The Children of Sanchez (58 page)

I may not be very Catholic, but neither am I a Mason or a freethinker. I send my daughters to Catechism in the Casa Grande every Tuesday to prepare them for their first communion. After that, if they want to stick close to the Church it will be because of themselves, not because of me. I am satisfied to have my pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of the Sacred Heart and to pray at home. Besides, I never did like to confess my sins to a priest, who is a sinner like myself. Many say that the priests bother women at confession and deceive them just like other men. When I was eleven years old, I confessed that I took money from the house and had a
novio
, and the priest gave me a whole rosary of penances. After my first communion, I never again confessed.

My prayers were always the same: I asked the Lord that if Crispín were not the one for me, it would be better to take him away once and for all, or if he
was
meant for me, then to please improve him so that we might live a normal life without so many ups and downs, for the sake of the children. But the Lord heard my first prayer better than the second.

My other prayer was always that my father should never be taken from us. When his end comes, I don’t want to be alive. When the wall falls, all the bricks fall with it. Then, none of us will be able to get up. If we cannot rise now that my father is alive, it will be impossible later. Like my brother, Roberto. If he cannot marry and lift his head now, how will he later?

When I think of how close death is to us, and that only God knows which of us will wake up the next morning, I say why don’t we do everything possible to make life happy for others? For example, my aunt is not going to last much longer on this earth and I would like to do something for her, but all by good intentions turn out bad because the very thought that I too may cease to exist from one moment to the other, prevents me from doing anything.

As my pregnancy developed, my legs swelled and my teeth hurt. Here, as soon as we have a toothache, out comes the tooth, so I had
two molars pulled. My clothes didn’t fit and I had no money to buy a larger dress. I forced myself to ask Crispín for money, but he refused on the grounds that he was not responsible for the child. His words hurt. He said, “No! Why should I give you money if you just go around like a whore, opening your legs for anybody.”

I became discouraged. To avoid Crispín and other people, after work I would take my daughters to the movies, or to the market, or window shopping. I never went out without my children. They were always at my side, otherwise I felt something was missing. Their father, on the other hand, never liked to take them anywhere and scolded them if they turned their heads. And he almost never bought them anything. The saddest part of my life was not to be able to buy my girls the nice things in the windows, or shoes and medicine when they were needed. Moments like those hurt me, and I would become angry with Crispín and call him a louse in the presence of my children. Then Concepción would say, imitating my aunt Guadalupe, “May all the money that Crispín earns turn to water and salt.” She didn’t even call him
papá
! This saddened me, for after all, he was their father. If that was her attitude toward him then, what would it be when she grew up?

Crispín came now and then and whistled for me. Sometimes he would apologize for not giving me money, saying he earned very little and was afraid my family would be more against him if he gave me only small sums. He advised me to go to a hospital to give birth (though he didn’t offer to pay) and made me feel ashamed because I couldn’t afford it.
He
belonged to Social Security but refused to give me the credentials I needed to enter the Maternity Hospital. Two months before Trini was born he disappeared and I didn’t see him again until she was about a half year old.

When my time drew near, my father told me to quit my job and move to the Casa Grande. Delila no longer lived there because she was pregnant again and was ashamed of the neighbors and my brothers and sisters. My father set up an apartment for her on the Street of the Lost Child and since, by that time, she had won him completely, he lived there too. That was his main house, where he ate, slept and had his clothes washed. Lupita, Antonia and her children, and Marielena, were living in the house my
papá
had built in the El Dorado Colony. They took care of his animals and he gave them expense money every day, so they had no reason to complain.

My father didn’t usually stick his nose into my affairs, but still he wanted to know who was going to take care of me when the baby came. I planned to have a midwife, but I told him a doctor would deliver the baby, hoping he wouldn’t see through my lie. I thought my father would have more confidence in a doctor and would not insist on staying to see that things were done right. I didn’t want him around because he gets very nervous and besides I was ashamed in his presence.

The pains began while my
papá
was having supper. I didn’t say anything to him and sat on the edge of the bed, hoping he would go home without noticing anything. He finally left when my pains were becoming bad. My
comadre
Angélica Rivera, who lived just across the courtyard, came and she and Roberto got busy, fixing the bed, preparing the alcohol, boiling the water and staying up all night with me. Violeta woke up and started to cry. I was afraid to pick her up, so she ran behind me holding onto my skirts as I walked up and down. At about six in the morning, Roberto went for the
señora
who was my midwife. I had a worse time with Trini than with the other two, and the midwife gave me an injection because I was so weak. My heart went out to my poor little daughter, because even before she was born, her father did not recognize her. And that is why I think I loved her more than my other two.

T
HE TRIP TO THE BORDER WAS ROUGH, MY COMPADRES BOUGHT BUS
tickets to Guadalajara and from there we hitched rides to Mexicali, because we were running out of money. The first thing Alberto said when we got out on the highway was, “
Ay, compadre
, I’m hungry already.”

“Me too,
compadre
, but we have to stretch the
centavos
, so, just let’s hang on for now, eh?” We got short hitches on trucks, and helped load and unload along the way. After one wild ride, we had to walk a stretch past Mazatlán. There was nothing but long, steep hills and big drops, without a house in sight. The sun was strong; the asphalt was so hot it smoked. We hadn’t eaten and were without water. We were in bad shape, especially Faustino. Ever since he had been burned in the restaurant, Faustino was sort of half-paralyzed and couldn’t move easily. Besides, the soles of his shoes were made of automobile tires, and were burning his feet. We all began to see spots before our eyes.

We got a slow lift, sitting on the blade of a bulldozer, then, in desperation, we stopped a bus and had to give the driver almost all the cash we had. That day and the next, the only thing we ate was watermelon. Along the road, we saw lots of boys and men on foot, heading for the border, and in the railroad yard at Hermosillo, where we spent the night, there were hundreds more, stretched out, hungry and covered with dust, just like us.

I was so hungry, I didn’t know where my stomach was any more, so I exchanged my windbreaker for twelve
pesos
and an old cotton jacket. We ate two rolls and a banana each, because food was so expensive.
The next morning, we bought some more bread and hopped a freight train. Unfortunately, the boxcar we picked was loaded with ice. There we were, like three trembling penitents, standing on ice in that cold coffin, until we had a chance to get into another boxcar, where we stretched out and fell asleep as though it were a Pullman. We were so tired we slept the whole night through, missing our stop at Santa Ana.

We took another train back to Santa Ana, but it was going too fast for Faustino to jump, so we missed that stop again and went to Benjamin Hill. It was two or three in the morning when we got off, and was it cold! We asked the watchman for permission to sleep in the train yard. He pointed to a pile of bricks and said we could lie down behind it. We spread out newspapers and tried to sleep, but all we could do was shiver and shake. I thought up the idea of two of us getting on top of the third to warm him up for a while. We took turns and kept from freezing, but we didn’t get any sleep.

Out on the highway again, we couldn’t get a lift. Then a truck loaded with goats stopped. “Climb on, boys, but each of you stand in a different corner so the floor doesn’t break.” The truck was divided into two stories, the top one for the little goats, the bottom one for the big goats. So away we went in the truck with those damned goats.

The heat was fierce and the stink of the goats got so bad, I couldn’t bear it. Every time the truck slowed down, the goats slid back and I had to keep pushing them forward. So I went up front to talk with my
compadres
and the weight of all three of us, plus a bad bump on the road, broke the crosspiece on which the second-story support rested, and all the little goats spilled in with the big goats.

The driver blamed us and I was afraid he would kick us off and leave us in that red-hot desert, where we would die for sure. So, without a word, we fixed the floor and kept pushing those god-damned goats back as we rode along. A big goat died and the driver said, “Throw it the hell over on the side of the road.” So we grabbed the goat and threw it away.

“
Ay, compadre,
” I say, “what a shame to throw away so much meat. Poor goat! It would have been delicious!”

Further on, the driver stopped at a water hole. “Let’s go, boys. Take the goats down to water them … and keep a sharp eye on them, eh? Because they can get away from us.” We washed ourselves first, then took down the goats, one by one. Their flanks were sunken, they were
sweating and panting from the heat, and without anything to eat … those poor goats were in the same shape we were.

We took down a great big ram with curled horns. He staggered and shook and acted drunk until he had some water. Then he looked us over carefully and began to walk off, with me right behind him. I tried to head him off, but he broke into a trot. The other boys went after him too, but he ran faster. I made a dive for him but only buried myself in the sand. The damned goat had us all chasing him, with the driver yelling for us not to let him get away. Well, we lost him and then it got too dark to look. Only God knew where that goat went.

The owner said, “I don’t move from this spot until that goat is caught. It was the best one I had. How can I just leave him? Tomorrow morning we’ll catch him.” He made us pinch the teats of the female goats so they would bleat. Off in the distance we could hear the ram answer. “Watch out, boys,” the owner says, “because the bastard will come back during the night.” So there we were, on the watch.

I said to Alberto, “Listen,
compadre
, this business with the goat is very thrilling, but, brother, go see if you can get a little coffee.” We got together three
pesos
and sent him off to look for a house or a store. We built a fire and, sure enough, Alberto came back with coffee and a clay pot to boil it in.

While we sat around waiting for the coffee, the driver told us all about the United States … that the grape crop was the best to pick … that only the first tomato picking was good … from the last two pickings you can barely make enough for
“el borde.” El borde
was what you pay for meals. After our coffee, we all dropped off to sleep.

At dawn, the driver woke us up. “All right, let’s go for the goat, boys.” Well, we chased that damned goat up and down the hills all morning. The owner was mad as hell and wanted to shoot the animal rather than leave him there. But at last we took off. A little before Río Colorado, where the trip was going to end, I said to my friends, “Boys, how about taking a goat with us?” No sooner were the words out of my mouth when they jumped on one of the goats. Alberto grabbed her around the neck and choked her, and Faustino banged her on the head until she was dead. So I told the driver that another goat had died and could we take it with us when we got off. We got down at a place where we could barbecue the animal.

The sun was too strong for me and I sat under a bush in the shade while the boys began to hack away at the goat with some pieces of tin.
They pulled out the guts and made a fire. The smell of the burned goat, the blood and the skin mixed with sand, and my
compadres
eating the meat almost raw, with the blood running down their chins, nauseated me. After all that goat stink, I couldn’t eat a thing.

I was weak and dizzy and couldn’t stand up. As I lay there in the shade, feeling faint and tired, I heard their voices far away. My eyelids felt like lead and all I wanted to do was sleep. I heard one of them say, “Don’t let him sleep. If he sleeps, he’ll die.” They made me get up and walk. My head felt a little clearer and we kept walking toward the village.

I said, “Look, Alberto, you’re proud and don’t want to ask for a handout, but we’re starving to death. We have one
peso
left and we must get something to eat with it.” At the next house, I asked if we could work for a meal. The
señora
looked us up and down and went inside. I thought we wouldn’t get a thing, but she came out with a pot of soup and a pile of
tortillas
. We sure ate fast. Our arms were going up and down like in a card game, the way we were shoving those
tortillas
into our faces. I began to sweat and sweat and then my dizziness went away.

We got to Mexicali, on the border, the next day. We didn’t have a
centavo
and didn’t know a soul, so we figured we’d sneak across the border right away, to look for work. We crossed the way the gamblers and border bums did, through a sewage ditch and under the fence. We thought if we worked even for a few hours we could get enough money for food and then they could throw us back over to this side.