The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  Paula and I were afraid of what her mother and brother would say when they found us. I had betrayed their trust and thought they would make an awful fuss. But I was wrong. From the beginning, my mother-in-law was reasonable. I bumped into her on my way to work a few days after Paula had gone off with me. “Holy Mother of God!” I said to myself, “here it comes!”

  “Good morning, Manuel,” she said.

  “Good morning, Cuquita.”

  “And Paula?”

  “Well, she’s all right, Cuquita.”

  “Good! So you got what you wanted, eh?”

  I was ashamed and kept looking down. “Forgive me. I don’t know what came over me, but that is the way it was. But don’t worry, I’ll provide for her and we’ll go on living as man and wife.”

  “Fine! Why don’t you come up to the house this evening?”

  “Sure thing, Cuquita.”

  I still had to square up with my father because I had just walked out of the house without asking or telling anybody. On the day I ran into my mother-in-law, just as though he had been reading my thoughts, my father sent Roberto for me. “And papá said to bring your wife.”

  “Holy Mary!” I thought, “the cat’s out of the bag.”

  When we got there, Paula didn’t want to go into the house. I was pushing her, when my father opened the door. “Come in,” he said. His face had the expression of a judge, and I felt as if I was in front of a jury. Madre Santísima! I was scared, because I always had a lot of respect for my father.

  He sat down at one side of the table and we sat on the other side. “So now you’re married, eh? you little bastard.”

  “Why, yes, papá.”

  “And how much are you making?”

  “Fifty-six pesos, papá.”

  “Fifty-six pesos? Why, you bloody idiot, are you stupid enough to think you can support a wife on bird seed? At your age, and you ve got yourself such a responsibility! Now you’ve really screwed yourself.” He said that right in front of my wife. Sometimes my father is too frank, no?

  Then he turned to Paula. “How old are you, girl?” She was holding my hand and the poor thing was trembling. My father’s face was very stern, and even though he was short, he had a loud voice.

  “Well, I’m sixteen, señor.” She made herself out to be three years younger.

  “So now what? Where do you live? How does this cabrón treat you?” Finally, my papá turned to me and said, “O.K., now get to work and behave like a decent human being. You’ve got to take care of her; you’ve taken on an obligation.”

  The worst was over. I don’t remember who was cooking in the house at the time, but my father said, “Give them some supper. They probably haven’t eaten all day.” We ate, but poor Paula was very ill at ease because my father didn’t like her at first.

  We lived with my aunt for over a year. I got to know my mother’s brothers, Alfredo, the baker, and José, because they came over every evening. I had once worked for my uncle Alfredo, but I scarcely knew my other uncle. I met him in the street once in a while and he would give me my “Sunday” money, to buy a treat. At Guadalupe’s, they would sit around drinking and talking for hours, and I spent a lot of time with them.

  My uncle José gave me some interesting advice. He said, “Son, now that you are married I will tell you something that you should heed all the days of your life. Look here, son, the first move a woman makes is to go for your knees. Very good. Up to there you may permit her. The second move will be to your waist. When she does that, screw her in any way you can, because if you let her get to your throat you will never in all your life get her off you.”

  My uncle was always complaining that his wife had bewitched him and at that time he was going to a curandero to fight the evil. “That cabrona,” he said, “she has me by the middle, the old witch. Every time I get home she is puttering about with her herbs, with her filthy sorcerizings. She has me enchanted and I don’t know how to get rid of it.” He said she had him bewitched, but the fact is that my uncle, may he rest in peace, kept his poor wife with her eyes blackened and her body bruised.

  When my uncle José hit his old lady I defended her because I didn’t like to see a woman being beaten. Once, when I saw my aunt Guadalupe with a bruise, I said to her husband, “Why is my aunt going around with a black eye? Look, you lousy half-pint, if you are hitting my aunt, you’ll have to settle with me, see?” I don’t think he laid a hand on her after that.

  But my uncle José’s advice was good. A wife needs to be watched. If you don’t act that way toward a Mexican woman she begins to take the reins in her own hands and runs wild. I have heard women say, “My husband is very good, I have everything I need in the house, but I want a man who dominates me, not one who lets me dominate him.” So I have always dominated my women, in order to feel more manly and to make them feel it too.

  Time passed, and then I had a little trouble with my uncle Ignacio. He was a bit drunk one evening and asked my wife when she was going to pay him. Paula, not understanding, said she didn’t owe him anything. He told her to stop pretending, that she knew very well what he meant. When I came home from work she told me about it and I had a big argument with him. I wanted to beat him up, then and there, but because of my aunt we left that same night and went to live with my mother-in-law.

  My mother-in-law and her husband lived in one room and a kitchen on Piedad Street, No. 30. At that time all four of her children, with their families, were living with her: Delila and her baby, Faustino and his wife, Socorrito and her husband and their three children, and Paula and me. The room was not large, and the rough wooden floor, on which we slept, was uneven and full of holes. All over the walls you could see finger marks and spots where they had killed bedbugs. There were great quantities of bedbugs in that house, something I was not used to … because of my father, right? Because he was extremely clean, and in our house we hardly had animals or insects. Here there was only a common outside toilet, which was always in a disastrous state.

  The room had one bed, in which Faustino and his wife slept. The rest of us slept on pieces of cardboard and blankets or rags spread on the floor. The only other furniture was a broken-down wardrobe, without doors, and a table which had to be put into the kitchen at night to make more room. Socorrito slept with her husband and children in the small area between the bed and, the wall. Paula and I spread our bedding at the foot of the bed. My sister-in-law Delila and her son slept on the other side of Paula, and my mother-in-law and her husband slept in the corner, near the kitchen, where the table stood during the day. That is the way the thirteen of us, five families, arranged ourselves in that little room.

  When so many people live together in a single room, naturally there is a brake, a restraint, on one’s liberty, right? As a boy in my father’s house I didn’t notice it so much, except when I wanted to talk to my friends or look at dirty pictures. But as a married man, I had more bitter experiences. Living together like that, never, never can there be harmony. There are always difficulties, like the time my brother-in-law insisted on removing the light bulbs whenever he left the house, because he had paid the electricity bill.

  There the conditions were terrible for me. All my life I have kept late hours, going to bed late and getting up late. So there I was stretched out, while they got up early, running, jumping, shouting and disturbing me. I would wake up with terrible headaches from so much noise.

  Living together like that in a single room also affected our sex life. The family was always there and one could not satisfy the appetite of the moment, because it was a matter of having witnesses, no? When we had the opportunity of being alone and were enjoying ourselves a bit, someone always came suddenly to knock at the door and stopped us short in the act. That was when one felt cheated and disillusioned.

  It was also embarrassing, even laughable. Pancho spent the night spying on me, and I spent the night with one eye shut, waiting for him and his wife to go to sleep. That’s the way we would all pass the night,
waiting for an opportunity, and fearing that we might hear each other.

  Once something very funny happened. Pancho had returned from a trip and he had desires, eh? We all went to bed and when they thought we were asleep they began to kiss and kiss. When the two of them must have been feeling good, Socorrito got up quietly, on tiptoe, and unscrewed the light bulb a little so no one could turn it on suddenly. She got back into bed and they were saying nice things to each other, and kissing. When Pancho got to the point of getting on top of her, the cursed bulb unexpectedly went on, all by itself, and he quickly jumped off. They both giggled and I had all I could do to keep from laughing.

  Once I had a little trouble with my sister-in-law Delila. One night when I had worked late, I was very, very sleepy and went to bed next to Paula. In my sleep, it seemed to me that Geofredo, Delila’s son, was crying, it sounded like he was suffocating, so I reached over and nudged Delila. The next day she told my mother-in-law and my wife that I had grabbed one of her breasts. Paula and I had an argument that time.

  I had been working, but I had a fight with my boss and quit, thinking I would find another job right away. I had experience working in a lamp shop, in a leather-goods factory, in a bakery, and I could even paint a house. We had the idea that if a man knew a little about a lot of different things, he would never die of hunger. But no matter where I looked, there was no work. We really had it rough for a long time. Even when I found a temporary job, we were very poor, because I earned only a miserably low wage, and I had to wait a week to get paid.

  My poor old woman never complained. She never asked me for anything or said, “Why do you treat me like this? Why should it be like this?” Because of the poverty in which we lived, I even went so far as to tell her, “Look, old girl, I feel like leaving you. You have a right to live a better life. I’m no good. I can’t give you anything at all. I don’t deserve you.”

  But Paula loved me—it was more than love—she worshiped me, all her life she worshiped me. And I loved her too. Every day, before going to look for work, I would say, “Here, take these three pesos and get yourself something to eat. That’s all I have.”

  “And you, aren’t you going to have breakfast?” she would say.

  “No, old girl, the señora who has the stand in the market will give me credit.” I told her this because I knew two people couldn’t eat on three pesos. My thought was, at that time, to go to my friend Alberto and ask him to treat me to coffee and something. He always had some centavos to help me out.

  From time to time, because I wasn’t working, my mother-in-law looked hard at me and my brother-in-law Faustino snubbed me. Before that, when Paula and I were novios, Faustino, Pancho, Alberto and I often went out together. We used to go to dance halls to pick up a couple of little “cats,” servant girls, and take them to a hotel for some fun, or we’d all go to the movies with our women, or we’d play cards. But when I was out of work, Faustino and Pancho didn’t treat me so well.

  All that time I swear I put my whole heart into looking for work. I had a friend, Juan, a big strong fellow, who had some trucks for hauling construction materials. When I was very desperate I went to him and said, “Look, Juan, do me a favor, brother, I beg you, find me a job, no matter what or how much, but just get me a job, I haven’t been able to give my old woman any money for days and we’re eating off my mother-in-law and I’m ashamed.”

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll come by for you at five in the morning.”

  Sure enough, he got me a job splitting rocks in the Pedregal. They gave me a hammer and a chisel, and told me they paid four pesos a load of rock. “Well,” I thought, “if I do two loads, it’ll be eight pesos.” But I sure was disappointed; from five-thirty in the morning to six at night, I barely did half a load. The hammer handle had scorched my hands, my blisters had broken, and the whole damned day I made only two pesos.

  When Paula saw my hands she burst out crying. She was so sorry for me that I cried too. I was touched, and said, “Come now, don’t cry, old girl, because it makes me feel bad. Better go and buy black coffee and beans. I’ll bet you haven’t had anything to eat.” She was proud and sometimes days would go by without her eating so that she wouldn’t have to take food from her mother.

  The next day, Juan came for me. I had a fever from the work I did, but I got up to go. In the truck, Juan said, “You know, Manuel, this is very hard work for you. I’d better take you along on the truck to help me with deliveries.” He’d give me five, eight or ten pesos, depending on the trips he made. I was very grateful to him.

  Well, so time passed. Paula and I had lived together for almost three years and we didn’t have any children. I wasn’t pleased and said, “Looks like I’m living with a man; you don’t seem to be a woman. When are we going to have a child?” At that time I didn’t know what it cost one to bring up children, or how bad one felt not to be able to provide for them. I didn’t think of such things.

  I kept fighting with Paula. I had a certain distrust of her because she had not been a virgin when I first slept with her. It made me mad that she had deceived me, but then I thought, after all, those who had gone before me didn’t matter. What I wouldn’t stand for, would be any who came after me. But I didn’t trust her completely, and when she didn’t become pregnant I thought she had taken something to cure herself. I kept accusing her, and she kept praying to God to give her a child. Today I understand that I was the one to blame because I was too young; my semen was too thin to produce a child.

  Then, one day, my wife told me I was going to be a father. “Man alive!” I said, “really? You’re not fooling me, old girl?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s true.”

  “Thank God!” I told her. “Lets see if this doesn’t change our luck. Come on, old girl, let’s go to the movies.” All I had was eight pesos. “It doesn’t matter, we’ll spend two pesos in the movies, but we have to celebrate this. Come on, mamá, let’s go.”

  Well, I took her to the movies and we were very happy. I was more affectionate toward her than usual, and told her that I didn’t want her to bend over or lift anything heavy.

  I kept making the rounds with Juan. Then he began to have very little work. I thought, “Well, I’m a rotten egg, I bring bad luck, just as soon as I hook up with somebody, things begin to go bad with him, too.”

  One time, when we hadn’t eaten all day, I went to my father to see whether he could help me. He looked hard at me when I came in. I was very skinny then, very skinny. I weighed only fifty-two kilos; now I weigh seventy. My wife had also lost a lot of weight after she began to live with me, although she was still quite buxom.

  “You don’t look very good. What have you been doing?”

  “Well, working, papá.”

  “Just look, your shoes are torn, your pants are all patched up; I don’t remember seeing you like this before.”

  “Well, no, papá, things haven’t been so good with me.”

  “It’s obvious, you don’t have to tell me, you bastard. Now you know it’s not the same thing having to go out and break your frigging back getting things for yourself.”

  “You’re right, papá.”

  “I think you’re coming down with tuberculosis. What’s the matter with you, aren’t you eating, or what’s wrong?”

  “Well, no, papá, I do eat, how do you expect me to go without eating?” But actually he wasn’t fooled.

  “O.K., sit down and have supper.” The truth was that I was awfully hungry, I felt as if I had a great big hole in my stomach. There were fried bananas on the table … and good things I had been longing for. I really had myself a fantastic supper. Then I didn’t know how to ask my father to lend me five pesos. Five pesos, and I couldn’t find the words to ask him! But he understood what was on my mind.

  “Here, take these ten pesos, you’ll find some use for them.”

  I almost felt like crying because I felt I wasn’t man enough to make a living. At that moment, I began to hate humanity because I felt I
was incapable. I thought, “I work hard like others, but it doesn’t pay off. I’m just not man enough.” That’s what I thought when I left my father’s house.

  I practically flew home to see my wife. It was a long time since I had given her ten pesos in a lump sum. I came home and the first thing I saw were her dry lips, dry from hunger and thirst. I felt like a heel and I wept. My stomach was full, I had eaten a lot … I was a bum for filling up when my wife hadn’t eaten. I shouldn’t have eaten either and so I cried.

  “Why are you crying, Manuel?”

  “Nothing, go on and buy yourself something for supper.”

  I gave her the whole ten pesos and all I said was, “Buy me five centavos’ worth of cigarettes and in the morning give me my bus fare so I can go out and see what I can find.” I used to do this every morning.

  When Paula was five-months pregnant, Raúl Álvarez asked me to come to work in his lamp shop. He had gotten an order for 18,000 pieces and had promised delivery in two weeks. My job was to take ordinary sheets of glass and cut them up into various shapes for lamps. I worked day and night to fill the order.

  The first week I drew two hundred pesos, just like that.

  “Holy Mother of God!” I said. “Praised be the Lord.” I came home and said to my wife, “Look, mamá, this is what I earned. I’m only going to take out twenty-five pesos to buy myself some shoes. Right now you need more things than I do. Buy yourself a tonic; get something so the kid will be healthy. We don’t want him to be born puny.”

  I worked there for about a month, when my brother-in-law Faustino, the one who treated me like dirt when I wasn’t working, became sick. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He said to me, “Compadre,” (I’m the godfather of baptism of his two children) “be a good fellow, go and help out in the café, brother, won’t you? If I don’t go to work I’ll lose my job. Take my job for two or three days, until I get better.”