In the Time of Butterflies (45 page)

And down I went, sucked back into the body like water down a drain.

Next thing I knew,
was calling out my name and shouting, Tell them I had to do it, as he was being dragged away.

Johnny seemed in a bad mood at all this commotion. Get him out of here, he said. Then to Bloody Juan, Get her dressed and take her back.

I was left alone in that room with a handful of guards. I could tell they were all ashamed of themselves, avoiding my eyes quiet as if Johnny were still there. Then Bloody Juan gathered up my clothes, but I wouldn’t let him help me. I dressed myself and walked out to the wagon on my own two feet.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Minerva

August to November 25, 1960

All my life, I had been trying to get out of the house. Papá always complained that, of his four girls, I should have been the boy, born to cut loose. First, I wanted to go to boarding school, then university. When Manolo and I started the underground, I traveled back and forth from Monte Cristi to Salcedo, connecting cell with cell. I couldn’t stand the idea of being locked up in any one life.

So when we were released in August and put under house arrest, you’d have thought I was getting just the punishment for me. But to tell the truth, it was as if I’d been served my sentence on a silver platter. By then, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to stay home with my sisters at Mamá‘s, raising our children.

Those first few weeks at home took some getting used to.

After seven months in prison, a lot of that time in solitary, the overload was too much. The phone ringing; a visitor dropping by (with permission from Peña, of course); Peña himself dropping by to see about the visitor; Don Bemardo with guavas from his tree; rooms to go in and out of; children wanting their shoelaces tied; the phone ringing again; what to do with the curdled milk.

In the middle of the day when I should have been out soaking up sun and getting good country air in my infected lungs, I would seek the quiet of the bedroom, slip out of my dress and lie under the sheets watching the sun speckling the leaves through the barely opened jalousies.

But as I lay there, the same overload would start happening in my head. Bits and pieces of the past would bob up in the watery soup of my thoughts those days—Lío explaining how to hit the volleyball so there was a curve in its fall; the rain falling on our way to Papá’s funeral; my hand coming down on Trujillo’s face; the doctor slapping her first breath into my newborn baby girl.

I’d sit up, shocked at what I was letting happen to me. I had been so much stronger and braver in prison. Now at home I was falling apart.

Or, I thought, lying back down, I’m ready for a new life, and this is how it starts.

I grew stronger gradually and began taking part in the life of the household.

None of us had any money, and the dwindling income from the farm was being stretched mighty thin across five families. So we started up a specialty business of children’s christening gowns. I did the simple stitching and seam binding.

The pneumonia in my lungs cleared up. I got my appetite back and began to regain the weight I’d lost in prison. I could wear again my old clothes Dona Fefita had brought down from Monte Cristi.

And, of course, my children were a wonder. I’d swoop down on them, showering them with kisses. “Mami!” they’d shriek. How lovely to be called mother again; to have their little arms around my neck; their sane, sweet breath in my face.

And pinto beans—were they always so colorful? “Wait, wait, wait,” I’d cry out to Fela before she dunked them in the water. I’d scoop up handfuls just to hear the soft rattle of their downpour back in the pot. Everything I had to touch. Everything I had to taste. I wanted everything back in my life again.

But sometimes a certain slant of light would send me back. The light used to fall just so at this time of day on the floor below my top bunk.

And once, Minou got hold of a piece of pipe and was rattling it against the
galería
rail. It was a sound exactly recalling the guards in prison running their nightsticks against the bars. I ran out and yanked the pipe from her hand, screaming, “No!” My poor little girl burst out crying, frightened by the terror in my voice.

But those memories, too, began to fade. They became stories. Everyone wanted to hear them. Mate and I could keep the house entertained for hours, telling and retelling the horrors until the sting was out of them.

We were allowed two outings a week: Thursdays to La Victoria to visit the men, and Sundays to church. But for all that I was free to travel, I dreaded going out of the house. The minute we turned onto the road, my heart started pounding and my breathing got shallow.

The open vistas distressed me, the sense of being adrift in a crowd of people pressing in on all sides, wanting to touch me, greet me, wish me well. Even in church during the privacy of Holy Communion, Father Gabriel bent down and whispered
“
i
viva la Mariposa!”

My months in prison had elevated me to superhuman status. It would hardly have been seemly for someone who had challenged our dictator to suddenly succumb to a nervous attack at the communion rail.

I hid my anxieties and gave everyone a bright smile. If they had only known how frail was their iron-will heroine. How much it took to put on that hardest of all performances, being my old self again.

My best performances were reserved for Peña’s visits. He came often to supervise our house arrest. The children got so used to his toad face and grabby hands, they began calling him Tío Capitán and asking to hold his gun and ride on his knee horse.

I myself could not get used to him. Whenever that big white Mercedes turned into our narrow driveway, I ran to my bedroom and shut the door to give myself time to put on my old-self face.

In no time, someone was sent back there to get me. “It’s Peña. You’ve got to come!” Even Mamá, who once refused to receive him, now buttered him up whenever he was over. After all, he had let her have her babies back.

One afternoon I was out trimming the laurel in the front yard. Manolito was “helping” me. After cutting the branches, all but a sliver, I held him up to pull them off. From his perch on my shoulders, he reported all he saw out on the road. “Tío’s car!” he cried out, and sure enough, I saw the flash of white through a break in the hedge. It was too late to tune up for my performance. I went directly to the carport to receive him.

“What a rare occasion, Dona Minerva. The last few times I’ve come you haven’t been well.” In other words, I’ve noticed your rudeness. All of it is filed away. “You must be feeling better,” he observed, without a question mark.

“I saw your car, I saw your car,” sang Manolito.

“Manolito, my boy, you are all eyes. We could use men like you in the SIM.”

Oh God, I thought.

“Ladies, it’s nice to have you all here,” Pena noted, when Mate and Patria joined us on the patio. Dedé had appeared with her shears to work on the hedge and keep her eye on “things.” Whenever she didn’t like my tone, she would clip the crown of thorns violently, scattering a spray of leaves and red petals in the air.

For the umpteenth time, Pena reminded us how lucky we were. Our five-year sentence had been commuted to house arrest. Instead of the restrictions of prison, we had only a few rules to obey. (We called them Peña’s commandments.) He rehearsed them each time he came: No trips, no visitors, no contact with politicals. Any exceptions only by his permission. “Clear?”

We nodded. I was tempted to bring out the broom and set it by the door, the country way to tell people it was time to go.

Peña dunked the bobbing ice cubes with a fat finger. Today he had come for more than the recital of his rules. “El Jefe has not visited our province for a while now,” he began.

Of course not, I thought. Most families in Salcedo had at least one son or daughter or husband in prison.