Amanda smiles whenever anyone asks her if she likes going to school or not: a sincere, happy smile that reminds me of my own many years ago. Until the last school year, we would hear Amanda crying out on the stairwell every morning – she didn’t want to go to her kindergarten.
The Coronary Care Ward at Havana’s Calixto Garcia Hospital is not exactly a merry place, but it would be far more depressing if it wasn’t for La Niña. La Niña is a cute little dog that squats on the ground floor of the hospital.
For six years, I lived with two elderly women (my grandmother and her sister). It was the saddest time in my life that I can recall. The Special Period crisis had hit us hard and we didn’t have the conditions needed to care for them at home.
I would have liked to have contributed something significant to the world, something small but important. Thinking about this, I came upon the first of August, the day in which Henrietta Lacks was born. She had the worst three defects someone could have in 1950s Virginia.
My mother was sweating buckets. An intense burning sensation in her chest was making her dizzy. She started to go cold and pale, and her lips took on that frightening purple tonality. Then, she passed out. That’s the beginning of the story.
On the last Saturday of March, an official government announcement took the habitual listeners of Havana’s Radio Reloj radio program by surprise. It was a petition by authorities asking the public the help clear up a crime that had taken place in Old Havana two days before.
It was ten to 8 pm, the time the second screening begins at Havana’s La Rampa theater. We were waiting to go in and see the Turkish film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, winner of the Grand Jury Award at Cannes. Ready to take in the 157-minute movie, we were waiting for the ticket booth to open.
Abortion is a complex issue that stirs up passions as well as ethical, religious, philosophical and biological debates. Generally, the person voicing an opinion – no matter what camp they belong to, in favor or against – denies that the opposite opinion has any validity.
Dora is a Cuban woman getting on in years who’s lived abroad for some time now. She loves the Central American country where she lives with her children so much she would have never left it, had a health complication not forced her to return to Cuba.
I’ve spent months looking for a small-sized bra without padding and still haven’t found it at any store. If I were looking for a pair of comfortable, low-heeled sandals, I would have to set out on a similar odyssey, because platform shoes are now in style.