Yesterday night, Santicló brought us the last of the contents of Mama’s package, including some Vigorex. Maybe now this stomach of mine will settle down. The smelling salts will also help. Mama and Patria outdid themselves. We have everything we need and then some luxuries. That is, if Minerva doesn’t give it all away.
She says we don’t want to create a class system in our cell, the haves and have nots. (We don’t? What about when Tiny gave Dinorah a dulce de leche as payment for her favors, and she didn’t offer anyone a crumb, even Miguelito?)
Minerva gives me her speech about how Dinorah’s a victim of our corrupt system, which we are helping to bring down by giving her some of our milk fudge.
So everyone’s had a Bengay rub and a chunk of fudge in the name of the Revolution. At least I get this notebook to myself.
Or so I think, till Minerva comes around asking if I couldn’t spare a couple of pages for America’s statement for her hearing tomorrow.
And can we borrow the pen? Minerva adds.
Don’t I have any rights? But instead of fighting for them, I just burst out crying.
[pages torn out]
Monday, March 28 (67 days)
I left my chao untouched. Just a whiff of that steamy paste, and I didn’t even want to take a chance. I’m lying on my bunk now, listening to the Little School discussing how a woman revolutionary should handle a low remark by a comrade. Minerva excused me from class. I feel like my insides are trying to get out.
I’ve gotten so thin, I’ve had to take in the waistbands of all my panties and stuff the cups of my brassiere with handkerchiefs. We were fooling the other day about whose were bigger. Kiki made a low remark about how the
men are probably doing the same thing with their you-know-whats. First month I was here, I was shocked by such dirty talk. Now I laugh right along with everybody.
Tuesday late night, March 29 (68 days)
I can’t even fall asleep tonight remembering Violeta’s prayer at the close of our group rosary: May I never experience all that it is possible to get
used to.
How it has spooked me to hear that.
Wednesday, March 30 (69 days)
I am trying to keep a schedule to ward off the panic that sometimes comes over me. Sina brought it up during Little School. She had read a book written by a political prisoner in Russia who was locked away for life, and the only way he kept himself from going insane was to follow a schedule of exercises in his head. You have to train your mind and spirit.
Like putting the baby on a feeding schedule.
I think it’s a good idea. Here’s my schedule.
—The Little School every morning—except Sundays.
—Writing in my book during guard change as I can get away with
twenty minutes at a time. Also after lights-out if there is a bright
enough moon.
—Going to the “movies” in my head, imagining what is happening at
home right this moment.
—Doing some handiwork. The guards are always bringing us the
prison mending.
—Helping clean up the cell—we’ve got a rotating list of duties Sina
wrote up.
—I also try to do one good thing for a cellmate every day, from giving
Delia massages for her bad back to teaching Balbina, who’s deaf,
and some of the others, too, how to write their names.
—And finally, the thing that gets me the most kidding, I try to “walk”
for half an hour every day Twenty-five feet down and back, twenty
feet across and back.
Where are you going? America asked me yesterday.
Home, I replied without stopping my walk.
Thursday, March 31 (70 days)
Day by day goes by and I begin to lose courage and wallow in dark thoughts. I’m letting myself go. Today I didn’t even braid my hair, just wound it in a knot and tied a sock around it. My spirits are so low.
Our visiting privileges were cancelled again. No explanation. Not even Santicló knows why. We were marched down the hall and then brought back—what a mean trick.
And it’s certain now—Leandro is not here with the rest of us. Oh God, where could he be?
Friday, April 1 (71 days)
Minerva and I just had a talk about morale. She says she’s noticed how upset I’ve been lately.
I am upset. We could have been out with Miriam and Dulce a whole week ago. But no, we Mirabals had to set a good example. Accepting a pardon meant we thought we had something to be pardoned for. Also, we couldn’t be free unless everyone else was offered the same opportunity.
I argued all up and down, but it was like the time Minerva wanted to do the hunger strike. I said, Minerva, we’re already half-starved, what more do
you want?
She held my hands and said, Then do what you think is right, Mate. Of course, I ended up on a hunger strike, too. (Santicló snuck me in some chocolates, thank God, and rounds of cassava or I would have starved.)
This time, too, I’d have taken that pardon. But what was I supposed to do? Leave Minerva behind to be a martyr all by herself?
I start to cry. I can’t take it anymore, I tell Minerva. Every day, my little girl is growing up without me.
Stop thinking like that, Minerva says. Then she tries all over again to lead me through this exercise where I concentrate on nice thoughts so as not to get desperate—
I have to stop and hide this. They’re coming in for some sort of check.
Saturday, April 2 (72 days)
There was a row here yesterday. As a consequence, there have been extra guards patrolling the hall outside our cell, so I didn’t dare write until tonight.
Minerva is back in solitary, this time for three weeks.
When they came in to remove our crucifixes, we sort of expected it because of what’s been going on.
The officials call it the Crucifix Plot. Minerva and El Rayo cooked up this idea that everyone without exception was to wear a crucifix as a symbol of our solidarity. Patria sent us a dozen little wooden ones Tio Pepe made for those who didn’t already have one. Soon, even the meanest prostitutes were dangling crosses above their bosoms. The naked men all wore them, too.
Whenever someone was taken for a “visit” to La 40 or got desperate and began shouting or crying, we’d all start singing “O Lord, My Sturdy Palm When Cyclone Winds Are Blowing.”
