My Brigadista Year

It felt as though I had barely gotten to sleep in my swaying bed when a rooster began to crow. I rolled out of the hammock and pulled on my uniform as quickly as I could in the semidarkness, hoping to be decent before anyone came in to fix breakfast. I was taking down my hammock when Veronica slipped into the room. “Buenos días, Maestra,” she said softly. She had called me “teacher,” even though I had taught her nothing yet.

“Buenos días, Veronica,” I said, and quickly added, “Please call me Lora.”

She smiled and nodded, but many months would pass before she ever called me by my name.

That morning our team began our work. The first task for Juan and Maria and me was the census. That meant that we went from house to house on the neighboring farms to discover who was literate and who was not. Between houses, Maria wanted to discuss Enrico. Didn’t I think he was handsome? And so intelligent!

“You girls think only of boys,” Juan said. “We are here to do a job, not gossip about boys!”

I wanted to protest. I was here to do a job. Had he heard me say a word about boys? Maybe he was just jealous because none of the girls were making eyes at him, as short and scrawny as he was, with a face blossoming in pimples. But to my relief, his admonition stopped Maria’s mooning for the time being, and we went on with our canvas.

When we came to my own house, we learned that neither Luis nor Veronica had ever been to school. There wasn’t a school for miles, and even as tiny children, they had worked on the farm. They both ducked their heads in shame when they spoke of their ignorance. Luis wouldn’t meet my eyes when he said, “I want you to teach me how to write my name. Then I will no longer have to mark an X or press my thumb to the paper when I vote or sign some important document. That is the most important thing. If, before the year is over, I can write Luis Santana, I will be satisfied.”

Our closest neighbors were the Acosta family, an old man and woman and their son and new daughter-in-law. The women were eager to learn, but the old man shook his balding head while his son glared with disdain. Daniel, the young man, told me bluntly, “My father and I do not want to take lessons from a little girl, and our wives are too busy to spend time with this nonsense.”

The women looked stricken.

“That is why the lessons will be at night, when the work day is over,” Maria said. “During the day, we brigadistas will work side by side with you.”

“What do you children from the cities know about our life? Nothing! You will only be in the way.”

I finally mustered up the courage to speak. “You are right,” I said. “We know nothing about the hard work you and your wives must do. But we’re here to learn as well as to share what we know.”

Nancy, his new wife, stepped forward. “Please sign me up for the lessons. And my mother-in-law as well. We talked to Lilian last week about the campaign. We want to learn.”

Her husband didn’t even look at her. “No one from this house will be going to Santana’s house for lessons. Now — we have work to do.” And he turned on his heel and went into the farmhouse.

We divided the potential students among the three of us. I was assigned only to Luis and Veronica. The Acostas should have been part of my class, but it didn’t look as though any of them would be coming.

“Be patient,” Lilian said the following Sunday when I told her how I’d failed to register them. “Those men are stubborn, but their women may win them over if you cannot.”

The next morning, I was up again before Veronica came into the kitchen. “You should sleep longer, Maestra,” she said, even though that would have been difficult since my hammock took up so much of the kitchen.

“No,” I said. “I want to do everything with you. That is as much my job as teaching is.”

She smiled her shy smile. “Then our first job is to fetch the water.”

She picked up two large metal cans and carried them out the door. I followed her to the crude stockade that surrounded the oxen and goats. She hitched a wagon to the ox team and loaded on the empty containers. They were large and filled the small wagon. “This way,” she said. “We must go to the river.”

I walked beside Veronica as she guided the oxen. She was a tiny woman, but the oxen were totally unde

r her control. “How did you learn to drive them?” I asked.

She laughed. “These two? They are as gentle as pet rabbits. Here —” She made as if to hand me the reins. “You try.”

“No, no. Not today. They don’t know me yet. Maybe later.”

It was a beautiful spring morning. The orchids and hibiscus and flowers whose names I’ll never know painted the way with brilliant color. The birds were singing. I felt a bit as Eve might have felt her first morning in Eden. That is, until Veronica noticed my enchanted gaze and said a bit sharply, “We must watch the path for snakes. They won’t kill you, but the bite will hurt.” I was glad to be wearing my boots.

I learned a lot that day — how to fill the large cans with water from the river (Veronica hefted her heavy can with ease — it was weeks before I stopped sweating and grunting), how to boil coffee, how to wash clothes on the rocks by the river (if only my mother could have seen me!), how to feed the chickens and the goats and the oxen, how to prepare a meal. In time, I would even learn to skillfully milk a goat (that took a while, believe me), cut corn with a machete, ride a horse (granted, an old, slow one), and plow a field behind a team of oxen (not that my furrows were ever straight). My skin would turn brown, and my hands become calloused.

But during those early weeks, I longed for thick gloves to protect my skin. Cornstalks are rough, and the worms on the tomatoes and tobacco were squishy, and, well, I was a bit squeamish in those days. I tried to remind myself that many of my fellow brigadistas were working on sugar plantations where cutting cane is ruinous for one’s hands. Others had been sent to enormous tobacco estates with thousands of plants, not just the small patch Luis cultivated for the bit of cash the leaves might bring in. If every muscle in my body protested after a day hoeing corn or digging up yams, just how would I have managed on an estate of hundreds of acres? Or such was the lecture I’d give myself as I tried to straighten my aching back after an hour or two bent over a row of beans.

“Take a rest, Lora,” Luis would say. But pride would keep me at a task until it was done. To my amusement, he began holding me up as an example to Emilia. “See, Emilia? Aren’t you ashamed, running off to play when there is still work to be done? Lora hasn’t stopped working.” I didn’t remind her father that Emilia, after all, was only five.

But I am getting ahead of the story. That night Luis, Veronica, and I sat at the kitchen table under our bright lantern and began the first lesson in the primer. Because Luis was so eager to learn how to write his name, I wrote both their names in large chalk letters on the piece of slate Veronica had put up for a blackboard. The first lesson, you may remember, was to learn the vowels o, e, and a. I pointed out the a’s in Santana and Veronica. “And soon we will do the other vowels, i and u, which are in Luis,” I promised.

I didn’t realize that one of the first lessons would have to be how to hold a pencil. Veronica watched me carefully as I wrote the initial letters, OEA, but Luis eagerly grabbed up his pencil and clutched it in his fist as though it were an ax poised to chop up his workbook.