The Children of Sanchez (82 page)

I would get angry and tell him he was crazy. We would quarrel a lot because I didn’t let him push me around, but usually he was nice Even when he was drunk, he would come home in a good mood. He only hit me twice, there in Acapulco.

The first time, before the baby was born, it was because of his two cursed brothers. They had come to visit him for the first time in two years. I heated supper for them and served them on a table outside the house. They talked and talked among themselves, about old times, about some of the women Baltasar had had, and other things that didn’t interest me. They didn’t call me or invite me to sit down, so I thought I would mind my own business and stay inside. When they left, I was in bed, pretending to be asleep. I heard Baltasar apologize for me, but he didn’t say anything to me that night.

The next day, he came home drunk and began. “You old she-goat! When my brothers come, see that you attend them the way you should. You went off and left us like dogs. Is that the way I treated your father when he came? Or your brother?” Then he hit me twice with his strap. It made me angry but he was drunk and I was afraid he might really get rough. I only cried and began to get my things together.

“You’re a fool if you think I’m going to stand for this,” I said. “If I left the father of my children because of his blows, why should I take them from you, who isn’t even my husband?” I told him off, but that was all that happened. A little later, he took me to the movies to calm me down.

The second time he hit me, he was also drunk. He had bought a hog, legally and all, and they had agreed to let him pay for it after he slaughtered it. But the meat was confiscated by the Courthouse because Baltasar hadn’t taken out a slaughter permit. He came home and said, “Imagine, they took the hog and charged a fine.”

“Well,” I said, “next, they will be taking you!” That’s the way he was, not responsible for his acts and then complaining about what others did to him. He went down the hill again, to do some errands,
and didn’t come back. The clock struck four, five, eight, and he didn’t appear.

“They must have put him in jail, with the hog. That’s where he is for sure.”

This happened after my son, Jesusito, was born. I remember very well, because I had already made the chocolate for his baptism. That evening, the baby and Trini were asleep. Concepción was in Mexico City visiting her grandmother, so I said to Violeta, “
Ay
, daughter, Baltasar might be in jail and we don’t even know. Let’s go down and look.”

First, I went to the pool parlor, then to the
cantinas
. I said, “Look under the doors, daughter, and see if your
papá
is there.” I turned and saw Baltasar coming out of a
cantina
across the street. It made me furious to think I was worrying about him being in jail when he was out having a good time. He had his arm around a girl. “Ah, the cursed fellow will pay for this!” I told Violeta, I followed them and saw the girl leave. Then Baltasar took some money out of his pocket and gave it to a friend. A car stopped and they both got in and drove off, in the direction of the red zone.

“The twice-condemned one! He’ll see!” I went straight home and started to pack my things. I had saved up one hundred
pesos
and planned to leave before he got back. “So, in addition to drinking, he goes around with other women. The bastard!”

He came back, saying, “
Ay
, old girl, now I really am good and drunk. Be nice and take off my shoes for me, won’t you?”

“You son-of-a-bitch, of what interest is it to me that you are drunk?”

“
Uy!
the old she-goat is very angry, eh? When have you spoken like that to me!”

Then he up and punched me. He noticed my packed valise and cut it with his knife. I thought he would knife me next, so I kept my peace. We were angry for only one or two days. After that, he didn’t know what to do for me. He took me to the movies and bought me this and that and even protected me from drafts. He thought my anger would cool, but he was crazy to believe he could buy me that way. Since that argument, I lost a lot of my respect for him. Before that, I had never used bad words in his presence and I wasn’t as vulgar with him as I am now. He thinks I am real depraved, the way I talk, but if one doesn’t speak up, one is left behind. Like Paula with Manuel. When Manuel was carrying on with that other woman, Paula kept quiet, so as not to make a big thing of it. Manuel didn’t even notice that she was
suffering, but how could he believe that she didn’t know what was going on? No, when a man makes a woman suffer, she should speak right up, so God will hear her. If I am uncouth with Baltasar, it is because he made me this way.

I was well off in Acapulco, but my
papá
wanted me and the children back, so I kept telling Baltasar I had to go home. He didn’t want to leave Acapulco. He said, “I’m not used to it there. Here we have meat every day, and bread, not just
tortillas
. When I am short of money, I can go fishing with my friends, or play dominoes and win thirty or forty
pesos
. Here we always have enough money for the movies. How can I go to the capital without money, to live like a dog?”

I was stubborn and kept nagging. My
papá
wrote that we could live in his house in the El Dorado Colony because Lupita was leaving him and moving out. That crazy Marielena kept saying her mother was living in sin with my father and that if he wouldn’t marry her the priest said she would have to separate from him. Maybe that was why Lupita finally left, but I believe it was because she couldn’t stand to see how Delila had won over my father. He almost never went to see Lupita and when he did, it was to take care of his pigeons and pigs.

So my
papá
said we could live there as soon as Lupita moved, and he would give us a pig to begin with, so that Baltasar could be a butcher and sell the meat among the neighbors. Baltasar thought it was a magnificent opportunity and set about raising money for the trip. He had to lie a little, but he did it to please me. He went to a friend who worked in the Department of Health and asked him for a letter saying he had to go to Mexico City for a hernia operation. He really did have a hernia because when he had his appendix taken out, the doctor told him. So he takes this letter to his companions at the slaughterhouse to see if they would take up a collection for him. Baltasar had only one hundred
pesos
at the time, and we couldn’t very well go with only that, could we?

Well, his friends got together one hundred and fifty
pesos
. It wasn’t enough and Baltasar went around as if he was in pain and it was an emergency. His friend from the Health Department came and told them his was a bad case, so they collected fifty
pesos
more. They said if he needed more after the operation, to let them know and they would send it.

We left in a hurry. Baltasar wanted to take the night bus, so that
we would not have to spend money on food on the way, but there was a misunderstanding with the driver, who demanded eighty
pesos
just for taking our furniture. We waited in the station until one of the drivers agreed to take it for seventy. Baltasar loaded the bed and chiffonier and other things on the roof of the bus, and bought us tickets for another forty-six
pesos
. There were more expenditures later for food for the children, for a jacket for Baltasar, and for a truck to take everything to the Casa Grande, so the trip was costly, right?

Lupita was still in my father’s house, so we moved in with Manuel and María. Roberto and his Antonia were there at the time, and my cousin David, his mother, wife and four kids. The place looked like a barracks with all those people stretched out on the floor at night. They slept with the candle burning on the altar and Baltasar began to complain to me that in such a setup he couldn’t even calm his desire. In Acapulco, at least we could send out the children during the day and enjoy ourselves alone. He wasn’t voracious and took care not to overdo it, but even so, he missed my caresses. Thank God, my cousin moved out with his family as soon as he could find a room of his own. Later, Antonia deserted poor Roberto and he went to live with my high-class sister, Consuelo. He lost his job and kept getting into fights. His only consolation was the bottle.

So there we were, sharing No. 64 with Manuel, María and their little baby girl, Lolita. Manuel’s four other children were staying with my
papá
and Delila, in the little house he was still building in the Ixmiquilpan Colony. Delila had had another baby, and people were still gossiping about it, saying she got it with someone’s help, that it wasn’t my father’s. This business of doubting who is the father is bad, as I know from bitter experience. Who could know better than the mother, who is the father of her child? For my part, I am willing to take the mother’s word for it.

Well, we began to have trouble right away. We were supposed to pay the rent one month, and Manuel the next month, but after we moved in, the landlord told us Manuel owed for five months and if it wasn’t paid up, my father would lose the room. To get off to a good start with Manuel, Baltasar offered to pawn his new radio and pay five months rent in advance, so that we would have a place to live. So Manuel took the radio and gave the landlord 165
pesos
, three months back rent, and only God knows what he did with the rest of the money. He said that was all he received but Baltasar didn’t believe
him because the radio was worth five hundred
pesos
. At first, I defended my brother, but when Manuel took the pawn ticket and sold it, I sided with Baltasar.

By that time, Manuel and Baltasar were
compadres
because it had occurred to me to ask my brother to be godfather at my son’s confirmation. So there was Baltasar having to behave respectfully to him, while trying to get justice. He would say, “With all due respect,
compadrito
, stop screwing around and give me back my radio.” But no matter how he said it or what he did, he never saw that radio or the money again. Manuel promised to pay it out little by little, but before he paid even one
centavo
he decided that the radio must have been a stolen one, so why should Baltasar worry about it.

Baltasar looked for work in the slaughterhouse, but he had no city license and they wouldn’t take him. He tried the bakeries but he needed money to buy a place in the union. My father got him a job at a key factory, but Baltasar quit because he said the union was run by the boss and was good for nothing. When he was sick for three days they deducted from his pay, and anyway, they paid only twelve-fifty
pesos
a day.

At other factories, they laid down too many conditions … they wanted to know who his family was, how long he had been in the capital, if he had a certificate from primary school, a letter saying why he left his last job, a letter of recommendation. He explained that he was a stranger here and couldn’t get a letter from anyone, but they didn’t understand. They said, “A letter or a bond. A letter or a bond.”

Baltasar was beginning to hate the Mexicans. He said they were dogs and selfish, that
Acapulqueños
give work to anyone who asks because if he didn’t need it he wouldn’t be asking, that Mexicans were all thieves, that if there was stealing in Acapulco, it was always someone from the capital who did it. He was ready to go back to his homeland.

My uncle Ignacio wanted him to sell newspapers, but how could we live on such a pittance? Finally, Manuel offered to show Baltasar how to be a “coyote” in the Tepito Market. Baltasar started by selling my table. He used the money to buy a pile of unwashed shirts from a laundry. When he sold those, he bought up other things. With both men working as peddlers, our room was cluttered with mirrors, broken toys, second-hand clothes, shoes, tools, and things like that. When they had nothing to sell, María and I had to hide our clothes because those
two would grab anything to raise money for the day’s expenses. Once Manuel took off Lolita’s sweater and sold it to a customer, then and there!

We got along better for a while, because Baltasar gave me my ten
pesos
a day and we had enough to eat. He even paid the back bills to the Power Company so that the electricity could be turned on again. But when Manuel didn’t pay for the next two months, the company cut us off again and Baltasar left it that way. He said we were better off with candles, because that way Manuel and María couldn’t turn on the lights and wake us up when they came in late. They ate all their meals at Gilberto’s café and stayed there every day with Lolita, until past midnight.

Baltasar needed capital, so when Roberto asked to borrow twenty-five
pesos
to go to Acapulco, Baltasar remembered the fellows at the slaughterhouse. He was crazy to think of sending my brother to collect money from them, but Roberto was going anyway, to dispose of something “hot,” and it wouldn’t cost us fare. Besides, Roberto told Baltasar that if he sold the stuff for a good price, he would get us another radio.

I didn’t believe my brother. I was angry with him because he had pawned a ring that Antonia had borrowed from me, and wouldn’t give it back. I had scraped together the money to buy that ring with so much sacrifice! If he wanted to steal, why didn’t he take from the rich, not from us? But he said, “Little sister, don’t upset yourself. I’ll get you a better one some day.”

Baltasar didn’t listen to me, and borrowed twenty-five
pesos
from my father, to lend to my brother. Four days later Roberto came back from Acapulco with only fifty
pesos
for Baltasar. He said he had spent the rest of it on food, hotels and bus fare. We never found out how much the butchers had collected, but Baltasar believed that my brother had robbed him of more than half. He began to feel hatred for Roberto.

One day, they were both mixing punch for a party at my aunt Guadalupe’s house, drinking as they went along. The more drunk they became, the more they spoke from their hearts and their rivalry came out. Baltasar told Roberto not to come to the Casa Grande any more, because he arrived like a big shot, pushing in the door as though he owned the place. Baltasar had paid three months rent and figured he was the boss there. He wouldn’t let María’s brothers come to sleep
there any more because, he said, if either of those bastards got hold of one of my girls he would feel responsible.