The Children of Sanchez (36 page)

It was at about that time that my wife told me she was not well. She had not yet lost weight and I swear that I never believed she was seriously ill. I told her to go to Public Health and see what the doctors thought. That night she said they wanted to hospitalize her, because they didn’t know what was wrong. But she didn’t want to go because she was afraid of hospitals. Besides, she was nursing Conchita and had no one to take care of the children.

I didn’t pay much attention to her. All I could think about was the
problem I had with the two women. I went about in a state of terrible confusion, like a crazy person. I didn’t notice that Paula was getting thin, that she urinated a great deal and was thirsty all the time. She never told me that her health was getting worse.

One day my father came to visit us. He had become fond of Paula, as if she were his own daughter. He liked her more than me. He realized that she was self-sacrificing, hard-working and clean. She never complained about anything. When he saw her, he said, “Listen, child, what’s wrong with you?” He insisted that she go back to his house so he could take her to a doctor.

I was so blind, so stupid, so unobserving that I hadn’t seen how ill she was. I thought it was something simple, like a cold. I said to her, “Old girl, get well; you must get well. We must go to Chalma this year.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m going to get well.” She made a vow to walk there on her knees if she recovered. But to my mother-in-law she said, “
Mamá
, I know if I go to my father-in-law’s house and lie down, I won’t get up. Please take care of my children.”

She was so anxious to spare me pain that she told me she was going to get well. She had a feeling she was going to die and kept it from me, a good-for-nothing who didn’t deserve to have anybody care about him.

She went to my father’s house and that night I moved our furniture to my mother-in-law’s. I saw her in the morning: “
Mi vida
, here I am, but I’ve got to leave for work.”

“Fine,” she said, “and may God bless you.”

When I got back from work in the evening, my father met me at the door. “Come in, you good-for-nothing, you god-damned son-of-a-bitch, see what you’ve done,
pinche cabrón
, you’re the one who’s responsible. It’s your fault if she dies.” I don’t know why but I had a feeling it was the truth. While he was talking to me I couldn’t look at him.

Paula heard him bawling me out. She looked at me with eyes full of love … and he said that in front of her! My answer? Nothing! I wanted to shout that he was wrong but, as always, I swallowed my words, because he was my father, no? But that time, more than others, I felt mortified.

I got down on my knees by the bed. “Here I am, old girl.” She put out her hand and held me. I can still feel her fingers. She caressed
my head and pulled at my ear. She smiled at me, then she lay there as if she were sleeping.

The baby began to cry, and I was very much upset because she woke up Paula, who then had to nurse her. In those days, when I saw how ill my wife was, I had an aversion toward the baby. It seemed to me as she nursed at the nipple, that she was sucking away Paula’s life. And when she cried at night, disturbing my wife, it made me angry. I felt this rancor toward my youngest child for a long time.

The next day Paula was worse and when I came back from work, my father again greeted me with, “
Hijo de la chingada
! Son-of-a-bitch! You see, you didn’t give her enough to eat. Why do you bastards marry if you cannot see to things. Now what? If this woman dies, what will you do with your children?” I wanted to hold my ears and tell him, for the first time in my life, “Shut up! Shut up!”

Someone, Delila I believe, sent for a priest to give Paula the last rites. Seeing him there scared me, and I said, “Father, I want to marry this woman.” He turned to look at me.

“Hmmm, now that she is dying you want to marry her. And you had all those years to do it!” He didn’t marry us! I was going to pay him … they usually ask if you have money to pay before they come … but I didn’t, because he had refused to marry Shorty and me. He went out angry. But I was angry too. He was a servant of God; if God saw one of his children … no matter who … suffering, he wouldn’t go and give him another blow, the way that priest did to me.

After that, my father told me to run for the doctor because Paula was failing. “Yes,
papá
,” and I ran, forgetting to take bus fare with me. It was past midnight and I hurried all the way to Rosario Street on foot. Dr. Ramón lived in the same house as Lupita. Antonia greeted me and told me that the doctor had been drinking. She went upstairs to see him, because I was so tired, and soon came down with a prescription.

“He said to inject this immediately.”

I had to walk back to the Casa Grande. I had been on my feet all day at the shop, and they swelled up on me. When I got to the house, my father gave me money for the medicine and I had to walk again, looking for a drugstore that was open, “
de turno
.” After that, back at the Casa Grande, I began knocking on doors to find someone to
give the injection. It was about 4:30
A.M.
and no one opened his door.

At five o’clock Paula was in a coma, and I desperately went to try again. This time a woman woke up and agreed to give the injection. Damn her for waking up, damn her for giving the injection! I have always cursed that moment, but now I believe my wife’s time had come, that possibly it was her turn to die, because a little while … a few minutes … after the injection, Antonia came running yelling, “Don’t give the injection! Don’t give it or she’ll die!”

My wife began to move her arms frantically. We could see her heart palpitating hard. Then the doctor came running in. “Did they give the injection?” He told us that the medicine had to be mixed with blood first, or it would bring on a heart attack. Then, what he did, was to take blood from my brother (he had the universal type) and inject it into her. She began to move, then, little by little, she opened her eyes. And then she died. She died.

“
Papá
, she’s dead, my wife is dead!” I shouted with desperation, with rage, with all the anxiety of life. He ran in and embraced her and cried. I banged my head against the wall, I tried to break it with my hands. And I shouted with all my soul, “It isn’t possible! There is no God! God cannot exist!” It pains me now, but that is what I blasphemed. I had so much faith that she would get better! Not for a moment did I believe that she would die. I remembered that God had said faith can do anything. So when she died, I blasphemed.

I believe that the good-for-nothing, worthless doctor killed her. The bum was dead drunk, and without seeing the patient, he prescribed the medicine. A few days before he had analyzed her urine and said she had diabetes. We had called in Dr. Valdés, a high-priced doctor, who said it was not diabetes. But seeing how ill she was, he washed his hands of the case. Later the doctor told me she was intoxicated, or perhaps had tuberculosis of the stomach. My father latched on to that to say that I had killed her, I had starved her to death.

It is true that I didn’t spend enough time with my wife and children. I should have come home early every day. Yes, I neglected her, but I swear that never, never did I leave my wife without money for food. I could have given her more, but she had at least enough to eat. It was the medicine that killed her!

Consuelo says that I didn’t love Paula, that I never showed her affection. But it is that I followed my father’s school, because even
when he was living happily with Elena he never permitted himself to show affection for her in our presence. I was the same way with Shorty. The only time I loved her up was in bed, in the dark. In front of my father and brother and sisters, I was tyrannical with her. I was very strict in my way of speaking, but she must have felt affection on my part because she continued to love me all those years.

My father kept throwing it into my face that it was my fault … that I wasn’t man enough … that I had neglected her … that I didn’t take her to a doctor in time. He lowered me to the level of assassin. I wanted to shout, “Isn’t my suffering enough? I lost part of my life, part of my heart has left me! It isn’t true, what you are saying.” But he said it in anger. Right or wrong, he was my father and had worked to support me and, at one time, had had illusions of love for me. So I wasn’t able to answer him, though I knew he was lying. He was my father. As far as I am concerned, my father can do anything with me he wishes. Even if he tried to kill me, I wouldn’t defend myself.

I kept my wife laid out two days … a day and a half … I don’t know how long I kept her. When I saw her lying cold and stiff, I wanted to die. I even grabbed a knife to kill myself, but my son came in and asked me for five
centavos
. I burst out crying and thought, “How can I kill myself? My poor children!” I was going crazy, so crazy that I didn’t even know how much the funeral cost. My friend Alberto and my father, took care of everything. Lots of people came to the wake … they came from the cafés Paula had worked in, from the cafés I ate in, from the market, from the
vecindad
. I wanted to tell them all to go away and leave me alone with the corpse.

She was buried in the Dolores cemetery, in the same grave as my mother and cousin, for after seven years they remove the bones and bury someone else on that spot. I have a horror of funerals. They say that just before the coffin is lowered, the corpse breaks out in goose pimples, because it is aware that it is about to be buried. The coffin gets heavier and heavier, because the body doesn’t want to be buried. That is what happened to Paula’s coffin, even though she had lost so much weight and was all bones.

I hope that when my turn comes, when I get the final kick from “
el coco
,” that they leave me on top of a hill, in the open air, or that they wrap me up like a mummy the way the Pharaohs did, or at least, that a surgeon removes my brain, so that I won’t suffer in my grave.
I don’t know why, but I have a horror of being buried. I’d prefer to be devoured by coyotes on a hill, than by worms under the earth. Yes, I am more afraid of worms than of wild animals.

I’ve never gone to the cemetery since. I don’t go because I believe that my wife will feel my presence and that instead of bringing her peace, I will bring her torment. She would get restless in her grave because she had loved me so. Feeling my presence, she would want to get out to speak to me, to embrace me, and she wouldn’t be able to.

I believe that crying over the dead is sheer hypocricy, because I noticed that I cried a lot for Paula, showing, after her death, the love I should have shown while she was alive. It is not love that makes a person cry like that, but a feeling of guilt. That is why I say I will never go to the cemetery again, not until my own funeral.

The day I buried my wife, in the midst of my despair, in the middle of my great sorrow, I thought, “I still have Graciela. I still have her.” I clung to the thought like a drowning man to a raft. But when Graciela heard about Paula’s death, the deep remorse and the whole combination of passions she felt, made her do the last thing she should have done. The day I buried Shorty, Graciela went off with
Señor
Rodolfo, the man her mother had always been trying to get her to live with. She loved me with all her soul, she adored me, right? But she wanted to punish herself, and her first reaction was to go off with him, a man she didn’t love.

So I lost both of them at one stroke, the mother of my children and the love of my life. Graciela should have waited, if only to console me. We should have helped each other, because in a way we were both to blame.

After that I walked the streets. I was surrounded by people, but I felt myself completely alone. Nobody cared for me, nobody noticed my sorrow. I felt I was the only one who was suffering, and as the time passed, as the days went by, I hoped to stop feeling the emptiness my wife left at home. But it got worse and worse and worse. I loved my wife even more after she was dead, just as my father loved my mother more. I believe my life is a repetition of my father’s, except that he took care of his four children, and I didn’t.

For three days and nights, I stood on the corner where Graciela lived, waiting for her to come out. I didn’t eat or sleep or anything. I just stood there. I was hoping she’d come out so I could kill her, because I felt she had betrayed what was most sacred to us.

When Alberto saw the state I was in, he said, “
Compadre
, listen, I think we’d better get out of here. You’re going to end up bad. We’d better go be
braceros
. Let’s go to work across the border.” He kept talking that way until he convinced me.

I just stopped by the house to ask my father for his blessing, and to put on an extra pair of overalls and my new windbreaker. At first, my father didn’t want me to go, but he finally gave me his blessing. We went to say good-bye to my brother-in-law and
compadre
Faustino, and the first thing we knew, he latched on to us and came along. I said, “Okay, then, here go the three of us.”

I had eight
pesos
in my pocket when we set out for California.

I
JOINED THE ARMY BECAUSE I ALWAYS LIKED GUNS, AND I HAD A YEN
for adventure, or at least for seeing new places, right? Well, when this fellow Truman came here, on March 3, 1947, to meet with the President of Mexico, I went to see the great man arrive. It was the first time in history, if I’m not mistaken, that a president of the United States had come to visit our country. So a lot of people went to the airport to see him, and I went too.

I was standing in the front row, right opposite the reviewing stand, by the Air Force headquarters, and they had a sign there which said, “Join the Air Force.” So just like that, without giving it a second thought, I signed up.

I was still very much of a child, sixteen at the most, and very short, so the first thing the captain said was “Kid, you have to get permission from your parents.”

“Sure thing, I’ve already got it.” I was lying, because I didn’t even know myself I was going to enlist, see? Well, at any rate I passed all the tests and signed a contract with the Mexican army for three years.