The Children of Sanchez (31 page)

Nowadays there are few girls who are worth anything; they have pretty faces and well-formed bodies, but the truth is they are not virgins. It is sad for the man who really loves them; he loses the chance of real happiness in marriage. Many girls know how to fool men into thinking they are virgins, but sooner or later the husband finds out. Some wives even tell them, because instead of having more affection
for the man who accepts them, they look down upon him for having been taken in.

The Mexican daughter suffers because she doesn’t trust her parents. She prefers to confide her secret, intimate problems to her friends. For example, menstruation. Most girls find out about this outside the home … Mine began when I was thirteen and I was very frightened. No one had prepared me for it. I knew from my friends that when you go with a man for the first time you bleed, so that day I couldn’t explain why I bled. My sister-in-law Paula was living with us then, and I asked her, “Why am I bleeding?” I didn’t go with any boy but, just look, I am bleeding.”

She scared me more because she said it wasn’t ever going to stop. I let loose and began to cry. I thought it was going to be that way forever. All Paula said was, “Go and change yourself.”

I was afraid that my dress and slip would get spotted so I put newspaper between my legs. Later, Irela told me about using rags. We didn’t know about napkins then.

Crispín and I were
novios
for about a year and a half. I liked him a lot and we had good times together, but he was too interested in other girls. One night, four months before my fifteenth birthday, we had a fight. I had seen him walking with a girl and it made me so angry I wanted to break with him. He said if I left him I would be responsible for what would happen to him. I was afraid he might kill himself or do something crazy and then they would blame me. He kept begging me to go to a hotel with him. He said, “If you really love me, you’ll go with me.”

It had always been my golden illusion to be married in white in church, and to have a home of my own. I wanted to bring up my children without a mother-in-law or relatives to bother me. I knew that if one ran off, it didn’t usually turn out that way. Besides, one’s parents suffer, and people say things. But when I told my friends of my dream, they laughed and said, “Look who thinks she is going to marry!” Most of them did not get married and are living in free union.

Now that I think of it, someone should have warned me about men, especially because I played with boys so much. But no one ever explained things clearly to me about the dangers and the temptations. So when Crispín said he would ask my father for permission to marry me, on condition that I sleep with him first, it seemed reasonable. I suppose I was weak, but I was afraid I would lose him forever if I
didn’t. The result was, that same night we ended being
novios
in order to continue as lovers.

First, I had to go home for a sweater. My father was not living there then, because he was taking care of Antonia, who was sick at her mother’s house. Only Consuelo was at home when I came in. My friend Ema was with me, to help me get away. She carried a jacket on her arm and I slipped my sweater under it, so my sister wouldn’t take notice. I said I was going to borrow the comics from a friend and got out of the house without trouble. I met Crispín, and no one, not even Ema, knew where we went.

He took me to a transient hotel near the Penitentiary. Now that I have seen other hotels, I realize that place was one of the worst. The night went badly. He undressed without shame, but I had never undressed in front of a man and was very embarrassed. I didn’t sleep at all because I was afraid of my father. I had always been afraid of him and now I thought he would be looking for me in fury. When we heard the Red Cross ambulance sirens, I was sure the police were after me.

The next morning, at five o’clock, Crispín took me to his mother’s house. He left me waiting outside. I felt ashamed and thought everyone was looking at me as though they knew what I had done. I was full of fear that Crispín would not marry me after all. He kept me waiting for an hour and I was beginning to think he had abandoned me, when he came out. He had spoken to his parents about me and they were not in agreement that I should stay there. So he took me home.

Roberto met us in the courtyard and made a big fuss. He threatened Crispín with a knife and called him every name in the book, until Crispín promised that his parents would come to ask my father for me.

There was a scandal in my house when my family learned the truth. Everybody wanted to hit me. Consuelo managed to give me two lashes, but I scratched her arms until she bled. Manuel raised a hand to me, but Paula intervened. Paula was the only one I confided in and she cried as though I had been her sister or her daughter. She said I did a very foolish thing. I had never been close to Paula … she was reserved and serious and had a temper … but I shall never forget that no one, not even my sister, cried for me the way she did.

When my
papá
came home from work, I stayed outside in the courtyard. I was afraid to face him, but he didn’t say a word, nor did he hit me. I had already “slipped” and he acted like he wasn’t interested in me any more. When Manuel told him Crispín’s parents were coming
he said he didn’t want to know anything about me and that I should arrange my own affairs. When they came, it was Manuel who spoke to them. He warned them that I knew nothing about housekeeping, that I hadn’t had my first communion until I was thirteen, that I was at a disadvantage because I didn’t have a mother. They said that it would be all right, that they would teach me everything, little by little. My
papá
told Manuel to ask for a two-year waiting period, because I was so young.

My father didn’t speak to me for a month, and treated me badly. I felt terrible and was ashamed to look him in the face. I had been his favorite and I couldn’t take my punishment. I was so upset that one night I began to cry very hard. I couldn’t stop crying, until my
papá
spoke to me. I asked him to forgive me and he said, “Don’t be a fool. I am your father and will never abandon you.” After that I felt better.

Crispín came to the house every day, or took me to his house, or to the park. Once in a while, very secretly, we went to a hotel. On my fifteenth birthday, my friends came to my house with a record player and made a
fiesta
for me. My
papá
had planned to give me a big fifteenth birthday party, with a new dress and everything, but since I was no longer a virgin and didn’t count for much any more, the only thing he gave me was a pair of shoes.

A week later, I went to live with Crispín in his mother’s house, once and for all. He no longer spoke of us getting married but I was terribly afraid of becoming pregnant while I was still living at home. Again, my poor
papacito
had to run around looking for me, because I was afraid to tell him where I was.

I
DIDN’T HAVE A HOME OR FURNITURE OR ANYTHING FOR MY WIFE. ALL
I had were my wages. So I took Paula to my aunt Guadalupe’s house. She and my uncle Ignacio lived alone in a little room on the Street of the Bakers. When I told my aunt we had come to stay, she said, “What do you mean, you’ve come to stay? What the devil sort of kid are you?” She turned to Paula and asked, “What do you think?” Are you in love with him?”

Paula blushed and bent her head. So I said, “O.K., are you going to let us stay or not?”

“Why sure, son,” she said, “I’ll be glad to. You know you’re always welcome. Here’s a blanket. Spread it out on a cardboard so as not to get it dirty.” My aunt didn’t have a bed then and we all slept on the floor. That’s where Paula and I had our honeymoon, on the floor.

My aunt and uncle slept with the votive candle burning, so we had to wait until they were fast asleep before we undressed and went to bed. We spent a terrible night because we were afraid they would hear us. Paula said, “Don’t make so much noise.” I answered, “Shut your mouth. You’re the one making all the noise. You’re the one causing a scandal here tonight.” We kept scrapping all that night.

And so our married life began. We paid no rent but I gave my wife five
pesos
a day for food. My aunt was a good person but had always been poor, much poorer than my mother and father. She worked for others, washing laundry or helping in a restaurant, and my uncle sold newspapers, but between them they didn’t make enough to eat more than one meal a day. If they ate more often, it would be just beans and chile. But they never complained about being poor; they were
satisfied with the way they lived. Ignacio was proud to be a member of the newsboys’ union and never thought of doing anything else. It wasn’t that he lacked intelligence, but that he didn’t know how to focus it to improve himself. More than anything, he and my aunt remained poor because they liked to drink.

Paula and I were afraid of what her mother and brother would say when they found us. I had betrayed their trust and thought they would make an awful fuss. But I was wrong. From the beginning, my mother-in-law was reasonable. I bumped into her on my way to work a few days after Paula had gone off with me. “Holy Mother of God!” I said to myself, “here it comes!”

“Good morning, Manuel,” she said.

“Good morning, Cuquita.”

“And Paula?”

“Well, she’s all right, Cuquita.”

“Good! So you got what you wanted, eh?”

I was ashamed and kept looking down. “Forgive me. I don’t know what came over me, but that is the way it was. But don’t worry, I’ll provide for her and we’ll go on living as man and wife.”

“Fine! Why don’t you come up to the house this evening?”

“Sure thing, Cuquita.”

I still had to square up with my father because I had just walked out of the house without asking or telling anybody. On the day I ran into my mother-in-law, just as though he had been reading my thoughts, my father sent Roberto for me. “And
papá
said to bring your wife.”

“Holy Mary!” I thought, “the cat’s out of the bag.”

When we got there, Paula didn’t want to go into the house. I was pushing her, when my father opened the door. “Come in,” he said. His face had the expression of a judge, and I felt as if I was in front of a jury.
Madre Santísima
! I was scared, because I always had a lot of respect for my father.

He sat down at one side of the table and we sat on the other side. “So now you’re married, eh? you little bastard.”

“Why, yes,
papá
.”

“And how much are you making?”

“Fifty-six
pesos, papá
.”

“Fifty-six
pesos
? Why, you bloody idiot, are you stupid enough to think you can support a wife on bird seed? At your age, and you ve got yourself such a responsibility! Now you’ve really screwed yourself.”
He said that right in front of my wife. Sometimes my father is too frank, no?

Then he turned to Paula. “How old are you, girl?” She was holding my hand and the poor thing was trembling. My father’s face was very stern, and even though he was short, he had a loud voice.

“Well, I’m sixteen,
señor
.” She made herself out to be three years younger.

“So now what? Where do you live? How does this
cabrón
treat you?” Finally, my
papá
turned to me and said, “O.K., now get to work and behave like a decent human being. You’ve got to take care of her; you’ve taken on an obligation.”

The worst was over. I don’t remember who was cooking in the house at the time, but my father said, “Give them some supper. They probably haven’t eaten all day.” We ate, but poor Paula was very ill at ease because my father didn’t like her at first.

We lived with my aunt for over a year. I got to know my mother’s brothers, Alfredo, the baker, and José, because they came over every evening. I had once worked for my uncle Alfredo, but I scarcely knew my other uncle. I met him in the street once in a while and he would give me my “Sunday” money, to buy a treat. At Guadalupe’s, they would sit around drinking and talking for hours, and I spent a lot of time with them.

My uncle José gave me some interesting advice. He said, “Son, now that you are married I will tell you something that you should heed all the days of your life. Look here, son, the first move a woman makes is to go for your knees. Very good. Up to there you may permit her. The second move will be to your waist. When she does that, screw her in any way you can, because if you let her get to your throat you will never in all your life get her off you.”

My uncle was always complaining that his wife had bewitched him and at that time he was going to a
curandero
to fight the evil. “That
cabrona
,” he said, “she has me by the middle, the old witch. Every time I get home she is puttering about with her herbs, with her filthy sorcerizings. She has me enchanted and I don’t know how to get rid of it.” He said she had him bewitched, but the fact is that my uncle, may he rest in peace, kept his poor wife with her eyes blackened and her body bruised.

When my uncle José hit his old lady I defended her because I didn’t like to see a woman being beaten. Once, when I saw my aunt
Guadalupe with a bruise, I said to her husband, “Why is my aunt going around with a black eye? Look, you lousy half-pint, if you are hitting my aunt, you’ll have to settle with me, see?” I don’t think he laid a hand on her after that.

But my uncle José’s advice was good. A wife needs to be watched. If you don’t act that way toward a Mexican woman she begins to take the reins in her own hands and runs wild. I have heard women say, “My husband is very good, I have everything I need in the house, but I want a man who dominates me, not one who lets me dominate him.” So I have always dominated my women, in order to feel more manly and to make them feel it too.

Time passed, and then I had a little trouble with my uncle Ignacio. He was a bit drunk one evening and asked my wife when she was going to pay him. Paula, not understanding, said she didn’t owe him anything. He told her to stop pretending, that she knew very well what he meant. When I came home from work she told me about it and I had a big argument with him. I wanted to beat him up, then and there, but because of my aunt we left that same night and went to live with my mother-in-law.