The Children of Sanchez (18 page)

When I was about eleven years old and still in the first grade, I ran away for the first time. I went to Veracruz with no more than the clothes on my back. I had no money to start out with. In those days, I never got to have a whole
peso
in my pocket all at once. I was limited to the five
centavos
my father would put under our pillows each morning before he went to work. On Sundays, we got twenty
centavos
each. But I usually spent my money right away and never had any in my pocket. On the road all the money I had was what one driver gave me.

My excuse for running away was that my father scolded me, but in reality, he always scolded me. The main reason was that I heard the boys talking about their adventures and I wanted to find out for myself. So I went to Veracruz. I chose that place because I had been to Veracruz once with my father and mother, Manuel and Consuelo, who was a nursing baby then. My grandfather had died and some uncles of mine had put my father in jail and had taken away his inheritance. Just to think of it made my blood boil! Imagine, my uncles
had done this to my father! Such shameless, materialistic people! Money was everything to them! But my uncles were dead and I didn’t know about my other relatives until later.

Right off the bat, I walked about twenty-three kilometers on the Mexico-Puebla highway. I have always liked the road; walking is my life. I’ve walked from Maltrata all the way along the railroad tracks as far as Orizaba (about seventy kilometers), just to see the vegetation and the fantastic view. The train would pass by and I could have jumped it (I don’t have the old-fashioned bad habit of paying fares) but I preferred to walk along, admiring the scenery. I like to walk day and night, until I fall down with exhaustion. Then I go to sleep at the side of the highway. I can find grass anywhere and I’d cut a pile of it for my bed.

On the highway I felt happy and carefree. The problem of food didn’t worry me. It was easy for me to go up to a shack and ask for work to do in exchange for a
taco
. Everybody gave me something to do, draw water from the well, chop wood, or any simple thing like that, and then they’d give me something to eat. Lots of people would tell me to sit down to eat first, and then they wouldn’t let me do anything for them. They would fix up a pack of
tortillas
and salt and off I’d go.

I had laid out a route and went as I had planned. From Los Reyes, I walked as far as the crossroads, where the highways to Texcoco, Puebla, and Veracruz meet. No damned car would stop for me, even though they saw I was a kid. A bus picked me up and they asked where I was from. If I had known that saying you are from Mexico City closed doors to you, I would have said I was from somewhere else. People from the capital have a very bad reputation. At the carnivals and
fiestas
, whenever they catch anybody stealing or doing something wrong, he turns out to be from there. During Holy Week and the Carnival on July 24, lots of dope addicts and homosexuals from Mexico City go to Veracruz. I saw some there, dressed up like women. Who knows why they do this? It is nauseating.

I traveled alone. I never wanted to take along friends because I have always preferred to go on my own. It is easier for me to get around by myself. I would ask people the way. By asking, you can get to Rome.

When I left home, I felt as though a great weight was lifted off me. To live with other people is hard. I never wanted to be tied to the
family again. Sometimes I would ask for lodging for a night and I would stay with a family for a few days. But I wasn’t comfortable because what I was looking for was to be free. And so I went, like the air, without difficulty, without direction, free … People would ask, “Why did you leave home?”

“Because my father scolded me. I have a stepmother.” How I used Elena as an excuse! I think that was why I was always making her mad, so that I could use her as a pretext for my lies. I had the luck of a canaille, for I achieved my ends for the moment. I call myself canaille, because I used another person to cover up my lies. What I have gone through is nothing, compared to what I deserve.

Like all adventurers, when I arrived in Veracruz, I asked the way to the sea. I reached it and sat on a navy dock all day looking at its vastness. The sea was beautiful, overpowering. I was there all day and saw how the tourists and the watchmen, who guard the docks and the cargoes, had nothing else to do but fish. When it was nightfall I wondered where I was going to sleep. That is the least problem there, because it is very hot. I decided to stay on one of the beaches, the best and softest one. At night the tide rises, so I stayed some distance from the sea.

The next day I felt like eating. I hadn’t eaten anything the day before. I was so entranced, watching the sea and the fishing. I went over to the docks, because of the cargo boats anchored there. I saw a lot of people walking back and forth. They were a rough bunch, dark-skinned guys, huskier than hell, the bastards. I approached the boat cook and asked if he didn’t have any work for me in exchange for a
taco
. He felt sorry for me and it was because of that cook that I worked as a longshoreman for the first time in my life. I carried any little stuff and they would give me meals in return. We started work at eight and stopped at twelve, then began at twelve-thirty and quit at four-thirty. That was the way I got my food and lodging, for they gave me permission to sleep on the boat.

After a while, it didn’t look like such a good setup for me. A boat would come in and I would stick to it like a leech. But the next day it would pull out and I would be homeless and without food again. I was always having to look for a place to eat and sleep. But I knew that if anybody died of hunger it was because he was lazy. If you helped the fishermen on the free beaches pull in their nets, you
wouldn’t get money but they’d give you a few fish. In one casting, they get all kinds of things, from sharks to turtles. I sold the fish, keeping one or two which I’d ask the fisherman’s wives to cook for me.

I was willing to work at whatever came along, so I could eat. I never earned a copper working, they just gave me fruit, for the most part. I even ate wild greens and there were times when I didn’t taste bread for two weeks. When I had nothing to eat, I would ask the watchmen to let me take a few pieces of coconut. When ships came in from Tabasco, or from places where they grew fruit, I had a feast day!

I began to have worries about a place to sleep because I heard that the police van was going around the beaches, where all the riffraff of Veracruz gathered. Anyone found sleeping on the sand would be taken off to jail. Nothing happened to me, but I slept with less calm, and went further away from the beach, toward the mountains. I didn’t dare go away from the docks in the daytime—they were the source of life for me.

About three months passed like this. The time came when I felt like going home. I thought of the family only once in a while, but when I did, I felt like getting back home as fast as I could. There were moments when I felt brave enough to leave, then I would lose heart. I never wrote home, because I didn’t know how to write a letter and I didn’t want them to know where I was. I imagined that if my
papá
found out he would come and beat me to death. That is what I thought, but I went home anyway.

The return trip was hard because I had to walk from Veracruz to Puebla. It took me eight or nine days. I walked day and night, as no damned truck would pick me up. I took the Córdoba road and came to the police booth at the entrance of the city of Puebla. My shoes were all worn out, strong miner’s boots that my father always bought for us. I asked the truck drivers for a lift, but they refused. Some of them made fun of me. I paid no attention to them but I felt lonely for the first time, alone as a feather flying through the air. I sat at the side of the road, crying.

Finally, the police stopped a truck and said, “Take care of this kid adventurer. He is headed for Mexico City.” I got on and we arrived late at night, at the Merced Market, near the Zócalo, the central square of Mexico City. Imagine, it was my first time there. I had been to Veracruz but had never seen the Zócalo! When I crossed in front of
the National Palace, I saw the great big clock in the Cathedral as it struck three. There I was, all alone in the plaza. I hurried home, knocked at the
vecindad
gate and the
portera
let me in.

Outside our door I sat, wondering whether or not to go in. I expected a terrific beating. I started to knock, but sat down again. Then something strange occurred. I am not superstitious, but if you had seen what I have, you would consider me a superior being. Sitting there, at that hour, I saw someone dressed like a
charro
, a cowboy, come down from the roof near the water tank. He lit something, a cigar, I think, because the fire was so big. I kept staring and wondering what the man was looking for. Then the cigar fell to the ground and the man disappeared … just like that. I figured he must have been kidding around … but where did he go?

I have always liked danger and strong emotions and when there is something unfamiliar, I want to know more about it. So I climbed up to the water tank, way up to the top. I went to the little garden and to the bathhouse. Rumors had gone around the
vecindad
that these places were haunted. Well, if I were superstitious, I would be dead now, because as I went to the bathhouse I heard a tremendous noise, a crash, as though something had broken. I got panicky and ran back to our door and knocked. They called out, “Who is it?” and I said, “Me,
papá
.”

My father opened the door immediately. “So you finally got back, son. Well, come on in.” He was very nice. I thought he would meet me with a belt in his hand and give me the hiding of the ages. But he said to me, “Did you have any supper?” We had no kerosene stove then, just a charcoal brazier, so he got himself to work and lit a fire. He heated the beans and coffee and said, “Eat. When you are finished turn out the light.” Then he went back to bed. As I knew he left for work early and that he was a light sleeper, I turned out the light and there I was eating in the dark. Then I went to sleep … and he hadn’t scolded me or hit me or anything.

The next day, before he left, my father gave me a terrible bawling out, which I well deserved. Then I noticed Saint Anthony, in the wardrobe, upside down, with my shirt wrapped around him. Elena took him out and said, “Well
Señor
San Antonio, now that you have brought him back to us, return to your place.” And she put him back on his feet. I don’t really know whether I am a good Catholic or not … I don’t like to talk much about religion, but it made me laugh when she
did that. At the same time, I wondered whether it really had a deep meaning.

That afternoon the storm broke loose, and I got what I had expected the night before … but good. After that, the common ordinary days followed, one after another, here in the
vecindad
. My friends tormented me to tell them about my adventures and I felt like a big shot because all they knew was Chapultepec Park. I felt very proud talking about what I had done, about not having money or anything to eat or a place to sleep.

I also told a bunch of lies about the women I had had in Veracruz. I did it because my friends, boys younger than I, talked about how good so-and-so was, and that they did such-and-such with her. They topped me and so as not to be left behind, I told them that in Veracruz I too had had good “linings,” as we say.

I was working in the bathhouse, when a woman, the wife of a tailor I knew, came in and asked for an individual bathtub. She was with a man who ran a shell game in the streets, a con man, and right there he asked her … well, what he asked her. She said, “No! How can you think of such a thing. If my husband found out he would kill me.” So he says, “Yes, but you are not going to tell him.”

The fellows who worked in the baths with me heard this dialogue. Well, he convinced her and they went into tub No. 1 together. One of the attendants, an older man, climbed to the roof to watch. After a while, he came down and said, “Man! He put her through all the positions.” So I climbed up too and saw them doing this sexual business and it excited me very much. All the rest of the day I kept thinking, “I wonder how you do it? I wonder what it feels like?”

So I started talking about it with the boys and we decided to go to Tintero Street that night. I wanted to do it, but didn’t like the idea of going with a woman, least of all where you could get a disease. But the boys said, “Go,
Negro
, and knock off one small piece. What can it amount to? So you know what it feels like to be a man.” I said to myself, “Oh, so that’s what you have to do to be a man. Well, then I’ve got to do it.” So I went.

The woman I drew said, “Come on over, kiddo, don’t be afraid.” I really felt like running out, but she said, “Come on, climb on. Don’t be scared. Is this your first time?”

“Yes, lady, I’d better go.”

“Don’t be afraid. You’ll see how nice it feels.” She took me by the
hand and the next thing I knew I was on the bed and we began to do … what we did. I liked it and after that I kept going on my own … only a few times … but I kept going.

I worked in the bathhouse all this time, watching the lockers, handing out towels and soap, even giving massages for extra tips, but then the other boy who worked there began complaining that we weren’t being paid enough … only two
pesos
fifty
centavos
a week, so, to even things up, we took fifty
pesos
out of the cash box but that bastard of a boss went and told my father we took more and my father made good for it. So I lost that job and got a beating besides.

Then Miguel, a friend of mine, asked me if I wanted to work in a glass shop. I had to enter as an apprentice at two
pesos
fifty a week, but I did it to learn the trade. About two months later I went to work in José Pinto’s glass shop. It was just a small shop then, but now that man has a big place, a house of his own, a bank account and a car. He was one man I knew who could get ahead. He paid for piecework and I made about thirty to thirty-five
pesos
a week.