Before We Were Free (4 page)

One afternoon, while Chucha and Mami are out shopping, we sneak into Chucha’s room and I show Sammy her coffin.

“Wow!” he says, glancing around at Chucha’s purple towel hanging from a peg, her purple mosquito net strung between two nails, her purple dresses draped over a chair. “Does everything she wear have to be purple?”

I nod. “Even her panties and stuff have to be dyed.” My face burns as I realize I’m talking about underwear to a boy.

But Sammy is too busy peering into the coffin to notice. “Why’s the inside all ripped up?”

I’m about to tell him how the SIM overturned the coffin and stuck their knives in the lining. But then I remember Mami’s orders not to discuss the SIM raid with anyone.

“You know what I bet happened?” Sammy guesses. “I bet the lid came down one night and she had to claw her way out.” Sammy makes claws with his fingers. His face has gotten flushed, as it always does when he gets excited. “Don’t you think that’s what happened?”

I don’t know what’s worse, telling a secret or a lie. So I shrug to be on the safe side. No flies fly into a closed mouth, I remind myself.

I suppose Mami is right to say that there are enough secrets in the world already. I could make a long list just of the secrets in our compound: my cousins’ sudden departure, the SIM’s two-week stay in our driveway, the intruder in Tío Toni’s
casita,
the fresh footprints, the cigarette butts by the porch. One day, I bump into Chucha hurrying toward the back of the property, carrying food tins stacked in a carrier. “Where are you going, Chucha?” I ask.

“Mi secreto, tu silencio,” she whispers—one of her old sayings, “My secret, your silence”—and hurries away.

Sometimes, the phone rings, and when I answer, whoever’s at the other end hangs up.

But one time, a man’s voice asks for Don Mundo, and after I call Papi in his study, I stay at my end to make sure he picks up before I set the receiver down. “Don Mundo?” the voice asks.
“¿Cómo están las cosas?”
How are things?

“We’re waiting for Mr. Smith’s tennis shoes,” Papi says. It is such an odd reply that, though I had meant to hang up, I stay on.

“They’ll be at Wimpy’s,” the voice replies, and hangs up.

Wimpy’s? Wimpy’s is the fancy grocery store where mostly Americans and other foreigners shop. The doors are made of glass and open magically as you approach. The air-conditioning is cranked so high, you have to bring a sweater along. Chucha claims the place is bewitched, and she refuses to go inside whenever Mami goes shopping there.

Slowly, I place the receiver back in its cradle.

My parents seem to be playing their own kind of Secret Santa game.

School is out for the holidays. This is usually my favorite vacation—first my birthday and then Christmas. But with everyone gone, I’m not looking forward to the loneliness. Thank goodness the Washburns have moved in next door.

On my birthday, Mami offers to invite Sam over, but I already told him I was twelve two weeks ago, so I don’t want to be caught in a lie. My birthday cake is in the shape of a heart this year. Mami is known for her fancy cakes, but she can’t get good flour or the American food dye, so she uses a
criollo
brand that turns the cake a purply color instead of the rose red she wanted. Chucha, of course, is delighted.

Because of the embargo, some of the American foods we usually eat at Christmas are not available or are too expensive. This year, there will be no red apples in a bowl or candy canes on a little dish to offer visitors. Mr. Nutcracker won’t have walnuts, only almonds from the almond tree behind Mamita and Papito’s house.

Also, I’ll only be getting one gift this year. I try to decide between a charm for my bracelet or a diary with a little lock and key like Lucinda got last Christmas. I finally settle on the diary because Mami hints that gold is too expensive right now on our budget. But truly, what I want most of all is to have my family back together again.

“We’re still going to have a lovely time,” Mami promises.

The Saturday before Christmas, we go shopping in the open air
mercado
for roasted pig, avocados, guava paste, and ripe plantains for
plátanos maduros,
the different merchants calling out their wares from their stands. Beside them on the ground sits a pile of their little children, in rags, looking up at me. I feel both lucky and ashamed.

Papi always says that we need a government that will give these children a chance, like the one the United States has. “Education is the key! Who knows if one of those little
tigueritos
in the
mercado
isn’t an Einstein or Michelangelo or maybe even a Cervantes!” Mami hushes him with her usual “No flies fly into a closed mouth, Mundo.” But her face is fierce with pride, as if Papi is a hero for saying what he thinks.

Monsito, the boy who helps us carry our sacks, always takes us to the best stands, where everything is fresh. He’s about my size, but we don’t really know how old he is. When Mami asks him, he just shakes his head and grins. “Don’t you know when your birthday is?” I persist. He looks worried, as if he thinks he might get in trouble for not knowing. “Sixteen,” he finally says, but it sounds like a guess. Mami says Monsito could very well be that old and still be as small as I am. “Poor kids who don’t get good nutrition just don’t grow.”

Even though we are on a budget, Mami gives Monsito a big tip for his family to buy food for Christmas. She also gives him several pairs of Mundín’s old trousers that probably won’t fit Monsito until he’s eighteen, or maybe never.

On the way back from the
mercado,
we drive slowly to look at all the sights. The roads are crowded. It seems as though everyone has come to the capital to see the decorations at the palace. A life-sized Nativity scene has been set up on the lawn below the towering statue of El Jefe on his horse. It looks as if those shepherds and camels and even Mary and Joseph have come all the way from Bethlehem just to see him.

We make a quick stop at Wimpy’s to pick up one apple to put in the mouth of the roasted pig and a few dates for the delicious bread pudding,
pudín de pan,
we always eat on Christmas Day. “Luxuries for
Nochebuena,
” Mami explains. I keep my eyes open for tennis shoes, but there don’t seem to be any for sale.

Papi disappears to the back office with the owner, whose nickname, Wimpy, is also the name of his store. He’s a former marine who came to the country with an occupation force years back, but once the troops left, he stayed on, marrying a rich Dominican lady and opening his successful grocery store. He has bulgy muscles with a tattooed eagle on his right arm. Sometimes he’ll flex for us kids, and the eagle looks like it’s flapping its wings.

When we’re ready to leave the store, Papi is not with us. It turns out he’s already outside in the parking lot, standing by the trunk of our car, one foot on the fender, smoking a cigarette and talking to Wimpy in a low, serious voice. In the backseat sits Chucha, arms crossed, glaring at the storefront. All I can think of is what Mami sometimes says to Lucinda when my older sister makes a face: “If looks could kill . . .”

We begin decorating the house to welcome the baby Jesus. One Sunday, we drive out to the beach and cut down a small sea grape tree, paint it white, and hang it with our lights that look like nose droppers filled with colored water. We place the olivewood crèche from Bethlehem, which was blessed by the Pope, under the tree and hang the lighted-up Santa face on the wall beside the portrait of El Jefe by the front door. Sometimes Papi pauses as he walks by, the reddish light illuminating his tense face. But it isn’t Santa he’s staring at with a fierce, if-looks-could-kill look in his eyes.

The night of
Nochebuena,
Mami and Papi throw a small “rooster” party, which will last till the wee hours when the cocks start to crow. They invite a few friends over, including the Washburns and Oscar’s parents, the Mancinis. Oscar’s mother, Doña Marina, has recently joined the canasta group, and during one of the games, Mami and she have discovered that they are related. They use the back of the score pad to sketch a whole forest of family trees. It’s such a distant connection that I hope Oscar won’t bring up our being kissing cousins at school.

Before everyone arrives, there’s a special call from
Nueva York
. This time it isn’t just Mamita and Papito or one of the uncles on the other end. Everyone is gathered together at my grandparents’, and one by one we take the phone and shout,
“Feliz Navidad,”
as if it were volume and not the cable at the bottom of the sea that carried our voices over the miles. When my turn comes, Mami reminds me to mind what I say, but she doesn’t have to worry. I’m so tongue-tied that I can’t think of any of the dozen things I’ve saved up to tell Carla. “Did you get my card?” she shouts.

“No, not yet!” I shout back. All mail has to go through the censors first, so, especially at Christmas, it takes a long time to get a letter.

I stay up late, helping Lorena and Chucha pass around trays of the traditional rum punch. This year the glasses are smaller, but everyone is happy to be together. Papi lifts his glass and offers a toast. “May the new year bring peace and liberty. . . .” I can see Mami tense up, watching Lorena from the corner of her eye. Papi must sense some danger as well because he adds, “
Paz y libertad
to all the peoples of the world!”

“What do you want Santa Claus to bring you?” Mrs. Washburn asks me. I have to bite my tongue not to be fresh. It’s true that I’m small for twelve, but I’m wearing Lucinda’s hand-me-down patent leathers with the little heels that bring me up to almost five feet. Mami has also put some of her lipstick and rouge on me and sprayed hair spray in my hair to make me feel more grown-up. But I guess I still look like I’m twelve going on eleven.

Later, in bed, I keep waking to the dull, pleasant sound of voices coming from the patio outside my window. Toward midnight, everybody starts singing carols in English and Spanish, and sometimes in both languages combined, now the English overpowering the Spanish, and now the Spanish overpowering the English, depending on whose voices carry the tune of that song.

I finally fall asleep and dream that Santa has arrived in a black Volkswagen filled with cousins carrying baskets full of apples and raisins and nuts. He’s knocking and knocking at our front door, but no one can hear him for all the party noise inside.

I sit bolt upright in bed, determined to let him in. An eerie silence fills the house. The guests seem to have left. I open the jalousies beside my bed and look out past the patio to the yard beyond. The party lanterns have been blown out and the garden is shrouded in darkness. But far off, at the back of the property, a light is shining in Tío Toni’s
casita,
a glittering sparkle among the dark foliage. In my dazed and sleepy state, I feel a surge of joy, as if Secret Santa has arrived and I am a little kid again.

four

Disappeared Diary

Mrs. Brown always says that writing makes a person more thoughtful and interesting. I don’t know about interesting, but the diary I got for Christmas is sure making me think about a lot of things.

Sam, for instance. His blond-white hair that no longer seems too white . . . his dreamy blue eyes, like a daydreamy sky . . . and suddenly, I’m thinking, I
do
want him as more than a friend, whether I’m allowed to have a boyfriend or not!

Before I wrote all this out, I really didn’t know I felt this way deep down.

I always write with a pencil for a reason. I want to be sure that on a moment’s notice, I can erase what I’ve written. I still have Carla’s huge eraser. With a few strokes back and forth, I can get rid of any evidence if the SIM come to our door.

Another danger is Mami. Not that my mother is the nosy kind, as she believes God in heaven can see you and that is supervision enough. But given how nervous she is these days, and given the trouble we seem to be in, and supposing a diary should just happen to fall out from under a pillow as she’s straightening a bed, her eyes might read a sentence like “I think I am falling in love with Samuel Adams Washburn,” and that’ll be the end of my being allowed to have Sam as any kind of a friend.

So whenever I write down something personal, I let it stay written for the rest of the day, like savoring a piece of hard candy before biting down on it. Then, at night, I erase that page to be on the safe side.

I haven’t told Sam about my diary because I know he’ll ask to see it. I do mention that my parents always review my letters to Carla before I send them off. As for Carla’s letters to me, a messy censor must read them because the envelopes come torn and taped, with whole sentences sometimes blocked out.

Sam tells me about this invention in the United States called invisible ink that lets you write stuff down so that no one can read it until the page is soaked in a chemical that makes all the letters reappear.

I wish I had a bottle of that ink for writing in my diary because the truth is I feel kind of sad writing in pencil, always prepared to erase. But Sammy says that ink is probably not sold anywhere in the country, not even at Wimpy’s.

School is supposed to reopen on Monday, January 9, soon after Epiphany, but we get a notice from the principal that classes will not resume until the end of the month. It turns out a lot of the Americans are traveling to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration of their new president, Mr. John F. Kennedy. Many, like the Farlands, won’t be coming back.

Since Papi knows Mr. Farland from when he went to school in the States, we go over to say good-bye. Wimpy and Mr. Washburn are there, too. Papi joins them out on the patio. Little snatches of their conversation drift in: “tennis shoes,” “outrage at the Butterflies,” “CIA intervention . . .” Before I can puzzle out what they’re saying, Mrs. Farland calls me away from the door. “Anita, sweetie, come over here and let Joey tell you about the inauguration for our new president.”

I know all about how the Americans run their country because we have to study it at school. Every four years, they have a contest, and whoever wins gets to be the
jefe
. But he can’t just keep being the
jefe
. He can only win the contest twice, and then he has to give somebody else a chance.

We have elections, too, but there’s only one person in the contest, Trujillo, and he has already been our
jefe
for thirty-one years. I once asked Mrs. Brown why nobody ran against him, and she hesitated and said that perhaps it would be better if I asked my parents that question. When I asked Mami, she said, “Ask your father,” and when I asked Papi, he told me to go ask Mami. After a while, I got tired of asking.

I can tell both Mami and Papi are really glad that Mr. Kennedy is going to be the American president. Mami thinks he is
muy
guapo,
so handsome, with his hair in his eyes and
only
(?!) forty-three years old. He’s also a Catholic, which is kind of like being related to us since we are in the same religious family. And most importantly, Papi says, Mr. Kennedy has declared himself a champion of democracy around the world.

At the next canasta gathering, Mami’s friends all count off the families they know that have left the country. Mrs. Washburn confesses that Mr. Washburn has talked of sending his family away. She always calls her husband Mr. Washburn, as if no one will know whom she’s talking about if she calls him plain Henry.

“I told Mr. Washburn, over my dead body,” she announces to the table. “We leave when he leaves! We’ve got diplomatic immunity. That S.O.B.’s a dead duck if he dares lay a hand on us!”

None of the Dominican women say a word. They sip their
cafecitos
quietly and look at each other. Mami, whose English has improved tremendously since the arrival of the Washburns next door, says, “Doris, put the lid on the sugar bowl,
por favor
. There are so many flies.”

I look around for flies, but there are none I can see. Lorena has just come out from the kitchen with a tray to collect the empty coffee cups. Perhaps she scared them away.

Then, just like that, it dawns on me: My mother is speaking to Mrs. Washburn in code. She’s saying:
We are being overheard; be
quiet
. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a room I’m not supposed to be in— but now that I’m inside, the door has disappeared. I feel the same way as when Lucinda told me how one day I, too, would get my period. “What if I don’t want to?” I asked, disgusted at the thought of bleeding between my legs. “You don’t have a choice,” she shot back.

Later, I write in my diary about the Washburn family maybe moving back to the United States. Just thinking about losing Sammy, I start to cry. Wiping my tears from the page, I smudge the writing so badly, I won’t have to erase a thing tonight.

According to Mami, I’m developing the same case of bathroomitis as Lucinda.

I roll my eyes when she says so. Can’t I at least have my own diseases?! I’m told I have my mother’s
café con leche
skin color, my father’s curly black hair, my grandmother’s slightly turned-up nose, the dimples from some great-aunt who spent her whole life smiling at everyone. I feel like just a hand-me-down human being!

Mami is right, of course. I
am
spending a lot more time in the bathroom. But I’m not about to tell her that it has nothing to do with my copying Lucinda and a lot to do with my liking Sam.

Liking a guy sure makes a girl think about whether she’s pretty enough. I stand in front of the mirror, staring at myself. My black hair is a tangle of curls. My nose is average. My mouth is average. Come to think of it, my whole face is really pretty average. But Mrs. Washburn says I look a little like Audrey Hepburn with a suntan. When I tell Lucinda, all she says is “Dream on.”

Still, if Mrs. Washburn thinks so, maybe Sam thinks so, too? I search Lucinda’s old
Novedades
magazines and Mrs. Washburn’s cast-off copies of
Look
and
Life
for pictures of Audrey Hepburn. But every one I find, I have to agree with Lucinda, and dream on.

One canasta afternoon, Mrs. Mancini brings Oscar along. Mami has told her that I would be encantada— enchanted!—to have my classmate around. When she says so, I have to do everything in my power not to roll my eyes. Mami says this is a terrible habit I’ve picked up since I turned twelve. (She must not have been looking at me when I was eleven!)

I’m worried that Sammy will not want to hang out with me if “cousin” Oscar is around. I stay in my room after Mami calls that my guests have arrived. When I finally come out to greet them, Oscar and Sammy have disappeared. I find them jumping on the trampoline, daring each other to see who can touch the branches of the ceiba tree.

Even though I’ve been worried that they’ll be enemies, now I’m upset they’ve become friends without me. Sometimes, it’s totally confusing to be me! Only writing in my diary helps me feel a little less crazy.

Oscar is the first to notice me. “
Hola,
Anita!”

Instead of waving back, I turn to go.

“What’s wrong with her?” I hear Sammy ask.

“I think her feelings are hurt,” Oscar replies. “Hey, Anita, wait up,” he calls. I can’t believe it’s Oscar who understands my feelings, not Sammy, whom I’m secretly planning to marry.

When they catch up with me, it’s also Oscar who says, “I was wondering where you were.”

“Yeah,” Sammy adds, and sunshine breaks upon my heart again.

“The entire country is in trouble,” Oscar explains. We’re sitting under the trampoline after having busted one of the ropes by all three jumping on it at once. “Mami saw Mrs. Brown at Wimpy’s and she said the school might have to close because so many families are leaving.”

“We’re staying!” Sam announces proudly. “We’ve got amnesia.”

“Amnesty,” Oscar corrects. I bite my lip so as not to smile. Even though I’m almost in love with Sam Washburn, I can’t resist feeling proud when a Dominican corrects an American’s English. “But you mean immunity,” Oscar goes on. “We have immunity, too, because my father is with the Italian embassy. Lots of people hide in the embassy because the SIM can’t touch them if they’re on another country’s property. Like your uncle,” he says, turning to me.

“Which uncle?” I want to know. Of course, I’m thinking of Tío Toni.

“I’m not supposed to mention names. But the embargo means countries are closing their embassies. That’s why you don’t have an embassy anymore,” he points out to Sammy. “Just a consulate.”

“My father’s the consul,” Sammy boasts.

“I know, but he’s not the ambassador.”

“So?”

Oscar shrugs. “Just that he can’t help the people who want to free this country.”

We
are
free!
I want to cry out. But thinking about how the SIM raided our property, how Tío Toni had to disappear, how I have to erase everything in my diary, I know that Oscar is telling the truth. We’re
not
free—we’re trapped—the Garcías got away just in time! I feel the same panic as when the SIM came storming through our house.

“Your father,” he points to Sammy, “and yours and mine, too,” he adds, pointing to me and then to himself. “They all know about this, but they don’t want to worry us.”

“So, how do you know all of this stuff?” Sammy confronts him.

A slow grin spreads across Oscar’s face. “I ask a lot of questions.”

So do I,
I’m thinking, but until now I never got any answers.

All these things that Oscar tells us I write down in my diary.

I don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I’m stitching the scraps back together. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night crying out. I cross the hall to Lucinda’s room and slip in beside her. She seems to welcome my presence because she lets me stay there instead of telling me to scram, like in the old days.

The worst stories Oscar tells are the ones about El Jefe. When I first heard how bad he was from Lucinda, I felt so confused. Everyone had always treated El Jefe like God. I shudder to think how many times I’ve prayed to him instead of to Jesus on His cross.

“He does even worse things than crucify people,” Oscar tells us one time. “He disappears them.”

I remember Chucha saying the SIM disappeared people. “What exactly does that mean?” I ask Oscar. He’s so much easier to talk to than Lucinda. I usually have to beg her and then throw in a free back rub before she’ll tell me anything.

“He arrests people, then cuts out their eyes and fingernails, and throws their cadavers in the sea for the sharks to eat them.”

“Wow!” Sammy says, impressed, his eyes greedy for more awful details.

I feel sick to my stomach. The thought of Tío Toni, eyeless and fingernail-less, is just too horrible to think about. But I don’t want to throw up in front of a boy I’m falling in love with and a cousin I don’t want to be related to. “We have a mystery ghost,” I speak up, wanting to change the subject. I mean to make my news sound scary, but a ghost now seems harmless compared to what we just heard.

“He comes at night, then leaves during the day,” Sam adds. I’ve told Sam about the light I saw at Tío Toni’s house Christmas Eve. We fill Oscar in on all the particulars of the unlocked door and cigarette butts.

“Let’s go see,” Oscar insists.

As we head for the back of the property, we hear hurried footsteps coming down the walk toward us.

“What are you doing back here?” Chucha questions, looking from one to the other, as if she’s trying to figure out which one of us will be most likely to tell her the truth.

“We’re allowed to,” I announce, showing off in front of my friends.

Chucha levels her gaze at me. I know she’s about to say that she’s the one to allow or not to allow things, as she once changed my diapers.

Quickly, I back down and explain. “Somebody’s been in Tío Toni’s
casita,
Chucha.”

Her dark eyes widen in warning. “You have to be very careful,” she whispers, making the familiar gesture of cutting off her head. “Things will be happening soon for which there is no protection.” She looks up at the sky and then all around her as if she sees signs everywhere. “No protection but silence, no protection but dark hiding places, wings, and prayers.” Listening to her, I remember how Chucha sometimes sees the future in dreams. I shiver, wondering what she has seen.

Although Sam knows a little Spanish, he rarely understands Chucha, who has a tendency to mumble and mix in Haitian words with her Spanish. “What’s she saying?” he wants to know.

“I’m not sure,” I tell him. “Sometimes she talks in riddles and you have to try to figure out what she’s saying.” Turning back to my old nursemaid, I ask her what’s uppermost on my mind. “Is Tío Toni all right?”

As if Chucha not only gives answers but makes them materialize, a face appears at the window of the small house. There’s no mistaking the dark, curly hair, the strong jaw, the good looks that make pretty girls call up my aunt Mimí and ask if they can come over and look at her orchids. I feel a rush of relief to see my uncle intact, no eyes or fingernails missing. But I have sense enough not to call out his name.