“What are you doing to my precious?” she says, coming in. Doña Isabel takes care of the baby while Minerva’s in class. She’s one of those pretty women who stay pretty no matter how old they get. Curly white hair like a frilly cap and eyes soft as opals. She holds out her hands, “My precious, are they torturing you?”
“What do you mean?” Minerva says, handing the howling bundle over and rubbing her ears. “This little tyrant’s torturing us!”
1957
Friday evening, July 26 The capital
I have been a disaster diary keeper. Last year, only one entry, and this year is already half over and I haven’t jotted down a single word. I did thumb through my old diary book, and I must say, it does all seem very silly with all the diary dears and the so secretive initials no one would be able to decipher in a million years!
But I think I will be needing a companion—since from now on, I am truly on my own. Minerva graduates tomorrow and is moving to Monte Cristi to be with Manolo. I am to go home for the rest of the summer— although it’s no longer the home I’ve always known as Mama is building a new house on the main road. In the fall, I am to come back to finish my degree all on my own.
I’m feeling very solitary and sad and more jamonita than a hog.
Here I am almost twenty-two years old and not a true love in sight.
Saturday night, July 27 The capital
What a happy day today looked to be. Minerva was getting her law degree! The whole Mirabal-Reyes-Fernández-González-Tavárez clan
gathered for the occasion. It was a pretty important day—Minerva was the first person in our whole extended family (minus Manolo) to have gone through university.
What a shock, then, when Minerva got handed the law degree but not the license to practice. Here we all thought El Jefe had relented against our family and let Minerva enroll in law school. But really what he was planning all along was to let her study for five whole years only to render that degree useless in the end. How cruel!
Manolo was furious. I thought he was going to march right up to the podium and have a word with the rector. Minerva took it best of all of us.
She said now she’d have even more time to spend with her family.
Something in the way she looked at Manolo when she said that tells me there’s trouble between them.
Sunday evening, July 28 Last night in the capital
Until today, I was planning to go back to Ojo de Agua with Mamá since my summer session is also over. But the new house isn’t quite done, so it would have been crowded in the old house with Dedé and Jaimito and the boys already moved in. Then this morning, Minerva asked me if I wouldn’t come to Monte Cristi and help her set up housekeeping. Manolo has rented a little house so they won’t have to live with his parents anymore. By now, I know something is wrong between them, so I’ve agreed to go along.
Monday night, July 29 Monte Cristi
The drive today was horribly tense. Manolo and Minerva kept addressing all their conversation to me, though every once in a while, they’d start discussing something in low voices. It sounded like treasure hunt clues or something. The Indian from the hill has his cave up that road. The Eagle
has nested in the hollow on the other side of that mountain. I was so happy to have them talking to each other, I played with little Minou in the back seat and pretended not to hear them.
We arrived in town midafternoon and stopped in front of this little shack.
Seriously, it isn’t half as nice as the house Minerva showed me where Papa kept that woman on the farm. I suppose it’s the best Manolo can do, given how broke they are.
I tried not to look too shocked so as not to depress Minerva. What a performance that one put on. Like this was her dream house or something.
One, two, three rooms—she counted them as if delighted. A zinc roof would be so nice when it rained. What a big yard for her garden and that long storage shed in back sure would come in handy.
The show was lost on Manolo, though. Soon after he unpacked the car, he took off. Business, he said when Minerva asked him where he was going.
Thursday night, August 15 Monte Cristi
Manolo has been staying out till all hours. I sleep in the front room that serves as his office during the day, so I always know when he comes in.
Later, I hear voices raised in their bedroom.
Tonight, Minerva and I were sewing curtains in the middle room where the kitchen, living, dining room, and everything is. The clock struck eight, and still no Manolo. I don’t know why it is that when the clock strikes, you feel all the more the absence of someone.
Suddenly, I heard this wracking sob. My brave Minerva! It was all I could do not to start crying right along with her.
From her playpen Minou reached out, offering her mother my old doll I’d given her.
“Okay” I said. “I know something is going on,” I said. I took a guess.
“Another woman, right?”
Minerva gave me a quick nod. I could see her shoulders heaving up and down.
“I hate men,” I said, mostly trying to convince myself. “I really hate them.”
Sunday afternoon, August 25 God, it gets hot in M.C.
Manolo and Minerva are on the mend. I mind the baby to give them time together, and they go out walking, holding hands, like newlyweds. Some nights they slip away for meetings, and I can see lights on in the storage shed. I usually take the baby down to Manolo’s parents and spend the time with them and the twins, then walk home, accompanied by Manolo’s brother, Eduardo. I keep my distance from him. First time I’ve ever done that with a nice enough, handsome enough young man. Like I said, I’ve had enough of them.
Saturday morning, September 7
A new warm feeling has descended on our little house. This mom ing, Minerva came into the kitchen to get Manolo his cafecito, and her face was
suffused with a certain sweetness. She wrapped her arms around me from behind and whispered in my ear, “Thank you, Mate, thank you. The struggle’s brought us together again. You’ve brought us together again.”
“Me?” I asked, though I could as easily have said, “What struggle?”
Saturday before sunrise, September 28
This will be a long entry … something important has finally happened to me. I’ve hardly slept a wink, and tomorrow—or really, today, since it’s almost dawn—I’m heading back to the capital for the start of fall classes.
Minerva finally convinced me that I should finish my degree. But after what happened to her, I’m pretty disillusioned about staying at the university.
Anyhow, as always before a trip, I was tossing and turning, packing and unpacking my bags in my head. I must have finally fallen asleep because I had that dream again about Papá. This time, after pulling out all the pieces of the wedding dress, I looked in and man after man I’d known appeared and disappeared before my eyes. The last one being Papá, though even as I looked, he faded little by little, until the box was empty. I woke up with a start, lit the lamp, and sat listening to the strange excited beating in my heart.
But soon, what I thought was my heartbeat was a desperate knocking on the front shutter. A voice was whispering urgently, “Open up!”
When I got the courage to crack open the shutter, at first I couldn’t make out who was out there. “What do you want?” I asked in a real uninviting way.
The voice hesitated. Wasn’t this the home of Manolo Tavárez?
“He’s alseep. I’m his wife’s sister. Can I help you?” By now, from the light streaming from my window, I could see a face I seemed to recall from a dream. It was the sweetest man’s face I’d ever seen.
He had a delivery to make, he said, could I please let him in? As he spoke, he kept looking over his shoulder at a car parked right before our
front door.
I didn’t even think twice. I ran to the entryway, slid the bolt, and pushed open the door just in time for him to carry a long wooden crate from the trunk of the car to the front hall. Quickly, I closed the door behind him and nodded towards the office. He carried the box in, looking all around for a place to hide it.
We finally settled on the space under the cot where I slept. It amazed me even as it was happening how immediately I’d fallen in with this stranger’s mission, whatever it was.
Then he asked me the strangest thing. Was I Mariposa’s little sister?
I told him I was Minerva’s sister. I left out the little, mind you.
He studied me, trying to decide something. “You aren’t one of us, are you?”
I didn’t know what us he was talking about, but I knew right then and there, I wanted to be a part of whatever he was.
After he left, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about him. I went over everything I could remember about him and scolded myself for not having noticed if there was a ring on his hand. But I knew that even if he was married, I would not give him up. Right then, I began to forgive Papa.
A little while ago, I got up and dragged that heavy box out from under. It was nailed shut, but the nails had some give on one side where I could work the lid loose a little. I held the light up close and peered in. I almost dropped that lamp when I realized what I was looking at—enough guns to start a revolution!
Morning-leaving soon—
Manolo and Minerva have explained everything.
A national underground is forming. Everyone and everything has a code name. Manolo is Enriquillo, after the great Taino chieftain, and Minerva, of
course, is Mariposa. If I were to say tennis shoes, you’d know we were talking about ammunition. The pineapples for the picnic are the grenades.
The goat must die for us to eat at the picnic. (Get it? It’s like a trick language.)
There are groups all over the island. It turns out Palomino (the man last night) is really an engineer working on projects throughout the country, so he’s the natural to do the traveling and deliveries between groups.
I told Minerva and Manolo right out, I wanted to join. I could feel my breath coming short with the excitement of it all. But I masked it in front of Minerva. I was afraid she’d get all protective and say that I could be just as useful sewing bandages to put in the supply boxes to be buried in the mountains. I don’t want to be babied anymore. I want to be worthy of Palomino. Suddenly, all the boys I’ve known with soft hands and easy lives seem like the pretty dolls I’ve outgrown and passed on to Minou.
Monday morning, October 14 The capital
I’ve lost all interest in my studies. I just go to classes in order to keep my cover as a second-year architecture student. My true identity now is Mariposa (# 2), waiting daily, hourly, for communications from up north.
I’ve moved out of Doña Chelito’s with the excuse that I need more privacy to apply myself to my work. It’s really not a lie, but the work I’m doing isn’t what she imagines. My cell has assigned me, along with Sonia, also a university student, to this apartment above a little comer store. We’re a hub, which means that deliveries coming into the capital from up north are dropped off here. And guess who brings them? My Palomino. How surprised he was the first time he knocked, and I opened the door!
The apartment is in a humble part of town where the poorer students live.
I think some of them can tell what Sonia and I are up to, and they look out for us. Certainly some must think the worst, what with men stopping by at all hours. I always make them stay for as long as a cafecito to give the
illusion that they are real visitors. I’m a natural for this, really. I’ve always liked men, receiving them, paying them attention, listening to what they have to say. Now I can use my talents for the revolution.
But I have eyes for one man only, my Palomino.
Tuesday evening, October 15
What a way to spend my twenty-second birthday! (If only Palomino would come tonight with a delivery.)
I have been a little mopey, I admit it. Sonia reminds me we have to make sacrifices for the revolution. Thank you, Sonia. I’m sure this is going to come up in my critica at the end of the month. (God, it seems like I’ll always have a Minerva by my side being a better person than I am.)
Anyhow, I’ve got to memorize this diagram before we burn the master.
Thursday night, November 7
Today we had a surprise visitor. We were in the middle of making diagrams to go with the Nipples kits when there was a knock at our door.
Believe me, Sonia and I both jumped like one of the paper bombs had gone off. We’ve got an escape route rigged up a back window, but Sonia kept her wits about her and asked who it was. It was Doña Hita, our landlady dropping in from downstairs for a little visit.
We were so relieved, we didn’t think to clear off the table with the diagrams. I’m still worried she might have spotted our work, but Sonia says that woman has a different kind of contraband in mind. She hinted that if Sonia and I ever get into trouble, she knows someone who can help us. I blushed so dark Dona Hita must have been baffled that this you-know-who was embarrassed at the mention of you-know-what!
Thursday afternoon, November 14
Palomino has been showing up frequently and not always with a delivery to make. We talk and talk. Sonia always makes an excuse and goes out to run an errand. She’s really a much nicer person than I’ve made out. Today she left a little bowl of arroz con leche—Ahem!—for us to eat. It’s a fact, you’ll marry the one you share it with.
The funniest thing. Doña Hita bumped into Palomino on the stairs and called him Don Juan! She assumes he’s our pimp because he’s the one who comes around all the time. I laughed when he told me. But truly, my face was burning at the thought. We hadn’t yet spoken of our feelings for each other.
Suddenly, he got all serious, and those beautiful hazel eyes came closer & closer. He kissed me, polite & introductory at first—
Oh God—I am so deeply in love!
Saturday night, November 16
Palomino came again today. We finally exchanged real names, though I think he already knew mine. Leandro Guzmán Rodriguez, what a pretty
ring it has to it. We had a long talk about our lives. We laid them side by side and looked at them.
It turns out his family is from San Francisco not far from where I lived with Dedé while I was finishing up secondary school. Four years ago he came to the capital to finish a doctorate. That’s just when I had come to start my studies! We must have danced back to back at the merengue festival in ‘54. He was there, I was there.
We sat back, marveling. And then our hands reached out, palm to palm, joining our lifelines.
Sunday night, December 1
Palomino stayed last night—on a cot in the munitions room, of course! I didn’t sleep a wink just knowing we were under the same roof.
Guess whose name was in my right shoe all day?
He won’t come again for a couple of weeks—training up in the mountains, something like that—he can’t really say. Then his next delivery will be the last. By the end of the month this location has to be vacated.
There have been too many raids in this area, and Manolo is worried.
The munitions room, by the way, is what we’ve started calling the back room where we keep all deliveries and where, by the way, I keep you, wedged between a beam and the casing of the door. I better not forget you there when we move out. I can just see Doña Hita finding you, opening your covers, thinking she’ll discover a whole list of clients, and instead— Lord forbid!—snapping her eyes on the Nipples bomb. Maybe she’ll think it’s some sort of abortion contraption!
For the hundredth time in the last few months I’ve wondered whether I shouldn’t burn you?
Sunday afternoon, December 15
This weekend has been harder than the last two months put together. I’m too nervous even to write. Palomino has not appeared as I expected. And there is no one to talk to as Sonia has already left for .La Romana. I’ll be going home in a few days, and all deliveries and pickups have to be made before I leave.
I suppose I’m getting cold feet. Everything has gone without a scrape for months, and I’m sure something will happen now. I keep thinking Dona Hita reported the grenade diagrams we left out in the open that time she surprised us. Then I worry that Sonia’s been nabbed leaving town, and I’ll be ambushed when my last delivery comes.
I’m a bundle of nerves. I never was any good at being brave all by myself.
Monday morning, December 16
I wasn’t expecting Palomino last night, and so when I heard a car pulling up in front of the building, I thought, THIS IS IT! I was ready to escape out the back window, diary in hand, but thank God, I ran to the front one to check first. It was him! I took the stairs two at a time and rushed into the street and hugged and kissed him like the kind of woman the neighbors think I am.
We piled up the boxes he’d brought in the back room, and then we stood a moment, a strange sadness in our eyes. This work of destruction jarred with what was in our hearts. That’s when he told me that he didn’t like the idea of my being alone in the apartment. He was spending every moment too worried about me to pay careful enough attention to the revolution.
My heart stirred to hear him say so. I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle. I would never be able to give up Leandro to some higher ideal the way I feel Minerva and Manolo would each other if they had to make the supreme sacrifice. And so last night, it touched me, Oh so deeply, to hear him say it was the same for him, too.