“This is what life is: fear, rage, desire… love.
To stop feeling emotions, to stop wanting to
feel them, is to feel… death.”
NAME: Elena Marie Taveras
AGE: Thirty-four
HOMETOWN: Luperon, Dominican Republic
DATE OF BIRTH: June 24th, 1981
FACE CLAIM: Zoe Saldana
CLUSTER #1
No one asks for terrible things to happen to them.
They just happen.
Elena Marie Taveras was born within a small, worn down home in Luperon, Dominican Republic. Her mother was a maid for those who were more fortunate than herself and her father was a farmer. Their life was simple and it was about to become vastly complicated with the birth of their daughter - Elena. She hadn’t been planned, but she hadn’t been unexpected either. Elena was something that just happened to her parents.
It seemed like Elena’s life was a series of happenings.
Unplanned, unexplained, and unwanted happenings.
As a child, Elena had no idea that the world was a vast, large place where there were so many people better off than her family and that there were people who were worse off. Elena’s world only encompassed the neighborhood she grew up in, her parents, and her friends. Despite the hardships her parents endured with her mother loosing her job and struggling to find a new one, they made sure Elena never went hungry.
So, the early years of Elena’s life weren’t full of difficult times or staring up at the stars praying to a god she didn’t whether or not existed that food would be put on the table in the morning. No, Elena had happy memories. Moments that were filled with laughter and joy as her father taught her how to catch, how to defend herself, how to fight and her mother teaching her how to sew and to cook. Despite being unplanned, Elena was the light of her parents life and even though they were poor - they were happy.
Until her mother became sick when she was just sixteen years old.
Six months later, her mama had passed into the next life.
Cancer had taken her life.
And thus began the series of terrible happenings in Elena’s life. Her papa fell into a spiral of depression, with his wife, his best friend gone from this world it seemed as though nothing would matter anymore. Elena tried to pick up the pieces of their shattered life, but nothing she did could replace her mother. Nothing she did could snap her father from his daze of grief.
In turn, Elena struggled with her own inner demons and wished every day that her mama had been there to lend an ear. To help Elena discover who she was.
Instead, Elena struggled working a full time job and attempting to finish her schooling. It wasn’t easy, but at least her father didn’t fall into a depression where he sat around their house all day. No, instead he worked their farm from the moment the sun came up to the moment it set. It broke Elena’s heart to see him like that, but two years had gone by and she had accepted this was her father now. Distant, stricken with grief, and only present in brief moments.
Once Elena had finished school, she set up a small shop out of their home and worked as a seamstress patching up clothing and sometimes making basic shirts and pants for the less fortunate in town. Elena didn’t make a lot, but at least it was some more income for her and her father. It put food on the table and allowed them to have a little extra left over after bills to stroll around the town’s market to indulge themselves.
Elena was twenty-seven when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her health had taken a nasty turn four months before her birthday and it seemed to snap her father from his daze and he dragged her on a bus to Hospital General de la Plaza de la Salud in Santo Domingo.
As soon as the news fell upon her father’s ears, he lost it. Despite the distance that had grown between them since her mother’s death, her father didn’t want to lose the only other family he had left.
They had no health care.
But he swore up and down he’d do whatever he needed to do.
At first, Elena’s father only had to sell a donkey, some pigs, and other animals every so often to pay for Elena’s chemotherapy and Elena worked as much as she could to help pay for the treatments.
They had no money, but Elena was steadily growing healthier and after a year of treatments, she was cancer free. It seemed like perhaps their life would become normal again and for some time it did.
Until six months ago, when Elena was told the cancer had come back. And this time? This time there was nothing they could do.
Elena had the option of removing her ovaries to get rid of the worst of her cancer which perhaps would give her five to ten more years to live with routine chemotherapy or she could forgo the surgery and only have a matter of months to live.
Elena’s father didn’t hesitate to sell everything he could to pay for the surgery. He was under the false impression that by having this surgery and having faith in God that Elena would be cured once more.
Before she could argue, before she could scream at her father to not waste his money on her terminal disease he had gone behind her back and paid the doctors. Tears sprang into Elena’s eyes and her hand twitched by her side because she wanted to hit her father for being so careless. He needed the farm so he could continue his life after she was gone.
Now? Now he would have nothing.
It made Elena weep.
One surgery later, Elena took trips into Santo Domingo once a month to have her treatment and her life wasn’t really a life at all.
Instead it was a series of unfortunate events.
