The Children of Sanchez (30 page)

A few years back, people were afraid to go out at night because this section was known for its criminals, pickpockets and dope addicts. It wasn’t so crowded then and there were big ditches in which they often found the bodies of people who had been drowned or strangled. This
vecindad
was a real robber’s nest. Men and women would disappear
mysteriously and it is believed that lots of them were buried under the floors. That’s why so many families had cement poured over the flooring.

Every day someone was robbed, or murdered or violated. There is a story about a girl in Tepito who had a boy friend. He was one of the worst kind. Once he invited her to the movies. He had prearranged with some other boys to take her home through the market, and there they grabbed her, dragged her into one of the stalls and they all raped her. They say that there were so many that her anus came out, and then they killed her.

Sometimes there were real waves of terror and no one dared go out or complain. The law isn’t very strict about assault cases and they almost don’t even take notice. Little by little, a better class of people came to live here and the situation changed.

But people are still afraid at night because they say there are ghosts here, lost souls wandering around. The older residents claim money is buried near the watertanks and that sometimes a hen, or a man dressed like a
charro
, appears there. Roberto once saw him and other strange things happened to my brother when he slept on the roof. Once he went to sleep above and woke up down below. Another time, he felt someone pulling him by the feet.

Consuelo was in the toilet once when a ghost called her by name and scared her. Another time, it happened to Manuel. He was coming home very late one night and saw an old woman pulling a cart loaded with furniture. He noticed that she went into one of the courtyard shower-rooms and heard all the furniture falling. He ran to help her … but there was nothing there. He came home looking white.

My
papá
and I once passed by a funeral and we heard the people cursing the dead man all along the way. My
papá
told me they had to curse the soul of a good man to put it at rest, otherwise it would haunt people. My stepmother Lupita was haunted by the dead. They followed her so much, she had to curse them to keep them away.

There are still some terrible
vecindades
around here. They are called “Lost Cities” and are made up of wooden shacks with dirt floors. The Casa Grande looks like a queen alongside them. On the Street of the Bakers, near my aunt’s house, is a “Lost City” half a block long. It is the worst
vecindad
in our
barrio
. If you walk in there halfway well-dressed, everyone looks at you. The way they treat you depends on how you are dressed. Outsiders are afraid to go in but my sister-in-law
Paula’s family has always lived in places like that, so I am used to them.

I knew the gang of girls who lived in the “Lost City” near my aunt’s, and there wasn’t a virgin among them. The boys there even took advantage of the little girls. When I was young, a fellow named “Guts,” who was the terror of the neighborhood, lived there. He was a “
teporocho
,” which means he drank straight alcohol, and was unbelievably fast with a knife. When he went to the movies with his gang, they sat up on the balcony and smoked marijuana. You could smell it all over the theatre, and if the movie were a daring one, you could hear them saying dirty things.

My
barrio
has everything, even prostitutes. We girls used to go down to Tintero Street just to look around. It’s a street full of prostitutes; on the first block you find girls of fifteen or sixteen, on the next are older women, who are ugly and fat, with fallen breasts. They charged three or five
pesos
, and even then the men bargained. On Orlando Street, where we once lived, the women were nicer but they charged more.

Rosario Street was the worst. I used to pass by on my way to Lupita’s house. There the women lived in little stores that were open to the street. There weren’t as many stores as women, so two or more lived together. They each had a bed and a bureau and a mirror, with a curtain dividing off their space. They’d put up pictures of saints, movie actors and naked women. They’d sit in the doorway, with their legs apart and their dresses pulled way up. They didn’t wear slips so you could see their brassières through their nylon blouses. When the women finished with a client, they washed themselves (they always had a jug of water ready on their charcoal burners) and emptied the washbasins into the street, splashing anyone passing by.

In the morning, when these women fixed up their rooms or went to the market, we couldn’t tell them apart from other women. But in the afternoon, when they were made up, we could spot them right away. They all worked for the same madam and had to turn in a certain daily quota to her. If they couldn’t make the quota, they’d accept any amount offered.

We’d always see a lot of men hanging around those streets, waiting, or just watching attentively. Those with little money were looking for a woman they could afford. I’ve seen married men and boys from the Casa Grande there, and other men I knew … bums, drunks, cripples, and kids from the neighborhood. Many boys don’t know what it’s all
about and have to go there to learn. Afterwards they are ready to do it with other girls.

I knew only two girls from around here who went to work on Tintero Street. If any girl from the Casa Grande lived that kind of life, she did it far away where we wouldn’t see her. Those two girls went bad because they ran away with boy friends who later made them work in cabarets and dives. A girl who falls in love with that kind of man is really a lost soul.

My second
novio
was Mario, the Soldier, the fellow my sister ran off with later. He was called the Soldier because of the way he walked. I saw him for the first time at a dance in the Casa Grande. Every week, the boys rented a record player, and anyone who wanted to, could dance in the courtyard. I was going to school at the time, and was still in braids and anklets. It was just seven o’clock and the dance was about to begin. I had to get my dancing done before my
papá
came out and whistled for me.

My friends and I were leaning against the wall, waiting for someone to take us out to dance. We were making bets on who would catch the most boys. One of the girls said, “Here comes Mario, the Soldier.” He was wearing a red sweater and didn’t look as rough as the other boys. I liked him right away. He came over and took me out to dance. From that moment he didn’t let me go. He danced only with me and wanted to know my name. I never told my real name at those dances, so I said it was Alicia. He wanted to see me the next day and though I told him I couldn’t, he said he’d wait for me on the corner. We both went home early.

The next evening when I went for bread, there he was at the corner. I saw him several times but it never reached the point of going out together or hugging and kissing. He didn’t learn my real name until much later.

Alberto Gómez of this
vecindad
was the
novio
of Chita, my friend. Then he began speaking to me and Chita said I had taken away her boy friend. I danced with Alberto and he tried to kiss me now and then. But it didn’t last long because right after he became my
novio
I met Crispín.

I went for milk every afternoon and my friends usually went with me because I bought candy at this time. If I didn’t have spending money I bought less milk and mixed it with water. With the money I saved, I always had enough for a treat. Crispín worked as a polisher in
a furniture shop on the same street. One day, when I was alone, he came out and asked me to be his
novia
. He told me his name and I told him mine and we went out that night.

We just walked and talked; he didn’t kiss me or touch me or anything. But on the way back, we bumped into Consuelo with her
novio
, Pedro. She yelled at me and gave me a sock and insulted Crispín. I was afraid she would tell my father. But Crispín spoke to her later and she gave him permission to go with me. She said she didn’t want me running around coquetting, but that if I promised to be serious about him, it would be all right.

I was thirteen when I began to go with Crispín. From that time on, my fears, scares, chases and beatings began. My brothers, especially Roberto, were always watching me. My
papá
, who had never before hit me, beat me three times, once with a whip and twice with a strap, because he saw me talking to Crispín.

Crispín and I would go for walks, but he never came near my house. Consuelo helped me keep our meetings a secret from my father and brothers. She allowed me to go to the movies with him. I would say, “I’m going to Mass,” and the two of us would go to the matinée. The people in the
vecindad
were getting accustomed to seeing girls go to the movies with their
novios
, but if my
papá
had known he would have hit me.

Crispín was the first one to really kiss and embrace me and that’s why I liked him a lot. Once in the movies he kissed me so much that he “heated my ears.” Inside me, I felt something discharge. It was the first time I wanted to be with him. Right away he asked me to go to a hotel. But by the time we left the movie I was more in control and I said he’d have to wait until I was fifteen. He kept on trying but I always managed to put him off.

Once he invited me to the movies and I said I couldn’t go. Later that day, Manuel and Paula went to the movies and took me with them. I happened to sit next to a boy, Miguel, who once had spoken to me about being his
novia
. I never responded because I was Crispín’s
novia
by then. But all through the movie we kept looking at each other.

Someone must have told Crispín because a week later he brought it up. He asked me if I had met anyone when I went to the movies with my brother. I said no and he slapped me hard, saying I was cheating. That was the first big quarrel we had. We didn’t speak to each other for a week.

We had other quarrels over dancing. I liked to dance but he was
jealous and didn’t want me to go alone. He learned to dance so that I would have no reason to dance with others, but whenever I heard of a dance somewhere, I’d go secretly with the girls. At that time Crispín lived just across the street from the Casa Grande and his shop was near the ice-cream factory where I was working, so he could easily spy on me. His friends helped him and when one of them saw me at a dance, he would tell. Crispín would go after me and pull me away. Even though I danced in a decent way, not shaking and moving around like my sisters Consuelo and Antonia, he would get very angry.

Twice I caught him with another girl, but he told me he wasn’t at all serious about her, that it was nothing more than a passing whim and that I was the only girl he cared about.

Meanwhile, my friend Irela began to go with Ema’s brother, my ex-
novio
, Donato. Irela’s mother was one of those excessively respectable, careful women, who would shout insults at a girl if she just saw her walking with a boy. Yet all her children turned out bad. Her sons were known thieves and Irela got into trouble too.

Irela didn’t get pregnant but anyway she went to live in Donato’s mother’s house. He worked in a bakery and spent the little he earned on shoes and dresses for Irela. She was pretty and he was ugly and the truth was, they didn’t make a nice couple. She didn’t pay attention to him at all. She didn’t care whether he had anything to eat or wear, and let her mother-in-law do all the work. Donato was one of those men who had the habit of bringing his friends home and Irela didn’t like to stay there. So she came over to talk to me for hours. I was going with Crispín and wanted to know as much as possible about what men do, so I asked her lots of questions.

Then Donato caught her in the movies with another boy. In revenge, that night he took her to his friend’s house and right there, on the bare floor, they both “blew” her. Then he threw her out.

She began to live with this one and that one, because she liked nice clothes and movies. She had the good luck not to get pregnant with all those boys. Then she fell in love with a tramp named Pancho. She had so many to choose from and she picked the worst! She left a good boy like Donato for a lazy bum, a pig, a calamity, who didn’t work and who beat her. She loved that barbarous creature and believed that when he hit her, he was showing his affection for her.

She lived in a corner of her mother-in-law’s house and didn’t even complain. We all said as a joke that Pancho had better aim than the
others because after all her experience without getting pregnant, his bullet hit the mark. He was the one who gave her a baby.

The next one to fall was Ema. Her mother, Enoé, worked in a hospital and was away from home a lot, so Ema found it easy to go to a hotel with her
novio
. The next day she came and confided to me what had happened. “Just think,” she said, “he couldn’t do a thing and the dunce came out of the hotel very angry.”

When I heard that, I said, “If he didn’t dishonor you, better break off with him now. Why continue? He has already tried you out and the next time he will get straight to where he has to go.”

But she adored him and two days later she told me that the worst had happened. She kept going with him but had the misfortune to get pregnant right away. Then her “adoration” abandoned her, and left her to her family.

Many times one’s friends are more helpful than one’s parents, or sisters or aunts. Unfortunately, Mexican mothers do not tell their daughters about life and that is why they have to bear the cross of disillusionment. Even if a mother took note of what was going on, she wouldn’t have the courage to ask about it. She couldn’t find the words to get the truth out of her daughter. She would let it go until the damage had been done. Then, when the daughter was pregnant and the boy had already abandoned her, the mother would not accept the painful truth, the dishonor.

That is why girls do not confide in their mothers. If girls say they have a
novio
, they get a beating; if they ask for permission to go to the movies, they get screamed at and called sluts, prostitutes, shameless hussies. These words hurt and that’s why, when a boy makes an offer, they accept. Many girls go off, not because they are hot, but to spite their fathers, mothers and brothers. The girls are like holy-water fonts, everyone lays hands on them. He who doesn’t hit them for one thing, hits them for another. Mexican daughters are really mistreated at home. That’s why there are so many unmarried mothers.