“I promise.”
He held out his big hand. “Then give the paper to me. It’s better if I sign. I am your father.”
I could hear my mother gasp, but I kept my eyes on my grandmother’s smile.
Even though, with Abuela’s help, I won the fight to join the campaign, I was shaken. I never liked to oppose my father, and I always felt bad when I did. My mother was another matter. She had such ideas of what a girl should be. My little brothers, Silvio and Roberto, could fight like alley cats and my mother would only smile. But should I get involved in a fight with them? Watch out! I was not being ladylike. They could play out all day in the summer sun, but I must come in after a few minutes for fear of ruining my beautiful complexion.
My first three years were blissful. I was an adored only child — and the only grandchild on either side of the family. Then boom! Everything changed overnight when my brother Silvio was born. For one thing, my mother’s mother was so thrilled, you would have thought heaven had come down to earth. Her own son, Pedro, was too much of a playboy to think about marriage, and my mother had so far only given her a granddaughter. After Silvio was born, Grandmother began to insist that we come across the city to visit her every Sunday. I hated those visits. I could never understand why my mother would make me go as well. That grandmother paid no attention to me at all with her darling Silvio to cradle in her arms and coo at.
By the time Silvio was walking around and talking, I began to tell him what he should do, as I firmly believed was my right, but if my mother heard me ordering Silvio to give me his cookie, she would scold me. My pride was injured. I was the eldest, and he was only a baby. Of course he ought to obey me. I wasn’t bossy; I was the boss. I almost had him convinced of this fact, when whammo! Roberto was born. Silvio quickly decided that now he was the boss. And my mother encouraged him. “You are now the big brother,” she would tell him. One day I reminded him that he was not as big as I, and he put his hands on his hips, threw back his head, and declared, “But you are only a girl!” So of course I hit him. He cried. And my mother gave me a smack. I took the cat to my bed and cried.
The year I was born, Papi’s father had died and my parents and I had moved in with Abuela. Since before I could remember anything, I had slept in the same room with her, and we were very close. But when I complained to her that time about how unfair my mother had been, even Abuela scolded me for hitting my brother.
I have always known that Abuela loves me, but she always has had a special place in her heart for Roberto. This is because her son Roberto, my father’s younger brother, was one of the young men killed in what is known as the 26th of July uprising against General Batista. My brother was born the following month, and so was named after the uncle he would never meet.
I was, of course, as jealous of a baby as a five-year-old could possibly be. But even I could sense that Abuela needed that baby in her time of grieving, so I kept my thoughts to myself, unless you count my whispers to the cat while squeezing him until he yowled and wriggled out of my arms.
I might have been jealous, but I didn’t hate my brothers. When there were no grown-ups to interfere, we often played happily together. Also, I had one magic spell with which to charm the little imps: I could read fluently. When I read them a story, they would sit almost still and listen. “Read it again,” they would beg. And I would.
We were not a wealthy family. Our apartment was small. In Abuela’s bedroom, I slept on a cot, and my parents had the other bedroom. My brothers shared a small cot in the corner of the living room. You would think that wouldn’t work, but those boys could sleep through a revolution — and they did.
Before the revolution, my mother worked as a maid in one of the big hotels run by the criminals that people in the United States call the Mafia. Our dictator, Batista, was not only a great friend to those American crooks, he also raked huge profits for himself from their hotel and casino operations in our country. Mama hated the hotel work because the rich tourists who came there to drink and gamble were so nasty to the help. They seldom left a tip for the maid, and the wages were hardly worth the bus ride, but it was a job, and in those days, jobs were hard to come by. My father worked as a tailor in a shop more than two miles from our apartment. He always walked to work to save the bus fare.
So when I said that I wanted to go to one of the best and therefore one of the most expensive girls’ secondary schools in Havana, my mother looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. My father shook his head sadly. He wanted me to have more education than he did, but why one of the most expensive schools in the city? He couldn’t possibly . . .
My mother burst in. “What are you thinking, Lora? That your poor parents should beggar themselves only to let you become one of those clever people who will look down their long noses on those who love you?” She began to cry.
It was then that Abuela stepped in, not for the first time. The evening after that particularly bitter exchange with my parents, she took me into our shared bedroom, where she opened a dresser drawer and brought out a small leather case.
“I was saving these to give you on your fifteenth birthday,” she said, opening the case to reveal a pair of intricately filigreed gold earrings nestled in the dark-blue velvet lining. The gold gleamed under the ceiling light.
Abuela could see my look of wonder. There was no way I could hide it. “Yes,” she said. “They are very precious. They were my quinceañera gift from my own abuela. I didn’t have a daughter of my own, so I have saved them for you.”
“For me?” I could hardly breathe.
“That was my intent,” she said. “But the choice is yours.”
What could she mean, the choice was mine?
She went on to explain. “The North American tourists love this old gold jewelry. If I sell these, you can go to any secondary school you wish, but you will not have a special gift from me on your quinceañera.”
It was impossible to make such a choice. I was only ten years old. I had never seen anything so beautiful before in my young life, and those earrings were meant for me. I knew my parents would never be able to give me anything approaching such a gift when I turned fifteen. And they had come down from my abuela’s abuela. How could I give them up to some arrogant, rich North American tourist? But . . . if I chose the school, I would be prepared for university. With a university education, I would not spend the rest of my life cleaning hotel rooms in a casino. So, in the end, I chose the school.
For the first few weeks, I wondered if I had made the right choice. The teachers seemed contemptuous of my primary-school education. I was sure they sensed that neither of my parents had ever gone past primary school. My new school started with kindergarten, and most of the students there had begun attending it when they were five. I struggled to catch up, especially in math and English.
Many of the nuns who taught us had degrees from England and Europe. Our French maestra had a degree from the Sorbonne University, in Paris, and the Sister who taught English had graduated from Oxford University, in England. They were scholars, and, if I may say so, not as humble as you might imagine a nun should be. Even though I was afraid of them, I was thrilled to hear them speak. But I never raised my hand and hardly raised my voice — the few times a teacher ever noticed me or asked me a question.
Then one day, Sister Evangelina, who taught our national Cuban his
tory and literature, began talking about José Martí.
“I’m sure every one of you girls knows that José Martí is Cuba’s greatest revolutionary hero, but how many of you know his literary work?”
Every hand shot up. Even mine.
“Good. Now who will volunteer to recite a favorite poem?”
She waited. No hands went up. “No one?” She sniffed. “You claim to know his work, but none of you has taken the trouble to learn any of it by heart?” She glared around the room. “You disappoint me. I would have expected more from persons with your privileged backgrounds.” The only sound breaking the silence was Sister’s foot tapping under her habit as she waited. “None of you?”