In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

It doesn’t help with the other girls if you are best all the time.

I asked Minerva why she was doing such a dangerous thing. And then, she said the strangest thing. She wanted me to grow up in a free country.

It is so strange now I know something I’m not supposed to know. Everything looks just a little different.

I’m going to spend the summer learning things I really want to learn! Like (1) doing embroidery from Patria (2) keeping books from Dedé (3) cooking cakes from my Tía Flor (I’ll get to see more of my cute cousin Berto, and Raúl, too!!!) (4) spells from Fela (I better not tell Mamá!) (5) how to argue so I’m right, and anything else Minerva wants to teach me.

No one had to tell me to believe in God or to love everything that lives. I did it automatically like a shoot inching its way towards the light.

From the beginning, I was so good, Mamá said she’d forget I was there.

“Give her time, Doña Chea, give her time. I’ve seen many a little angel mature into a fallen one.”

And why, you might ask, was the otherworldly, deeply religious Patria attracted to such a creature? I’ll tell you. I felt the same excitement as when I’d been able to coax a wild bird or stray cat to eat out of my hand.

Is pity always a part of love? It was all I could do to keep from touching him.

He could not love me very much, I protested, because all he said was that he loved me. According to Minerva, those truly in love spoke poetry to their beloved. He stopped, and took me by the shoulders. I could barely see his face that moonless night. “You’re not getting a fancy, high-talking man in Pedrito González,” he said rather fiercely. “But you are getting a man who adores you like he does this rich soil we’re standing on.”

“It’s a dirty business, you’re right. That’s why we women shouldn’t get involved.” Minerva listened with that look on her face of just waiting for me to finish. “I don’t agree with you, Patria,” she said, and then in her usual, thorough fashion, she argued that women had to come out of the dark ages.

And so it was that Patria Mercedes Mirabal de González was known all around San José de Conuco as well as Ojo de Agua as a model Catholic wife and mother. I fooled them all! Yes, for a long time after losing my faith, I went on, making believe.

He was not a jealous man. I’ll say it plain: he was not a man of imagination, so he wasn’t afflicted by suspicions and worries.

Minerva gets another great idea. Why not play volleyball, and then, when they are hot and sweaty, go jump in the lagoon.

First, we mean to depose the dictator in this and this way. Second, we have arranged for a provisional government. Third, we mean to set up a committee of private citizens to oversee free elections.

She decided not to read the papers anymore. They were turning her upside down inside. The regime was going insane, issuing the most ludicrous regulations. A heavy fine was now imposed on anyone who wore khaki trousers and shirts of the same color. It was against the law now to carry your suit jacket over your arm. Lío was right, this was an absurd and crazy regime. It had to be brought down.

Same-color khaki outfits were what the military wore, and so a dress distinction had to be made. A jacket over the arm could be hiding a gun, and there had recently been many rumors about plots against El Jefe.

an awful book just published by Doña María. Everyone knew the dictator’s wife hadn’t written a word of it, but the audience clapped politely. Except Minerva. Dedé prodded her with an elbow and whispered, “Think of it as life insurance.” The irony of it—she had been practicing for her future profession!

In confidence, the old man tells me that he gave all thirteen sons the same name to try to outwit the regime. Whichever son is caught can swear he isn’t the brother they want!

He addresses me sincerely. “I hate to see ladies in any kind of distress.” “It must be difficult for you,” I acknowledge. He does not catch the sarcasm in my voice.

Of course, we can’t fire him or that would look like we have something to hide. But he’s been promoted, so we told him, from the yard to the hogpen. Now he hasn’t much to report except oink, oink, oink all day.

All the streets are named after Trujillo’s family, so it’s kind of confusing. Minerva told me this joke about how to get to Parque Julia Molina from Carretera El Jefe. “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.”

Which reminds me. I must find you a better hiding place, diary. It’s not safe carrying you around in my pocketbook on the street of his mother or the avenue of his little boy.

I know I used to say I wanted to be a lawyer like Minerva, but the truth is I always burst out crying if anyone starts arguing with me.

The campus is buzzing with the horror story. Disappearances happen every week, but this time, it’s someone who used to teach here. Also, Galindez had already escaped to New York so everyone thought he was safe. But somehow El Jefe found out Galindez was writing a book against the regime.

We women at this university are particularly grateful for the opportunities afforded us for higher education in this regime. Minerva insists I stick this in.

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!

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.

Then he asked me the strangest thing. Was I Mariposa’s little sister?

A national underground is forming.

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.

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.

The American journalist threw out questions to El Jefe about his policies regarding political prisoners and the recent OAS charges of human rights abuses. El Jefe waved them away.

Trujillo’s son Ramfis had come special to question her because Trujillo had said that Minerva Mirabal was the brain behind the whole movement. I’m very flattered, Minerva said she said. But my brain isn’t big enough to run such a huge operation. That worried them.

Tuesday late night, March 29 (68 days) I can’t even fall asleep tonight remembering Violeta’s prayer at the close of our group rosary: May I never experience all that it is possible to get used to. How it has spooked me to hear that.

You think you’re going to crack any day, but the strange thing is that every day you surprise yourself by pulling it off, and suddenly you start feeling stronger, like maybe you are going to make it through this hell with some dignity, some courage, and most important—never forget this, Mate—with some love still in your heart for the men who have done this to you.

When asked why a small, peace-loving island would strike out against him, President Betancourt confabulated a plot against his life by the Dominican government: “Ever since I brought charges of his human rights abuses before the OAS, Trujillo has been after me.”

think Minerva is close to her own breaking point. She has been acting funny. Sometimes, she just turns to me and says, What? as if I had asked her something. Sometimes her hand goes to her chest as if she is making sure she has a heartbeat. I am glad we will soon be out of here.

For the OAS Committee investigating Human Rights Abuses. This is a journal entry of what occurred at La 40 on Monday, April 11th, 1960, to me, a female political prisoner. I’d rather not put my name. Also, I have blotted out some names as I am afraid of getting innocent people in trouble. Please don’t put it in the papers either, as I am concerned for my privacy.

I had been so much stronger and braver in prison. Now at home I was falling apart.

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.

So Trujillo was no longer saying Minerva Mirabal was a problem, but that all the Mirabal sisters were.

People came out of their houses. They had already heard the story we were to pretend to believe. The Jeep had gone off the cliff on a bad turn. But their faces knew the truth.

When did it turn, I wonder, from my being the one who listened to the stories people brought to being the one whom people came to for the story of the Mirabal sisters? When, in other words, did I become the oracle?