“I never really thought of it that way, but . . .”
“North American?”
“No, English. It’s set in the early nineteenth century, so —”
“Really old-fashioned European stuff, then.”
“It doesn’t feel so old-fashioned.”
“And Martí? You like him?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I guess everybody’s supposed to, but I could never really get into him. The teachers were always telling us what everything meant — everything he ever said. I got a little tired of it.”
If I had hoped Maria would be another Norma, I realized quickly this would not be the case. Nor would she be a wise and sisterly Marissa. She turned out to be just Maria, and, in the end, that was enough.
I never even tried to talk to Juan about literature. He and the other young boys seemed to think about nothing but war and politics.
The three nights we were together at base camp, we ended every evening with Carlos leading us in song. The next two nights we danced as well. On the final night, the nearby campesinos emptied their houses and joined us — even the little children, who should have been long asleep. They taught us a dance of the mountains that none of us had ever seen before, and Maria and little Isora, who had television sets at home, taught everyone the Twist, which was the newest craze from North America. It seemed strange to be dancing like our enemies, but I have to admit it was fun. Even solemn Esteban was twisting with delight. “I don’t care if it did come from them,” he said. “It’s better than bombs.”
It was time to leave the base camp and go to our new homes. Even if there were still jumping beans in my stomach, I felt reasonably prepared, and I truly wanted to start my assignment. The three of us — Juan, Maria, and I — were going to an area not much more than a half hour’s walk from base. Lilian took Juan to his place, but Esteban felt it was important for him to introduce us girls. I suppose he wanted to indicate to any reluctant men that he, as a man, had approved us to be teachers of men.
We stopped first at Maria’s farm. Everyone rushed from the house or from across the field to welcome her with open arms. They were so excited, they said. They had hardly been able to wait for their very own teacher. Maria, in turn, was almost jumping up and down as she expressed her own pleasure that she had been permitted to come to their home and be with them. She just knew it was going to be a wonderful time all around for everyone.
I watched her and, I must say, I was impressed. She didn’t seem a bit anxious. In fact, she acted so happy that I felt a pang of envy watching her. Any feeling of superiority I might have developed at base camp melted on the spot. Maria wasn’t going to have any trouble relating to illiterate campesinos. She was practically a member of the family already — long before she had even opened the primer to page one. At any rate, I would soon realize that I had been so preoccupied with watching her interact with her new family I had not even looked at the house she was going to live in. If I had, the first look at my own new home might not have been such a shock.
I hope I was able to conceal my dismay as we approached the house where I was to stay. It was a two-room shack, not a proper house at all. The walls were built of rough planks with palm thatch for a roo
f. At least there was a real door and not just palm branches across the entrance.
The farmer was out in the field, but he spotted us coming through the trees. He came to us, carrying his hoe, and spoke a quiet greeting to Esteban, whom he seemed to know, then smiled shyly at me. Esteban told him my name. He told me his — Luis Santana — and started to extend his hand but realized how dirty it was and simply wiped it on his pant leg.
“Welcome,” he said formally, and walked hurriedly away to the house. I supposed he was telling the rest of his family that we had arrived. Esteban and I waited outside the door. It may have been a few minutes. It seemed like hours. We could hear some talking inside, but not what was being said. There were the high-pitched voices of little children, objecting, as I imagined, to having their faces washed before they met the strange visitor. I smiled at Esteban, trying not to show how anxious I was, but he sensed it and patted my shoulder.
The family finally straggled out of the door, following their father, who now offered me a clean hand and repeated his name. Then he stepped aside and presented his wife, whom he called Veronica. The three children were tiny, so I guessed that Luis and Veronica were perhaps younger than they looked. Their faces were as dark and leathery as dried tobacco, and their hands, when they shook mine, were very rough. The little boy stood stiffly beside his father, and the even smaller girls hid behind their mother.
“You must meet the teacher,” Luis said. “Tell her your names.”
The boy whispered something and then the little girls did as well, but their hands were covering their faces, so I had no idea what any of them had said. I knelt down close to them. “Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t hear your names.” The boy looked at his father for help while the tiny girls giggled behind their hands.
“My son, Rafael, is six. My daughters are Emilia, who is five, and little Isabel, who has just turned three,” their father said.
“You have beautiful children,” I said. The tiny smiles on the parents’ faces told me that I had said the right thing.
When Luis ushered us all inside, I could see that the floor was just dirt, but swept clean. In the back room, there were two straw mattresses on the floor. The farmer and his wife apparently slept on one and the three children on the other. There was no mattress for me, or even room for another mattress. After much discussion, they decided that the teacher should hang her hammock across a corner of the kitchen. However, I would have to take it down each morning, or there would be no way to reach the dishes and stored foodstuffs. A table and stools stood in the center of the kitchen. Esteban asked the farmer for rope so that he could hang my lantern on a beam over the table. “The government wants to be sure you have plenty of light to study by,” he explained.
I didn’t say much that evening. None of us did. The children stared at me over their plates of stew, which consisted of beans and a mixture of vegetables over rice. There was no meat that night, but I found the food very tasty. When I complimented Veronica on it, she ducked her head and blushed.
It was nearly dark by the time the meal was finished, but there was no mention of lighting the government lantern. The family simply retired to the back room, and I hung my hammock on the hooks Luis had provided and climbed in.
I had slept in the hammock at base camp, but Maria and some of the other girls were close by. I’d never felt alone. But that first night at the Santanas’, it felt unbearably lonely to be lying there in the dark by myself. It is so dark in the country. In Havana it is never totally dark, but there wasn’t even a moon that night, and once the sun set, it was blacker than black in that tiny room from which I could not see the stars. The blackness seemed to enhance the noises of the night — the stirring of the family on their straw mattresses, a sleepy murmur from one of the children, a low grunt from one of the pigs, the rustle of one of the large animals, restless in the stockade, and then, a sound I could not identify from farther off in the woods. A lonely, lonely cry. It’s only a bird, I told myself, just a bird.
I longed for my family — for my mother fussing over me if she heard me cough in the night, for Abuela’s quiet snoring, for simply knowing that beyond my closed eyelids the lights of my city were coming through my window and the noises I heard were that of the occasional car driving past my home.
Only that morning, even as late as that very afternoon, I had felt prepared, eager to start my new life as a teacher. Now the truth was like a stone lying on my chest. I knew at last why my parents had been so afraid for me. I was too young. I had had no experience to speak of as a person, much less as a teacher. And the people I would be living with seemed so timid around me. I wanted so much for them to like me. Maria had made an instant warm connection with her family, and I didn’t have any idea how she had done it. I was not good at making friends — look how few I had made at school! Only Norma, and she was more of an outcast than I was. There was Marissa, but she had probably befriended me when I arrived at Varadero because she felt sorry for me.
I lay awake long into the night, wondering why I had volunteered, why I’d been accepted, why anyone had ever imagined that I was up to the challenge. Finally, I forced myself to turn my thoughts away from my fears and toward the family in the next room. Even if they didn’t like me, they had asked for a teacher and volunteered to take one into their home, so they must want to learn — they must want to be able to read and write. And like it or not, I was the person that had been sent to them. But was I up to the task of teaching them? At that moment I could hardly believe that I was.