Free In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Álvarez

from consecrated ground. The poor innocent would be stuck in limbo all eternity! I decided to check first before insisting Pedrito dig him back up.
    So I went to the graveyard and enlisted a couple of campesinos with the excuse that I’d forgotten the baby’s Virgencita medallion. After several feet of digging, their shovels struck the small coffin.
    “Open it,” I said.
    “Let us put in the medal ourselves, Dona Patria,” they offered, reluctant to pry open the lid. “It’s not right for you to see.”
    “I want to see,” I said.
    I should have desisted, I should not have seen what I saw. My child, a bundle of swarming ants! My child, decomposing like any animal! I fell to my knees, overcome by the horrid stench.
    “Close him up,” I said, having seen enough.
    “What of the medal, Doña Patria?” they reminded me.
    It won’t do him any good, I thought, but I slipped it in. I bowed my head, and if this was prayer, then you could say I prayed. I said the names of my sisters, my children, my husband, Mama, Papa. I was deciding right then and there to spare all those I love.
    And so it was that Patria Mercedes Mirabal de González was known all around San Jose 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.

    It wasn’t my idea to go on the pilgrimage to Higüey. That was Mamá’s brainstorm. There had been sightings of the Virgencita. She had appeared one early morning to an old campesino coming into town with his donkey loaded down with garlic. Then a little girl had seen the Virgencita swinging on the bucket that was kept decoratively dangling above the now dry well where she had once appeared back in the 1600s. It was too whimsical a sighting for the archbishop to pronounce as authentic, but still. Even El Jefe had attributed the failure of the invasion from Cayo Confites to our patron saint.
    “If she’s helping him—” was all Minerva got out. Mama silenced her with a look that was the grownup equivalent of the old slipper on our butts.
    “We women in the family need the Virgencita’s help,” Mamá reminded her.
    She was right, too. Everyone knew my public sorrow, the lost baby, but none my private one, my loss of faith. Then there was Minerva with her restless mind and her rebellious spirit. Settle her down, Mama prayed. Mate’s asthma was worse than ever and Mama had transferred her to a closer school in San Francisco. Only Dedé was doing well, but she had some big decisions ahead of her and she wanted the Virgencita’s help.
    So, the five of us made our plans. I decided not to take the children, so I could give myself over to the pilgrimage. “You sure you women are going on a pilgrimage?” Pedrito teased us. He was happy again, his hands fresh with my body, a quickness in his face. “Five good-looking women visiting the Virgin, I don’t believe it!”
    My sisters all looked towards me, expecting I would chide my husband for making light of sacred things. But I had lost my old strictness about sanctity. God, who had played the biggest joke on us, could stand a little teasing.
    I rolled my eyes flirtatiously “Ay, sí,” I said, “those roosters of Higüey!”
    A cloud passed over Pedrito’s face. 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. But if he saw or heard something he didn’t like, even if he had said it himself, the color would rise in his face and his nostrils flare like a spirited stallion’s.
    “Let them crow all they want,” I went on, “I’ve got my handsome rooster in San José de Conuco. And my two little chicks,” I added. Nelson and Noris looked up, alerted by the play in my voice.

    We set out in the new car, a used Ford Papa had bought for the store, so he said. But we all knew who it was really for—the only person who knew how to drive it besides Papa. He had