The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  When Elena lived with us I never felt that we were poor because our room always looked nicer than our neighbors’. I was proud of our house. It was clean and had curtains in the doorway. The two metal beds had yellow bedspreads and the wardrobe was kept polished. The big table on which we ate was covered with a checked tablecloth, which had its matching napkins. These, of course were never used except when we children grabbed them as handkerchiefs. We ate from clay bowls with wooden spoons but Elena had some nice white cups and saucers and platters which she kept for company.

  Our four chairs stood at the foot of the beds. There was another, smaller chair made of colored straw, that my father liked to sit in when he read the newspaper. As long as I can remember, we had a radio, a little RCA Victor, that stood on a shelf made especially for it. Odds and ends, such as tools, old magazines, shoes, boxes, a washbasin, the burlap bags my brothers slept on, were always kept under the bed or wardrobe, carefully out of sight.

  When my father had finished paying for the table and the wardrobe, he bought the chiffonier. It was shiny and had three large drawers and two small ones. My father was very happy when it was delivered and he kept rubbing it with a rag to make it shine more. He let Elena decide where it was to go, and the next day he bought a flower vase for the top of it. He began to send flowers every few days from the market—gladiolas, dahlias and beautiful, beautiful roses. Then he made a little shelf for the votive light, under the picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Later, he bought Elena a dressing table. Our room was full of furniture then.

  The kitchen was in a tiny, inner courtyard that had no roof. When the rainy season came it was very inconvenient to cook there. My father didn’t want to shut out the light and the air, and he tried to roof half of it. But when he began to raise birds, he had the whole thing roofed to keep them dry. The last thing my father did to improve the house was to buy some metal spoons and two glass shades for the electric-light bulbs in the bedroom and in the kitchen. After that, Elena got sick and he didn’t take care of the house any more.

  My father hired La Chata to help Elena because my stepmother was not strong enough to work hard. La Chata did all the heavy work in our house for five years. She would arrive at 7:00 A.M., the time my father left for work, go for the milk and light the charcoal stove. While the milk and water for the coffee came to a boil, she washed the supper dishes from the night before. Manuel and Roberto would ask for their coffee and go off to school. Marta and I stayed in bed until the room warmed up or, if we had to go to the toilet, we would run barefoot to the toilet in the kitchen, shivering in our underwear. After breakfast, Elena would take her basket and go to the market while La Chata piled the furniture onto the beds so that she could wash the floor. If she were in a good humor she would let me sit on the bed and watch her through the chair legs, but usually she chased everyone out of the house when she cleaned.

  We ate lunch at three o’clock, crowded around the little table in the kitchen. After the meal, we would have to go to the movies with Elena, whether we wanted to or not. She loved the movies and went almost every day. She would leave a note for my father telling him in which theatre he could find us and sometimes he would join us there. It would be dark when we arrived home and we children would have our coffee and bread and go right to bed. Marta and I slept in one of the beds, my father and Elena in the other, and my brothers on burlap bags on the floor. By nine o’clock, the front door would be locked and the light turned out.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, we would get up at different times, long after my father had left for work. Manuel was the laziest one in the family and was usually the last one to get up. His habit of sleeping late interfered with the housecleaning, for no one could sweep while he lay on the floor, wrapped from head to foot in his blanket. What a sleepyhead he was! When he finally did wake up he would stretch himself with great effort, rubbing his eyes and yawning desperately, his hair falling in his face. He didn’t like to go for haircuts or to wash himself.

  One morning Elena and Roberto decided to light a firecracker and toss it under his covers. We waited in the doorway to see what would happen. When it exploded Manuel jumped up violently and ran around the room, his head still wrapped in the blanket. We all laughed to see how frightened and angry he was.

  Sometimes on Sundays, Elena would take us on outings to Chapultepec Park, to Xochimilco or elsewhere. Once in a while she would take us to see my grandmother and my aunt Guadalupe. Roberto and Manuel would carry Marta and me on their shoulders all the way there. My grandmother made candies which she sold in the street and she always gave us some. After she died, we continued to visit my aunt.

  But these visits to my mother’s family had to be kept secret because my father would punish anyone who took us there. He didn’t like my mother’s family because they drank a lot and criticized him for marrying Elena. My stepmother was very nice about it and never told him we went there. She was always seeing to it that nothing happened to us.

  I don’t know why but I have always preferred the company of older women. While my brothers and sister played outside with their gangs of friends, I would sit in the doorway, sewing and chatting with La Chata. She would tell me how happy she used to be before her husband left her, and how Señora Chucha, who lived in Room No. 27 in the Casa Grande, had stolen him away. I rarely had friends but La Chata encouraged me to make friends with Candelaria, Chucha’s daughter, so that she could spy on the family. Candelaria was very ugly but she had a little blue crib I liked to lie in, pretending to be her baby. Every time I came home from Candelaria’s, La Chata would question me about the family. She hated Señora Chucha and often complained to my father that Chucha had insulted her and was mean; especially when Chucha was drunk.

  One day La Chata went for the milk, came back hurriedly and ran out again. Usually it was hard for her to get past the narrow door because she was so stout, but this time she went in and out easily. My father was reading to Elena, I was playing with some toy furniture Elena had bought for me, and Marta was playing marbles on the floor. We heard shouts and screams and we ran out to the courtyard. My father would not let Marta and me see what was happening but Elena climbed the ladder to the roof and could see La Chata fighting with Chucha. Soon my father came back with La Chata. Her hair was disarranged and she was very agitated, explaining to him what had happened.

  When she had gone home, my father and Elena laughed at the quarrel and commented on how funny the two women had looked rolling around on the ground. The next day La Chata came to work as though nothing had happened. But Candelaria never spoke to me again and I didn’t go to her house any more.

  Another one of my “friends” was Señora Andrea, who lived in No. 28. She was a motherly-looking woman with big breasts. She was an expert housekeeper and taught me how to sew. I helped her by taking care of her children. I spent whole days in her house and often Marta or Roberto was sent there to look for me. My friendship with her came to an end when she accused Roberto of stealing a razor. My father gave him a beating and had to buy a new razor for Andrea’s husband.

  Roberto had become very stubborn and rebellious and was quite unbearable at home. He had never been able to get along with Elena and it made him mad to see me around her a lot. He would say to me, “Dumb kid. She’s not even our mother. Stay away from her.” He insulted Elena to her face and she would spank him or pull his hair. Later he would be punished by my father; he got a beating almost daily. He fought with Manuel, too, and always got the worst of it.

  Roberto often disappeared for one or two days and we thought nothing of it, but once five days passed and my father became worried. Someone advised him to wrap Saint Anthony in my brother’s clothing, put it upside down inside the wardrobe under lock and key and, he said, Roberto would be back in a week. My father did it and Roberto was back on the seventh day. He had gone to Veracruz to look for my father’s family. He had gone without money or extra clothing, knowing only that they lived near a hacienda. After that, running away becam
e a habit with him.

  It was my stepmother who took me to school for the first time. She told me: “You stay here. In a little while, I’ll come and bring your coffee.” I expected her to come back in a short time. When I saw that she wasn’t coming, my face must have been all twisted, because the teacher patted my chin and said, “Don’t cry, little girl. Look, you have lots of little friends here. Your mother will be here in a little while.”

  The morning I entered the second year of primary school it was very cold as we stood in line to register. Almost all the mothers were waiting but Elena wasn’t there yet and I became alarmed. I saw the girls file in one by one and the mothers step up to give their names. Elena arrived exactly at the moment when they were asking me my second family name, that is, my mother’s name. When Elena saw that I didn’t know, she whispered to me, “Look, I’m going to give you the same name as mine. You won’t be mad?” I answered that I wouldn’t be, and that’s how it was that I was registered as Consuelo Sánchez Martínez. When my brothers and my aunt found out, they all said that Elena wasn’t my mother, that I was a fool, that I should go with her if I loved her so much.

  In this grade, I was robbed for the first time. This was very upsetting and my brothers made fun of me. A lady had tricked me into letting her hold my new cape and box of school supplies and then she had disappeared with them. From that day on, under the threat of getting a beating, one of my brothers had to take me up to the gate of the school, where he would repeat: “If any dame talks to you …” All I had to do was to tell my father that Manuel or Roberto didn’t take me to school and it was enough for him to beat them.

  How important I felt toward the middle of that year in school when the señorita said that we were going to learn to use ink. I remember going through the doorway with my books under my arm and my hands empty so that people could see my ink-stained fingers. Every time she told us that we were going to use ink, I would ask my father for a new penholder. And I always got everything I wanted. All I had to do was to show my father the list of school supplies and the next day I had everything I needed. It was the same with clothing; as long as it was for school, we had it almost before we asked him for it.

  Elena was the first one to teach us to pray. At night she made the four of us kneel down and repeat the words she said. The most balky were Roberto and Manuel, who poked each other with their elbows and laughed until they got themselves put into the kitchen. As for me, at first I too didn’t like to be kneeling with my arms crossed, without blinking an eye. I remember how, when I was four or five years old, my father would take my sister’s hand and mine at night and make us cross ourselves. My father and Roberto crossed themselves every morning before going to work; they were always more strict about this than the rest of us.

  When I was six or seven, Elena would tell us the Examples, which she had learned from the priest in her village. A miracle always took place in these stories, and Our Lord would appear to the person who had been good. In one Example a daughter who disobeyed her mother and was lacking in respect, was punished by Him. She went to confession and the priest told her that if a flower grew out of a nail she would be forgiven.

  When I heard this story I thought, “How wonderful it would be if such a day should come for me.” Often under cover of the darkness of the room, I would cry because I had been bad during the day, and I even felt glad at the thought of the punishment I would suffer. I would beg forgiveness and would promise faithfully not to get angry or shout at my brother. The Examples we heard Elena tell was my first real religious instruction. While she lived with us we went to hear Mass (my father never took us) and we learned how to celebrate the religious fiestas, like the Day of the Dead and Holy Week.

  The first time I attended catechism was after we moved to the Casa Grande. One afternoon, while Elena and I were having coffee and were looking at a comic book, I heard a little bell ring. I looked out and saw some children running, each carrying a little stool. I asked no questions but suddenly a heavy figure appeared dressed in black, her hair combed in a bun and a rosary on her breast. She passed close by me ringing a little bell. “Aren’t you coming to catechism?” I smiled and nodded.

  I asked my father’s permission. He agreed and sent all four of us. How glad I was to gol There I was, running through the courtyard with a little chair in my arm. My sister and two brothers also carried their stools. The señorita was speaking to the seated children. I had never before heard anything like what she was saying. Elena had taught us Our Father and the Ave, besides a prayer to the Angel, but it wasn’t the same thing.

  They always gave us candies as we went out. That first day, we all tore off at a run to show my papá what they had given us. I really felt happy. All by myself I began to take on the obligation of going to catechism. It made me very angry that Roberto and Manuel didn’t come. I told on them to my papá.

  One time I saw the señorita with a group of older girls around her, answering in chorus. When the señorita had finished, I asked a girl, “What was that?” She answered, “You mean you don’t know! Those were God’s Commandments.” I was embarrassed and didn’t say anything. Besides, I was afraid that the girl was going to hit me.

  When catechism was over I told the señorita that I wanted to learn the Commandments. “But they are preparing for the first communion,” she said. It was like a ray of light breaking over my head. I said nothing, but from that time all I wished for was to make my first communion and to die. I don’t know why this desire came over me. I didn’t even know the meaning of the first communion and I didn’t ask.

  Then the señoritas didn’t come to teach us any more. We waited in vain with our little stools. I went back home angry. My papá asked me, “What’s wrong, daughter?”

  “Nothing, nothing is wrong with me.” But I felt as though nobody remembered me any more. We were left quite a long time without catechism but I memorized all that I had learned.

  Santitos, Elena’s mother, and her three youngest children came to live with us. They all slept on the floor. Santitos was very religious. She was always dressed in black and prayed every night, which seemed unusual to me at that time. When I saw Santitos praying with her rosary in her hands and her face so serious, I thought it must be because she was going to die. One afternoon when Santitos was praying with her rosary, I asked her what my Lord Jesus Christ was like. With all the good will in the world, she set herself to teach me. How difficult it turned out to be. And how I respected Santitos! She taught me the Señor Jesucristo and the Yo Pecador. I asked my papá to buy the book with which to make my first communion. He agreed and in it I read how you were supposed to act before the priest.

  The only bad memory I have of Elena is that she was the one who disillusioned me about who the Santos Reyes (Three Kings) were. When I was about eight years old I still believed in the Three Holy Kings who came bearing presents to children on January 6. I resisted believing the truth for some time. Even my brothers had told me a lot about the Reyes. During the Christmas Posada season, as evening would begin to fall, Roberto or Manuel would sit with Marta and me in the doorway, and would show us the three most brilliant stars in the Big Bear constellation. “Look, little sister, do you see those stars there? Those little stars are the Three Kings.” I remember how every year a little before falling asleep I would look at the sky and it would really seem to me that the stars were coming closer. In my imagination I surrounded them with an intense light that dazzled me even after I was asleep. On the next day I would find the toys.

  This year I decided to spy on my father, to see if Elena was right. At night Marta and I made believe we were asleep. Finally my father was satisfied that we were sleeping and I saw him put some toys in our shoes. It was true! My dream was over and I felt sad. The next day when my father got up to go to work, he said the same as every year. “Hurry, daughter, go and see what the Reyes brought you! Go on!” I looked at my presents but I no longer saw that magic thing that had surrounded my toys. This was the only
time I did not like Elena.

  The strongest impression remaining with me of that period was of a night when we came home from the movies. Generally my papá would carry Marta, while Elena took me. On this particular night everything was very dark, and suddenly the grownups were absolutely silent. As he opened the lock, my father told Elena to hold on to me. My head was pressed very tight against her skirts. They told me to close my eyes and Elena carried me. I didn’t hear a sound, not my father talking nor the key in the lock—nothing. When I could open my eyes, I was already in bed. I asked why they had made me close my eyes, but my father only said, “Go to sleep. It’s late now.” I went to sleep, very curious; the next day, Roberto told me that they had seen ghosts, nuns walking on the wall with a priest in front of them. I don’t know whether it was true or not. My father never told me anything.

  I always seemed more afraid of things than my brothers and sister. Once, when I was eight or nine, Roberto gave me a terrible fright by throwing a sackful of mice at me. The shock was so great I fainted. After that I had a horror of mice and rats, more than anything else in the world. Every time I saw one of them, dead or alive, I would scream and run.

  I remember one morning in the Casa Grande an ugly old rat came out of his hole. I was asleep but pretty soon I woke up enough to hear something gnawing under the bed. I opened my eyes wide and hardly breathed, expecting the animal to climb up on the bed. As the sound got closer and closer I began to call to my father, at first softly, then a little louder. When I actually heard the animal at the head of my bed I gave a wild scream. My father got up like a flash and put on the light. The animal started to run. I kept screaming, “The rat! the rat!” My brothers jumped up from their bed on the floor and chased the rat with sticks. But this animal was hard to catch; he kept escaping and they couldn’t kill him. When finally they succeeded in hitting him (I still get goose pimples all over when I think of it) the animal squealed and I screamed. I kept hearing his horrible, piercing cries. Every time they hit him, I would jump. After that, my father had a new floor laid.