In the Time of Butterflies Read Free Page A

one could say Enrique Mirabal didn’t wear the pants in his family.
    I knew what he was up to all right. When Papa asked which one of us would stay as his little helper, he looked directly at me.
    I didn’t say a word. I kept studying the floor like maybe my school lessons were chalked on those boards. I didn’t need to worry. Dedé always was the smiling little miss. “I’ll stay and help, Papá.”
    Papá looked surprised because really Dedé was a year older than me. She and Patria should have been the two to go away. But then, Papá thought it over and said Dedé could go along, too. So it was settled, all three of us would go to Inmaculada Concepción. Me and Patria would start in the fall, and Dedé would follow in January since Papá wanted the math whiz to help with the books during the busy harvest season.
    And that’s how I got free. I don’t mean just going to sleepaway school on a train with a trunkful of new things. I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sinita and saw what happened to Lina and realized that I’d just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country.

    First time I met Sinita she was sitting in the parlor where Sor Asunción was greeting all the new pupils and their mothers. She was all by herself, a skinny girl with a sour look on her face and pokey elbows to match. She was dressed in black, which was odd as most children weren’t put in mourning clothes until they were at least fifteen. And this little girl didn’t look any older than me, and I was only twelve. Though I would have argued with anyone who told me I was just a kid!
    I watched her. She seemed as bored as I was with all the polite talk in that parlor. It was like a heavy shaking of talcum powder in the brain hearing all those mothers complimenting each other’s daughters and lisping back in good Castilian to the Sisters of the Merciful Mother. Where was this girl’s mother? I wondered. She sat alone, glaring at everybody, as if she would pick a fight if you asked her where her mother was. I could see, though, that she was sitting on her hands and biting her bottom lip so as not to cry. The straps on her shoes had been cut off to look like flats, but they looked worn out, was what they looked like.
    I got up and pretended to study the pictures on the walls like I was a lover of religious art. When I got to the Merciful Mother right above Sinita’s head, I reached in my pocket and pulled out the button I’d found on the train. It was sparkly like a diamond and had a little hole in back so you could thread a ribbon through it and wear it like a romantic lady’s choker necklace. It wasn’t something I’d do, but I could see the button would make a good trade with someone inclined in that direction.
    I held it out to her. I didn’t know what to say, and it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. She picked it up, turned it all around, and then set it back down in my palm. “I don’t want your charity.”
    I felt an angry tightness in my chest. “It’s just a friendship button.”
    She looked at me a moment, a deciding look like she couldn’t be sure of anybody. “Why didn’t you just say so?” She grinned as if we were already friends and could tease each other.
    “I did just say so,” I said. I opened up my hand and offered her the button again. This time she took it.

    After our mothers left, we stood on line while a list was made of everything in our bags. I noticed that along with not having a mother to bring her, Sinita didn’t own much either. Everything she had was tied up in a bundle, and when Sor Milagros wrote it out, all it took was a couple of lines: 3 change of underwear, 4 pair of socks, brush and comb, towel and nightdress. Sinita offered the sparkly button, but Sor Milagros said it wasn’t necessary to write that down.
    “Charity student,” the gossip went round. “So?” I challenged the giggly girl with curls like hiccups, who whispered it to me. She