In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

“You take the road of El Jefe across the bridge of his youngest son to the street of his oldest boy, then turn left at the avenue of his wife, walk until you reach the park of his mother and you’re there.”

It looked like the newsreels of Hitler and the Italian one with the name that sounds like fettuccine.

But she’s not angry at me. She says I gave it a chance and that’s what matters.

Looking at her, I almost felt sorry. I wondered if she knew how bad her father is or if she still thought, like I once did about Papá, that her father is God.

She says this country hasn’t voted for anything in twenty-six years and it’s only these silly little elections that keep the faint memory of a democracy going. “You can’t let your constituency down, Queen Mate!”

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!

“I hate men,” I said, mostly trying to convince myself. “I really hate them.”

I almost dropped that lamp when I realized what I was looking at—enough guns to start a revolution!

My eighteenth year of marriage the ground of my well-being began to give a little. Just a baby’s breath tremor, a hairline crack you could hardly see unless you were looking for trouble.

Batista had fled! Fidel, his brother Raúl, and Ernesto they call Che had entered Havana and liberated the country ¡Cuba libre! ¡Cuba libre!

Virgencita, I knew spirit was imminent, and that the churches were just glass houses, or way stations on our road through this rocky life.

Minou knows, all of her nieces know, that Dedé can’t bear for them to be on the road after dark. If their mothers had only waited until the next morning to drive back over that deserted mountain road, they might still be alive to scold their own daughters about the dangers of driving at night.

So when she saw her three sisters coming down the path that afternoon, she felt pure dread. It was as if the three fates were approaching, their scissors poised to snip the knot that was keeping Dedé’s life from falling apart.

But doing nothing could be worse. Unclaimed prisoners tended to disappear. Oh God, Dedé could not let herself think of that!

The butterflies, Lord God, how people romanticized other people’s terror!

Maybe the evil one had become flesh like Jesus!

I’m tempted to curl up in the corner like a hurt animal, whimpering, wanting to be safe. But I know if I do that, I’ll be giving in to a low part of myself, and I’ll feel even less human. And that is what they want to do, yes, that is what they want to do.