The Children of Sanchez (34 page)

I don’t believe witchcraft really exists, but when I was living at my aunt’s house, I saw a woman curing a man who had cataracts in both eyes. She took a fresh egg laid by one of her own chickens, rubbed his eyes with it and then broke it open. It was black inside so she told the man that his blindness was caused by sorcery, by his his own wife! And she gave him a counterremedy.

I guess my father believed in these superstitions because he would scold us if we spilled salt while anyone was eating, and once he was very angry with me for bringing home a belt made of snake skin. He made me get rid of it before something bad happened to one of us. When he found out about Antonia, he went to see a witch too. She gave him water to sprinkle in the room, so that the spell would not take effect.

But Antonia continued to be my father’s favorite. He bought her whatever she wanted, and no matter what she did or said, he’d comment, “That’s fine, that’s fine.” It always struck me as strange that my father could be so sweet, so very sweet, to others, and so hard to us. In the case of Antonia he was trying to compensate for his neglect of her and Lupita all those years. Also, because she helped at home. Marta and Consuelo had no mother to teach them and they were useless around the house.

One thing that had always bothered me, was that no one in my
family ever treated me like an older brother. It was my duty and right, for example, to have stopped Marta when I saw her keeping company with Crispín. I really wanted to speak to that fellow, man to man, but I was afraid that Marta or my father would put me in a ridiculous position by not backing me up. Once I asked Marta to hold my daughter Mariquita, and Crispín told her not to, just as though she were his servant or something. I got mad at that and spoke up.

“Listen, Crispín, why do you tell my sister not to hold my child? I want you to understand that I know you have struck Marta on more than one occasion. Well, let me tell you that the next time you put a hand on her you won’t be seeing her any more.”

The logical thing to expect was for Marta to support her big brother, isn’t that so? Well, she did just the opposite. She said, “What are you mixing into my affairs for?” That’s what she came out with.

“Look, Marta,” I said, “never, never again will I mix in, even if I see you dying. Even if you are being dragged on the floor I won’t do a thing.”

Later, when she ran off with Crispín, my father blamed Roberto and me. He never allowed us to meddle in her affairs and then he blamed us. The same thing happened with Consuelo. From the beginning I was wise to that fellow she went with. Why shouldn’t I be, since I was the same type!

Twice I had to fight with my brother, to teach him how to respect his elders. The first time, he called me “
pinche guey
,” for no reason at all. “Watch what you’re saying, you son-of-a-bitch. You are insinuating you went to bed with my wife and that you have made a fool of me. You’re offending her, and me too, imbecile!” While I was speaking,
pas
! he punched me in the face. He was strong, but I beat him up, right there in the courtyard.

The next fight we had was when Consuelo came in crying because he had hit her. He said she had been flirting at a dance, acting like a little whore. So I said, “Roberto, it’s none of your business what she does. What do you give her anyway? Besides, she works …” Again, while I was talking, he socked me. I got him on the floor and beat him so hard he had to get the fellows to pull me off. That time I even bit his nose. When the boys intervened, I got up, saying, “This kid has got to learn some respect for me.” I think he did, too, because he told the boys, “
Ay!
my brother is short, but how strong he hits. You have to be careful with that guy.”

Roberto was always watching his sisters. Just like my father, he was against decent women going to dance halls. After all the things Roberto got himself into, it turned out that he was the one who was following my father’s morality. The thing was, that for Roberto, a woman … well, he had such a narrow, abstract notion of what female chastity should be, that he thought a girl should be absolutely pure. And that is something difficult to find these days.

Today, if you invite a girl to the movies and act like a gentleman, she says later that you are a jerk. But the man who comes along and starts using his hands … even though she resists, because a woman is always saying no … well, that’s the man for them. My brother was so retiring that I didn’t think he would ever get married.

Roberto suffered from a lot of complexes. So far as women were concerned, there were a lot of undercurrents there. It wasn’t that he was not able to take a woman and go to bed with her. He was just as capable as anybody. I knew because of some information I got from a woman who had gone with him. It was that Roberto believed he was ugly, so dark and ugly, that he thought that the woman who married him would deceive him at the first opportunity. He knew that if anyone made a fool of him he wouldn’t be able to control himself and there would be very serious consequences.

The thing about Roberto was that he was too violent. He was capable of grabbing a guy at any moment and giving him a bath in blood, of caving in his ribs, or of sticking a knife into him. It’s not that he was a criminal … just very bad-tempered. But when his rage cooled down and he remembered the shape he left the guy in, he might cry with remorse and ask for forgiveness. My poor brother was a tangle of contradictions.

Roberto was really very noble, the most noble in the family. If he were surrounded by people of culture and understanding, he would be a happy person. He really liked nice things. He liked to talk to people more educated than he, and he was always alert to learn new words and to express himself correctly. If he had contact with people in a higher social sphere, he would straighten out. He really hated the nauseating atmosphere we lived in … all that we had to rub shoulders with every day.

I attribute a lot of his trouble to the mistaken idea we have that it is a matter of self-respect or pride to show no fear. Roberto really didn’t know what fear was; he was incapable of running away
from trouble. If somebody pulled a knife, he pulled one, and used it too. And he was worse when he drank. I have said to him, “I don’t know what you are after. Can’t you get drunk decently and sleep it off, like other people do? What does it cost you? But no, you have to go out and look for someone who will pick a fight and beat you up! If you have so much anger in you, why don’t you let me make a boxer out of you?”

He would have made a good boxer, but he didn’t want to be one. He said he hated fighting. He was good at sports … if he had the support of a sports club, he might have been a champion swimmer or bicycle racer. He would have been a real luminary. But that business of going around hitting people and stealing just couldn’t go on. The day he killed someone, who would the guy’s family take it out on? Me, of course! But he never thought of the consequences of his actions. He was like a runaway horse. Nothing could stop him, not blows, not advice, scoldings, jail … nothing. He was not satisfied with ordinary emotions, like me, but he needed more action, an outlet for the fire that was inside him.

At bottom, I believe he was afraid of something. In my poor judgment, it was his subconscious at work, trying to defend itself from something indeterminate. Perhaps he felt the lack of love too strongly. His life was really sad, sadder than mine and our sisters, because he had never known real love.

During all this time I had kept myself informed about Graciela, and then I began to hang out at the café where she worked. She had married a man named León, but had left him after three months because he was a thief and sold marijuana. He was one of the worst, a real murderer! His body had so many scars, it looked like a map! I used to see Graciela in the street every once in a while, and each time felt something stir inside me. She gave birth to a son at the time my first daughter was born.

When I had the shoe shop, friends who knew I had been in love with her, would say, “You know what? Graciela is working in a café on Cuba Street,” or, “I saw Graciela working on Constantino Street.”

One time I went to deliver some shoes, and I had two hundred
pesos
on me, a pretty large roll, no? I was passing Constantino Street and saw Graciela waiting on tables there. I thought, “I’m going in so she can see that I’m well off now.”

A long time had passed since we had last spoken to each other. We were polite and had a chat while she served me supper. I managed to take out a fistful of
pesos
, and I could see she was impressed. I wondered whether she still cared for me, so I went back to the café about three times. Then she disappeared and I didn’t know where she was working. I thought, “Well, maybe it’s better this way.” I had been with Paula five years, and I hadn’t had relations with any other woman during that time.

One day as my friends and I were going to the Florida movie theatre, we passed by a café and there was Graciela, working. So I thought, “Good! Now I know where you are.”

Then I really went after her. I ate at the café every day and made it my hangout. I began to get close to her, pretending to just renew an old friendship. Little by little, the affection she had for me came back. As for me, I kept fanning the spark in my heart, until I felt my old love again. I began to get somewhere with her, but it cost me a lot of work.

One evening, she agreed to go out with me and another couple. We went to a cabaret and had a few beers. While we danced, we kept looking at each other. We kissed and she looked a bit dazed. Then she said, with a lot of passion, “Kiss me, kiss me.” I knew I was making headway and I said, “Graciela, Graciela, when will you be mine?”

“One of these days, tomorrow, the day after … one of these days,” she said. The next day at the café, I reminded her of what she had said. “If it’s all right for tomorrow, why not now?”

“So you believe me?” she said. “I was just talking. I didn’t mean it. After all, you are married, you have your two children and I know your wife. So how do you think we can do this?”

I waited for the café to close and invited her out for
tacos
.

“Fine,” she said, “I’m hungry. I can’t eat this stuff in the café any more.” Trying to be clever, I took her down Orégano Street and then turned the corner at Colombia, where there was a hotel. Well, she caught on and about fifteen yards before reaching the hotel she stopped.

“Let’s keep walking, Graciela, please.”

“No,” she said, “I know what you’re up to, nothing doing.”

“No, look, believe me, I don’t want a thing from you.” But I finally came clean with her. “All right, Graciela, it’s true I want you to be
mine tonight.” No and no and no, we were arguing out there in front of the hotel for three hours, she and I. I argued this way and that, but she absolutely refused to come with me.

I finally got mad, grabbed her arm in a tight grip, and kicked the door open, forcing her in. I asked for a room. The manager went ahead of us, opened the door and I pushed her in. I tried to undress her but she wouldn’t let me. Actually, deep down she did want to, but her mind told her she shouldn’t. “Leave me alone, Manuel, please leave me alone. By all that you love most in this world, leave me alone, because if I do this I won’t be able to live. You are married, you have children, have pity on me and leave me alone.”

But I was obsessed. All I wanted was to have her.

Well, then I had to urinate and since the toilet was outside, I went out. She locked the door and wouldn’t open it when I knocked. I went to the manager and said, “Please unlock my door. I think my wife must have fallen asleep.”

“Why, of course,” and he opened the door with his key. She was in bed and I got in.

After a long hard battle, it was then about four-thirty in the morning, after struggling with her for an hour and a half, she gave in. But by that time, either because I had used up so much energy or I don’t know what, I found I couldn’t function …

Holy Mother of God, was I in a sweat! Was I ashamed! I said: “Dear God, how can this happen to me? No, no, it can’t be.” Well, I was in a frightful stew and terribly embarrassed. There she was ready for me and I said, “
Madre Santísima
, now what am I going to do?” So I said, “
Mi amor
, I know that you are now willing, but I’m going to punish you. I’m going to make you suffer the way you made me suffer.” I was lying, the reason was I just couldn’t. So I lit a cigarette and prayed to all the saints: “Please, St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Gabriel, help me recover so I can go on with it.” Well, after some time I felt my strength coming back, and I said to myself, before it changes its mind and goes soft on me again, I’d better hop to it.

Well, I think it was the most wonderful night I ever had in my whole life. We just let go completely. It was as if the whole stream of love within us two overflowed, broke the dike and overflowed. She was as insatiable as I. One, two, three, five, six, seven times we had each other, and when dawn came we were still making love.

At daylight we had to get up for work. She was afraid of what
her mother would think. But I said, “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. You’re a full-grown woman. If you were a young, unmarried girl it would be different.” When we got outside everything seemed to be yellow, cars, houses, men, women. Both of us looked pale and tired. She went to her job, only two blocks from there, and I to mine. That is, I went to the shop, but I was like a milkman’s horse sleeping on the job.

We two continued making love. We’d always go to a hotel. My wife didn’t think it unusual for me to come home at twelve, one, or two in the morning because I’d been doing it for years. I don’t know to this day if she ever found out that I was going with Graciela. We never had any trouble about this. My brother and sisters didn’t know anything about it either. The only one who always knew everything was Alberto. I told him all my problems, all the things that were troubling me.

I realized that my love affair with Graciela was harmful to me in every respect. If my wife found out she might go so far as to leave me and I didn’t want that for I loved her too. I loved her a great deal, but with a different kind of love. Paula was passive, anything I wanted to do was all right, but she didn’t respond with much passion. Perhaps that was her nature; she had other ways of showing me her love. But she didn’t excite me as much. Graciela responded in a way that satisfied me and my vanity. She worshiped me. With Graciela, every time I touched her it felt like the first time, as though she were a different woman. I loved her passionately, madly, I couldn’t think of living without her. And I didn’t have to worry about her becoming pregnant because she couldn’t have any more children.