Compte les étoiles

My cousin Carla sat in front of me at the American school, her arm waving in the air to be a Pilgrim. When our teacher, Mrs. Brown, called on us, she made us the Indians. I felt ridiculous in a headband with a single feather sticking up, but then the principal appeared in the doorway with Carla's mother, Tía Laura, looking more nervous than usual. A few minutes later, Mrs. Brown told Carla to pack up all her things - her notebooks, her pencils, even her special eraser in the shape of the Dominican Republic. I helped her, wondering why I wasn't being asked to pack my things, too. In the car, Papi tried to sound excited for my cousins, telling them they would see snow in the United States of America. But when Carla and I said our good-byes in the driveway, I couldn't stop the tears. That night, our large family compound, once full of aunts and uncles and cousins, felt hollow and quiet.

The next morning, a half-dozen black Volkswagens crawled up our driveway, and men in dark glasses streamed out across the lawn. They were the SIM, the secret police. Mami let them in, and they searched every corner of our house, even poking bayonets under my sister Lucinda's bed. Afterward, those black cars just sat at the end of our drive, watching. We couldn't go to school. The whole house fell into a whisper. “Shhh!” Mami would hiss whenever I asked a question. It was Lucinda who finally told me the secret: our Tío Toni was part of a plot against the dictator, El Jefe. His friends had been arrested, and now our family was being watched. I was so confused. El Jefe's portrait hung in our classroom next to George Washington's; everyone said he was our Benefactor. But Lucinda explained that we had to hang his picture, that he was a monster who made people disappear.

A little bit of our old life returned when Mr. Washburn, the American consul, moved his family into my cousins' empty house next door. With Americans living in the compound, the SIM finally drove away. Mr. Washburn had a son my age, Sam, with hair so blond it looked almost white. We explored the overgrown grounds together, and one day we found the door to Tío Toni's little casita unlocked. Someone was inside. I soon learned it was Tío Toni himself, hiding. For my twelfth birthday, I got a diary with a little lock and key. It became my only true friend, the one place I could write down all the secrets: Tío Toni's presence, the men who came to meet with him at night, and my growing crush on Sam. But one evening, Mami found me writing. “No more,” she pleaded, her eyes full of fear. “For now, we have to be like the little worm in the cocoon of the butterfly. All closed up and secret until the day . . .”

That day felt impossibly far away. At a party for Sam's sister, El Jefe himself appeared, his chest gleaming with medals. He noticed Lucinda, and the next day a palace limousine delivered a bouquet of roses from “an admirer.” A cold terror seized our house. Mami and Papi knew what this meant - that El Jefe had chosen my sister for himself. A frantic plan, which they called Operation Maid, was put into motion. Mr. Washburn arranged a special visa for Lucinda to go to the United States to work for a friend. The morning she was to leave, I woke to find blood on the sheets. I had gotten my period. I felt as if my own body was betraying me, turning me into a young woman in a country where that was the most dangerous thing to be.

As the weeks passed, a quietness grew inside me. Words would abandon me mid-sentence, leaving me stranded in silence. At school, when the teacher called on me, I could only shake my head. Papi understood. He would sit on my bed at night, stroking my hair. “One day,” he told me, his voice a soft story, “you're going to look back on all this and think, I really was a strong and brave girl. Promise me you'll spread your wings and fly.” The danger was everywhere. One afternoon, riding with Mr. Washburn, our car was hit from behind and the trunk flew open. Inside, wrapped in sugar-cane sacking, were the guns Papi and his friends called “the ingredients for the picnic.” A policeman saw them, but after a long, silent moment, he simply tied the trunk shut with a rope and waved us on.

One evening in late May, the men gathered at our house, their voices electric with nervous energy. They drove off into the night, and hours later returned, triumphant, shouting, “¡Que vivan Las Mariposas! Long live the Butterflies!” They had done it. El Jefe was dead. For a moment, our house was filled with a wild, breathless joy. But the joy was short-lived. The general who was supposed to take over the army and announce the liberation could not be found. The plan was falling apart. Papi and Tío Toni and the others scattered into the night, trying to salvage their revolution, leaving us to wait.

The next morning, the SIM stormed the compound. They tore our house apart, smashing everything. Then they dragged Papi and Tío Toni from the garage, their hands tied behind their backs, and shoved them into a car. Mami cried out my father's name, one last time. We fled to the home of our friends, the Mancinis, and hid in a walk-in closet off their bedroom. For weeks, that closet was our world. We ate food smuggled to us in a plastic bag and listened to the news on a shortwave radio, hearing of thousands of arrests and terrible tortures. Mundín was smuggled out of the country disguised as a girl, and then, one Sunday, Wimpy - an American grocer who was secretly an agent - arrived with paratroopers. A helicopter was waiting on the embassy lawn. As we lifted into the sky, I looked down at my island, a green and beautiful place I was leaving behind, and I saw a flash of purple by a van on the ground - Chucha, waving good-bye.

We landed in New York City, a world of gray buildings and strangers, into the arms of all the family who had escaped before us. For months we waited, Mami calling Mr. Washburn in Washington every few days for news. There was never any. Then one afternoon, he appeared in my grandparents' hotel room. He told us that just before the dictator's family fled the country, the son and his cronies had gone to the prison. They tied the remaining prisoners, including my father and my uncle, to palm trees and shot them. Then they took their bodies out to sea.

On Thanksgiving, my first in America, we gathered at my aunt's house in Queens. The sky, which had been gray all day, began to release tiny, hesitant flakes. I stood outside with my cousins, watching my first snow. It fell silently, covering the dead grass and bare trees, making the whole world new and clean. Later, looking out the window, I saw the angels we had made in the fresh snow. But they didn't look like angels. With their arms and legs swept wide, they looked like butterflies. Four of them, resting in the white silence. I thought of Papi's last promise, and Chucha's dream of us sprouting wings. The emptiness inside me began to fill, not with happiness, but with a strong, fierce pride. I closed my eyes and whispered to my father. *Okay, Papi. I promise I'll try.*