Free In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Álvarez Page B

Mamá.” It was all the comfort I had.

    The next morning we woke early and set out for the chapel, telling our hosts that we were fasting so as not to give them any further bother. “We’re starting our pilgrimage with lies,” Minerva laughed. We breakfasted on water breads and the celebrated little cheeses of Higüey, watching the pilgrims through the door of the cafeteria. Even at this early hour, the streets were full of them.
    The square in front of the small chapel was also packed. We joined the line, filing past the beggars who shook their tin cups or waved their crude crutches and canes at us. Inside, the small, stuffy chapel was lit by hundreds of votive candles. I felt woozy in a familiar girlhood way. I used the edge of my mantilla to wipe the sweat on my face as I followed behind Maria Teresa and Minerva, Mamá and Dedé close behind me.
    The line moved slowly down the center aisle to the altar, then up a set of stairs to a landing in front of the Virgencita’s picture. María Teresa and Minerva and I managed to squeeze up on the landing together. I peered into the locked case smudged with fingerprints from pilgrims touching the glass.
    All I saw at first was a silver frame studded with emeralds and agates and pearls. The whole thing looked gaudy and insincere. Then I made out a sweet, pale girl tending a trough of straw on which lay a tiny baby. A man stood behind her in his red robes, his hands touching his heart. If they hadn’t been wearing halos, they could have been a young couple up near Constanza where the campesinos are reputed to be very white.
    “Hail Mary,” Maria Teresa began, “full of grace ...”
    I turned around and saw the packed pews, hundreds of weary, upturned faces, and it was as if I’d been facing the wrong way all my life. My faith stirred. It kicked and somersaulted in my belly, coming alive. I turned back and touched my hand to the dirty glass.
    “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I joined in.
    I stared at her pale, pretty face and challenged her. Here I am, Virgencita. Where are you?
    And I heard her answer me with the coughs and cries and whispers of the crowd: Here, Patria Mercedes, Fm here, all around you. I’ve already more than appeared.

II
    1948 to 1959

CHAPTER FIVE
    Dedé
    1994
and
1948
     
     
    Over the interview woman’s head, Dedé notices the new girl throwing plantain peelings outside the kitchen shed. She has asked her not to do this. “That is why we have trash baskets,” she has explained. The young maid always looks at the barrel Dedé points to as if it were an obscure object whose use is beyond her.
    “You understand?” Dedé asks her. “Sí, señora.” The young girl smiles brightly as if she has done something right. At Dedé’s age, it is hard to start in with new servants. But Tono is needed over at the museum to take the busloads through the house and answer the phone. Tono has been with them forever. Of course, so had Fela until she started going wacky after the girls died.
    Possessed by the spirits of the girls, can you imagine! People were coming from as far away as Barahona to talk “through” this ebony black sibyl with the Mirabal sisters. Cures had begun to be attributed to Patria; Maria Teresa was great on love woes; and as for Minerva, she was competing with the Virgencita as Patroness of Impossible Causes. What an embarrassment in her own backyard, as if she, Dedé, had sanctioned all this. And she knew nothing. The bishop had called on her finally. That’s how Dedé had found out.
    It was a Friday, Fela’s day off. As soon as the bishop had left, Dedé headed for the shed behind her house. She had jiggled the door just so to unlock it—a little trick she knew—and i Dios mío! The sight took her breath away. Fela had set up an altar with pictures of the girls cut out from the popular posters that appeared each November. Before them, a table was laid out, candles and the mandatory cigar and bottle of rum. But most frightening was