Each day, when the workers who remained at the workshop had their lunch hour, María Isabel and Antonio met them in a clearing in the middle of a sugarcane field. Antonio struggled to receive copies of La Aurora now that Porteños y Gómez no longer employed him, but he rode into the city every few days to bring back other news. They made the trek to their meeting spot with a bundle of books each, philosophy texts and political manifestos, mostly. The workers repaid them with yeasty bread, with fat sausages, with cauldrons of ajiaco. On Christmas eve, they even slaughtered a pig that roasted for hours. Every day at noon, they lit their cigars and took a place on dried palm that lined the ground. They nodded and clapped at passages that inspired or put to words that which they all felt.

And María Isabel learned to read more each day. Now that she had empty time at home, she sat with Antonio for hours, and when all had gone to bed, she ran her fingers over crisp pages by candlelight until the stub wore to darkness.

But still, they were dark days for her, filled with hunger, with panic, with mourning, even as she celebrated a secret: she was pregnant, her belly beginning to swell and round. She’d known for months before she shared the news with Antonio or his mother; she’d known even before she walked out of Porteños y Gómez. But she had kept quiet because marveling at what a life could be felt tenuous when death sank its tentacles into everything else. When she finally told Antonio, he lit up like wildfire in a field of grass, deepened his resolve to resist the terror the governor’s edict had staked in their minds.

But Antonio didn’t want her making the trip to the clearing with him any longer. He urged María Isabel to rest, take shade. Her mother-in-law agreed and made hot compresses of cheesecloth and cotton for her aching back, told her to mind her priorities. For a few days, she listened to them and stayed in the comfort of their homey cabin, stewing beans and embroidering a baby bonnet. But even in her state, she yearned to leave. She made the trips until her ankles could no longer tolerate them. And then she put aside all her housework and read for hours.