The Children of Sanchez (60 page)

No, the Pope lived in portentous opulence and was fantastically wealthy, because the churches all over the world sent him the money they collected. Why, just the money collected on one Sunday at the Basilica of Guadalupe here, would support me and my family all our lives! Then, in what kind of poverty does the Pope live? And where is his charity if there is so much misery in Rome itself?

In Mexicali, two missionaries had come from California to build a mission among the
braceros
. They invited those of us who were hungry to eat … it was not just the food they gave us … the thing I noticed was the love they had, the compassion and sincerity. Being from Tepito, I could tell when a person was lying or being a hypocrite. I swear that those men came with good hearts, and gave spontaneously, as though it didn’t cost them any effort.

Then I began to think about the Evangelists, the Adventists, the Anglicans I knew. Well, I never had seen one of them stretched out drunk in the street, they never carried knives, or smoked, took drugs or cursed. Their homes had everything they needed; their children were well dressed and well fed, and they treated their wives the way human beings should be treated. They lived healthful, peaceful lives. But under Catholicism, people lived like, well, the way I did.

I didn’t lose my faith … I remained a Catholic, because I didn’t feel strong enough to obey the Commandments and to carry out the
strict rules of the Evangelists. I would no longer be able to enjoy smoking, or gambling, or fornicating, and well, I was absolutely incapable of living up to the laws of God.
Carajo
! it seems that the nicest things in the world we owe to the Devil! I felt I was not born to be a martyr. I still had a way to go to tame my spirit.

Finally, Monday came. Very early in the morning we heard the trucks arriving, and then the call for breakfast. The food they gave us the first two days was better than what they gave us afterwards. In the morning it was bread, oatmeal, eggs and coffee with canned milk. For lunch, we took three sandwiches along with us, and beans. In the evening, when we got back, it was
tortillas
, liver and potatoes, Mexican style, and soup. It was good … at first.

After breakfast, on my way to the truck, I passed the kitchen and saw a great pile of dirty dishes. Tony, the dishwater, was mad, and was cursing. I said, “It’s a lot of work, isn’t it,
maestro
? I’ve worked as a dishwasher too, so I know. That sure is a mountain of plates you have there.” Then I got into the truck with Alberto and went off to work.

On the way, a boy from Michoacán said, “Don’t work too fast. Take your time. If you don’t, they will get used to us doing a lot and the day we don’t feel like working and slow down, they will fire us.” When we got there, we grabbed cans and began to pick green tomatoes.

I started out real lively. Reach out, bend over, there I go, pum, pum, picking tomatoes. Everybody was moving along even. After a while, I stopped to rest, then I moved along sitting down, trying not to lag behind, because they watched you. The two men next to me, what dopes, those two! They looked like windmills, they were picking so fast!

Well, you have to get used to the fields.
Qué bárbaro
! Oh, it was hard, hard, hard. When the can was filled, we lifted it to our shoulders and, jumping the furrows, would go to empty it into the crates.
Madre Santísima
! How my back hurt! Well, anyway, at least I knew that in the evening we would rest.

That night, after supper, the head man in the kitchen called me. “Hey, boy, would you like to work in the restaurant? Do you know how to wash dishes?”

“Man, but of course. Everybody knows how to wash dishes.” So they put me to work in the kitchen. My job was to serve the oatmeal and coffee and prepare the box lunches. The work I was paid nine hours
for didn’t take more than three. Imagine, just because I had said something to Tony that morning! Alberto said, “What luck! Who knows what saint you pray to. Me, I’m going to beat my brains out in the field. Why don’t you see if you can get me in with you?”

Later, I managed to work on other jobs between meals. A Filipino came around every once in a while and offered us a dollar an hour to work in his fields. We were not supposed to do this, but we hadn’t come there to spend the time sleeping. We grabbed extra jobs whenever we could.

When we got our first check, Alberto said, “Let’s go to the dance hall.”

“Nothing doing,” I said, “I won’t go, brother. It’s going to be a matter of spending money. Then it’ll be ‘Let’s have a beer.’ And the next thing you know we’ll be without a cent. No, I won’t go.” To make a long story short, we went—in Tony’s car. Tony was a Mexican but born in the United States—a “
pocho
,” not really Mexican and not really American. The girls at the dancehall were also Mexican-Americans. They wore elegant dresses and we thought they wouldn’t want to dance with us.

But Tony introduced me to Inez, a friend of his girl friend, and I danced with her all evening. She was pretty and spoke Spanish. It seemed strange that she spoke to me right away and let me dance with her. Before the evening was over she said, “Why don’t you come to my house tomorrow to talk? I’d love to hear about Mexico. Come at seven.”

Well, that night I dreamed of little pink elephants. I really felt happy again. The next morning I worked with lots of will and served the whole camp. In the afternoon, the Filipino came and took me to pick pomegranates. I worked for five hours and made $6.25. Then in the evening, I went to see Inez.

I was a little embarrassed about going into her house. She lived alone with her two kids, who were sleeping in one of the bedrooms. She had been married, but I didn’t know what had happened to her husband. Well, I went in and we talked and had coffee. Later, she turned on some music and we began to dance. She kept looking at me and we kissed. And then, well, that night we made love, right off the bat. I said to myself, “Now, that’s more like it.” I had got myself a girl friend.

The following evening I was sound asleep in my bunk, when I heard a knocking on the window. It was Inez. She had come to camp looking
for me. “I felt like having you sing me a song,” she said. So I got into her car, and off we went. I had learned to drive on Tony’s car, and it sure felt good to drive her around all night, singing and kissing.

She caused a lot more commotion one day by driving me right into the middle of the camp, just when everyone was coming out of the dining room. The men watched her leave and then the comments started. “How do you like that? Look at that guy! He finally caught himself one with shoes.” All of them kept kidding me.

Inez was pretty, all right, but I didn’t fall in love with her. After what happened with Graciela, I didn’t want love mixed into my life ever again. To me love meant suffering. Love was what killed me, it left me scarred. When I felt myself going for a girl, I immediately remembered all the errors and wounds of my affair with Graciela. But I didn’t regret it because that was the only true love I ever had, the only real passion I have felt. Graciela helped me live and feel great emotion at an early age, and I am grateful to her for life! But how much it cost me!

In the United States, I noticed that marriage was different. I liked the independence and the blind faith the husband and wife had for each other. I think it exists because it is based on a strong moral principle. The more sweetly they treat each other, the better they behave. There, they don’t like lies. When they say “No” they mean “No.” Even if you kneel and beg, it is still “No.”

In Mexico, it is not that way. Right off the bat, I can say that fidelity of the husband for the wife does not exist here. It is exactly nil. Out of one hundred friends of mine, one hundred are unfaithful to their wives. They are always on the hunt for new emotions, they are just not satisfied with one woman, you know what I mean? The wives are more faithful … I would say that out of a hundred about twenty-five are absolutely faithful. The rest, whew! they run the gamut.

Several of the men in the camp began to get sick because of the bad food. They complained to Greenhouse and he said that anyone who didn’t like it could pick up his things and consider his contract terminated. Immediately they got scared and kept quiet. Then two hundred
braceros
in a nearby town got food poisoning, and everybody began to protest again. Greenhouse decided to send people away, one by one.

There weren’t many men around, so they sent me out to pick. It was the third tomato picking by then, and we didn’t earn much any more
because it was piecework. I didn’t like the work and it didn’t pay. My
compadre
Alberto was in the hospital for an emergency gall-bladder operation. I wanted to be with him when they operated, no matter what. I thought, “They might kill him and I wouldn’t even know about it.”

I felt a throbbing in my side, and it really hurt a little, so I pretended to be sick in the appendix. I went to the manager and he took me to the hospital. I wanted to be there two days, just until Alberto’s operation would be over. They put an ice pack on my stomach and when I said I felt better, they telephoned the manager to come and take me back to camp.

But I wanted to get back to the hospital, so I began to act sick again. “
Ay, ay
, my appendix.” They took me off to the hospital and this time I was put to bed, next to a North American. I figured they would put on another ice pack and send me home the next day. I lay in bed very calmly, trying to talk to the North American through my English book. He was very nice and even invited me to visit him when we both got out. He was the first and only North American to do that and I wish I could have gone.

Then I saw them come in with a rolling table. They made me get on it and rolled me down the hall, with me whistling and the nurses saying, “How brave! How brave!” They spoke English and I had no idea what they were trying to explain or where they were taking me. Well, they stuck me in the operating room. “Move onto the table.” I figured they were probably going to take an x-ray. It was not going to be just an ice pack this time.

The doctor came in, wearing a mask, then the anesthetist and two nurses. But me, I wasn’t nervous. I thought they were going to give me an examination. They tied down my hands. It wasn’t until then that I began to get excited. I said to myself, “Well, well, what’s going on? What are they going to do to me?” They tied my feet and covered my eyes with pieces of cotton. I began to holler, “No, no, I don’t want to be operated. Nothing hurts me any more. No!”

But nobody there understood Spanish and I couldn’t speak English. They put a mask on my face and began to pour on the ether. I kept shouting, “Please, please. Nothing is wrong with me. I don’t want to be operated, please.” I felt as though I was smothering. “I’m dying … my heart, my heart …” Then I thought, “They are going to kill me for sure.” My heart was jumping, palpitating.

I don’t think there is a worse horror than to have to keep still when you can’t breathe. I desperately tried to free myself and couldn’t. Ever since they did that to me I have been afraid of being buried, of being held down, unable to move. Now I know that Hell means the grave, and I am so afraid of burial and the Infinite that I feel like crying when I think it’s going to be like that.

I was sure they were trying to kill me there in the hospital. But why? “For money?” I thought. “But what is money to these people? With such a luxurious hospital, what is a thousand dollars to them?” Then I said to myself, “You see? Why did you put yourself in their hands? Why did you trust them? Why did you come here?” I tried not to breathe, so I wouldn’t be put to sleep.

I heard a humming, and I felt I was falling, falling, at a terrific rate. I saw a light, like a headlight being driven away fast, at supersonic speed. Then, in the middle of that well, of that abyss into which I was falling, I saw my wife standing … my dead wife, looking me full in the face with an expression of anger in her eyes, I called, “Paula, wait for me. Wait, old girl.” She turned away and walked down the abyss. I wanted to fall but I was floating in the air, with my hands and feet out. My daughter Mariquita appeared … she was saying, “
Papá
.”

“Have you died, too, daughter?” I asked. In the middle of all this, I heard the anesthetist say, “Now, doctor?” I said, “Not yet! I’m still not asleep. Don’t put the knife in yet. Please!” Then I didn’t know anything any more.

Little by little I started coming to. I tried to get up and heard Alberto say, “Be quiet,
compadre
. You will hurt yourself.”

“Is that you, Alberto? Is it you? Listen, don’t let them operate on you. Run,
compadre
! Leave me here and go, because they’ll screw you up.” Something was burning me and I tried to pull down my pants. It was my bandage, and then I knew they had operated on me. The nurse gave me an injection and I fell asleep.

The next day I kept saying, “I want my
compadre
. Take me to Alberto.” He had been operated on and was saying the same thing in his room. “I want my
compadre
, Manuel,” I found out the number of his ward and got out of bed. Supporting myself against the wall, little by little, I went toward his room.

He was in bad shape. They had his stomach open and a tube coming out so it would drain. I saw the hole and said, “Why are they leaving it open? Something is liable to get in and you’ll die.”
Madre Santísima
!
I really thought he’d die on me. What would I tell his aunt … his children? But Alberto wasn’t worried.

“Go back now. Nothing is going to happen to me.” Just then, the nurses came with a cart and bawled me out for getting out of bed.

Actually, everyone was very nice to us. The nurses taught me more English words and corrected my pronunciation. I was jumping around, getting in and out of bed, as if nothing had happened. But when the doctor came and took off the bandage to remove the stitches, I took one look at the gash they had made and didn’t feel like moving any more. I couldn’t even walk after that.

I spent seventeen days in that hospital. The insurance company took care of everything … a very pretty room, luxurious beds with radios in the headboard … telephone in the room … everything that was out of our reach in Mexico. It didn’t cost us a single penny.