My Brigadista Year

by Katherine Paterson

As much as I grew to love my family and the Acostas, our Sunday gatherings at the base camp were a treat. Esteban didn’t want us walking through the forest after dark, so he insisted we start home long before sundown. There were no songs around the fire. But we still had music. Carlos brought his guitar every Sunday, and Lilian was not above cutting off an Esteban lecture in midsentence to announce that it was time for a break.

  Carlos always played cheerful songs, and Maria and Isora would jump up to start the dancing. At first, I just watched. Dancing in the firelight during those first nights at base camp had been one thing, but now I was a bit shy about dancing in the bright daylight. Everyone seemed to be a better dancer than I was. But Maria wouldn’t let me sit there watching for long. She pulled me to my feet. “You must dance,” she said. So I did. And a minute later, Carlos shouted across to me, “That’s more like it, Lorita!” I’m sure my face turned the color of a ripe strawberry, but, of course, I was thrilled. It felt so good to be a part of a crowd of friends and not a lonely someone looking in longingly from the outside.

  I began to spend a day each week working at the Acostas’. They didn’t need me as much as the Santanas, as they had four capable adults to do the chores, whereas at my house there were only two. But Luis felt strongly that I should spend some daylight time with the neighbors. He was right, of course. Chopping corn together, we got to know each other better, and though Daniel never really apologized for his earlier rudeness to me, he made a real effort to listen carefully during the lessons and work hard.

  The Acostas were always glad to see me when I came to their farm, and it eased the initial awkwardness of their studying with me. One day Daniel and I had a race to see who could fill a basket of beans first.

  “You lose!” he crowed.

  “No fair,” I said. “Your arms are longer.”

  “What do long arms have to do with it? It’s skill.”

  “Well. You’ve been picking longer — years longer.”

  “Can I help it if all you’ve done is read books?”

  I had to laugh. Not because anything was so terribly funny, but because sour-faced Daniel and I were actually having fun together.

  One day he had fetched the Santanas’ oxen for plowing, as the two families shared their use. When it was time for me to go home, Daniel asked me to drive the pair home and save him the round-trip. I was very honored that he would trust me with this errand.

  Having all four Acostas in the class made everything more lively. However, teaching Joaquin how to write his name became something of a challenge. He looked at what I had written on the slate and said, “That’s not my name.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “J-o-a-q-u-i-n. That is the way to spell Joaquin.”

  “No,” he protested. “It should be J-o-a-c-i-n. You taught us ca, ce, ci, co, cu. It should be ci, like you taught us.”

  “No, Joaquin, I’m sorry. I didn’t teach you that. I told you it’s ca, co, cu, but the c before i and e is pronounced like an s sound. C-i is pronounced ‘si.’ You wouldn’t want to pronounce Joaquin ‘Joasin,’ would you? Of course not. So the proper spelling of your name is J-o-a-q-u-i-n.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why,” I said. “I didn’t decide it. Maybe somebody long ago in Spain decided on this funny way to write it. It’s strange, but that’s the way it is. And if you want someone to look at what you’ve written and read ‘Joaquin,’ this is the way you will have to spell it.”

  He shook his head. “It makes no sense,” he grumbled.

  “No, it doesn’t, and I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s just the way it is.”

  “When I write my letter, I will tell Fidel it is wrong and tell him to change it. We won our freedom from Spain many years ago. Those stupid imperialists have no right to tell us how to write our own names.”

  On Sunday when I read this story aloud from my diary, all my friends laughed with delight. “He’s perfectly right,” Lilian said. “You must encourage Joaquin to write Fidel and tell him so.”

  Writing a letter to Fidel was not a joke. It was part of the final exam for those who had completed the primer. There were three tests. The first test required students to write their full names and addresses. Then they were required to read and write six simple words, three simple sentences, and a short paragraph. For the intermediate test, the words and sentences to be read were harder. The final test consisted of a paragraph with quite difficult words. In English it went something like: “The revolutionary government wants to turn Cuba into an industrialized society. Many industries will be started. Many people will have jobs. There will be no more unemployment.”

  After the paragraph was read, the student was required to write out answers to several questions related to the paragraph. Then he or she had to turn the paper over and write out the paragraph as the teacher dictated it.

  Finally, the student was to write a letter to Dr. Fidel Castro. When our leader announced the literacy campaign, he said that he wanted every student who completed the primer to write him a letter. So the letter became part of the final test.

  Every night I looked at my students, their heads bent over their workbooks, the bright light of the lantern shining on their hair, and wondered if any of them would pass the final test before the end of the year. Was it an impossible goal? They were trying so hard. We were all trying so hard, and they could all, at last, write their own names, but it was the middle of the summer before my best students, Luis and Nancy, passed the first test.

  For all her seeming giddiness about love, Maria must have been a good teacher. All six of her students had passed their first tests and were well on their way to taking the second. My envy of her looks and warm personality gave way to my envy of her success. But she never lorded it over me.

  “I’m just lucky. My students are all so eager,” she said. “They are easy to teach.”

  In the midst of my discouragement, there were wonderful moments. I remember when it was old Dunia’s turn to read a paragraph. She pushed her glasses back up on the bridge of her nose and, with a finger on each word, she struggled through the two-sentence paragraph. Then she went back to the beginning and read the paragraph again. Then a third time, the pitch of her voice going up with excitement as she tore through the short passage. She raised her head, her eyes wide behind the thick lenses. “I can read!” she cried out. “I can read!”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can read. You have been reading for quite some time, but you didn’t realize it.”

  Everyone began to laugh and clap. I may have been the only one with tears in my eyes. I must write home about this, I thought. My parents must be told how wonderful it is to witness such ecstasy and to know that you have played a part in creating it. And, of course, I could hardly wait until Sunday to tell Esteban and Lilian and the rest of the squad about my triumph.

  Some weeks after the Acostas had joined our class, Joaquin offered the use of their horse, Bonita, for Maria and me to ride to our Sunday meetings with our advisers. Neither of us had ever ridden a horse before, but the Acostas’ old mare was as gentle as Joaquin had promised — and slow, really slow. We might have gotten there faster on our own two feet, but we couldn’t risk hurting Joaquin’s feelings. He seemed so proud to have something to offer the teachers. Besides, horseback riding was one more thing to add to the long list of things I was learning in the mountains.

  That particular Sunday morning, I was especially impatient as I waited outside Maria’s house, bursting as I was to tell everyone about Dunia’s triumphant accomplishment. But for Maria, Sunday was the day she would see Enrico, so, as usual, she was spending a long time brushing her hair and primping. If either of us had owned any makeup, I’m not sure if we’d have gotten to the weekly meetings before noon.

  One look at the alarmed faces awaiting our arrival, and my high spirits crashed to the ground before we had even dismounted. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  For a moment, each one waited for someon
e else to speak. Then Lilian said softly, “Tie up the horse and come inside. We need to talk.”

  I did as she directed and followed the advisers and the other latecomers into the largest house in the village. We squeezed into the front room, which was already jammed with uniformed bodies. About half of the squad had spilled over into the adjoining room. The few kitchen stools were pushed under the table. No one was attempting to sit down. No one was making a sound.

  “The militia was here last night,” Esteban said quietly. “Yesterday they came upon a campsite, obviously one belonging to the counterrevolutionaries. They were able to track down and surround a dozen or so of the bandidos in the hills about ten kilometers from here. But they are sure some of them escaped. Those captured boasted that others would come and kill all the literacy teachers in the area.”

  My heart jumped in my chest. I am truly not a brave person.

  “Well, that’s good they were captured,” said Juan. “But what will they do with prisoners? There’re no jails around here.”

  “They have taken no prisoners,” said Lilian softly.

  “Oh,” said Juan.

  “But there are still live insurgents out there,” said Esteban, trying to change the subject for those of us imagining yesterday’s brutal scene. “You are to be careful. Maybe stay inside your houses for a few days, just until the militia finds the runaways.”

  “But I’m plowing tomorrow!”

  “I have to hoe the corn!”

  “I’m doing the washing,” I said quietly. Everyone looked at me. They knew that washing had to be done at the riverside, not in a field close to the house.

  Esteban shook his head. “Do what you must,” he said. “But do be careful. Don’t wear your uniforms outside your houses. There will be no more Sunday meetings until the militia tells us it is safe to move about the area.”

  I can remember how quiet I was on the way to Maria’s house. She kept up a nervous chatter about Enrico. How charming and brave and wonderful he was.

  “The picture you took for me? I’m sending it to my parents. I want them to see the beautiful man I am going to marry.”

  “Marry? Who? What?”

  “Enrico! You weren’t listening to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I hadn’t been listening. “What were you saying?”

  This time she repeated, with a trace of impatience in her voice, that she was sending the picture I had taken to show her parents the man she was planning to marry.

  I was startled. I had written off all her carrying on as a teenage crush. Nothing more. Finally I said, “Do you really think you’re in love with him?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” she said. “And I know he’s in love with me.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t imagine when they had ever been alone together. We always did everything in the big group. How could either of them be sure of anything?

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s true. I know he loves me. His eyes have told me so.”

  I could picture Enrico’s dark eyes shining out of his very dark skin. He was quite beautiful, but he smiled at everyone, not just Maria.

  “He was very happy when I showed him the picture of us you took.”

  “Really?” I was beginning to sound like a broken record, but I didn’t want my friend to be hurt. Her idea of Enrico’s love seemed to me more like a fantasy spun out of wishful thinking than reality. Reality was live insurgents roaming the forest — and dead ones lying in the bush.

  It was not until I had dropped Maria off and was on the way home that I realized that I hadn’t told anyone about Dunia’s triumph. What kind of brigadista was I — thinking only of my own safety and not of my students?

  I didn’t say anything to Luis and Veronica about what had gone on at the meeting. I didn’t want my fear to spread like a contagion to my farm families, because by now, they were my family. But they knew, somehow, about the new danger. That night when it was time for class, Luis said, “We must move our studies to the back room.”

  “There’s no table in there,” I said.

  He lit the lamp in the kitchen. “Show her,” he said to Veronica.

  “Come with me, Maestra,” Veronica said, taking my hand and leading me out of the house. We went across the fields and into the trees beyond. “Do you see?”

  From far away, even through the foliage, I could see the brilliant light of our lantern hanging from the rafter, and beneath it, the form of a man and the heads of two children bobbing about inside. “You see? A man with a powerful gun could shoot anyone from this distance,” she said.

  I shivered at the thought.

  To my surprise, the Acostas came that night. They did not question the move. We sat on the mattresses next to the sleeping little girls, and the students wrote on their laps. It was awkward, but no one complained.

  I wrote my own family in Havana every week, but mail was seldom delivered into the mountains, so I had received only one letter from home since I’d left Varadero on April 28. My one letter came from my mother after I’d been in the mountains about three weeks, asking me how I was, what sort of toilet facilities were available, in short, if life in the country was too hard for me.

  So you can imagine that I never included in my own letters any fears or frustrations I might have. Yes, I said, life was different, it took getting used to, but it was a challenge, and they all knew how much I loved a challenge. (I stopped writing when I wrote that sentence. Should I erase the part about their knowing I loved a challenge? Did any of my family think I loved a challenge? Well, I did like to study hard subjects. And I had dared to join the campaign. Surely they would recognize those as challenges. I left it in.) I was learning so much, I said. Could they believe that I could milk a goat? Boil coffee? Wash clothes on a rock? Cut corn with a machete?

  And the Santana children were darling. Luis and Veronica were like an older brother and sister to me, etc., etc., etc. I was simply a fountain of cheer. In my weekly letters home, that is. But this week, I wasn’t sure what I could write after Esteban’s grim warnings.

  The next morning after breakfast, I took off my beloved uniform and dressed in the one blouse and skirt outfit I had brought from home. My only shoes now were my boots, but I had to have something on my feet. Without my uniform and beret, I felt strangely bare. But Esteban had forbidden us to wear boots outside the house. I sighed and gathered the clothes that needed washing, put them in the basket, and started out the door. Veronica stopped scrubbing Isabel’s face and looked at me. “Where are you going?”

  “The washing . . .”

  “Not today,” she said. “We can do it another time.”

  “It’s all right. We can’t let them stop us.” I think I even tossed my head. “I’m not afraid.” Which of course was a colossal lie.

  “Well, I’m afraid,” she said quietly. She took the basket from my hands. “Please . . .”

  Perhaps I should have argued, but I didn’t. I wasn’t that bold.

  “Rafael is eager to write his name,” she said. “He wants to be like his papi. Would you teach him?”

  “Of course,” I said. “When?”

  “Now is a good time.”

  I went out and found Rafael squatting between two rows of tobacco plants, pulling bugs off the leaves and dropping them into a cup of kerosene. Luis, usually busy in the fields, was nowhere to be seen. I remember thinking that he must have gone to the Acostas’ for something.

  Rafael was delighted to leave his messy chore to have a private lesson with the grown-ups’ teacher. We went back into the house.

  “Sit at the table,” I said. “Your mama said you wanted to write your name. You have a long name with many letters. Can you do that?”

  He nodded vigorously.

  I fetched my diary and two pencils from my rucksack. Then I sat on a stool next to him, tore a page from the back of my diary, and carefully wrote his name on it.

  “See?” I said. “You have a very hard name to write.”

&nbs
p; He studied the paper and then carefully took up a pencil. He worked with his eyes squeezed in concentration. His mouth was open and his tongue went back and forth across his lips as though willing his fingers to push the pencil across the page. His first attempts looped and straggled like drunken snakes. One attempt even left the page entirely and ended up marking the tabletop.

  “Maybe we should wait until you’ve learned your letters.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No. I can do it.” I tore a fresh piece of paper from the back of the diary, and he began again.

  Within the hour, he could copy his name well enough that I could read each letter. We called Veronica in. “Oh!” she said with that expression I’d often seen on my mother’s face when confronted with her child’s small triumph. “I see the maestra has written your name.”

  “No!” Rafael cried. “It was me! Can you believe that? I did it myself.”

  “But this is wonderful!” she said and kissed his beaming cheek. “You are such a clever boy!”

  “He’s very clever,” I said. “And he worked very hard. I think he has earned his own notebook and pencil.” I got a spare notebook from my gear and handed it to him along with one of the pencils.

  “For me?”

  “Yes. But now you must come to class every night. Those are not toys for you to play with. You have to be a real student.”

  He looked at his mother. “Truly? Every night with you and Papi and the Acostas?”

  “Of course,” she said. “If you have a notebook and pencil, you have to be a serious learner.”

  Afterward, I went out and helped him in the tobacco patch. The work had to be done.

  “Where did Luis go?” I asked Veronica when we came into the house.

  “He had some business in the town,” she said.

  It was nearly dark when he returned. He had bought a heavy metal bolt. Without a word he fastened it to the inside of the front door.

  That night, with the help of Daniel and the others, we rearranged the house. The two mattresses now lay across the kitchen floor, and the kitchen table, with stools around it, stood in what had been the bedroom. The lantern hung over the table, and my hammock and blanket were neatly folded in a corner with my rucksack on top.