In the Time of Butterflies (12 page)

Her cousin Jaimito will be there. They have known each other all their lives, been paired and teased by their mothers ever since the two babies were placed in the same playpen during family gatherings. But in the last few weeks, something has been happening. All that had once annoyed Dedé about her spoiled, big-mouthed cousin now seems to quicken something in her heart. And whereas before, her mother’s and Jaimito’s mother’s hints were the intrusion of elders into what was none of their business, now it seems the old people were perceiving destiny. If she marries Jaimito, she’ll continue in the life she has always been very happy living.

Minerva must have given up calling down numbers and getting no response. She stands directly in Dedé’s line of vision, waving. “Hello, hello!”

Dedé laughs at getting caught daydreaming. It is not like her at all. Usually it is Minerva whose head is somewhere else. “I was just thinking ...” She tries to make up something. But she is not good at quick lies either. Minerva is the one with stories on the tip of her tongue.

“I know, I know,” Minerva says. “You were thinking about Einstein’s theory of relativity.” Sometimes she can be funny. “You want to call it quits for today?” The hopeful expression on her face betrays her own wishes.

Dedé reminds them both, “We should have gotten this done a week ago
^!
”

“This is so silly” Minerva mimics their counting. “Four crumbs of
dulce
de leche; one, two, let’s see, seven ants marching towards them—” Suddenly, her voice changes, “Two visitors!” They are standing at the door, Mario, one of their distributors, and a tall, pale man behind him, his glasses thick and wire-rimmed. A doctor maybe, a scholar for sure.

“We’re closed,” Dedé announces in case Mario is here on business. “Papá’s at the house.” But Minerva invites them in. “Come and rescue us, please!”

“What’s wrong?” Mario says, laughing and coming into the store. “Too much work?”

“Of the uninspiring kind,” Minerva says archly.

“But it needs to be done—our end-of-the-year inventory is now our new year’s unfinished business.” Saying it, Dedé feels annoyed at herself all over again for not having finished the job earlier.

“Maybe we can help?” The young scholar has stepped up to the counter and is gazing at the shelves behind Dedé.

“This is my cousin,” Mario explains, “just come from the capital to rescue ladies in distress.”

“You’re at the university?” Minerva pipes up. And when the young man nods, Mario goes on to brag for his cousin. Virgilio Morales has recently returned from Venezuela where he earned his medical degree. He is now teaching in the faculty of medicine. Every weekend he comes up to the family place in Licey.

“What a serious name Virgilio.” Dedé blushes. She is not used to putting herself forward in this way.

The young man’s serious look fades. “That’s why everyone calls me Lío.”

“They call you Lio because you’re always in one fix or another,” Mario reminds his cousin, who laughs good-naturedly.

“Virgilio Morales ...” Minerva muses aloud. “Your name sounds familiar. Do you know Elsa Sánchez and Sinita Perozo? They’re at the university.”

“Of course!” Now he is smiling, taking a special interest in Minerva. Soon the two of them are deep in conversation. How did that happen? Dedé wonders. The young man, after all, had headed straight for her, offering his help.

“How are you, Dedé?” Mario leans confidentially on the counter. He tried courting her a few months back before Dedé set him straight. Mario is just not, not, well, he’s not Jaimito. But then neither is this young doctor.

“I wish we could get this done.” Dedé sighs, capping her pen and closing the book. Mario apologizes. They have interrupted the girls in their work. Dedé reassures him that it was slow going before the visitors arrived.

“Maybe it’s the heat,” Mario says, fanning himself with his Panama hat.

“What do you say we all go for a swim in the lagoon?” Minerva offers. The young men look ready to go, but Dedé reminds Minerva, “What about volleyball?” Jaimito will be looking for her. And if she’s going to end up with Mario, which is no doubt the way things will settle, she’d rather be with the man she intends to marry. So there.

“Volleyball? Did someone say volleyball?” the young scholar asks. It is nice to see a smile on his pale, serious face. It turns out he has played on several university teams.

Minerva gets another great idea. Why not play volleyball, and then, when they are hot and sweaty, go jump in the lagoon.

Dedé marvels at Minerva’s facility in arranging everyone’s lives. And how easily she assumes they can get permission from Papá. Already the volleyball evenings are becoming a problem. Papá does not feel that two sisters make the best chaperones for each other, especially if they are both eager to go to the same place.

Back at the house, while the young men visit with Mama in the galería, Minerva argues with their father. “But Papá, Mario’s a man you do business with, a man you trust. We’re going to Tío Pepe‘s, our uncle, to play volleyball with our cousins. How much more chaperoned can we be?”

Papá is dressing before his mirror. He has been looking younger, more handsome, something. He cranes his neck, looking over Minerva’s shoulder. “Who is that young man with Mario?”

“Just some cousin of Mario’s here for the weekend,” Minerva says too offhandedly. Dedé notes how Minerva is avoiding mentioning Lío’s association with the university.

And then the coup de grace. “Why don’t you come with us, Papá?”

Of course, Papa won’t come along. Every evening he tours his property hearing reports from the
campesinos
about what’s been done that day. He never takes his girls along. “Men’s business,” he always says. That’s what he’s getting ready to do right now.

“You be back before it’s dark.” He scowls. This is the way Dedé knows he’s granted them permission—when he begins talking of their return.

Dedé changes quickly, but not fast enough for Minerva. “Come on,” she keeps hurrying Dede. “Before Papa changes his mind!” Dede is not sure her buttons are all buttoned as they head down the driveway to where the young men now wait beside their car.

Dedé feels the stranger’s eyes on her. She knows she looks especially good in her flowered shinwaist and white sandal heels.

Lio smiles, amused. “You’re going to play volleyball dressed like that?” Suddenly, Dedé feels foolish, caught in her frivolity as if she were a kitten knotted in yam. Of course, she never plays. Except for Minerva in her trousers and tennis shoes, the girls all sit in the
galeria
cheering the boys on.

“I don’t play” she says rather more meekly than she intends. “I just watch.”

The truth of her words strikes Dedé as she remembers how she stood back and watched the young man open the back door for whoever wanted to sit by him. And Minerva slipped in!

She remembers a Saturday evening a few weeks later.

Jaimito and his San Francisco Tigers are playing poorly against the Ojo de Agua Wolves. During a break, he comes up to the
galería
for a cold beer.
“Hola, prima,”
he says to Dedé as if they are just cousins. She is still pretending not to give him the time of day, but she checks herself in every reflecting surface. Now her hands clench with tension in the pockets of her fresh dress.

“Come on and play, cousin.” He tugs at her arm. After all, Minerva has long been working up a sweat on the Ojo de Agua side of the net. “Our team could use some help!”

“I wouldn’t be much help,” Dedé giggles. Truly, she has always considered sports—like politics—something for men. Her one weakness is her horse Brío, whom she adores riding. Minerva has been teasing her how this Austrian psychiatrist has proved that girls who like riding like sex. “I’m all flan fingers when it comes to volleyball.”

“You wouldn’t have to play,” he flirts. “Just stand on our side and distract those wolves with your pretty face!”

Dedé gives him the sunny smile she is famous for.

“Be nice to us Tigers, Dedé. After all, we did bend the rules for you Wolves.” He indicates over his shoulder where Minerva and Lio are immersed in an intent conversation in a comer of the
galería.

It is true. Although Lío is not from Ojo de Agua, the Tigers have agreed to let him play for the weakling team. Dedé supposes that the Tigers took one look at the bespectacled, pale young man and decided he wouldn’t be much competition. But Lío Morales has turned out to be surprisingly agile. The Ojo de Agua Wolves are now gaining on the San Francisco Tigers.

“He’s had to be quick,” Jaimito has quipped. “Escaping the police and all.” Jaimito and his buddies knew exactly who Virgilio Morales was the first night he came to play volleyball. They were split between admiration and wariness of his dangerous presence among them.

Jaimito hits on a way of getting Dede to play. “Girls against guys, what do you say?” he calls out, picking up a fresh bottle of beer. Used to keeping tabs at the family store, Dedé has made note of three large ones for Jaimito already.

The girls titter, tempted. But what about mussing their dresses, what about spraining their ankles on high heels?

“Take off your heels, then,” Jaimito says, eyeballing Dedé’s shapely legs, “and whatever else is in your way!”

“You!” Her face bums with pleasure. She has to admit that she is proud of her nice legs.

Soon, shawls are flung on chairs, a half dozen pairs of heels are kicked off in a pile at the bottom of the steps. Dress sleeves are rolled up, ponytails tightened, and with squeals of delight, the Amazons—as they’ve christened themselves—step out on the slippery evening grass. The young men whistle and hoot, roused by the sight of frisky young women, girding themselves, ready to play ball. The cicadas have started their trilling, and the bats swoop down and up as if graphing the bristling excitement. Soon it will be too dark to see the ball clearly.

As they are assigning positions, Dedé notices that her sister Minerva is not among them. Now, when they need her help, the pioneer woman player deserts them! She looks towards the galeria, where the two empty chairs facing each other recollect the vanished speakers. She is wondering whether or not to go in search of Minerva when she senses Jaimito’s attention directed her way. Far back, almost in darkness, he is poised to strike. She hears a whack, then startled by the cries of her girlfriends, she looks up and sees a glowing moon coming down into her u
^p
raised hands.

Wasn’t it really an accident? Dedé ponders, rewinding back to the exact moment when she belted that ball. It had sailed over everyone’s heads into the dark hedges where it landed with the thrashing sound of breaking branches, and then, the surprising cry of a startled couple.

Had she suspected that Minerva and Lio were in the hedges, and her shot was an easy way to flush them out? But why, she asks herself, why would she have wanted to stop them? Thinking back, she feels her heart starting to beat fast.

Nonsense, so much nonsense the memory cooks up, mixing up facts, putting in a little of this and a little of that. She might as well hang out her shingle like Fela and pretend the girls are taking possession of her. Better them than the ghost of her own young self making up stories about the past!

There was a fight, that she remembers. Lio came out of the hedges, the ball in his hand. Jaimito made a crude remark, carried away by his three-plus beers and growing uneasiness with Lio’s presence. Then the picture tilts and blurs the memory of Lio throwing the ball at Jaimito’s chest and of it knocking the breath out of him. Of Jaimito having to be held by his buddies. Of the girls hurrying back to their high heels. Of Tio Pepe coming down the steps from inside, shouting, “No more volleyball!”

But before they could be ushered away, the two men were at the quick of their differences. Jaimito called Lio a troublemaker, accusing him of cooking up plots and then running off to some embassy for asylum, leaving his comrades behind to rot in jail. “You’re exposing us all,” Jaimito accused.