CHAPTER SEVEN
María Teresa
1953 to 1958
1953
Tuesday morning, December 15
Fela says rain
I feel like dying myself!
I can’t believe she came to the funeral mass with her girls, adding four more slaps to her big blow. One of them looked to be only a few years younger than me, so you couldn’t really say, Ay, poor Papa, he lost it at the end and went behind the palm trees. He was bringing down coconuts when he was good and hardy and knew what he was doing.
I asked Minerva who invited them.
All she said was they were Papá’s daughters, too.
I can’t stop crying! My cute cousins Raúl and Berto are coming over, and I look a sight. But I don’t care. I really don’t.
I hate men. I really hate them.
Wednesday evening, December 16
Here I am crying again, ruining my new diary book Minerva gave me.
She was saving it up for my Epiphany present, but she saw me so upset at Papá’s funeral, she thought it would help me most now.
Minerva always says writing gets things off her chest and she feels better, but I’m no writer, like she is. Besides, I swore I’d never keep a diary again after I had to bury my Little Book years back. But I’m desperate enough to try anything.
Monday, December 21
I am a little better now. For minutes at a time, I forget about Papa and the whole sad business.
Christmas Eve
Every time I look at Papá’s place at the table my eyes fill with tears. It makes it very hard to eat meals. What a bitter end of the year!
Christmas Day
We are all trying. The day is rainy, a breeze keeps blowing through the cacao. Fela says that’s the dead calling us. It makes me shiver to hear her say that after the dream I had last night.
We had just laid out Papa in his coffin on the table when a limousine pulls up to the house. My sisters climb out, including that bunch that call themselves my sisters, all dressed up like a wedding party. It turns out I’m the one getting married, but I haven’t a clue who the groom is.
I’m running around the house trying to find my wedding dress when I hear Mamá call out to look in Papa’s coffin!
The car hom is blowing, so I go ahead and raise the lid. Inside is a beautiful satin gown—in pieces. I lift out the one arm, and then another arm, then the bodice, and more parts below. I’m frantic, thinking we still have to sew this thing together.
When I get to the bottom, there’s Papa, smiling up at me.
I drop all those pieces like they’re contaminated and wake up the whole house with my screams.
(I’m so spooked. I wonder what it means? I plan on asking Fela who knows how to interpret dreams.)
Sunday afternoon, December 2 7
Today is the feast day of San Juan Evangelista, a good day for fortunes. I give Fela my coffee cup this morning after I’m done. She turns it over, lets the dregs run down the sides, then she reads the markings.
I prod her. Does she see any novios coming?
She turns the cup around and around. She shows me where two stains collide and says that’s a pair of brothers. I blush, because I guess she can tell about Berto and Raúl. Again; she slowly rotates the cup. She says she sees a professional man in a hat. Then, a capitaleño, she can tell by the way he stands.
I am at the edge of my seat, smiling in spite of these sad times, asking for more.
“You’ll have to have a second cup of coffee, señorita,” she says, setting the cup down. “All your admirers can’t fit in one cup of fortune.”
¿Berto & Mate?
¿Mate & Raúl ?
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ forever??????????
Ojo de Agua, Salcedo 30 December 1953 Twenty-third year of the Era of Trujillo
Generalísimo Doctor Rafael L. Trujillo Benefactor of our Country
Illustrious and well-loved Jefe,
Knowing as I do, the high esteem in which my husband Enrique Mirabal held your illustrious person, and now somewhat less confounded by the irreparable loss of my unforgettable compañero, I write to inform Your Excellency of his death on Monday, the fourteenth day of this month.
I want to take this opportunity to affirm my husband’s undying loyalty to Your Person and to avow that both myself and my daughters will continue in his footsteps as your loyal and devoted subjects. Especially now, in this dark moment, we look to your beacon from our troubled waters and count on your beneficent protection and wise counsel until we should breathe the very last breath of our own existence.
With greetings from my uncle, Chiche, I am most respectfully, Mercedes Reyes de Mirabal
Wednesday late afternoon, December 30
Mamá and I just spent most of the afternoon drafting the letter Tío Chiche suggested she write. Minerva wasn’t here to help. She left for Jarabacoa three days ago. Tío Fello dragged her off right after Christmas because he found her very thin and sad and thought the mountain air would invigorate her. Me, I just eat when I’m sad and so I look “the picture of health,” as Tio Fello put it.
Not that Minerva would have been much help. She is no good at the flowery feelings like I am. Last October, when she had to give her speech praising El Jefe at the Salcedo Civic Hall, guess who wrote it for her? It worked, too. Suddenly, she got her permission to go to law school. Every
once in a while Trujillo has to be buttered up, I guess, which is why Tío Chiche thought this letter might help.
Tomorrow I’ll copy it in my nice penmanship, then Mamá can sign it with her signature I’ve taught her to write.
Sunset
I ask Fela, without mentioning any names, if she has something I can use to spell a certain bad person.
She says to write this person’s name on a piece of paper, fold it, and put the paper in my left shoe because that is the foot Eve used to crush the head of the serpent. Then bum it, and scatter those ashes near the hated person.
I’ll sprinkle them all over the letter is what I’ll do.
What would happen if I put the name in my right shoe? I ask Fela.
The right foot is for problems with someone you love.
So, I’m walking around doing a double spell, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in one shoe, Enrique Mirabal in the other.
Thursday night, December 31
last day of this old sad year I can write the saddest things tonight.
Here I am looking out at the stars, everything so still, so mysterious. What does it all mean, anyway?
(I don’t like this kind of thinking like Minerva likes. It makes my asthma worse.)
I want to know things I don’t even know what they are.
But I could be happy without answers if I had someone to love.