In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

You must think I’m so outside of things.” Tan afuera de la cosa. Dedé bites her lip. “Not at all,” she lies.

Dedé looks up at those young faces, and she knows it is herself at that age she misses the most.

Every soft foot needs a hard shoe.

“Enrique, those girls need some learning. Look at us.” Mamá had never admitted it, but I suspected she couldn’t even read.

Lourdes was fat, though as friends we called her pleasantly plump when she asked,

Mamá never bought from him. She claimed Jesus told us not to gamble, and playing the lottery was gambling. But every time I was alone with Papá, he bought a whole bunch of tickets and called it a good investment.

“Pobrecita,” we chorused, like an amen.

And you might not know this, Little Book, but I always cry when people laugh at me.

I resolve not to think of clothes when I am in church.

Pedrito just cracks his knuckles and consoles her by saying that they can have another one real soon. Imagine making such a gross promise to someone who is already having a hard enough time.

the sea and land have to compromise about a shoreline,

Lío’s whispers were eerie, a disembodied voice from the dark interior of the car.

“I’m talking about my proposal, Dedé.” Jaimito’s voice was that of a hurt little boy.

For one thing, my nose was always in a book.

“Cosas de los hombres,” he said. Things a man does. So that was supposed to excuse him, macho that he was!

“You are the father of thirteen sons?” I ask in disbelief. “Si, señora,” the old man nods proudly. At the tip of my tongue is the question I burn to ask him, “How many different mothers?”

Dios mío, has everyone in this country been reading my mail except me?

Mamá’s eyes are boring a hole in Papá. Our one lifeline in this stormy sea and Papá is cutting the rope she’s been playing out.

every wall washed clean of writing no one knows how to read anyway.

Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me!

I keep hoping that someone special will come into my life soon. Someone who can ravish my heart with the flames of love.

I try to put together the perfect man from all the boys I know.

“You must not see every man as a potential serpent,” he warned me. And I don’t really think I do. I mean, I like men. I want to marry one of them.

tamarinds.

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

I wish I could shed pounds as readily.

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.

I mean, most women I know, their husband gets a job in Texas, say, well, Texas it’s going to be.” “I’ve never been to Tejas,” Dedé says absently.

“All human beings are born with rights derived from God that no earthly power can take away.”

“Jaimito is behaving himself very well. I can’t complain,” she said. Behave? What a curious word for a wife to use about her husband.

Minou and Jacqueline laughed in that forced way of children imitating adult laughter they don’t really understand.

“Now, now, Doña Patria, don’t get like that.” But I could tell from Peña’s tone that he loved seeing women cry.

“Lord forgive me,” she said, smiling sweetly. There wasn’t a bit of sorry in her voice.

we were talking about love, love among us women.

I 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.

How strange that the sun was shining so innocently. That people were walking around as if there were no such thing in the world as poor souls in my predicament.

“Manolito, my boy, you are all eyes. We could use men like you in the SIM.” Oh God, I thought.

Mate told some of her favorite riddles we all pretended not to know so she could have the pleasure of answering them herself.

Just then, the light from the children’s bedroom that gave on the garden went out. As we stood in the dark a while longer, calming ourselves, I had this eerie feeling that we were already dead and looking longingly at the house where our children were growing up without us.

The other two came up to the counter, shaking their legs and pulling at their crotches, the way men getting out of cars do.

But as far as I’m concerned, a moon is a moon, and they all bear remarking.

Poor Mamá, living to see the end of so many things, including her own ideas.

Her voice has that exasperated edge our children get when we dare wander from their lives.

November 25th, the day of their murder, is observed in many Latin American countries as the International Day Against Violence Towards Women.