Fragile Thread

Yeni is 19 years old. Yeni carries the burden of loss and uncertainty on her shoulders. Her mother is dead and her father has disappeared. She lives in an old, half-ruined house in Old Havana, very close to the Capitolio. The once-thriving architecture is now a reminder of the passage of time and the struggles of its inhabitants. Yeni’s room, built of simple wooden planks under a dilapidated high ceiling that she climbs up a rickety wooden ladder to get to, is both a refuge and a daily battle against despair. Her two older brothers and a friend with her child live with her in the one-room apartment. She has no job, no support, except for the monthly food ration that the Cuban state distributes in the bodegas. Small stores in the neighborhood, with the most basic food. How exactly she gets by, she can’t say.