CAMAGÜEY.- Half a century later, Gladys remembers her mother’s voice scolding her: “stretch your legs, walk nicely,” “play with the girls, as it is meant to be”. Through intense love, she was seeking to show her the assumed keys of feminity. The girl returned her mother, sometimes punishing herself, her best attempts.

Telma grew up with green everywhere, at an estate where she ran and climbed to her gracious whim. Although “it was another era”, many times, at a young age she got on top of her father’s tractor helped her father make the most challenging works in the fields.

They both learned the hard way that being female is neither about showing off sensitivity, nor tenderness. It is not about maintaining fine fingernails or hair. It is not about cooking tasty food. It is not about the yearning to be a mother. It is not about finding passion in a man ot many. A woman can be all that, or something from that. Or none of that.

Gladys leaves home to look for supplies. Telma stays and set up a broken pot or produces a mixing to continue building her brick oven. Actuall, she will be the one who will use it due to her proven cooking skills. In the case of art, Gladys has a passion for the world of transmutation, because she feels like a fine actress “even with a mustache” when she disguises herself as a boy. Telma is more into canvas and brushes, bringing her back to the country of her nostalgia.

Gladys knows she is a rebel: “Actually, I was married to a gay friend. But it was a pact we broke. We got carried away by happiness. It cost, but the people that love me understood, without my explanations”.

Telma knows she is a winner. She insists on what she aspires. se sabe: “You get what you fight for”, says. And it is easy to imagine this sequence when Gladys was brought to her, took her hand, danced with her and stole her first kiss. Afterwards,many other enndeavours would follow, for the sake of both of them such as learning how to be a builder just by setting her sights and continue to build after two spinal surgeries and and ankle injury.

Presumptuousness is a matter of both of them. In 2019 —at least fifteen years after their first meeting—, it was Gladys who “let out” the unforgettable: “We are getting married”. “She was asked who wanted to be at a symbolic wedding officiated by the Cuban Metropilitan Community Church and offered herself without consulting me. My opinion was not ignored, but we had dreamed of marriage so much… It was a ceremony that surprised me. I thought of something small, but we lived such a beautiful time that I wanted to invite more people, I did not even brought my parents”, Telma said, and Gladys consoles her with the certainty that would soon be able to do it legally, with witnesses and documents that officially tie them together: “because under the Constitution I feel that yes, more rights for individuals, families, for women like us are coming”.

Rumour has it that Gladys is more talkative, but Telma neither hides answers nor observances: “Very often, we have been asked which one is the woman. We are two women”, states, now she is very serious with no need of allegations to wonder about the absurd and blinkered of the binary eye of sexuality, love and life.

It is not easy for a woman in worlwide schemes and prejudices. Being a non-straight woman is even more difficult. Even so, “if there were another life and they may pick”, they would repete as women. Both of them say so, before we asked them, so that it could be read clearly on the press. And, “if there is another life and we may pick, we would be two lesbian women again”, they say together, again, with unobjectionable certainty.

Gladys Martínez Palomo and Telma Hernández Beltrán are in doubt about hwo to put together the image of womanhood “suitting everyone”. Life has taught them that it is not fair nor correct to put together patterns and labels. In Gladys and Telma world, the same world you and I inhabit, is more just and right to speak of women and feminity. It is more just and precise to conjugate in plural. Against false singular forms, fight a war, etched, these two gladiators.