My Brigadista Year

Slowly and hesitantly, I did something I’d never done before in any of my classes: I raised my hand to volunteer an answer. Sister’s bushy eyebrows shot up to the rim of her headdress, but, surprised or not, she called my name.

“‘I Grow a White Rose,’” I said in a shaky voice.

“Indeed?”

I don’t know where I got the courage, but I stood up and recited the poem. When I sat down, a girl named Norma began to clap. A couple of girls joined in. Then it seemed that the whole class had broken into applause. Eventually, so did Sister Evangelina. I know my face was scarlet, but I could feel a smile stretching across it.

I’d noticed Norma before, but we’d never spoken. The expression on her dark face was always guarded, her almost-black eyes unreadable, but at lunchtime she sidled up to the table where I, as usual, was eating alone. Her face was alive, her eyes sparkling. “‘The White Rose’ is my favorite, too,” she said. “I could have recited it. But I’m not brave like you.”

“Would — would you like to sit down?” I was stammering. I wanted a friend so badly.

She smiled and nodded. She sat down across from me and unwrapped an empanada stuffed with meat. I was glad that my thin sandwich with its paper-thin slice of ham was nearly gone.

She took a large bite and began talking, her mouth so full that little bits of meat and bread escaped to the table between us. “I love ‘The White Rose.’ But this is the first time I’ve ever told anyone. I can’t even talk about José Martí at home. My father doesn’t like him. And he especially hates ‘The White Rose.’ Papá thinks caring about your enemy is weakness. Especially in a man.”

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?”