The Children of Sanchez (48 page)

One Christmas, my father put me through the worst shame of all. Jaime and I had given Paula money to make the traditional supper, a salad and two other dishes. Jaime had brought the bottles of soda and the poinsetta flowers, and Paula had arranged the table and the room very nicely. But the same thing happened. My father arrived at about ten o’clock and didn’t even say hello as he came in. I greeted him with a smile, full of fear. “
Papacito
, we’ve been waiting for you to have supper.”

“I don’t want anything. Get to bed! Come on, get all this stuff away from here.” He immediately shut the doors of the room. He threw the tablecloth on one of the beds and the flowers landed on one of the chairs.

“At least let me take the table out into the kitchen to have supper.”

“You’re taking nothing out of here. The table doesn’t leave this room. Everybody to bed. Turn that light out!” Paula went to bed with the children.

I went out to the courtyard with Jaime. A dance was going on. I didn’t know what to say to him. He pulled out a cigarette and lighted it. “Don’t worry about it, Skinny. Maybe somebody made him mad and that’s why he is acting like this.”

I said nothing. I leaned on his chest and began to cry. After staying with me half an hour, Jaime said good-bye. I let him go, feeling very sad. “He’s not going to love me any more. He’s going to change toward me,” I thought.

I wasn’t wrong. He began to criticize my father and order me about. He wanted me to obey him instead of my
papá
and, of course, I wouldn’t. Jaime acted as though we were married and began to show
his true colors. He drank more than before and would come to see me, completely drunk. Sometimes he would whistle for me at three or four o’clock in the morning and if I didn’t appear, he would bang on the door. I began to be annoyed with him and kept trying to make him stop drinking.

Then, one day I realized I had been too innocent in going through with our engagement. A girl named Adelaida had come to work in our office long after I had. Everyone in the office knew that Jaime and I were going to be married, so I don’t believe this girl could not have known. One afternoon, I came back from lunch early and sat down in
Señor
Garcia’s armchair in his private office. I heard voices in the next office and looked through the little telephone window. There I saw Jaime kissing Adelaida and stroking her hair. He was about to say something when he saw me. He remained dumb.

I stood there thinking, “Am I seeing right? Who knows if he knew her before me?” I felt bitter, defeated, and furious with myself for having believed in him. “Great idiot! But didn’t you see all the attention he pays her? Didn’t you see how she seeks him out for any little thing?” I was burning with jealousy and I felt an infinite hatred for him. He tried to explain but my heart was broken. I cried on the bus all the way home.

When I arrived home, I wanted to burst into tears again, but a very dear little voice, dearer than Jaime’s, stopped me. Mariquita, my little niece, said to me, “Auntie, Auntie, take us to the merry-go-round. I have my five
-centavo
piece.” When I saw her, the bitterness dissolved into sweetness because of the great love I had for that child. “Yes,
madre
. Put your little sweater on and put on Alanes’ also.”

Their pleasure completely washed away the deception that I had suffered that afternoon. Once we were at the poor little fair and I saw how happy my little niece and nephew were, I was happy too. The pleasant dizziness of the merry-go-round, the up and down motion of the horses and the children in my arms, made me laugh out loud. My little niece was my adoration. It was as if she were my own child—Jaime was even jealous when he saw how much we loved each other. He would ask me if I preferred my niece to him, and I always said yes, I preferred her.

I didn’t want Jaime to come to my house any more, but he was jealous and distrustful and came around to see whether I was going with somebody else. Since I was still in love with him, I let him come.
I really needed his moral support because my father was bothering me about my health.

I had become terribly thin and had a cough. He had always worried about me becoming tubercular and took me to his friend, Dr. Santoyo, who wasn’t really a medical doctor but a curer of some sort. Dr. Santoyo agreed that I looked tubercular and prescribed two injections a day, one in the vein and one intramuscularly. Later, he added a third one, subcutaneously. He also gave me tonics, pills, transfusions and serums, I had a strong taste of iodine in my mouth and my body ached from so many punctures.

Sometimes I didn’t go for my daily injections and my father would get angry, scolding me cruelly. He threatened to put me in the hospital where Elena had been, “I’ll put you there and then you’ll see. Imbecile! Like dumb animals that don’t understand! The only place you’ll go from there is to the cremation furnace.” Even in Jaime’s presence, my father, with his scornful look, would say, “With that tubercular dog cough you have, you’re going to end up in the morgue.” I listened to all this with my head bowed and didn’t dare talk back. How completely without compassion my father was! As for Dr. Santoyo, he had arranged for me to enter the hospital and told us that he had a bed ready. I cried desperately.

Jaime’s mother heard about what was going on and took me to her doctor. He took an x-ray and said I didn’t have the slightest trace of being sick. My ex-employers, Juana and
Señor
Santiago, also took me to a specialist, who had me under observation all afternoon. My sputum, blood, pulse, lungs, everything, was examined. I had more proof to show that Dr. Santoyo was wrong. Screwing up my courage, I showed my father the doctors’ reports. Far from believing me, he and Dr. Santoyo were angry because I had gone to someone else. My “treatment” continued against my will.

I didn’t understand my father. Things couldn’t continue that way. One afternoon, I went to visit Santitos and told her what he was doing to me. “Why, why, why? Why is my father like this?” I asked. She hunched her old shoulders and puffed on a cigarette and said, “Someone must be ‘working’ on him. I think someone is bewitching him.”

“
Ay
, Santitos! Do you think so? If I only knew who it might be!”

That was when I went to the telepathist with her. He told me my father was not bewitched, but that it was his nature to be like that, and I should not worry about him. He didn’t help me with my problem
at all, but he saw something in the cards about myself that gave me a fright. He said I had a strong will and could become someone very important, or, if I was not careful, I could fall very low. He told me to come often for advice, for he could keep me from falling. I left him three
pesos
and went home with Santitos, feeling foolish. I didn’t believe he was a good diviner but nevertheless I remembered for years what he said about me.

Things got worse at home. My dishes and spoons were kept apart and the children were forbidden to come near me. I can’t begin to explain how I felt when my sister-in-law pulled them away from me by their arm or hair. Paula gave Mariquita terrible spankings for disobeying the new orders. I couldn’t mix in because when Manuel had first brought his wife home, my father had said, “The day I find out that any of you has been disrespectful to Paula, I’ll break your necks.” She never bothered us and, indeed, I thought my sister-in-law was very nice.

The time Manuel beat Paula without pity, Marta and I and Paula’s mother, Cuquita, mixed in and tried to defend her. Marta was living with us again, with her babies, because she had left Crispín for the third time. I was in the kitchen and didn’t see when the fight began. Paula was lying on the bedroom floor, crying and insulting him, and he was kicking her in the belly. He seemed crazy and didn’t care where the blows fell. I felt a tremendous desperation and screamed for him to stop. I got the children out first and left them crying in the courtyard. Marta and Cuquita were pulling at Manuel’s clothes, but he continued to hit Paula. Her abdomen was big with child, and that was precisely where he kept kicking her, there in her womb, her beautiful womb.

I don’t know who it was who forced the knife out of my brother’s hand, but, thank God, he didn’t get to use it. In desperation, I broke a clay jug over his head, fearful that he would turn on me, but he didn’t even notice it. I remembered how they knocked out men in the movies and I put my palms together and brought them down hard on the back of his neck, once, twice, four times! But that barbarian didn’t stop until he finally got tired.

I defended my sister-in-law more than once, so I couldn’t understand why Paula told something to Manuel which made him hit Marta and me. All I know is that something woke me up suddenly one morning and I heard Manuel saying “Get up, you! Do you think you’ve got servants or what? Just lying around all the time!”

Paying no attention, I spit on the floor. I was still half asleep when I felt that my eye was swelling up. I rubbed it and sat up. I saw my brother sitting on the other bed, swearing at me. The cardboard horse that Jaime and I had bought for the children was lying on the floor, where it had landed after hitting my eye. I said nothing, but spit again.

Manuel shouted at me, “Stop spitting! You are not the one who has to clean up.” But I was stubborn and spit again and at that Manuel leaped from his bed and hit me.

“Why are you hitting me? Who do you think you are? Imbecile, idiot, stupid!” He kept hitting me. Then my sister Marta jumped up and hit Manuel.

But how could we two women get the better of a tough guy who was used to street fighting? I was terrified when Manuel kicked my sister on the floor. I tried to help her, but couldn’t. If I managed to get a blow in, I got three or four back. I tried to run out even in my underwear, to call Yolanda. I had one foot in the courtyard when I was pushed so hard I rolled to the next room.

When Manuel finally stopped hitting us, Marta and I were black and blue all over; she was bleeding, my face was bruised and I had a black eye. But Manuel had also got some scratches and kicks. Marta cried a lot. I told her to get dressed, that we were going to leave the house, that I was going to get money. I was sure Jaime would not refuse to help me. I telephoned him and he came immediately in a taxi. He took us for breakfast, then to Lupita’s house, saying I should stay there until Manuel moved out. I argued against this because I thought if Paula left the house, the children would suffer. I knew my brother wouldn’t take care of his children. He didn’t even on Christmas Day; I was the one who bought them their toys.

We told my father what had happened and he said Manuel was the one who should leave. When we got back, Paula had already left, taking the children. Marta and I lived there alone. But Paula dressed up my Mariquita and sent her once a week to see us. To be sure, this caused gossip. People whispered that the little girl was mine. As a matter of fact, I really did feel as though she were part of me.

I found a temporary job addressing envelopes for a Bacardi rum firm. But we had no one to take care of the house because Marta by now had gone back to live with Crispín. Only my father, Roberto and I lived at home. One afternoon a girl, Claudia, came looking for work. She said she had just arrived from Zacatecas without a
centavo
. I felt
sorry for her and gave her the job. That night when I told my father, he didn’t want her, but I said I would pay her and, in spite of my father, she stayed.

A number of months went by when my father told me he was going to bring Paula back to the house because she was very sick. I was alarmed, but since he always exaggerated, I didn’t believe it when he said she was like a corpse. She had been very fat at the time she left our house. I warned Claudia that there would be a little more work, but said I would help. The clothes would be sent out to be washed and it didn’t matter if she couldn’t finish the housework. The children were to be looked after first. She agreed.

When my father brought Paula, I was almost struck dumb to see her. What my father had said was true, she was unrecognizable, just skin and bones. She kept on her feet only because of her great love for her children. I pulled myself together and greeted her, smiling. “Hello, Paula, come on in and he down.”

When she lay down, I went into the kitchen to cry. I loved Paula very much, much more than my sister. Now she looked so ill, I couldn’t believe it was she. However, here were the three children and the new baby to prove it. When Mariquita saw me, she ran to hug me, and Alanes, too. Paula, in a very faint voice, said, “Give my little girl some milk. She’s hungry. I haven’t any to give her.” I heated the milk and gave it to the baby in a soda bottle. She was beautiful; her eyes were enormous and she was very fat, like the other three, who had grown big and filled out with life and color.

Claudia took care of the children while I was at work. Things had been going well and I was satisfied with her. When I got back, I would fix the food. Once a week I would clean the house, washing everything—floor, tables, chairs, the stove—and finish up exhausted. The baby was just seven months old and I had to give her her bottle early in the morning and change her diaper.

The house was very crowded now. Paula, the baby at her side, slept with Manuel and the three children crosswise on one of the beds. Roberto slept on the floor in the kitchen, and I in my bed. Later, Manuel made his old “bed” on the floor in front of the wardrobe because “the damned brats don’t let a man sleep.” At night, sometimes one of the children would wet the bed and Paula would pull his hair or pinch him and make him cry. Rather than witness that, I took the three children into my bed. I didn’t get much sleep but I didn’t complain.

In the mornings, it was difficult too, for I had to pick my way quietly
among the piles of clothing, benches, chairs and get dressed while the others slept. Manuel’s sleeping form usually blocked the wardrobe door and I bumped him when I tried to get my clothes.

“What the hell are you doing, you damned brat?” or, “I’ll break your snout if you wake me up again,” he would say.

“Let’s see if your man enough!” I would answer. “What a fine fellow and he doesn’t give a
centavo
into the house!” And a quarrel would continue until everyone was awake and the children crying. I would escape with a bang of the front door and, with a smile on my face and usually nothing but coffee in my stomach, I would be off to work.