The Children of Sanchez (73 page)

“I wonder if we are going to have a baby?” I said. But he had lost confidence in me. He looked at me coldly and said, “The post-office building will fall down before you are a mother. I believe that the day you are pregnant you will die.” I just twisted my mouth and that is the way things were left.

But that night, like on other nights, I wouldn’t let Mario sleep with me. I told him to sleep on the floor as he had been doing. We had a fight and he went into a fury. He was weeping with rage and insulting me, comparing me with his wife whom he placed above me.

“Yes, Camilia is superior to you. She could give me a son, but you can’t even do that. You aren’t good for anything!” I felt terribly ashamed and humiliated at that moment, lying there half naked next to him, only to be insulted. I covered my head to shut out his shouts: “Camilia, Camilia! Come, I need you. Only you know how to cure me!”

He cried as he hit me in the face with a magazine. He seemed to be drunk on his anger. I saw him grab his razor and thought he meant to use it on me, but he held out his arm to cut his own veins. Somehow, I managed to make him drop the blade. I got him to bed. All that night, I had a terrible pain in my abdomen. He went to work early the next morning without believing my complaints.

I woke to the shout of “Consuelo, the north wind is carrying away your clothes.” Very sleepy, I got up and ran toward the wires to take down the wash. The cement was slippery and I fell and fainted. When I woke up in the maternity ward two days later, Mario was at the side of my bed, crying. When I saw him like that, what love I felt for him! He asked me to forgive him and said that he despised himself for not having believed me. I smiled. He hadn’t abandoned me and I felt happy to have him next to me. He came to see me every day during the five days I was there. He didn’t want to let my father know. But I felt bad, really sick and broken. Thanks to Brígida, I managed to send a telegram: “
Papá
, need money. Am in hospital.”

One afternoon, the cry of a newborn baby awakened me. In a little while a stretcher came by, carrying a woman who had given birth. It wasn’t until then that I felt the sadness of not seeing my child next to me. How beautiful it would have been to have a baby at my side. When I left there, it made me sad to see children playing in the street. I was like that for a long while, thinking every time, “My baby would be six months old now,” or older, according to the amount of time that had passed. As time went by, I resigned myself and tried to wipe out what had happened.

At home I waited for an answer from my father. I was worried, for none came. It wasn’t possible that he hated me that much. One afternoon, I was lying on my bed of rags in the room which measured six by six feet, with its thin walls and ceiling made of black compressed cardboard held up by six narrow beams joined with nails and bottle tops. The walls were supported by three horizontal beams, one of which served as a shelf for my saints. My clothes were hanging from some nails in the boards; my shoes were in a wooden box.

There I was, in that little room, alone. Mario had gone to work at the post office. I hurt all over. My hip and legs felt as if I had been beaten with clubs. My hand felt numb, my face swollen and my teeth as if they were crumbling. And I was deaf. All I could hear was a buzzing in my ears.

Then my pain began to disappear. My body was free, as if I suddenly became divided in two. One part floated and the other remained in bed. “Finally,” I murmured and felt a smile on my lips. I felt so light, as I had never felt before, and saw Him there, there on the ceiling. There was a luminous cross in a strange shade of green, with a little flame in the center. It seemed as though it were incorporating me into it. I didn’t feel my painful body any more. I was a kind of veil that, little by little, rose in the air.

What I felt was so beautiful I cannot find the exact words to describe it. I can only say that with a zigzag I entered nothingness. This was what I had been waiting for all my life. My happiness had no bounds, it is impossible to explain the degree of joy I reached. It lasted several minutes. Far away I heard the voice of a neighbor’s child, “Consuelo, Consuelo, someone is looking for you. I think it’s your
papá
.” It didn’t disappear until then. I would have liked to remain that way forever. When I came to, I felt a sharp pain in the abdomen and I embraced my father.

We both cried and after calming down, he said to me, “Is this what you went to school for? Is this why you became a shorthand stenographer? Just look at this dump of a room you have!”

I felt myself getting angry. Up to then, nobody had said anything like that to me about my house, where I was the boss and where I could move my few things from one side to another without being afraid of anyone, where María or Brígida or any other girl could talk to me without being embarrassed, where there was nobody to tell me I wasn’t different from the pigs. I had gotten to love my little house. “I am happy here,
papá
. Mario is very good. He doesn’t give me more because he can’t. But he is good.”

My father wanted me to go to Mexico City with him and he brought another doctor, who said I could travel. I thought it over. Mario was married to another, by church and civil law, and could not get a divorce. He had a son to support. Besides, Mario had begun again to insult me and to set his wife above me. “You can’t even compare with her! Her skin is very white and yours is dark. She gave me a child. That’s a woman!” Mario had said this to me when I refused to be his.

That is why I agreed to go with my
papá
. Mario stayed in Monterrey. I told him, “As soon as you arrange your transfer, I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll never let you down, you know that.” I returned to Mexico City by bus. My father wanted to take me to the Casa Grande, which
meant facing Delila again. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, so he took me to my aunt’s house. Mario began sending me letters right away. I still keep them for consolation—those words of tenderness and love.

Fifteen or twenty days later, Mario came to my aunt’s house. I was well by then. My father paid for my whole treatment, which included four transfusions, serums and injections. Mario said that he would pay back everything but I was already thinking that we should separate. I couldn’t give myself to him any more. When I would not go to Monterrey with him, he moved back to his mother’s house.

I know now that when I refused Mario, I lost the chance of my life to have a home and a family of my own. He was good to me from the start, he spoke up for me, defended me, gave me all he earned, consulted me in everything. But in my cursed pride and senselessness, I did not know how to value those things.

At my aunt’s, the battle started again, except that it was worse now because my uncle didn’t hold back foul words when he scolded me. The neighbors felt sorry for me but gossiped even worse than before. I had come back defeated.

I began to look for a job. From my friends, I learned that Jaime had gone up in the world and was still unmarried. He made a very good salary, but that meant nothing to me. I got a job working for
Señor
Ruiz in a used-car lot. He was very nice but I couldn’t stand the snickers and vulgarities of the mechanics and the manager when they got together in the office to play cards. All day at the office I had to put up a fight to make the men respect me. I stayed on because I couldn’t get another job. One good thing that resulted from this job was that I met
Señor
Ruiz’s aunt, who later befriended me when I needed help.

Meanwhile, there had been some changes in my family. My father had built a little house on a lot he had bought way out in El Dorado Colony. He had won two thousand
pesos
in the National Lottery and that was how he happened to have money to buy the land. He sold some of his pigs to get money to start building the house. It was the first property my father had ever owned and he was the only one among our friends and relatives who had achieved such a thing. But the house was not for us. Lupita and my half-sisters, Antonia and Marielena, were living there and taking care of my father’s animals.
Tonia had two children but she did not live with Francisco, their father, because he had not been willing or able to set up a house for her. My father had supported her and the children ever since she had become Francisco’s common-law wife.

Marta now had three little daughters and had left her husband, Crispín, for good. When she moved back to the Casa Grande, our room was very crowded. Manuel and his four children were there, Roberto, my father, Delila and her son, and Marta with her three children. My father decided to move with Delila to a room on the Street of the Lost Child and to leave Marta in charge of the place in the Casa Grande.

Marta was depressed and I tried to encourage her. I would say, “Don’t be foolish, sister. You are right to leave Crispín. If he doesn’t meet his obligations, what do you want him for? Look, you are young, there is still time, but if you keep on having babies, you will be ruined. Study something, like dressmaking … it will only take a few months and then you could work without leaving the house. There is a training school around here, go see how much the registration fee is and let me know. I will pay for it. My aunt will take care of the girls while you are in school. Go, and let me know. There is still time.”

Marta kept quiet while I sat on the bed trying to convince her. She was on a bench near the door, with her eyes down, looking very pretty. But she was like a living statue. I wanted a glance, a gesture, something to let me know that my words had struck home. I wanted to see her smile, with zest for life, the way she had been with her gang when she was younger. I remember her straight white teeth and the dimples when she laughed, and how she walked with her arms entwined with her friends. But now there was no response to my concern for her. She was like an Oriental statue that breathed.

I tried to get her a job that would take her out of that environment. I wanted to show her that places existed where she would be treated decently and where she might find some responsible young man who would help her solve her family problem and educate her daughters. I absolutely refused for a long time to accept the fact that my sister belonged to the low cultural level of her surroundings.

But she was far from understanding the healthiness of my intentions. She twisted everything, and, it hurts me to say so, she considered me a whore or a crazy girl who got everything with her body. I didn’t even know until later that my sister, my dear little sister, thought of me in that way. When I was working, I did my best to take care of my
appearance, to paint my lips and my nails, and to have my hair set once in a while. By being well groomed I was fighting to maintain my position and to keep people from humiliating me and lording it over me. But I didn’t dress up to please men! My sister couldn’t understand that. To her … I can laugh at it now … taking care of my appearance meant only that I was a loose woman.

I didn’t have the remotest idea then, that she preferred harsh criticism to my kind words, that she used personal slovenliness to protect her “morals,” severe clothing to preserve her religion, and economy of words to maintain the respect of her children. And she did all these things to keep the love and favoritism of my father. I speculated about her and tried to understand her, but couldn’t. I always ended up saying, “Oh, the poor thing, she never knew her mother.”

Marta paid no attention to my suggestion and agreed to look after Manuel’s children, although I know she didn’t love them. I moved in to help her. My father came every day at about seven o’clock to check on us and to leave Marta her daily expense money. With Manuel, Roberto and me working, it began well enough, but then Manuel refused to contribute and Roberto stayed away a lot. I could not eat the fried meat and food made with lard my sister served at home and, to escape her arguments, I ate dinner in cheap restaurants. That used up almost all the money I earned, so I, too, stopped contributing to the house.

Marta didn’t need my help, although it made her angry when I didn’t give her anything. I noticed, and, yes, it hurt me, that every day my father brought her soap, sugar, coffee, rice, tomatoes, oil, chocolate and so on, in addition to the ten
pesos
expense money. Then he gave her money for the movies three or four times a week, and shoes and clothing for the children or whatever she needed. She enjoyed his favor and all the liberty she wanted. Every day she took the children to one of the markets, or downtown to look in the store windows, and if she wanted something extra, she asked Roberto for money, for he was working in a factory then. On Sundays, she went with my aunt and uncle to the Villa or to a park to eat
tacos plazeros
and drink
pulque
. Once in a while, I caught sight of Crispín around the Casa Grande. So I asked myself why I should help her. She had my father and brother on her side, she could go out whenever she wished, she could have relations with her husband, and didn’t have to worry about anything. And she had her children. I had only my work … and very little peace at home.

As the days passed, Marta and I had more differences. She had the
bad habit of letting Trinidad, the youngest girl, go about without pants. Naturally, the child did her necessities on the floor or wherever she pleased. I kept telling Marta to put pants on Trini and to teach her where to go. Unhappily, my sister only became angry and would say that I thought I was high-class or a “
pocha
,” imitating the way of others. One day, I lost my temper when Trini moved her bowels on the floor near the stove where Marta was cooking. My sister kept on working, then picked up the baby and washed her at the sink.

I couldn’t contain myself. “Why don’t you teach her to sit on the chamber pot? This way you are making a pig out of her!”

“If you’re so fussy, move out! You don’t give a
centavo
into the house and yet you are so delicate. Why don’t you move to Lomas with the rich?”

That was my sister’s answer, no matter what I said. I tried to teach her to cover the garbage can and the cooked food, to protect them from rats, to keep the dirty laundry in a carton under the bed, instead of piled under the sink, to keep food away from the heat of the sun and the stove, so that it would not spoil, but she refused to learn. When I described
Señor
Santiago’s house or the way one of my friends lived, she would take offense and say I was looking down at the poor. She made fun of me to her friends and complained daily to my father, who always backed her up.