In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Álvarez Page B

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.

    She remembers the night Lio went into hiding.
    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