The Children of Sanchez (72 page)

The next day I didn’t want to look him in the face. When he came home from work, he embraced me and didn’t mention what had happened the night before. I knew exactly what his intentions were and I rejected him. He didn’t achieve his purpose that night. We really had contact only a few times, he and I. I always refused. When he came close to me, asking that I stroke his head, that I say a sweet word to him without coldness, it would drive me crazy. My nerves would explode. I would push him away and belittle him. At the beginning, he gave in to me but afterwards we had real fights on that score.

His desperation reached such a pitch one night that he went wild. He destroyed everything he could lay his hands on. He tore his clothes and the blankets. He threw a glass of water in my face, all because
I told him I didn’t love him. It frightened me to hear him curse the love he had for me, curse the moment he had met me. We had no lights, only the oil lamp that was rolling around on the floor from the blow Mario had given it. Taking advantage of the darkness, I put on my dress and slipped around the corners of the room, holding on to the walls. Mario kept on cursing and I was terribly afraid until I found the door and ran away, barefoot as I was.

I stumbled more than once and trying to get under a barbed-wire fence, I hurt my back and tore my dress. I was trembling for fear Mario would follow and beat me. I was losing my breath and was scared by the darkness that was so different from that of Mexico City. I sat down in the doorway of a house, feeling lost. Not knowing anybody, without clothes, where could I go at this hour of the night? I pulled my hair and rubbed my feet, trying to get the thistle spines out of them. When I stopped crying, I heard heavy breathing, felt something tickling my legs. I jumped to my feet, imagining that it was a scorpion. I shook myself and felt things fall. I was frightened.

I approached the window of a house and whispered, “
Señora, señorita
, please be kind and take me in. My husband is drunk and I am afraid he’ll hit me.” Thank God, a woman’s voice answered. It was the woman who had offered to cook and wash for us on the day we arrived. She let me sleep there. The next day she asked me if I was going back to Mario, and I told her no, I intended to work. Then Brígida really opened her house to me. After Mario left for work, I went to get my clothes.

I didn’t have one single
centavo
, just a pair of earrings which I sold to get money for the bus and a newspaper. I answered an ad for a stenographer and was interviewed by
Señor
Pacheco’s wife. She tested me and gave me the job. I began to work that same morning. It was an office-supply shop and I was in charge of answering correspondence and keeping the accounts in order. I earned only 125
pesos
per month, but took the job until I could find something better.

At noon, Clemente, the mechanic who fixed the typewriters, and I had time out for eating. I had not eaten since the night before and my stomach felt like it was stuck to my backbone. I didn’t have any money so I looked into some windows close by and went back to the office. The doors weren’t open yet and I stood in the doorway with my arms pressed across my noisy stomach. The first one to arrive was
Clemente. He must have guessed that I had not eaten because he insisted that I have a drink with him.

He took me to some friends of his who ran a restaurant near by. He said something to the waitress and in a few minutes Priciliana brought me fish broth and a shrimp cocktail. I was terribly embarrassed but my hunger was stronger than my will to refuse such a delicious dish. I worried all through the meal because if Mario or one of his mailmen friends had passed by at that moment it wouldn’t have gone well with me.

I expected Clemente to make some insinuation to me, but, thank God, he didn’t. From then on we had a sincere friendship. I don’t believe I will ever meet a young man like him again. He helped only for the desire to help, expecting nothing in return.

A short time later, a Chinese came in and watched me work. The next day he offered me the job of cashier at his café. The job paid twelve
pesos
a day and included three meals. I worked from eight in the morning to eight at night with no time off—not like in
Señor
Pacheco’s office. The work was very simple: keep an account of the merchandise used, note down the money spent, and check the register.

A waitress there told me that now that I was a
señora
, I wouldn’t be able to live without a husband. She said the day I least expected it, I would give myself to another man, not because I loved him but because the body demanded it. These words really made me afraid. If it was a choice between giving myself to somebody I didn’t even know and continuing with Mario, I’d better to go back to him and be out of danger.

It hadn’t been difficult for Mario to find me because he was working at the post office. He had taken me to meet the superintendent of the office and the others there, and I had been well received. So even if I wanted to hide, it wouldn’t have been possible, as all the letter carriers knew me. When I was working for
Señor
Pacheco, Mario came to see me three times. “Think it over carefully, Consuelo. You’ve got to come back to me. We are all alone here. You need me and I need you. By the way, don’t you want anything?”

I was arrogant, all right, that time. I said, “I certainly do not need you. I can take care of myself. And don’t expect me to come back to you.” But after he left, I felt sentimental about him. When I didn’t see him, he grew more important.

He came for me every night at the Café Frontera. I had rented a
little wooden shack for fifty
pesos
a month. It didn’t have a single piece of furniture and I slept on the floor. The only light I had, came from Brígida’s house, which was opposite mine. But at the café I didn’t know what it was to be hungry any more. And I had a good friend in Brígida. I felt as if she were a close relative, like an aunt.

Everybody told me I should go back to Mario. I resisted, until one night when I worked later than I was supposed to and fell exhausted onto my “bed” on the floor. A terrible pain in the ribs on my left side woke me. I began to cry. I wanted to straighten up, but the pain got worse. I doubled over and my breath came short; my left leg became paralyzed. I wanted to shout but I couldn’t. I didn’t even have a candle. There was a lovely moon outside and I looked at it through the window thinking that at home my father and sister and everybody were in bed, sleeping calmly, without a worry, and with their stomachs full.

I cried a long time, bearing the pain. When, little by little, I was able to move my leg again, I remembered Mario. If he had been there, he would have taken me to the doctor or prepared some tea. At least, in his company, I wouldn’t feel afraid. The next day I met Mario and told him that I would go back to him after all. I quit my job and Brígida loaned us a cot and a blanket and gave me permission to cook on her stove.

It was strange, but little by little I felt stronger. Now I had something to occupy my thoughts, not love, because I didn’t love Mario and didn’t really want him, but a sense of duty. I found it hard to feign an enormous love I was far from feeling and my indifference and coldness toward him continued. Mario said I had a refined type of cruelty because when he was suffering one of his rages … they might be called attacks … I did nothing to quiet him. He would lock the door and not let me out and would desperately smash everything against the walls, tear his clothing, cry, shout, go half crazy. I would stand motionless, like a stone, showing neither my fear nor my anger, with my eyes fixed on some point in the room.

He said I enjoyed seeing him angry and desperate, but inside me I felt only horror and fear that he would turn on me. I wanted to run but was like a trapped dog, trapped by my cowardice and fear. I wanted to cry and say those beautiful words, “pardon me,” but I was paralyzed.

Mario had often begged me to try to calm him when he had these attacks of nerves. “With just one caress, you can quiet me. Please, Consuelo,
please. When you see me angry, speak to me, insult my mother, punch me if you will, but don’t just stand there. Have you no heart?”

To my shame, I would just watch him rage, until he grabbed his head in his hands and fell sobbing on the bed. A day didn’t pass without a fight and the few things I kept buying soon lay smashed on the floor. The neighbors would get scared and knock on the door, asking, “Did he hit you?” But I would always come out and calmly say, “No, he never hits me. It’s his nerves.”

The truth of the matter was that I was the nervous one. I couldn’t find any way out. I wasn’t satisfied with anything. If he would say “Let’s go to the Zócalo, a little relaxation for you,” my answer would be, “To the Zócalo? What a big time you’re going to give me!” If he said, “Let’s go to the movies,” “To the movies? Not me. You know I don’t care for them. Go with your friends!” He let all this go by. He bored me and I regretted having gone back to him. But when he said he would leave if I was not satisfied, I promised never to be nasty to him again.

During that time, the only reason I didn’t take my own life was because I didn’t want to fail Him. But in what a fever of anxiousness I begged Him to take me! In the afternoons or at night before Mario came home, I would stretch out, face up, on my poor bed. The bed consisted of a small spring on a frame, with a mattress made of a blanket spread over a pile of cardboard and old clothes. A bolster I had made, completed the bedding. The room was lighted by a candle. Looking up at the ceiling, crying bittersweet tears that came from deep inside me, I would ask Him, beg Him, to take me.

My body belonged to Mario, but how hard it was for me! Never in my life did I desire to belong to a man, not even once. I had never thought of it! And now I died every time he came home, happy from his work, to embrace me. I was afraid of it. “Why are they so base? Better take my life, Lord. I don’t want this life. I wasn’t born for it.” These were not mere words. It was my being itself, all my feelings, everything that was in me that was asking Him to grant me this miracle. Always waiting, waiting for it to happen. You might say I was already dead.

Mario made every effort to see me happy, contented. What a bad thing it is not to know how to pretend! I remained in a stupor until the moment he would arrive. “Little Skinny one, where are you,
mi
vida
? I’m home. What’s wrong? Why are you crying? Come on, let’s eat out, or let’s go to the Zócalo. Don’t be sad.” He loved me so much he didn’t realize that minutes earlier I had been asking to die, to escape this life.

I really got to love him, when the letter from his mother arrived, advising him to leave me. “That woman is not good for you. She is older than you and very tricky. Leave her. Find a sweetheart there and bring her home. I’ll send you the money.” I felt as though I were being stoned, each word leaving a bruise. Continuing the letter, I read at the end, “Your son has no shoes any more. Send me money for them and don’t squander it on that woman.” I turned and looked at him. “So, he has a son.” I hid my face and cried.

In reality, I didn’t know a thing about Mario. The love that I had begun to feel for him collapsed. He explained to me about the boy. “Look,
mi vida
, there are things I haven’t told you, because of my honor as a man, but Camilia—” Then he told me about the life he had led with that woman. Mario’s mother had had them married by force when she discovered he had gotten Camilia pregnant. But it had been the girl’s fault, because she had gone after him. He hadn’t ever even liked her, because she was too forward. His mother had called the police and they had dragged him to court in his underwear. From there, they went to the church—the police, Camilla’s parents and Mario’s mother—to marry the couple. A short time later, after his sixteenth birthday, he suffered his first deception when he found his wife in a dance hall with one of his friends. The second time he caught her in their house with a soldier; the third, he saw her coming out of a hotel with another man. After that, he left her.

I accepted his explanation, but the only thing I could think of was that we could never be married. There wasn’t even the slightest possibility. And knowing he had a child prevented me from coming close to him. I felt like a thief. I kept on living but I got no pleasure out of anything. Life had no color. To be alive without living was an ugly thing. I was useless, a person in a faint who moved about but who no longer felt anything.

How horrible it was at night, when he would overcome me and I had to give myself to him against my will. There is nothing more terrible than to surrender yourself, to be just an instrument. But Mario said to me, “No,
mi vida
. I don’t do it out of desire alone. There are lots of women who can satisfy me better than you. No, don’t think
that way,
mi vida
. I do it because I want a child, your child. Can’t you imagine it? A little girl just like you? How happy I would be, if you gave me a child!”

A child was the last thing I wanted. I would say, “A child? The child I have must have her father’s name. You gave that to the other one. If I had a child with you, it would have to take second place and my child must be first.”

He kept on trying to convince me that it would be something sublime if I gave him a child. One afternoon, filled with anger, I cursed the day I should have a child. He had never hit me, but that day he did. He kept slapping me. I didn’t even protest, because I understood that he was right.

Luck continued against me. One morning the votive light tipped over and the house burned, not all of it, just a part. But we were left with only two shirts and two pairs of pants of Mario’s and three or four dresses of mine. I just looked at the burned things. Mario lit a cigarette and smoked. He said, “Aren’t you going to cry?”

“Why should I? It’s over and done with.” And so, back to life without interest.

It is painful to remember certain things—things which make you feel bad even when you keep quiet about them. Yes, I was going to be a mother, though I didn’t know it then because I didn’t notice any of the symptoms. I felt fine until the month of January. I had no nausea or stopping of menstruation. That is why Mario did not believe me when I told him my back hurt.