LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

       The First Grand Plié

      The alarm clock sounded at five o’clock in the morning on 1 September 1982. My father turned on the light, and I had the impression that he had been wide awake all night, pacing up and down like an unquiet soul. Mamá went to heat up the breakfast while my sisters slept on. I washed my face, brushed my teeth and put on the red shorts, white shirt and blue kerchief that are the uniform worn by primary school children throughout Cuba. After drinking my milky coffee, I picked up the rucksack with my exercise books and the new ballet clothes the school had given me. My father gave me a brief, tight hug. I kissed my mother on the cheek. She smiled at me brightly, but her eyes were shining with sympathy. Then I went out to meet our neighbour Candida’s sons, Alexis and Alexander, to begin the long journey into school.

      It was strange and exciting to travel into the city to go to school. I had only previously been to the centre of Havana on a couple of occasions when my sister Berta had taken Marilín and me for a special treat to the ice-cream parlour Coppelia. The school was in the very centre of Havana close to all the famous buildings such as the Focsa and the Hotel Capri. Everything was grand and majestic, and the streets were full of traffic and people going to work.

      I would be attending two schools. At the first, the Orlando Pantoja, which was three blocks away from L and 19, we would study the usual academic subjects from eight in the morning until noon. The Pantoja consisted of two buildings, one for the pupils from pre-school up to fourth grade and the other for fifth-and sixth-grade students. The buildings were elegant old houses. Before the Revolution, they had been the homes of wealthy families, and one could still imagine their former glory, even though they were now an ugly, institutional green and their paintwork was shabby and peeling.

      Two hundred schoolchildren studied there. There were about fifty of us dancers, and the rest were kids from the local area. Some were better off than others, and although this should not have mattered because in Cuba education is free for everyone, I still felt intimidated that first day, as if I did not belong there.

      A kid called Ismar and I were the only dancers in the fourth grade. In the other building, there were fifth-and sixth-grade classes just for the dance students. It was much easier for them. I was always getting into fights with my classmates because they called me ‘Alicia Alonso’, ‘poof ’ or ‘fag’. I did not mind fights, I liked the chance to work off my anger from time to time, and it did not take much for me to get into a scrap with somebody or other, however big he happened to be. Soon the kids in my class began to respect me and stopped calling me names, taking it out on Ismar instead. He never answered back, they could call him fag or whatever and it would not get a rise out of him. More than once, I had to come to his rescue because the classroom bullies were pinning him down. Eventually, after being summoned once too often to the head’s office for bad behaviour, they decided to leave us in peace.

      Our teacher Nancy was sweetness itself. She was not like the teacher at my previous school, who had beaten me with a thick, metre-long ruler until I was covered in bruises. Nancy was olive-skinned, with a beautiful smile and a strong clear voice like a soprano: Maria Callas working as a teacher. When she attempted to be strict, she could never keep it up for long because she adored children and she loved each of us unconditionally. Even though I was a rebellious child, a truant and a troublemaker who often fell asleep during class, I always respected my teachers, and Nancy most of all. When she told me off, I would hang my head in shame, unable to meet her dark eyes because I knew that she wanted me to do well. She used to laugh when I came up with imaginative excuses to justify my truancy. On one occasion I swore that my mother had given me diazepam instead of aspirin for a fever, and that I had slept for two days; on another, I claimed that I had been kidnapped by neighbourhood bandits. Nancy never shouted at me or threatened me, much less hit me. Instead, she liked my stories. When I had to catch up on schoolwork after my frequent absences, she would stay with me till I was done, helping me to go over the lessons with kindness and patience beyond the call of duty. I was with Nancy throughout fourth grade, taking classes in tenderness and understanding as well as science and the arts. I can only give thanks to God for putting her in my path.

      In the afternoon we took our ballet classes at the school in L and 19. There were about twenty new students on the day I started. I was very nervous that first day, and kept as quiet as possible. Ramon, the head teacher, a man some six feet tall with completely white hair, welcomed us all.

      ‘Dear students, today we see the beginning of the new school year and with it a new page in the Cuban Revolution. You are the foot-soldiers, the men and women of tomorrow, those who will shape the revolutionary future …’

      After his long speech, the head of the student group, Lorena Feijó o, shouted out the slogan of Cuban primary school children: ‘Pioneers for communism!’

      And we all had to respond in unison: ‘We will be like Che!’

      I had my own subtle variation.

      ‘Pioneers for communism! We will be like Pelé!’

      In the hot narrow changing rooms of the school we put on our ballet clothes – leotards, which I hated because they were like girls’ clothes, and were uncomfortable to wear because the back bit pulled up between your buttocks. The boys were given trunks to wear over the top. I thought I looked ridiculous.

      We walked to the studio where an attractive woman with a lovely smile waited for us.

      ‘My name is Lupe Calzadilla,’ she said.

      She was firm but fair and loved what she did and above all the results she achieved. She was a born teacher. We arranged ourselves at the barre. Some tall, some short, all skinny except for one pudgy kid called Victor. A boy called Ulises and I were the only blacks in the group.

      Lupe showed us the positioning of our arms and legs. She explained to us what a grand plié was and a tendu, then she showed us an exercise.

      ‘So this is ballet?’ I thought to myself as she made us all stand with our feet turned out like Charlie Chaplin in something that she called first position.

      After that we had to do squats, eight down and eight up, then we had to repeat the same exercise standing like frogs, which was what the teacher called second position. I could not see the point of it.

      We continued like this for an hour, repeating things that were strange, ridiculous, obscure and meaningless. The more I repeated the boring, monotonous exercises, the more I was convinced that this was not for me. We finished

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