In the Time of Butterflies (21 page)

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

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

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

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

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

It’s raining here, too, in Ojo de Agua. Eye of Water! The name seems ironic given the weather. North to Tamboril and the mountain road to Puerto Plata, the rain drives on, in every
bohío
and small
conuco,
and on out to the Atlantic where it is lost in the waves that rock the bones of martyrs in the deepest sleep. We’ve traveled almost the full length of the island and can report that every comer of it is wet, every river overflows its banks, every rain barrel is filled to the brim, every wall washed clean of writing no one knows how to read anyway.

CHAPTER SEVEN

María Teresa

1953 to 1958

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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!

 

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.)

 

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??????????

 

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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:

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.

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.

 

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!

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.