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 capitol building.
"Ah, these eyes could grow the humble beans that could fill plates and bodies," he thought to himself.
"These eyes could produce the bountiful guavas that hang from the trees like tiny gifts."
Yet he saw in those eyes a hurt and hopelessness that came from the underside of the great city, for that place was 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.
He 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," he thought again to himself.
"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."
He welcomed the child, kissed her 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.
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