The minute Jaimito’s pickup turned onto the road in the mornings for daily mass, the little toy-engine sound of a VW would start up. All night, we smelled their cigarettes in the yard and heard muffled coughs and sneezes. Sometimes, we would call out, “God bless you!” As the days wore on, we began taking our little revenges on them.
There was a nook where one side of the house met another, and that was their favorite after-dark hiding place. Mama put some cane chairs out there along with a crate with an ashtray so they’d stop littering her yard. One night, she set out a thermos full of ice water and a snack, as if the three Kings were coming. They stole that thermos and glasses and the ashtray, and instead of using the path Mamá had cleared for them, they trampled through her flowers. The next day, Mama moved her thorn bushes to that side of the yard. That night when she heard them out there, she opened up the bathroom window and dumped Jacqueline‘s dirty bathwater out into the yard. There was a surprised cry, but they didn’t dare come after us. After all, they were top secret spies, and we weren’t supposed to know they were out there.
Inside, Dedé and I could barely contain our hilarity. Minou and Jacqueline laughed in that forced way of children imitating adult laughter they don’t really understand. Next morning, we found bits of fabric and threads and even a handkerchief caught on the thorns. From then on when they spied on us, they kept a respectful distance from the house.
Getting our packet to Margarita took some plotting.
The morning after her visit, we stopped at the pharmacy on the way back from daily mass. While the others waited in the pickup, I went in. I was holding Raulito in such a way that his blanket covered up the package. For once, that little boy was quiet, as if he could tell I needed his good behavior.
It was strange going into that pharmacy now that I knew she worked there. How many times in the past hadn’t I dropped in to buy aspirin or formula for the baby. How many times hadn’t the sweet, shy girl in the white jacket taken care of my prescriptions. I wondered if she’d known all along who I was.
“If it’s any problem—” I began, handing her the package. Quickly, she slipped it under the counter. She looked at me pointedly. I should not elaborate in this public place.
Margarita scowled at the large bill I pressed into her hand. In a whisper, I explained it was for the Lomotil and Trinalin and vitamins I wanted her to include in the package. She nodded. The owner of the pharmacy was approaching.
“I hope this helps,” Margarita said, handing me a bottle of aspirin to disguise our transaction. It was the brand I always bought.
That week, Mamá and Dedé came back elated from their weekly trip. They had seen a black towel hanging out of a window of La Victoria! Dedé couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a zigzag of something in the front, probably the monogram. And who else would have a black towel in prison?
“I know, I know,” Mama said. “I already heard it several times coming home.” She mimicked Dedé: “See, Mamá, what a good idea it was to send that towel. ”
“The truth is,” Mamá continued—it was her favorite phrase these days—“I didn’t think it’d get to her. I’ve gotten so I suspect everyone.”
“Look at this!” Jaimito called us over to where he was sitting at the dining room table, reading the papers he’d bought in the capital. He pointed to a photograph of a ghostly bunch of young prisoners, heads bowed, as El Jefe wagged his finger at them. “Eight prisoners pardoned yesterday at the National Palace.” He read off the names. Among them, Dulce Tejeda and Miriam Morales, who, according to Mate’s note, shared a cell with her and Minerva.
I felt my heart lifting, my cross light as a feather. All eight pardoned prisoners were either women or minors! My Nelson had only turned eighteen a few weeks ago in prison. Surely, he still counted as a boy?
“My God, here’s something else,” Jaimito went on. Capitan Victor Alicinio Peña was listed in the real estate transactions as having bought the old González farm from the government for a pittance. “He stole it is what he did,” I blurted out.
“Yes, the boy stole the mangoes,” Dedé said in a loud voice to conceal my indiscretion. Last week, Tono had found a little rod behind Mama’s wedding picture—a telltale sign of bugging. Only in the garden or riding around in a car could we speak freely with each other.
“The truth is ...” Mamá began, but stopped herself. Why give out the valuable truth to a hidden microphone?
Peña owed me was the way I saw it. The next day, I put on the yellow dress I’d just finished and the black heels Dedé had passed on to me. I talcumed myself into a cloudy fragrance and crossed the hedge to Don Bernardo’s house.
“Where are you going, Mamá?” Noris called after me. I’d left her tending the children. “Out,” I said, waving my hand over my shoulder, “to see Don Bernardo.” I didn’t want Mamá or Dedé to know about my outing.
Don Bernardo really was our next door angel disguised as an old Spaniard with an ailing wife. He had come to the island under a refugee program Trujillo had instituted in the forties “to whiten the race.” He had not been much help to the dictator in that regard, since he and Dona Belén had never had any children. Now he spent most of his days reminiscing on his porch and tending to an absence belted into a wheelchair. From some need of his own, Don Bernardo pretended his wife was just under the weather rather than suffering from dementia. He conveyed made-up greetings and apologies from Dona Belén. Once a week, the old man struggled to get behind the wheel of his old Plymouth to drive Dona Belén over to Salcedo for a little checkup.
He was a true angel all right. He had come through for us as a god-father for all the little ones—Raulito, Minou, and Manolito—at a time when most people were avoiding the Mirabals.
Then, after the girls were taken, I realized that Jacqueline hadn’t been christened. All my children had been baptized the country way, within the first cycle of the moon after their birth. But Maria Teresa, who always loved drama and ceremony, had kept postponing the christening until it could be done “properly” in the cathedral in San Francisco with the bishop officiating and the girls’ choir from Inmaculada singing “Regina Coeli.” Maybe pride ran in more than one set of veins in the family.
One afternoon when I was still a little crazy with grief, I ran out of Mamá’s house, barefoot, with Jacqueline in my arms. Don Bemardo was already at his door with his hat on and his keys in his hand. “So you’re ready to be a fish in the waters of salvation, eh, my little snapper?” He chucked Jacqueline under her little chin, and her tears dried up like it was July in Monte Cristi.
Now I was at Don Bemardo’s door again, but this time without a baby in my arms. “What a pleasure, Patria Mercedes,” he greeted me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have me drop in at any hour of the day or night, barefoot or dressed up, with a favor to ask.
“Don Bernardo, here I am bothering you again,” I said. “But I need a ride to Santiago to Captain Peña’s office.”
“A visit to the lion’s den, I see.”
I caught a glimpse of a smile in the curve of his thick, white mustache. Briefly, he entered the bedroom where Dona Belén lay harnessed in her second childhood. Then out he came, crooking his elbow as my escort. “Doña Belén sends her greetings,” he said.
Captain Victor Alicinio Pena received me right away. Maybe it was my nerves, but his office had the closed-in feeling of a jail cell, metal jalousies at the windows and fluorescence the only light. An air conditioner gave out a violent mechanical sound, as if it were about to give out. I wished I were outside, waiting under the almond trees in the square with Don Bernardo.
“It’s a pleasure to see you, Dona Patria.” Captain Peña eyeballed me as if he had to be true to his verb and see every part of me. “How can I be of help?” he asked, motioning for me to sit down.
I had planned to make an impassioned plea, but no words came out of my mouth. It wouldn’t have been exaggerating to say that Patria Mercedes had been struck dumb in the devil’s den.
“I must say I was a little surprised to be told you were here to see me,” Pena went on. I could see he was growing annoyed at my silence. “I am a busy man. What is it I can do for you?”
Suddenly, it all came out, along with the tears. How I had read in the papers about El Jefe excusing minors, how my boy had just turned eighteen in prison, how I wondered if there was anything at all Pena could do to get my boy pardoned.
“This matter is outside my department,” he lied.
That’s when it struck me. This devil might seem powerful, but finally I had a power stronger than his. So I used it. Loading up my heart with prayer, I aimed it at the lost soul before me.
“This came down from above,” he continued. But now, he was the one growing nervous. Absently, his hands fiddled with a plastic card on his key ring. It was a prism picture of a well-stacked brunette. When you tilted it a certain way, her clothes dropped away. I tried not to be distracted, but to keep right on praying.
Soften his devils heart, oh Lord. And then, I said the difficult thing, For he, too, is one of your children.
Pena lay down his pathetic key ring, picked up the phone, and dialed headquarters in the capital. His voice shifted from its usual bullying bark to an accommodating softness. “Yes, yes, General, absolutely.” I wondered if he would ever get to my petition. And then it came, so smoothly buttered, it almost slipped right by me. “There’s a little matter I’ve got sitting here in my office.” He laughed uproariously at something said on the other end. “No, not exactly that little matter.”
And then he told what I was after.
I sat, my hands clutched on my lap. I don’t know if I was praying as much as listening intently—trying to judge the success of my petition from every pause and inflection in Pena’s voice. Maybe because I was watching him so closely a funny thing started to happen. The devil I was so used to seeing disappeared, and for a moment, like his tilting prism, I saw an overgrown fat boy, ashamed of himself for kicking the cat and pulling the wings off butterflies.
I must have looked surprised because as soon as he hung up, Pena leaned towards me. “Something wrong?”
“No, no,” I said quickly, bowing my head. I did not want to be pushy and ask him directly what he had found out. “Captain,” I pleaded, “can you offer me any hope?”
“It’s in the works,” he said, standing up to dismiss me. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“¡Gracias, ay, muchas gracias!” I kept saying, and I wasn’t just thanking Peña.
The captain held on to my hand too long, but this time I didn’t pull away. I was no longer his victim, I could see that. I might have lost everything, but my spirit burned bright. Now that I had shined it on him, this poor blind moth couldn’t resist my light.
It was time to tell him what I’d be doing for him. “I’ll pray for you, Captain.”
He laughed uneasily. “What for?”
“Because it’s the only thing I have left to repay you with,” I said, holding his gaze. I wanted him to understand that I knew he had taken our land.
We waited, and weeks went by. A second, and then a third, pastoral was read from the pulpits. The regime responded with a full-force war against the church. A campaign began in the papers to cancel the concordat with the Vatican. The Catholic church should no longer have a special status in our country. The priests were only stirring up trouble. Their allegations against the government were lies. After all, our dictator was running a free country. Maybe to prove himself right, Trujillo was granting more and more pardons and visiting passes.
Every day or so, I stopped at the portrait with a fresh flower and a little talk. I tried to pretend he was my boy, too, a troubled one in need of guidance. “You know as well as I do that casting out the church won’t do you a bit of good,” I advised him. “Besides, think of your future. You’re no spring chicken at sixty-nine, and very soon, you’re going to be where you don’t make the rules.”
And then more personally, I reminded him of the pardon I’d asked for.
But nothing came through for us. Either Peña had forgotten or—God forbid!—something terrible had happened to Nelson. I started having bad days again and long nights. Only the thought of Easter just around the comer kept Patria Mercedes inching along. The blossoms on the flame trees were about to burst open.
And on the third day He rose again ...
The little notes kept streaming in. From the few hints Mate could drop into them, I pieced together what the girls were going through in prison.
They asked for food that would keep—they were hungry. Bouillon cubes and some salt—the food they got had no flavor. Aspirin—they had fevers. Ephedrine—the asthma was acting up. Ceregen—they were weak. Soap—they were able to wash themselves. A dozen small crucifixes? That I couldn’t make out. One or two, yes, but a dozen?! I believed they were feeling more peace of mind when they asked for books. Martí for Minerva (the poems, not the essay book) and for Mate, a blank book and a pen. Sewing materials for both, plus the children’s recent measurements. Ay, pobrecitas, they were missing their babies.
I spent hours with Don Bernardo and Dona Belén next door, wishing my mind could fade like hers into the past. I would have gone all the way back, all the way back to the beginning of—I wasn’t sure of what.
Finally, when I’d almost given up hope, Peña arrived at the house in his big showy white Mercedes, wearing an embroidered guayabera instead of his uniform. Oh dear, a personal visit.
“Capitán Peña,” I welcomed him. “Please come inside where it’s cool.” I made a point of stopping at the entryway so he could see the fresh flowers under the portrait. “Shall I make you a rum coke?” I was gushing shamelessly all over him.
“Don’t bother yourself, Doña Patria, don’t bother yourself.” He indicated the chairs on the porch. “It’s nice and cool out there.” He looked at the road as a car slowed, the driver taking in who had dropped in on the Mirabal family.
Right then and there, I realized this visit was as much for him as for me. I’d heard that he was having trouble at our place—I will never call that farm anything else. All the campesinos had run off, and there wasn’t a neighbor willing to lend a hand. (What could he expect? That whole area was full of González!) But being seen conversing with Doña Patria sent out the message—I didn’t hold him responsible for my loss. All he had done was buy a cheap farm from the government.
Mamá did, however, hold him responsible. She locked herself in her bedroom with her grandbabies and refused to come out. She would never visit with the monster who had torn her girls from her side. She didn’t care that he was trying to help us now. The truth was the devil was the devil even in a halo. But I knew it was more complicated than that. He was both, angel and devil, like the rest of us.
“I have good news for you,” Peña began. He folded his hands on his lap, waiting for me to gush a little more over him.
“What is it, Captain?” I leaned forward, playing my pleading part.
“I have the visiting passes,” he said. My heart sunk a little, I had wanted the pardon most of all. But I thanked him warmly as he counted out each one. “Three passes,” he concluded when he was done.
Three? “But we have six prisoners, Captain,” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Shouldn’t it be six passes?”
“It should be six, shouldn’t it?” He gave me little righteous nods. “But Manolo’s in solitary, and Leandro’s still deciding on a job for El Jefe. So! They’re both—shall we say—unavailable.”
A job for El Jefe? “And my Nelson?” I said right out.
“I talked with headquarters,” Pena spoke slowly, delaying the news to increase my anticipation. But I stayed unruffled, praying my Glory Be‘s, one right after the other. “Seeing as your boy is so young, and El Jefe has been pardoning most minors...” He swilled his drink around so the ice tinkled against the glass. “We think we can get him in with the next round.”
My first born, my little ram. The tears began to flow.
“Now, now, Doña Patria, don’t get like that.” But I could tell from Peña’s tone that he loved seeing women cry.
When I had controlled myself, I asked, “And the girls, Captain?”
“The women were all offered pardons as well.”
I was at the edge of my chair. “So the girls are coming home, too?”
“No, no, no,” he said, wagging his finger at me. “They seem to like it in prison. They have refused.” He raised his eyebrows as if to say, what can I do about such foolishness? Then he returned us to the subject of his little coup, expecting more of my gratitude. “So, how shall we celebrate when the boy comes home?”
“We’ll have you over for a sancocho,” I said before he could suggest something rude.
As soon as he was gone, I rushed to Mamá’s bedroom and delivered my good news.
Mama went down on her knees and threw her hands up in the air. “The truth is the Lord has not forgotten us!”
“Nelson is coming home?” Noris rushed forward. Since his imprisonment, Noris had moped horribly, as if Nelson were a lost love instead of “the monster” who had tortured her all her childhood.
The younger children began to chant, “Nelson home! Nelson home!”
Mama looked up at me, ignoring the racket. “And the girls?”
“We have passes to see them,” I said, my voice dropping.
Mamá stood up, stopping the clamor short. “And what does the devil want in return?”
“A sancocho when Nelson comes home.”
“Over my dead body that man is going to eat a sancocho in my house.”
I put my hand on my lips, reminding Mamá that she had to watch what she said.
“I mean it, over my dead body!” Mamá hissed. “And that’s the truth!”
By the time she said it the third time, she and I both knew she was resigned to feeding Judas at her table. But there would be more than one stray hair in that sancocho, as the campesinos liked to say. No doubt Fela would sprinkle in her powders and Tono would say an Our Father backwards over the pot, and even I would add some holy water I’d bottled from Jacqueline’s baptism to give to her mother.
That night as we walked in the garden, I admitted to Mamá that I had made an indiscreet promise. She looked at me, shocked. “Is that why you snuck out of the house a few weeks ago?”
“No, no, no. Nothing like that. I offered Our Lord to take me instead of my Nelson.”
Mama sighed. “Ay, m‘ija, don’t even say so. I have enough crosses.” Then she admitted, “I offered Him to take me instead of any of you. And since I’m the mother, He’s got to listen to me first.”
We laughed. “The truth is,” Mama continued, “I have everything in hock to Him. It’ll take me another lifetime to fulfill all the promesas I’ve made once everybody comes home.
“As for the Pena promesa,” she added, “I have a plan.” There was that little edge of revenge in her voice. “We’ll invite all the neighbors.”
I didn’t have to remind her that we weren’t living among our kin anymore. Most of these new neighbors wouldn’t come, afraid of being seen socializing with the blackmarked Mirabals. That was part of Mama’s plan. “Peña will show up, thinking the sancocho is meant just for him.”
I started laughing before she was through. I could see which way her revenge was going.
“All those neighbors will look out their windows and kick themselves when they realize they slighted the head of the northern SIM!”
“Ay, Mamá,” I laughed. “You are becoming la jefa of revenge!”
“Lord forgive me,” she said, smiling sweetly. There wasn’t a bit of sorry in her voice.
“That makes two of us,” I said, hooking my arm with hers.
“Good night,” I called out to the cigarette tips glowing like fireflies in the dark.
Monday, Pena telephoned. The audience with El Jefe was set in the National Palace for the next day. We were to bring a sponsor. Someone willing to give the young offender work and be responsible for him. Someone who had not been in trouble with the government.
“Thank you, thank you,” I kept saying.
“So when is my sancocho?” Pena concluded.
“Come on, Mamá,” I said when I got off the line and had given her our good news. “The man isn’t all that bad.”
“Humpf!” Mama snorted. “The man is smart is what he is. Helping with Nelson’s release will do what twenty sancochos couldn’t do. Soon the González clan will have him baptizing their babies!”
I knew she was right, but I wished she hadn’t said so. I don’t know, I wanted to start believing in my fellow Dominicans again. Once the goat was a bad memory in our past, that would be the real revolution we would have to fight: forgiving each other for what we had all let come to pass.
We made the trip to the capital in two cars. Jaimito and I rode down in the pickup. He had agreed to sponsor his nephew, giving him his own parcel to farm. I always said our cousin had a good heart.
Mama, Tio Chiche and his son, Blanco, a young colonel in the army, followed in Don Bernardo’s car. We wanted a show of strength—our most respectable relations. Dedé was staying behind to take care of the children. It was my first excursion out of the Salcedo province in three months. My mood was almost festive!
At the last minute, Noris stole into the pickup and wouldn’t come out. “I want to go get my brother,” she said, her voice breaking. I couldn’t bring myself to order her out.
Somehow, in our excitement, our two cars lost each other on the road. Later we found out that Don Bemardo’s old Plymouth had a flat near the Constanza turnoff, and when Blanco went to change it, there was no jack or spare in the trunk. Instead, Mamá described a whole library that Don Bernardo confessed he had hidden there. In her forgetful rages, Dona Belen had taken it into her head to rip up her husband’s books, convinced there were love letters hidden in those pages.
Because we had backtracked, looking for them, we got to the National Palace with only minutes to spare. Up the front steps we raced—there must have been a hundred of them. In Dedé’s tight little heels, I suffered my Calvary, which I offered up to my Nelson’s freedom. At the entrance, there was a checkpoint, then two more friskings inside. Those were my poor Noris’s Calvary. You know how girls are at that age about any attention paid their bodies, and this was out and out probing of the rudest kind. Finally, we were escorted down the hall by a nervous little functionary, who kept checking his watch and motioning for us to hurry along.
With all the rushing around, I hadn’t stopped to think. But now I began worrying that our prize would be snatched away at the last minute. El Jefe was going to punish us Mirabals. Just like with Minerva’s degree, he would wait till I had my hands on my Nelson and then say, “Your family is too good to accept pardons, it seems. I’m so sorry. We’ll have to keep the boy.”
I could not let myself be overcome by fears. I hung on to the sound of my girl’s new heels clicking away beside me. My little rosebud, my pigs-eye, my pretty one. Suddenly, my heart just about stopped. ¡Ay, Dios mío! What could I be thinking, bringing her along! Everybody knew that with each passing year the old goat liked them younger and younger. I had offered myself as a sacrificial lamb for Nelson. Certainly not my darling.
I squeezed my Noris’s hand. “You stay by me every second, you hear! Don’t drink anything you’re offered, and it’s no to any invitation to any party.”
“Mamá, what are you talking about?” Her bottom lip was quivering.
“Nothing, my treasure. Nothing. Just stay close.”
It was like asking the pearl to stay inside its mother oyster. All the way down that interminable hall, Noris held tight to my hand.
I needed her touch as much as she needed mine. The past was rushing down that long corridor towards me, a flood of memories, sweeping me back as I struggled to keep up with the little official. We were on our way to the fateful Discovery Day dance, Minerva and Dedé, Pedrito, Papa and Jaimito and I, and nothing bad had happened yet. I was climbing up to the shrine of the Virgencita in Higuey to hear her voice for the first time. I was a bride, promenading down the center aisle of San Juan Evangelista twenty years back to marry the man with whom I would have our dear children, dearer than my life.