The Children of Sanchez (78 page)

“I’m not asking your permission. Don’t be absurd. What a fool! It will
only take a moment. How many girls would like to be in your place. They would feel honored! So why not you? Do you think you are a goddess? You should thank me!”

I sat on the bed. He laughed mockingly, locked the door, and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Kiss me!”

“No. I don’t want to. Let me alone! You’ll have to do it by force. Let me go, you’re hurting me.”

“Oh, shut up! Why are you making such a tango of it? I suppose you are a virgin? Come on, girl, take things easily. This is the most natural thing in the world. What are you afraid of? You are an enchanting little witch, but I’m not used to begging. If I can do it with Sarita and Martita, why not with you, eh?”

Four months later I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t suspect it because my menstruation had not stopped. I had never seen
Señor
Ángel again, and when I called the studios or at the
televicentro
, where he had appeared, they told me he was away on location. I finally found a doctor who was willing to do the delicate operation and I sold my new clothes closet to pay the expenses. I was very ill after it and missed two weeks of work.

Thus, to my sorrow, was my first, bitter encounter with that infamous, cursed Mexican
machismo
. I, like an infinite number of other Mexican women, was part of that cruel game, in which the domineering male wins. “Shall I knock you down or let you free?” There is nothing generous, noble or worthy in it, for there is a price to being let free. It is a barbarous act of egotism and advantage, adorned with persuasive words.

After my illness, I was too nervous to work in an office any more. I was in debt and three months behind in the rent. My father refused to help me and there was no one else to ask. I needed money desperately. I went back to the Studios to see if I could become a permanent extra. I met a girl who had made three thousand
pesos
as an extra in just one movie. She said I must become a member of the
Sindicato
and sent me to
Señor
Pissaro, a union official who might help me.

He said to me, “So, once you put your shoes before a camera, you want to do it again, eh?”

“Yes,
Señor
Pissaro, It is that I need the money.”

“Ah? And you don’t have membership papers? Can you leave the city to go on location?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good! Are you married?”

“Mmmm … well …” I looked at his face.

“Man! I’m only asking to see if you are really free to be sent out. You have nothing to worry about. I will arrange your papers and everything. Be here on Monday.”

This time, I realized what I was doing.
Señor
Pissaro was not bad-looking. He must be worth something to become an official. He was in a position to help me. If he wanted something from me, I would be willing … especially when we were out of the city on location, or at least after I got to know him better. I fixed my nails and hair and got my best dress out of the pawnshop where Roberto had taken it when he needed some quick money. It wouldn’t hurt to look attractive!

But I hadn’t expected
Señor
Pissaro to take me to a motel that very day, and to force himself on me like
Señor
Ángel! Is it that I really looked like an easy woman? But I tried to fight him off! Then when I couldn’t, I turned into a stone. I controlled myself in an incredible way and didn’t respond. He was desperate and forced me down with his knee.

“Please,
Señor
Pissaro, don’t treat me like this!”

“What do you want? To let you go, so that later you can mock me? Above all I am a man, and you are trying to demean my manhood! Why don’t you fulfill your duty as a woman? Don’t be ridiculous! You help me and I will help you.”

He got what he wanted. But when I asked him about going on location, he said, “If I go, you go. I don’t know whether they will send me. Call me tomorrow at this number.”

I called and he wasn’t there; I went to the
Sindicato
offices and could never find him. Finally, I admitted to myself that I had been taken in. I didn’t let myself think about it, but closed my mind to all feeling. A short time later, I went to live in the apartment of an American student who had come to Mexico for his vacation. He introduced me to some of his friends.

Caray!
So many things have happened to me since then. I don’t know where I get the strength! What can I do to stop punishing myself? Was it bad luck or bad faith that was my undoing? Not a day goes by when I do not have some filthy proposition, nor a powerful reason to accept it. But now nothing matters to me, not morality, nor
principles, nor my love for my family. I try to quiet the pain and anxiety I feel in my breast and look with indifference on the four children I have loved so much. It wasn’t right for me to expend all my moral and physical strength to offer them a better life, only to fall in a faint.

I have no job any more and that gives me a powerful defense. Now, when I see my aunt sick or upset, I can say, “I am not working. I cannot help you.” When Roberto needs a lawyer or has to pay a fine, I can say, “I have no money. Don’t come to me.” And the same with the children, for whom I had once held out so many hopes. I must break the chain that drags me down and injures me, thought it costs me five years of my life and all my noble sentiments. I will live half blind, like the rest of the people, and so will adapt to reality.

But though I try to disengage myself, I cannot fail to see what is happening to my family. Oh, God! They are destroying themselves, little by little. They are using themselves up, disappearing slowly, like my uncles, my mother, my grandmother, Elena, Paula … they have all gone and left me too soon. Now my aunt Guadalupe is like a light going out, a wax candle at the foot of the altar; Marta is but twenty-four years old and looks over thirty; each year, I think this will be Roberto’s last, for his life is agitated and he fears nothing. To him the edge of a sharp knife is the same as a piece of velvet. Manuel? yes, he will live, but at whose cost? How many more times will he test the love of his children by denying them food? It is horrible to think that he will survive his own children! Paula! how could you have let yourself die so easily? How could you have abandoned your adorable children, knowing what was in store for them?

T
HE REASON I WENT BACK TO CRISPÍN … WELL, NOW, HOW WAS IT?
The thing was, after all that time, his mother was asking to see the girls, Concepción and Violeta. Trini was just one and a half years old and Crispín had never asked about her or made her a single
fiesta
. I took the two older girls to see their grandmother in December. Crispín and I talked things over, though there was really no need to discuss, because he knew very well he was to blame for Trini.

Well, it was a long time since we had spoken and we kept looking at each other, you know what I mean? So he said, “All right, then, so what?”

“Well, so what?” I said. ’Concepción needs shoes and clothes because she hasn’t any. And Violeta, too.” I really didn’t have anything else to say to him.

“We’ll buy them on Saturday,” he says.

“All right, fine.”

“Your
papá
is with Delila, isn’t he?”

“No, I don’t know.” I think my cheeks got red, because then he said, “Well, you don’t have to be ashamed.”

“I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Is it a shame to live with a woman?”

“No, don’t get embarrassed.”

And that was as far as we talked. He said he would wait for me at the Social Security building on Saturday, and I went home with the girls.

Saturday came and we went and bought Concepción a pair of shoes, and Violeta, too. I didn’t mention Trini at all. The only thing
he said to me was that I was too proud. I told him it wasn’t pride, but shame, that after what he had done, he shouldn’t even have spoken to me again.

“What did I do?” he says, as if he expected me to overlook everything and go back to him without mentioning Trini. It seemed he was willing to recognize her as his daughter, as though she was just going to be born starting from that moment. Imagine, he hadn’t left me until I was seven months pregnant; that was when he tried to make out that she wasn’t his daughter. If a man knows his wife is going to have a baby and it is not his, right away he would say, “Okay, where did you get it, because I am sure it isn’t mine.”

But Crispín didn’t do that. He didn’t leave me until two months before Trini was born. He wasn’t ashamed to go around with me all that time. If it was like he said, he would have left me from the first minute, don’t you think? I really don’t know what was the matter. His mother and sister had a big influence over him and told him I was going around with other men. And I wasn’t going with anyone at that time. Wherever anyone saw me, I was alone or with the girls, so I have nothing to reproach myself with on that score.

When we were through buying, I said good-bye and started to leave.

“You’re going? Just like that?” said Crispín.

“What do you expect? What do you want?” I said. Then I got mad. “Do you expect me to pay you back? What do you want me to pay with, my body?” I talked like that ever since the time I had tangled with him on the street, when we beat each other. You might say that was the day I freed myself from him. From then on, I said what I had to say with strong words. Lots of times I would even tell him that he should be ashamed not to support his little girls and all that, things I couldn’t say before because I was afraid to go too far.

“Don’t be like that, Marta,” he said.

“Why not? That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? I knew just what to expect from you, that you would have to get something in exchange for what you give your daughters.”

“No,” he says, “it’s not that … I don’t know how to explain it.”

“If you were fed up with me, why do you want to go back to the same thing?”

“I never said I was fed up.”

“The proof is that you left and didn’t even say a word.”

He kept quiet and we walked on, until we came to the door of a hotel.

“Come on,” he says.

“No!” I say.

“Don’t make a fuss.”

“I’ll make one if I feel like, even if you bust me in the mouth.” Then I said all of a sudden, “Sure, you have to receive some kind of payment, don’t you?” So I up and go in. After being without a man for so long, I went into that hotel with him.

Why did I do it? Because I felt like? Because of desire? Not exactly. There were several men around who hadn’t just proposed taking me to a hotel, but who had offered to set up a home for me. Nevertheless, I didn’t because I knew perfectly well ever since Trini was a year old that if I went with a man I would become pregnant again. I have always gotten pregnant after the girls were a year old and that was precisely why I held myself back.

But I really couldn’t say that Crispín forced me into that hotel, not in a certain sense. You might say I had my next baby for two pairs of shoes. He knew when he bought them that I had no other way to repay him. I fell in, because I said to myself, “This man is not going to change.”

So we had this interview in the hotel. As far as whether I enjoyed it … well, I didn’t because I did it with anger. The second time we went to the hotel … the thing was, we went again to buy clothes for Concepción but, as a matter of fact, we didn’t buy anything because we went straight to the hotel. That time I made him mad because I got away from him. I began to see that I was being a fool; all at once it made me mad to see that we were going to do the same thing all over again. We were in bed and he was just on the point of making use of me when I got mad and got out of bed.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Why are you leaving?”

“Because I feel like it.”

“You just try to go out and you’ll see what will happen.”

“You won’t do anything to me. Not you or twenty like you will stop me. You’re not dealing with the same dupe as before.”

This had happened other times in hotels, but I never got past the door because he would catch me and slap me around. He must have figured I would be afraid to go this time. He was still lying there when I left. I was nervous in the street, wondering when he would catch up with me and start a fight.

That was in December. In January, I waited for my menstruation and it didn’t come. I didn’t even have time to tell Crispín I was pregnant because when he came on the sixth of January, the Day of the Kings, to give Concepción and Violeta their toys, he was angry with me and wouldn’t come in. Then, that evening I saw him in the street as the girls and I were going to visit Lupita. When he saw us, he crossed the street to avoid me, but Concepción yelled, “Look, there goes Crispín,” and he came back.

“Where are you going?” he says to me.

“To Lupita’s.”

“Ah, you are going to see your lover there.”

“What lover?” I was fed up with his suspiciousness and to change the subject I told him about the circus in the El Dorado Colony. He gave me five
pesos
to take the girls.

“What about me?” I asked, and he gave me another five
pesos
. Then he said to Concepción, “I’ll come for you on Saturday, daughter, to buy you candy.”

The week went by without me seeing him. On Saturday morning, my friend Raquelle came in and said, “How do you like that! There’s Crispín standing in the doorway of his house and that Eustakia is walking up and down in front.”

“Yes?” I say, “I’ve got a yen to see them together.”

“Okay, then let’s go.”

This Eustakia had gotten mixed up with Raquelle’s
novio
and came out of it pregnant. Then she took up with Crispín and told him he was the father of her child. So Raquelle and I were both sore at the girl.

We walked by Crispín’s house but nothing was happening and we kept going around the block. The next thing I knew, I saw Crispín in the distance, walking with his arm around another woman, who turned out to be an old friend of his family. She was married and had children and I had often seen her in Crispín’s house. I had always thought there was something queer about her, but how was I to know she and Crispín … I was such a kid then, anyone could make a sucker out of me.