The Children of Sanchez (11 page)

Well, school continued and I played hooky at least one day a week. That’s when I started smoking with my friends. We’d be going along and one of the fellows would say, “How about taking ‘three drags’?”
He’d hand me his cigarette and I’d take three puffs, and pass it to the next guy.

I had to hide my smoking from my father. I have even popped burning cigarettes into my mouth when he came home unexpectedly. He caught me once, when I was twelve, smoking in the courtyard with my friends, and right in front of them he said, “Aha, you bastard, so you already know how to smoke? Now you have to work to keep yourself in cigarettes. Just wait until you get into the house, you’ll see, you little son-of-a-bitch.” After that, my friends kidded me when I asked for a cigarette. “No, kid, why should we, if your
papá
is going to hit you!”

It wasn’t until I was twenty-nine that I first smoked in my father’s presence. It was a kind of small rebellion against him, no? I am still uneasy when I do it, but I want him to see that I am a man now.

In looking back, I seemed not to have had any homelife. I didn’t have much to do with my family and spent so little time at home I can’t even remember what we did there. Besides, I have no memory for everyday things. I have an aversion for routine and only the very good or very bad things, the exciting things, stick in my memory.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but about my father … the truth is, he always mistreated my brother and me. What I mean is that he made us pay for the piece of floor we slept on, and the bread we ate, by humiliating us. True, he was very loyal and responsible, but he imposed his strict personality upon us, and never permitted us to express our opinions, or to approach him. If we asked him something, he’d say, “Slobs! what do you know? Shut your snouts.” He would squelch us every time.

In a way, it was his fault that I didn’t come home. I never had the feeling that I had a true home because I wasn’t free to bring my friends there. In the afternoons and evenings, when my father liked to read, he chased us into the courtyard. “Get out of here, you mules. A man works hard all day and he can’t even read in peace. Get out!” If we stayed inside, we had to be absolutely quiet.

Maybe I am hypersensitive, but my father’s lack of feeling for us made me think we were a burden to him. He would have been happier with Elena if he didn’t have us; we were like those heavy loads that one carried only because one must. I will never forget the look of hatred he gave Roberto and me, while we were having supper that
day. I went into the kitchen to cry, and couldn’t eat because of the lump in my throat.

Many times I wanted to say, “Look, Father, what have I ever done to you? Why do you have the worst opinion of us? Why do you treat us like criminals? Don’t you realize that there are sons who are addicts, who abuse their families right in their own house? Or who even kill their own fathers?” Someday, if I dare, I would like to say this to him, in a nice way, of course.

But whenever I tried to speak out to my father, something stopped me. With others, I had more than enough words, eh? But with him, something formed in my throat and didn’t let me speak. I don’t know whether it was the profound respect I felt for him, or whether it was fear. Perhaps that is why I preferred to live my life apart from my father, and from the rest of my family, too. There was a gulf between us, a disunity, and although I respected them, and was hurt to see what was happening to them, I shut myself off. A selfish attitude, yes, but I believe I hurt them and myself less that way.

I used to go out with my friends all the time. I practically lived in the street. I went to school in the afternoon; in the mornings I sometimes went with my friends to work in a tannery, to make engravings on leather. I only went home to pick up my books. I still ate at home, but I ducked out as soon as I finished. I really did it to avoid getting into difficulties with my stepmother, to avoid getting beatings. My father didn’t say anything to me about it because, I guess, it was better for him that way.

I liked to work when I was a boy. I must have worked since I was very small because the first job I had my father used to call for me and when I got my money I handed it right over to him. I remember how good I felt when my father hugged me, and said, “Now I have someone to help me.” I was a shoemaker’s assistant in a workshop a few blocks from our house. I used to work until late at night; there were times when we worked all night long. I don’t think I was over nine years old then.

My second job was making belts, then I sold lottery tickets in the street, and for a while I worked with Elena’s younger brother, as an assistant to my grandmother’s cousin’s son, who was a mason. While I was still in school I was night watchman in a bakery shop. My uncle Alfredo worked there and he taught me how to make biscuits. As I look back, almost my entire life has been spent working—even though
the work wasn’t very productive—so why do they say I am a lazy bastard and a son-of-a-this or that?

At the end of the school year they handed me my flunk notice. Professor Everardo was very fond of me but he failed me anyway. It hurt me on account of my father, and I thought my teacher had been unfair. After that, I lost interest in my studies. I was stupid when it came to grammar, to conjugating verbs, and only average in arithmetic, but I was outstanding in world history and geography. These studies fascinated me.

When it came to sports, to physical strength, I was first in my class. I have always been a good runner and in the sixth grade I came in first in the 100 and 200 meter races. I also liked anything that had to do with motors and once in a while I dreamed of becoming a mechanical engineer, of having a career. But I’ve left all that behind.

We still lived on Cuba Street, near my grandmother. She kept coming to visit, bringing us little cakes and sweets or clothing, and asking how our stepmother was treating us. Once I ran to her house because my father had hit me. I wanted to live with her, but that night my
papá
came and made me go home.

I have a poor memory for dates, but I remember the day we moved to the Casa Grande because it was my father’s Saint’s Day and it was the day my grandmother died. When my uncle sent word of her death my father had said, “What a nice little present for me!”

The day before, she had sent for us and I was impressed because she knew she was dying; she died with all her five senses intact and she had a word for everyone. To me she said, “Kneel down, child, I’m going to sleep. Now take good care of your brother and sisters. Behave well in life so that life treats you well. Son, don’t be wicked, otherwise your mother’s spirit and mine won’t rest in peace.” She asked us always to pray an Our Father in her name because it would be like food to her. Then she blessed us. There was a knot in my throat but by that time I felt like a man and tried hard not to cry. My uncle José was drunk as usual and was dancing outside her room.

My aunt Guadalupe and my uncles washed and dressed my grandma for the funeral. They put a clean sheet on the bed that day and laid her out while they went to buy the coffin. The four of them lifted her into the coffin and put under it a tray of vinegar and onion to absorb the
cáncer
that leaves the body of a dead person. There were two candles at her head and two at her feet, when we arrived for the
wake. All night people sat around drinking black coffee and eating bread and telling off-color stories which made me very angry. My father sat on one side, talking to my uncles. I heard him say, “You see, Alfredo, look at our case. What is the use of all the rivalry and disagreements, when this is the end, the reality of things?” They had always had conflicts, but anyway my father helped them with the funeral expenses.

Well, then we began life in the Casa Grande. The boys there, the Casa Grande gang, tried to provoke me to fight. I had not lost a single fight at school and so, when the gang surrounded me, with the strongest of them egging me on, I just said, “Well, come on, brother, you’re done for.”

What a fight we had! We were covered with blood but he got the worst of it. There was only one of them that dared fight me after that, a fellow nicknamed the Donkey, because he had a very big penis. One day he knocked a tooth out of my brother’s mouth and that was when I took him on. The Donkey and I had a wonderful fight. I gave him a sock that made him cry, but when he saw that he couldn’t manage with his fists, he bit me. I still have the scar on my shoulder where his teeth dug into me. After that we became close friends, closer than I was with my own brother, because we kept nothing secret from each other. The Donkey was none other than my present
compadre
and best friend, Alberto Hernández.

From our first fight, I was attracted to Alberto. I liked him a lot, although I usually had opinions contrary to his. I don’t know why, but no sooner did he come out with an idea, than I said the opposite. But in the things that counted, like if someone picked a fight with one of us, we always stood together. We saw each other every day; wherever Alberto was, there I was too. In a word, we were inseparable. We confided in each other, all our joys and troubles, our conquests and secrets. And he always treated me, because he worked and had more money to spend.

Alberto was a year or two older than I, but he had had a lot more experience, especially with women. He had wavy hair and big eyes and the girls liked him, even though he was a country boy and talked like an Indian. I was impressed by the things he knew. While I was still a schoolboy, he had worked in a mine in Pachuca, had washed cars, waited on tables, and had traveled the highways. He had never gone to school because from the beginning he had to support himself. His
life was harder than mine, because his mother had died when he was a baby, and his father had abandoned him. First, his mother’s mother took care of him, then his mother’s sister. He was living in the Casa Grande with this aunt and her husband.

Even though I was younger than he, Alberto talked to me about matters of the bedroom. He told me of different positions, about women with “dog,” and things like that. What a
cabrón
he was when it came to women! To this day he is a great one with the ladies. We nicknamed him Three Daily, because he was so
puñetero
, so hot. Why, once when we went out selling newspapers, he stood next to a car and saw the woman driver with her dress up and her knees showing, and right then and there, he put his hand into his pocket and began masturbating.

We kids used to go to the bathhouse and peek through holes in the walls to see the girls bathing. Once Alberto came running to tell us that a pretty girl, Clotilde, was taking a bath, so four of us hired the bath next to hers and watched her. We saw her naked and she sure had everything! There we were peeking, with our hands in our pockets, rubbing away, racing to see who would come first.

Alberto and I were members of the Casa Grande gang. There were about forty of us then; we played games, like
burro
, or told dirty jokes together, and we were always very proud of keeping up the name of the Casa Grande. The guys from the streets of the Barbers, the Painters, or the Tinsmiths could never get the better of us. At dances we kept our eyes peeled to see that they didn’t hang around trying to make the girls of the Casa Grande.

Every sixteenth of September a certain gang would come with sticks to make war against us. We would let them come in through one of the gates and, meanwhile, the janitor’s son, who was a member of our gang, would lock the other gate. When all of the gang was inside, he would run and lock the first gate. Then we would let them have it in all the courtyards, with stones, pails of water, and sticks.

We never let anyone get the better of us, Alberto and I were the first to take on any others … we were known as good fighters and were always put up front against other gangs. We fought so much in those days, I began to dream about it. I dreamed that Alberto and I were surrounded by five or six guys and I jumped to escape them and went up and up until I reached the electric cables, out of everyone’s reach. I said, “Ay! I can fly! I can fly!” Then I made myself
go down by putting my feet vertical, toward the ground, and I said to Alberto, “
Compadre
, get on.” And he got on my back and I began to fly again. “You see? They can’t do anything to us now!” I kept flying until we passed the cables. Then suddenly I lost the power and I felt myself fall. I kept dreaming this for many years.

The thing is, growing up in our environment here, we see the realities of life so close that we must learn to have a lot of self-control. Sometimes I had an intense desire to cry because of something my father said, but instead, because life, cynicism, had taught me to put on a mask, I laughed. For him, I did not suffer, I felt nothing, I was a shameless cynic, I had no soul … because of the mask I showed. But inside, I felt every word he said.

I have learned to hide my fear and to show only courage because from what I have observed, a person is treated according to the impression he makes. That’s why when I am really very afraid inside, outwardly I am calm. It has helped me too, because I didn’t suffer as much as some of my friends who trembled when they were grabbed by the police. If a guy shows weakness and has tears in his eyes, and begs for mercy, that is when the others pile on him. In my neighborhood, you are either a
picudo
, a tough guy, or a
pendejo
, a fool.

Mexicans, and I think everyone in the world, admire the person “with balls,” as we say. The character who throws punches and kicks, without stopping to think, is the one who comes out on top. The one who has guts enough to stand up against an older, stronger guy, is more respected. If someone shouts, you’ve got to shout louder. If any so-and-so comes to me and says, “Fuck your mother,” I answer, “Fuck your mother a thousand times.” And if he gives one step forward and I take one step back, I lose prestige. But if I go forward too, and pile on and make a fool out of him, then the others will treat me with respect. In a fight, I would never give up or say, “Enough,” even though the other was killing me. I would try to go to my death, smiling. That is what we mean by being “
macho
,” by being manly.