The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  “Look, you did the dealing, not I. I have only my little tail to help me. If there were no God for suckers well, brother of my soul …”

  I picked up over a thousand pesos in that game. Then I stood up. “I’m going, fellows … I didn’t remember that I had an appointment … dammit, man, I forgot all about it.”

  I tell you, I was famous in the Casa Grande for being, well, a little less than a wizard at cards. Everybody watched my hands when I dealt, but I swear I never used tricks. It is just that I had extraordinary luck, luck without limit! I won so often that some of the boys swore they would never play with me again. They advised me to go to the elegant casinos to gamble, but there the cards are all marked. There they would take me over. I told my friends, “No, I’ll go along here with my little luck. I’m satisfied to make enough for my little expenses, right?”

  My luck led me into more and more gambling; the bad thing was that I never benefited by it, because after the game I went out with my friends and their girls and threw it all away. I never did anything practical with my winnings.

  When my father learned about my gambling, naturally, he was very angry. But no one in my family knew how much money I won nor how I spent it.

  Every night I went to the café to see Graciela. She was busy waiting on tables and I used to spend most of my time in the kitchen, talking to her friend, Paula, who worked there too. The curious thing is that although I loved Graciela desperately, I preferred talking to “Shorty,” that is, Paula. I found her more understanding, and I got her to “light up” Graciela by putting in a good word for me. When Paula saw me jealous of some guy or depressed because of a quarrel with Graciela, she would say, “Don’t worry, Manuel. Don’t pay any attention to the way she is, because I know that at bottom she really loves you. She told me so.” That’s the way she talked, always making me feel better.

  The truth was, that my relations with Graciela were insecure. I was always afraid of losing her. I had bad dreams in which she betrayed me in some ugly way; I felt anxious because of her. She was so pretty, men were always after her—she was lucky that way. Some of her customers left her fifty-peso tips. But she seemed to love me, and, on more than one occasion, she was jealous of me too. We finally broke up because I insisted on going to Chalma with Shorty.

  Paula had told me that she was going to Chalma with her mother and sister Delila. I was planning to go too, so I said, “Just you three women? What the hell, maybe we’ll go together.” When I told Graciela she said, “Oh, yes? Well, you’re not going.”

  Now, when we had a disagreement, I always made it a point to tell her off. I had to have it my own way, and I also made it clear that I wasn’t stuck on her, though I really loved her very much. I’d say, “I don’t understand why some men fight over a woman. If you ever cheat on me, I won’t fight for you.”

  About two months before I went to Chalma, a chap from Puebla, Andrés, came to the café and I noticed him give Graciela the eye. It seemed to me she also looked at him in an interested way. The day I was supposed to leave for Chalma, I spoke up.

  “Look, Andrés, I’ve noticed there’s something between you and Graciela, and if you’re a friend of mine you have to be straight with me. Tell me the truth and I promise I won’t lift a hand, I won’t do anything to you.”

  “No, Manuel, how do you expect Graciela to go out with me if she is your novia?” he said. “You’re the one she likes, and I’m not the type to play a dirty trick on you.”

  Meanwhile Shorty and her mother were preparing tortillas and hard-boiled eggs for the trip, grub for the road, as we say here. We carried the suitcases on our backs, and took the bus to Santiago Temistengo. That year, my friend Alberto went with us. We were very happy together, Shorty, Alberto and I, praying and singing on the way. We passed through the woods and it was beautiful at dawn. The smell of the pine trees and the country was fine and sometimes from the top of a hill we could see a little village way off, and the little Indian women making tortillas.

  An hour before arriving at the Sanctuary, there is a gigantic ahuehuete tree at which the pilgrims usually stop. This tree is the nicest thing about going to Chalma. It is hung with women’s braids and children’s shoes and other testimonials of the pilgrims’ faith, and it is so wide I think it would take ten men to encircle it. The tree stands between two hills, and a little river flows out from under it. Well, we pilgrims arrived tired from the road, and with much faith in our hearts, bathed our feet in the healing waters and all our tiredness and ills left us.

  The entrance to Chalma is down a winding road that leads right to the Sanctuary. It always gave me the greatest satisfaction to enter the Church and kneel in the cool darkness and see the figure of the Sainted Christ of Chalma. He seemed to be receiving me alone, and that gave me a wonderful feeling, because I had much faith at that time. I asked the Saint to give me strength, to show me the way to earn enough money to marry Graciela, and not to let her betray me.

  Absolutely nothing happened between Shorty and me on that trip. On the contrary, I wanted Alberto and Paula to become novios so all four of us could go out together. I talked with Paula about my problems with Graciela all during the trip, all the seven days. Then I noticed that Paula looked at me in a special sort of way. Once I pretended that a poisonous scorpion had bitten me. I fainted and everything, and she was scared, poor thing, really scared, more than you get for just a friend. So I said to myself, “God! could it be possible? She’s probably in love with me.” But I had no idea of getting involved with her.

  My prayer to the Lord of Chalma went back on me because as soon as we returned Andrés told me that Graciela was his novia. I was very angry, I felt like busting his bones, but I tried to keep my word not to hit him. “O.K., Andrés, except that she’ll have to come and tell me herself.”

  “Well,” he said, “that won’t be possible because from now on I don’t want you to have anything to do with her.”

  “Oh, no?” I said. “So now it’s not a matter between friends. Now it’s a question of man to man, and I’m going to show you I’m more of a man than you are,” and then bang! I gave him such a sock he fell down head over heels. I lifted him up and leaned him against the wall, and bang, bang, I walloped him in the stomach.

  I went to speak to Graciela. “Good evening,” I said. “I was bringing you a gift, a compact I bought at Chalma … but when Andrés told me about you two I stomped on it and broke it.” I came close to her and asked, “Graciela, is it true Andrés is your novio? Answer me, don’t be afraid.”

  She stood there looking at me very sadly. She just nodded her head, and did not speak. My first reaction was to slap her face. But I’d never fight over a woman; it would show her I loved her a lot. I controlled myself. “Ah, how nice! Let me congratulate you, Graciela, look I’m a gambler and I play it straight, win or lose. This time I lost, right? It doesn’t matter, Graciela, here is my hand, let’s remain friends, no hard feelings.”

  She stood there, very angry by now, and burst out crying. “What the hell,” I said, and I turned around and left.

  Well, I was very unhappy about all this. I changed my job, and went to work for some Spaniards. I started at eight pesos a day. They paid me for Sunday too, and so I made fifty-six pesos a week. Now I had a little more money and I didn’t have to turn any of it over to my father either.

  About Graciela, I thought, “If she did this to me, I’ll pay her back in kind, with someone she’s close to so it’ll be real hard on her. I’ve got to make her suffer.” Right away I decided on Shorty, and I began to court her. After that I went to the café every day to see Paula. I asked her to be my novia.

  “But it’s not right, because you are in love with Graciela. How is it that you are talking to me this way?”

  “No, really, I told you that so you’d tell her and make her think I really loved her. But I’m not in love with her. After all, didn’t I always chat with you when I came here?”

  I don’t know where I got all the arg
uments, but the fact is it was a hard job courting Paula.

  It lasted over a month and she always said, “I’ll think about it, I’ll think about it.” Finally, she said, “Well, all right.” By then she wanted to be my novia.

  Paula had a big quarrel with Graciela on account of this. Paula said, “So what are you complaining about? You pulled the same dirty trick with Andrés, who was his friend. Besides, he wasn’t your husband, only your novio. Now he’s my novio and I love him.”

  Then Graciela said, “The trouble is, Andrés really wasn’t my novio. I said this only to see if Manuel loved me, because Andrés told me that Manuel was just trying to make a fool of me.”

  Andrés had convinced Graciela to test me; they had put on an act which I fell for. After that, I didn’t feel I loved Paula, but because of the eternal vanity, the pendejo machismo of the Mexican, I couldn’t humiliate myself by going back to Graciela. I loved her with all my soul and deep down I really wanted to say, “Come back to me … let’s go together seriously …” But I set my pride and my vanity above everything else. My heart told me to tell her the truth, but I was afraid that she would make fun of my sentiments. It was a play of tactics between us, and little by little, without either of us wishing it, we took different roads.

  So I continued to see Paula and to take her out. I got her to quit her job at the café, and she found another, weaving children’s coats.

  I once caught Paula in a lie and thought she was deceiving me. She had told me she was going to Querétaro to see her sister who was ill, but while she was away, Delila blurted out that Paula was in Veracruz, with a man and a girl friend. When Paula returned, I said, “How were things in Querétaro, Paula?”

  “Well, fine.”

  “And how’s your sister?”

  “Well, she wasn’t very ill, but you know how people exaggerate these things.”

  When she said that I slapped her in the face. “Look, don’t give me any of that crap; you didn’t go to Querétaro. Don’t pull anything on me. You took yourself a little trip to Veracruz.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Somebody, as you can see,” I said. “So you did go to Veracruz?” and bang! I slapped her again. I was really very angry with her and I beat her.

  She began to cry, “Yes, Manuel, but I swear to you by my mother, by all I cherish most, may my mother drop dead, if I did anything bad. What happened is that my girl friend was going with this fellow and she asked me to go along to protect her.”

  I was pretty sure Paula had cheated on me. “No, sir,” I told her, “I’m not taking any of that stuff from you, and if you’re that easy to get, you come with me now, we’ll go to the hotel.”

  “No, Manuel.”

  “No?” I said to her. “But you did go off with the other fellow, didn’t you? So if you’re a street walker come on with me and tell me how much you’re going to charge. You can’t be worth more than fifty centavos, not for me anyway.”

  She was crying and crying. “Look, Manuel, please come with me, do me a favor, I beg you.” Well, deep down I hoped she hadn’t done anything bad. We went to her friend’s house, and the girl backed up Paula’s story.

  I wasn’t entirely convinced and, whether she liked it or not, I made Paula go with me to a hotel that night.

  I should explain that in Mexico, at least in my case, even if I believe that my novia loves me, there is always a doubt, a jealousy, no? And one day the man says, “Give me proof of your love. If you love me you will go with me.” I had never thought of going through either a civil or a church wedding, it simply never occurred to me, and that is true of most of the men and women I know. I always assumed that if the woman loves me and I love her and we wish to live together, then the legal papers and things like that are not important. If my novia were to demand that I marry her and set up a house for her, I would immediately act offended and would say, “Then it isn’t true that you love me! Where is your love if you set up conditions to love me?”

  There is also the matter of being poor. If one begins to examine what a marriage comes to, a poor man realizes he doesn’t have enough money for a wedding. Then he decides to live this way, without it, see? He just takes the woman, the way I did with Paula. Besides, a poor man has nothing to leave to his children so there is no need to protect them legally. If I had a million pesos, or a house, or a bank account or some material goods, I would have a civil marriage right away to legalize my children as my legitimate heirs. But people in my class have nothing. That is why I say, “As long as I know these are my children, I don’t care what the world thinks.”

  A civil marriage is not costly like a church wedding, but then one rejects the legal responsibilities too. We have a saying, “The illusions of matrimony end in bed.” I couldn’t commit myself to all the legal responsibilities at the risk of suffering a failure later. We didn’t know each other profoundly and how could we know how we would react to intimacy? And the majority of women here don’t expect weddings; even they believe that the sweetheart leads a better life than the wife. What usually happens is that the woman goes with the man and it isn’t until after a honeymoon of about six months that she begins to protest and wants him to marry her. But that is just the conventionalism of women. They want to tie a man up in chains!

  We have a firm belief that it is one thing to be lovers, and it is another to be man and wife. And if I ask a woman to be my wife, I feel as much responsibility toward her as I would if we were married. Marriage wouldn’t change a thing! That is the way it was with Paula and me.

  We continued to go to hotels on the sly for a few months, but I was not satisfied. I think that at bottom I was looking for a way to escape my father, for a way to leave my home, once and for all, and to become a man. So one evening I said, “Take your choice, Paula. Look, I’m going this way, your house is the opposite way. From now on I don’t want you to go to your house. What do you say to that?”

  “No, Manuel,” she said. “What about my mother and brothers and sisters?”

  “Oh, well, then you don’t love me. Choose either of these two roads, except that if you go home, we won’t see each other any more. If you go with me, you’ll be my wife, you’ll live with me.”

  Well, she made up her mind, and instead of going home, she came with me. That’s how we got married: I had just turned fifteen and she was nineteen.

  Roberto

  I STARTED STEALING THINGS FROM MY OWN HOUSE WHEN I WAS SMALL. I saw something I liked and swiped it without asking anybody’s permission. Just like that. I began by stealing an egg. It wasn’t that I was starving, see? because my mother fed us well. It was just for the fun of filching it, and sharing it with my friends in the courtyard, and feeling important.

  I stole twenty centavos from my mother when I was just a little fellow, five or six, more or less. Twenty centavos at that time was like ten pesos today. My father gave us five centavos every day, but all my life I’ve always wanted more, and when I saw a twenty centavo piece on the cupboard, well, there wasn’t anybody around and I thought I might as well take it. I bought some candy and it was my bad luck that they gave me a lot of change, all single centavos.

  So I had a lot of money in my pocket, right? When I got home in the evening, they began to ask about the missing coin. I thought, “Caramba! as soon as they get the idea of fishing me they’ll find the money and I’ll get a licking I won’t forget for ten years. I’d better go to the toilet.”

  The toilet, which was right inside the house, had only a half-door, so when I threw the centavos into the toilet bowl it made a hell of a big noise and they knew what I did. Even though I flushed the coins away forever, they knew. Now, wasn’t that something? Like I said, I was a bad egg from the time I was born. So I got a real thrashing that day. My mother, my father, and my mother’s mother, may she rest in peace, gave me my punishment so I wouldn’t do it again.

  My mother took good care of us. She was loving to me, but she loved Manuel the most. She rarely hit me, and I know s
he loved me a lot because she always took me with her wherever she went, me more than the others. She used to say, “Roberto, let’s go and get the cake trimmings.”

  “All right, mamá, sure, let’s go.”

  My mother and father usually got along well, except for one terrible quarrel which left a lasting impression on me. My father was hollering at my mother, may she rest in peace, and, well, he was pretty mad. My mother’s mother and my aunt Guadalupe kept him from hitting her. His key ring fell on the floor during the fight and I grabbed it and ran out. It had a razor blade on it and since my father was very quick-tempered, I thought he might want to use it on my mother.

  My aunt, my granny Pachita, and the servant, Sofía, all jumped in and held him off. When I came back to the house, the fight was over. My father took me with him to the Villa where he prayed to the Virgin. I saw him cry and I cried with him. Then he quieted down and bought me a taco.

  Every year the Three Kings came on the sixth of January and left us toys in the flowerpot stand where my mother kept her favorite plants. But one sixth of January the Three Kings were unable to come to our poor house, and I felt I was the unluckiest child in the world. We children got up early, like all children do on that day, to look for our toys. We went looking in the flowerpot stand; then we looked in the brazier to see if the Kings left something for us in the ashes and charcoal. Unfortunately they didn’t, so all that was left for us to do was to go out to the courtyard and watch our friends play with their-toys. When they asked, “What did the Kings bring you?” Manuel and I said, “They didn’t bring us anything.”

  It was the last sixth of January my mother spent with us before she died. After that I cried for years.

  We were living in one room on Tenochtitlán Street. My father and mother slept in one bed, Manuel, Consuelo and I slept in the other. When Marta was older she slept with us too. We slept crosswise, first Manuel, then Consuelo, then Marta, then me, always in that order.