I gave her the bright brave smile she also required of me.
Our spirits were so high with the good news we couldn’t wait for Thursday to tell the men. The night before, we were almost festive as we rolled our hair in the bedroom so it would curl for our men the next day. We always did this, no matter how gloomy we were feeling. And they noticed it, too. It was a fact—we had all compared notes—that our men got more romantic the longer they were in prison. Patria claimed that Pedrito, a man of few words if there ever was one, was composing love poems for her and reciting them during visiting hours. The most embarrassing part, she admitted, was that this made her start feeling that way right there in the middle of the prison hall surrounded by guards.
Dedé sat by, watching our preparations with displeasure. She had gotten into the habit of staying over the nights before our visits. She said she had to be at Mamá’s early the next day anyhow to help with all the children once we left. But really, she was there to convince us not to go.
“You’re exposing yourselves to an accident by going down all together,” Dedé began, “that’s what you’re doing.”
We all knew what kind of accident she meant. Just a month ago Mar rero had been found at the foot of a cliff, having supposedly lost control of his car.
“Bournigal’s drivers are very reliable,” Patria reassured her.
“Think of how many orphans you’d be leaving behind, how many widowers, a mother de luto for the rest of her life.” Dedé could really pour on the tragedy.
I don’t know if it was nerves or what, but all three of us burst out laughing. Dedé stood up and announced she was going home. “Come on, Dedé,” I called as she headed out the door. “There’s a curfew. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable!” Her voice was seething with anger. “If you think I’m going to sit by and watch you all commit suicide, you’re wrong.”
She didn’t make it past the front gate. The SIM sent her back. She slept on the couch and the next morning wouldn’t talk to us all through breakfast. When she turned away as we went to kiss her goodbye, I decided to use her own fears on her. “Come on, Dedé. Think how sorry you’d be if something should happen to us and you didn’t say goodbye.” She stiffened with resistance. But the second the driver turned on the engine, she ran to the car, sobbing. She blurted out the one loss she hadn’t mentioned the night before, “I don’t want to have to live without you.”
The atmosphere in prison was bright with hope. The voices in the visitors’ hall had a lift to them, now and then there was laughter. The news had spread there already: sanctions had been imposed, the gringos were closing down their embassy.
Only Manolo, like Dedé, was not convinced. He seemed gloomier than ever.
“What is it?” I asked between passings of the guard. “Isn’t it good news?”
He shrugged. Then seeing my worried face, he smiled, but it was a smile for my benefit, I could tell. I noticed for the first time that some of his front teeth were broken off.
“We’ll be home soon!” I always tried to raise his spirits with the thought of our little nest in Monte Cristi. The owners, old friends of Manolo’s parents, were allowing us to keep our things there until the day they should find a new tenant. Strangely enough, it gave me hope to know our little house, the only home we’d ever shared, was still intact.
Manolo leaned towards me, his lips grazing my cheek. A kiss to mask what he had to say. “Our cells, are they ready?”
So that’s what was worrying him. He didn’t know that the revolution was out of our hands. Others were now in charge.
“Who?” he persisted.
I hated to tell him I didn’t know. That we were totally disconnected at Mamá’s. The guard was passing by, so I remarked instead about the plantain fritters we’d eaten the night before. “Nobody knows who they are,” I mouthed when the guard was safely down the row.
Manolo eyes grew big in his pale face. “This could be a plant. Find out who’s left.” His grip tightened until my hands felt numb, but I would never tell him to let go.
We were watched around the clock, our visits supervised, even food vendors had their baskets checked at the gate. When and how and whom was I to contact? And if I tried, I’d only be risking more lives.
But it was more than that. I had put on too good a show for Manolo as well. He didn’t know the double life I was leading. Outwardly, I was still his calm, courageous compañera. Inside, the woman had got the upper hand.
And so the struggle with her began. The struggle to get my old self back from her. Late in the night, I’d lie in bed, thinking, You must gather up the broken threads and tie them together.
Secretly, I hoped that events would settle the matter for me and, along with everyone else, I honestly believed we were seeing the last days of the regime. Shortages were everywhere. Trujillo was doing all the crazy things of a trapped animal. In church in a drunken stupor, he had seized the chalice and dispensed communion to his frightened attendants. The pope was talking about excommunication.
But with everyone against him and no one left to impress, Trujillo didn’t have to hold himself back anymore. One morning, soon after sanctions went into effect, we woke up to the sound of sirens on the road. Trucks were roaring by, full of soldiers. Dedé did not appear that morning, and since that one was like clockwork, we knew something was wrong.
The next day Elsa brought the very news we’d been waiting for, with the conclusion we had dreaded. Two nights ago after dark, a group of young men had run through Santiago, distributing leaflets under doors, urging an uprising. Every last one of them had been caught.
“‘They will find out what it is to run a comb through tangled hair,’ ” Elsa quoted Trujillo’s reaction to the young rebels’ capture.
Peña came by late that afternoon. All further visits to La Victoria were cancelled.
“But why?” I blurted out. And then bitterly I added, “We wrote the letter!”
Pena narrowed his eyes at me. He hated to be asked questions that implied he wasn’t in charge of things. “Why don’t you write another letter to El Jefe and ask him to explain himself to you!”
“She’s just upset. We all are,” Patria explained. She made a pleading face for me to be nice. “Aren’t you just upset, Minerva?”
“I’m very upset,” I said, folding my arms.
It was the end of September before visiting days were reinstated at La Victoria, and we got to see the men. That morning when we picked up our passes, Peña gave us a warning look, but we were all so relieved, we answered him with smiles and too many thank-yous. All the way down in the car we rented with a driver, we were giddy with anticipation. Mate told some of her favorite riddles we all pretended not to know so she could have the pleasure of answering them herself. The thing Adam had in front that Eva had in back was the letter A. The thing that’s put in hard and comes out soft were the beans in the boiling water. That one had gotten a taste for spicy humor in prison.
Our mood changed considerably when we were finally ushered into that dim, familiar hall. The men looked thinner, their eyes desperate in their pale faces. Between passings of the increased guardia patrol, I tried to find out from Manolo what was going on.
“It’s over for us.” Manolo clutched my hands.
“You can’t think like that. We’ll be back in our little house before the year is up.”
But he insisted on goodbyes. He wanted me to know how deep was his love for me. What to say to the children. What kind of burial he wanted if I got a body, what kind of memorial service if I didn’t.
“Stop this!” I said in an annoyed voice. My heart was in my mouth.
On the drive home, we all wept, unable to console each other, for my sisters had heard the same grim news from Pedrito and Leandro. The men in their cells were being taken out at night in small groups and killed.
The driver, a man about our age who had already driven us down twice, looked in his rearview mirror. “The butterflies are sad today,” he
noted.
That made me sit up and dry my tears. The butterflies were not about to give up! We had suffered a setback but we had not been beaten.
In the long days that followed, we expected Pena to appear every morning with the horrible news. Now I was the one waiting out on the galeria to intercept him if he came. I did not want anyone else to have to bear the first blow.
Clearly, the tide had turned. The failed uprising plunged the whole country into despair again. At home, everyone walked around with the look of people at a funeral. “We cannot give up,” I kept saying.
They marveled at my self-control—and so did I. But by now in my life I should have known. Adversity was like a key in the lock for me. As I began to work to get our men out of prison, it was the old Minerva I set free.
Saving the Men
October
We could see them, chugging along behind us in their little Volkswagen. They would have a heyday reporting to Pena that we had visited another political. “Rufino,” I said, “turn down Pasteur, quick.”
Rufino had become our favorite driver. Every time we rented from Boumigal, we asked for him. Ever since the trip home from our last visit to the prison, we had felt his unspoken allegiance to us. Just this morning, when Dedé had worried about us leaving the house, Rufino had spoken up. “A Dio‘, Dona Dedé, you think I’ll let anything happen to the butterflies? They’ll have to kill me first.”
“And they will, too!” she had muttered.
He was peering into the rearview mirror. “We’ve lost them.”
I checked out the back window myself. Then I turned to my sisters as if to say, See, you didn’t believe me.
“Maybe this’ll be just the excuse they need.” Mate was tearful. We had just come from seeing the men. Leandro and Manolo had been told they would be going on a little trip—what all the prisoners were told before they were killed. They were desperate, grim, taking the Miltown we had smuggled in to them, and still not sleeping.
“They’re in God’s hands.” Patria made the sign of the cross.
“Now listen to me, you two. We have a good excuse,” I reminded them. “Delia is a female doctor and we have plenty of reason to see her.” Neither Mate nor I had had a period for months.
Delia was nervous as she let us into her small office, her eyes full of signals. Before I could say a thing, she held up her hand to her lips and gestured towards the wall where her diplomas hung. We cannot talk here.
“We came about our cycles,” I began, searching the wall for the telltale little rod. Wherever it was, all the SIM got at first was an earful about our women problems. Delia relaxed, thinking that was truly why we were here. Until I concluded a little too unmetaphorically, “So is there any activity in our old cells?”
Delia gave me a piercing look. “The cells in your systems have atro phied and are dead,” she said sharply.
I must have looked stricken, for Delia’s manner softened, “A few of them are still active, to be sure. But most importantly, new cells are filling in all the time. You need to give your bodies a rest. You should see menstrual activity by the beginning of next year.”
Next year! I reached for the prescription pad on her desk and wrote down Sina’s name with a big question mark.
“Gone. Asylum,” she wrote back.
So Sina had abandoned our struggle. But then, I reminded myself, I had too, in effect, under house arrest for the last two months.
I listed six more names of members I knew had been released. Then I watched Delia draw a line through each one.
Finally I wrote, Who’s left in our area?
Delia bit her lip. Throughout our meeting her manner had been guarded, as if we were being watched as well as bugged. Now she wrote down a name hurriedly, held it up for us to read, then tore all the used pages in half, over and over again. She stood, eager to have us gone.
The name Delia held up for us to see was unknown to us, a Dr. Pedro Viñas. When we got home, we asked Mama, who went through a whole family tree of Viñas, only to declare she didn’t know this particular one. We grew suspicious, for a stranger in our midst probably meant a SIM plant with a fabricated name. But Don Bernardo banished our doubts. Dr. Pedro Vinas was a urologist in Santiago, a very good one, who had attended Doña Belén several times. I called up and made an appointment for early next week. The woman’s voice on the other end spoke to me as if I were a young child. “What is the little problem we’re having?”
I had to think what a urologist was for. The only doctors I knew were Delia, Dr. Lavandier, and the doctor in Monte Cristi who had delivered my babies. “Just a little problem,” I said, stalling.
“Oh, that,” she said. And gave me a time.
Permission from Peña was next. That was not going to be easy. The morning after our unauthorized detour, he appeared at the house. We could tell by the bang of his car door that we were in for it.
For a full minute he shouted threats and obscenities at us. I sat on my hands as if they were extensions of my mouth. It took all my self-control not to order him and his filthy mouth out of our house.
Finally Peña calmed down enough to ask us what we had been up to. He was looking straight at me, for I was usually the one to do the talking.
But we had already settled it among us. I was to keep my mouth shut, and Patria, his favorite, was to do the explaining. “We had to see the doctor about a private matter.”
“¿Qué mierda privado?” Peña’s face was so red, it looked ready to explode.
Patria blushed at the obscenity. “We had to consult about some women’s problems.”
“Why didn’t you just ask my permission?” Pena was softening. By now, Patria had got him to sit down in a rocker and at least accept a glass of guanábana juice—good for the nerves, Mama always said. “I wouldn’t keep you from medical care. But you know very well”—he looked straight at me—“that Delia Santos is on the political list. The rules clearly state, no contact with politicals.”
“We weren’t seeing her in her political capacity,” I protested. Patria coughed a reminder of our agreement. But once I got started, it was hard to shut me up. “In fact, Captain, I’m glad to hear that you wouldn’t stand in the way of our medical care—”
“Yes,” Patria swiftly cut in. “You have been very kind to us.” I could feel her eyes scouring me.
“I have been referred to Dr. Viñas in Santiago—”
“And you would be very grateful for the captain’s leniency in allowing you to go,” Patria reminded me, embedding my request in her scold.
Patria and Mate dropped me off in front of the small house on their way to El Gallo. A black Volkswagen was already parked across the street. It was hard to believe this was a doctor’s office, but the sign in the window insisted. The lawn was overgrown, not in that neglected way that makes a place look shabby, but with nice abandon, as if to say, there’s room in this house for everything, even a lot of grass.
How Patria had managed this was beyond me. Mama always said Patria’s sweetness could move mountains, and monsters, obviously. Not only had she gotten Pena to grant me permission for this visit, she had also secured a pass for herself and Mate to go shopping for supplies in the meanwhile. Our little dressmaking business was doing well. We were already working on November’s orders and here it was only the middle of October. We couldn’t sleep nights, so we sewed. Sometimes Patria started a rosary, and we all joined in, stitching and praying so as not to let our minds roam.
The genial little man who met me at the door seemed more like an uncle than a professional man or, Lord knows, a revolutionary. “We’re having a little problem,” he chuckled. Some chickens had gotten into the office from his house next door, and the maid was chasing them out with a broom. Dr. Viñas entered into the fun, teasing the maid to the delight of several small children who seemed to be his. He had gotten hold of some eggs and kept pulling them out of unlikely places, the children’s ears, his own underarms, the boiler for his syringes. “Look what
the hens left me,” he said each time. His children screamed with delight.
Finally, the hens were out of view and the children were sent along with the maid to tell their Mamita to bring over a cafecito for the señorita. The diminutives were killing me. Lord, I thought, so this is what we’ve come to. But the minute Dr. Viñas closed the door of his consulting room, he was a different man, intent, serious, down to business. He seemed to know exactly who I was and why I had come.
“This is an honor,” he said, motioning for me to sit down. He turned on the raspy air conditioner—the place was not bugged, he was pretty sure—but just in case. We spoke in whispers.
“The boys,” I began, “we believe they’re all about to be killed.” I heard myself strangely demoting our men to the more helpless boys. Another diminutive—and from me.
Dr. Viñas sighed. “We tried our best. The problem was getting the ingredients for the picnic—” He looked at my face for a moment to see if I understood. “We were all set to go, the whole party assembled. But the gringos pulled out on their promise of pineapples. Some of the boys went ahead anyway.” He made a gesture of broadcasting pamphlets.
“Why did the gringos pull out?” I wanted to know.
“They got cold feet. Afraid we’re all communists. They say they don’t want another Fidel. They’d rather have a dozen Trujillos.”
I could feel dread rising in my chest. The men were not going to be saved after all. My old prison cough started up. Dr. Viñas reached for a thermos and poured me iced water in a glass cup that had measurement marks on the side. When my coughing had subsided, he went on, “The gringos are flirting with another group now.”
That was hopeful news. “The MPDs?”
Dr. Viñas laughed, and briefly I saw the family doctor inside this toughened revolutionary. “No, they’re idealists, too, and all of us idealists are dirty communists. These are people the gringos feel are safer. Some of Trujillo’s old cronies who are tired of the old man. Their only ideology is, well, you know.” He patted his pockets.