阿妮塔日记（附）1

June 3, 1961, Saturday, time of day, hard to say

We are finally settled in and Mami has said, go ahead, write in your diary as much as you want, we’re in trouble already, maybe you can leave a record that will help others who are in hiding, too.

Mami now speaks in spurts of panic instead of sentences. I tell her that all I want to do is keep a diary, not save the world.

I don’t want any freshness here, Anita, I’ve just about had it, I’m up to four Equanil a day, that’s sixteen hundred milligrams, I can’t take it.

You see why I need this diary.

June 5, 1961, Monday morning—Mami’s showering in the bathroom next door

I can only write a little bit at a time, as I don’t get much privacy around here, even though it’s just me and Mami in the walk-in closet in the Mancinis’ bedroom. When the Mancinis lock their bedroom door, we can visit with them in their room and do things like take a shower. Otherwise, we have to stay in the closet.

Last night in the middle of the night, Mrs. Mancini shook us awake and whispered, I don’t know which one of you is doing it, but I’m afraid you don’t have the luxury of snoring in this house.

Our sounds have to sound like their sounds.

June 6, 1961, Tuesday, early—or so it seems from the light streaming in the bathroom window

Mrs. Mancini says it’s a good thing she has always been in the habit of locking their bedroom door in order to get some privacy. Also, she has always cleaned the master bedroom herself, as the help have enough to do what with five kids. Besides, she doesn’t trust anyone since she learned of the undercover training at the Domestic Academy. So the Mancinis’ habits make their bedroom as safe a hiding place as any private residence can be right now.

The Mancinis have this kind of strange house like an apartment. The first floor is basically a large garage and laundry room and kitchen. They live on the second floor, since it’s cooler up here with a gallery running all along the back and stairs going down to the garden.

From their bathroom window, I have a bird’s-eye view of the grounds of the embassy. But unlike a bird, I can’t fly free . . . except in my imagination.

Later, evening

According to Mr. Mancini, loads of people are being arrested. The whole town of Moca was imprisoned because one of the conspirators comes from there! El Jefe’s son, Trujillo Junior, says he will not rest until he has punished every man, woman, and child associated with the assassination of his father. Actually, Mr. Mancini says that people are secretly calling it an ajusticiámiento, which means bringing to justice, the way criminals have to face the consequences of their evil deeds.

I feel so much better thinking that Papi and Tío Toni were doing justice, not really murdering killing hurting someone. But still . . . just the thought of my own father—

Have to go. One of the little Marías is calling at the bedroom door.

June 7, 1961, Wednesday afternoon, a cloudy day, I can tell rain is coming

Once the Mancinis go out, we have to stay quietly in the closet and can’t move around or use the bathroom. (We have a chamber pot, but you’d be surprised how noisy peeing is, and how messy in the dark.)

Only two human beings in the house know we are here, Tío Pepe and Tía Mari (they insist I call them that now), and their two teensy Yorkshire terriers. Thank goodness Mojo and Maja remember me from school and Mami from the times the canasta group met here, so they don’t bark at us. No one else knows. Tía Mari says it’s going to be a job keeping a secret in this curious family. But it’s just too dangerous right now to tell anyone where we are.

It is so strange to be in the very same house as Oscar, and he doesn’t even know! Every time Tía Mari or Tío Pepe mentions his name, I can feel my face burn. I wonder if they notice my special interest?

The emergency procedure is, if the SIM start a search or anyone comes into the bedroom (besides the Mancinis), we slip into the bathroom, where there are two narrow closets; Mami goes in one and I go in the other, all the way to a crawl space in back, and we stay there and pray we are not discovered.

June 8, 1961, Thursday, right after supper, in bathroom

During supper tonight, Tía Mari turned on Radio Caribe kind of loud. Meanwhile, Tío Pepe tuned his shortwave radio to Radio Swan real low since that station is still illegal, and he and Mami and Tía Mari leaned forward listening closely to the “real” news. It was like night and day, what each station was reporting.

CARIBE: The OAS is here to help the SIM maintain stability.

SWAN: The OAS is here investigating human rights abuses.

CARIBE: Prisoners praise treatment to OAS investigation committee.

SWAN: Prisoners complain of atrocities to OAS investigation committee.

CARIBE: Consul Washburn has been recalled.

SWAN: Consul Washburn has been airlifted by helicopter to protect his life.

Both stations agreed on one thing: The plot did not work. Pupo, the head of the army, just wasn’t there to announce the liberation over the radio, and instead, Trujillo Junior has taken over, and it’s a bloodbath out there. The SIM are doing house-to-house searches. Over 5,000 people have been arrested, including family members of the conspirators.

I wanted to block my ears and not listen to this stuff!

Whenever I feel this way, I start writing in my diary so there’s another voice that I can listen to. A third radio, tuned to my own heart.

So I snuck off to the bathroom with my diary, and soon enough, Mami was calling me, saying it was rude for me to be off by myself, come join them and be sociable, but then Tía Mari told her to let me be, that it’s a good thing that I’m writing, that ever since I started keeping this diary, I’m talking a lot more.

It took her saying so for me to realize it’s true.

The words are coming back, as if by writing them down, I’m fishing them out of forgetfulness, one by one.

June 9, 1961, Friday—evening

Mami has heard from Tío Pepe that Mr. Washburn is back in Washington and pushing to get Papi and Tío Toni on the OAS list of prisoners interviewed, as their lives are then much safer. Once the OAS has a name on record, it’s harder for the SIM to get rid of that individual.

Mami and Tía Mari have begun praying a rosary to the Virgin Mary every night to take care of all the prisoners, but most especially to take care of Papi and Tío Toni.

I always kneel with them. But even though I’m talking again, I can’t seem to fish the words for an Our Father or Hail Mary out of my brain.

June 10, 1961, Saturday, late night

The electricity goes on and off all the time. Tía Mari bought Mami and me little flashlights. Tonight, a total blackout again. So I’m writing by the light of this tiny beam.

I never know exactly what time it is anymore—except when the siren sounds at noon and then again at 6 for curfew. The Mancinis don’t have an electric clock in their bedroom because it would never tell the right time anyhow. The kind you wind drives Tía Mari crazy because it tick-tocks too loud. She says she feels like someone is timing her life.

The truth is, when you live in such close quarters, you find out the most private things about people—like Tío Pepe always having to wear white socks to bed or Tía Mari tweezing little hairs from her upper lip.

I wonder what they’ve noticed about me? How I stroke a spot on my left cheek whenever I’m feeling scared or lonely?

June 11, 1961, after supper, second Sunday in hiding

Sundays are especially hard, as that was always the day of our big family gathering. But we were reduced to just the Garcías and us, then just us, then just us minus Lucinda, and now it’s even less than a nuclear family, just Mami and me, like survivors after a bomb drops, a fallout family.

Every day, I ask Mami about Papi and Tío Toni. But on Sundays, I probably ask her more than once. (No, not “countless times,” like she accuses me of!)

Today, I promised myself I wouldn’t ask her even once. But by evening, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Mami, I said, just tell me if they’re okay.

She hesitated. They’re alive, she said, and started crying.

Tía Mari pulled her into the bathroom, and meanwhile I was left alone in the bedroom with Tío Pepe. We were quiet for a while and then he said, Anita, one must think positively. That is how the greatest minds in history have survived tragedy.

I felt like reminding him I’m not one of the greatest minds, but Tío Pepe is so smart, maybe his advice is worth a try?

I close my eyes and think positively. . . . After a while, a picture pops into my head of Papi and Tío Toni and me walking on the beach. I’m real little, and they’re holding me between them and swinging me out over the waves like they’re going to throw me into the sea, and I’m giggling and they’re laughing, and Papi is saying, fly, mi hijita, fly, like I am a little kite that is catching the wind!

Then, like on a birthday, I make a wish: that Papi and Tío Toni will soon be free and that we will all be together again as a family.

June 12, 1961, Monday night, bathroom, about ten o’clock

Sometimes, I try to think of my life in hiding as a movie that will be over in three hours. It makes it a lot easier to put up with Mami’s nerves!

So here’s the scene every night when I want to write after lights-out:

SETTING: Dark inside of closet. Mother on her mat, not the most comfortable of beds, but a lot better than sleeping in prison or in a coffin!

ACTION: Girl feels for diary and flashlight under her pillow. Absolutely silently, she begins to slip out of the closet.

MOTHER: (whispering, loud enough to wake up sleeping couple in bedroom beyond closet) Remember, the Mancinis are asleep!

GIRL: I know. (Rolls her eyes in the dark, makes disgusted face, which, of course, mother can’t see. Girl goes into bathroom, props flashlight on back of the toilet, and begins writing. Screen goes blurry and scene of what she’s writing unfolds before our very eyes!)

Back to my diary—

I want to write down everything that happened the night that Tío Pepe rescued us from the compound—not that I’m likely to forget. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared!

Mami and I crouched down in the back of Tío Pepe’s Pontiac with some sacks over us. Good thing, too, since the streets were crawling with tanks. When we got to the Italian embassy, Mundín was already there, and though Mami had sworn that she was going to kill him, she was so pleased to see him alive and well and biting his nails that she just hugged him and kept touching his face and hair. Poor Mundín looked like he had suddenly turned from fifteen to fifty, his eyes glazed over with the horrible news of Papi and Tío Toni being taken away.

Meanwhile, Tío Pepe and the Italian ambassador came up with a plan.

Since Mundín was most at risk, being a guy, he’d stay at the embassy, as it’s off-limits to the SIM if they’re obeying rules anymore. But the place was so packed with refugees seeking protection, we couldn’t all stay there. So Mami and I were moved next door to the Mancinis’, which is not as safe. (Private residences do not have immunity privileges.) The plan is to get us all out of the country as soon as a way can be found. Meanwhile, we have to lay low, not a peep from us, as the SIM close in with their house-to-house searches.

When we got to the Mancinis’ bedroom that first night, Tía Mari showed us “the accommodations.” Here is the dining room, she said, pointing to her bedside table with magazines, and here is your bedroom, she added, showing us the walk-in closet, then crossing the narrow hallway, here is your bathroom–living room–patio. She was trying to make us smile.

I started unpacking, and what a surprise to find my diary among my things! Then I remembered Chucha scooping it up and stuffing it in my laundry bag.

Ay, how I miss Chucha!

June 13, 1961, Tuesday evening

Tío Pepe says he drove by the compound today and the whole place was crawling with SIM. He heard through Radio Bemba, which is how people are referring to gossip, Radio Big Mouth, that the compound is now a SIM interrogation center. It makes me sick just to think what might be happening in my old bedroom.

What about Chucha? I asked. The thought of anything happening to Chucha . . .

Chucha is fine! Tío Pepe assured me. It seems that the day after he evacuated us, Chucha also left the compound. She wandered into town on foot, to Wimpy’s, and has gotten a job there sweeping out the aisles, which is near impossible to believe. But Wimpy is one of Tío Pepe’s contacts, so maybe Chucha feels that by being there, she is close to us. Who can tell?

Just the thought of Chucha at Wimpy’s makes me smile.

June 14, 1961, Wednesday morning, after breakfast

Poor Tía Mari has to think of meals on top of everything else!

For breakfast, she always fixes Tío Pepe’s tray first thing, before the cook is up, and carries it to their bedroom. So that meal is never a problem. Tía Mari just brings some extra waterbreads and marmalade and cheese and a pot of coffee and one of milk, and fresh fruits. She locks the door, and Mami and I slip out of the closet and eat breakfast, taking turns drinking out of one cup while Tía Mari and Tío Pepe share the other one.

As for supper, Tía Mari and Tío Pepe used to eat out in the dining room, but now, with the excuse that they want to listen to the news quietly in their bedroom, they bring their trays in here and we all eat off the two plates.

The problem is the big midday meal, as the family always eats together in the formal dining room. So what Tía Mari does is hide a plastic bag under her napkin on her lap, and she serves herself lots of food and eats slowly so that the little girls and María de los Santos and Oscar are excused long before she is done, and then quick, she scrapes her plate into the bag for us. It’s not the most appetizing meal, a bag of mixed-up food, but when I think—which I don’t want to—of what Papi and Tío Toni and the other prisoners are eating, I feel grateful and make myself eat so Tía Mari doesn’t have to worry about getting rid of leftovers. (Mojo and Maja can only eat so much.)

Tío Pepe likes to tease Tía Mari that she has gotten so good with that plastic bag, if she ever needs a job, the SIM would surely hire her!

June 15, 1961, Thursday evening, already two weeks in hiding!!!

Earlier this afternoon, I was in the bathroom writing and I heard the three little Marías playing out in the yard. I felt such envy for them, enjoying the warm sun on their skin and the blue sky above.

Then I started thinking how Papi and Tío Toni might not even have a glimpse of sky and fresh air or a bite of food and all my positive thinking went out the window. I stroked my cheek, but that didn’t help, either. I burst into tears. So much for the girl who never cried.

Mami caught me crying and began scolding, what is the matter with you, Anita, you’re going to have to make an effort, please, you’re too old for this.

Which made me cry even more.

Tía Mari pulled me into the bathroom and shut the door and whispered, Anita, you have to understand that your mother is under tremendous pressure, tremendous pressure, and so take that into account, and just keep writing, don’t stop. Stay calm. Pray to La Virgencita.

My brave and beautiful niece, she added, hugging me.

June 16, 1961, Friday, after supper

Believe it or not, we get mail here!

Mundín writes out notes that he gives to the ambassador, who gives them to Tío Pepe, then we answer back by reverse method. It seems so strange that we should be writing back and forth when we’re only a house away! Mundín won’t say where exactly he is hidden in case the note should fall into the wrong hands, but he tells us he is fine, though very worried about Papi and Tío Toni. Today’s note was just to me. I guess from his hiding place, Mundín caught a glimpse of María de los Santos sitting on the gallery with some young fellow, and he wants to know what I know.

I couldn’t believe that Mundín was thinking about a girlfriend at a time like this!

But then . . . I’m thinking a lot about Oscar! As Chucha would say, the hunchback laughing at the camel’s hump!

Tonight at supper, I’ll drop a question about María de los Santos and see if the Mancinis volunteer any news of a boyfriend.

Mojo and Maja are making it hard for me to write—they climb up on my lap and chew at my pen. They look like two little waterfalls of hair, with a pink and a blue ribbon tied in a teensy pigtail on top of their heads.

Stay calm, I say to them. Keep writing, I say to myself.

June 17, 1961, Saturday night

Another scene from the movie of my life in hiding:

SETTING: Girl and mother sitting in bedroom with husband and wife who are hiding them. Radio they have been listening to is turned off.

GIRL: (very innocently) How is María de los Santos?

WIFE: Muy bien, she is fine, gracias to La Virgencita María.

GIRL: Does she have a boyfriend?.

WIFE: (shaking her head) When hasn’t that girl had a boyfriend?

HUSBAND: (looking up from shortwave radio, alarmed) What’s this? I didn’t know you were allowing María de los Santos to have gentlemen callers.

WIFE: (hand on her hip) Allowing her? Who can tell that girl what to do? And where have you been that you didn’t notice? Even the Chinese in Bonao know this.

(Soon, a full-blown disagreement is in progress. Mother and girl slip back into closet, and mother turns on girl.)

MOTHER: Look at what you started, Anita, I hope you’re satisfied, such nice people, after all they have done for us.

(Girl keeps her mouth shut—someone has to keep the peace around here!)