The Children of Sanchez (45 page)

“You’re just making a fool of me,” he said. “You do it because you know I love you, but if you keep it up we are going to have a real fight.”

“I’ll break up with you, before I quit dancing,” I’d say, and that was what finally happened.

At that time, the boys of the
vecindad
used to say, “The girls from Casa Grande are for us only,” and it was true. The stranger who tried to find a girl in the Casa Grande was to be pitied because the boys
would fight him or give him trouble. Pedro and others from the gang said we girls should not dance nor talk to strangers, but I did not pay any attention. I would dance with any stranger as long as I liked him. That is how I met Diego Toral.

Diego was a fair-skinned young man, half reserved and half a joker. He dressed well. I had to find an excuse to stop going with Pedro to become Diego’s sweetheart, but Pedro did not give me any reason to break up. Since I liked Diego very much, I was the sweetheart of both of them. I used to see Diego only when I went dancing. If Pedro and Diego were both at a dance, I would leave. One day Diego asked me to meet him at a nearby school building. I had already told Pedro to wait for me at the same hour at the arcade on the side of the Street of the Tinsmiths. The building had two exits and Pedro was waiting for me at one while I, running, went to the garden at the other side to meet Diego. My heart was pounding furiously. “I came for just a few minutes, you know how my brothers are.” Diego was satisfied.

I returned to the arcade to see Pedro. He insisted that we walk toward the garden. I didn’t want to because Diego might still be there but, I do not know how to explain this, instead of being afraid I felt comfortable. I was laughing to myself at both of them.

I did not go very long with Diego, but he proposed to me. At that time marriage meant nothing to me; it did not even seem real. Diego said, “Wouldn’t you like to have a beautiful house with upholstered furniture?”

“Upholstered?” I did not know what that meant. He would describe his work to me, but while he talked I thought, “You think I believe you, huh? No, Sharpy. You can’t fool me! Don’t believe him, Consuelo, don’t believe him.” But then going back to sweetness, I would say, “Yes, I’d like it. It would be nice.” But inside, I was laughing. I was distrustful of all of them. I do not know why. Probably because love was never my ideal.

My brother Roberto’s friends were my friends. But always, thanks to his influence and to the fact that I never liked mean, practical jokes, all of them respected me. Other gangs feared the boys from Casa Grande because they were bullies and trouble makers. I often heard about the Casa Grande gang having a fight with the gang from the Casa Verde or from the Street of the Potters. Those from Casa Grande used to get together at the arcade in such a large group that they interfered with traffic. They would sing or play, tell jokes, and fool around.

When there was a moon or stars, the “loafers” or the “lazy bastards,” as my father would call them, came together at the door of our house. They used to sing love songs if Pedro and I were on good terms; if not, songs of defiance or despair. For example, once when Pedro and I were extremely angry, they sang, “Hypocrite, simply a hypocrite. Perverse one, you deceived me; with your fatal line you poisoned me. And because you don’t love me, I’m going to die.” From my bed I delighted in listening to their wonderful voices and felt lullabyed, knowing that Pedro was there. I felt that all the songs were meant for me. But the neighbor women insulted them: “Lazy bums! Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Why don’t you take your noise some place else?”

Some time later, a family with a record player for rent, moved into Room No. 53. On the tenth of May, Mother’s Day, they played the
mañanitas
(birthday songs) for the mothers. It also became a custom to sing the
mañanitas
to the Virgin of Guadalupe at about four or five in the morning and to bring the priest to consecrate her every year. We girls and some of the neighbor women used to get up, well wrapped, because it is cold at that time of the day. Before beginning the
mañanitas
, the janitor would set off rockets.

The day that made me angry was St. John’s Day, June 24. At exactly two in the morning, the whistle from the public bathhouse blew. It was deafening. Everyone awoke. The older boys from the gang would go to swim at that hour; some of the girls would go swimming too, but I never went. Marta used to tell me that they gave away corn gruel,
tamales
, sweets and flowers and that they had swimming matches, in which my brother Roberto participated. The record player at the swimming pool played all day. They told me that they really lived it up, but I wondered how they looked, dancing in bathing suits. That was the reason I never went.

Later on, a new custom appeared. On the Saturday before Easter, they would throw water at each other, until they were soaked. It probably started with burning the effigies of Judas. That day, I was watching from the main roof, and saw some boys throw brick powder in a paper sack on the people below. The gang from the Street of the Potters was going around in a big circle in the street and suddenly someone threw a can of water at them. Others quickly came with cans and buckets of water and that’s how the custom started.

But the water throwing got out of hand and I hated it. They no longer had respect for anyone. In the Casa Grande, the boys began to soak
the girls, too. Men and women chased each other with pails of water. Everyone was showered, even if they were dressed up and ready to go out, for that day is generally a day off. The girls were a horrid spectacle, their hair dripping water and their dresses stuck to their bodies. One could almost say they were nude. I looked on from the roof or from behind the door, half enjoying it and half angry.

I liked the Christmas celebration better and I did take part in that. On Christmas Eve all of us cleaned and adorned the courtyard. We watched to see that the kids from other courtyards did not pull down the decorations. Some brought wood from the roofs for the luminaries at night; a luminary is a small bonfire on the sidewalks, celebrating the coming of a holy day.

But after all that work, my father would not let me go out. I usually spent those nights crying. At midnight, the bath house whistle blew, the kids hit the telephone poles (these are made of iron and produce a sound similar to that of a bell), horns were blown insistently, bells tolled, and everyone hugged each other and said, “Merry Christmas!” I wanted to have a good time like the others, but by that hour our lights were out, we were all in bed and my father was watching to make sure that we did not go out.

I loved all things religious and never stopped attending the religious obligations I had taken on with such conformity and delight. I deposited my faith, my hope, in Him, in Him whose permission I asked for everything. To Him I offered all the sufferings and pleasures that fell to me in school, at work, or outside during the day. All through the afternoons and nights when I was left alone, I would offer Him everything and talk to Him and make Him promises. I have always fulfilled the First Commandment, Love God above all things, but I have never managed to fulfill the Second, Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. Unfortunately, I have found need to lie.

The first time I went into a church, it seemed to me as though I was entering the sacred precinct, that is, as if the doors of peace illuminated by pale rays of light were opening for me. My prayers always were that my brothers should not turn out bad, that He should make them change and pardon them, that He give me strength to go on. I had to help them develop, to study, to be very capable. In church, I felt insignificantly tiny. He represented everything there was for me, there at the altar. I almost always went alone to church and to the cemetery, always promising to be good and humble. “Do not permit
pride to enter me,” was what I asked for myself. I wanted to be as humble and good as St. Francis of Assisi, but it didn’t turn out that way.

For years I didn’t stop asking my father to put me into a school for nuns. I tried for a long time, even up to the time I was eighteen years old. But what a disillusion it was when Yolanda and
Señor
Alfredo, her husband, told me that one had to pay a dowry in order to become a nun. They also told me about the sufferings one had to go through, but that didn’t make any difference to me. To sleep on a hard bed seemed to me to be a meritorious thing, a sacrifice, yes, but it was to serve Him who had suffered so much. I saw a movie at that time which showed the entire Passion of Christ, and I cried and cried and felt like shouting. If I had been there to be allowed to embrace the Lord and help Him with His crossi That memory will never be erased. The humility with which He suffered! My love for Him was greater than ever. When my brothers made me cry or my father scolded me or I was going through a bad moment of any kind, I would think, “If He who was divine suffered so much, why shouldn’t a poor human like me suffer? What does my suffering mean compared to His!” And I would feel resigned.

I didn’t learn the meaning of Mass until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. One afternoon I left the office with Lupe, a girl who worked with me. I was working for an accountant then. Lupe had received much more religious instruction than I and always went to Mass. She asked me if I did, and at first I said yes, but because she seemed like such a simple person, I dared ask her, “Listen, and what does the Mass mean?”

“Haven’t they told you?”

“No, never. When I go, I kneel when everybody kneels and get up when everybody gets up, and say what they say. But I don’t know why. Why do you have to get up or kneel with the bell?”

“Look, when they ring the bell—” And then I learned the grand significance of the Mass. When I least expected it, I had that deciphered for me.

I took part in my first religious pilgrimage when my uncle Ignacio and my aunt went on the newsboys’ union pilgrimage. We marched four abreast. Some carried flowers. Although they were very poor people, they kept in order. Some sang hallelujahs. I just kept looking straight ahead toward that distant point I was soon to feel so near. I was very happy to be there. The second time was much later when I
graduated from commercial school, and all of us, dressed in cap and gown, set off for the Basilica to give thanks. Never, never did I lose hope that I would see Him.

Once, on Roberto’s Saint’s Day, Crispín paid for the rental of a record player to celebrate. At one point, Crispín and Marta pulled the chair out from under me as I was about to sit down. Of course, there were people present and they laughed when I fell. I felt like dying of embarrassment and fury, but went right into the house without saying a word. There I was safe from the laughter because my father didn’t permit the doors to be open. He just gave the electric current to run the music.

A few minutes later I got even with Marta and Crispín. I emptied a pan of water on them from the roof while they were dancing. Marta couldn’t take the harmless joke and went in to tell my father, shouting, “
Papá
, look at what that Skinny did! Tell her not to start up with Crispín.”

I came down the stepladder, laughing, but once I saw my father my laughter was cut short. Before all the people, I got a slap and a scolding from him. “I’m sick and tired of supporting people who don’t deserve it.” My father hurt me very deeply, and I began thinking of how I would run away the following day. And that’s what I did. I got together the few clothes I had and went to Santitos’ house.

Santitos lived in a small stand built of scrap wood and heavy cardboard, in the little market of the Martínez
Colonia
. Her merchandise consisted of a few vegetables, candies and herbs which she kept on a board. At her place I was glad to eat plain nopal leaves roasted on the clay griddle, and to sleep on a dirt floor with just a piece of straw mat under me and some strips of bedspread covering me. The colony was on the outskirts of the city and we went to sleep to a kind of lullaby made by the croaking of toads and frogs. I would wake up with my whole back eaten by fleas, and I slept wrapped from head to foot for fear of the rats.

At night, by the light of the little candle Santitos bought when the kerosene gave out, the two of us would sit on a low bench, she talking to me about religious things or drowsing, and I with my hand on my chin and my eyes half closed, listening to her sweet, kind voice which made me sense the thing I was always seeking—a home and a mother.

I really was happy during the week I stayed with her. I felt like her
daughter. I didn’t have a single quarrel, there was no rush about anything. She never scolded me or made me realize how miserable I was. If my father hadn’t come for me, I would have stayed there. But he came with his harsh voice and said, “You must come home or I will have you locked up in the reformatory.”

“I don’t want to go. I am very happy here,” I said to my father. But it didn’t mean a thing. He remained standing in the doorway waiting for me. Crying, I said good-bye to Santitos. She cried too, but I went back to my house.

A short while later, I moved to Lupita’s on Rosario Street. My brother Roberto did not trouble me there, for he was not allowed into the house. I had a superficial friendship with my half-sisters, Antonia and Marielena, but down deep I guessed they didn’t care about me. On several occasions when Tonia introduced me to her friends, she said I was an acquaintance; she almost never introduced me as her sister. This offended me, but I didn’t fight with her about it because I didn’t like to say that she was my sister, either. I considered her very crude, her vocabulary and her jokes made one blush and laugh. My father’s younger daughter, Marielena, was very fickle. I couldn’t care for her because she was nasty to my father and talked back to him in a common and demanding way.

The ones who were nice to me were Lupita and her older daughters, Elida and Isabel. They were her daughters by another man, whom she had left when she discovered that he was married. My father had also deceived her by concealing that he was married and I don’t think she ever forgave him for it. At any rate, she never asked him for anything, even when her children were small and she really needed help. You might say he practically abandoned her until Antonia was eight years old, though he and Lupita both worked in the La Gloria restaurant. When Antonia got very sick and begged to see her father he began to visit them every three days and to bring food and presents. Because he was so good to Antonia, Lupita took up with him again. But even after Marielena was born, Lupita didn’t make any demands on my father.