I Lived on Butterfly Hill: List 2

I burst into hysterical tears, and Marisol hugs me close while Lucila whispers, “Celeste, everything will be okay. That’s what Mamá keeps telling me over and over.”

“Then why do you still have the pendulum?” Gloria prods.

“My father says that poets, writers, and journalists are subversives. And some singers and artists, and those people who work with the poor and think they can change things themselves.” She casts a glare like a knife in my direction. “Those people are weakening Chile. My father says they are enemies of the fatherland and very dangerous.”

My father’s voice falters. “Teachers, students, doctors...anyone they suspect would support Alarcón...”

They all shrug and look at their scuffed shoes.

I exhale, fear subsiding for a second.

His face looks stricken, his blue eyes dark. “It only keeps trying to say one thing—a thing too terrible...”

They are afraid that the upheaval in Santiago might spread to Valparaíso.

“Why don’t you call him? Just say your fear made you hurtful,” Delfina suggests when she finds me brooding in my room.

A Beatles song about a place called Strawberry Fields is playing, and I start to wonder if I’d ever get sick of eating strawberries forever, when the song is interrupted by a solemn voice...

All day everyone in the house is preoccupied: talking in whispers, listening to the radio, speaking furtively to neighbors who come to the door.

She gives me a wry look.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at Papá defiantly, all the while knowing what I’d said was childish.

“It’s dangerous, Esmeralda! Those people know where our sympathies lie!” my father snapped in a tone I had never heard him use with my mother before. I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant by “sympathies,” but my mother had already started waving her hands like she does whenever they disagree.

Mamá’s voice was oddly nonchalant. “Oh, just that we want her to keep you safe....Now finish your bread, Celeste.”

“You, niña! Sit down! Or I’ll report you for conduct unbecoming of a lady, sitting behind a tree with a boy!”

And he picks up his heavy black boot and stomps with all his might on the pendulum! Amazingly, all the sea glass stays intact! He stomps again and again, and it doesn’t break.

It just doesn’t make sense—Cristóbal bludgeoned by a guard at the Juana Ross School?

I am stunned and scared and hurt but angry, too—angry enough to meet her cold gaze without wavering until she turns back around.

I stop myself from looking, but when I turn on the radio, the music is gone, replaced by the harsh blaring of military marches.

In its place is a giant portrait with a gilded frame.

His shorn head nods defiantly.

It’s hard to swallow the saffron rice Nana has set before me.

Delfina’s voice has the cadence of prayer.

I glance pleadingly at Delfina, but she nods emphatically.

Celeste, the country is enduring what your mamá calls earthquakes of the soul. Never in Chile have I seen neighbor turn against neighbor. I would never have imagined that in this country someone could knock on your door and pull you from your bed, tell you they are taking you for only a few short hours, and then interrogate you with violence.

This earthquake we are living in is called dictatorship. It is called intolerance.

I promise to do my hair up and wear my blue pleated skirt.

He had such green eyes! I would tell him he must have an immense, verdant forest in his soul.

But today his face is grim—he doesn’t even smile when Abuela Frida comes to the front door with a flourish. As always she is dressed elegantly in an orchid dress and pearl necklace and earrings.

All the shops and cafés are closed. I can’t even smell empanadas baking. I look to Abuela Frida in dismay.

But the air is still thick with the lush scent of honeysuckles.

But her voice is resolute as she continues, “But the danger creeps closer still. We need, Celeste—we need to send you to live for a while with your Tía Graciela.”

“Graciela will be there to help you,” Abuela Frida said with a wave of her hand, as if trying to sweep English to the corners of the kitchen and the far recesses of my mind.

Alongside the valley rises the tallest mountain in all the Americas, Mount Aconcagua. It fills my eyes like a snow squall.