by Oscar Lewis
My mother was angry and said, “Look, Jesús, I will never again touch your radio!” And she didn’t; she died without turning it on again. My aunt is still angry at my father for that. She said he only understood food and rent, and never thought a person needed more. He shouted at people, but underneath he was a coward and didn’t even have the heart to kill a bedbug … that his heart was made of cardboard. My aunt never got along well with my papá. That’s why she talks like that.
There is a woman, Julia, who lives in my aunt’s vecindad. Julia was the wife of my uncle Lucio, and she knew my mother well. She and my uncle and Julia’s two children, Yolanda and Maclovio, lived in my mother’s house for three years. Julia would help my mamá in the house and Yolanda was the one who carried me around and cleaned my tail. They all slept on our kitchen floor and left when my uncle Lucio died.
My uncle couldn’t stand his stepchildren and hit them a lot. He drank and didn’t provide for them. At mealtime, he made the kids sit under the table, so he could kick them while he ate. My mamá took pity on them and gave them food; otherwise those poor kids would have starved. They had always worked as servants and never had a single toy.
Yolanda told me that the most enjoyment she got out of childhood was when she lived with my mamá. Yolanda used to grab the five-centavo pieces my papá left under our pillows each morning. She also snitched cake crumbs from my mamá and would sneak into the toilet to eat it. When we caught her, we told my uncle Lucio and he would give her a good beating on the head. But Yolanda was not so badly off then … she had food and shelter … my mamá gave her everything.
According to Julia, my papá was very happy with my mamá. He never hit her and though he didn’t like fiestas, he took her when she wanted to go. He gave her expense money but she worked because she wanted to have extra centavos. She liked nice clothes and earrings, and when she went out she always took a bus or a taxi. She never walked. Even to go to the market, she would take a bus. She helped her mother and her sister with money and didn’t want my father to think he was supporting her family.
The trouble between my uncle Lucio and Julia started when she went out to sell. She met a railroad man and began to live with him while she was still living with my uncle. My aunt says that Julia bewitched my uncle, because he suddenly changed. Instead of beating his wife, he gave in and begged her for things.
She must have given him “coconut water,” because when we see a wife bossing the husband and flirting with others, we know she has him all tied up. The woman washes her behind in this “coconut water” and gives it to her husband to drink. Sometimes women make a tea of an herb called toloache, and if she gives it to her husband, he gets weak in the brain.
Julia must have prayed to the Dark Saint and measured my uncle with a black ribbon, because one morning he got sick with dropsy and died. My mother blamed Julia and ran her out of the house.
Julia was also known to have cast a spell on her first husband, the father of her children, because he had died suddenly too. She blamed it on the fact that he had led a life of sin and drank too much. He would hit her all the time. In fact almost everybody hit that woman. She had three husbands … because after my uncle died, she left her kids and went off with that railroad worker. All three men drank and beat her and all three died at her side. Now she is living a good life with Guillermo Gutiérrez, because even though he doesn’t give her expense money, he never hits her.
People tell me that my little mother knew about my papá and Lupita from the very beginning. Here there is always some gossip who runs and tells the wife. A man hardly gets out of another woman’s bed, and his wife already knows. Once my mamá and my aunt Guadalupe went to a fiesta on Rosario Street and they discovered where Lupita lived. My mamá took a pair of scissors and stood with it outside Lupita’s door, shouting insults and daring her to come out. But Lupita didn’t, and my aunt dragged my mamá away by the hair, so nothing happened.
According to my aunt, my papá also went with Lupita’s niece, who worked at the same restaurant. My aunt said my papá “swept” that restaurant clean, and if the boss hadn’t been a man, he would have fallen to my father too. Papá had a son with Lupita’s niece, but never helped her because she married a man who accepted the child. I have never seen this half-brother of mine and only Lupita knows the name of his stepfather. My grandma tried to find out who he was because she was afraid that some day, when we grew up, this half-brother might make love to Consuelo or me. All we know is that his name is Pedro and that he looks just like my papá.
Lupita was on the night shift in the restaurant and my papá was on the day shift for a long time, until they met. She already had her daughters, Elida and Isabel. She told me that all the rest of her children were my father’s. The girl born between Antonia and Marielena died. She said that with each pregnancy my papá disappeared and forgot his obligations, and that she didn’t see him again until after the baby was born. Once, he left her for two years. She said my papá never helped her … yes, once in a while he got around to giving her a centavo, but to pay regular expenses or to pay the rent, no. He didn’t give her a thing, and to have her children she had to look for someone to take her in.
According to Lupita, she suffered a lot, right? She worked hard to support herself and her girls. Then she cut her hand and had to stop working. But it makes me angry, because knowing my father, I doubt that he didn’t give her a centavo and that he didn’t attend her, the way she says. I never had a discussion with her about it and only she really knows, but how am I going to believe her when she says that about my father? I just let her talk!
To this day, I cannot forgive Lupita for going with my papá while my mother was alive. But it is not for me to question my father’s affairs, and I make it my business to get along with my stepmother. She was neither mean nor affectionate toward us; if she had been loving and had tried to kiss or caress us, it would have offended me. I have no complaint about her, but there will always be a barrier between us.
They say that when my mother died, my papá went crazy. He jumped into her grave and wanted to die too. From that day to this, he has been very serious. I never see him laughing or happy. He is always sad and thoughtful, alone with his problems and his expenses.
By the time I was out of school, most of my mother’s family had died. There were left only my aunt Guadalupe; her husband, Ignacio; my aunt Piedad, my uncle Alfredo, and their two sons; my great-aunt Catarina and her son and daughter and all their children; and a few other cousins. On my father’s side I knew only my cousin David and his mother Olivia.
My uncle Alfredo died a little while ago. He caught pneumonia because when he came home drunk his sons were angry and let him lay on the damp floor all night. The next day he went to Guadalupe’s house to borrow her pail and soap for a bath. He said his chest hurt and he was going into the steam room. In a few days he was dead. My poor aunt suffered a lot of grief because she had buried her whole family, her parents, her five brothers, her only sister, and her two sons. She was the only one left, except for Ignacio and us.
When I was about twelve, I began to take account of things and stopped playing with boys. I liked to dress up and I changed my clothes every day. Consuelo was doing my washing and ironing then and was annoyed. So I had to learn to halfway wash my things myself. I spent my pennies on ribbons and adornments and pasted beauty marks on my face. For a long time, I wore an artificial carnation in my hair, thinking it made me look pretty, even though it was torn and spotted and the stem wire showed. My father seemed to enjoy seeing me fix myself up like that.
Once I got into a fight with a girl who pulled off my beauty mark. I was so mad I tore her dress from top to bottom, as though it had been cut with a scissors. I was always getting into fights because some girls are vipers; they get jealous, tell lies about each other, and start trouble.
I fought with boys too. If they said or did anything to me, I never let them get away with it. One fellow who was bigger than I, tripped me wh
en I was running around the courtyard. I fell and cracked my head. I wasn’t scared, just very angry, and when my head was better, I went after him for revenge. I hit him so much, his mother complained to my papá. But my father didn’t pay any attention to her.
My best friends were Irela and Ema, the daughter of Enoé. Chita was also my friend, but not so much as the others. We had all grown up together and defended each other tooth and nail. If one was treated badly by her family, the others invited her to go home with them. If one ate, the others ate, even if it were only beans. I placed all my confidence in these girls and we did everything together.
La Chata had the habit of sending me to the pulquería every day, for a bottle of pulque to drink with her dinner. She did it secretly, because my papá had forbidden us to go into such places. One day, I had the idea of buying an extra bottle for me and my friends. We went up to the roof where no one could see us drink it. After that, we bought a small bottle of tequila every Sunday and finished it off together on the roof. There were times when we were so drunk, we couldn’t climb down the ladder. If I didn’t know how to control myself, I would have gotten the drinking habit, like Irela and Ema.
We smoked on the roof too, and told dirty stories. Then we would go and buy chewing gum to take away the odor of the nicotine. Irela and Ema would steal—once they stole money from the school bank—but I never joined them. I just didn’t have that desire for extra money or things. I had enough spending money because during school vacations my father let me work in an ice-cream factory near my house. They paid me two or three pesos a day and I spent it all on myself. My father never asked me for the money I earned. With it I bought what I pleased, socks, sweets, clothing … but most of the money went to rent a bicycle or to go to the swimming pool with my friends.
I liked having money of my own and I enjoyed working better than going to school. When I was in the third grade, I found a job decorating shoes; I worked from ten in the morning to eight at night, and earned more money. Lilia, a friend who lived on the Street of the Potters, told me of a better job cutting out stamped wooden figurines. I took it but lasted only two days, because of an incident with the boss.
Lilia and two other girls and I worked in a little shop in front of the room in which the boss slept. He was fat and ugly, the kind of man who nauseated me because, in spite of being old, he still looked at girls. I think the bastard had evil intentions from the moment I arrived, the way he leered at me and smiled. I couldn’t stand the sight of him.
On the second day, the boss told me to make his bed. While I was in his room, he entered and started to hug and kiss me. Then he took out his “bird” and made me put my hands on it. I began to shout for Lilia, but she didn’t hear me. I was very frightened, right? But I didn’t let him, and he got angry and said, “When I find out that you are going to get married, I’ll intervene. I’ll tell everyone that you can’t marry because I’ve already had you.”
That was at about six o’clock in the evening. Lilia and I left at seven. I cried and cried and told her what had happened. That night we both got drunk and we never went back there to work. Instead, I took my old job at the ice-cream factory, where the boss was a woman.
Irela, Ema, Chita and I joined a palomilla, a gang of about twelve girls who lived in the Casa Grande. When you enter a gang, if you do not defend yourself, you can only cry. In any gang there is at least one girl who has a reputation for being mean, for fighting rough. The others begin to be afraid of her and give in or run away. But if you find out the last her shoe is made on, if you stand up to her, the fury often turns out to be a phony, nothing but a mirror, reflecting the weakness or strength of the others. I never liked to see anyone take advantage of timid girls, so I often stuck up for them.
We girls had many fights over novios, and our talk was mostly about boys. One would say, “Look, so-and-so is slipping with her novio, so you have a chance with him.” Or, “She’s a pig and a gossip and doesn’t deserve him.” If a girl had a boy friend she’d tell the others how he hugged and kissed her and when he asked her to go stand in dark places with him. We found out that the favorite line of the boys was to say, “If you really like me, come to bed with me and prove it.” And we knew they would leave a girl who didn’t. The girls who were truly in love with their novios usually went. Having the proof of their love within reach, there was nothing else for them to do.
The year I joined my gang, there was a heat wave among the girls, and one by one they were shelled, like corn. It started with the older girls and ended with the younger ones. Tina was the first to go and the others didn’t want to be left behind. It got so, we asked each other, “Well, where did you lose it, on a bed or on a petate?” Most of the boys took their girls to a hotel, for an hour or so or, if they could, for a whole night. Some did it in an aunt’s house or at a married sister’s, or anywhere they could.
I had my first novio when I was twelve. Donato was the son of Enoé who worked for us. They lived in No. 32 in the Casa Grande. He was a good boy, but very ugly. I looked down at him a little because his mother was our servant. I imagined myself her mistress! My papá and my brothers were very strict and were always keeping an eye on my sister and me, so I never once had a chance to go out with him. If I had been a little older, I could have managed it, but at that time I had to be home by six-thirty and in bed by eight. At ten o’clock the courtyard lights were turned off and almost no one went out. It is different now because of TV. Neighbours go in and out of each other’s houses to see the late shows and the courtyard lights are on until midnight.
A few years back, people were afraid to go out at night because this section was known for its criminals, pickpockets and dope addicts. It wasn’t so crowded then and there were big ditches in which they often found the bodies of people who had been drowned or strangled. This vecindad was a real robber’s nest. Men and women would disappear mysteriously and it is believed that lots of them were buried under the floors. That’s why so many families had cement poured over the flooring.
Every day someone was robbed, or murdered or violated. There is a story about a girl in Tepito who had a boy friend. He was one of the worst kind. Once he invited her to the movies. He had prearranged with some other boys to take her home through the market, and there they grabbed her, dragged her into one of the stalls and they all raped her. They say that there were so many that her anus came out, and then they killed her.
Sometimes there were real waves of terror and no one dared go out or complain. The law isn’t very strict about assault cases and they almost don’t even take notice. Little by little, a better class of people came to live here and the situation changed.
But people are still afraid at night because they say there are ghosts here, lost souls wandering around. The older residents claim money is buried near the watertanks and that sometimes a hen, or a man dressed like a charro, appears there. Roberto once saw him and other strange things happened to my brother when he slept on the roof. Once he went to sleep above and woke up down below. Another time, he felt someone pulling him by the feet.
Consuelo was in the toilet once when a ghost called her by name and scared her. Another time, it happened to Manuel. He was coming home very late one night and saw an old woman pulling a cart loaded with furniture. He noticed that she went into one of the courtyard shower-rooms and heard all the furniture falling. He ran to help her … but there was nothing there. He came home looking white.
My papá and I once passed by a funeral and we heard the people cursing the dead man all along the way. My papá told me they had to curse the soul of a good man to put it at rest, otherwise it would haunt people. My stepmother Lupita was haunted by the dead. They followed her so much, she had to curse them to keep them away.
There are still some terrible vecindades around here. They are called “Lost Cities” and are made up of wooden shacks with dirt floors. The Casa Grande looks like a queen alongside them. On the Street of the Bakers, near my aunt’s house, is a “Lost C
ity” half a block long. It is the worst vecindad in our barrio. If you walk in there halfway well-dressed, everyone looks at you. The way they treat you depends on how you are dressed. Outsiders are afraid to go in but my sister-in-law Paula’s family has always lived in places like that, so I am used to them.
I knew the gang of girls who lived in the “Lost City” near my aunt’s, and there wasn’t a virgin among them. The boys there even took advantage of the little girls. When I was young, a fellow named “Guts,” who was the terror of the neighborhood, lived there. He was a “teporocho,” which means he drank straight alcohol, and was unbelievably fast with a knife. When he went to the movies with his gang, they sat up on the balcony and smoked marijuana. You could smell it all over the theatre, and if the movie were a daring one, you could hear them saying dirty things.
My barrio has everything, even prostitutes. We girls used to go down to Tintero Street just to look around. It’s a street full of prostitutes; on the first block you find girls of fifteen or sixteen, on the next are older women, who are ugly and fat, with fallen breasts. They charged three or five pesos, and even then the men bargained. On Orlando Street, where we once lived, the women were nicer but they charged more.
Rosario Street was the worst. I used to pass by on my way to Lupita’s house. There the women lived in little stores that were open to the street. There weren’t as many stores as women, so two or more lived together. They each had a bed and a bureau and a mirror, with a curtain dividing off their space. They’d put up pictures of saints, movie actors and naked women. They’d sit in the doorway, with their legs apart and their dresses pulled way up. They didn’t wear slips so you could see their brassières through their nylon blouses. When the women finished with a client, they washed themselves (they always had a jug of water ready on their charcoal burners) and emptied the washbasins into the street, splashing anyone passing by.