In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn’t believe in the hammer.

“Ay, m’ijita” she says. “You’re going to fight everyone’s fight, aren’t you?” “It’s all the same fight, Mamá,” I tell her.

May the limitations of love not cast a spell On the serious ambitions of my mind.

Blessed are the peacemakers, Dedé thought, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what the prize was that had been promised them.

If they had only known how frail was their iron-will heroine. How much it took to put on that hardest of all performances, being my old self again.

I didn’t want to listen anymore. But I made myself listen—it was as if Manolo had to say it and I had to hear it—so that it could be human, so that we could begin to forgive it.