Susana the magician

HAVANA – Visibly furious, she slammed the door to her house as she entered. Her name is not Nora, like Ibsen’s, but Susana the angry woman. She is a short brunette, kind of like a puppy. But at this moment she is not smiling. Once inside the house I imagine her alone as she collapses on some couch, if there is one, and face full of tears.

It’s her father again. He is 57-years-old. It’s his buddies and their almost daily drunkenness until well into the morning; the beatings of the woman on duty. That is why “he has been living alone for more than 20 years.” And it all happens in the ‘house’ next door — with only a wall separating them. A wall that doesn’t even reach the ceiling. It is a very old house, an old structure in an almost residential neighborhood, that was divided into two homes when her parents separated when she was very young.

Houses in Cuba are flexible, they adapt to the socioeconomic needs of those who inhabit them, they “move.” Although, until 1995, Cuba experienced an increase in housing after the triumph of the Revolution, the deficit was never overcome. The growth was due not only to the construction of new buildings but “to the creation of new living spaces that were renovated, and additions in individual homes or in multiple buildings, which adapted to the growth or modification of the family,” according to studies conducted by Dr. María Elena Benítez in 1995. Of the one million homes built between 1959 and 1995, 21.3 percent were built by the government. The rest is due to people’s own efforts. According to the magazine Temas, at present there is a housing deficit of around one million homes on the island.

It is a constant shock that does not allow me sleep thinking that someone is going to break-in to the house. Just anybody can walk by, and there is no security not allowing them to enter my side of the house. My dad just lets anyone in the house. It is why I want to finish raising the wall.

Her father has been vomiting blood. Even then, he won’t stop drinking. He is the kind of person who simply can not. There are those people who do not know how to accept help because they do not believe they have a problem. And still, or in spite of him, Susana keeps her girlish laugh intact, although she will soon turn 30.

“Dad almost died in my hands last year when his blood pressure went up to two hundred and something. Then everything calmed down a bit. It’s like when you say: now I’m going to take a break. But no. And you have a meltdown.” Alcoholism is, no matter your social status, a vicious circle that gets everyone around the patient involved. There is probably no investigation on the subject that has not addressed, even briefly, the issue of violence among family members of an alcoholic. Crisis: of disorganization and demoralization, of drama, of pain. Children and couples are, in most cases, the most affected, physically and psychologically.

Since my mom moved houses in 2013, I have lived alone. She found a boyfriend and took off with him. I’ve been adjusting to the idea that this is no longer our house, it’s just mine.

Susana’s mother was present during her childhood and adolescence. Things were normal. Until one day she wanted to leave. And she left. There is no easy adjective to describe a mother who breaks the socially accepted model, so she prefers not to go into much detail. She only explains that when she entered the university, enrolled in Computer Science, she knew that she was never going to be a programmer, that she did not like it and that she had to make a change. She then decided to change careers just when her mother told her that she could no longer help her, that she was leaving for the United States and that she, Susana, was on her own. That’s how her working life began. With the urgency of unforeseen events.

Some time later, after living alone, and working in for the State, and enrolling in pursuit of a new career, her mother returned. She did not come to the family home, but landed in a boyfriend’s house, in a town outside of Havana.

And Susana, still today, remains alone. “Of course, in that lapse of time I went to live with my boyfriend, but things did not go well and I returned.” She knows she’s lucky. She had somewhere to go.

Hers is a one-person home. At least from 1981 to 2002, this type of household increased by five percentage points. It was only 13.9 percent of the “family nuclei” in Cuba seven years ago. Of those people, 36.7 percent were single and another 33.7 percent divorced and/or separated. Hers is what is known as an “improvised dwelling.” According to classifications offered by housing specialists, and the population studies and census, this type of dwelling includes rooms within larger structures, and all the additions, divisions and changes of structures usually made to houses or apartments as the family nucleus grows and changes.

Home and housing, let’s not confuse them, they are often not the same thing.

At that point it was telling me: OK, I’m gonna fix my house situation. But while attending to the paper work, settling in on a new job, deciding to leave my government job, putting things in order, in other words, time went by. Also, I need people to help me. I was able to take some friends to see the state of construction of the place and to help me understand what I need to do to finish the project. Because if I ask any builder or construction worker, they want to take you for all you’ve got, especially when you’re a woman and alone. The estimate they gave me were double what my friends calculated it would cost. They want to screw you.

“With the salary I was earning, I did not have enough money to both live and fix the house,” she says. She started at 300 pesos; they then raised her 40 pesos, and when she changed jobs she was earning 495, which came out to four hundred and twenty-some pesos after discounting her payment for a subsidized Haier refrigerator. Now that she works in the private sector, she says, she does not lack for salad and she buys more meats. “Up to now,” she says knocking on wood, “I have not gone hungry.”

Susana has herself, and that’s plenty. She no longer expects anything from her parents, and will assume all the consequences. She loves them. At almost 30, she has yet to graduate, but will, she says smiling. She survives with a bit more than fifty dollars a month. She knows that things will be twice as tough as compared to those born with a silver spoon in their mouths. She does not care. It is not her fault. “Me?” she says. “I make magic.”