once hid.

They picked right, all right. I was ready, big as I looked, heavy as I was.

The minute I walked into that room, I knew something had changed in the way the Lord Jesus would be among us. No longer was there the liturgical chatter of how San Zenón had made the day sunny for a granddaughter’s wedding or how Santa Lucia had cured the cow’s pinkeye. That room was silent with the fury of avenging angels sharpening their radiance before they strike.

The priests had decided they could not wait forever for the pope and the archbishop to come around. The time was now, for the Lord had said, I come with the sword as well as the plow to set at liberty them that are bruised.

I couldn’t believe this was the same Padre de Jesus talking who several months back hadn’t known his faith from his fear! But then again, here in that little room was the same Patria Mercedes, who wouldn’t have hurt a butterfly, shouting, “Amen to the revolution.”

And so we were born in the spirit of the vengeful Lord, no longer His lambs. Our new name was Acción Clero-Cultural. Please note, action as the first word! And what was our mission in ACC?

Only to organize a powerful national underground.

We would spread the word of God among our brainwashed campesinos who had hunted down their own liberators. After all, Fidel would never have won over in Cuba if the campesinos there hadn’t fed him, hidden him, lied for him, joined him.

The word was, we were all brothers and sisters in Christ. You could not chase after a boy with your machete and enter the kingdom of heaven. You could not pull that trigger and think there was even a needle hole for you to pass through into eternity.

I could go on.

Padre de Jesus walked me out when the meeting was over. He looked a little apologetic when he glanced at my belly, but he went on and asked me. Did I know of any one who would like to join our organization ? No doubt he had heard about the meetings Manolo and Minerva were conducting on our property.

I nodded. I knew of at least six, I said, counting Pedrito and Nelson among my two sisters and their husbands. And in a month’s time, seven. Yes, once my son was born, I’d be out there recruiting every campesino in Ojo de Agua, Conuco, Salcedo to the army of Our Lord.

“Patria Mercedes, how you’ve changed!”

I shook my head back at him, and I didn’t have to say it. He was laughing, putting on his glasses after wiping them on his cassock, his vision

—like mine—clean at last.

 

 

Next time they gathered under the shade of the thatch, I went out there, carrying my week-old prize.

“Hola, Patria,” the men called. “That’s quite a macho you got there!” When they picked him out of my arms to look him over, my boy howled. He was a crier from the start, that one. “What you call that bawling little he- man?”

“Raúl Emesto,” Minerva said meaningfully, bragging on her nephew.

I nodded and smiled at their compliments. Nelson looked away when I looked at him. He was probably thinking I had come out there to get him. “Come on inside now,” I said. “I have something to talk to you about.”

He thought I meant him, but I was looking around at the whole group. “Come on.”

Minerva waved away my invitation. “Don’t you worry about us.” I said, “Come on in, now. I mean it this time.”

They looked from one to the other, and something in my voice let them know I was with them. They picked up their drinks, and I could have been leading the children out of bondage, the way they all followed me obediently into my house.

 

 

Now it was Pedrito who began to worry. And the worry came where he was most vulnerable.

The same month we met in Padre de Jesús’ rectory, a new law was passed. If you were caught harboring any enemies of the regime even if you yourself were not involved in their schemes, you would be jailed, and everything you owned would become the property of the government.

His land! Worked by his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him. His house like an ark with beams where he could see his great- grandfather’s mark.

We had not fought like this in our eighteen years of marriage. In that bedroom at night, that man, who had never raised his voice to me, unleashed the fury of three ancestors at me. “You crazy, mujer, to invite them into the house! You want your sons to lose their patrimony, is that what you want?”

As if he were answering his father, Raúl Ernesto began to cry. I gave him the breast and long after he was done, I cradled him there to help coax out the tenderness in his father. To remind him there was some for him as well.

But he didn’t want me. It was the first time Pedrito González had turned me away. That hurt deep in the heart’s tender parts. I was going through that empty period after the baby is born when you ache to take it back into yourself. And the only solace then is the father coming back in, making himself at home.

“If you had seen what I saw on that mountain,” I pleaded with him, weeping all over again for that dead boy. “Ay, Pedrito, how can we be true Christians and turn our back on our brothers and sisters—”

“Your first responsibility is to your children, your husband, and your home!” His face was so clouded with anger, I couldn’t see the man I loved. “I’ve already let them use this place for months. Let them meet over on your own Mirabal farm from now on!”

It’s true, our family farm would have been a logical alternative, but Dedé and Jaimito were living on it now. I had already approached Dedé, and she had come back without Jaimito’s permission.

“But you believe in what they’re doing, Pedrito,” I reminded him. And then I don’t know what got into me. I wanted to hurt the man in front of me. I wanted to break this smaller version of who he was and release the big- hearted man I’d married. And so I told him. His first born did not want this patrimony. Nelson had already put in his application for the university in the fall. And what was more, I knew for a fact he was already in the underground along with his uncles. “It’s him you’ll be throwing to the SIM!”

Pedrito wiped his face with his big hands and bowed his head, resigned. “God help him, God help him,” he kept mumbling till my heart felt wrong hurting him as I’d done.

But later in the dark, he sought me out with his old hunger. He didn’t have to say it, that he was with us now. 1 knew it in the reckless way he took me with him down into the place where his great-grandfather and his grandfather and his father had met their women before him.

 

 

So it was that our house became the motherhouse of the movement.

It was here with the doors locked and the front windows shuttered that the ACC merged with the group Manolo and Minerva had started over a year ago. There were about forty of us. A central committee was elected. At first, they tried to enlist Minerva, but she deferred to Manolo, who became our president.

It was in this very parlor where Noris had begun receiving callers that the group gave themselves a name. How they fought over that one like schoolgirls arguing over who will hold whose hand! Some wanted a fancy name that would touch all the high spots, Revolutionary Party of Dominican Integrity. Then Minerva moved swiftly through the clutter to the heart of the matter. She suggested we name ourselves after the men who had died in the mountains.

For the second time in her quiet life, Patria Mercedes (alias Mariposa #3) shouted out, “Amen to the revolution!”

So it was between these walls hung with portraits, including El Jefe‘s, that the Fourteenth of June Movement was founded. Our mission was to effect an internal revolution rather than wait for an outside rescue.

It was on this very Formica table where you could still see the egg stains from my family’s breakfast that the bombs were made. Nipples, they were called. It was the shock of my life to see Maria Teresa, so handy with her needlepoint, using tweezers and little scissors to twist the fine wires together.

It was on this very bamboo couch where my Nelson had, as a tiny boy, played with the wooden gun his grandfather had made him that he sat now with Padre de Jesús, counting the ammunition for the .32 automatics we would receive in a few weeks at a prearranged spot. The one named Ilander we called Eagle had arranged the air drop with the exiles.

It was on that very rocker where I had nursed every one of my babies that I saw my sister Minerva looking through the viewfinder of an M-1 carbine

—a month ago I would not have known it from a shotgun. When I followed her aim out the window, I cried out, startling her, “No, no, not the mimosa!”

I had sent Noris away to her grandmother’s in Conuco. I told her we were making repairs to her room. And in a way, we were, for it was in her bedroom that we assembled the boxes. It was among her crocheted pink poodles and little perfume bottles and snapshots of her quinceañera party that we stashed our arsenal of assorted pistols and revolvers, three .38 caliber Smith and Wesson pistols, six .30 caliber M-1 carbines, four M-3 machine guns, and a .45 Thompson stolen from a guardia. I know, Mate and

I drew up the list ourselves in the pretty script we’d been taught by the nuns for writing out Bible passages.

It was in those old and bountiful fields that Pedrito and his son and a few of the other men buried the boxes once we got them loaded and sealed. In among the cacao roots Pedrito lowered the terrible cargo. But he seemed at peace now with the risks he was taking. This was a kind of farming, too, he told me later, one that he could share with his Nelson. From those seeds of destruction, we would soon—very soon—harvest our freedom.

It was on that very coffee table on which Noris had once knocked a tooth out tussling with her brother that the plans for the attack were drawn. On January 21st, the day of the Virgin of Highest Grace, the different groups would gather here to arm themselves and receive their last-minute instructions.

It was down this very hall and in and out of my children’s bedrooms and past the parlor and through the back galería to the yard that I walked those last days of 1959, worrying if I had done the right thing exposing my family to the SIM. I kept seeing that motherhouse up in the mountains, its roof caving in, its walls crumbling like a foolish house built on sand. I could, by a trick of terror, turn that vision into my own house tumbling down.

As I walked, I built it back up with prayer, hung the door on its creaky hinges, nailed the floorboards down, fitted the transoms. “God help us,” I kept saying. “God help us.” Raulito was almost always in my arms, crying something terrible, as I paced, trying to settle him, and myself, down.