My Brigadista Year

There was, of course, no meeting on Sunday, but to my surprise, Esteban appeared at our door that afternoon. He asked me to come outdoors and speak to him privately. It was a relief to get out and smell the fresh air and see the sun shining on the fields and woods. Veronica and Rafael were bent over the bean patch. I longed to join them.

“Lora . . . Lora?” I turned my attention to Esteban.

“I’m sorry. It just feels so good to be out of the house. It’s such a beautiful time of year.”

“Yes,” he said. “But maybe not for you.” I must have looked startled.

“I know you’ve had a very frightening experience. Lilian reminded me that you’re still only thirteen. No one will blame you if you go home a little early.”

“Go home?” I hadn’t asked to go home — yet. “Go home?” I repeated myself, trying to untangle this unexpected twist. It was supposed to be my decision, not Esteban’s.

At that moment, Emilia came running out of the house and grabbed the leg of my uniform. “Lora! Lora!” she cried. “Isabel can do the ABCs all the way to g! I taught her myself! I’m a teacher just like you!”

Little Isabel came out, her hand in front of her face. “Say your alphabet for Lora, Isabel!” her sister commanded.

Isabel said something behind her hand. Emilia snatched it away from her face. “Lora can’t hear you! Say it again!”

I knelt down beside her and put my arm around her. She smiled a tiny smile and whispered into my ear, “A-b-c-ch-d-e-f- g — that’s all I know.”

“That’s wonderful,” I whispered back, and kissed her cheek. I was conscious of Esteban watching us, so I stood up. “Will it be too dangerous for them if I stay?”

He shook his head. “We can’t be sure, but I don’t think so,” he said. “The militia will keep a close eye if I ask.”

I stroked Isabel’s hair and smiled at proud Emilia. “I can’t leave them,” I said. “I promised.”

It proved to be Oscar that led to the capture of the insurgents who had threatened our home. They made the mistake of butchering the piglet, and the smell of roasting pork and the sight of smoke alerted the militia to the bandits’ location. Juan and the other young boys were gleeful when they talked about it. “They didn’t even get a bite of meat before they became a feast for the vultures.” Juan was chortling as he said this. I put my hand in front of my mouth, afraid I might throw up.

I never had the heart to tell Emilia and Isabel what had happened to their beloved Oscar. Of course, the children were farm raised. They knew perfectly well where their occasional dishes with meat came from. Even I had seen chickens slaughtered. And before I left, a piglet and a small goat would join celebrations, and not as guests. It was the idea that the bandidos had made off with Oscar that distressed the little girls. I could not tell them about his ironic end. They would not have cheered.

Poor Maria! She was still lamenting her mistake of sending the picture of herself and Enrico to her parents. “Now he hardly speaks to me. ‘Just friends’! What does it mean to be just friends?”

She nearly drowned poor old Bonita with her tears. “Writing a poem didn’t help at all,” she said. Fortunately she didn’t ask me for my opinion of her poetry. It might have set me off, and no one with a broken heart wants a friend laughing in her face. She was so unhappy those days.

As for me, the next few weeks proved to be my happiest time in the mountains. First, there was my fourteenth birthday, on November 5. Somehow the family knew the date, and that night after our lessons, they told me to close my eyes and wait. After much giggling, Emilia and Isabel came to the back room. Each of them took one of my hands, and they led me carefully around the mattresses in the front room and out the door. “Now you can open your eyes,” Emilia said.

I opened my eyes to a large bonfire blazing in the yard in front of the house. There were a lot of people standing there. A few people tried a ragged English version of “Happy Birthday to You” (somehow it’s a song people think can only be sung in English), but soon they abandoned the attempt and burst into a song our music teacher in school had told us was beloved by the people in these mountains. Its refrain, “Son de la loma,” means “They come from the hills.”

Juan, and then Maria, were there with their own students. I could see in the firelight that even in the midst of her own sadness, Maria was smiling for me. Esteban and Lilian were there, too. The folks from the neighboring farms had brought food and drink. We danced and sang until late into the night. The campesinos taught us mountain dances that we city kids had never seen before, and Maria urged Juan and me to show our friends dances that we did in the city. Well, to be honest, I was stumbling all over my feet trying to follow Maria’s lead. Among all her other assets, her ability to dance absolutely shone. Everyone was laughing and clapping with delight.

I didn’t care how poorly I danced. I had never felt so honored or so happy. Lying in my hammock, feeling too full of food and music to sleep, I thought how close I had come to missing this night of nights.

Two days later, Bonita came galloping, or as close to galloping as the old mare could manage, with Daniel on her back. “The baby is coming! The baby is coming!” he cried, which meant that they had sent him to fetch Veronica to help Dunia with the birth.

“May I come?” I asked Veronica shyly.

She looked at me. “You won’t be afraid?”

“No, I promise. And I won’t get in the way. I just want to be there.”

“Then come along,” she said. Daniel gave us the horse. He wouldn’t be needed, so he would walk. I climbed up on Bonita’s back behind Veronica, and off we went, faster than I’d ever ridden before.

“Watch the branches!” Veronica warned.

I, of course, had been watching the path for snakes, but I heard her warning just in time to duck.

Being there when Nancy’s baby was born — oh, how can I explain it? It was being allowed to witness a miracle. He was a squalling, little wriggly boy. They let me hold him while they tended to Nancy after his birth. That was when I decided. I would go back to the city and get the education I needed to become a doctor. My country needed more doctors, and I wanted not only to help heal; I wanted to help bring new life into the world.

On the 15th, the real doctor came and took off Luis’s cast. His leg was ashen and shriveled, but the doctor was confident that the bone had healed well, and he was sure that with exercise, the muscles would grow strong and Luis would be “as good as new” or “maybe even better with a doctor like me,” he said with a laugh. (I told myself that when I became a doctor, I would not brag, not even as a joke.) My now mature fourteen-year-old self was sure that doctors and priests as well as teachers should always be sincere and humble.