In the Name of Salome by Julia Álvarez Page A

deserves.
Difficult time adjusting
, Camila remembers the chairman’s phrase. She should think so with this rude attitude.
    It turns out he is, in fact, the son of Manuel Calderón, who was killed last summer in the Luperón invasion. He knows of Gugú. Before she can express her sympathy, Manuelito continues, testing her. “I understand your brother works for the government.”
    â€œMax is in foreign relations,” she says, trying to minimize her brother’s participation. In fact, Trujillo offered posts to the whole family—the Henríquez Ureña name would lend prestige to his regime. Even Pedro had served briefly as secretary of education, only to resign before a year was up. But Max has stayed on.
    â€œSo you can go back when you want?” Manuelito asks. His look is fierce, but his eyes, she notices, are a boy’s eyes, full of tears.
    She sighs, her glance falling on her hands. They have aged, grown spotted and rough. Recently, her body is full of these kinds of surprises. She looks in the mirror, and an aging woman blinks back at her. Meanwhile, a girl waits in the wings of her heart for all the important things she was promised that have not yet happened: a great love, a settled home, a free country. “I have not been back since the massacre,” she explains. The slaughter of Haitians had disturbed her profoundly. What was it Trujillo finally paid for the twenty thousand dead, twenty pesos a head?
    â€œBut you mentioned in class that you will be going back in October for your mother’s centennial?”
    She hesitates. She had said so. (“There will be a procession of six hundred students, wearing black armbands. We will make one stop so we can each lay a gardenia, my mother’s favorite flower, in front of the house where she was born. The fragrance will be apparent for miles.”) It was as if she were creating that future day, a touch of this, a touch of that, filling in the gaps left behind by her mother.
    The young man sets down his parcel on the small desk that projects from her armrest. The wood is full of carvings, sets of initials connected with plus signs, declarations of love, and indictments of teachers:
Peguero is a pill
, then a quote ascribed to Martí but which sounds rather biblical,
Whoever gives himself to others lives among the doves
.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asks, nodding at the package.
    â€œMy submission to the contest,” he says. He is watching herwith a look she used to call a thermometer look, when she saw it on her stepmother’s face, eyes probing, gauging her reaction. “I am Dominican. I can submit?”
    â€œOf course, you can. But you must submit it to the instituto directly. Why not send it by mail?”
    â€œIt would not pass the censors.”
    Her hands burrow in her lap as if away from his scrutiny. “Manuelito, there is a good chance I will not be going down at all. I still have not decided. But remember, if I do, my luggage will be checked, too.”
    â€œI see,” he says, giving her little nods as if confirming a suspicion he has about her. “You come here, you get ahead, you forget your country.” He is speaking to someone he has created in his head.
    She could defend herself. She could say that she came here just as he did, because there was no place left to go.
La patria still in chains . . . The tears I’ve shed for her have never dried
. . . Or she could try to calm him by agreeing to do whatever he asks. Pancho always used to say that the best prescription for dealing with the mad was not to contradict them. But this boy is not crazy. He is the voice of her own heart if she were prepared to obey it.
    Instead, she stands, weary. A long evening awaits her: the lecture she does not feel confident about, a reception with colleagues she has not seen since last summer, a talk with Marion. She gathers together her scarf, her leather gloves, the briefcase with her initials