In The Time Of The Butterflies Part 18

"The liberators are here!" Jaimito's voice was sloppy with emotion. Dede's arrival with Minerva and Manolo probably confirmed his suspicions. "What do you want?" he asked, hands gripping either side of the door frame.

"My sons," Dede said, coming up on the porch. She felt brave with Minerva at her side.

"My sons," he proclaimed, "are where they should be, safe and sound."

"Why, cousin, don't you say h.e.l.lo?" Minerva chided him.

He was curt in his greetings, even to Manolo, whom he had always liked. They had together invested their wives' inheritance in that ridiculous project-what was it?-growing onions in some G.o.dforsaken desert area where you couldn't even get Haitians to live? Dede had warned them.

But Manolo's warmth could thaw any coldness. He gave his old business partner un abrazo, un abrazo, addressing him as addressing him as compadre compadre even though neither one was G.o.dparent to the other's children. He invited himself in, ruffled the boys' hair, and called out, "Dona Leila! Where's my girl?" even though neither one was G.o.dparent to the other's children. He invited himself in, ruffled the boys' hair, and called out, "Dona Leila! Where's my girl?"

Obviously, the boys suspected nothing. They yielded reluctant kisses to their mother and aunt, their eyes all the while trained on the screen where el gato el gato Tom and Tom and el ratoncito el ratoncito Jerry were engaged in yet another of their battles. Jerry were engaged in yet another of their battles.

Dona Leila came out from her bedroom, ready to entertain. She looked coquettish in a fresh dress, her white hair pinned up with combs. "Manolo, Minerva! "Manolo, Minerva! iQue placer!" iQue placer!" But it was Dede whom she kept hugging. But it was Dede whom she kept hugging.

So he hadn't said anything to his mother. He wouldn't dare, Dede thought. Dona Leila had always doted on her daughter-in-law, so much so that Dede sometimes worried that Leila's five daughters would resent her. But really it was obvious they adored the sister-in-law-cousin who encouraged them in their small rebellions against their possessive only brother. Seven years ago, when Don Jaime had died, Jaimito had taken on the man-of-the-family role with a vengeance. Even his mother said he was worse than Don Jaime had ever been.

"Sit down, please, sit down." Dona Leila pointed to the most comfortable chairs, but she would not let go of Dede's hand.

"Mama," Jaimito explained, "we all have something private to discuss. We'll talk outside," he addressed Manolo, avoiding his mother's eyes.

Dona Leila hurried out to a.s.sess the porch. She turned on the garden lights, brought out her good rockers, served her guests a drink, and insisted Dede eat a pastelito pastelito snack-she was looking too thin. "Don't let me hold you up," she kept saying. snack-she was looking too thin. "Don't let me hold you up," she kept saying.

Finally, they were alone. Jaimito turned the porch lights off, calling out to his mother, that there were too many bugs. But Dede suspected that he found it easier to address their problems in the dark.

"You think I don't know what you've been up to." The agitation in his tone carried.

Dona Leila called from inside. "You need another cervecita, m'ijo?" cervecita, m'ijo?"

"No, no, Mama," Jamito said, impatience creeping into his voice. "I told Dede," he addressed his in-laws, "I didn't want her getting mixed up in this thing."

"I can a.s.sure you she's never been to any of our gatherings," Manolo put in. "On my word."

Jaimito was silent. Manolo's statement had stopped him short. But he had already gone too far to readily admit that he'd been wrong. "Well, what about her meetings with Padre de Jesus? Everyone knows he's a flaming communist."

"He is not," Minerva contradicted.

"For heaven's sake, Jaimito, I only went to see him once," Dede added. "And it was in reference to us, if you have to know the truth."

"Us?" Jaimito stopped rocking himself, his bravado deflated. "What about us, Mami?"

Can you really be so blind, she wanted to say. We don't talk anymore, you boss me around, you keep to yourself, you're not interested in my garden. But Dede felt shy addressing their intimate problems in front of her sister and brother-in-law. "You know what I'm talking about."

"What is it, Mami?"

"Stop calling me Mami, I'm not your mother."

Dona Leila's voice drifted from the kitchen where she was supervising her maid in frying a whole platter of snacks. "Another pastelito, pastelito, Dede?" Dede?"

"She's been like that since the minute I got here," Jaimito confided. His voice had grown tender. He was loosening up. "She must have asked me a hundred times, 'Where's Dede? Where's Dede?"' It was as close as he could get to admitting how he felt.

"I have a suggestion, compadre," compadre," Manolo said. "Why don't you two take a honeymoon somewhere nice." Manolo said. "Why don't you two take a honeymoon somewhere nice."

"The boys have colds," Dede said lamely.

"Their grandmother will take very good care of them, I'm sure." Manolo laughed. "Why not go up to-wasn't it Jarabacoa where you honeymooned?"

"No, Rio San Juan, that area," Jaimito said, entering into the plan.

"We went to Jarabacoa," Minerva reminded Manolo in a tight voice that suggested she disapproved of the reconciliation he was engineering. Her sister was better off alone.

"They have a beautiful new hotel in Rio San Juan," Manolo went on. "There's a balcony with each room, every one with a sea view."

"I hear the prices are reasonable," Jaimito put in. It was as if the two men were working on another deal together.

"So what do you say?" Manolo concluded.

Neither Jaimito nor Dede said a word.

"Then it's settled." Manolo said, but he must have felt the unsettled-ness in their silence, for he went on. "Look, everyone has troubles. Minerva and I went through our own rough times. The important thing is to use a crisis like this to grow closer. Isn't that so, mi amor?" mi amor?"

Minerva's guard was still up. "Some people can't ever really see eye to eye."

Her statement broke the deadlock, though it it was probably the last thing Minerva had intended. Jaimito's compet.i.tive streak was reawakened. "Dede and I see perfectly eye to eye! The problem is other people confusing things." was probably the last thing Minerva had intended. Jaimito's compet.i.tive streak was reawakened. "Dede and I see perfectly eye to eye! The problem is other people confusing things."

The problem is when I open my eyes and see for myself, Dede was thinking. But she was too shaken by the night's events and the long week of indecision to contradict him.

And so it was that the weekend that was to have been a watershed in Dede's life turned into a trip down memory lane in a rented boat. In and out of the famous lagoons they had visited as a young bride and groom Jaimito rowed, stopping to point with his oar to the swamp of mangroves where the Tainos had fished and later hidden from the Spanish. Hadn't she heard him say so eleven years ago?

And at night, sitting on their private balcony, with Jaimito's arm around her and his promises in her ear, Dede gazed up at the stars. Recently, in Vanidades, Vanidades, she had read how starlight took years to travel down to earth. The star whose light she was now seeing could have gone out years ago. What comfort if she counted them? If in that dark heaven she traced a ram when already half its brilliant horn might be gone? she had read how starlight took years to travel down to earth. The star whose light she was now seeing could have gone out years ago. What comfort if she counted them? If in that dark heaven she traced a ram when already half its brilliant horn might be gone?

False hopes, she thought. Let the nights be totally dark! But even that dark wish she made on one of those stars.

The roundup started by the end of the following week.

Early that Sat.u.r.day Jaimito dropped off Dede at Mama's with the two youngest boys. Mama had asked for Dede's help planting a crown-of-thorns border, so she said, but Dede knew what her mother really wanted. She was worried about her daughter after her panicked visit a week ago. She wouldn't ask Dede any questions-Mama always said that what went on in her daughters' marriages was their business. Just by watching Dede lay the small plants in the ground, Mama would know the doings in her heart.

As Dede walked up the driveway, a.s.sessing what still needed to be done in the yard, the boys raced each other to the door. They were swallowed up by the early morning silence of the house. It seemed odd that Mama had not come out to greet her. Then Dede noticed the servants gathered in the backyard, and Tono breaking away, walking briskly towards her. Her face had the burdened look of someone about to deliver bad news.

"What, Tono, tell me!" Dede found she was clutching the woman's arm.

"Don Leandro has been arrested."

"Only him?"

Tono nodded. And shamefully, in her heart Dede was thankful that her sisters had been spared before she was frightened for Leandro.

Inside, Maria Teresa was sitting on the couch, unplaiting and plaiting her hair, her face puffy from crying. Mama stood by, reminding her that everything was going to be all right. By habit, Dede swept her eyes across the room looking for the boys. She heard them in one of the bedrooms, playing with their baby cousin Jacqueline.

"She just got here," Mama was saying. "I was about to send the boy for you." There were no phone lines out where the old house was-another reason Mama had moved up to the main road.

Dede sat down. Her knees always gave out on her when she was scared. "What happened?"

Mate sobbed out her story, her breath wheezy with the asthma she always got whenever she was upset. She and Leandro had been asleep just a couple of hours when they heard a knock that didn't wait for an answer. The SIM had broken down the door of their apartment, stormed inside, roughed up Leandro and carried him away. Then they ransacked the house, ripped open the upholstery on the couch and chairs, and drove off in the new Chevrolet. Mate stopped, too short of breath to continue.

"But why? Why?" Mama kept asking. "Leandro's a serious boy, an engineer!" Neither Mate nor Dede knew how to answer her.

Dede tried calling Minerva in Monte Cristi, but the operator reported the line was dead. Now Mama, who had stood by accepting their shrugs for answers, levelled her gaze at each of them. "What is going on here? And don't try to tell me nothing. I know something is going on."

Mate flinched as if she knew she had misbehaved.

"Mama," Dede said, knowing the time had come to offer their mother the truth. She patted a s.p.a.ce between them on the couch. "You're going to have to sit down for this."

Dede was the first to rush out when they heard the commotion in the front yard. What she saw made no sense at first. The servants were all on the front lawn now, Fela with a screaming Raulito in her arms. Noris stood by, holding Manolito's hand, both of them crying. And there was Patria, on her knees, rocking herself back and forth, pulling the gra.s.s out of the ground in handfuls.

Slowly, Dede pieced together the story Patria was telling.

The SIM had come for Pedrito and Nelson who, alerted by some neighbors, had fled into the hills. Patria had answered the door and told the officers that her husband and son were away in the capital, but the SIM overran the place anyway. They scoured the property, dug up the fields, and found the buried boxes full of their incriminating cargo as well as an old box of papers. Inflammatory materials, they called it. But all Patria saw were pretty notebooks written in a girlish hand. Probably something Noris had wanted to keep private from her nosey older brother, and so hidden away in the grove.

They tore the house apart, hauling away the doors, windows, the priceless mahogany beams of Pedrito's old family rancho. rancho. It was like watching her life dismantled before her very eyes, Patria said, weeping-the glories she had trained on a vine; the Virgencita in the silver frame blessed by the Bishop of Higuey; the wardrobe with little ducks she had stenciled on when Raulito was born. It was like watching her life dismantled before her very eyes, Patria said, weeping-the glories she had trained on a vine; the Virgencita in the silver frame blessed by the Bishop of Higuey; the wardrobe with little ducks she had stenciled on when Raulito was born.

All of it violated, broken, desecrated, destroyed.

Then they set fire to what was left.

And Nelson and Pedrito, seeing the conflagration and fearing for Patria and the children, came running down from the hills, their hands over their heads, giving themselves up.

"I've been good! I've been good!" Patria was screaming at the sky. The ground around her was bare, the gra.s.s lay in sad clumps at her side.

Why she did what she did next, Dede didn't know. Grief driving her to salvage something, she supposed. Down she got on her knees and began tamping the gra.s.s back. In a soothing voice, she reminded her sister of the faith that had always sustained her. "You believe in G.o.d, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and eanh ..

Sobbing, Patria fell in, reciting the Credo: "Light of light, who for us men and for our salvation..."

"-came down from heaven," Dede confirmed in a steady voice.

They could not get hold of Jaimito, for he had gone off to a tobacco auction for the day. The new doctor could not come out from San Francisco after they had explained why they needed him. He had an emergency, he told Dede, but being a connoisseur of fear, she guessed he was afraid. Don Bernardo kindly brought over some of Dona Belen's sedatives, and indiscriminately, Dede gave everyone a small dose, even the babies, even Tono and Fela, and of course, her boys. A numbed dreariness descended on the house, everyone moving in slow motion in the gloom of Miltown and recent events. Dede kept trying to call Minerva, but the line was truly, conclusively down, and the operator became annoyed.

Finally Dede reached Minerva at Manolo's mother's house. How relieved Dede felt to hear her voice. It was then she realized that after all her indecisiveness, she had never really had a choice. Whether she joined their underground or not, her fate was bound up with the fates of her sisters. She would suffer whatever they suffered. If they died, she would not want to go on living without them.

Yes, Manolo had been arrested last night, too. Minerva's voice was tight. No doubt Dona Fefita, Manolo's mother, was at her side. Every once in a while Minerva broke into a fit of coughing.

"Are you all right?" Dede asked her.

There was a long pause. "Yes, yes," Minerva rallied. "The phone's been disconnected but the house is standing. Nothing but books for them to steal." Minerva's laughter exploded into a coughing fit. "Just allergies," she explained when Dede worried she was ill.

"Put on Patria, please," Minerva asked after giving the grim rundown. "I want to ask her something." When Dede explained how Patria had finally settled down with a sedative, that maybe it was better if she didn't come to the phone, Minerva point blank asked, "Do you know if she saved any of the kids' tennis shoes?"

"A, Minerva," Dede sighed. The coded talk was so transparent even she could guess what her sister was asking about. "Here's Mama," Dede cut her off. "She wants to talk to you."

Mama kept pleading with Minerva to come home. "It's better if we're all together." Finally, she handed the phone back to Dede. "You convince her." As if Minerva had ever listened to Dede!

"I am not going to run scared," Minerva stated before Dede could even begin convincing. "I'm fine. Now can't Patria come to the line?"

A few days later, Dede received Minerva's panicky note. She was desperate. She needed money. Creditors were at the door. She had to buy medicines because ("Don't tell Mama") she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. "I hate to involve you, but since you're in charge of the family finances .. Could Dede advance her some cash to be taken out of Minerva's share of the house and lands in the future?

Too proud to just plain ask for help! Dede took off in Jaimito's pickup, avoiding a stop at Mama's to use the phone since Mama would start asking questions. From the bank, Dede called Minerva to tell her that she was on her way with the money, but instead she reached a distraught Dona Fefita. Minerva had been taken that very morning, the little house ransacked and boarded up. In the background Dede could hear Minou crying piteously.

"I'm coming to get you," she promised the little girl.

The child calmed down some. "Is Mama with you?"

Dede took a deep breath. "Yes, Mama is here." The beginning of many stories. Later, she would hedge and say she meant her own Mama. But for now, she wanted to spare the child even a moment of further anguish.

She rode out to the tobacco fields where Jaimito had said he'd be supervising the planting of the new crop. She had wondered as she was dialing Minerva what Jaimito would do when he came home and found his wife and his pickup missing. Something told her he would not respond with his usual fury. Despite herself, Dede had to admit she liked what she sensed, that the power was shifting in their marriage. Coming home from Rio San Juan, she had finally told him, crying as she did, that she could not continue with their marriage. He had wept, too, and begged for a second chance. For a hundredth chance, she thought. Now events were running away with them, trampling over her personal griefs, her budding hopes, her sprouting wings.

"Jaimito!" she called when she saw him from far off.

He came running across the muddy, just-turned field. How ironic, she thought, watching him. Their lives, which had almost gone their separate ways a week ago, were now drawing together again. After all, they were embarking on their most pa.s.sionate project to date, one they must not fail at like the others. Saving the sisters.

They drove the short distance to Mama's, debating how to break the news to her. Mama's blood pressure had risen dangerously after Patria's breakdown on the front lawn. Was it really less than a week ago? It seemed months since they'd been living in this h.e.l.l of terror and dreadful antic.i.p.ation. Every day there were more and more arrests. The lists in the newspapers grew longer.

But there was no shielding Mama any longer, Dede saw when they arrived at her house. Several black Volkswagens and a police wagon were pulled into the drive. Captain Pena, head of the northern division of the SIM, had orders to bring Mate in. Mama was hysterical. Mate clung to her, weeping with terror as Mama declared that her youngest daughter could not leave without her. Dede could hear the shrieks of Jacqueline calling for her mother from the bedroom.

"Take me instead, please." Patria knelt by the door, pleading with Captain Pena. "I beg you for the love of G.o.d."

The captain, a very fat man, looked down with interest at Patria's heaving chest, considering the offer. Don Bemardo, drawn by the commotion from next door, arrived with the bottle of sedatives. He tried to coax Patria back on her feet, but she would not or could not stand up. Jaimito took the captain aside. Dede saw Jaimito reaching for his bill-fold, the captain holding up his hand. Oh G.o.d, it was bad news if the devil was refusing to take a bribe.

At last, the captain said he would make an exception. Mama could come along. But out on the drive, after loading the terrified Mate in the wagon, he gave a signal and the driver roared away, leaving Mama standing on the road. The screams from the wagon were unbearable to hear.

Dede and Jaimito raced after Maria Teresa, the small pickup careening this way and that, swerving dangerously around slower traffic. Usually, Dede was full of admonitions about Jaimito's reckless driving, but now she found herself pressing her own foot on an invisible gas pedal. Still, they never managed to catch up with the wagon. By the time they reached the Salcedo Fortaleza and were seen by someone in authority, they were told the young llorona llorona with the long braid had been transferred to the capital. They couldn't say where. with the long braid had been transferred to the capital. They couldn't say where.

"Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Jaimito exclaimed once they were back in the pickup. He kept striking the vinyl seat with his fist. "They're not going to get away with this!" This was the same old violence Dede had cowered under for years. But now instead of fear, she felt a surge of pity. There was nothing Jaimito or anyone could do. But it touched her that he had found his way to serve the underground after all-taking care of its womenfolk.

Watching him, Dede was reminded of his fighting c.o.c.ks which, in the barnyard, appeared to be just plain roosters. But put them in a ring with another rooster, and they sprang to life, explosions of feathers and dagger claws. She had seen them dazed, stumbling, eyes pecked out, still clawing the air at an attacker they could no longer see. She remembered, too, with wonder and some disgust and even an embarra.s.sing s.e.xual rush, how Jaimito would put their heads in his mouth, as if they were some wounded part of him or, she realized, of her that he was reviving.

On the way back to Mama's, Dede and Jaimito made plans. Tomorrow early, they would drive down to the capital and pet.i.tion for the girls, not that it would do any good. But doing nothing could be worse. Unclaimed prisoners tended to disappear. Oh G.o.d, Dede could not let herself think of that!

It was odd to be riding in the pickup, the dark road ahead, a slender moon above, holding hands, as if they were young lovers again, discussing wedding plans. Dede half expected Minerva and Lio to pop up in back. The thought stirred her, but not for the usual reason of lost opportunity recalled. Rather, it was because that time now seemed so innocent of this future. Dede fought down the sob that twisted like a rope in her gut. She felt that if she let go, the whole inside of her would fall apart.

As they turned into the driveway, they saw Mama standing at the end of it, Tono and Patria at her side, trying to hush her. "Take everything, take it all! But give me back my girls, por Dios por Dios!" she was shouting. she was shouting.

"What is it, Mama, what is it?" Dede had leapt out of the pickup before it had even come to a full stop. She already guessed what was wrong.

"Minerva, they've taken Minerva."

Dede exchanged a glance with Jaimito. "How do you know this, Mama?"

"They took the cars." Mama pointed to the other end of the drive and, sure enough, the Ford and the Jeep were gone.