Would You Call It Resignation?
By Lien Estrada
HAVANA TIMES – Every afternoon, kids from who knows how many places known and unknown congregate to play soccer on the dirt street in front of my house. The noise, that perennial scream because they missed the goal (formed by two small stones designating where the ball should be aimed to score), and similar screams if they got the goal, is truly horrendous.
I promised myself that if someday a kick should send that ball into my patio, I’d grab a knife and shred it into little strips. That was to be my revenge for having put up with so many horrible afternoons, without knowing where to protest.
The opportunity arrived! On my way out of the house, I spy the ball sitting on one of my poppy plants and the little hands of a boy of about 11 trying to open the grating. “Gotcha!” I said to myself, then exclaimed: “Hey kid! What is it you want there?”
The hand slid out of the grating, and he answered me: “The ball has gone into your yard. It’s right there!”
My mind had been made up – in one blow, I’d make them pay for so much accumulated irritation. Now I found myself right in front of the tall poppy plant, where the ball was sitting. It was a factory-made ball, a very nice one, undoubtedly brought in from over there, outside the country.
Because in Cuba, as far as I know, we neither produce nor sell them in any store, speaking about all of Holguin, anyway. My thoughts, flashing by at the speed of light, then tugged at my conscience: very possibly, the only thing these kids have is their game with this ball. Skinny, sunburnt, shirtless, and nearly barefoot; since they were born, they’ve been dealing with the long blackouts, as I have; who knows if they eat, certainly not as they should – in Cuba, very few families eat as they should. They don’t even have schools, because the teachers either leave to work at private businesses, like most of the professionals, or they leave the country like the rest of the Cuban population.
These kids don’t have, and won’t have, any – or at least very limited – horizons, because we live under a government that’s only interested in their own continued rule, the plight of the rest doesn’t matter. And what awaits this little band of malnourished kids with a sack of frustrations on their shoulders, as so many women and men live in this country, like a raft, praying that the sharks don’t eat them. Or the jungle, to get to Curitiba, Brazil, or any other place on Planet Earth.
I gave them their ball back.
They grabbed it, turned their backs on me, and left with their little steps. “’Thank you’ is what you say,” I told them. You have to keep teaching, whatever our fate or that of the other.
“Thank you,” responded first one, then the other. I went back into the house laughing at myself, at the idea that I had been planning to give them back the ball cut into so many palm leaves, like for a broom. Will you look at that! And I’ve sympathized with myself, in a way.
Well, God bless us, that’s life, more than once. You think one thing, then existence tells you: “Come here and see if you can really do what you thought you would.” And you have to rethink it all once again.