The Children of Sanchez (70 page)

When Manuel’s wife died, Delila came to take care of the children. My father seemed very happy with her and she and I got along better than I did with my other stepmother, Elena. There is a monument to Delila here in my heart for her noble work in taking care of my nieces and nephews. None of us, not even Manuel, the father of these children, did as much. I esteemed and loved her for it, and that is why I regretted what happened between us. I didn’t want to hit her, but she made me do it. And I believe she did it intentionally.

One evening, I was having a beer with my friend Daniel, when my nephew Domingo came crying. “What happened, son?” I asked. Geofredo, Delila’s son, had knocked him down. This had happened many times and I had never said anything, though it always made
me angry. I went to make a complaint to Delila, and then I gave my nephew some advice. “Don’t be a fool, son. I have already told you not to give in to anyone.”

“Yes,” said Delila, “go on, tell him to grab a knife and stick it into Geofredo’s guts. You are always teaching him to fight and to give it to the other fellow.”

It was true I had taught my nephews something about personal defense, but only with the hands, with clean fists, the way any man must learn. This time I told Domingo not to speak to Geofredo or to play with him. Delila was listening and finally she said, “I’ve had enough of your frigging around. What’s bothering you? Let’s come out with it … are you fighting me because I am with your father?”

“Listen, Delila, why bring up things that have nothing to do with the case? We were talking about the kids.”

She went on. “Well, if you don’t like me being with your father, why don’t you give him what I give him!” Those were very strong words for me and I warned her, “You’d better shut up or it will go badly for you.”

“It won’t go badly for me! Who do you think you are? For me, you are only a pitiful jerk!”

That’s when I punched her and she jumped on me. She was quite a fighter and I had to give her four or five punches. I held back because, first, she was a woman, and second, she was pregnant, and third, she was my father’s wife. She scratched my face and hands and I had to grab her. At one time, she fell and pulled me down on top of her. I would have fallen on her stomach but I stopped in time, kneeling over her and holding her hands. The children ran to the café to call Manuel.

When he arrived I had calmed down a bit, but then Delila told him I had come in drunk on marijuana and that I had pulled her by the hair into the courtyard and had locked her out. That was a big lie. because I had pulled her out by her hands. Manuel didn’t ask me for my side of the story but began to bawl me out and insult me. That hurt because I was only trying to defend his children, and he should have been a little less righteous.

I didn’t wait for my father to come home. I went to Ramón’s to get some money and took off for Acapulco.

Marta and Baltasar had invited me to come back to visit them, though I don’t think they expected me so soon. Again, I noticed that
Baltasar took me wherever he went. “Come on, let’s go,” he always said when he had to go out. It seemed quite natural to me and I went along in good faith. It wasn’t until much later that I realized my brother-in-law was jealous of me and didn’t trust me with my own sister.

This time I looked for a job. Baltasar kept saying he would speak to this one and to that one, but I don’t believe he ever did. I might have gotten a truck-driver’s job, if I had had a driver’s license. I still don’t have a license, because of my history. I’ll have to save up five hundred
pesos
to buy back my prison record and destroy it, before I can apply for a license. Here, with money you can do anything!

If I had a driver’s license, I could laugh at the world. Ever since I learned how to drive, I felt I wanted something more out of life. I wanted to do anything that involved cars, like the automobile business, or a parking lot, or being a chauffeur. If I could go to a training school, I would study to be a first-class auto mechanic.

I almost got hooked up with a girl there in Acapulco. Rather, she was a married woman, married in church and all, and with a child, and a husband, but she was so young and pretty, that I liked her right away. She was very friendly and one day I asked her, in a joke, whether she would like to go to Mexico City with me. She said yes, anytime I was ready, just like that! And we weren’t even
novios
yet! Although she opened the way, I never dared to make love to her, because, first, my sister was around, and second, this girl was married in church. If she had been married only by civil law, well, it would have been different.

Baltasar offered me another sister of his. He said. “She is as dark as you but she really is a pretty chick. You saw how Luisa was? Well, this one is younger and even better. Arrange your driver’s license and settle down in Acapulco. It’s not necessary to marry here. If you don’t want my sister, I’ll get Melania for you!” I never did go to see his sister, but as a joke, I sometimes called Baltasar my twice-brother-in-law.

I never thought Baltasar was a bad fellow, but he had lived as much as I, and between two sharp adventurers, there is little trust. My sister Marta would always be an impassable wall between us. You can imagine how I felt when he told me he had had thirty women, some of them the mothers of his children. And sure enough, we met one of his ex-wives in the street. She stopped him and said, “Listen, half-pint,
how about getting me some fresh tripe?” And we passed a couple of his kids playing in the street.

He said Marta knew all this and accepted it, but from that time on I didn’t like Baltasar. I didn’t trust him. He might do to Marta what he did to all those other women. I never said anything to him or to my sister, because I might have put my foot into it.

I stayed on for a few days, or perhaps it was a few weeks, but Mexico City had a powerful hold on me, and I wanted to go back. I missed my neighborhood, in spite of the fact that it had deteriorated and become more corrupt. But I still felt like somebody there and had the people’s respect, which I had bought with my fists. And because my mother had died there, I had a special feeling for the place. I, too, will die there some day, perhaps tomorrow, for I will never abandon it.

So after a while I said to Marta, “Do you know what, sister? I’m going home.”

“What are you going back for?” she said. “You fought with Delila and don’t expect my
papá
to receive you well. You know how he is.”

“Well, yes, sis, from the moment I first punched her I’ve regretted it. But what do you want? The thing is done and there is no help for it. I’m going only to look around. I’ll come back soon, I promise you by God.”

She tried to discourage me, but when the travel bug entered me I got stubborn. There wasn’t a person who could stop me. Marta was used to my character and to my desperate ways, so she loaned me a
peso
to get out to the highway, where I hitched a ride to the capital.

I arrived without a
centavo
, so I went to Ramón’s. I never go to Ramón for money unless I’m down and out and desperate, because he doesn’t just do you a favor, you have to work for it. That man always had the advantage over people like me, those of us who have lifted things. He was vengeful that way and used us. He had thousands of
pesos
, which I helped him get, but when I come to him for a loan he says he can’t spare any. But if I would like to earn some … he usually had a soft job for me, like delivering a “hot” scale or picking up a “crooked” radio … or stealing something he had a customer for. All I usually asked for was a loan of twenty
pesos
, but the favor he wanted might have landed me in jail!

When I got back from Acapulco, Ramón’s son, who followed in his father’s path, said, “Listen, Roberto, I need some car-radio antennas, because a customer wants a few.”

I thought it over and said, “Well, I must have some money, so lend me a bicycle to ride over to Lomas and I’ll see how many I can find.” It was an easy job, but I had bad luck with the very first one I tried to pull off a car. It wouldn’t come loose and I pulled this way and that; before it came off I had lost a slice of flesh from my finger.

“Cursed luck of mine! To spill blood for kid stuff like this!” I was angry with myself. I rode back quickly, delivered the antenna and received ten lousy
pesos
for it.

My finger was wrapped in a piece of newspaper I had picked up in the street, but the cut continued to bleed. I went to my aunt, who washed it with boiled water and peroxide, and bandaged it. I was staying with her, for my father was still angry with me and didn’t want me to set foot in his house. He had told my brother that what I had done to Delila was unpardonable and that he never wanted to see me again. My father was my world, and when they told me what he said, my world fell.

The next day, on June 25, 1958, a girl named Antonia (not my half-sister) came to visit my aunt. I had known this Antonia for years. She had lived with her mother and brothers in the worst “Lost City” in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, I didn’t remember until later that I had never liked this girl’s manner. She was one of those who stood on the street corner talking to the boys in a loud, familiar way. It certainly never occurred to me then that she would ever become my woman.

It was early in the morning when Antonia arrived, and her hair was still uncombed and her dress dirty. I have never liked a sloppy woman, but something about her, I don’t know exactly what, attracted me. Apart from physical desire, the thing I liked was her attentiveness. My aunt introduced us, and, right off, Antonia told me she had good hands for curing and that in no time she would have my finger fixed up.

So there she was curing me, holding my hand in hers, and asking me if I had a wife. Then she began to complain of her husband. “He leads me a dog’s life,” she said.

“But why?” It was the first time I had heard a woman complain like that.

“Ah, but it is because we live with my mother-in-law and everything I do is bad. He doesn’t give me more than two or three
pesos
a day and demands good meals. I’m fed up. I guess I’ll have to leave him.”

Qué caray
! She kept on that way, and the idea immediately occurred
to me that I might be this girl’s rescuing angel. I thought, “Poor girl! She suffers so much with that so-and-so and his family.” My aunt backed up her story. And she wasn’t bad-looking either, though a bit fat. That afternoon, Antonia sent me some
tamales
she had made … then she was asking my aunt how I liked my hamburgers and, sure enough, the next noon, there were hamburgers waiting for me.

Believe me, after that it was not so much selfish desire as compassion, that I felt for her. My feeling had turned into something nobler, for I wanted to help her. Since she had already left her husband and was living with her mother, I planned to propose that I give her daily expense money, in exchange for her taking care of me … with the understanding that we would marry if we got along well. Once I had made my decision, I went on a big drinking spree to celebrate with my friends.

Antonia didn’t mind seeing me drunk, and even asked me to treat her to a beer. We sat at a table with her friends and I hugged and kissed her, right there in front of everyone. She agreed to go to the movies with me the next day.

I had to do another little favor for Ramón to get money for my date, but when I met Antonia, she said, “No, I don’t like the movies. Better let us take a bus and get off somewhere.” I was a bit slow, although I did suspect something. I realized what her goal was … that she was acceding to me in a nice way, right?

Well, we ended up in a hotel and I spent the most marvelous night of my life. No sooner were we alone, when she threw herself on the bed and pulled me with her. “Let’s get to work,” she said. I undressed her and, well, we enjoyed ourselves.

I took her to live at my aunt Guadalupe’s house. We slept on a mat on the floor and were well off because all I had to do was pay for our own food. Antonia didn’t go out at all the first few days, but I had lost my factory job and had to hurry each morning to look for small piecework jobs at the glass shops. When I couldn’t earn any money that way, I usually counted on making ten or fifteen
pesos
by helping Manuel sell at the market. But there were days when I could give Antonia only two or three
pesos
for food. I would tell her I had eaten when I really hadn’t, so that she would have enough.

The very first morning Antonia and I went out of the house together, there was her ex-husband, Cándido, across the street, talking
to a couple of his cronies. He must have known what he was up to and I’m sure it cost him plenty for their help because the people who lived in the
vecindad
opposite my aunt’s were all crooks, the flower of the underworld, some of whom I had seen in the Penitentiary. I expected trouble with Cándido, especially if he turned out to be a man with hair on his chest, because I had taken away his woman. I always carried a knife in my belt, and kept the lower part of my shirt unbuttoned so that I could grab the weapon quickly if Cándido and his friends ganged up on me. I was careful to stay sober, but that was easy because since I had Antonia I had no desire to drink or steal or fight. I wanted only to be left alone.

When I saw Cándido watching us, my blood went to my feet. I thought, “Now some throats are going to be cut.” But that time he just looked at us and went on talking to his companions. The next few days I borrowed money so that Antonia and I could sleep at hotels in other neighborhoods, but seven
pesos
a day for a room was a lot and we had to go back to my aunt’s.

We had other difficulties in that
vecindad
. There was a neighbor, a tigress by the name of Julia, who would insult me whenever she saw me because once when I was drunk, I had taken one of her husband’s bicycles and had lost it. She would yell, “Yes, look at the crooked bastard! He should be ashamed not to pay for Guillermo’s bicycle, the stinking son of his fucking mother!” And to Antonia, she was even worse. “
Ay
, there goes the horny beggar. The slut doesn’t mind whom she sleeps with, any man will do!”