My Brigadista Year

by Katherine Paterson

  “My son, Rafael, is six. My daughters are Emilia, who is five, and little Isabel, who has just turned three,” their father said.

  “You have beautiful children,” I said. The tiny smiles on the parents’ faces told me that I had said the right thing.

  When Luis ushered us all inside, I could see that the floor was just dirt, but swept clean. In the back room, there were two straw mattresses on the floor. The farmer and his wife apparently slept on one and the three children on the other. There was no mattress for me, or even room for another mattress. After much discussion, they decided that the teacher should hang her hammock across a corner of the kitchen. However, I would have to take it down each morning, or there would be no way to reach the dishes and stored foodstuffs. A table and stools stood in the center of the kitchen. Esteban asked the farmer for rope so that he could hang my lantern on a beam over the table. “The government wants to be sure you have plenty of light to study by,” he explained.

  I didn’t say much that evening. None of us did. The children stared at me over their plates of stew, which consisted of beans and a mixture of vegetables over rice. There was no meat that night, but I found the food very tasty. When I complimented Veronica on it, she ducked her head and blushed.

  It was nearly dark by the time the meal was finished, but there was no mention of lighting the government lantern. The family simply retired to the back room, and I hung my hammock on the hooks Luis had provided and climbed in.

  I had slept in the hammock at base camp, but Maria and some of the other girls were close by. I’d never felt alone. But that first night at the Santanas’, it felt unbearably lonely to be lying there in the dark by myself. It is so dark in the country. In Havana it is never totally dark, but there wasn’t even a moon that night, and once the sun set, it was blacker than black in that tiny room from which I could not see the stars. The blackness seemed to enhance the noises of the night — the stirring of the family on their straw mattresses, a sleepy murmur from one of the children, a low grunt from one of the pigs, the rustle of one of the large animals, restless in the stockade, and then, a sound I could not identify from farther off in the woods. A lonely, lonely cry. It’s only a bird, I told myself, just a bird.

  I longed for my family — for my mother fussing over me if she heard me cough in the night, for Abuela’s quiet snoring, for simply knowing that beyond my closed eyelids the lights of my city were coming through my window and the noises I heard were that of the occasional car driving past my home.

  Only that morning, even as late as that very afternoon, I had felt prepared, eager to start my new life as a teacher. Now the truth was like a stone lying on my chest. I knew at last why my parents had been so afraid for me. I was too young. I had had no experience to speak of as a person, much less as a teacher. And the people I would be living with seemed so timid around me. I wanted so much for them to like me. Maria had made an instant warm connection with her family, and I didn’t have any idea how she had done it. I was not good at making friends — look how few I had made at school! Only Norma, and she was more of an outcast than I was. There was Marissa, but she had probably befriended me when I arrived at Varadero because she felt sorry for me.

  I lay awake long into the night, wondering why I had volunteered, why I’d been accepted, why anyone had ever imagined that I was up to the challenge. Finally, I forced myself to turn my thoughts away from my fears and toward the family in the next room. Even if they didn’t like me, they had asked for a teacher and volunteered to take one into their home, so they must want to learn — they must want to be able to read and write. And like it or not, I was the person that had been sent to them. But was I up to the task of teaching them? At that moment I could hardly believe that I was.

  It felt as though I had barely gotten to sleep in my swaying bed when a rooster began to crow. I rolled out of the hammock and pulled on my uniform as quickly as I could in the semidarkness, hoping to be decent before anyone came in to fix breakfast. I was taking down my hammock when Veronica slipped into the room. “Buenos días, Maestra,” she said softly. She had called me “teacher,” even though I had taught her nothing yet.

  “Buenos días, Veronica,” I said, and quickly added, “Please call me Lora.”

  She smiled and nodded, but many months would pass before she ever called me by my name.

  That morning our team began our work. The first task for Juan and Maria and me was the census. That meant that we went from house to house on the neighboring farms to discover who was literate and who was not. Between houses, Maria wanted to discuss Enrico. Didn’t I think he was handsome? And so intelligent!

  “You girls think only of boys,” Juan said. “We are here to do a job, not gossip about boys!”

  I wanted to protest. I was here to do a job. Had he heard me say a word about boys? Maybe he was just jealous because none of the girls were making eyes at him, as short and scrawny as he was, with a face blossoming in pimples. But to my relief, his admonition stopped Maria’s mooning for the time being, and we went on with our canvas.

  When we came to my own house, we learned that neither Luis nor Veronica had ever been to school. There wasn’t a school for miles, and even as tiny children, they had worked on the farm. They both ducked their heads in shame when they spoke of their ignorance. Luis wouldn’t meet my eyes when he said, “I want you to teach me how to write my name. Then I will no longer have to mark an X or press my thumb to the paper when I vote or sign some important document. That is the most important thing. If, before the year is over, I can write Luis Santana, I will be satisfied.”

  Our closest neighbors were the Acosta family, an old man and woman and their son and new daughter-in-law. The women were eager to learn, but the old man shook his balding head while his son glared with disdain. Daniel, the young man, told me bluntly, “My father and I do not want to take lessons from a little girl, and our wives are too busy to spend time with this nonsense.”

  The women looked stricken.

  “That is why the lessons will be at night, when the work day is over,” Maria said. “During the day, we brigadistas will work side by side with you.”

  “What do you children from the cities know about our life? Nothing! You will only be in the way.”

  I finally mustered up the courage to speak. “You are right,” I said. “We know nothing about the hard work you and your wives must do. But we’re here to learn as well as to share what we know.”

  Nancy, his new wife, stepped forward. “Please sign me up for the lessons. And my mother-in-law as well. We talked to Lilian last week about the campaign. We want to learn.”

  Her husband didn’t even look at her. “No one from this house will be going to Santana’s house for lessons. Now — we have work to do.” And he turned on his heel and went into the farmhouse.

  We divided the potential students among the three of us. I was assigned only to Luis and Veronica. The Acostas should have been part of my class, but it didn’t look as though any of them would be coming.

  “Be patient,” Lilian said the following Sunday when I told her how I’d failed to register them. “Those men are stubborn, but their women may win them over if you cannot.”

  The next morning, I was up again before Veronica came into the kitchen. “You should sleep longer, Maestra,” she said, even though that would have been difficult since my hammock took up so much of the kitchen.

  “No,” I said. “I want to do everything with you. That is as much my job as teaching is.”

  She smiled her shy smile. “Then our first job is to fetch the water.”

  She picked up two large metal cans and carried them out the door. I followed her to the crude stockade that surrounded the oxen and goats. She hitched a wagon to the ox team and loaded on the empty containers. They were large and filled the small wagon. “This way,” she said. “We must go to the river.”

  I walked beside Veronica as she guided the oxen. She was a tiny woman, but the oxen were totally unde
r her control. “How did you learn to drive them?” I asked.

  She laughed. “These two? They are as gentle as pet rabbits. Here —” She made as if to hand me the reins. “You try.”

  “No, no. Not today. They don’t know me yet. Maybe later.”

  It was a beautiful spring morning. The orchids and hibiscus and flowers whose names I’ll never know painted the way with brilliant color. The birds were singing. I felt a bit as Eve might have felt her first morning in Eden. That is, until Veronica noticed my enchanted gaze and said a bit sharply, “We must watch the path for snakes. They won’t kill you, but the bite will hurt.” I was glad to be wearing my boots.

  I learned a lot that day — how to fill the large cans with water from the river (Veronica hefted her heavy can with ease — it was weeks before I stopped sweating and grunting), how to boil coffee, how to wash clothes on the rocks by the river (if only my mother could have seen me!), how to feed the chickens and the goats and the oxen, how to prepare a meal. In time, I would even learn to skillfully milk a goat (that took a while, believe me), cut corn with a machete, ride a horse (granted, an old, slow one), and plow a field behind a team of oxen (not that my furrows were ever straight). My skin would turn brown, and my hands become calloused.

  But during those early weeks, I longed for thick gloves to protect my skin. Cornstalks are rough, and the worms on the tomatoes and tobacco were squishy, and, well, I was a bit squeamish in those days. I tried to remind myself that many of my fellow brigadistas were working on sugar plantations where cutting cane is ruinous for one’s hands. Others had been sent to enormous tobacco estates with thousands of plants, not just the small patch Luis cultivated for the bit of cash the leaves might bring in. If every muscle in my body protested after a day hoeing corn or digging up yams, just how would I have managed on an estate of hundreds of acres? Or such was the lecture I’d give myself as I tried to straighten my aching back after an hour or two bent over a row of beans.

  “Take a rest, Lora,” Luis would say. But pride would keep me at a task until it was done. To my amusement, he began holding me up as an example to Emilia. “See, Emilia? Aren’t you ashamed, running off to play when there is still work to be done? Lora hasn’t stopped working.” I didn’t remind her father that Emilia, after all, was only five.

  But I am getting ahead of the story. That night Luis, Veronica, and I sat at the kitchen table under our bright lantern and began the first lesson in the primer. Because Luis was so eager to learn how to write his name, I wrote both their names in large chalk letters on the piece of slate Veronica had put up for a blackboard. The first lesson, you may remember, was to learn the vowels o, e, and a. I pointed out the a’s in Santana and Veronica. “And soon we will do the other vowels, i and u, which are in Luis,” I promised.

  I didn’t realize that one of the first lessons would have to be how to hold a pencil. Veronica watched me carefully as I wrote the initial letters, OEA, but Luis eagerly grabbed up his pencil and clutched it in his fist as though it were an ax poised to chop up his workbook.

  “Today,” I said, “Veronica had to teach me how to light the stove so I wouldn’t set the house on fire. Tonight, please let me show you the best way to hold a pencil so both the pencil and the workbook will survive your attack on the alphabet.”

  Luis looked up, puzzled. But when he realized I was joking, he laughed and let go of his tight grip on the pencil. Then he allowed me to demonstrate a more gentle and effective method of wielding his new tool.

  Lessons were erased daily from the slate, but never their names, which Luis always looked at longingly night by night until, after he knew his vowels and consonants — indeed all the alphabet — I wrote his name in his workbook and suggested he practice copying it. Then came the night I erased his name from the slate and urged him to try his hand at writing it where I had written it two weeks before.

  The chalk was tight in his hand and his tongue peeked out the corner of his mouth, as painstakingly he wrote, for the first time, his own name for others to see. At the final a, he let out something between a gasp and a laugh.

  “You did it,” I said. “You wrote Luis Santana.”

  “I wrote my name,” he said, “and my wife and my teacher can both read it, right? My name. Luis Santana. Now everyone who can read will know that I am Luis Santana.”

  “Wait, let me get my camera.” I fetched my uncle Roberto’s camera from my rucksack. “Now stand there — no, don’t hide your signature. Stand a little to your left so I can see both your smile and your name.”

  I’ve taken many photos since, but none I treasure more.

  In the midst of our celebration, there was a call from outside the door. We turned to see who could be visiting at this time of night. At some point during those first busy days, I had forgotten to be afraid of marauding insurgents, but I felt a chill at the call. Luis went to the door. It was the Acostas — all four of them. “We have brought the women for the lessons,” Daniel said gruffly.

  “Everyone come in,” Luis said. “Everyone must see.” He made no attempt to contain his pride. “You must look here,” he said, pointing at his signature on the slate. “I can write my name.”

  “How wonderful!” Nancy exclaimed. “Now you can sign your name and not just your thumbprint.”

  “How do you know it means anything?” her husband said grumpily. “It’s just scribbling.”

  “No,” said Luis. “It’s real writing. I know because I can read it. Look here — L-u-i-s, Luis, and S-a-n-t-a-n-a, Santana. Luis Santana. That is my name in letters, so that anyone who can read will be able to tell what it is.”

  “I can read it,” said Veronica softly. “Veronica is longer and harder, so . . .”

  “But you’re practicing,” I said. “Soon you’ll be able to write it on the slate for everyone to read.”

  “Did we come too late for the lesson?” Nancy asked.

  “No,” I said. “If Luis and Veronica don’t mind a review, I can start the first lesson with you and your mother tonight.”

  “You and Joaquin should join,” Luis said to Daniel. “Lora is a good teacher.”

  Daniel made a sound like humf. “We’ll wait outside for the women,” he said, and then turned to his wife. “But don’t you be long. We have work to do tomorrow.”

  It went that way for several nights. The Acosta men sat on the ground outside the door while their womenfolk studied under the lantern. Nancy was very bright and quickly caught up with Luis and Veronica. Her mother-in-law, Dunia, despite her determination, was having trouble making out any words.

  One afternoon, Veronica suggested that I leave the washing for her to finish and go and give Dunia a private lesson. I hesitated, but she urged me to help her neighbor, and so I went.

  “Do you know why my son relented and let Nancy and me join the lessons?” Dunia asked me that afternoon.

  “No, but I’m very glad he did.”

  She laughed. “I live with two stubborn men, but Nancy knows how to handle them. When Daniel refused to let her go to the lessons, she packed her clothes and went home to her mother’s house. When Daniel went to bring her home, she said she would not return unless he allowed the two of us to come to your class. She was not going to give her child two ignorant parents. You see, she will be having Daniel’s first child in November, and the thought that his child would not be born in his own home was too much for my son to bear, so he agreed.” She snorted. “Macho men. If only I had been as clever as my daughter-in-law when I was a young bride.”

  It was also at that private lesson that I realized that Dunia had trouble reading because, although she could often make out the words I wrote up on the slate, the small letters in the workbook were for her simply blurs on the page.

  When I told Lilian the next Sunday about the problem, she said, “The eye doctor will be coming to our area soon. Señora Acosta should get an examination.”

  When the doctor came, Joaquin accompanied his wife to the examination, and it tu
rned out they both needed glasses. Oh, how proud they were of their new government-issued glasses.

  “I can see a bird in that tree!” Dunia cried.

  “Humf,” said Joaquin. “I can see a mosquito.”

  By the next night, we had three Acostas with us at the table.

  Daniel hung around outside the door, but he was secretly listening to the activity inside. Finally, I think he realized that if he didn’t have his own pencil and workbook, he would never be able to write his name like the rest of his family — and how embarrassing would that be? Everyone, including his wife and his old mother, able to sign their names, while he would have to put his thumb on the ink pad and make a print? That wouldn’t do at all.

  I loved detailing these triumphs in my diary. Each week, I could hardly wait for Sunday to come so I could share my students’ progress with the rest of the squad. Since Maria and I were the closest neighbors, I would go by her house and we would go together to our meetings at the base camp. I didn’t try to share my life with her on the way because she was too full of talk about Enrico, how he was paying her special attention. I enjoyed being in on her romance, but, actually, I had never seen Enrico speak to Maria beyond a casual hello. When I ventured to say so, she assured me that was because he was not only dedicated to his work but adorably shy.

  “Bring your camera next week,” she said. “I know if I ask him to have his picture taken with me, he’ll jump at the chance.” I wasn’t so sure, but I brought my camera anyhow. I only had a few shots left, and I wanted to send off the roll of film with Esteban when he made his next trip into Gavilanes, which was our nearest town. I was eager to share the pictures of my farm family with my family in Havana.

  I asked Esteban to make sure they gave me two copies of every print. I needed to give Luis a picture of himself standing beside his name.