The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  The next fight we had was when Consuelo came in crying because he had hit her. He said she had been flirting at a dance, acting like a little whore. So I said, “Roberto, it’s none of your business what she does. What do you give her anyway? Besides, she works …” Again, while I was talking, he socked me. I got him on the floor and beat him so hard he had to get the fellows to pull me off. That time I even bit his nose. When the boys intervened, I got up, saying, “This kid has got to learn some respect for me.” I think he did, too, because he told the boys, “Ay! my brother is short, but how strong he hits. You have to be careful with that guy.”

  Roberto was always watching his sisters. Just like my father, he was against decent women going to dance halls. After all the things Roberto got himself into, it turned out that he was the one who was following my father’s morality. The thing was, that for Roberto, a woman … well, he had such a narrow, abstract notion of what female chastity should be, that he thought a girl should be absolutely pure. And that is something difficult to find these days.

  Today, if you invite a girl to the movies and act like a gentleman, she says later that you are a jerk. But the man who comes along and starts using his hands … even though she resists, because a woman is always saying no … well, that’s the man for them. My brother was so retiring that I didn’t think he would ever get married.

  Roberto suffered from a lot of complexes. So far as women were concerned, there were a lot of undercurrents there. It wasn’t that he was not able to take a woman and go to bed with her. He was just as capable as anybody. I knew because of some information I got from a woman who had gone with him. It was that Roberto believed he was ugly, so dark and ugly, that he thought that the woman who married him would deceive him at the first opportunity. He knew that if anyone made a fool of him he wouldn’t be able to control himself and there would be very serious consequences.

  The thing about Roberto was that he was too violent. He was capable of grabbing a guy at any moment and giving him a bath in blood, of caving in his ribs, or of sticking a knife into him. It’s not that he was a criminal … just very bad-tempered. But when his rage cooled down and he remembered the shape he left the guy in, he might cry with remorse and ask for forgiveness. My poor brother was a tangle of contradictions.

  Roberto was really very noble, the most noble in the family. If he were surrounded by people of culture and understanding, he would be a happy person. He really liked nice things. He liked to talk to people more educated than he, and he was always alert to learn new words and to express himself correctly. If he had contact with people in a higher social sphere, he would straighten out. He really hated the nauseating atmosphere we lived in … all that we had to rub shoulders with every day.

  I attribute a lot of his trouble to the mistaken idea we have that it is a matter of self-respect or pride to show no fear. Roberto really didn’t know what fear was; he was incapable of running away from trouble. If somebody pulled a knife, he pulled one, and used it too. And he was worse when he drank. I have said to him, “I don’t know what you are after. Can’t you get drunk decently and sleep it off, like other people do? What does it cost you? But no, you have to go out and look for someone who will pick a fight and beat you up! If you have so much anger in you, why don’t you let me make a boxer out of you?”

  He would have made a good boxer, but he didn’t want to be one. He said he hated fighting. He was good at sports … if he had the support of a sports club, he might have been a champion swimmer or bicycle racer. He would have been a real luminary. But that business of going around hitting people and stealing just couldn’t go on. The day he killed someone, who would the guy’s family take it out on? Me, of course! But he never thought of the consequences of his actions. He was like a runaway horse. Nothing could stop him, not blows, not advice, scoldings, jail … nothing. He was not satisfied with ordinary emotions, like me, but he needed more action, an outlet for the fire that was inside him.

  At bottom, I believe he was afraid of something. In my poor judgment, it was his subconscious at work, trying to defend itself from something indeterminate. Perhaps he felt the lack of love too strongly. His life was really sad, sadder than mine and our sisters, because he had never known real love.

  During all this time I had kept myself informed about Graciela, and then I began to hang out at the café where she worked. She had married a man named León, but had left him after three months because he was a thief and sold marijuana. He was one of the worst, a real murderer! His body had so many scars, it looked like a map! I used to see Graciela in the street every once in a while, and each time felt something stir inside me. She gave birth to a son at the time my first daughter was born.

  When I had the shoe shop, friends who knew I had been in love with her, would say, “You know what? Graciela is working in a café on Cuba Street,” or, “I saw Graciela working on Constantino Street.”

  One time I went to deliver some shoes, and I had two hundred pesos on me, a pretty large roll, no? I was passing Constantino Street and saw Graciela waiting on tables there. I thought, “I’m going in so she can see that I’m well off now.”

  A long time had passed since we had last spoken to each other. We were polite and had a chat while she served me supper. I managed to take out a fistful of pesos, and I could see she was impressed. I wondered whether she still cared for me, so I went back to the café about three times. Then she disappeared and I didn’t know where she was working. I thought, “Well, maybe it’s better this way.” I had been with Paula five years, and I hadn’t had relations with any other woman during that time.

  One day as my friends and I were going to the Florida movie theatre, we passed by a café and there was Graciela, working. So I thought, “Good! Now I know where you are.”

  Then I really went after her. I ate at the café every day and made it my hangout. I began to get close to her, pretending to just renew an old friendship. Little by little, the affection she had for me came back. As for me, I kept fanning the spark in my heart, until I felt my old love again. I began to get somewhere with her, but it cost me a lot of work.

  One evening, she agreed to go out with me and another couple. We went to a cabaret and had a few beers. While we danced, we kept looking at each other. We kissed and she looked a bit dazed. Then she said, with a lot of passion, “Kiss me, kiss me.” I knew I was making headway and I said, “Graciela, Graciela, when will you be mine?”

  “One of these days, tomorrow, the day after … one of these days,” she said. The next day at the café, I reminded her of what she had said. “If it’s all right for tomorrow, why not now?”

  “So you believe me?” she said. “I was just talking. I didn’t mean it. After all, you are married, you have your two children and I know your wife. So how do you think we can do this?”

  I waited for the café to close and invited her out for tacos.

  “Fine,” she said, “I’m hungry. I can’t eat this stuff in the café any more.” Trying to be clever, I took her down Orégano Street and then turned the corner at Colombia, where there was a hotel. Well, she caught on and about fifteen yards before reaching the hotel she stopped.

  “Let’s keep walking, Graciela, please.”

  “No,” she said, “I know what you’re up to, nothing doing.”

  “No, look, believe me, I don’t want a thing from you.” But I finally came clean with her. “All right, Graciela, it’s true I want you to be mine tonight.” No and no and no, we were arguing out there in front of the hotel for three hours, she and I. I argued this way and that, but she absolutely refused to come with me.

  I finally got mad, grabbed her arm in a tight grip, and kicked the door open, forcing her in. I asked for a room. The manager went ahead of us, opened the door and I pushed her in. I tried to undress her but she wouldn’t let me. Actually, deep down she did want to, but her mind told her she shouldn’t. “Leave me alone, Manuel, please leave me alone. By all that you love most in this world, leave m
e alone, because if I do this I won’t be able to live. You are married, you have children, have pity on me and leave me alone.”

  But I was obsessed. All I wanted was to have her.

  Well, then I had to urinate and since the toilet was outside, I went out. She locked the door and wouldn’t open it when I knocked. I went to the manager and said, “Please unlock my door. I think my wife must have fallen asleep.”

  “Why, of course,” and he opened the door with his key. She was in bed and I got in.

  After a long hard battle, it was then about four-thirty in the morning, after struggling with her for an hour and a half, she gave in. But by that time, either because I had used up so much energy or I don’t know what, I found I couldn’t function …

  Holy Mother of God, was I in a sweat! Was I ashamed! I said: “Dear God, how can this happen to me? No, no, it can’t be.” Well, I was in a frightful stew and terribly embarrassed. There she was ready for me and I said, “Madre Santísima, now what am I going to do?” So I said, “Mi amor, I know that you are now willing, but I’m going to punish you. I’m going to make you suffer the way you made me suffer.” I was lying, the reason was I just couldn’t. So I lit a cigarette and prayed to all the saints: “Please, St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Gabriel, help me recover so I can go on with it.” Well, after some time I felt my strength coming back, and I said to myself, before it changes its mind and goes soft on me again, I’d better hop to it.

  Well, I think it was the most wonderful night I ever had in my whole life. We just let go completely. It was as if the whole stream of love within us two overflowed, broke the dike and overflowed. She was as insatiable as I. One, two, three, five, six, seven times we had each other, and when dawn came we were still making love.

  At daylight we had to get up for work. She was afraid of what her mother would think. But I said, “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. You’re a full-grown woman. If you were a young, unmarried girl it would be different.” When we got outside everything seemed to be yellow, cars, houses, men, women. Both of us looked pale and tired. She went to her job, only two blocks from there, and I to mine. That is, I went to the shop, but I was like a milkman’s horse sleeping on the job.

  We two continued making love. We’d always go to a hotel. My wife didn’t think it unusual for me to come home at twelve, one, or two in the morning because I’d been doing it for years. I don’t know to this day if she ever found out that I was going with Graciela. We never had any trouble about this. My brother and sisters didn’t know anything about it either. The only one who always knew everything was Alberto. I told him all my problems, all the things that were troubling me.

  I realized that my love affair with Graciela was harmful to me in every respect. If my wife found out she might go so far as to leave me and I didn’t want that for I loved her too. I loved her a great deal, but with a different kind of love. Paula was passive, anything I wanted to do was all right, but she didn’t respond with much passion. Perhaps that was her nature; she had other ways of showing me her love. But she didn’t excite me as much. Graciela responded in a way that satisfied me and my vanity. She worshiped me. With Graciela, every time I touched her it felt like the first time, as though she were a different woman. I loved her passionately, madly, I couldn’t think of living without her. And I didn’t have to worry about her becoming pregnant because she couldn’t have any more children.

  My life became a living hell, because I couldn’t imagine going on without both of them. I wanted to have them both without either of them feeling bad about it. I was always thinking of Graciela and of my wife. I couldn’t sleep any more. All night long I kept turning and twisting, I suffered from a terrible restlessness. Once I even said to Graciela, “Look, I can’t live without you. Let’s set up house, leave your mother and let’s move into a room. We’ll manage one way or another, but I’m going to stay with you.”

  But when I got home and saw my wife sleeping with my children, I felt ashamed. I hated myself. I said, “How can I be such a good-for-nothing? I’ve got to leave that other woman. Here is my poor little wife with my children; they don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

  It got to the point where I was hoping my wife would give me an excuse to leave her. I was short-tempered with her; once I beat her hard, very hard. You see, I was used to absolute obedience on her part, not forcing her with blows, but on the basis of yelling at her. Alberto had come to see me one morning, and I asked Shorty for something, I forget what. She was in the kitchen and she shouted back, “I’m busy right now! Stop bothering me.”

  She had never talked back to me before. “Here is Alberto and look at the way you answer me! Will you give it to me or must I make you give it to me?”

  “No, man!” she said. “You just give orders around here! How are you going to make me? Get it yourself.” I got up, not very angry yet, saying, “I’m telling you … Shorty …” and pum! she gave me a slap. Right in front of Alberto!

  I don’t know, I was so angry that I went blind. I felt a red band over my eyes. I was so ashamed in the presence of my friend that I went after her and really beat her up. Later, Alberto said, “What a brute you are! Brother, how strong you are when you’re angry!” because with one blow, I made her fly, just as though she were a doll. He tried to stop me, but couldn’t. Her mother was there too, washing clothes. She didn’t interfere at first, but when she saw me kicking Paula, she said, “Don’t kick her, can’t you see she’s pregnant again?”

  Another time I hit Shorty, was when she beat up Mariquita and left the child black and blue all over her little body. Shorty had a very strong temper, a strong spirit … she was very active and quick … and she hit the children hard. That day I got mad and said, “Look, never again! Don’t think I’m going to let you do this to my daughter. If you as her mother can do that, then you show no human qualities. You are not worth anything, and from here on our relations will end, if you hit her like that again. I’ll take her away and you’ll never see her. If she needs discipline, spank her on her behind and no place else!”

  That’s how I spoke to her, see? She didn’t know any other way to bring up children, because her mother had always beaten her and her sisters that way.

  I had some trouble with Graciela on account of Domingo, my third child. I had told her I didn’t get along with my wife and no longer slept with her. I had to fool her so she would keep seeing me. But Graciela saw Paula in the street and noticed that she was pregnant.

  “So you don’t sleep with her, eh? I just saw her and she’s in the family way again.”

  “Ah,” I said, “so you saw her? So what do you want me to do? I just touched her once and it stuck.”

  Actually, I had contact with my wife almost every day. I often did it because I felt guilty. I thought, “I can’t neglect my wife to that extent. I’ve got to do my duty toward her because if I don’t provide her with satisfaction, who will?” And many times I did it without wanting to, just to do my duty. I couldn’t see Graciela every day, just every three or four days; sometimes a week went by before we slept together. I explained to her the best I could, and it seemed reasonable to her that I just couldn’t help having relations with my wife.

  I acted like a real canaille to Paula. When Roberto was in jail in Córdoba, my father sent me to see him. Instead of going alone, I took Graciela with me. I had only 150 pesos in my pocket … not enough to take her to a hotel or to good restaurants … so I took her to my cousin David’s house and sponged on my aunt. I presented Graciela as a friend I worked with, but my aunt wasn’t fooled. She was annoyed with me, and when she saw me getting into Graciela’s hammock, she made me sleep on the floor with David. That whole week, Graciela and I had to get together in the sugar-cane field.

  Back in Mexico City, I spent every evening in the café. I almost never ate at home. I got so I couldn’t enjoy a meal except in the café. Once, as I was sitting there, my mother-in-law came hurrying in. “Manuel, Manuel,” she said, “Paula needs you.�
�� Graciela was standing right by.

  “What does she want me for?”

  “Hurry,” she said, “she’s dying.” I got up as if a spring had been released and ran home. Paula had had a bad hemorrhage, the whole house was full of blood. I became terribly alarmed and ran for the doctor. I did what he asked me to and went and bought the medicine. That time my wife was annoyed with me for not being around when she most needed me.

  But once Paula was taken care of, I returned to the café. I realized I was a heel for acting that way. I struggled against it with all my strength. I struggled as hard as I could to leave Graciela, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t. So I went back to the café. The next day Paula had another hemorrhage and the doctor told me, “If she has one more, don’t spend money for medicine, buy a coffin.”

  “Holy Mother,” I said. “Dear God, it’s not possible.” I don’t know what the cause was, maybe it was from a fit of anger. The child was pretty far along, about seven months. My wife got well and my son Domingo was born normal.

  Once Paula said to me, “I’m going to get myself cured.”

  I said to her, “Why? What are you going to cure? So you don’t want to bear my children any more? I don’t want to have a murderer for a wife. You have no right to take the life of a being that can’t even defend itself. It’s a bigger crime and more despicable to kill a being that can’t defend itself than to kill a man in cold blood.” And we never lost a child.

  The only ideas I had about women and childbirth I learned from my married friends. My wife didn’t know much either. Neither her mother nor my father ever told us anything about such matters. Paula always nursed each of the children about a year or until she got pregnant. There were two years between Marquita and Alanes and Domingo and only one year between Domingo and our last child, Conchita. We always had sexual relations up to the day the child was born but after the birth we waited a month or so, never the required forty days.