by Oscar Lewis
One day my father said, “Manuel, you are going to the market to sell birds.” It felt good to help my father, I was glad he thought me worthy. But at bottom I was ashamed of the work. I carried the cages, one on top of the other, and walked through the market trying to sell the birds.
One Wednesday, along came my father, to see how I was doing. While we were standing there, an agent of the Forestry Department came up and asked my father to show him the permit to sell animals. My papá didn’t have any permit and since he had never been involved in these things, he got very nervous. I think the bribe he gave the police was larger than the fine.
After that he sold birds only to neighbors and to his fellow workers; he got a lot of customers when he became the compadre of a big bird-dealer who lived on the Street of the Potters. I think my father went into selling birds and then pigeons, turkeys, chickens and pigs because, after being a worker for so many years, he discovered that he had a taste for business. It came late to him, but he realized he could make more money that way.
I began to get wind of the existence of my half-sisters, Antonia and Marielena, when I was about fourteen. Before that I had no idea my father had another wife and other children. But I do remember that once, when I was ten years old, my father took me to help him in La Gloria restaurant. On the way home, we came to Rosario Street and my papá said, “You wait here on the corner.” He left me and walked into a tenement. I wondered, “What’s my papá doing there, whom is he going to see?” I got a feeling something like jealousy. I even wondered whether my mother had been right in believing that my father had another woman.
Now I realize that he had been visiting Lupita. She is the mother of my half-sisters. As a child I never knew her and even later I scarcely exchanged three words with her.
Once I came home after midnight and noticed that an extra person was sleeping in my sisters’ bed. Roberto was in his usual place on the floor and my father was in his bed. I tiptoed to the girls’ bed and leaned over to see who was there. My father, who must have been watching me in the dark, said suddenly, “It’s your sister.”
“My sister?”
“Yes, your sister Antonia.”
Well, after that I didn’t say anything; I just went to bed. Nobody had ever told me about her before. I wondered, “Where does this sister come from?” I was anxious for the morning to come so I could see my new sister.
She was not attractive as a girl although likeable and pleasant in the way she chatted. But she always had a kind of unfriendly feeling toward us, something like a grudge. From the very beginning, she hated my father and gave him trouble. She’d use swear words and talked back to him in such a way that I wanted to slap her across the mouth. Why, once my father was telling her she shouldn’t do something, and she said, “I can do as I damned well please, and what’s it to you anyway … who’s getting the raw deal, who?” That’s the way she screamed at my papá.
I never liked Antonia after that. I stayed away from her as much as possible, partly because I was afraid I’d see her as a woman, not as a sister. We hardly spoke to each other even though we lived in the same house.
But my brother Roberto was very much in love with her. I do not know how my father got wind of it, but he found out. I can’t tell whether Roberto loved her as a sister, or like a woman, but the fact is he was terribly fond of her.
Meanwhile, Elena wasn’t getting better in the hospital and she came home. When her condition became serious, my father sent us to my aunt Guadalupe to get the priest. The priest asked whether my father had been married before and we said no. Then he went ahead and married Elena and my father, so that her soul could rest in peace. I believe my papá still has the marriage ring.
One afternoon, when I got home, Marta said, “Go to Elena’s room.” I went in and she was dead. My father had been quite hopeful a few days before, because she had been gaining weight. He thought this was a sign she was getting better, and then she died. I remember the scene very well. The coffin was in the middle of the room, a lighted candle at each corner. Some people were there, and my father was standing in the doorway. When he noticed me, he said, “Look at what you’ve done, you bastards, you, you are the ones who killed her, you sons-of-bitches.”
I understood it was because of his grief, a burst of despair, but that’s the way my father has always been. I don’t know why, but no matter what happened he always said, “It’ll go bad for you and wherever you go, they’ll shut the door in your face.” He was always wishing me bad luck. That day my father made me so ashamed I hid behind the door, and inside of me I said, “Forgive me, forgive me if I did you any harm, Elena; forgive me for any wrong I may have done you,” and that’s all I could say.
Roberto was there crying, crying over her; Consuelo was also there, and my father, grief-stricken, blaming us for her death. She was laid out just two days—not like my mother—and then we buried her in the same cemetery. My father bought a little piece of ground “in perpetuity,” and had a little brick fence put up around it. He paid a man to take care of the grave.
Well, after we buried her, my father’s attitude toward us became more bitter and gruff. His grudge against us grew bigger, he always blamed us that he couldn’t live happily with her. Life at home became worse and I spent more and more time out of the house.
Just opposite the clothing stall, where we hung out, was a restaurant, Lin’s Café, owned by a Chinese. A pretty girl, Graciela, came to work there as a waitress. She had dark curly hair and light skin. I liked her right away. “Ay, ojón! Really, compadre,” I said to Alberto, “that one has everything! A todo dar! Look how pretty that girl is. How much do you bet that I’ll tie her up?” I said it just like that, without meaning it seriously.
“Yeah? What do you mean, tie her up? She won’t even notice you. You don’t find bugs like that on your petate! That dame goes out with guys who dress well and who have centavos.”
In the evening we had supper there, and I saw Graciela in passing. I was a little embarrassed because I still couldn’t use a knife and fork very well … at home we never used them, we ate with tortillas … but I soon became expert, because from then on, I ate all my meals there, day after day. It became a big habit with me … in fact, I misspent fourteen or fifteen years of my life in that place and in other cafés.
I asked Lin for a job, but there was nothing doing for me there. He taught me how to bake bread and later he sometimes let me pay for my meals by baking for him.
Anyway, I had bet Alberto that I could get Graciela to be my sweetheart, my novia, and I set out to do it. It took money, so I said to my father, “Listen, papá, I’d like to earn a few centavos. I’m in school but I can work at the same time.” I spoke to Ignacio, my aunt’s husband. He said, “Well, why not come and sell newspapers with me, what’s wrong with that?”
The next day I went out selling newspapers with Ignacio. We went over to Bucareli Street where we waited for the Ultimas Noticias and the Gráfico. Papers sold for ten or fifteen centavos and we would make about four and a half centavos a paper. I got my papers and my uncle said, “Now start running.”
I said, “Where?”
“Well, any street you want, just run and shout Gráfico, Noticias!” I started running, running, from the Caballito de Troya down Francisco I. Madero, then I went up Brasil all the way to Peralvillo and from there I returned, running all the way, past my house. I sold my papers and was back again in the Zócalo, As soon as I returned, I gave Ignacio the money. “That’s fine, look you made yourself two pesos.” I went home, washed my face, combed my hair and went to school.
At first, Graciela didn’t take to me at all, not at all. I know this because once I was eating supper in one of the booths in back and she didn’t see me. She was talking with Alberto and told him, “Don’t bring that heel, Manuel, if we go to the movies, because I don’t like him.”
That really hit me hard, “Why in hell did she say that? I never did anything to her.” So I said to myself, “Just fo
r spite I’m going to make you my novia.” She told one of the other waitresses, “He’s all right but he doesn’t work, he doesn’t do a thing, wasting his time like a fool with his little books. I bet he does not even go to school. He doesn’t go to school or to work, so what good would it do me to go with him?” Ah, well, I was pleased to hear that and decided to look for a job.
The sixth-grade final exams were coming up and I was afraid I was going to fail. My teachers didn’t have a good opinion of me and wanted to expel me, but my father asked them to give me another chance and they did. I passed the exams and graduated. I was a little disappointed because no one in my family came to my graduation. I expected my father to congratulate me or give me an embrace, but he didn’t. He didn’t even do it on my fifteenth birthday, or my twenty-first, when a boy really becomes a man. He didn’t even change his tone of voice with me!
After my graduation, I told my father I was through with studying and wanted to go to work. It was the biggest mistake of my life, but I didn’t know it then. I was determined to make Graciela my novia and all I wanted was to get a job and earn money. My father was pretty sore because I didn’t want to study for a career. I think if he had talked it over with me like a good friend, I might have continued school. But instead, he said, “So you think you want to work? Do you think it’s so nice to have someone boss you around all your life? I’m ready to give you a chance and you throw it away. O.K., go be an idiot. If that’s what you want, go to it.”
Alberto had already gone to work in a shop where they made glass lamp fixtures. He didn’t know how to read or write, but he was smart and was making good money, anyway. Since we wanted to be together, I went to look for a job in his shop. I told the maestro that I knew how to work the machines and the drills, and he accepted me.
But I kept breaking the glass pieces and my finger tips were skinned and bleeding from the emery. They burned horribly and I finally confessed that I had never worked the machines before. So they set me to polishing glass, instead. Polishing was easy, but very dirty work since glass is polished with soot. Later they taught me how to shape “cocolitos,” pendants, on the machines. You grab a piece of glass with three fingers and told it tightly against the wheel to cut it down. I caught on to this work quickly and they kept me. Raimundo, Elena’s brother, was living with us then, and I even got him into the shop. We worked the machine together and between us, we knocked out two or three thousand “cocolitos” a week.
The maestro treated us well; on Fridays, he gave us tickets to the fights, and on the days we worked late, he blew us to our supper. But he knew how to stick us, too, the bastard. He really was sharp, and we were the suckers. He’d say to me, “Ay! Chino, Raimundo says he can work faster than you on the machine.”
“What? The dumb ox!” I’d say. “How can he work faster if I was the one who taught him?”
Then the maestro would go to Raimundo and say, so that I did not hear, “So Chino can do two to your one, eh? He says he can beat you without trying.” So we two fools began competing with each other, going at a fast pace and producing more for the maestro. That’s how he got double work out of us.
The pay was very little and because I ate at a lunch counter with the boys during the week, by Saturday I had only seven pesos left. When I got home that night, I said, “Look, papá, all I have left from my wages are five pesos, take them.” At that time, my father was pretty sore at me on account of Elena’s death. Anyway, he was standing by the table and I put down the five pesos. He stood there, looking hard at me, picked up the five-peso bill and threw it in my face.
“I don’t collect alms from you, you bastard. Go and spend your few pennies with your fucking friends. I’m not asking you for anything. I’m still strong and can work.” That hurt me a lot, because God knows that was all I had. The next time I tried to give him money, he did the same thing. After that I never gave him a single centavo!
Later, another maestro offered me a job drilling holes in glass. He paid by the piece and offered me three and a half centavos a piece. Other places paid less, so I took the job thinking I’d make more money. Well, I worked fast and hard all week. The thousands of holes I drilled there! On Saturday, when the week was up, the maestro said, “Come on, boys, let’s see how much pay you get.” The old man couldn’t read or write and he had one of the boys figure up the wages. “Let’s see how many pieces Chinito made.” The old man’s eyes stood out, he really opened them, when my pay totaled 385 pesos.
“No, no young man, no! How am I going to pay a kid of his age three hundred eighty-five pesos! Better keep the whole lousy shop! I don’t get a thing out of this place, I just keep it up to entertain you fellows. I’m the owner and so help me God, I don’t make more than fifty pesos a week on it. No! I can’t give you that much money. The trouble is that you work too quickly.”
“But, maestro, if you pay me by the piece, I have to hurry, no? And you promised three and a half centavos, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t think you would earn so much! All I can give you is a hundred pesos, take it or leave it!” Well, I had to take the money, but that is when I began to hate to work for a boss.
Graciela became my novia, all right, just as soon as I started to work. Every night, after the job, I went to the café to see her and I didn’t get home until past twelve o’clock. We went to the movies several times and I began to feel I loved her a lot, with a real passion.
It was about that time that I learned to play cards, to gamble. The first time I played was one Saturday, when I came home to the Casa Grande after work. There, near the water tank were some friends of mine, Domingo, Santiago, the fellow who is now in jail for killing a guy, and a couple of others. Santiago said, “Look, look, here comes the hard worker, the bastard turned out to be a worker.”
“Sure, you stupid ass! pinche guey! You just pound the pavement all day. Do you think everyone is a pimp?” That’s how we kidded around with each other. Then Domingo, knowing I had my week’s pay in my pocket, said, “Come on, compadre, let’s play a little game of poker.”
“But I don’t even know how to eat this crap, brother! What a joke! Do you think I’m a sucker, a pendejo?”
“I’ll show you, I’ll tell you when you win! Come on, we’ll only play for five centavos, go on, sit down.”
Well, they knew I never said no, so we all kneeled in a circle behind the tank, where we could see by the courtyard light. Naturally, I lost that time, but I learned the rules of the game. I made a real study of it, going around asking questions all week. I had the great advantage, or perhaps disadvantage, of learning it quickly, and in a week I was a good player. I always had unusual luck when it came to playing poker, a luck that seemed boundless, even excessive.
Without noticing it, I was caught up in a whirlwind of card playing. If a day passed without a game, I was desperate. I looked for boys to play a round or two. I began betting at five centavos but soon I was betting my whole week’s pay. I always felt certain I would win. Even if I had been losing and was down to my last five pesos, I would say, “Let’s see if with these five, God wishes me to rise again!” Fine, as if by magic, always, well, nine out of ten times, with my last five pesos, up I’d go!
The fellows would say; “What happened? You bum, someone is passing you cards on the sly! Keep it on the up and up … none of this ‘sucker’ stuff … don’t go hiding little cards under the table … you bastard, if there were no thieves there would be no distrust!”
And that’s how it went. Once I lost seventy pesos, but that was because the winner, a man named Delfino, left without giving us a chance to win back. He owned a few trucks and had lots of centavos but when he saw he was winning he got up and said, “I’ve got to go boys. I have something to attend to … man, I forgot all about that lousy appointment.”
When he left I was shaking with anger, because I hadn’t won a single game. “The bastard,” I said. “He made a sucker out of me.”
The next day was Sunday, the
day we usually played soccer in the courtyards. I went to the bathhouse for a shower and as I came out, holding my bundle of clothes, I bumped into Delfino.
“What’s up, Chino?” he said. “Do you want revenge, you bastard? All you need to play is money and balls.”
“Sure, do you think I’m a cripple or something, you’ll see.”
He went to call Domingo and the Bird, two compatriots from his homeland, Chiapas, and we sat down to play. First we played “conquián” but when I won, Delfino wanted to switch to poker.
“O.K.,” I said, “any ass hole is good enough for me—cualquier culo me raspa el chile. No matter what, this time you’ll sweat to take my money away from me.”
And so we started a round of poker. Well, that was a game to remember! I started out by betting two pesos. When it went up to thirty pesos, the Bird dropped out. Then Delfino bet fifty … he must have had a good hand … whenever he got a card, he blew on it and rubbed it between his legs, on his testicles, for luck.
“You ve got to heat it up to have it come,” he said, “make it curdle … It got me three sevens already, imagine!” He said that without showing his cards, see? But I had him killed from there on because I had three kings and a knight. I bet fifty more, very calmly.
“Puta madre! Slut of a mother!” he said, “now you’re really offering yourself up. Damn it, you’re pretty sure of yourself, you son-of-a-guayaba!”
“Yes, I’m up against the wall, but I know how to defend myself. I get along. Don’t tremble, you runt. Get hold of your cigarette, your hand is shaking!”
Again he rubbed his cards between his legs, but I had the guy licked, because I drew another king.
“You’re doing all the rubbing and blowing, but I’m the one who is going to suck the tit!”
When he saw that I had four kings he said, “Whoring mother! How do you expect me to believe that? No, this isn’t luck, this must be dirty tricks!”