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The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn’t believe in the hammer.
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.
She had never known an enemy of state before. She had assumed such people would be self-serving and wicked, low-class criminals. But Lío was a fine young man with lofty ideals and a compassionate heart. Enemy of state? Why then, Minerva was an enemy of state. And if she, Dedé, thought long and hard about what was right and wrong, she would no doubt be an enemy of state as well.
“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.
“We cannot remain indifferent to the grievous blows that have afflicted so many good Dominican homes. . . .” Padre Gabriel’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“All human beings are born with rights derived from God that no earthly power can take away.”
“To deny these rights is a grave offense against God, against the dignity of man.”
Once the goat was a bad memory in our past, that would be the real revolution we would have to fight: forgiving each other for what we had all let come to pass.
If we made up the perfect country Minerva keeps planning, I would fit in perfectly. The only problem for me would be if self-serving ones were allowed in. Then I believe I’d turn into one of them in self-defense.
She came forward like she was going to tell me a secret and brushed her lips to mine. I pulled back, shocked. Ay, Magdalena, I said, I’m not that way, you know. She laughed. Girl, I don’t know what you mean by that way, like it’s a wrong turn or something. My body happens to also love the people my heart loves.
that the gringos were working with a group to slaughter the goat for the picnic. Manolo had not heard this. His face tensed up. “I don’t like it. The gringos will take over the revolution.” They’ll take over the country, I thought to myself. I didn’t say it out loud.
He was going to make us a nation proud of ourselves, not run by the Yanqui imperialists.
“It’s still 1960 for you,” she concludes. “But this is 1994, Dedé, 1994!” “You’re wrong,” I tell her. “I’m not stuck in the past, I’ve just brought it with me into the present. And the problem is not enough of us have done that. What is that thing the gringos say, if you don’t study your history, you are going to repeat it?” Olga waves the theory away. “The gringos say too many things.”
“The nightmare is over, Dedé. Look at what the girls have done.” He gestures expansively. He means the free elections, bad presidents now put in power properly, not by army tanks. He means our country beginning to prosper, Free Zones going up everywhere, the coast a clutter of clubs and resorts. We are now the playground of the Caribbean, who were once its killing fields. The cemetery is beginning to flower.
She tells me all the news of what Camila did today. Of Doroteo’s businesses, of their plans to build a house up north in those beautiful mountains. I am glad it is dark, so she cannot see my face when she says this. Up north in those beautiful mountains where both your mother and father were murdered! But all this is a sign of my success, isn’t it? She’s not haunted and full of hate. She claims it, this beautiful country with its beautiful mountains and splendid beaches—all the copy we read in the tourist brochures.
On August 6, 1960, my family arrived in New York City, exiles from the tyranny of Trujillo. My father had participated in an underground plot that was cracked by the SIM, Trujillo’s famous secret police.
November 25th, the day of their murder, is observed in many Latin American countries as the International Day Against Violence Towards Women. Obviously, these sisters, who fought one tyrant, have served as models for women fighting against injustices of all kinds.
