Module 2: "A Genetics of Justice" by Julia Alvarez

The pale face of a young military man wearing a plumed bicorne hat and a gold-braided uniform looked down beneficently at my mother as she read her romantic novelas and dreamed of meeting the great love of her life.

Perhaps because she had innocently revered him, my mother was now doubly revolted by this cold-blooded monster.

One such story showed the seeds of Trujillo's megalomania. As a child, Trujillo had insisted his mother sew coke bottle tops or chapitas to his shirt front so that he could have a chest of medals.

How plumes for his Napoleonic hats were purchased in Paris and shipped in vacuum-packed boxes to the Island.

How his uniforms were trimmed with tassels and gold epaulettes and red sashes, pinned with his medals, crisscrossing his chest.

How he costumed himself in dress uniforms and ceremonial hats and white gloves—all of this in a tropical country where men wore guayaberas in lieu of suit jackets, short-sleeved shirts worn untucked so the body could be ventilated.

And that's when my mother would tell me how, under pressure from his friends up north, Trujillo pretended to be liberalizing his regime.

Periodically, Trujillo would demand a tribute, and they would acquiesce.

If you did not march, your cédula would not be stamped, and without a stamped identification card, you could do nothing; in particular, you could not obtain your passport to leave the country under the pretext of wanting to study heart surgery.

Under her breath, my mother is cursing this monster who drags thousands of women out on the hot streets to venerate him.

For there, no more than ten steps away, he stands, a short, plump man sweating profusely in his heavy dress uniform.

She can see the rivulets of sweat under his Napoleonic hat, making his pancake makeup run down his face, revealing the dark skin beneath.

Still, my mother found ways of controlling me. The Trujillo cautionary tales worked momentarily, in that I loved to hear those outlandish stories.

The novel would be a fictional retelling of the story of three Mirabal sisters, contemporaries of my mother, whose murder had been reported in that confiscated Time magazine.

There were still old cronies of the dictator around who would love an excuse to go after my family, after my father, after her.

I inscribed a copy to both Mami and Papi with a note: "Thank you for having instilled in me through your sufferings a desire for freedom and justice."

I stood in my kitchen in Vermont, stunned, relishing her praise and listening to her cry.

If there is such a thing as genetic justice that courses through the generations and finally manifests itself full-blown in a family moment, there it was.