My Brigadista Year

by Katherine Paterson

  Mama, I knew, would have suggested a different friend. Norma’s complexion made me sure she was of mixed African blood. And if even my good mama was so biased, Norma surely felt the prejudice of all our fair-skinned classmates. She wiped her mouth with the side of her hand. “I’m so glad there’s someone I can talk about Martí’s writing with.” Or anything else, I thought. She took another large bite. “He is a great poet. We should all memorize his poetry, don’t you think?”

  I quickly forgave Norma’s table manners. Here was the friend I’d longed for. We ate together every noon. I soon learned that she, too, had younger brothers whom she both loved and resented. It made me feel that it might be natural for sisters to have such mixed feelings. I told her my mother wanted a daughter who was much more concerned about her looks, and she told me her mother bewailed the fact that Norma’s skin was much more like that of her father’s family than her own proud family’s. When we had known each other for several weeks, she whispered across the lunch table that her father was part of General Batista’s bodyguards. But I never told her that my uncle was killed in the 26th of July raid on the Moncada Barracks. That was a family secret I could not share even with my best friend. We swapped poems and gossip, but there was no trading of political views. Just as I couldn’t speak of my family’s past, she seemed equally hesitant to speak of her family’s present.

  On New Year’s Day 1959, our family, including my other grandmother, was sitting around the holiday meal when the telephone rang. We looked at one another. Who could be calling? But my other grandmother cried, “Answer it, Paulo! It’s Pedro calling to wish me a good new year!” She jumped to her feet. She was always sure her son would remember her sometime other than when he needed to pay off his gambling debts.

  Papi got up and went to the phone. “Yes . . . No! . . . What? . . . Are you sure? How can you be sure? . . . No! . . . You never . . .” It went on like that until, at last, the one-sided conversation seemed to be over, but Papi just stood there as though stunned, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Is it Pedro? Is he all right?” His alarmed mother cried.

  “No.” Papi turned toward our anxious faces. “No, it’s not Pedro.” The dead phone was still hanging in his hand. “It’s . . . it’s the General.”

  “What’s that scoundrel done now?” Abuela asked.

  “Shhh.” My other grandmother always wanted us to be careful. She was sure there was a policeman listening behind every door.

  My father continued standing there, the phone in his hand. “Nothing. . . . That is, maybe . . . everything.”

  He looked at our puzzled faces. “That was Ramón.” Papi’s best friend. “The General resigned last night. He’s — he’s fled the country. The 26th of July rebels have taken Santa Clara, and they are on the way here to take charge of the government.”

  “What? Here? To Havana?” Mama was as puzzled as we all were.

  “Fidel is leading them.”

  “But he’s dead,” I said. That’s what all the newspapers had been saying for years.

  “Apparently not,” Papi said. He looked at the phone in his hand, as if suddenly seeing it. He turned and hung the phone back on the wall. “Ramón knows these things. He’s one of them. That’s why he’s been disappearing in that car of his. He’s been smuggling arms into the Sierra Maestra.” He shook his head. “My best friend since elementary school, and he couldn’t trust me enough to tell me.”

  “He didn’t want you to know,” Abuela said gently. “He was trying to keep you safe, Paulo. He knows the police watch our family.”

  Papi looked at Abuela, and she looked at him. There was a silence between them that somehow held in it the story of my uncle Roberto’s life and sacrifice.

  In that quiet moment, we could hear the cheering from the street outside. The news had spread. The boys and I jumped up from the table. “You haven’t finished your dinner!” Mama yelled after us, but who cared about food on a day like this? It was more than we could take in. The dictator was gone! The July 26th movement had not been destroyed, as all the news reports had claimed. Somehow a tiny band of fighters in the Sierra Maestra had conquered Batista’s army. Fidel Castro was alive and, at that very moment, riding triumphantly toward our city!

  As we rushed out the door, I heard Abuela say, right out loud, “Gracias a Dios.” Thank God.

  The boys wanted to race down the front steps to join the crowds that were flowing like a river in flood toward the main plaza, but I grabbed them by the backs of their shirts. They were likely to be trampled in the excitement. “Wait!” I ordered. “We can’t leave here without Papi!”

  Soon Papi came out and insisted we come inside. “Your mama has made a beautiful dinner. Come in and finish eating.”

  “We want to see, Papi,” Silvio whined.

  “Please, Papi. Can’t we go see?”

  “There’s nothing to see now, boys. Not until they actually get here.”

  Shouldn’t we celebrate our victory for one more day, at least? Although the three of us protested, Mama insisted that we go to school on Monday. It seemed strange that our daily lives should go on as usual — just as if the whole world had not been turned upside down.

  And it had been turned upside down. My quiet school was like a swarm of bees whose hive has been disturbed. Even the stoical Sisters seemed agitated.

  In every class there were empty seats. Their parents let them stay home to celebrate! I thought jealously, until I realized when I went into Sister Evangelina’s classroom for Cuban History and Literature that one of the empty seats was Norma’s. Her family would not be celebrating. Norma’s father was one of the General’s bodyguards. Where was she? It was several days before I learned that victory, too, demands a price. I had to accept the fact that Norma and her family had fled north with the General. The revolution had cost me my best friend.

  There was no school on January 8. Or if there was, we didn’t know about it, because Papi, the boys, and I were among the thousands on Simón Bolívar Avenue, waving our little flags and screaming with joy. We couldn’t see over the heads of the crowds. The boys fought for turns on Papi’s shoulders and each got a glimpse of the parade of jeeps and trucks left behind by Batista’s fleeing army, now carrying our triumphant heroes into the capital.

  Within a week after I submitted my permission and application, I was notified of my acceptance. My mother started weeping all over again, but she knew she was defeated, so she began to plan my wardrobe. “We can’t afford any new clothes,” she mourned. She always wanted her children to look properly cared for.

  “I won’t need new clothes, Mama. We’ll be wearing uniforms.”

  That turned on the tear spigot again. The idea of her only daughter in men’s clothes was almost too much for her. I put my arm around her shoulder. “It’s okay, Mama. I’ll still be your daughter.”

  She looked at me through her tears. “I knew we should never have let you go to that fancy school. You got all sorts of crazy, modern ideas there.”

  “Oh, Mama, those nuns were dressed head to toe in medieval habits. They didn’t give me any crazy, modern ideas.” Except, I knew, they had taught me to think for myself. To Mama, that was a crazy, modern idea. Other schools for girls in Havana were often intent only on turning their students into good housewives and mothers.

  “Just get me an extra toothbrush and more toothpaste, please. My old comb and brush will do, and I won’t be wearing any makeup, you’ll be glad to know.” Mama thought no girl should wear makeup or think about boys before her fifteenth birthday. I didn’t dare ask her how old she was before she began thinking about boys. When she seemed so sad that the only new thing in my suitcase was a toothbrush, I relented and let her make me a new nightgown — cut down from one of her own nice ones.

  Papi gave me a camera and three rolls of film. “It’s a simple one,” he said, “but it takes good pictures. Take care of it, Lora. It belonged to your uncle Roberto.” I was touched that he would give me this treasur
e — one of the few mementos of his lost brother.

  I tried to comfort my parents with the fact that after I returned, they would never have to pay another school fee for me. Really. The government had promised that every young volunteer who finished the year of service would be guaranteed free secondary school and university education. Although they never admitted as much, I could tell both of my parents were relieved to hear that bit of news.

  Of course, everyone at school knew who had enlisted in the campaign. For the first time I became a center of attention — not all of it positive. “Don’t your parents even care about your safety?” one of the senior girls asked me. “What good do you think you can really do? Those campesinos all have IQs below normal. They won’t be able to learn. My uncle knows. He was an overseer on a sugar plantation before the revolution.”

  But at least some of the girls were openly envious and told me so. “I wanted to join, but my papi wouldn’t agree. How did you get your parents to sign?” they would ask. When I said that my abuela convinced them, their eyes would go wide with surprise. Their grandmothers would never have done such a thing, and I was aware that my abuela was a rare human being — an old woman with young ideas. It made me very proud.

  My teachers reacted in different ways. Sister Evangelina urged me to take poems and essays by José Martí to share with every campesino I worked with, so that they would be inspired by our true revolutionary hero. My English maestra demanded to know what I was going to do to keep from going backward in my progress in the language. “There won’t be anyone there with whom you can speak English,” she said, indicating that by leaving her tutelage, I was leaving civilization and in danger of becoming a barbarian. And the Sister who instructed us in belief and practice took me aside and gave me a little sermon. Teaching literacy was not a bad thing — far from it — but she understood that the young literacy teachers also would be charged with spreading the message of socialism. I was to beware of helping spread secular propaganda — not that socialism was necessarily bad, but when it veered toward the Russian variety, it made an idol of socialist belief and forgot God. “Do not forget God, Lora,” she said.

  “I won’t, Sister,” I said, wondering why she thought I might.

  “And don’t forget the moral teachings of the church.”

  “Of course not, Sister.”

  “You will be a young woman alone, unprotected by your father and far from our Mother Church, out there in the countryside. I cannot understand why your parents . . .” She stopped midsentence and sighed before she continued her homily. “Be on your guard against men with sweet words and evil intent. God will be watching.” Even though her voice was stern, if not frightening, I could see her concern for me in her dark eyes.

  “I will be very careful, Sister.”

  “I will pray for you, my child.”

  “Thank you, Sister,” I said, and I meant it. Perhaps I should have said that I would pray for her, because, as it turned out, in just a few months’ time, an act was passed to nationalize all the schools, and the teaching of religion there was prohibited.

  I found it touching that my brothers were concerned as well.

  “But who will read to us after you’re gone?”

  I put my arm around little Roberto. “You can read by yourself now,” I said. “You don’t need me anymore.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said through his tears. “I just stumble through the hard words. None of the words are hard for you.” He snuffled. “You read better than a teacher. When you read, I see all the pictures in my head and hear the voices.”

  I stroked his hair and sighed. I would miss him.

  Silvio sat up straighter on his chair. “I will read while Lora is gone.”

  “See?” I said. “Silvio will read in my place.”

  “He’s not as good as you,” Roberto protested. “He can’t make the voices right.”

  “I can, too! I just haven’t had enough practice.” Silvio looked to me for confirmation.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Silvio will get better every day, and by the time I get back, he will read better than me.” I said these words as bravely as I could, but there was a hollow echo in my heart. What if they did get along just fine without me? What if I was gone so long that they forgot to miss me and filled in the spot where I should have been with other things? They were just little boys, after all, and half the time they were so busy with their own games and spats that they hardly noticed me even when I was standing five feet from them.

  Roberto seemed to sense my anxiety. “Silvio will never be as good a reader as you, Lora,” he said, and snuggled closer to me on the couch.

  For once, Silvio didn’t argue, but his stricken face made me forget my fears. “Silvio will read in his own way. And his way will be a very good one,” I said.

  Silvio nodded his thanks. “Keep going,” he said. “We need to finish this book before you leave.”

  Abuela was especially gentle with me those two weeks before my departure. One night we were both lying on our beds in our dark room, not quite ready for sleep, and she began for the first time to talk to me about her son Roberto, who had given his life for the revolution.

  “My son died with a gun in his hand,” she said, her voice as soft as the spring night. “As much as I wanted a new day for our country, it has always saddened me that it had to come with brothers killing brothers. I am so glad that instead you will be bringing in the new day with books and pencils and the gift of words.

  “I remember,” she went on, “the day you discovered you could read. You were only a tiny little thing. We were at the market shopping, and suddenly you let go of my hand. I looked down, startled, but you were turned away, staring at a sign at the fruit seller’s. ‘Mango!’ you said. I thought you were pointing at the fruit, but you grabbed my hand and pointed it at the sign above the fruit. ‘It says mango, like in my book!’ From then on, there was no stopping you. I was very proud.”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “I can’t remember when I couldn’t read.”

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not. You were very young.”

  When the time came for me to leave, she didn’t go to the station with me. She kissed me on both cheeks and told me to be strong and kind. I promised that I would try. “And I will always wear the rosary you gave me,” I said. “That will help me to remember when I forget.”

  “Good,” she said, and kissed me on my forehead. “I will pray for you every night.”

  Those of us who had volunteered from my school had been allowed to take our exams a week early so that we could be at the Varadero training camp when it opened in April. A great herd of buses left the station that morning, so I soon lost sight of my family in the mob of relatives and friends waving farewell to the departing volunteers.

  I was not the youngest person on our bus to Varadero Beach. There were at least two boys whom I guessed were no more than ten or eleven, or about the age of my brother Silvio, though with boys it is hard to guess. When I boarded, I had recognized two other girls from my school and waved shyly. They beckoned me to join them and slid over so we could share one seat. The girls were a class ahead of me, but that day it didn’t matter. Old cliques and snobberies were forgotten. Our new selves were one united whole, ready to fight for literacy among the illiterate peasantry.

  For most of the one-hour bus ride east along the northern coast, my schoolmates and I covered our nervousness by arguing as to whose family had cried the loudest when the bus left the Havana station. Eventually I was declared winner of the contest because both of my little brothers were wailing and my father was wiping his eyes as well. The girls and I couldn’t be too frightened when we were laughing so hard.

  From the windows of the bus, I got my first glimpse of Varadero Beach. It was a warm April morning, and at the skyline, where the sea met the bright blue of the spring sky, the water was a dark, almost purplish blue. As it neared the beach, it turned to aquamarine, but then, where the white waves licked
the gleaming sand, the water was the color of turquoise. No wonder that before the revolution, rich people from all over had gathered here to play in these beautiful waters and bask in our warm Cuban sun.

  It was hard for me to believe that this place that had once been a playground for the wealthy was now the place where we ordinary youngsters would be trained to be brigadistas. We were called brigadistas because we young literacy workers, those of us under eighteen, would be part of the new Conrado Benítez Brigade. It was to be like an army of young people — not an army carrying weapons of war, but, as Abuela had said, one carrying pencils and books.

  Conrado Benítez was a young black man who had gone to work as a literacy teacher in the Escambray Mountains. Even though the revolution had triumphed more than a year before, it was still a dangerous place. Some of the defeated army had fled to those mountains with their weapons, determined to defeat the proposed literacy campaign. Just three weeks before Conrado’s eighteenth birthday, the insurgents captured him. They tortured him, and then this year, on the fifth of January, to be exact, they killed him. Papi had, of course, thought of his death when I said I wanted to volunteer. Whenever the thought had come into my mind, I’d tried to bury it in my excitement for the adventure ahead.

  But I could not, should not, forget Conrado’s sacrifice. He was our hero and our example, though secretly I hoped I would never have to follow that example. For all my fierceness in front of my family, I wasn’t born to be a hero.

  At last our bus pulled off the seaside highway into the parking area behind a hotel that looked to be the size of several soccer fields. When we climbed off the bus, a young man with a clipboard looked up my name and directed me to my lodgings at the resort.

  I stood uncertainly in the doorway of a room that I was sure had been once part of a luxurious suite, but which was now filled with cots like a dormitory. One of my roommates saw me before I saw her. “Welcome,” she said, taking my small bag from my hand. “Let’s find you an empty bed so you can get settled.”