Ways

The teacher looked into the eyes of the little girl. 

They were brown, the color of the soil of the countryside around the city, the color of the weathered bark of the guava trees in the courtyards around the capital building. 

"Ah, these eyes could grow the humble, helpful beans that fill plates and bodies and help us live," she thought to herself. 

"These eyes could produce the beautiful, bountiful guavas that hang from the trees like tiny gifts from the servants who planted them." 

Yet she saw in those eyes a hurt and hopelessness that came from the underside of the great city, the place where the owner of a sugar plantation drove around the streets in a sparkling, new Chevrolet from el Norte and a worker on that plantation walked around on those same streets in broken sandals made from used tires from a broken down, old Chevrolet...at the same time, together...but as far apart as one world from another.

She listened to the stomach of the little girl. 

It was empty, the emptiness of the poverty of a family with seven children and low wages, the emptiness of one meal a day for days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime. 

"Ah, this grumbling stomach could be filled with beans and guava," she thought again to herself. 

"It could be filled with food and hope if only she had a chance to become a person instead of a thing, to become the owner of a small piece of land instead of the servant of a large landowner, to become all that she could become instead of all that could be used for by another...to become, to become."

She welcomed the child, kissed her softly and tenderly on one cheek and then another, and sent her into the classroom with 50 other children with the same eyes and the same stomachs.

She became a friend of the revolution on that day she looked into the eyes and listened to the stomachs of her students. 

She closed the door to her classroom in the late afternoon and walked the miles to her own apartment and her own family. 

Her children, eight-year-old Luis and four-year-old Ashley grabbed her legs and pressed their kisses into the flowers on her dress. 

Her Mother and Abuela greeted her from the kitchen, where they were cooking the beans and rice that would be their evening meal.

"Hola, mi corazons," she said. "How were your days?"

"Bueno, mamí! Bueno!" they answered.

"I made this picture at school," said Luis. 

He held up a picture of a lopsided cello with seven strings, drawn with a pencil and colored with bark from a tree outside of his classroom. Underneath the picture were the words - "I want to make an instrument. I need wood and wire to make an instrument like a cello. It might be small and broken looking but it would make beautiful music. I would play it for my friends. I would play it for my mamí."

She kissed Luis on top of the head.

"It is so beautiful, my hijo. The picture and the words are so beautiful. One day, I hope to buy a cello for you so you can play music as beautiful as your picture and your words."

"Look mamí! I made a picture, too!"

Ashley held up her picture. 

There was a trace of her little hand in the middle of the page. It was painted in blues and greens like the land and oceans on a map. Her name was written in large, leaning letters beneath her hand.

"Oh, mi Amor, it is marvelous...as marvelous as you. Perhaps one day you can take me by my hand and show me the wonderful world.”

She dragged her children into the kitchen, each wrapped around a leg and standing on a foot.

"Hola," said her mother and her abuela in harmony. 

"How was school today?"

"Honestly," answered Maria, "It was a sad day for me."

She told them about the eyes and the stomach of the little girl and they lamented that there was so little for so many yet so much for so few.

"Here," spoke the abuela. "Let me tell you a story."

When I was a little girl, a flower grew in the countryside. We called it the flor hermosa y humilde,  the beautiful, humble flower. It was beautiful in it's brilliance and smallness,

and humble in the way it appeared in one place for a while and then another place for a while,

almost dancing around to share it's beauty with many people in many places

instead of with a few people in one place.

Now, it grows no more. It's beauty and humility is gone from the earth, for it grew only in here. "Why is such a flower gone from the earth?" you might ask.

Seeds came down from el Norte. These seeds grew a flower we named flor destructiva y arrogante, the destructive, arrogant flower. It was destructive in it's opaqueness and bigness,

and arrogant in the way it appeared in all places at all times, almost marching around to take the nutrients of the land from the beautiful, humble flower and the beauty of the land from the people.

"Yes," said Maria. "What can we do for the beautiful, humble flower?"

"There are two minds," answered the abuela. "Some of the people are of the mind to use fire, to burn the destructive, arrogant flowers into ash and use the ash to fertilize the land for the beautiful, humble flower again. Some of the people saved the seeds from the beautiful, humble flower, you know. And some of the people are of the mind to use hoes, to dig up the destructive, arrogant flowers and let them decompose until there is room to replant the seeds of the beautiful, humble flowers."

"Can there be three minds?" wondered Maria. "Is there another way?"

She looked down at the newspaper on the table that the older women had retrieved from a trash pile as they were meandering around the market bartering for the beans and rice they were cooking for the evening meal. 

There, on an open page of the newspaper, was an advertisement by Simmons International Ltd., the sellers from el Norte of the Beautyrest mattress. The advertisement displayed a large drawing of José Martí, the great writer and icon of Cuban freedom. He was in a serious pose with a quill behind him and a book in front. Below the picture was the quote - "What is important is not that our cause should triumph, but rather that our motherland should be happy."

She sat in silence.

Happiness was an expensive mattress? An expensive mattress was the purpose of life, when her own family slept on corn stalk mats on the floor and her students ate one meal a day?

Later that night, as she woke and thought about the question she asked to her abuela, she remembered her husband Josef.

He was a person who could see clearly and feel deeply. That clear sight and deep feeling led him to join the Revolution, to leave his work as a teacher, to leave the city...to make his way to the mountains to join the peoples army and become a part of the vanguard that would give the land back to the people again.

Gone five months, she had not heard from him. This was the time she missed him most, the times she woke in the middle of the night with a question or a feeling to work out in her mind and heart.

She closed her eyes and remembered the night before he left for the mountains. She laid naked on her back and he laid between her knees. He kissed her softly on her thighs, his lips and breath brushing against her skin. With the kisses he recited a poem from Pablo Neruda. 

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres,

porque de las praderas planetarias

otro estrella no tengo tú repites

la multíplicación del universo.

I love the handful of the earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

She opened her eyes again and stared into the darkness and felt the emptiness around her. 

"Can there be three minds...is there another way?"