Jumping without a Parachute

By Caridad

In a couple of years, it will be dangerous for me to have a child.  I’m not saying I have an in-depth knowledge of my current state of my health; it could be risky to be pregnant right now.  However, when I turn 36, a very delicate stage will begin for me if I decide to give birth.

A while back I began to experiment something I was afraid of since I decided not to have children. I dream of babies; I stare at them more insistently than usual and feel something odd inside me.  Then I imagine that that girl or boy could be mine, it is so nice…  Fortunately, I imagine right away how it would be like ten years later, when the baby becomes a teenager, or when they begin to go to school…

School.  A small detail to take into account if one thinks of having a child nowadays.

In developed countries, students have decided to kill each other for fun -I know this is a very sarcastic way of putting it.

In Cuba, to be fair and honest, students do not kill each other, but the education system is no longer efficient.

However, I’m not going to write about that now, nor about the absurd compulsory military service (which could extend to women?), or about the moment when I would have to open my arms and let my seed grow away from my family and I.

Lately, I could have made a decision contrary to the one I made 10 years ago.  Despite being a lesbian, the matter of finding a biological father would not upset me as much as it upsets others who, for their own reasons, prefer to conceive a child without having physical contact with a man.

Maybe the time has come for me to conceive: my psychic, spiritual, biological moment.  But I can’t.  At least, this year; it would be sheer madness.

I receive a salary of 405.00 pesos, which is equivalent to around 16.00 Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC), the Cuban currency trading for a little more than the US dollar, and which is used to buy 98 percent of all purchases.

I have no relatives abroad who send me remittances.

A supposed father of my child -someone from my circle of friends- would not earn more than 20.00 CUC a month.

How would I manage to take care of another person?

I have no home.

I live in a cheaply built apartment of building materials that retain humidity and produce dust continuously.  My room is 3X3 m².

To “finish the month” (as we call the act of surviving after there is nothing left of our salary), I have another job which I do in my free time.  But, if I have a child, I wouldn’t have any free time.

I imagine that a lot of people (who do not live as I do) think that I am making a mountain out of a molehill; or that if I am not married, there is no reason for me to have a child; or that if the rest of humanity had thought like me, we would have become extinct a long time ago.

There’s a saying that it is better not to think too much about things, that they will get solved along the way.

Everyday it seems like the possibility of achieving the minimum conditions to embark on this journey are further and further away.  I am satisfied with having little material comfort, but I do not dare to demand so much from a creature only because I feel the need to give birth.

Faith and hope can serve me well, but not for long.