Chucha and I clutch each other and watch the men pulling open drawers, throwing my clothes on the floor. Soon another bunch of men come into the room, pushing Mami in her nightgown before them. “Traitors!” they shout.
Mami rushes to me and holds me so tight, I can hear her heart pounding in my head. I’m too terrified even to cry.
When they’re done with our room, they nudge us with the barrels of their guns into the living room. A tall, skinny man with a thin mustache sits in Papi’s chair, directing the operation. Men run in and out, reporting their finds. They refer to him as Navajita, little Razor Blade. I don’t want to think how he came by that nickname.
“Have a seat,” Navajita offers, as if this were his house, not ours. He stretches his mouth like a rubber band, showing us his teeth. It takes me a second to realize that he’s smiling.
We sit and wait, cringing at the sound of glass breaking, things smashing as his gang ransacks the house and the grounds.
“We found El Jefe!” a SIM agent comes shouting into the room. The skinny man stands abruptly, as if there’s a spring under him. His profile is as sharp as a razor blade. “In the trunk of the Chevy,” the agent explains, “locked up in the garage.”
“Take them in,” Navajita orders. The SIM agent hurries out, shouting orders.
From the front window, we can see a swarm of black Volkswagens, engines starting up. Papi and Tío Toni, hands tied behind their backs, are being pushed toward one of the waiting cars.
Mami races to the window. “MUNDO!” she cries out.
My father’s head jerks around before he’s shoved into the car.
“Where are you taking them?” Mami wails.
“Where they took El Jefe,” Navajita replies grimly.
Soon the other agents who have been scouring the compound gather in their cars, driving over the lawns, leaving a trail of smashed-up flowers and muddy wheel marks. I try to catch a glimpse of Papi or Tío Toni, the backs of their heads or a flash of their profiles, some little bit of them to hold on to in my memory. But I cannot remember which car is theirs or whether it has already gone ahead to a place where I don’t want to imagine what is waiting for them.
The minute they disappear, Mami begins making phone calls, trying to find someone who can help us. But everybody seems to have taken flight. Spooky funeral music keeps playing on the radio. Wherever Pupo is, he has not been found to make his announcement that El Jefe is gone. Instead, the SIM and Trujillo’s son and brothers seem to be in charge, and they are going to make the whole country pay for the murder of El Jefe.
We huddle together in that wrecked house, not knowing what to do with ourselves. Everything that used to be in a drawer or on a shelf is smashed and broken on the floor. Mami’s jewelry, my charm bracelet, the silver in the velvet-lined box in the dining room, and Papi’s car have been confiscated, now “property of the state.” Even the wishing coins at the bottom of my grandparents’ pond have been fished out. The last time the SIM raided us, they were very polite compared to this. We’re in real trouble now.
Mami and Chucha and I start to clean up, but Mami breaks down. “What’s the use?” she sobs. I keep right on, helping Chucha, trying to stay one step ahead of being terrified. But the panic is stirring inside me, a big black moth of scaredness flapping around inside my chest that can’t get out. I sweep and dust and clean extra hard, as if that’s going to set it free.
Finally, Mami manages to reach Mr. Mancini, who comes right over, shaking his head at the mess the SIM have made of our house.
Mami is trying to control herself, but she keeps dabbing at her eyes with one of Papi’s handkerchiefs. Every time she blows her nose, she sees the monogram and that gets her started crying again. “We’ve got to do something. Ay, Pepe, please, God, we’ve got to do something.”
Mr. Mancini bows his head, as if he doesn’t want Mami to see the bad news written all over his face.
“Ay, Pepe, they’ll murder us all, ay, Dios.” Mami is sobbing uncontrollably.
Mr. Mancini escorts her to a chair and offers her his handkerchief, since Papi’s is all wet and balled up. “Cálmese, Carmen.”
“Por favor, Pepe, por favor, we’ve got to find Washburn.”
“What we must do at the moment is find you a safe place. The SIM will be back, believe me. If they can’t get the confessions they want, they will come after the wives and children. They’re already rounding up the boys in some families.”
“Mundín!” Mami’s hands are at her throat.
“Mundín is fine,” Mr. Mancini reassures her. “Now you two ladies get a few things ready, prontísimo. You are coming with me.” His eye falls on Chucha, who’s standing by, listening to all this.
“Chucha, I suggest you close the house and go off to your people.”
“These are my people,” Chucha replies, crossing her arms.
“Anita,” Mami says, “go with Chucha and collect some of your things.”
“And bring some of Mundín’s things as well, Chucha,” Mr. Mancini adds, giving Mami a small nod.
While Chucha packs a bag for Mundín next door, I try to gather up some clothes, but my room is such a mess, I can’t even find two matching socks. A big heap lies on the floor: school clothes and dresses and torn blouses all thrown together with panties and shoes. Papers are scattered everywhere; my books and pencils have been emptied out of my schoolbag; even the diary I stashed away months ago on a shelf in the closet has been hurled near the door. Seeing everything I own thrown around like trash makes me want to give up. I tell myself, Be brave, be strong. But when I see that pathetic little monkey hand from the smashed lamp sticking out from inside one of my tennis shoes, I collapse, sobbing, on top of all my stuff.
“¡Vengan!” Mr. Mancini is shouting from the entryway for us to come.
I try to stand but I cannot move. The same paralysis that has attacked my voice now seems to have taken hold of my legs.
Chucha hurries into the room. She takes one look at me and begins stuffing clothes in the laundry bag that once hung behind my door, a rag doll’s face on a hanger with her body an empty sack. When she’s done, she pulls me to my feet and wraps her arms around me as if she is filling me up with her courage.
“¡Ya! ¡Ya!” It’s time. Fly, fly free! She yanks up my laundry bag and, at the last minute, scoops up the diary and stuffs it inside. Pushing me before her, we race out the door, my legs gaining strength as I fly through the house to the waiting car, Chucha urging me on.
Anita’s Diary
June 3, 1961, Saturday, time of day, hard to say
We are finally settled in and Mami has said, go ahead, write in your diary as much as you want, we’re in trouble already, maybe you can leave a record that will help others who are in hiding, too.
Mami now speaks in spurts of panic instead of sentences. I tell her that all I want to do is keep a diary, not save the world.
I don’t want any freshness here, Anita, I’ve just about had it, I’m up to four Equanil a day, that’s sixteen hundred milligrams, I can’t take it.
You see why I need this diary.
June 5, 1961, Monday morning—Mami’s showering in the bathroom next door
I can only write a little bit at a time, as I don’t get much privacy around here, even though it’s just me and Mami in the walk-in closet in the Mancinis’ bedroom. When the Mancinis lock their bedroom door, we can visit with them in their room and do things like take a shower. Otherwise, we have to stay in the closet.
Last night in the middle of the night, Mrs. Mancini shook us awake and whispered, I don’t know which one of you is doing it, but I’m afraid you don’t have the luxury of snoring in this house.
Our sounds have to sound like their sounds.
June 6, 1961, Tuesday, early—or so it seems from the light streaming in the bathroom window
Mrs. Mancini says it’s a good thing she has always been in the habit of locking their bedroom door in order to get some privacy. Also, she has always
cleaned the master bedroom herself, as the help have enough to do what with five kids. Besides, she doesn’t trust anyone since she learned of the undercover training at the Domestic Academy. So the Mancinis’ habits make their bedroom as safe a hiding place as any private residence can be right now.
The Mancinis have this kind of strange house like an apartment. The first floor is basically a large garage and laundry room and kitchen. They live on the second floor, since it’s cooler up here with a gallery running all along the back and stairs going down to the garden.
From their bathroom window, I have a bird’s-eye view of the grounds of the embassy. But unlike a bird, I can’t fly free . . . except in my imagination.
Later, evening
According to Mr. Mancini, loads of people are being arrested. The whole town of Moca was imprisoned because one of the conspirators comes from there! El Jefe’s son, Trujillo Junior, says he will not rest until he has punished every man, woman, and child associated with the assassination of his father. Actually, Mr. Mancini says that people are secretly calling it an ajusticiámiento, which means bringing to justice, the way criminals have to face the consequences of their evil deeds.
I feel so much better thinking that Papi and Tío Toni were doing justice, not really murdering killing hurting someone. But still . . . just the thought of my own father—
Have to go. One of the little Marías is calling at the bedroom door.
June 7, 1961, Wednesday afternoon, a cloudy day, I can tell rain is coming
Once the Mancinis go out, we have to stay quietly in the closet and can’t move around or use the bathroom. (We have a chamber pot, but you’d be surprised how noisy peeing is, and how messy in the dark.)
Only two human beings in the house know we are here, Tío Pepe and Tía Mari (they insist I call them that now), and their two teensy Yorkshire terriers. Thank goodness Mojo and Maja remember me from school and Mami from the times the canasta group met here, so they don’t bark at us. No one else knows. Tía Mari says it’s going to be a job keeping a secret in this curious family. But it’s just too dangerous right now to tell anyone where we are.
It is so strange to be in the very same house as Oscar, and he doesn’t even know! Every time Tía Mari or Tío Pepe mentions his name, I can feel my face burn. I wonder if they notice my special interest?
The emergency procedure is, if the SIM start a search or anyone comes into the bedroom (besides the Mancinis), we slip into the bathroom, where there are two narrow closets; Mami goes in one and I go in the other, all the way to a crawl space in back, and we stay there and pray we are not discovered.
June 8, 1961, Thursday, right after supper, in bathroom
During supper tonight, Tía Mari turned on Radio Caribe kind of loud. Meanwhile, Tío Pepe tuned his shortwave radio to Radio Swan real low since that station is still illegal, and he and Mami and Tía Mari leaned forward listening closely to the “real” news. It was like night and day, what each station was reporting.
CARIBE: The OAS is here to help the SIM maintain stability.
SWAN: The OAS is here investigating human rights abuses.
CARIBE: Prisoners praise treatment to OAS investigation committee.
SWAN: Prisoners complain of atrocities to OAS investigation committee.
CARIBE: Consul Washburn has been recalled.
SWAN: Consul Washburn has been airlifted by helicopter to protect his life.
Both stations agreed on one thing: The plot did not work. Pupo, the head of the army, just wasn’t there to announce the liberation over the radio, and instead, Trujillo Junior has taken over, and it’s a bloodbath out there. The SIM are doing house-to-house searches. Over 5,000 people have been arrested, including family members of the conspirators.
I wanted to block my ears and not listen to this stuff!
Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.
So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.
It took her saying so for me to realize it’s true.
The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them out of forgetfulness, one by one.
June 9, 1961, Friday—evening
Mami has heard from Tío Pepe that Mr. Washburn is back in Washington and pushing to get Papi and Tío Toni on the OAS list of prisoners interviewed, as their lives are then much safer. Once the OAS has a name on record, it’s harder for the SIM to get rid of that individual.
Mami and Tía Mari have begun praying a rosary to the Virgin Mary every night to take care of all the prisoners, but most especially to take care of Papi and Tío Toni.
I always kneel with them. But even though I’m talking again, I can’t seem to fish the words for an Our Father or Hail Mary out of my brain.
June 10, 1961, Saturday, late night
The electricity goes on and off all the time. Tía Mari bought Mami and me little flashlights. Tonight, a total blackout again. So I’m writing by the light of this tiny beam.
I never know exactly what time it is anymore—except when the siren sounds at noon and then again at 6 for curfew. The Mancinis don’t have an electric clock in their bedroom because it would never tell the right time anyhow. The kind you wind drives Tía Mari crazy because it tick-tocks too loud. She says she feels like someone is timing her life.
The truth is, when you live in such close quarters, you find out the most private things about people—like Tío Pepe always having to wear white socks to bed or Tía Mari tweezing little hairs from her upper lip.
I wonder what they’ve noticed about me? How I stroke a spot on my left cheek whenever I’m feeling scared or lonely?
June 11, 1961, after supper, second Sunday in hiding
Sundays are especially hard, as that was always the day of our big family gathering. But we were reduced to just the Garcías and us, then just us, then just us minus Lucinda, and now it’s even less than a nuclear family, just Mami and me, like survivors after a bomb drops, a fallout family.
Every day, I ask Mami about Papi and Tío Toni. But on Sundays, I probably ask her more than once. (No, not “countless times,” like she accuses me of!)
Today, I promised myself I wouldn’t ask her even once. But by evening, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Mami, I said, just tell me if they’re okay.
She hesitated. They’re alive, she said, and started crying.
Tía Mari pulled her into the bathroom, and meanwhile I was left alone in the bedroom with Tío Pepe. We were quiet for a while and then he said, Anita, one must think positively. That is how the greatest minds in history have survived tragedy.
I felt like reminding him I’m not one of the greatest minds, but Tío Pepe is so smart, maybe his advice is worth a try?
I close my eyes and think positively. . . . After a while, a picture pops into my head of Papi and Tío Toni and me walking on the beach. I’m real little, and they’re holding me between them and swinging me out over the waves like they’re going to throw me into the sea, and I’m giggling and they’re laughing, and Papi is saying, fly, mi hijita, fly, like I am a little kite that is catching the wind!
Then, like on a birthday, I make a wish: that Papi and Tío Toni will soon be free and that we will all be together again as a family.
June 12, 1961, Monday night, bathroom, about ten o’clock
Sometimes, I try to think of my life in hiding as a movie that will be over in three hours. It makes it a lot easier to put up with Mami’s nerves!
So here’s the scene every night when I want to write after lights-out:
SETTING: Dark inside of closet. Mother on her mat, not the most comfortable of beds, but a lot better than sleeping in prison or in a coffin!
/> ACTION: Girl feels for diary and flashlight under her pillow. Absolutely silently, she begins to slip out of the closet.
MOTHER: (whispering, loud enough to wake up sleeping couple in bedroom beyond closet) Remember, the Mancinis are asleep!
GIRL: I know. (Rolls her eyes in the dark, makes disgusted face, which, of course, mother can’t see. Girl goes into bathroom, props flashlight on back of the toilet, and begins writing. Screen goes blurry and scene of what she’s writing unfolds before our very eyes!)
Back to my diary—
I want to write down everything that happened the night that Tío Pepe rescued us from the compound—not that I’m likely to forget. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared!
Mami and I crouched down in the back of Tío Pepe’s Pontiac with some sacks over us. Good thing, too, since the streets were crawling with tanks. When we got to the Italian embassy, Mundín was already there, and though Mami had sworn that she was going to kill him, she was so pleased to see him alive and well and biting his nails that she just hugged him and kept touching his face and hair. Poor Mundín looked like he had suddenly turned from fifteen to fifty, his eyes glazed over with the horrible news of Papi and Tío Toni being taken away.
Meanwhile, Tío Pepe and the Italian ambassador came up with a plan.
Since Mundín was most at risk, being a guy, he’d stay at the embassy, as it’s off-limits to the SIM if they’re obeying rules anymore. But the place was so packed with refugees seeking protection, we couldn’t all stay there. So Mami and I were moved next door to the Mancinis’, which is not as safe. (Private residences do not have immunity privileges.) The plan is to get us all out of the country as soon as a way can be found. Meanwhile, we have to lay low, not a peep from us, as the SIM close in with their house-to-house searches.
When we got to the Mancinis’ bedroom that first night, Tía Mari showed us “the accommodations.” Here is the dining room, she said, pointing to her bedside table with magazines, and here is your bedroom, she added, showing us the walk-in closet, then crossing the narrow hallway, here is your bathroom–living room–patio. She was trying to make us smile.