CAMAGÜEY.- I learned forever the judgment of Gabriel García Márquez: the tape recorders do not receive the beats of the heart. I read it in a text that was not included in the formal bibliography of my first year as Journalism student. This is a tattoo that I have in the agenda of the profession. And there is perhaps the first one of the sprains with which it turned out to be this interview.
About Marlene, I knew only the name. Not even the voice had come up between phone and phone to coordinate the meeting. Another person had done it for me. Mistake again. The literature advises that the interviewer must know everything about his interviewee; first it means respect, and second, a good way for the success. But this one, I already said, it is an anti-example of the genre. When I came Marlene was already waiting; we keep on adding adversity. In addition I went to ask her for herself.
“We are going to sit down here, more comfortable”, and she prepares for me the ambience, as who foresees in the steps of the journalist a pure stumble. It was a tenuous, fresh evening, and the postcard that many and leafy trees were proving I foresaw it like the prediction of the good and fertile thing for coming. We sat down. I pull out my agenda and a propelling pencil given at the last hour (never so exact the expression). “I do not use tape recorder”, apologize before the question mark that showed her face.
If we were going to classify, Marlene is not an empowered woman's "model"; successful, social life of nerves; that chooses, according to her accounts, her own destiny. Rather the destination chose her. Marlene is a housewife and she sews every day of her life. Of having done without the interview, Marlene would fit in molds of another century.
Two days after her birthday 21, Kleidel was born. And what it seemed a round February of celebrations turned turbulent. Kleidel was born with Down syndrome. The first sorrow can be counted in lines and stitches. She did not already want any more the garments of her frenzies; and the scissors of the annoyance cut both the pledges and the pain. She remembers that in the middle of one of these "therapies" her mother sat down in front of her and enlightened her: “life does not stop here”. She understood.
Since then, she devoted herself to her son with the whole love and the energy that is foreseen in a well-made piece. Because “in Kleidel I found all the love and the energy that I have needed to turn the game of the rag-dolls and their clothes into the game of looking for the sustenance and doing what I like”.
At the age of 21, she understood that the game of life sometimes takes tears and anguish that then change into strength, in more passion for the game. At the age of 21, sometimes, also, the love and the reason are trebled, and she decided, in peace, that there are neither widths so absolute nor genetic malformations: it is possible to play at winning with "imperfect" chromosomes; it is possible to play at winning, because an extra copy of the pair 21 adds urgencies as sacred as those of taking care, supporting, loving, giving life after life.
“I wanted that he was happy; I bet everything so he grew up as a normal child. We walk very much, he did everything he wanted: he danced, practiced sports, painted, sang, mounted bicycle, learned to swim. Of child, his dad and I we took him very much to the beach and he loved it; every Sunday went to the Japanese park. He was always the happiest child of the world, and mom and dad along with him”.
Marlene per moments loses some accounts, as that of the forms of sports that Kleidel practiced: long jump, athletics, and weight. There she stops and remembers the golden medal that he won at national level in this specialty. I hesitate to ask her for the year of the prowess; I am not going to press it so much, I think. She "listens" to my conflict.
“In 2001, she clears me. I have the house full of his diplomas. Yes, he has been happy”, and I believe that she speaks to herself. She knows that her biography, as that of all those who decide to multiply, must be written from the aptitude to achieve full children, with the fortune of the happiness, more than of the genetic perfection.
“The design of a normal day in Marlene's life? Simple. I get up early and prepare breakfast. When the child wakes up I enlist him and start sewing. After lunch I keep on sewing until it falls down the evening. Of course, if I have not had to do any responsibility as the president of electoral school or coordinating committee of area of the CDR, since I´ve been for more than 15 years in these functions; and they demand effort, I work directly with the delegate. We have been up to avant-gardes”, she tells, and there is no one who demotivate her.
“It has changed very much the dynamics of the quarter and the organization, the vitality of the CDR is not the same as earlier, but it turns out to be my way of helping. In another place my son would not be here already. I cannot define the amount of tests and studies that we have done to him and he has always had the best thing”.
Last February 21st, Marlene Estrada Nápoles and Orbelio Gregorio Salazar celebrated 34 years of marriage; on the 22nd she came to her 54, and on the 24th Kleidel celebrated his 33. It was the happiest sheet of the almanac again: in addition, three nephews also add up years and a sister celebrates her wedding anniversary. “It is full the month”, she sums up. Then I imagine at her mom's to her large family being happy: "there we always met and we do all the holidays, we are very close”, and she concludes the interview.
Another companion in this mute point after the "close" had interrupted the recording, just at 7:10 p.m. I continued with the agenda and the foreign propelling pencil in the hand. Her cell phone rang. “Yes, do not worry, now I come by to pick him up over there”. “My sister, she tells to me, that the girl dances tomorrow in the Casino and now they told her that the suit must have more adornments. Today, I spend the night sewing, and early tomorrow I am going to see her dancing”, she authentically smiles and one believes that her clock has more numbers.
True, she has an army of chromosomes who supports her and to whom she supports; they are “very close”. I say goodbye and note down my last prayer: Jéssica will dance beautifully because this way her suit will be; at her 10 years she knows that aunt Marlene "threads" the fondness exactly.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez