In the Time of Butterflies (23 page)

 

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.

 

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.

 

¡
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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

 

 

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!”

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.