The Children of Sanchez (23 page)

One thing my father had strictly forbidden us to do was to touch the radio. It always had to be set for the station that he had been listening to the night before. Also, the furniture could not be moved unless he
had given permission, or he would yell, “Who shifted things out of their place? Don’t I count for anything in this house? Let’s put everything back.” So when I saw Antonia turning on the radio one morning, I told her not to or my father would get angry. She paid no attention and turned it to another station. This frightened the four of us but when my father learned about it he didn’t say a word.

One day my father gave Antonia a box of Max Factor face powder which she had heard advertised on the radio. She had told him to bring a box for each of us and when I saw him come home with one box and give it to her, it hurt me. Antonia took it and said, “Look, Consuelo, you take from here too.” But I said contemptuously, “No. What do I want it for? You use it.” Tonia was offended and went out.

I was serving myself some coffee when I heard the door slam and my father suddenly stood right in front of me with an expression on his face that made me tremble from head to foot. “What did you do to Antonia?” he demanded.

“Nothing,
papá
,” I answered. “I just told her that I didn’t want any powder.”

“Imbecile! Stupid, nasty girl! The next time you do a thing like that, I’ll slap you in the mouth. You’ll pick up your teeth halfway across the courtyard,” he said, clenching his fists. I only lowered my head and went to sit in the doorway. That night I went to bed without eating and in the darkness I cried and lamented that Elena wasn’t living with us any more.

The continual lying to us also began. In the afternoons when my father came home, Antonia was all dressed up and they would go out. They would say that they were going to the doctor but they went to the movies. I would see my father and Tonia walking across the courtyard. She would take his arm and the two of them would walk away together. When
papá
went out with us he always held us tightly by the arm and when we arrived home my arm hurt. As for my brothers, he never even let them come near him. Almost always they walked in front or in back, but never next to him.

I had a bad opinion of Antonia on other counts too. She put postcards of half-naked women and follies dancers around the mirror of her dresser. We were all worried about them, even Manuel who at that time stayed away from home all day and never took an interest in what was going on there. I finally complained to my father, demanding that he take away the pictures. He didn’t say anything then but two
days later the pictures were replaced by portraits of Pedro Infante and other actors which Antonia showed to her friends.

That was another thing that seemed unfair to the four of us. My father would never permit our friends to come into the house. If he ever happened to come home and find them there, he would chase them out: “Outside, little girl. Go play with your mother. It is too late for visiting now.” But he never did this to Antonia’s friends and would converse and laugh with them.

We had never noticed our birthdays or saint’s days until Tonia insisted on celebrating my father’s Saint’s Day. It was his first party and for the first time, too, we had special glasses in the house for serving “Cubas.” On Antonia’s birthday, my father bought her everything, a dress, shoes, stockings, and even a cake. We had the pleasure only of seeing the cake, because my father and Antonia would take it to her mother Lupita’s house, where they made the party and cut the cake.

Perhaps because of pride or to avoid being scolded or to hold back our tears, we never asked for a piece of the cake. But it bothered us a lot. Marta would look at it from the bed and whisper to me, “They only buy a cake for her. Let them take their dirty old cake. It isn’t even good.” I once dared ask my father who bought Antonia’s cake and he said her mother did. I didn’t believe this because Lupita had hurt her hand at the restaurant and was not working at that time.

We all wanted birthday cakes after that but my father said, “What do you think I do? Sweep up money with the broom? I have to pay for the rent, the light and food. Where am I going to get it all?” It was that way every time I asked him for something that wasn’t for school.

There was something inside me that screamed, that wept, when my requests were rejected, especially when I saw how my half-sister was humored. I thought to myself “How can you make my
papacito
spend so much money. Poor little thing, he works so hard! Doesn’t it hurt you?” I would go to Yolanda’s house and tell her what I was thinking. I looked for consolation from her and she would tell me to bear it, not to say anything, that my father would have to notice how unfair Antonia was. But I waited and waited and he never noticed anything. On the contrary, I felt that my father was cutting himself off more and more from the rest of us.

At first Marta didn’t seem to mind the change in my father. But later, when she was wild and wouldn’t go to school, he began to scold her and beat her with a strap. Then, she too began to blame Antonia,
and to damn her. Marta’s words were music to my ears and I encouraged her. But most of the time there was a heaviness in my heart and my cheeks burned with shame when my father yelled at us and called us lazy bums.

Naturally, I asked myself a lot of questions. At night my head went round and round and I would get lost in the darkness of my room. Sometimes when I would cry, Antonia would try to console me, but I always rejected her. I wouldn’t accept her words or her caresses. “What’s wrong, Consuelo? Why are you crying? Did my father scold you?” This last question seemed so cruel to me that if I could I would have slapped her. At night when my sister would try to read us some story or the paper, I didn’t like the idea. I thought that she did it only to win over my father more, and so when she began to read, I would turn my back and make believe I was asleep.

I couldn’t understand that it was because Antonia was older that she was treated differently. I only knew that my father loved her more. I began to doubt that I was really his daughter. That is what I felt when I would see his indifference, not only toward me, but toward Marta, who used to be his pet. Now he hit her whenever he got a complaint from Antonia. He never hit me, but the words he said to me were worse than whiplashes. I never answered back. I couldn’t; the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. They only went to my head and made me want to get out of the place and not see anybody.

It was about this time that I had a nightmare which caused me to wake up sweating and crying. In it I saw my father in his faded overalls and trousers, with his
sombrero
on. He was beating and chasing the whole family without mercy. He hadn’t yet struck me, and I kept yelling to the rest, “Get out! Get out!
Papá
has gone mad! He’s going to kill us!” Everybody ran out. Chairs were knocked over, dishes broken. From the kitchen doorway I saw that my father had tied my sister Marta with a rope to the legs of the bed and was beating her with no concern for where the blows landed. He stood over her, watching the pleading look on her face, and even when she began to bleed he kept on beating her. Suddenly, one of the blows hit the brass spittoon which was always kept in the house, it overturned, and his feet got wet. I yelled at him. “
Papá, papá
. You’ve gone mad! Let her alone! You’re going to kill her!” But he paid no attention to me and kept on whipping her. While I was shouting I woke up. I went back to sleep, only to go on dreaming the same nightmare.

But this time in my dream my father had moved the bed and the shelf of the saints to a different wall. Manuel and Roberto were in the bedroom, Marta and I in the kitchen. One of the panels of the bedroom door was only half-closed and I looked in. I saw my father leaning over the bed, holding in his hands a heart, the heart he had torn from the body of a young painter, Otón, who lived in the same tenement. Otón was lying on the bed, face upward. I could see the cavity from which his heart had been torn. My father was holding the heart high and offering it to somebody. I had a terrible fright and awoke with the same cry that I always make when I dream. I have never been able to get rid of the sight of my father holding that bloody heart in his hands.

The day Elena died, Marta, Tonia and I were at home. My father came in and with tears in his eyes told us to go and bid her good-bye. The three of us ran to her room. On the way I kept saying to myself, “
Ay
, dear little God, it isn’t true, it isn’t true.” When we entered, Santitos was there holding her rosary. Elena was very pale, her lips purple, her hair spread over the pillow. Roberto was there crying; Marta and Tonia cried too. I had a big lump in my throat. Santitos took Elena’s hand and we received her benediction. Then my father sent Marta and me home, where we cried like two lone coyotes.

At the funeral the next day we all cried, especially my father. He put his arms around me and said, “She has left us, daughter, she has left us forever.” Elena was buried under a
pirú
tree in the Dolores cemetery. When we arrived home my father immediately went to her room to dispose of her things. Most of them went to her mother, some were sold. Tonia followed my father and asked for Elena’s dressing table and her good coat, which he gave her. Later, I asked him for some remembrance of Elena and he gave me a little porcelain doll.

After that I began to feel horror toward my home. My father would turn out the light and make us go to bed right after supper. He would spend the evening out of the house with Tonia or would sit in the kitchen until very late. Roberto and I hated each other more and more. If he were in the courtyard, I would go into the house; if he were in the house, I would go into the courtyard. In the morning I would pray to all my saints that he would still be asleep so that he wouldn’t hit me. Sometimes I left for school without breakfast to avoid him, and I dreaded going home again.

To be sure, I was no angel. Knowing that it annoyed Roberto for the door to be open, I would open it. If he closed it, I would open it
again and again, until we would fight. Roberto hated me so much that he would have killed me if he could. Once he tried to strangle me, banging my head against the headboard of the bed.

Another time, I’ll never forget as long as I live, I had my back to him as he was standing in the doorway and I felt a little breeze pass my left side. When I turned around to see what had caused it, I felt a kind of fogginess and a bitter taste in my mouth, for only a few centimeters from me, stuck in the wall, was a knife with a very sharp blade. All I could do was to turn around, look at my brother, and then continue searching for what I needed.

Roberto kept watching me from the door. I didn’t show that I was afraid or angry. He came over, giving me a shove that knocked me down, and pulled out the knife. At that moment I felt as though the delicate tissues of my heart were coming away little by little, causing a bitter liquid to drip down and kill me. But I got up off the ground, realizing that if I provoked him, he would finish what he wanted to do. So I left and went to Yolanda’s house.

In spite of everything, I had to admit that after we fought, Roberto would come over to me and say, “Little sister, did it hurt? Forgive me, yes? Please, little sister.” To which I would yell, “Get out of here, you damn black one. I wish you’d die! Beat it … you just wait until my
papá
comes!” And there I would be, rubbing my eyes, squealing with pain and rage.

After my father came home and Roberto got his beating, he would go to cry in the dark kitchen, sitting between the brazier and the dish closet, his hair hanging over his forehead, his nose filthy, one suspender of his overalls hanging down over his shoulder. He would sob for a long time, with nobody to comfort him. We wouldn’t notice when he left, but in a few minutes, people would start coming around to complain that Roberto had beaten a child or had done some other nasty thing.

Yet, in his own way, Roberto kept on trying to win the affection of everyone in the family. I remember one time when he came home with his windbreaker and pants pockets full of nuts. Two days before, he had gotten a terrific beating from my father “to pay” for something he had done. Everyone in the house was disgusted with him. I can still see him as he came home … in his gray overalls, his “miner’s” shoes scuffed, one shirt sleeve torn, his hair covered with dust. At that time, he seemed hateful to me, but now, as I think of it, how beautiful my brother was as he came in, holding out his jacket to Marta, Tonia and
me, offering us the nuts. He divided them into piles, one for each of us, and even helped me shell mine. But I wasn’t taken in … I knew he would soon hit me again for one reason or another.

I remember one night very well, when Roberto was about fourteen. The room was dark, not even the votive light was lit, and I was lying in bed with my hands under my neck, thinking … wondering why my father had changed toward us. Roberto came in, spread out his sack and pillow on the floor at the foot of my father’s bed and lay down.

There was a dance going on in the courtyard and we could hear the words of a popular song. It went more or less like this: “The soul of my drum, because my drum does have a soul, says it lost its peace because it is black. And even though you don’t like people who are dark, they have white souls and their hearts are white.”

I don’t know whether Roberto was dreaming or was just drunk, but the lines aroused such emotion in him that he began to sob, louder and louder. He said reproachfully, “Yes,
papacito
, you don’t love me because I am dark, because my hide is black. That’s why none of you love me … but my soul is white!”

It hurt me to hear what he said. Actually, I had never paid attention to my brother’s color. I hated him for hitting me, but not because he was dark. I believe that Roberto very much wanted my father to comfort him, to embrace him, at that moment. My father reacted to his words, because he spoke gently and said, “Shhh … be quiet and go to sleep … go to sleep now, hear?”

One evening my father was sitting at the table, reading. It was past eight o’clock and he had already taken off the overalls which he wore over his trousers and shirt. He often kept large sums of money in his trouser pockets because he was a food buyer for the La Gloria restaurant. He wore the overalls to protect the money from the thieves that abound in the city markets. Marta was playing on the bedroom floor; Antonia and I were listening to a radio drama. We heard a knock on the door and Antonia opened it.