A Brief Time Line of Cuban History
“Ai — ee!” In all my thirteen years, I hadn’t heard a screech like that since the time I accidentally stepped on the cat’s tail. But now it was my own mama’s voice, shrieking to high heaven.
My father, usually so quiet, wasn’t much better. He was shaking his head and pacing like a caged lion. “No! No! No! Lora! Lora! Lora! This is unheard of. What were you thinking?”
At that moment, I was thinking that he was about to tear my permission sheet to shreds. Instead he crumpled it in his hand and threw it into the waste can. “Now. No more of this nonsense.” He gave me a pat on the top of my head and nodded at my mother, who hushed her cries. “Your grandmother is resting.”
But it was too late. Abuela was standing at the door, her hair still disheveled from her nap, her face crumpling into a thousand new wrinkles.
“What is it, Paulo?” she asked. “What is unheard of?”
“This, this . . .” my father began.
“My baby . . .” my mother injected, her tears threatening to start all over again.
“This granddaughter of yours,” my father said to Abuela, with a stern look to the side at my mother, “this granddaughter of yours thinks we will let her throw away her life.”
“That’s hard to believe, Lora,” Abuela said to me. She began to wrap her kerchief about her head. Her gray hair was thin, and she liked to cover the balding. She looked so tiny, so fragile. I didn’t want to distress her.
“I don’t want to throw away my life, Abuela, truly I don’t. I want to —”
“You have no idea —” my father began, but Abuela put up her small hand.
“Why don’t we all sit down — you, too, Paulo — and then Lora can explain to me quietly and calmly just what’s going on. I don’t like my siesta disrupted, much less the peace of my family.”
The three of us waited until Abuela had finished tucking under the tail end of her kerchief and seated herself comfortably in her rocker. My parents plunked down on the sofa, and I took the low stool near Abuela’s chair.
“Now,” she said, looking straight at me, “suppose you explain how you’re planning to throw away your life.”
“She thinks —” my father started.
“Hush. I’m asking Lora.”
“Abuela, you remember how last fall our leader told the United Nations that Cuba would become a literate nation in one year?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, he said that.”
“We’re really going to do it, Abuela. We really are! And — and I want to be a part of it.”
Papi leaned forward, about to interrupt, but once again Abuela raised her hand. “How do you want to help, Lora?”
“Well, today there was a poster at school. The government is calling on all of us who can read and write to teach the citizens who don’t know how. The poster said —”
“That doesn’t mean,” Papi said, “that the government expects thirteen-year-old girls, who have never left their homes, whose parents care for and protect them —”
“If the government is not seeking young girls, why is there a poster in a girls’ secondary school?” Abuela asked.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered.
“What did the poster say, Lora?”
“It called for young men and women to join an army of young literacy teachers. It said: ‘The home of a family of campesinos who cannot read or write is waiting for you now. Don’t let them down!’”
“And what made you think the call was for you, Lora?”
“I can read and write — really I’m quite a good student. Shouldn’t I share what I have with someone who needs it? Isn’t that what you’ve always said, Papi? That we children should share what we have with those less fortunate?”
“I didn’t mean —”
“Your parents have taught you well, Lora. We are called on to share what we have with those less fortunate.”
“But the child has no idea how primitive conditions are in the country. There’s no electricity. There is no running water —” my father began, only to be interrupted by Mama.
“I’ve heard that those campesinos don’t even have proper toilets.” It was hard to ignore the anguish in my mother’s voice.
“You’ve hardly ever been out of Havana . . .” Papi added.
“You’ve never spent a night away from home, not even at my mother’s house,” Mama wailed.
Abuela heard out their complaints before she turned to me. “It will be a hard life,” she said. “Your father is right. You can’t imagine how hard.”
“I know,” I said, but of course, I knew nothing except that I wanted to be a part of the campaign. The girl in the poster was wearing a uniform. I looked at her smiling face and for the first time in my life imagined what it might feel like to be truly free. No one telling me not to play in the sun or mess up my nice dress. I didn’t want to spend the next few years of my life just sitting still so that someday I would be able to make a proper marriage. I wanted to do something, be someone.
My father stood up. “Do you want to throw away your life?”
“No. I want to live it.”
“And break your mother’s heart?”
“No, no, Papi. I want to make you both proud of me.”
“They killed that boy.” He muttered the words as he sat down heavily, his head in his hands. My heart gave a jerk. We all knew the story of the young literacy worker who was killed by the bandidos in January.
For a long time, or what seemed a long time to me, no one said anything. Finally Abuela leaned forward and put her small hand on my shoulder, but she was looking at Papi. “Remember, Paulo, how we have longed and prayed for a new day in our country?” she said. “Well, that new day, the one we prayed for, the one your brother died for, is here.” I was looking at my grandmother, not at Papi, but the sigh he gave was deeper than a sob.
Abuela was quiet for a minute and then went on: “With a new day, my son, must come new people. We who are old must learn from the young how to change.” She stroked my shoulder. “
I know it will be hard, Lora, harder than you can ever imagine. So. Will you promise to come home if it is too hard?”
I nodded.
She studied my face as though she were reading my heart. Finally she spoke. “Is there something that needs to be signed?”
“Papi refuses.”
She sighed. “Then I suppose I must. Get it for me.”
I didn’t dare look at my parents. I fetched the wadded-up slip out of the trash and smoothed it out on a book. Then I got a pen and handed the paper and pen to my grandmother, but at that point Papi stood up. “Lora, do you truly promise me to come home if it proves too hard?”