Before We Were Free by Julia Álvarez

but until now I never got any answers.
    All these things that Oscar tells us I write down in my diary.
    I don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I’m stitching the scraps back together. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night crying out. I cross the hall to Lucinda’s room and slip in beside her. She seems to welcome my presence because she lets me stay there instead of telling me to scram, like in the old days.
    The worst stories Oscar tells are the ones about El Jefe. When I first heard how bad he was from Lucinda, I felt so confused. Everyone had always treated El Jefe like God. I shudder to think how many times I’ve prayed to him instead of to Jesus on His cross.
    “He does even worse things than crucify people,” Oscar tells us one time. “He disappears them.”
    I remember Chucha saying the SIM disappeared people. “What exactly does that mean?” I ask Oscar. He’s so much easier to talk to than Lucinda. I usually have to beg her and then throw in a free back rub before she’ll tell me anything.
    “He arrests people, then cuts out their eyes and fingernails, and throws their cadavers in the sea for the sharks to eat them.”
    “Wow!” Sammy says, impressed, his eyes greedy for more awful details.
    I feel sick to my stomach. The thought of Tío Toni, eyeless and fingernail-less, is just too horrible to think about. But I don’t want to throw up in front of a boy I’m falling in love with and a cousin I don’t want to be related to. “We have a mystery ghost,” I speak up, wanting to change the subject. I mean to make my news sound scary, but a ghost now seems harmless compared to what we just heard.
    “He comes at night, then leaves during the day,” Sam adds. I’ve told Sam about the light I saw at Tío Toni’s house Christmas Eve. We fill Oscar in on all the particulars of the unlocked door and cigarette butts.
    “Let’s go see,” Oscar insists.
    As we head for the back of the property, we hear hurried footsteps coming down the walk toward us.
    “What are you doing back here?” Chucha questions, looking from one to the other, as if she’s trying to figure out which one of us will be most likely to tell her the truth.
    “We’re allowed to,” I announce, showing off in front of my friends.
    Chucha levels her gaze at me. I know she’s about to say that she’s the one to allow or not to allow things, as she once changed my diapers.
    Quickly, I back down and explain. “Somebody’s been in Tío Toni’s
casita,
Chucha.”
    Her dark eyes widen in warning. “You have to be very careful,” she whispers, making the familiar gesture of cutting off her head. “Things will be happening soon for which there is no protection.” She looks up at the sky and then all around her as if she sees signs everywhere. “No protection but silence, no protection but dark hiding places, wings, and prayers.” Listening to her, I remember how Chucha sometimes sees the future in dreams. I shiver, wondering what she has seen.
    Although Sam knows a little Spanish, he rarely understands Chucha, who has a tendency to mumble and mix in Haitian words with her Spanish. “What’s she saying?” he wants to know.
    “I’m not sure,” I tell him. “Sometimes she talks in riddles and you have to try to figure out what she’s saying.” Turning back to my old nursemaid, I ask her what’s uppermost on my mind. “Is Tío Toni all right?”
    As if Chucha not only gives answers but makes them materialize, a face appears at the window of the small house. There’s no mistaking the dark, curly hair, the strong jaw, the good looks that make pretty girls call up my aunt Mimí and ask if they can come over and look at her orchids. I feel a rush of relief to see my uncle intact, no eyes or fingernails missing. But I have sense enough not to call out his name.
    “Who’s that?” Sammy asks. He and Oscar are peering