In The Time Of The Butterflies Part 4

Sunday, March 3 Oh dear! Little Book!

Tio Mon appears today for visiting hours with some letters and a parcel for us, and almost the first words out of Sor Asuncion's mouth are "And how are you feeling, Don Ramon?" I just about died of flabbergastedness, if that is a word. Minerva, who is much quicker on her feet, just hooked her arm in his and whisked him away saying, "Tio Mon, a nice stroll will do you good." Tio Mon looked a little confused, but Minerva had him through the arm as well as around her little finger, so off he goes.

About the letters he brought me. Dear Little Book, here I am ten years old and already getting beaus. Berto wrote again. I've shown Minerva all his letters and she smiles and says they are "sweet, boyish letters."

I confess I didn't show her his last one.

It's not that it was mushy, but I felt sort of shy about it. Berto wrote so sympathizingly about my homesickness and signed himself, "your Stronghold."

I do like the sound of that.

Tuesday, April 30 Dearest Little Book, This new friend of Minerva's, Hilda, is really rude. She wears trousers and a beret slanted on her head like she is Michelangelo. Minerva met her at one of her secret meetings at Don Horacio's house. Very soon this Hilda was always at Inmaculada. I think the sisters felt sorry for her because she is some kind of orphan. Rather, she made herself an orphan, I am sure. Her parents probably just died of shock to hear that girl talk!

She says the most awful things like she isn't sure G.o.d exists. Poor Sor Asuncion. She keeps giving Hilda little booklets to read that will explain everything. I've seen what happens to those little booklets the minute our princ.i.p.al turns her back. The nuns have let her get away with her fresh ways for a while, but today, they finally put their foot down.

Sor Asuncion asked Hilda if she wouldn't like to join us for Holy Communion, and Hilda said that she liked a heartier menu!

So, she was asked to leave and not come back. "She has a very poor att.i.tude," is how Sor Asuncion explained it, "and your sister and her friends are catching it." Although I hated to hear anyone criticize Minerva, I had to agree about Hilda.

Friday, June 27 My dear secret Little Book, All week guards have been coming in and out, looking for Hilda.

Minerva has told me the whole story.

Hilda appeared a few nights ago at Inmaculada wanting to hide! What happened was she hid some secret papers in the trunk of a car she borrowed, and she ran out of gas on the highway. A friend came to pick her up, and they got some gas in a can at a station, but when they were on the way back, they saw police swarming around the car. The trunk was pried open. Hilda got her friend to drop her off at Inmaculada where she woke up Minerva and her friends. They all argued what to do. Finally they decided they had to ask the sisters for help.

So, late that night, they knocked on the convent door. Sor Asuncion appeared, in her night dress, wearing a nightcap, and Minerva told her the problem.

Minerva said she still doesn't know if Sor Asuncion agreed to help Hilda out of the goodness of her heart or because this was a perfect lesson to teach that fresh girl. Imagine! Hilda, who doesn't even believe in G.o.d!

The police have been here again today. They pa.s.sed right by Sor Hilda with her hands tucked in her sleeves and her head bowed before the statue of the Merciful Mother. If I weren't so scared, I'd be laughing.

Thursday, July 4 Home at last!

Dear Little Book, Minerva graduated this last Sunday. Everyone went to La Vega to watch her get her diploma. Even Patria with her stomach big as a house. She is expecting any day now.

We are home for the summer. I can't wait to go swimming. Minerva says she's taking me to our lagoon and diving right in herself in her "temptation" swimsuit. She says why keep her promesa when Mama and Papa still won't let her go to law school in the capital?

I'm going to spend the summer learning things I really want to learn! Like (1) doing embroidery from Patria (2) keeping books from Dede (3) cooking cakes from my Tia Flor (I'll get to see more of my cute cousin Berto, and Raul, too!!!) (4) spells from Fela (I better not tell Mama!) (5) how to argue so I'm right, and anything else Minerva wants to teach me.

Sunday, July 20 Oh Little Book, We all just got back from the cemetery burying Patria's baby boy that was born dead yesterday.

Patria is very sad and cries all the time. Mama keeps repeating that the Lord knows what he does and Patria nods like she doesn't half believe it. Pedrito just cracks his knuckles and consoles her by saying that they can have another one real soon. Imagine making such a gross promise to someone who is already having a hard enough time.

They are going to stay with us until she feels better. I am trying to be brave, but every time I think of that pretty baby dead in a box like it doesn't have a soul at all, I just start to cry.

I better stop till I get over my emotions.

Wednesday, in a hurry My dearest Little Book, Oh my dearest, Minerva asks if I'm ready to hand you over. I say, give me a minute to explain things and say goodbye.

Hilda has been caught! She was grabbed by the police while trying to leave the convent. Everyone in Don Horacio's meeting group has been told to destroy anything that would make them guilty.

Minerva is burying all her poems and papers and letters. She says she hadn't meant to read my diary, but it was lying around, and she noticed Hilda's name. She says it was not really right to read it, but sometimes you have to do something wrong for a higher good. (Some more of that lawyer talk she likes so much!) She says we have to bury you, too.

It won't be forever, my dear Little Book, I promise. As soon as things are better, Minerva says we can dig up our treasure box. She's told Pedrito about our plan and he's already found a spot among his cacao where he's going to dig a hole for us to bury our box.

So, my dearest, sweetest Little Book, now you know.

Minerva was right. My soul has gotten deeper since I started writing in you. But this is what I want to know that not even Minerva knows.

What do I do now to fill up that hole?

Here ends my Little Book Here ends my Little Book Goodbye Goodbye for now, not forever (I hope)

CHAPTER FOUR.

Patria 1946.

From the beginning, I felt it, snug inside my heart, the pearl of great price. No one had to tell me to believe in G.o.d or to love everything that lives. I did it automatically like a shoot inching its way towards the light.

Even being born, I was coming out, hands first, as if reaching up for something. Thank goodness, the midwife checked Mama at the last minute and lowered my arms the way you fold in a captive bird's wings so it doesn't hurt itself trying to fly.

So you could say I was born, but I wasn't really here. One of those spirit babies, alela, alela, as the country people say. My mind, my heart, my soul in the clouds. as the country people say. My mind, my heart, my soul in the clouds.

It took some doing and undoing to bring me down to earth.

From the beginning, I was so good, Mama said she'd forget I was there. I slept through the night, entertaining myself if I woke up and no one was around. Within the year, Dede was born, and then a year later Minerva came along, three babies in diapers! The little house was packed tight as a box with things that break. Papa hadn't finished the new bedroom yet, so Mama put me and Dede in a little cot in the hallway. One morning, she found me changing Dede's wet diaper, but what was funny was that I hadn't wanted to disturb Mama for a clean one, so I had taken off mine to put on my baby sister.

"You'd give anything away, your clothes, your food, your toys. Word got around, and while I was out, the country people would send their kids over to ask you for a cup of rice or a jar of cooking oil. You had no sense of holding on to things.

"I was afraid," she confessed, "that you wouldn't live long, that you were already the way we were here to become."

Padre Ignacio finally calmed her fears. He said that maybe I had a calling for the religious life that was manifesting itself early on. He said, with his usual savvy and humor, "Give her time, Dona Chea, give her time. I've seen many a little angel mature into a fallen one."

His suggestion was what got the ball rolling. I was called, even I thought so. When we played make-believe, I'd put a sheet over my shoulders and pretend I was walking down long corridors, saying my beads, in my starched vestments.

I'd write out my religious name in all kinds of script-Sor Mercedes-the way other girls were trying out their given names with the surnames of cute boys. I'd see those boys and think, Ah yes, they will come to Sor Mercedes in times of trouble and lay their curly heads in my lap so I can comfort them. My immortal soul wants to take the whole blessed world in! But, of course, it was my body, hungering, biding its time against the tyranny of my spirit.

At fourteen, I went away to Inmaculada Concepcion, and all the country people around here thought I was entering the convent. "What a pity," they said, "such a pretty girl."

That's when I started looking in the mirror. I was astonished to find, not the child I had been, but a young lady with high firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a sweet oval face. She smiled, dimpling prettily, but the dark, humid eyes were full of yearning. I put my hands up against the gla.s.s to remind her that she, too, must reach up for the things she didn't understand.

At school the nuns watched me. They saw the pains I took keeping my back straight during early ma.s.s, my hands steepled and held up of my own volition, not perched on the back of a pew as if pet.i.tion were conversation. During Lent, they noted no meat pa.s.sed my lips, not even a steaming broth when a bad catarrh confined me to the infirmary.

I was not yet sixteen that February when Sor Asuncion summoned me to her office. The flamboyants,.I remember, were in full bloom. Entering that sombre study, I could see just outside the window the brilliant red flames lit in every tree, and beyond, some threatening thunderclouds.

"Patria Mercedes," Sor Asuncion said, rising and coming forward from behind her desk. I knelt for her blessing and kissed the crucifix she held to my lips. I was overcome and felt the heart's tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in my eyes. Lent had just begun, and I was always in a state during those forty days of the pa.s.sion of Christ.

"Come, come, come"-she helped me up-"we have much to speak of." She led me, not to the stiff chair set up, interrogative style, in front of her desk, but to the plush crimson cus.h.i.+on of her window seat.

We sat one at each end. Even in the dimming light I could see her pale gray eyes flecked with knowing. I smelled her wafer smell and I knew I was in the presence of the holy. My heart beat fast, scared and deeply excited.

"Patria Mercedes, have you given much thought to the future?" she asked me in a whispery voice.

Surely it would be pride to claim a calling at my young age! I shook my head, blus.h.i.+ng, and looked down at my palms, marked, the country people say, with a map of the future.

"You must pray to the Virgencita for guidance," she said.

I could feel the tenderness of her gaze, and I looked up. Beyond her, I saw the first zigzag of lightning, and heard, far off, the rumble of thunder. "I do, Sister, I pray at all times to know His will so it can be done."

She nodded. "We have noticed from the first how seriously you take your religious obligations. Now you must listen deeply in case He is calling. We would welcome you as one of us if that is His Will."

I felt the sweet release of tears. My face was wet with them. "Now, now," she said, patting my knees. "Let's not be sad."

"I'm not sad, Sister," I said when I had regained some composure. "These are tears of joy and hope that He will make His will known to me."

"He will," she a.s.sured me. "Listen at all times. In wakefulness, in sleep, as you work and as you play."

I nodded and then she added, "Now let us pray together that soon, soon, you will know." And I prayed with her, a Hail Mary and an Our Father, and I tried hard but I could not keep my eyes from straying to the flame trees, their blossoms tumbling in the wind of the coming storm.

There was a struggle, but no one could tell. It came in the dark in the evil hours when the hands wake with a life of their own. They rambled over my growing body, they touched the plumping of my chest, the mound of my belly, and on down. I tried reining them in, but they broke loose, night after night.

For Three Kings, I asked for a crucifix for above my bed. Nights, I laid it beside me so that my hands, waking, could touch his suffering flesh instead and be tamed from their shameful wanderings. The ruse worked, the hands slept again, but other parts of my body began to wake.

My mouth, for instance, craved sweets, figs in their heavy syrup, coconut candy, soft golden flans. When those young men whose surnames had been appropriated for years by my mooning girlfriends came to the store and drummed their big hands on the counter, I wanted to take each finger in my mouth and feel their calluses with my tongue.

My shoulders, my elbows, my knees ached to be touched. Not to mention my back and the hard cap of my skull. "Here's a peseta," I'd say to Minerva. "Play with my hair." She'd laugh, and combing her fingers through it, she'd ask, "Do you really believe what the gospel says? He knows how many strands of hair are on your head?"

"Come, come, little sister," I'd admonish her. "Don't play with the word of G.o.d."

"I'm going to count them," she'd say. "I want to see how hard His work is."

She'd start in as if it were not an impossible task, "Uno, dos, tres ..." "Uno, dos, tres ..." Soon her gratifying fingering and her lilting voice would lull me to sleep again. Soon her gratifying fingering and her lilting voice would lull me to sleep again.

It was after my conference with Sor Asuncion, once I had begun praying to know my calling, that suddenly, like a lull in a storm, the cravings stopped. All was quiet. I slept obediently through the night. The struggle was over, but I was not sure who had won.

I thought this was a sign. Sor Asuncion had mentioned that the calling could come in all sorts of ways, dreams, visitations, a crisis. Soon after our conference, school was out for Holy Week. The nuns closed themselves up in their convent for their yearly mortifications in honor of the crucifixion of their bridegroom and Lord, Jesus Christ.

I went home to do likewise, sure in my bones that I would hear His calling now. I joined in Padre Ignacio's Holy Week activities, going to the nightly novenas and daily ma.s.s. On Holy Thursday, I brought my pan and towels along with the other penitents for was.h.i.+ng the feet of the paris.h.i.+oners at the door of the church.

The lines were long that night. One after another, I washed pairs of feet, not bothering to look up, entranced in my prayerful listening. Then, of a sudden, I noticed a pale young foot luxuriant with dark hair in my fresh pan of water, and my legs went soft beneath me.

I washed that foot thoroughly, lifting it by the ankle to soap the underside as one does a baby's legs in cleaning its bottom. Then, I started in on the other one. I worked diligently, oblivious to the long lines stretching away in the dark. When I was done, I could not help looking up.

A young man was staring down at me, his face alluring in the same animal way as his feet. The cheeks were swarthy with a permanent shadow, his thick brows joined in the center. Underneath his thin guayabera, I could see the muscles of his broad shoulders s.h.i.+fting as he reached down and gave me a wad of bills to put in the poor box as his donation.

Later, he would say that I gave him a beatific smile. Why not? I had seen the next best thing to Jesus, my earthly groom. The struggle was over, and I had my answer, though it was not the one I had a.s.sumed I would get. For Easter ma.s.s, I dressed in glorious yellow with a flamboyant blossom in my hair. I arrived early to prepare for singing Alleluia with the other girls, and there he was waiting for me by the choir stairs.

Sixteen, and it was settled, though we had not spoken a word to each other. When I returned to school, Sor Asuncion greeted me at the gate. Her eyes searched my face, but I would not let it give her an answer. "Have you heard?" she asked, taking both my hands in her hands.

"No, Sister, I have not," I lied.

April pa.s.sed, then came May, the month of Mary. Mid-May a letter arrived for me, just my name and Inmaculada Concepcion in a gruff hand on the envelope. Sor Asuncion called me to her office to deliver it, an unusual precaution since the sisters limited themselves to monitoring our correspondence by asking us what news we had gotten from home. She eyed me as I took the envelope. I felt the gravity of the young man's foot in my hand. I smelled the sweat and soil and soap on the tender skin. I blushed deeply.

"Well?" Sor Asuncion said, as if she had asked a question and I was tarrying in my answer. "Have you heard, Patria Mercedes?" Her voice had grown stem.

I cleared my throat, but I could not speak. I was so sorry to disappoint her, and yet I felt there was nothing to apologize for. At last, my spirit was descending into flesh, and there was more, not less, of me to praise G.o.d. It tingled in my feet, warmed my hands and legs, flared in my gut. "Yes," I confessed at last, "I have heard."

I did not go back to Inmaculada in the fall with Dede and Minerva. I stayed and helped Papa with minding the store and sewed frocks for Maria Teresa, all the while waiting for him to come around.

His name was Pedrito Gonzalez, the son of an old farming family from the next town over. He had been working his father's land since he was a boy, so he had not had much formal schooling. But he could count to high numbers, launching himself first with his ten fingers. He read books, slowly, mouthing words, holding them reverently like an altar boy the missal for the officiating priest. He was born to the soil, and there was something about his strong body, his thick hands, his shapely mouth that seemed akin to the roundness of the hills and the rich, rolling valley of El Cibao.

And why, you might ask, was the otherworldly, deeply religious Patria attracted to such a creature? I'll tell you. I felt the same excitement as when I'd been able to coax a wild bird or stray cat to eat out of my hand.

We courted decorously, not like Dede and Jaimito, two little puppies you constantly have to watch over so they don't get into trouble-Mama has been telling me the stories. He'd come over after a day in the fields, all washed up, the comb marks still in his wet hair, looking uncomfortable in his good guayabera. guayabera. Is pity always a part of love? It was all I could do to keep from touching him. Is pity always a part of love? It was all I could do to keep from touching him.