America feels alone

HAVANA – America’s loneliness has nothing to do with the loss of a great love, or the hatred for someone. My neighbor on 60th Street has simply been left alone. Her life has been on this path for quite some time now and there doesn’t appear to be anything that might change it — no last minute turn or angel that might appear and make it a better. America is 67-years-old and most of what she possesses these days is herself.

We are five siblings, because one died two years ago. There’s another who live here; he’s a chemistry teacher, but you will never see him around. There is a sister who is seven years older than I am. She was hard-core, threw eggs at those who left and wrote down the names of those who entered the Catholic Church. She’s now a Spanish citizen and lives there. There is another one who lives in Sweden and has two daughters. And well, there is a fifth,  who was the black sheep of the family; he has cancer of the larynx. His name is José. He was one of those persons stuck in the caravan in Costa Rica. Due to his sickness, they prioritized him. But he left mad at all of us and does not communicate with any of us. We are a disaster as a family. I am also a disaster.

America, as her older sister named her, does not think about politics, nor does she see poetry in her name. She only remembers how her high school classmates ridiculed when they asked her: “And have you opened the Panama Canal?” She married a man sick with complexes, according to the only friend who visits her in her lonely apartment. “He never treated her well. At that time I was just her neighbor, and I never imagined what was going on inside that house. Her in-laws knew, and they did nothing to help her, to intervene in that madness.”

The house where my two children were born belonged to my in-laws. One day I no longer wanted that life, and I left. Initially alone, until I could create the right conditions for my children. I thought they would be fine with their grandparents, who did not love me, but loved their grandchildren. I only had a small plot of land where I was never able to build anything on, so I rented a room with a bathroom and that was it. Doing whatever I could and wherever I could, I got my own apartment. And that’s when everything started to go sideways, because my children never wanted to go live with me, they preferred to stay with their grandparents, who filled their heads with nonsense, and I, the idiot that I was, allowed it. I never thought that things would end up like this, I saw it as something that would naturally heal. And then I moved to this area to leave that damn Mariel…

Later, her children moved, one to Hialeah the other to Costa Rica, as soon as they had the opportunity. “Sometimes they send me pictures,” says a teary America, “but we never talk. The Costa Rican works in construction, and I think can he not re-enter the country. From what I know, he got involved in some kind of shady business here and I doubt he’ll ever return. I have four grandchildren that I’ve never met.” 

Loneliness is, like stress, the great challenge of the 21st century. For a whole bunch of reasons the number of elderly people with no family to take care of them, or who even love them, or “represent” them (as stated in the Social Security Law 105), has been increasing, and not only in Cuba. America’s retirement consists of 305 Cuban pesos (about $13 USD) a month, and for years now only visits Mariel once a week to pick up 10 or 12 bottles of yogurt, depending on what she can carry back, which she then sells in the neighborhood fo six pesos each. She has a knack for selling, all done illegally, but not only the yogurt: she sells house products, air fresheners, fish, clothes, wood carvings, some crafts and she even makes her own vinegar from fruit. She is also paid a monthly fee by some neighbors to pick up their monthly food allotments at the store. In other words, she’s a survivor.

Family members who ‘represent’ them, as the law states, are not an option for America, who knows she will have to work until the end of her days. It is these cases that prove the obvious: Cuban public policy must begin to focus urgently on this group of older people, whose numbers increase every year, and help provide them a comfortable life and a real opportunity for the rest they deserve. In other words, repay them for the work of decades, which benefited the whole society.

Right now nobody, besides herself, will take care of covering her basic needs. She will continue to climb that rickety ladder to paint her walls as long as she has the strength. And according to what she tells me, there will always be a little something to eat, maybe a slice of pudding or a cup of coffee, for her next door neighbor who she loves like a daughter.

By the way, that neighbor is me.