“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 iDios 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 the picture of Trujillo that had once hung on Dede and Jaimito’s wall. Dedé was sure she had thrown it in the trash. What the devil was he doing here if, as Fela argued later, she was working only with good spirits?

Dedé had pulled the door to, letting the old lock catch again. Her head was spinning. When Fela returned, Dedé offered her two alternatives. Either stop all this nonsense and clean out that shed, or.... She could not bring herself to state the alternative to the stooped, white-haired woman who had weathered so much with the family. She hadn’t had to. The next morning, the shed was indeed empty. Fela had moved her operation down the road to what was probably a better spot—an abandoned storefront on the bus route to Salcedo.

Minou was furious when she heard what Dedé had done to Fela. Yes, that’s the way she had phrased it, “What have you done to her, Mama Dedé?”

“It was disrespectful to your mother’s memory. She was a Catholic, Minou, a Catholic!”

Minou would have none of it. Dede had already told her too much about her mother’s falling out with the church. Sometimes Dedé worries that she has not kept enough from the children. But she wants them to know the living breathing women their mothers were. They get enough of the heroines from everyone else.

Now, Minou stops by at Fela’s whenever she comes to visit her aunt. It gives Dedé goose bumps when Minou says, “I talked to Mama at Fela’s today, and she said ...”

Dedé shakes her head, but she always listens to what the old woman has to say.

The strangest time was when Minou came from Fela asking after Virgilio Morales. “Mamá says he’s still alive. Do you know where he is, Mama Dedé?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you?” Dedé asked sarcastically. “Don’t spirits know the whereabouts of all of us?”

“You sound upset, Mama Dedé,” Minou observed.

“You know I don’t believe in all this spirit business. And I think it’s a disgrace that you, the daughter of—”

Minou’s eyes flashed with anger, and Minerva herself stood before Dedé again. “I’m my own person. I’m tired of being the daughter of a legend.”

Quickly, the face of her sister fell away like water down a slanted roof. Dedé held out her arms for her dear niece-daughter. Dark mascara tears were coursing down Minou’s cheeks. Didn’t she, Dedé, understand that feeling of being caught in a legacy. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “Of course, you have a right to be yourself.”

Afterwards, Dedé confessed that she did know where Lío Morales now lived. Someone had pointed out the house to her the last time she was in the capital. The comfortable bungalow was just blocks from the dictator’s huge wedding cake palace that the mobs had long ago burned down.

“So what’s the message you’re to deliver?” Dedé asked as casually as she could.

“Message?” Minou looked up, surprised. “I was just to say hello and how much Mamá thought of him.”

“Me, too,” Dedé said, and then to clarify, “Tell him I said hello, too.”

“What problems?” she asks, an edge to her voice. Whatever feelings she once had for Lío never became a problem for anyone, even for herself. She had taken care of that.

“I mean the problems with the regime. When did these problems start?” The woman speaks in a soft voice as if she suspects she is intruding.

Dedé apologizes. “My mind wanders.” She feels bad when she can’t carry off what she considers her responsibility. To be the grande dame of the beautiful, terrible past. But it is an impossible task, impossible! After all, she is the only one left to manage the terrible, beautiful present.

“If it is too much, I can stop now,” the woman offers.

Dedé waves the offer away “I was just thinking about those days. You know, everyone says our problems started after Minerva had her run-in with Trujillo at the Discovery Day dance. But the truth is Minerva was already courting trouble two or three years before that. We had this friend who was quite a radical young man. You might have heard of Virgilio Morales?”

The woman narrows her eyes as if trying to make out a figure in the distance. “I don’t think I ever read about him, no.”

“He was thrown out of the country so many times, the history books couldn’t keep up with him! He came back from exile in ‘47 for a couple of years. Trujillo had announced we were going to have a free country—just like the Yanquis he was trying to butter up. We all knew this was just a show, but Lio—that’s what we called him—may have gotten swept up in the idea for a while. Anyhow, he had family in this area, so we saw a lot of him for those two years before he had to leave again.”

“So he was Minerva’s special friend?”

Dede feels her heart beating fast. “He was a special friend of mine and my other sisters too!” There she has said it, so why doesn’t it feel good? Fighting with her dead sister over a beau, my goodness.

“Why was the friendship the beginning of problems?” The woman’s head tilts with curiosity.

“Because Lio presented a very real opportunity to fight against the regime. I think that, after him, Minerva was never the same.” And neither was I, she adds to herself. Yes, years after she had last seen Lio, he was still a presence in her heart and mind. Every time she went along with some insane practice of the regime, she felt his sad, sober eyes accusing her of giving in.

“How do you spell his name?” The woman has taken out a little pad and is making invisible zeroes trying to get her reluctant pen to write. “I’ll look him up.”

“I’ll tell you what I remember of him,” Dedé offers, stroking the lap of her skirt dreamily. She takes a deep breath, just the way Minou describes Fela doing right before the sisters take over her body and use her old woman’s voice to assign their errands.

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!

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^praised hands.

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.

“If I leave my country, it’s only to continue the struggle. We can’t let Chapita kill us all.”

Then there had been the silence that always followed any compromising mention of the regime in public. One could never be sure who in a group might report what to the police. Every large household was said to have a servant on double payroll.

“I said no more volleyball tonight.” Tio Pepe was looking from one to the other young man. “You two shake and be gentlemen. Come on,” he encouraged. Jaimito stuck out his hand.

Oddly enough, it was Lio, the peace lover, who would not shake at first. Dedé can still picture the long, lanky body holding in tension, not saying a word, and then, finally, Lio reaching out his hand and saying, “We could use men like you, Jaimito.” It was a compliment that allowed the two men to coexist and even to collaborate on romantic matters in the months ahead.

Such a small incident really. A silly explosion over a foul volleyball. But something keeps Dedé coming back to the night of that fight. And to the days and nights that followed. Something keeps her turning and turning these moments in her mind, something. She is no longer sure she wants to find out what.

Sometimes Dedé felt a little peevish. After all, her beau had been along, too. But not a word was said about that fine young man Jaimito. How handsome he looked in his Mexican guayabera. What a funny joke he had made about what the coconut said to the drunk man. Mamá had known him since he was a kindred swelling of her first cousin’s belly. What was there to say about him but, “That Jaimito!”

Dedé and Jaimito would wander off, unnoticed, stealing kisses in the garden. They’d play How Much Meat, Butcher?, Jaimito pretending to saw off Dedé’s shoulder, and instead getting to touch her sweet neck and bare arms. Soon they’d hear Mama calling them from the galeria, a scold in her voice. Once when they did not appear immediately (the butcher had been wanting the whole animal), Mama put a limit to how much Jaimito could come calling—Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays only

But who could control Jaimito, only son of his doting mother, unquestioned boss of his five sisters! He appeared on Mondays to visit Don Enrique, on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help with any loading or unloading at the store, on Fridays to bring what his mother had sent. Mamá sighed, accepting the coconut flan or bag of cherries from their backyard tree. “That Jaimito!”

Then one Sunday afternoon Mate was reading Mamá the newspaper out loud. It was no secret to Dedé that Mama couldn’t read, though Mama still persisted in her story that her eyesight was bad. When Dedé read Mama the news, she was careful to leave out anything that would worry her. But that day, Mate read right out how there had been a demonstration at the university, led by a bunch of young professors, all members of the Communist party. Among the names listed was that of Virgilio Morales! Mamá looked ashen. “Read that over again, slowly,” she commanded.

Mate reread the paragraph, this time realizing what she was reading. “But that isn’t our Lío, is it?”

“Minerva!” Mama called out. From her bedroom, the book she was reading still in hand, appeared the death of them all. “Sit down, young lady, you have some explaining to do.”

Minerva argued eloquently that Mama herself had heard Lío’s ideas, and she had even agreed with them.

“But I didn’t know they were communist ideas!” Mama protested.

That night when Papa came home from doing his man’s business about the farm, Mamá took him to her room and closed the door. From the galería where Dedé visited with Jaimito, they could hear Mamá’s angry voice. Dedé could only make out snatches of what Mamá was saying—“ Too busy chasing ... to care ... your own daughter.” Dedé looked at Jaimito, a question in her face. But he looked away. “Your mother shouldn’t blame your father. She might as well blame me for not saying anything.”

“You knew?” Dedé asked.

“What do you mean, Dedé?” He seemed surprised at her plea of innocence. “You knew, too. Didn’t you?”

Dedé could only shake her head. She didn’t really know Lío was a communist, a subversive, all the other awful things the editorial had called him. She had never known an enemy of state before. She had assumed such people would be self-serving and wicked, low-class criminals. But Lío was a fine young man with lofty ideals and a compassionate heart. Enemy of state? Why then, Minerva was an enemy of state. And if she, Dedé, thought long and hard about what was right and wrong, she would no doubt be an enemy of state as well.

“I didn’t know,” she said again. What she meant was she didn’t understand until that moment that they were really living—as Minerva liked to say—in a police state.

Small things, she decided. Right now, for instance, she was providing Minerva with an alibi. For after finding out who Lío was exactly, Mamá had forbidden Minerva to bring him into the house. Their courtship or friendship or whatever it was went underground. Every time Jaimito took Dedé out, Minerva, of course, came along as their chaperone, and they picked up Lio along the way.

And after every outing, Dedé would slip into the bedroom Minerva shared with Mate when their little sister was home from school. She’d lie on Mate’s bed and talk and talk, trying to bring herself down from the excitement of the evening. “Did you eat parrot today?” Minerva would say in a sleepy voice from her bed. That one had nerves of steel. Dedé would recount her plans for the future—how she would marry Jaimito; what kind of ceremony they would have; what type house they would buy; how many children they would have—until Minerva would burst out laughing. “You’re not stocking the shelves in the store! Don’t plan it all. Let life surprise you a little.”

“Tell me about you and Lío, then.”

“Ay, Dedé, I’m so sleepy. And there’s nothing to tell.”

That perplexed Dedé. Minerva claimed she was not in love with Lío. They were comrades in a struggle, a new way for men and women to be together that did not necessarily have to do with romance. Hmm. Dedé shook her head. No matter how interesting-minded she wanted to be, as far as she was concerned, a man was a man and a woman was a woman and there was a special charge there you couldn’t call revolution. She put off her sister’s reticence to that independent streak of hers.

Dedé’s own romance with Jaimito acquired a glamorous, exciting edge with Lío and Minerva always by their side. Most nights when there was no place “safe” to go—a new thrilling vocabulary of danger had entered Dedé’s speech—they’d drive around in Jaimito’s father’s Chevy or Papa’s Ford, Jaimito and Dedé and Minerva visible, Lío hidden in the back of the car. They’d go out to the lagoon, past a military post, and Dedé’s heart would beat fast. They would all talk a while, then Minerva and Lío would grow very quiet, and the only sounds from the back seat were those coming from the front as well. Intent whispers and little giggles.

Maybe that’s why Jaimito went along with these dangerous sallies. Like most people, he avoided anything that might cause trouble. But he must have sensed that engaging in one illegality sort of loosened other holds on Dedé. The presence of Lío gave her the courage to go further with Jaimito than ever before.

One night, she asked Lío right out: “How is it you mean to accomplish your goals?”

Thinking back, Dedé remembers a long lecture about the rights of the campesinos, the nationalization of sugar, and the driving away of the Yanqui imperialists. She had wanted something practical, something she could use to stave off her growing fears. First, we mean to depose the dictator in this and this way. Second, we have arranged for a provisional government. Third, we mean to set up a committee of private citizens to oversee free elections. She would have understood talk like that.

“Ay, Lío, ”she said at last, weary with so much hope, so little planning. “Where is it you get your courage?”

“Why, Dedé,” he said, “it’s not courage. It’s common sense.”

Common sense? Sitting around dreaming while the secret police hunted you down! To keep from scolding him, Dedé noted that she liked his shirt. He ran his hand down one side, his eyes far away, “It was Freddy‘s,” he said in a thick voice. Freddy, his comrade, had just been found hanging in his prison cell, a supposed suicide. It seemed weird to Dedé that Lío would wear the dead man’s shirt, and even weirder that he would admit it. In so many ways, Lío was beyond her.

Dedé was scared, and angry at herself for being so. She was growing more and more confused about what she wanted. And uncertainty was not something Dedé could live with easily. She started to doubt everything—that she should marry Jaimito and live in Ojo de Agua, that she should part her hair on the left side, that she should have water bread and chocolate for breakfast today like every day.¹

“Are you in your time of the month, m‘ija?” Mama asked her more than once when Dedé set to quarreling about something.

“Of course not, Mamá,” Dedé said with annoyance in her voice.

She decided not to read the papers anymore. They were turning her upside down inside. The regime was going insane, issuing the most ludicrous regulations. A heavy fine was now imposed on anyone who wore khaki trousers and shirts of the same color. It was against the law now to carry your suit jacket over your arm. Lio was right, this was an absurd and crazy regime. It had to be brought down.

But when she read the list to Jaimito, she did not get the reaction she expected. “Well?” he said when she was through and looked up at him.

“Isn’t it ridiculous? I mean, it’s absurd, insanely ridiculous.” Unlike her golden-tongued sister, Dedé was not eloquent with reasons. And my God, what reasons did she need to explain these ridiculous insanities!

“Why are you so worked up, my love?”

Dedé burst into tears. “Don’t you see?”

He held her as she cried. And then in his bossy, comforting voice, he explained things. Same-color khaki outfits were what the military wore, and so a dress distinction had to be made. A jacket over the arm could be hiding a gun, and there had recently been many rumors about plots against El Jefe. “See, my darling?”

But Dedé didn’t see. She shut her eyes tight and wished blindly that everything would turn out all right.

One night not long after that, Lio told them that as soon as his contact in the capital could arrange for asylum, he and several others would be going into exile. Minerva was deathly quiet. Even Jaimito, who wouldn’t give a rotten plantain for risky politics, felt Lío’s plight. “If he’d just relax, and stop all this agitating,” he argued later with Dede, “then he could stay and slowly work his changes in the country. This way, what good is he to everyone far away?”

“He doesn’t believe in compromise,” Dedé defended Lío. The anger in her voice surprised her: She felt somehow diminished by Lio’s sacrifice. Ay, how she wished she could be that grand and brave. But she could not be. She had always been one to number the stars.

Jaimito tried convincing Dedé to his way of thinking. “Don’t you see, my heart, all life involves compromise. You have to compromise with your sister, your mother has to compromise with your father, the sea and land have to compromise about a shoreline, and it varies from time to time. Don’t you see, my life?”

“I see,” Dedé said at last, already beginning to compromise with the man she was set to marry.

It was also the night she finally agreed to marry Jaimito.

They had been to a gathering of the Dominican party in San Francisco—Jaimito’s idea. Belonging to the party was an obligation unless, of course, like Lio you wanted trouble for yourself and your family. Needless to say, Lío had not come along. Minerva had reluctantly chaperoned Dedé and Jaimito and brought her cedula to be stamped.

The evening was deadly. There were readings by high-ranking women in the party from Moral Meditations, an awful book just published by Doña Maria. Everyone knew the dictator’s wife hadn’t written a word of it, but the audience clapped politely. Except Minerva. Dedé prodded her with an elbow and whispered, “Think of it as life insurance.” The irony of it—she had been practicing for her future profession!

They came directly home, sobered by the travesty in which they had participated. The three of them sat on the galería with the gas lamp off to keep the bugs down. Jaimito began what Minerva called her “interrogation.”

“Has your friend invited you to go with him?” Jaimito had sense enough not to mention Lío’s name out loud in Mama’s house.

There was a pause before Minerva spoke up. “Lío”—and she mentioned the name distinctly without a cowardly lowering of her voice—“is just a friend. And no, he hasn’t invited me to leave with him, nor would I go.”

Again Dedé wondered over her sister’s reserve about Lío. Here was Minerva risking her life for this young man, why not just admit she was in love with him?

“They were looking for him today at my house,” Jaimito whispered. Dedé could feel her own shoulders tightening. “I didn’t want to worry you, but they took me down to the station and asked me a bunch of questions. That’s why I wanted us to all go tonight. We’ve got to start behaving ourselves.”

“What did they want him for?” This time Minerva did lower her voice.

“They didn’t say. But they did want to know if he had ever offered me any kind of illicit materials. That’s what they called it.”

Jaimito paused a long moment so that the two women were beside themselves. “What did you say?” Dedé’s voice broke from a whisper.

“I told him he had.”

“You what?” Minerva cried out.

“I confess.” Jaimito’s voice was playful. “I told them he’d given me some girlie magazines. Those guards, you know how they are. They all think he’s a queer from what the papers have been saying. If nothing else, he climbed a little in their regard today.”

“You are too much!” Minerva sighed, getting up. There was tiredness but also gratitude in her voice. After all, Jaimito had stuck his neck out for a man whose politics he considered foolhardy. “Tomorrow, we’ll probably read in the papers how Virgilio Morales is a sex maniac.”

Dedé remembers a sudden stillness after Minerva left, different from their usual silences. Then Jaimito returned to the topic of Minerva and Lio. It was almost as if they had become for Jaimito, too, a shadow couple by which he could talk of his own deepest, most hidden wishes.

“Do you think she’s hiding something?” Jaimito asked Dede. “Do you think they have crossed the Rio Yaque?”

Ai, Jaimito!“ Dedé chastised him for suggesting such a thing about her sister.

“They haven’t exactly been discussing Napoleon’s white horse in the back seat!” Jaimito was now lifting up her hair for access to the pale, hidden parts of her neck.

“Neither have we been discussing Napoleon’s white horse in the front seat,” Dedé reminded him, pushing him gently away. The kissing was bringing on waves of pleasure she feared would capsize her self-control. “And we haven’t crossed the Rio Yaque, and we aren’t going to!”

“Ever, my sky, ever?” he asked, putting on a hurt voice. He was patting his pockets for something. Dedé waited, knowing what was coming. “I can’t see in this dark,” he complained. “Light the lamp, will you, my own?”

“And wake up everyone, no!” Dedé felt her heart fluttering. She wanted to delay his asking. She had to think. She had to make sure that she was choosing right.

“But I have something I want you to see, my love.” Jaimito’s voice was full of excitement.

“Let’s go out back. We can get in Papa’s car and turn on the inside light.” Dedé could never bear to disappoint him.

They stumbled down the driveway to where the Ford was parked, a big black hulking shape in the dark. Mama would not be able to see them from her front bedroom window. Dedé eased open the passenger door and turned on the ceiling light. Across from her, Jaimito was grinning as he slid into the driver’s seat. It was a grin that carried Dedé all the way back to the day her naughty cousin had put a lizard down her blouse. He had been grinning like that when he approached her, his hands behind his back.

“My lamb,” he began, reaching for her hand.

Her heart was beating loud. Her spoiled, funny, fun-loving man. Oh, what a peck of trouble she was in for. “What have you got there, Jaimito Fernández?” she said, as he slipped the ring on her hand. It was his mother’s engagement ring that had been shown to Dedé on numerous visits. A small diamond set at the center of a gold filigree flower. “Ay, Jaimito,” she said, tilting it to catch the light. “It’s lovely.”

“My heart,” he said. “I know I have to ask your father for your hand. But no matter what Minerva says, I’m modem. I believe the woman should be asked first.”

That’s when they heard the alerting little cough from the back of the car. She and Jaimito looked at each other in shock. “Who’s there?” Jaimito cried out. “Who?” He had turned himself around so he was kneeling on the front seat.

“Relax, it’s just me.” Lio whispered from the back of the car. “Turn off the light, will you?”

“Jesus Christ!” Jaimito was furious, but he did turn off the light. He sat down again, facing the front as if he and his girl were alone, talking intimacies.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Lio explained. “The heat’s on. Mario’s house is surrounded. My ride to the capital is stopping at the anacahuita tree at dawn. I have to hide out till then.”

“So you come here and endanger this whole family!” Jaimito twisted around in his seat, ready to throttle this reckless man.

“I was hoping to get this to Minerva.”

A hand slipped an envelope between Jaimito and Dedé. Before Jaimito could grab it, Dedé had it. She put it away in her pocket. “I’ll take care of it,” she promised.

“Now you’ve done what you came to do, you’re not staying here. I’ll give you a goddamn ride.” Jaimito’s father’s Chevy was parked in front of the house by the gate.

“Jaimito, be smart, listen.” Lío’s whispers were eerie, a disembodied voice from the dark interior of the car. “If you’re on the road in the middle of the night, of course you’ll be stopped, and your car searched.”

Dedé agreed. When Jaimito was finally convinced, she walked him down the drive to his car. “So what do you think, my love?” he asked as she was kissing him goodbye.

“I think you should go home, and let him catch the ride he’s already arranged.”

“I’m talking about my proposal, Dedé.” Jaimito’s voice was that of a hurt little boy.

It wasn’t so much that she had forgotten as it was the inevitability of that proposal. They had been headed for it since they had patted mud balls together as toddlers in the backyard. Everyone said so. There was no question—was there?—but that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

He kissed her hard, his body insisting that her body answer, but Dedé’s head was spinning away with questions. “Yes, my love, of course, but you must go. I don’t want you to be stopped on the road.”

“Don’t worry about me, my darling,” Jaimito said bravely, emboldened by her concern. But he left soon after a last lingering kiss.

Alone, Dedé breathed in the cool air and looked up at the stars. She would not count them tonight, no. She twisted the ring around and around her finger, glancing towards the car at the bottom of the drive. Lio was there, safe! And only she knew it, only she, Dedé. No, she would not tell Minerva. She wanted to hold the secret to herself just this one night.

In the bedroom she had once shared with Patria, the lamp was bum ing low. Dedé took out the letter from her pocket and stared at the poorly sealed envelope. She toyed with the flap and it came easily undone. Slipping the letter out, she read haltingly, telling herself after each paragraph she would stop.

Lío was inviting Minerva to take asylum with him! She should drive down to the capital on the pretense of seeing the exhibit at the Colombian embassy and refuse to leave. What a risk to ask her sister to take! Why, the embassies were surrounded these days, and all the recent refugees had been intercepted and put in prison where most of them had disappeared forever. Dedé could not expose her sister to this danger. Especially if, as Minerva claimed, she did not even love this man.

Dedé took the chimney off the lamp, and with a trembling hand, fed the letter to the flame. The paper lit up. Ashes fluttered like moths, and Dedé ground them to dust on the floor. She had taken care of the problem, and that was that. Looking up at the mirror, she was surprised by the wild look on her face. The ring on her finger flashed a feverish reminder. She brushed her hair up into a tight ponytail and put on her nightgown. Having blown out the light, she slept fitfully, holding her pillow like a man in her arms.