The Children of Sanchez (62 page)

For a while I spent time with my family. Consuelo and Roberto had both left home because of Delila. No one knew where Roberto had disappeared to, but Consuelo was living with my aunt Guadalupe. Whenever I saw my sister, she cursed Delila and made her out to be one point lower than a cockroach, so she could step on her. She had hated Delila from the start because Delila had taken away her position in the house. And although Delila had offered her the olive branch of peace, my sister threw it back in her face as though it had thorns a meter long.

The truth is, my sister was selfish. She was always looking out for herself. Ever since she got that bug about completing her studies, she felt set apart, as though she had nothing in common with us any more. Just because she had acquired a little learning, she became rebellious at home and no longer bowed down to paternal law. She claimed my father had no right to throw her out of the house because he was legally responsible for her. She was demanding a kind of legal justice from her own father, as though she were dealing with the government! But how could she do that? He was our father and had power over us!

Consuelo used her troubles with Delila and my father as an excuse to run off to Monterrey with some chap. It seems that ever since excuses were invented, there have been no wrongdoers. The tiling is, my sister lacked moral courage. Why, I knew a woman who was kicked out of her house by her father when she was only fourteen and she didn’t use that as an excuse to run off with the first guy she met. She went to work and is a virgin to this day.

Consuelo had always said she loved my children, but she never bothered to wash a piece of clothing for them, or to prepare their food. It’s one thing to say you love them, and another to prove it, like Delila. It’s true that after my wife died, Consuelo had good intentions and felt brave and humble enough to take care of them, but she couldn’t stick it out for more than two weeks. If she was such a good aunt why didn’t she give my father money for my children? She bought them candy and presents, but if she gave them clothing or things like that she’d come and ask me to pay her back. What I mean is, Delila didn’t have money or education but every day she worked for my children and that impressed me more.

I felt sorry for my sister Marta because the fact is she was really of no account, for she was even poorer than the rest of us. She had left Crispín again and had come home with her three little daughters. She wasn’t the person to open her heart to anyone and she seemed happy enough because she still had her father, but deep down I knew she was suffering. She thought the world had ended for her. She must have felt condemned to live alone the rest of her life, because no man would accept her with three children.

The truth was that the lives of my brother and sisters, and especially of my father, have always been a mystery to me. I never understood how my father managed, and frankly I don’t want to. He had always provided us with enough food … he took care of so many people on so little money. I cross myself when I think about it, not that I believe my father did anything wrong … he has absolutely no use for a crook … but since he bought all the food for the restaurant, he probably charged them a little more and kept fifty
centavos
or a
peso
on every purchase. It’s also possible that dealing in the market for so many years, they gave him fruit, coffee, meat and things because he was a good customer. Otherwise how could he manage with a wage of only eleven
pesos
a day?

If my father kept back a
peso
or two when buying supplies, I don’t hold it against him. On the contrary, I feel I’m the guilty one, and my brother and sisters, because he did it for our sake. Every day that passed, my father grew more in my esteem, not because he helped me with my children, but because you really have to be quite a man to keep things together like he had.

Meanwhile, I got a job again at the glass place. One Monday I came in late and my boss decided to punish me by docking me for a week. “O.K.,” I said, “big deal,” and I got up and left. To kill time, I went to the Tepito Market, which is also known as the Thieves’ Market.

I met Joaquín, the friend who had lived in our cardboard house in Mexicali. He was a peddler now, a dealer in second-hand goods, and he was carrying a pair of gabardine pants on his shoulder. He told me that I was an idiot to work on a job when I could be making more money selling stuff in the market. I thought it was risky, today you make something, tomorrow nothing, and maybe I wouldn’t be good at it.

Actually, ever since my mother had taken me to the market, I liked the atmosphere there. It was picturesque, very colorful, like the rural
markets where buyers and sellers know each other, tell jokes, dicker and bargain. There is nothing impersonal here, like in Sears, Roebuck and the Palacio de Hierro, where the clerks don’t dare chat with the customers. There, they only tell you the price and do things mechanically, and the joker is that the prices are fixed, right? The customers don’t have a chance to defend themselves; they can’t even make an offer like we do in the markets, if the price doesn’t suit us.

The market place has always been generous, very bountiful, to the peddlers. In the old days, famous peddlers like “the Bear,” “
el Contola,
” “
la Gringa
,” and “the Evil One,” made as much as five hundred to two thousand
pesos
a day. Now they own nice houses and even cars. I had some idea of what it was like to work in the market, because I used to watch my mother and my uncles and other peddlers hawk their wares. I knew the old-style method of buying and selling.

So when Joaquín told me to try to sell the trousers for at least fifteen
pesos
, while he was buying up more stuff, I agreed. I noticed a boy on the other side of the street, staring at the pants. I thought, “So you like the trousers, eh?” and crossed the street.

“Go on, pal,” I said, “I’ll give it to you cheap.” I wasn’t embarrassed at all. I took to selling right away. It was easy.

“Well, yes, but I have no money. I’m selling too.” He takes out a watch, a luxury-type Haste, very nice. He wanted 125
pesos
for it.

“How many jewels?”

“Fifteen, I think,” he says.

I opened the watch and it was twenty-one jewels. “No,” I say to him. “It’s fifteen jewels, pal, and you’re asking too much for it.”

Meanwhile, Joaquín came over with three other “coyotes”—dealers—and surrounded us while I was bargaining. They just watched, no one butts in while someone is bargaining.

“Look,” I say to the boy, “let’s make a deal. You like the pants, it’s exactly your size, it fits you perfectly.” I held it up to his waist. “I want fifty
pesos
for the pants. I’ll give it to you, plus twenty-five
pesos
, for your watch. How about it?”

“No, nothing doing, there’s nothing in it for me. I want more for the watch.”

“
Ay
, brother, I don’t work here … I only want the watch for myself.” I say, “Let’s see if any of these bastards here offer you more.”

Anyway, to make a long story short, I gave him forty
pesos
and the
pants, so the watch came to fifty-five
pesos
. I offered Joaquín his fifteen
pesos
for the pants.

“No,” he says, “don’t be a crook, pal! Only fifteen
pesos
and you took in a great sale.” Then he laughed, and said, “O.K. Say no more. It’s your debut here in the market. Beginner’s luck.”

Well, one of the “coyotes” wanted to buy the watch. I thought I’d ask seventy-five
pesos
for it and make a fast twenty
pesos
profit. But before I opened my mouth, Joaquín says, “Two hundred.”

“No,” says the “coyote.”

“Son-of-a-bitch! Don’t push your luck. The stinking watch just cost you fifty-five … I’ll give you a “century” and you’ll make forty-five on it, no?”

I was ready to sell, but my partner, Joaquín, said, “What? Moron! Hold your horses.” So I wait with my little watch, see? and we walk away.

He comes along behind us and says, “So as not to be frigging around, I’ll give you a hundred twenty-five, yes or no?” I held out for 175. “Don’t be a bastard. God’s truth, I want it for myself, I don’t wanna make a deal with it. Don’t be like that, you son-of-a-bitch.”

Well, he gave me 170 for the watch. I made 115
pesos
on it. There in a minute, in a few seconds, I made more than I made in a week of hard work at the shop. “What am I working like an idiot over there for?” I said to myself. Then and there I decided to quit my job and dedicate myself to trade in the market.

I liked selling … I liked the freedom. I had time for myself and no one bossed me around. Up to that time I had been blind, and couldn’t see further than my nose. Like other laborers, I knew only one thing, working on a job! Even when it doesn’t pay off, a worker doesn’t try another road or look for other horizons, but goes on doing the same thing. My father was like that, until he began raising animals … that’s when he started getting ahead. I’m going to see to it that my sons aren’t workers. If they can’t be professionals, I’ll put them into some business. That’s the only way they can earn money without being dependent on others.

For a couple of years now I’ve been working at the Tepito and Baratillo markets. I deal in second-hand stuff, clothes, shoes, gold, silver, watches, furniture, anything that comes along. In a way you take a chance in this kind of work, but it’s never been really bad for me. On the worst day I make at least twelve
pesos
, enough for food.

The only time I lost in the market was when I bought a thing called
a mimeograph. I didn’t even know what the gadget was for, but, well, I was real impressed with the word, see? “Mimeograph,” I thought; “with a name like that it must be worth something.”

The character who was selling it spotted me for a moron. He made a fool out of me, one of the many times it happened. He says to me, “See this little machine? I want only two hundred
pesos
for it.”

“Holy shit!” says I, “so it’s really worth something! But that’s a lot of money. I’ll give you fifty.” We argued the pros and cons and I started to back out. I was getting a presentiment. “Maybe this damn thing doesn’t even work and I’m talking my head off. The truth is I don’t even know what that pile of crap is good for.”

“O.K.,” the guy says, “over here with the fifty.”

There go my fifty
pesos
. The first customer offered thirty, the next was willing to give me twenty-five. And that’s how it went until after fifteen days of lugging around my famous mimeograph, they were offering me ten. I finally abandoned it in the market administration office. But usually I make good money in the market … more than I had on any job.

I figure this way: if I start working right now on a job, where I make the legal minimum wage of twelve
pesos
a day, I could never raise my living standard. Out of the twelve, I’d have to give at least six to my children, and a man can’t live on six. I couldn’t pay rent, eat three meals outside the house, buy shoes or clothes or anything on six
pesos
. Suppose one of my kids gets sick and I need to buy medicine for one hundred
pesos
 … any good medicine costs at least that … I’d have to borrow the money and pay it back at fifty
centavos
a day. At that rate it would take over six months to pay for the medicine and most likely in that time someone else would get sick. It’s just a vicious circle and there is no way for a working man to get ahead.

In my business, all I need is capital. With five hundred or a thousand
pesos
, I’d make out all right, the least I would earn would be a hundred
pesos
a day. There are lots of low, crude characters mixed up in it, but they have money in their pockets.

The fact is, I have a horror of being poor. I get depressed when I haven’t got five
centavos
in my pocket. Whew! Do my nerves get on edge! That’s when I feel poor, really poor. When I see someone who looks hungry, I am absolutely horrified. It makes me want to cry because I remember the days when I was that way, when I cried tears of blood because I didn’t have money to feed my wife and kids, or to
pay for a doctor. I really cannot stand that life any more. I am not back at peace until I start hustling to get some money in my pocket again. That’s why I let my father take care of my children for me, so that I won’t have the responsibility.

The way I figure, if I’m going to die anyway, I ought to treat myself well while I am alive, right? How do I know what will happen to me in the next world? If I have ten
pesos
in my pocket, and feel like having a sweet, I’ll buy it, even if my other expenses are not taken care of. So that I won’t be left with just my desires, eh? I hate to deny myself little things.

I have often asked myself, what is worth more at the end of one’s life, the things one has accumulated or the satisfactions one has experienced? I believe that human experience is worth more, no? And although I have worked all my life, now, when I want to go somewhere, I go in a taxi. I never travel in a bus.

If I go into a restaurant, I don’t order beans. I order a fried steak or a couple of eggs. If I want to sit down, I sit; if I don’t feel like getting up in the morning, I sleep. Yes, the best heritage I can leave my children is to teach them how to live. I don’t want them to be fools … I swear by my mother, I won’t let them become ordinary workers.

But it wasn’t all easy going at the market. The market administration sometimes asks traders for their credentials, to force us to join a union, see? The market superintendent is in cahoots with all of them. Imagine, to sell second-hand clothing in the Thieves’ Market they ask you for a Social Welfare card, a Department of Health card, a union card, your police record! I have no cards and I’ve had a lot of arguments about it. I resent it, it makes me rebellious, you know what I mean? There I have my merchandise spread out on the floor and the guards come and want to take it away, so I argue with them, see?

Like once, I had just finished fighting for a spot one Saturday, because every morning when the doors are opened, we have to run to get a good spot. There are no permanent places for the peddlers, the one who gets there first, gets the spot. It’s like those cowboy pictures, when they open the market doors, we all race in like horses. I had just had a violent argument over my spot when the guard comes over and squats down to take the cloth with my merchandise on it.