My Brigadista Year

“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.”

What a beautiful girl! That was my first thought. She could have been a poster girl for the campaign, with very light tan skin — reminding me of the milky coffee Abuela made for me on the nights before exams. The green beret on her head made her hazel eyes look almost green, her hair was a lustrous dark brown, and her figure, even in boots and uniform, was a match for any Hollywood star.

While she helped me spread my cot with the simple bedding we had been provided, we exchanged names and told each other where we were from. Marissa was from Santiago de Cuba, but she went to the university in Havana, so we knew some of the same places in the city. She had left university to join the campaign! She didn’t even need her looks to make me admire her. I so longed to go to university, and here was someone willing to leave that cherished opportunity behind to be part of the Conrado Benítez Brigade with kids like me.

“Have you been here at Varadero long?” I asked, as she seemed to know so much.

She laughed. “Only two days, but they keep us so busy we think we have been here for weeks. They only excused us from class minutes ago so we could help the newcomers piling off the buses. How many of you were there? It looked like thousands of you.”

“I don’t know how many,” I said. “But at the station I’d never seen so many people getting on buses in my life, and all of the buses seemed to be headed for Varadero.”

“That’s great!” She flashed a beautiful smile. “The campaign needs hundreds of thousands of teachers if we’re to get this job done.”