I Lived on Butterfly Hill Read online

  “It’s Celeste Marconi! Are you there?”

  But the sky is covered by a gray fog.

  The pelicans don’t fly by.

  I go downstairs to finally call Cristóbal and apologize for calling him a liar. I wince when I think of how right he was, and how unfair I was to him.

  I dial his number, but the telephone line is busy. I try again and again. “Mamá? Why can’t I get through to Cristóbal?” I ask, frustrated.

  Mamá, who looks like a sleepwalker, doesn’t answer me at first. Then she says, “What? What was that, Celeste? Oh, the phones . . . So many people trying to call their loved ones, trying to figure out what is going on . . . The lines must be tied up, or they’ve been cut.”

  I know Mamá is talking about the phone lines, but her words terrify me. Tied up or cut. The same thing could happen to people!

  It’s not just my mother. All day everyone in the house is preoccupied: talking in whispers, listening to the radio, speaking furtively to neighbors who come to the door. Abuela Frida keeps putting her head in her hands and crying out—“José and I met Alarcón when we were just married! He was a law student then, and a fine and respectable man!”—over and over in disbelief.

  I find refuge on the roof as much as possible, sitting on my hands to stop them from shaking. It is spring, but I feel so cold!!! My limbs tremble and tremble—this is the earthquake of the soul Mamá spoke about. How could someone kill the president? A good man who wanted to help people? How could someone kill anyone? What is the General going to do to Chile? I heard on the radio that he wanted to “clean the country.” Clean it of what? He says strange things like “bleaching the streets of dirt” and talks about making the whole country pure and white! I think of all the colors of Valparaíso—the flowers, the kites, the paint on the houses and stores . . . and what will happen to all the murals that line the streets going up and down the hills?! And all the colorful people . . .

  Suddenly, I don’t know exactly why, at the heart of all my confusion, I feel afraid for my parents. Very afraid.

  Before, I Only Feared Earthquakes

  I wake early the next morning and creep, barefoot, to the kitchen. But I stop when I hear the voices of my parents and grandmother, for what my father says makes me sit on the stairs and wrap my arms around my stomach. He is telling them how he snuck down to the harbor last night, and how the biggest warship has a belly full of prisoners. “I could hear the cries of the men and women trapped in the storerooms.” He pauses, then adds, “The rumor is that they’re being beaten and thrown into the ocean.”

  Before, I only feared earthquakes. So I thought I knew fear. But now I realize I didn’t. Not at all. Because this new fear is entirely different and strange. I put one icy foot in front of the other. It takes me forever to get down the stairs. I walk into the kitchen, and everyone stops talking. I sit down and hear my own voice sounding like a stranger’s: “Buenos días, Mamá, Papá, Abuela Frida, Nana Delfina.”

  I shiver as I try to eat the sweet bread Delfina places before me, and pretend that I haven’t heard anything.

  “Are you cold, Celeste?” Abuela Frida asks, and wraps a blue scarf around my shoulders. I nod my head up and down.

  At school a man with a uniform covered with medals stands at the front door. He nods at each one of us as we enter the building. I keep my head down—everyone does. And everyone is absolutely quiet. No one laughs or runs or shouts in the halls. The man looks like he is counting each student. Is he looking for something or someone in particular?

  And Lucila still hasn’t returned to school! I look over at Marisol. She smiles at me weakly. Ana is not back either, and it looks like a few more classmates have left too. Once, doce, trece . . . I count nineteen missing! Is the man with the medals looking for them?

  I crane my neck to see Cristóbal’s desk, and breathe a sigh of relief. He is still here. I manage to catch his eye and mouth the words “I’m sorry.” He looks down at his desk for a moment. When he looks up again, he looks much older. His eyes, especially, are so serious and alert. Then he flashes a quick grin in my direction. I grin back, for a single moment forgetting everything except how lucky I am to have him.

  Marta Alvarado sits quiet and still at her desk. The enormous black shadows under her eyes make her look like a raccoon. But she still wears her red lipstick. Finally our teacher—who always flew joyfully this way and that about the classroom with maps and teacups in her hands—speaks.

  “Students.” Her voice is hoarse. “It is my duty to inform you that Principal Castellanos’s time in the Juana Ross School has ended. Beginning today the military authorities are in charge of your education.”

  Principal Castellanos! But he’s been at Juana Ross for twenty years! Gone? Just like that?! Where did he go?!

  Marisol raises her hand, but Señorita Alvarado just shakes her head and puts her finger to her lips.

  She glances toward the classroom door, which is open to the hallway, where another man in uniform stands at attention. Even from the back of the room, I see the fear in her eyes. Then, as if she has made a big decision, she says, “I promise you children we will keep learning as best we can. And without fear.”

  A single tear slides down to her chin. She quickly wipes it away, with another glance at the open door.

  “Today our first task is to paint over the murals we painted on the walls. The authorities have ordered that all school walls must be white. And, girls, beginning tomorrow, you can only wear skirts to class, no pants. And you must wear your hair tied back in a bun. Nice and tidy, no loose strands flying in the wind. Boys, you must all cut your hair short, to above your ears. If you do not do it, the authorities will do it for you.”

  What?! Erase the paintings we all worked so hard on at the beginning of the school year? The children doing cartwheels, the hills and harbor of our city, a white dove that Marisol and I painted with the word “paz,” peace, emerging from its mouth on an olive branch? So we can be surrounded by blank walls, by nothing? Why?!

  And what does it matter how we dress, or if our hair is long or short, up or down? Can they actually tell us what we have to look like?!

  My head starts to ache. I rub my eyes, suddenly feeling so, so tired. Nothing makes sense anymore.

  That night the voice on the radio calls what is happening to Chile “the restoration of order to the country.” I write the words down in my notebook and wonder—what was out of order before?

  A Horrible Trick

  Another day at school and no sign of Lucila. Where is she? Where is Ana? Every day there are one, two, three more empty chairs in the classroom. How can it be that so many people are leaving without a trace, telling no one?! It’s horrible, like an evil magic trick. And there’s even a word for it—“disappearing.”

  Disappear. I hear that word on the cable cars when I go to school in the mornings and come straight home in the afternoons. No more eating ice cream in the market or exploring the harbor with my friends. Our parents all want us safe at home. Disappear. I hear that word when I sit under the table late at night, when my parents think I am asleep. Disappear. Marisol whispers that word to me in the school yard before the first bell rings. “I heard Papá tell Mamá that my uncle was made to disappear.”

  “But how? By who?”

  “The soldiers!” she hisses back into my ear, glancing around to make sure we don’t see the soldier who tramples his big black boots all over the school all day—“in order,” the new principal tells us, “to maintain discipline worthy of the fatherland.”

  “But,” I protest, “Lucila’s father has to be somewhere! People don’t just vanish! And”—I gulp—“what about Lucila and her mother?”

  Marisol begins to sob. “Mamá tells me there is a chance that they escaped and went into hiding. But then I heard Papá tell Mamá not to get my hopes up, that she knows that is nearly impossible, that there were witnesses the night my uncle was taken away who say they left a guard at the door and that a car with no lice
nse plate came back soon for the rest of the family. It would have been impossible to escape!”

  I hardly know what to say. I think of what my father said, about the cries from the bellies of the warships. I shake my head, trying to erase the image from my mind—Lucila cannot be there! And I say the only thing I can say. “We can’t lose hope, Marisol! I heard my parents talking about how many of their friends are escaping by climbing over the Andes by night and hiding in caves during the day!”

  Marisol draws a raggedy breath. “Yes, you’re right. There’s a chance.” She gives me a wry look. “Even though Lucila hates the cold . . .” I think of my friend shivering in a snowstorm. Is she freezing? Is she hungry? Where is she?!

  The bell rings and I jump. “Ay! Hurry so we aren’t late!” I hand my handkerchief to Marisol. “Dry your eyes so nobody asks you why you’re crying!” I urge her.

  Marisol wipes her face and blows her nose. “Gracias, amiga.” Then she looks at me urgently. “Celeste, can I tell you a secret?”

  “You know you can!”

  Marisol takes another raggedy breath. “I feel selfish saying this—I do!—especially since Lucila is the one I should be worried about—but I have nightmares every night that I will be taken away!”

  “Me too.”

  “Celeste, I don’t want to disappear!”

  “Me neither.” We file into the building, and I try to imagine that one day I woke up and just didn’t exist, was swallowed up by a black cloud without saying good-bye to anyone. A strange thought comes into my head. I think tomorrow I will bring photos of myself to school, just in case I disappear. I don’t want people to forget I existed.

  I pass Gloria on the way to my desk. She meets my gaze and quickly turns her head down to her math book. Her brown shoes tap quickly against the floor—tap tap tap—the way they always did before a test that made her nervous, or sometimes when she talked about how strict her father could be. But she doesn’t talk about her father anymore. In fact, I realize, she doesn’t say much to anyone at all.

  She Is So Like You

  Today my parents do something they’ve never ever done: go to work late. They want to ride the trolley cars with me to school before heading to the hospital.

  “I can walk from here by myself,” I tell them when we get out at the bottom of Barón Hill, but my mother shakes her head and takes my hand. Papá follows a few steps behind us, fiddling with his stethoscope. Last night after supper he announced he didn’t want to let me go to school anymore. But I told him I wanted to keep going, no matter what.

  “I won’t leave Juana Ross!” I yelled at him. “What does the president getting shot two hours away in Santiago have to do with me leaving school?! It won’t change anything!” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at Papá defiantly, all the while knowing what I’d said was childish. I know my parents are worried about all the families disappearing around us. About the soldiers at my school and in the street and what they could do to me. But that childish part of me hopes that if I pretend my own life is still normal, everything around me will somehow magically go back to normal too. The warships in the bay will go away, and Lucila and Ana and everyone else will come back.

  Then Papá looked very cross. He had met Presidente Alarcón and helped in his campaigns for health care for the poor. I guess I supported our president too, but right now he just seems to be part of this big argument in our country that has messed everything up! Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to help the poor so much . . . though I don’t understand why that made the soldiers so angry . . . but I don’t care, because then Lucila and Ana and Señor Castellanos wouldn’t be gone . . . and then Gloria wouldn’t have become so nasty. . . .

  “Andrés, we must let Celeste see her friends, keep her life as normal as possible!” my mother spoke up for me.

  “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. “Andrés, listen to what you are saying! Chile will never be free if we don’t let our children be children! Mi amor, we had our child so she could follow her heart! She wants to stay in school!”

  “She is so like you, Esmeralda,” my father said with a sigh, and reached across the table for her hand.

  Before we left the house this morning, my mother put a letter “to Señorita Marta Alvarado” in my backpack. “For your teacher’s eyes only,” she said sternly. I stared at the envelope’s whiteness. It was exactly the same color as our new school walls.

  “Can’t I know what it says, Mamá?”

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

  As we approach Juana Ross, I spot Cristóbal walking through the gate. He waves to my parents. “Hola, Señora Marconi, Señor Marconi!”

  “Hola, Cristóbal!” they call out in unison.

  “Adiós, Mamá! Adiós, Papá! See you later!” I run ahead of them to join Cristóbal before my father changes his mind.

  “Celeste, come see! My pendulum has been acting stranger than ever today!” Cristóbal’s eyes dart this way and that as he leads me over to an empty corner of the courtyard. We sit with our backs against the broad trunk of a eucalyptus tree so no one can see us. Cristóbal pulls the pendulum from his pocket and holds it between his index finger and his thumb. “Wake up!” he commands it loudly. The pendulum doesn’t move to and fro like it usually does. Cristóbal pushes it with his other hand, and the pendulum doesn’t budge!

  A chill comes over me. “That’s weird,” I say, then add hopefully, “Is this a new trick?”

  “Really, Celeste! Feel for yourself!” Cristóbal reaches for my hand and places it against the pendulum. It is stiff and holds firm as if it is rooted in the air!

  “Ow!” I draw back my hand. “It’s cold!”

  “What’s going on here?!” A voice like a thundercloud booms from behind us. Cristóbal and I jump and turn in unison. The guard who patrols the school is glaring at us from the other side of the tree. “What—I mean—Buenos días, sir,” Cristóbal stammers. I clutch his arm in fear. I feel him trembling.

  “Let me see that.” The guard’s voice is low and cruel, but as I look at his face, I see he is young. He looks like one of the senior boys—he can’t be even twenty years old. His leather-gloved hand grabs the pendulum from Cristóbal’s.

  “What are you up to back here? I’ve been told to watch out for this voodoo of yours!”

  “Please, sir!” I stand up to face the guard. “It’s only a game! A toy! He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  The guard’s face reddens. “You, niña! Sit down! Or I’ll report you for conduct unbecoming of a lady, sitting behind a tree with a boy!” He laughs to himself.

  “Leave her alone!” Cristóbal stands up and moves between me and the guard.

  In a flash the guard pulls out the club he carries at his hip and smashes it down toward Cristóbal’s head! Cristóbal darts out of the way, but the club still lands hard on his shoulder.

  “Please! Stop!” I move close to Cristóbal’s side just as the bell rings.

  The soldier smirks again. “One more thing before you go to class . . .” 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. And every time he steps on it, it glows more and more red. I can feel the heat from it on my face—it’s turned hot as fire. . . .

  Finally the guard backs away. “Let me never see that again!” His scowl has turned to a look of terror.

  “Cristóbal!” I cry. “Are you hurt?!” I touch his shoulder lightly, and he winces and pulls away.

  “No, it’s just a little sore.” He tries to make his voice brave.

  “Let me see if anything’s bro
ken.” I start to press my fingers lightly up his arm like I’ve seen my parents do. I watch myself go through the motions as if trapped in a nightmare from which I can’t wake up. How could this be anything else but a bad dream? It just doesn’t make sense—Cristóbal bludgeoned by a guard at the Juana Ross School? The school we have both known since we were five years old?!

  I must be pressing Cristóbal’s flesh too hard, because suddenly his hand covers my own and gently takes it off his arm. “Celeste, I’m fine!” he protests. “If we don’t get to class, things will get a lot worse for both of us. Come on!”

  He’s right. I nod and take Cristóbal by one hand and his pendulum by the other. And we run, all the way into the building and down the hall to Marta Alvarado’s classroom, without saying a word.

  Marisol looks sorrowfully at me when I enter the classroom and sit down without even taking off my coat.

  “That was a test!” Gloria whips her head around and whispers to me viciously. “And you failed, Celeste!”

  My mind reels in confusion. Test of what? Did Gloria tell on us? Is that why the guard came over?! She gives me a little smirk. She did tell! How could she be so . . . so . . . cruel?! I am stunned and scared and hurt but angry, too—angry enough to meet her cold gaze without wavering until she turns back around. Then I put my head down on my desk and close my eyes, trying to still my racing heart.

  I hear Señorita Alvarado asking questions and students answering her, but she doesn’t call on me. I don’t realize how much time has passed until Marisol taps me on the shoulder. “Celeste, it’s time for lunch.” I raise my head and shake it—saying, “I’m not hungry”—and put my head down again.

  Marisol gently tugs one of my braids, and I hear her say, “I will bring you a sandwich in case you get hungry later.” I want to tell her thank you, but I can’t. I am trapped even deeper in the nightmare, terrified that if I lift my head or speak or even move an inch, another horrible thing—something even more terrible—will happen to me or one of my friends. I stay frozen like that until the final bell rings. Then I spring to my feet like a hunted rabbit, and without looking left, right, or anywhere but straight ahead, I run all the way home to Butterfly Hill.