Excerpt from In the Time of Butterflies
By Julia Alverez
Citation: Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010.
Assignment:
For this passage, you will read and annotate. Annotations can include
- brief reactions
- Analysis
- Definitions of words
- Connections to other books we have read
You are responsible for writing three annotations and responding to two annotations from your class. Be sure to annotate in your section’s reading group.
Chapter 1, pg 8-10:
She remembers a clear moonlit night before the future began. They are sitting in the cool darkness under the anacahuita tree in the front yard, in the rockers, telling stories, drinking guanabana juice. Good for the nerves, Mama always says.
They’re all there, Mama, Papa, Patria-Minerva-Dede. Bang-bang-bang, their father likes to joe, aiming a finger pistol at each one, as if he were shooting them, not boasting about having sired them. Three girls, each born within a year of the other! And then, nine years later, Maria Teresa, his final desperate attempt at a boy misfiring.
Their father has his slippers on, one foot hooked behind the other. Every once in a while Dede hears the clink of the rum bottle against the rim of his glass.
Many a night, and this night is no different, a shy voice calls out of the darkness, begging their pardon. Could they spare a calmante for a sick child out of their stock of kindness? Would they have some tobacco for a tired old man who spent the day grating yucca?
Their father gets up, swaying a little with drink and tiredness, and opens up the store. The campesino goes off with his medicine, a couple of cigars, a few mints for the godchildren. Dede tells her father that she doesn’t know how they do as well as they do, the way he gives everything away. But her father just puts his arm around her, and says, “Ay, Dede, that’s why I have you. Every soft foot needs a hard shoe.
“She’ll bury us all,” her father adds, laughing, “in silk and pearls.” Dede hears again the clink of the rum bottle. “Yes, for sure, our Dede here is going to be the millionaire in the family.”
“And me, Papa, and me?” Maria Teresa pipes up in her little girls voice, not wanting to be left out of the future.
“You, mi napita, you’ll be our little coquette. You’ll make a lot of men’s--”
Their mother coughs her correcting-your-manners cough.
“--a lot of men’s mouths water,” their father concludes.
Maria Teresa groans. At eight years old, in her long braids and checkered blouse, the only future the baby wants is one that will make her own mouth water, sweets and gifts in big boxes that clatter with something fun inside when she shakes them.
“What of me, Papa?” Patria asks more quietly. It is difficult to imagine Patria unmarried without a baby on her lap, but Dede’s memory is playing dolls with the past. She has sat them down that clear, cool night before the future begins, Mama and Papa and their four pretty girls, no one added, no one taken away. Papa calls on Mama to help him out with his fortune-telling. Especially--though he doesn’t say this--if she’s going to censor the clairvoyance of his several glasses of run. “What would you say, Mama, about our Patria?”
“You know, Enrique, that I don’t believe in fortunes,” Mama says evenly. “Padre Ignacio says fortunes are for those without faith.” In her mother’s tone, Dede can already hear the distance that will come between her parents. Looking back, she things, Ay, Mama, ease up a little on those commandments. Work out the Christian math of how you give a little and you get it back a hundredfold. But thinking about her own divorce, Dede admits the math doesn’t always work out. If you multiply by zero, you still get zero, and a thousand heartaches.
“I don’t believe in fortunes either,” Patria says quickly. She’s as religious as Mama, that one. “But Papa isn’t really telling fortunes.”
Minerva agrees. “Papa’s just confessing what he thinks are our strengths.” She stresses the verb confessing as if their father were actually being pious in looking ahead for his daughters. “Isn’t that so Papa?”
“Si, senorita,” Papa burps, slurring his words. It’s almost time to go in.
“Also,” Minerva adds, Padre Ignacio condemns fortunes only if you believe a human being knows what only God can know.” That one can’t leave well enough alone.
“Some of us know it all,” Mama says curtly.
Maria Teresa defends her adored sister. “It isn’t a sin, Mama, it isn’t. Berto and Raul have this game from New York. Padre Ignacio played it with us. It’s a board with a little glass you move around, and it tells the future!” Everybody laughs, even their mother, for Maria Teresa’s voice is bursting with gullible excitement. The baby stops, suddenly, in a pout. Her feelings get hurt so easily. On Minerva’s urging, she goes on in a little voice. “I asked the talking board what I would be when I grew up, and it said a lawyer.”
They all hold back their laughter this time, for of course, Maria Teresa is parroting her big sister’s plans. For years Minerva has been agitating to go to law school.
“Ay, Dios mio, spare me.” Mama sighs, but playfulness has come back into her voice. “Just what we need, skirts in the law!”
“It is just what this country needs.” Minerva’s voice has the steely sureness it gets whenever she talks politics. She has begun talking politics a lot. Mama says she’s running around with the Perozo girl too much. It’s about time we women had a voice in running our country.”
“You and Trujillo,” Papa says a little loudly, and in this clear peaceful night they all fall silent. Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security. Don Enrique claims Trujillo needs help running this country. Don Enrique’s daughter says it’s about time women took over the government. Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much.
Now, as if drops of rain had started fallings--though the night is as clear as the sound of a bell--they hurry in, gathering their shawls and drinks, leaving the rockers for the yard boy to bring in. Maria Teresa squeals when she steps on a stone. “I thought it was el cuco,” she moans.
As Dede is helping her father step safely up the stairs of the galeria, she realizes that hers is the only future he really told. Maria Teresa’s was a tease, and Papa never got to Minerva’s or Patria’s on account of Mama’s disapproval. A child goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn’t want to be the only one left to tell their story.