The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 3

Havana

1900

As the last students trickled from her classroom, Eva reached for her notebook. Snippets of the girls’ conversations reached her ears—complaints about the number of pages Eva had assigned for reading, worry over the test that was coming at the end of the next week. Threaded in between their academic concerns were plans for the weekend, a birthday party one of the girls was having that they were all looking forward to. Her students’ lives were often far more exciting than hers, and she found herself taking inspiration in the joy with which they lived, their enthusiasm. When one of them had her heart broken by some boy who surely wasn’t worth the trouble, Eva worried about her. When another did well on a test, she cheered. She spent so much of her life with them that after they inevitably moved on, she looked forward to the times when they would return to visit, to the letters they would write her. She kept the correspondence in her dresser at home, tied together by a pale blue ribbon that had belonged to her mother.

Often her students inspired the characters in her writing, their final iterations so different from what had begun that she doubted even their own mothers would recognize them on the page.

Right now, though, her mind was elsewhere, on the final line for the third chapter of her novel. It had come to her while she was teaching.

Eva sat down at the wooden desk at the front of her classroom, her blue notebook freed from the cubbyhole where it rested while she taught.

She repeated the line in her mind lest she forget it. Words came to her at the strangest times, when she was bathing, teaching, shopping for groceries, on Sundays while she made a large pot of black beans for the week.

She lived her life in two worlds: she was Eva Fuentes—teacher of literature for fifteen female students—and she was the characters in her novels, slipping their personas on like a second skin. They had endless conversations in her mind, as she conducted the triumphs and tragedies of their lives with a pen and paper. Her characters were both family and friends, constant companions.

How do you get your ideas? her colleagues asked her, more than a little perplexed by how much of her time was spent dreaming about fictional characters and made-up stories.

She tried to explain that the ideas weren’t the problem. They had always been there, ever since she was a little girl, like a melody playing in the background of her days. At first, she hadn’t realized it was unusual, hadn’t understood that everyone didn’t walk around with these people they sculpted like lumps of clay in their mind, giving them full-fledged personalities and histories so that she knew exactly what they would say, understood their innermost thoughts better than her own. They were real to her in a way that she couldn’t always adequately describe to others. Perhaps because she put a part of herself in each of her characters—even the villains—and they became dear to her because often they contained the parts of herself that she didn’t share with others.

She gave her characters her secrets.

Eva scribbled the phrase onto the page, her brain working faster than her hand could. Sometimes it was like this—a race to get the words out because they came with a fervor, ready to set the page on fire. And other times, far too often, if Eva was being honest—it was a struggle, the battle between the pen and the blank page and the words that would not come.

But maybe that was what made her love writing the most—that for all the instances when it was difficult, when she was sure that she would never finish this infernal book, there were times when the magic would come, when the perfect words would meet the moment in her story.

“Still writing, I see?”

She jerked in surprise at the interruption, her pen skittering across the page mid-word.

Eva glanced up.

The school’s headmaster stood a few feet away from her desk, a smile on his face.

Mr. Garcia was generally well-liked among the students, equally so by the staff. He was a fair headmaster, not an easy one, but the sort who pushed those around him to be the best versions of themselves. She’d spent the first few months as a teacher convinced he didn’t like her, only to gradually realize that his respect took time to be earned, and once it was, he could prove himself to be a tireless advocate on that person’s behalf.

“May I?” he asked, his hand outstretched toward the notebook.

The nod was automatic, the product of over two decades of obeying her family, teachers, elders, over two decades of being obedient and helpful, the instinct to please, to acquiesce to avoid conflict, as second nature as drawing breath.

He picked up the notebook, and something lurched in the vicinity of her stomach, a protest resounding in her mind.

Eva lunged forward, her glasses slipping down her nose as her body listed.

Mr. Garcia’s eyes widened, and he dropped the notebook reflexively, no doubt more than a little surprised by the ferocity of her response.

Eva caught it as it dropped. Her fingers curled around the spine, relief churning through her veins.

Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.

“It’s not ready,” she blurted out as she met his gaze. “I haven’t—I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “So you keep saying. When you didn’t object, I thought you might have finally finished it.”

“No—not yet. It isn’t. I keep—”

She didn’t know how to explain what it was like, how she would write ten pages on a Monday morning in the hour she had cobbled together to work before school began, and then by Wednesday, the pages she had written would end up in a ball in her trash can.

The trouble was that she knew there was a story inside her, knew there were words she wanted to say, words pushing inside her to get out, but when she tried putting them down on paper, it was like they slipped away from her, always outside of her grasp until she no longer recognized the story as the one that she had intended to tell. And those were the good days. The days when the words flowed freely on the page, even if they weren’t the right words. Other days, she woke at her writing time, and the blank page taunted her, the words dried up inside her. It was a thoroughly maddening process, and sometimes she wondered why anyone would want to write a novel.

“I’m surprised,” Mr. Garcia replied. “With as much time as you spend on it, with as much effort as you’ve put into it, I’d think it would be ready for public consumption.”

He didn’t say it unkindly, and she couldn’t find it in herself to take offense. Her inability to finish the novel was becoming her greatest source of frustration.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever feel like it’s ready,” she admitted, giving voice to one of her greatest fears. There was something so audacious about sharing her writing with others, as though she believed it was worth reading. How would she ever know it was ready? How would she ever know it was good enough? How would she ever know she was good enough?

“That’s likely a common fear with artists,” he replied. “But I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working on your novel, the amount of time you’ve put into it. I think that speaks a great deal to your determination to grow in your craft. I’ve seen the kind of teacher you are, the kind of person you are. I have the utmost faith that you will be good at anything you put your mind to.”

She flushed. “Thank you.”

“Maybe a change of scenery, a new experience, an adventure if you will, could provide you with the inspiration to work on your novel. Not to mention some time to focus on it away from the classroom.”

An adventure sounded wonderful, but as improbable as Eva finally feeling as though her novel was done. The things she read about in the books she loved—ship passages, grand romances, and secrets and scandals—couldn’t have been further from her real life.

Eva wrote about things she had never experienced.

“I have an opportunity for you,” Mr. Garcia continued.

As soon as the word “opportunity” fell from his lips, she felt a spark of excitement, a shift in the schoolroom air. It was like a breeze had swept open the classroom door, a whisper of possibility calling to her.

Was there an available position at another school? She’d spent her whole life in Havana, and the idea of seeing another part of the island—another city or the countryside, perhaps—filled her with hope. She would miss her students, of course, but she had no family ties keeping her here with both her parents gone, and as much as she would miss the friends she had made, the truth was so many of them had moved on with their lives, marrying and having children, their priorities shifting as they took on new roles, new responsibilities, that she often sensed she had been left behind by others whose lives had passed her by.

“The American military governor Leonard Wood has proposed for us to send Cuban teachers to study in the United States. To Harvard. It was a plan initially conceived by our current superintendent of schools, Alexis Frye.”

Since the war for independence from Spain and the Americans’ war with Spain had ended in 1898, Cuba had been under military occupation. The Americans claimed they were interested in helping Cuba rebuild after the devastation that years of fighting the Spanish had wrought, but to many it was all too familiar, as though Cuba had finally won its independence from Spain at great cost, only to replace the Spanish with the Americans, independence an elusive concept. While Eva had not had any dealings with the new American school superintendent, by all accounts that had trickled down to her, he was intent on opening more schools and enrolling far more students than before, both propositions that she couldn’t disagree with.

Eva was born at the end of the Ten Years’ War to a mother who had grown up in war and a father who had died right after her conception in the fighting. Her first memories were of her mother, of holding her hand as they walked through the city streets, of helping her with the chores, of the two of them as a pair. Eva had learned through the subsequent periods of fighting and exile that the ground on which she stood was ever changing, never firm, and often inhospitable to a woman.

Eva’s life had been defined by war, and now that the war for independence was over, now that Cuba was supposed to be on the path to freedom, the quest for real independence represented something greater than herself, an obligation for more. Her countrywomen had achieved great feats during the war—had served as couriers, spies, nurses, fought for independence. Her role had been minimal in comparison. She had helped her mother, caring for her as she grew ill. She had taught classes, trying to give hope to her students, attempting to add some stability to their lives, to help them build a future, skills that they would one day be able to use to support themselves since so many were now alone in the world. More than anything, she didn’t want them to feel helpless or scared like she so often was.

It took her a moment to untangle what Mr. Garcia was saying, to understand how these people he was talking about whose lives were so far removed from hers could possibly be somehow connected to her. Surely, he wasn’t suggesting Harvard? For Eva to go to Harvard? She’d heard of the school and its vaunted reputation, of course. It was almost inconceivable in both the distance and the opportunity.

“Why? Why Harvard?”

“Frye and Wood graduated from Harvard. They believe that sending our teachers to study in the United States for the summer will help strengthen relations between our two countries. The hope, I’m sure, is that whatever teachers learn in the United States will be brought back to Cuba and taught in our classrooms here.”

Ah.

There it was. Many had suspected when the Americans appointed an American superintendent of schools in Cuba that their aim was to Americanize Cuba’s education system.

It was difficult to tell what Mr. Garcia made of the entire business based off his tone alone. Like so many academics, Mr. Garcia had protested against Spain’s hold on Cuba during the fight for independence until he was exiled to New York. Now that the Spanish had left Cuba and he had returned to Havana, his feelings about the Americans were less clear, and Eva wasn’t sure if his time living in exile in the United States had softened him toward them.

“I need to send a teacher from the school, and I think you would be the perfect one to go,” Mr. Garcia added.

“Why me? I would think there are others who would be far more qualified.”

Among her colleagues, Eva was on the younger side.

“Yes, I confess I thought about seniority when I was making the selection. I approached a few of our more senior teachers, but I’ll be honest with you: They weren’t interested in joining the summer school delegation. They have lives, spouses, children.”

And she had none.

“So, my youth is less of a detractor and more of an asset in this situation?”

“I did think of the fact that you had fewer entanglements keeping you here for the summer. Things have been hard these past few years. Not everyone is able to travel to the United States so readily with such short notice. But it isn’t just that, Eva. I’ve seen the way you teach, how your students connect to you. The girls listen to you. They respect you. And your passion for education shines through in everything you do. You are the perfect person to represent the school—and me.”

Her heart pounded at the praise in his voice.

“What will they be teaching us?”

“Several academic subjects as well as English, which I believe you already know? Didn’t you live in the United States when you were younger?”

Like many Cubans, her family had gone into exile during the wars for independence from Spain. Her mother’s brother was living in Key West at the time, and after Eva’s father died, she and her mother left Cuba to join her uncle in exile. They were only there for a few years before they returned to Cuba when Eva was five, but during that time her uncle taught her to speak, read, and write in English, and she grew up speaking it with those around her while they lived in Key West. When she and her mother returned to Havana, her uncle would write her letters in English, encouraging her to do the same. The letter writing ended when he died a couple years ago, but her uncle had always believed that the United States would play a role in Cuba’s political future whether they wished it or not, and encouraged Eva to speak their language in order to play their game.

“My English is not very good,” she protested, even though that was not entirely accurate. Technically, she was fluent. Still, she lacked confidence in speaking the language, and the words she searched for eluded her when she needed them most. Reading was a bit easier and more comfortable for her, writing in English the same, as at least there was some privacy there, any mistakes she made hers alone rather than shared with her conversation partner.

“Nonsense. With a little practice and the time spent at Harvard, I’m sure you’ll be fine. There’s nothing better than immersing yourself in a place to grasp the language. It certainly helped me when I was in New York. Besides, they’ll have translators accompanying the delegation. They also plan on teaching American history and government. This is a goodwill program, an attempt to have us understand the Americans better, and hopefully for them to learn from us as well.”

And yet, he hadn’t mentioned a program for American teachers to come to Cuba to study.

“I know some of the teachers have reservations about the project. They feel like it’s just another example of the Americans inserting themselves into Cuban affairs.” He sighed. “This is an opportunity for you. A chance to travel, to study at a great university. My recommendation to you is that you take what you can from the experience. Don’t worry about the American motives behind the summer school; if they want to impress us with their teaching methods and academic institutions, fine. Let’s show them who we are and what we’re made of. After all that we’ve been through these past few years, we are still here. There will be over one thousand of you representing Cuba. Make us proud.”

The weight of his words settled over her, the implication in his tone and his gaze suggesting that there was more to consider than her own feelings on the matter, her own benefits to be gained. For Eva, it was not simply enough that she eke every last drop out of the experience, that she personally enjoy this adventure. There was a great deal of responsibility to keep in mind. She wouldn’t be representing only herself, or the school, or Cuba’s education system, or women in Cuba, but her fellow Cubans at a time when they desperately needed the Americans to recognize Cuba’s right to independence, their ability for self-governance.

After centuries of Spanish dominion over the island’s affairs and decades of fighting for independence, Cuba’s dreams of having the right to self-govern had been put on hold by the Americans’ intervention.

And yet, now that Mr. Garcia had proposed the endeavor, now that the suggestion lingered between them, she knew without a doubt that she wanted to go, that this was the adventure she had been waiting for all this time. It seemed unlikely that she would ever again get a chance to leave the island, much less for an educational opportunity such as this one. And perhaps now at a time when Cuba needed so much, the havoc the war had wrought on their lives great indeed, this was a chance for her to serve her country, to do some good.

“Thank you for considering me. It would be my honor to attend the Cuban Summer School.”