by Oscar Lewis
In the morning, when these women fixed up their rooms or went to the market, we couldn’t tell them apart from other women. But in the afternoon, when they were made up, we could spot them right away. They all worked for the same madam and had to turn in a certain daily quota to her. If they couldn’t make the quota, they’d accept any amount offered.
We’d always see a lot of men hanging around those streets, waiting, or just watching attentively. Those with little money were looking for a woman they could afford. I’ve seen married men and boys from the Casa Grande there, and other men I knew … bums, drunks, cripples, and kids from the neighborhood. Many boys don’t know what it’s all about and have to go there to learn. Afterwards they are ready to do it with other girls.
I knew only two girls from around here who went to work on Tintero Street. If any girl from the Casa Grande lived that kind of life, she did it far away where we wouldn’t see her. Those two girls went bad because they ran away with boy friends who later made them work in cabarets and dives. A girl who falls in love with that kind of man is really a lost soul.
My second novio was Mario, the Soldier, the fellow my sister ran off with later. He was called the Soldier because of the way he walked. I saw him for the first time at a dance in the Casa Grande. Every week, the boys rented a record player, and anyone who wanted to, could dance in the courtyard. I was going to school at the time, and was still in braids and anklets. It was just seven o’clock and the dance was about to begin. I had to get my dancing done before my papá came out and whistled for me.
My friends and I were leaning against the wall, waiting for someone to take us out to dance. We were making bets on who would catch the most boys. One of the girls said, “Here comes Mario, the Soldier.” He was wearing a red sweater and didn’t look as rough as the other boys. I liked him right away. He came over and took me out to dance. From that moment he didn’t let me go. He danced only with me and wanted to know my name. I never told my real name at those dances, so I said it was Alicia. He wanted to see me the next day and though I told him I couldn’t, he said he’d wait for me on the corner. We both went home early.
The next evening when I went for bread, there he was at the corner. I saw him several times but it never reached the point of going out together or hugging and kissing. He didn’t learn my real name until much later.
Alberto Gómez of this vecindad was the novio of Chita, my friend. Then he began speaking to me and Chita said I had taken away her boy friend. I danced with Alberto and he tried to kiss me now and then. But it didn’t last long because right after he became my novio I met Crispín.
I went for milk every afternoon and my friends usually went with me because I bought candy at this time. If I didn’t have spending money I bought less milk and mixed it with water. With the money I saved, I always had enough for a treat. Crispín worked as a polisher in a furniture shop on the same street. One day, when I was alone, he came out and asked me to be his novia. He told me his name and I told him mine and we went out that night.
We just walked and talked; he didn’t kiss me or touch me or anything. But on the way back, we bumped into Consuelo with her novio, Pedro. She yelled at me and gave me a sock and insulted Crispín. I was afraid she would tell my father. But Crispín spoke to her later and she gave him permission to go with me. She said she didn’t want me running around coquetting, but that if I promised to be serious about him, it would be all right.
I was thirteen when I began to go with Crispín. From that time on, my fears, scares, chases and beatings began. My brothers, especially Roberto, were always watching me. My papá, who had never before hit me, beat me three times, once with a whip and twice with a strap, because he saw me talking to Crispín.
Crispín and I would go for walks, but he never came near my house. Consuelo helped me keep our meetings a secret from my father and brothers. She allowed me to go to the movies with him. I would say, “I’m going to Mass,” and the two of us would go to the matinée. The people in the vecindad were getting accustomed to seeing girls go to the movies with their novios, but if my papá had known he would have hit me.
Crispín was the first one to really kiss and embrace me and that’s why I liked him a lot. Once in the movies he kissed me so much that he “heated my ears.” Inside me, I felt something discharge. It was the first time I wanted to be with him. Right away he asked me to go to a hotel. But by the time we left the movie I was more in control and I said he’d have to wait until I was fifteen. He kept on trying but I always managed to put him off.
Once he invited me to the movies and I said I couldn’t go. Later that day, Manuel and Paula went to the movies and took me with them. I happened to sit next to a boy, Miguel, who once had spoken to me about being his novia. I never responded because I was Crispín’s novia by then. But all through the movie we kept looking at each other.
Someone must have told Crispín because a week later he brought it up. He asked me if I had met anyone when I went to the movies with my brother. I said no and he slapped me hard, saying I was cheating. That was the first big quarrel we had. We didn’t speak to each other for a week.
We had other quarrels over dancing. I liked to dance but he was jealous and didn’t want me to go alone. He learned to dance so that I would have no reason to dance with others, but whenever I heard of a dance somewhere, I’d go secretly with the girls. At that time Crispín lived just across the street from the Casa Grande and his shop was near the ice-cream factory where I was working, so he could easily spy on me. His friends helped him and when one of them saw me at a dance, he would tell. Crispín would go after me and pull me away. Even though I danced in a decent way, not shaking and moving around like my sisters Consuelo and Antonia, he would get very angry.
Twice I caught him with another girl, but he told me he wasn’t at all serious about her, that it was nothing more than a passing whim and that I was the only girl he cared about.
Meanwhile, my friend Irela began to go with Ema’s brother, my ex-novio, Donato. Irela’s mother was one of those excessively respectable, careful women, who would shout insults at a girl if she just saw her walking with a boy. Yet all her children turned out bad. Her sons were known thieves and Irela got into trouble too.
Irela didn’t get pregnant but anyway she went to live in Donato’s mother’s house. He worked in a bakery and spent the little he earned on shoes and dresses for Irela. She was pretty and he was ugly and the truth was, they didn’t make a nice couple. She didn’t pay attention to him at all. She didn’t care whether he had anything to eat or wear, and let her mother-in-law do all the work. Donato was one of those men who had the habit of bringing his friends home and Irela didn’t like to stay there. So she came over to talk to me for hours. I was going with Crispín and wanted to know as much as possible about what men do, so I asked her lots of questions.
Then Donato caught her in the movies with another boy. In revenge, that night he took her to his friend’s house and right there, on the bare floor, they both “blew” her. Then he threw her out.
She began to live with this one and that one, because she liked nice clothes and movies. She had the good luck not to get pregnant with all those boys. Then she fell in love with a tramp named Pancho. She had so many to choose from and she picked the worst! She left a good boy like Donato for a lazy bum, a pig, a calamity, who didn’t work and who beat her. She loved that barbarous creature and believed that when he hit her, he was showing his affection for her.
She lived in a corner of her mother-in-law’s house and didn’t even complain. We all said as a joke that Pancho had better aim than the others because after all her experience without getting pregnant, his bullet hit the mark. He was the one who gave her a baby.
The next one to fall was Ema. Her mother, Enoé, worked in a hospital and was away from home a lot, so Ema found it easy to go to a hotel with her novio. The next day she came and confided to me what had happened. “Just think,” she said, “he couldn’t do a thing and t
he dunce came out of the hotel very angry.”
When I heard that, I said, “If he didn’t dishonor you, better break off with him now. Why continue? He has already tried you out and the next time he will get straight to where he has to go.”
But she adored him and two days later she told me that the worst had happened. She kept going with him but had the misfortune to get pregnant right away. Then her “adoration” abandoned her, and left her to her family.
Many times one’s friends are more helpful than one’s parents, or sisters or aunts. Unfortunately, Mexican mothers do not tell their daughters about life and that is why they have to bear the cross of disillusionment. Even if a mother took note of what was going on, she wouldn’t have the courage to ask about it. She couldn’t find the words to get the truth out of her daughter. She would let it go until the damage had been done. Then, when the daughter was pregnant and the boy had already abandoned her, the mother would not accept the painful truth, the dishonor.
That is why girls do not confide in their mothers. If girls say they have a novio, they get a beating; if they ask for permission to go to the movies, they get screamed at and called sluts, prostitutes, shameless hussies. These words hurt and that’s why, when a boy makes an offer, they accept. Many girls go off, not because they are hot, but to spite their fathers, mothers and brothers. The girls are like holy-water fonts, everyone lays hands on them. He who doesn’t hit them for one thing, hits them for another. Mexican daughters are really mistreated at home. That’s why there are so many unmarried mothers.
Nowadays there are few girls who are worth anything; they have pretty faces and well-formed bodies, but the truth is they are not virgins. It is sad for the man who really loves them; he loses the chance of real happiness in marriage. Many girls know how to fool men into thinking they are virgins, but sooner or later the husband finds out. Some wives even tell them, because instead of having more affection for the man who accepts them, they look down upon him for having been taken in.
The Mexican daughter suffers because she doesn’t trust her parents. She prefers to confide her secret, intimate problems to her friends. For example, menstruation. Most girls find out about this outside the home … Mine began when I was thirteen and I was very frightened. No one had prepared me for it. I knew from my friends that when you go with a man for the first time you bleed, so that day I couldn’t explain why I bled. My sister-in-law Paula was living with us then, and I asked her, “Why am I bleeding?” I didn’t go with any boy but, just look, I am bleeding.”
She scared me more because she said it wasn’t ever going to stop. I let loose and began to cry. I thought it was going to be that way forever. All Paula said was, “Go and change yourself.”
I was afraid that my dress and slip would get spotted so I put newspaper between my legs. Later, Irela told me about using rags. We didn’t know about napkins then.
Crispín and I were novios for about a year and a half. I liked him a lot and we had good times together, but he was too interested in other girls. One night, four months before my fifteenth birthday, we had a fight. I had seen him walking with a girl and it made me so angry I wanted to break with him. He said if I left him I would be responsible for what would happen to him. I was afraid he might kill himself or do something crazy and then they would blame me. He kept begging me to go to a hotel with him. He said, “If you really love me, you’ll go with me.”
It had always been my golden illusion to be married in white in church, and to have a home of my own. I wanted to bring up my children without a mother-in-law or relatives to bother me. I knew that if one ran off, it didn’t usually turn out that way. Besides, one’s parents suffer, and people say things. But when I told my friends of my dream, they laughed and said, “Look who thinks she is going to marry!” Most of them did not get married and are living in free union.
Now that I think of it, someone should have warned me about men, especially because I played with boys so much. But no one ever explained things clearly to me about the dangers and the temptations. So when Crispín said he would ask my father for permission to marry me, on condition that I sleep with him first, it seemed reasonable. I suppose I was weak, but I was afraid I would lose him forever if I didn’t. The result was, that same night we ended being novios in order to continue as lovers.
First, I had to go home for a sweater. My father was not living there then, because he was taking care of Antonia, who was sick at her mother’s house. Only Consuelo was at home when I came in. My friend Ema was with me, to help me get away. She carried a jacket on her arm and I slipped my sweater under it, so my sister wouldn’t take notice. I said I was going to borrow the comics from a friend and got out of the house without trouble. I met Crispín, and no one, not even Ema, knew where we went.
He took me to a transient hotel near the Penitentiary. Now that I have seen other hotels, I realize that place was one of the worst. The night went badly. He undressed without shame, but I had never undressed in front of a man and was very embarrassed. I didn’t sleep at all because I was afraid of my father. I had always been afraid of him and now I thought he would be looking for me in fury. When we heard the Red Cross ambulance sirens, I was sure the police were after me.
The next morning, at five o’clock, Crispín took me to his mother’s house. He left me waiting outside. I felt ashamed and thought everyone was looking at me as though they knew what I had done. I was full of fear that Crispín would not marry me after all. He kept me waiting for an hour and I was beginning to think he had abandoned me, when he came out. He had spoken to his parents about me and they were not in agreement that I should stay there. So he took me home.
Roberto met us in the courtyard and made a big fuss. He threatened Crispín with a knife and called him every name in the book, until Crispín promised that his parents would come to ask my father for me.
There was a scandal in my house when my family learned the truth. Everybody wanted to hit me. Consuelo managed to give me two lashes, but I scratched her arms until she bled. Manuel raised a hand to me, but Paula intervened. Paula was the only one I confided in and she cried as though I had been her sister or her daughter. She said I did a very foolish thing. I had never been close to Paula … she was reserved and serious and had a temper … but I shall never forget that no one, not even my sister, cried for me the way she did.
When my papá came home from work, I stayed outside in the courtyard. I was afraid to face him, but he didn’t say a word, nor did he hit me. I had already “slipped” and he acted like he wasn’t interested in me any more. When Manuel told him Crispín’s parents were coming he said he didn’t want to know anything about me and that I should arrange my own affairs. When they came, it was Manuel who spoke to them. He warned them that I knew nothing about housekeeping, that I hadn’t had my first communion until I was thirteen, that I was at a disadvantage because I didn’t have a mother. They said that it would be all right, that they would teach me everything, little by little. My papá told Manuel to ask for a two-year waiting period, because I was so young.
My father didn’t speak to me for a month, and treated me badly. I felt terrible and was ashamed to look him in the face. I had been his favorite and I couldn’t take my punishment. I was so upset that one night I began to cry very hard. I couldn’t stop crying, until my papá spoke to me. I asked him to forgive me and he said, “Don’t be a fool. I am your father and will never abandon you.” After that I felt better.
Crispín came to the house every day, or took me to his house, or to the park. Once in a while, very secretly, we went to a hotel. On my fifteenth birthday, my friends came to my house with a record player and made a fiesta for me. My papá had planned to give me a big fifteenth birthday party, with a new dress and everything, but since I was no longer a virgin and didn’t count for much any more, the only thing he gave me was a pair of shoes.
A week later, I went to live with Crispín in his mother’s house, once and for all. He no longer spoke of us g
etting married but I was terribly afraid of becoming pregnant while I was still living at home. Again, my poor papacito had to run around looking for me, because I was afraid to tell him where I was.
Part II
Manuel
I DIDN’T HAVE A HOME OR FURNITURE OR ANYTHING FOR MY WIFE. ALL I had were my wages. So I took Paula to my aunt Guadalupe’s house. She and my uncle Ignacio lived alone in a little room on the Street of the Bakers. When I told my aunt we had come to stay, she said, “What do you mean, you’ve come to stay? What the devil sort of kid are you?” She turned to Paula and asked, “What do you think?” Are you in love with him?”
Paula blushed and bent her head. So I said, “O.K., are you going to let us stay or not?”
“Why sure, son,” she said, “I’ll be glad to. You know you’re always welcome. Here’s a blanket. Spread it out on a cardboard so as not to get it dirty.” My aunt didn’t have a bed then and we all slept on the floor. That’s where Paula and I had our honeymoon, on the floor.
My aunt and uncle slept with the votive candle burning, so we had to wait until they were fast asleep before we undressed and went to bed. We spent a terrible night because we were afraid they would hear us. Paula said, “Don’t make so much noise.” I answered, “Shut your mouth. You’re the one making all the noise. You’re the one causing a scandal here tonight.” We kept scrapping all that night.
And so our married life began. We paid no rent but I gave my wife five pesos a day for food. My aunt was a good person but had always been poor, much poorer than my mother and father. She worked for others, washing laundry or helping in a restaurant, and my uncle sold newspapers, but between them they didn’t make enough to eat more than one meal a day. If they ate more often, it would be just beans and chile. But they never complained about being poor; they were satisfied with the way they lived. Ignacio was proud to be a member of the newsboys’ union and never thought of doing anything else. It wasn’t that he lacked intelligence, but that he didn’t know how to focus it to improve himself. More than anything, he and my aunt remained poor because they liked to drink.