The Children of Sanchez (80 page)

And his wife was worse. María had told my friend Herlinda’s daughter that we were crazy if we expected her to take care of Manuel’s kids. She couldn’t stand them and she didn’t intend to kill herself working for them, that they were his kids, not hers, so let him do it
himself. Naturally, if he doesn’t feel anything for them, how can you expect her to? There isn’t anyone who can feel for kids like their own father or mother. Manuel never acted like a father because he wasn’t obliged to. He knew that even if he didn’t work or give expense money, he could always count on eating and having a place to sleep in my father’s house. If my father had made us work when we were small, if he had said, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat,” we all would have been different.

Anyway, I was sick and tired of being criticized and blamed for everything, especially when I was not the only guilty one. My
papá
stayed on for a while, to scold me. So I up and began to do things around the house. To begin with, I had a lot of dirty clothes. I sorted out my things from those of my nieces and nephews. My father watched me closely. He must have been suspicious, for he said, “What are you going to do with the clothes?”

“I’m going to wash them,” I answered.

That was when he told me he was going to give me half of the lot in the El Dorado Colony and build me a room, even if only out of boards, so that none of my brother’s or sisters would mix into my affairs again. He said he would arrange the papers and build the room and move me there very soon. I said nothing and he left.

As soon as he was gone, I found a flour sack and put in it a blanket, a sheet, three dresses each for me and the girls and a bunch of rags for Trini’s diapers. I gave all the kids their supper and told Mariquita to bring María. I sent Concepción to see if my friend Herlindita would buy my new watch for eighty
pesos
.

I hated to sell the watch because it was only one week old. The week before, I had received four hundred
pesos
from a
tanda
I had joined with ten other neighbors, and I used the money to buy myself a watch and a jacket. I took a trip to Puebla with Angélica Rivera and my girls, and I still had fifty
pesos
left.

When María arrived, I told her I was leaving.

“Where to?” she asked.

“I don’t know where, but I’m going. Everybody here has something to say about what I do. I’m like a holy-water fount, everybody sticks his hand in.”

“But what will you do? Better don’t go,” she said.

“No, I’m not staying here.”

Roberto came in, but he was mad at me, too, and didn’t even ask me
where we were going or anything. Herlinda didn’t have the money to buy my watch, so I picked up the girls and the sack and went across the courtyard to say good-bye to my
comadre
Angélica.

“Better don’t go,” she said.

“But I can’t stay. You see how things are here.”

While we were talking, along came my aunt Guadalupe. She had come to scold me about something, but I was fed up by then and said, “No, stop pestering me. I’m sick and tired of everything.” I had never spoken like that to her before.

She just looked at me. “Come on, come on, or I’ll think you really meant it.”

“Listen,” I said, “stop bothering me. You’d think I was your daughter or something.”

I picked up my sack and took a bus to the central depot. There, the night bus to Acapulco was the only one taking passengers, so I bought a ticket and got on with my three girls.

I was so scared when I got on that bus, I must have looked as though I had robbed someone. My ticket was for seat No. 13, but I sat in the one behind it. The man who had the ticket for No. 12 got on just as the bus was leaving.

“This is my seat,” he said.

I was so nervous and depressed that one seat or another was the same to me. When I had first boarded the bus, there was a boy, he couldn’t have been over sixteen, sitting in front of me across the aisle. Right away he asked me where I was going and if I knew anyone in Acapulco.

“No, nobody.”

“Me, either,” he says. “I’m running away from my father and going to look for my godmother. My father is a government agent.”

Then he offered me some chocolates and talked some more. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I wanted to be absolutely alone.

“If you like, I’ll take one of the girls in my seat so you won’t be so crowded.” But the girls didn’t want to go. I said, “Thanks, all the same.”

That was when Baltasar got on, and I had to move to seat No. 13. He sat behind me, so I didn’t see his face or talk to him or anything. This boy across the aisle kept talking to me.

“I had a girl friend who gave me a ring.” Then he shows me a couple
of pawn tickets. One was for fifteen hundred
pesos
for a ring. He said he had plenty of money, but I didn’t pay much attention to him. When the bus stopped, he invited me for a cup of coffee, I didn’t accept and stayed in my seat with the three kids on my lap. Because of that boy, I later had a big argument with Baltasar. He kept throwing it up to me that we were
novios
and that I had gotten on the bus with him. He even thought the kid was the father of my child!

Baltasar and I didn’t talk at all during the trip, except once when he said, “Pass me one of your girls. The inspector is coming through and he will make you buy another ticket.”

“Another ticket!” I said. “I’ll be ruined!” So I handed him Violeta for the rest of the journey.

I sat with the other two, crying nearly all the way. I think it was the saddest day of my life. If it hadn’t been for the children, I would have done away with myself. It was not the first time I had had such thoughts; in fact, once I bought some rat poison, a package of The Last Supper, and had already mixed it with water, when my father came to look for me on the roof and stopped me. I was little then, still in school, and he had scolded me, I don’t remember why, and all of a sudden I felt alone and fed up with my life. I really gave my father a scare. If he hadn’t noticed that I got out of bed and went to the roof, who knows what would have happened?

Later, with Crispín, at times I would just see my situation and would feel desperate. I was in the same despair on the way to Acapulco. I felt that for me everything was finished. Life was a he and all doors were closed. It is a bitter thing to have your brothers and sisters throw up to you what you are, and to be blamed unjustly. I never liked them to interfere with me or my children, especially the children. I would light up like a rocket, because I saw the way Roberto and Consuelo would take Manuel’s kids here and there and do things for them only when it occurred to them. They just pulled those kids apart and upset them. I never permitted that with my children and so my brothers and sister say I am very touchy and cannot be spoken to.

It’s true that my character is the worst in the family. I am very rancorous; I
never
forget and I stop speaking to the person who does a thing to me. If he is in the wrong, I hate him all the more. Delila always says that Manuel and I were the best because we get even with others by shutting up. They soon forget their anger, but not I.

I wish I were like other women, like my aunt and my stepmothers,
who took their sufferings with resignation. They never complained of their lot or thought of throwing themselves into a life of perdition. But some of us are not prepared to bear up under great trouble, and we act crazy. Like me, for example. I took my children and up and left, without knowing what would happen to us. Not until we were on the bus, did I think, “And now what? Where am I going? What shall I do? I haven’t enough money …”

Toward the end of the trip, Baltasar leaned forward and asked me if I had relatives in Acapulco.

“No, I’m going to look for work.”

Then he says, “If you are interested, I have an aunt who runs a restaurant. I can get a job for you there right away. You won’t have any problem about food for the children there.”

I thought it over. I could do something there, even if washing dishes. So I said, “I’ll see. What I want is work.”

“I’ll talk to my cousin when we get there.”

Finally, the bus arrived in Acapulco and we got off. Then this boy says to me, “Look, there’s a hotel. You can put up there if you want.”

Baltasar was standing beside us. He said, “Are you still coming with me or not?”

So there I was between the two of them, asking myself which one I should go with. I figured the kid had money on him but wherever we went people would say I was his sweetheart. And maybe he stole the pawn tickets or the money and I would be blamed. Baltasar didn’t look too good either. His shirt and cotton pants were dirty and wrinkled (he told me later he had been drinking for two days straight), and he was wearing the cheapest kind of moccasins. His shirt was unbuttoned all the way down, showing his fat belly. I didn’t like the looks of the gold earring he had in his right ear. With that, and his curly hair and gold teeth and eyes that popped like a frog’s, he looked, like Manuel says, a bit exotic. But he was older than the boy and gave me more confidence.

“Well,” I said to Baltasar, “let’s go see your cousin.” I didn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings and to let him know I wasn’t showing favoritism, I said to him, “Come on, let’s all have a cup of coffee meanwhile. What do you say?”

So the kid says, “All right. I’ll catch up with you. I want to buy some cigarettes.” He left and I never saw him again.

Well, Baltasar took me to his cousin’s lunch counter and ordered
coffee. He had his problems, too, as he was adventuring at that time. He explained his situation. He did trucking around Acapulco but had no place to live. He slept in the truck and ate on the road. He was wondering where to put me up. It was not that he had no family there, for he had a mother and stepfather, a father and stepmother, and I don’t know how many half-brothers and half-sisters and aunts, uncles and cousins. But he wasn’t on good terms with most of them, and didn’t like to ask favors.

His uncle Pancho came by and they whispered together. Then Baltasar said, “Come on, let’s go to my uncle’s house. He is a good person and you will be fine there.” And off I went, like a cow to the slaughter.

“Well,” I thought, “if I see something wrong, I can always scream, can’t I?”

We rested up in Pancho’s house and then Baltasar took us to the beach to see La Quebrada and the Malecón and the wharves. I found out later that he sold his radio to his cousin for eighty
pesos
to have money to spend on us. I still didn’t see things clearly or know what Baltasar was like. I was upset and not really at peace, but there I was, smiling and laughing. I was just saying over and over to myself, “Thank God, we arrived all right.” That was about as far as I could think.

In the evening, I was very suspicious because Baltasar said his boss wanted him to leave for Acopana for a few days. He told me not to worry about anything, that his uncle would not molest me. Before he left, he brought me meat and lard and corn dough for
tortillas
, and gave me twenty
pesos
.

“Take this until I get back. If you need anything, tell my uncle.”

Pancho loaned me a cot. I put the girls to sleep on the floor on one side of the cot, and Pancho slept on the floor on the other side. He turned out to be a very nice man and never bothered me. I found out later that he had asked Baltasar whether he could have me, but was told no, that Baltasar was thinking of me for himself. When Baltasar came back, he slept on the floor near the girls and still didn’t bring up the subject of my going to bed with him.

I kept saying to myself that he was going to expect something from me in return. “If the father of my children demands payment from me, then another man would be even more justified.” I felt uneasy every night, between those two men. I figured if it wasn’t one, it
would be the other who would jump on me. I couldn’t sleep. In all that heat, I didn’t take off my clothes. I would lie there, sweating and starting at every little noise, expecting one of them to get into my bed.

But Baltasar was a man like no other. For eighteen days he gave me expense money without touching me. I told him I needed work and didn’t want to be a burden on him, that I felt bad letting him support me.

“If you like,” he said, “I’ll set up a fruit stand for you, or a tomato stand. After that, if you still want to leave, it will be all right.”

When he came back from his trips, he would take us swimming or to the movies, and, at night, would sleep on the floor beside my cot, always keeping his distance. We would talk in the dark, and that’s when I told him about my family and learned about his life.

He was born in Acapulco, but had moved to many towns and cities with his parents, who struggled to make a living. Wherever they went, his mother would set up a little food stand in a park, and he and his father would sell newspapers. Baltasar worked from the time he could remember, first, taking care of his younger brothers and sisters, then, when he was seven, selling papers, hauling water, catching fish, making sandals, and anything his parents wanted him to do. They sent him to school four times, but he didn’t last more than a week or two each time, because he would be thrown out for fighting or using bad language.

When Baltasar was thirteen, he found out that his father was really his stepfather. He said deep in his heart he knew it all the time because his father was very mean, and treated him worse than the other children. His stepfather beat Baltasar for any little thing, for playing instead of working, for not turning over all his earnings, for asking for food … He got a beating for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for supper.

In Puerto México, they sold newspapers to the passengers on the night trains and while they waited for the trains, the stepfather would play pool or go into a
cantina
, leaving Baltasar outside the door, to sleep on the pavement like a dog. He would be sent to deliver papers to houses on the other side of the woods or the cemetery, and the little fellow would be afraid of the animals, the ghosts and the dark. Once he had to walk five kilometers to deliver a paper and as he crossed a bridge, he saw a man without a head, standing on the other side. Baltasar was afraid, but he couldn’t go back because he was more
afraid of his stepfather, so he ran past the headless man, delivered the paper, and ran all the way home.