by Oscar Lewis
It was close to a year after Domingo was born, that there was an incident with Consuelo, which made us leave my father’s house. Consuelo had never liked my wife and, to humiliate her, she spit on the floor just after Paula had cleaned it. It bothered my wife, and all I did was to whack Consuelo a couple of times on the arm. Then Marta grabbed the scale weight and tried to hit me with it. So I took them both by the hair and held them down on the bed, to keep them from moving, right?
But Consuelo has an enormous imagination, no? She and Marta should have been actresses. They blew it up big. Consuelo said I beat her on the lungs and whipped her like a horse, and as a result Paula and I had to leave the house where our two sons were born.
I rented a room in the Matamoros section. I bought my wife a bed, my father gave us a wardrobe, a table and a kerosene stove. Then Delila and my mother-in-law asked whether I would like us all to live together in a room in a private house. Ana, the sister of my mother-in-law’s husband, who had her own little house, was willing to rent to us. It was a humble home, but the first private house, with a garden, I had ever lived in, and it was something very nice for me.
When I saw how other people lived … the nice homes in the movies, and magazines, and in rich neighborhoods, the luxuries that exist, I felt … well, degraded, to live the way I did. I felt unfortunate, but at the same time, it should give me incentive, no? That is when I say, “I have to rise … I must reach that level.” Because, in reality, it is humiliating, saddening, not to have a nice home and to have to live with other people all the time.
The only time in my life that I have felt fully happy, was when we lived in Ana’s house. Paula and I and the babies shared one room with Delila and her son, and my mother-in-law and her husband. We got along well together. It was the only time I can say I felt like a man, in the sense that I fulfilled my duties at home. On more than one Sunday, I stayed home and painted the table, or the chairs, and saw that my wife was comfortable.
When Alanes suffered from earaches and couldn’t sleep I cured him, the way my mother had cured me. I made a paper cone and put the point in his ear. Then I lit the paper with a match and let it burn as long as he could stand it. I did this two or three times, until the aire left his ear and he was able to sleep.
At that time, I did what I had always wanted to do on Sundays. I took my wife and children first to the market to buy tortillas, cheese, avocados and cooked pork and then to the park to eat our tacos. I was working again and giving my wife sixty pesos a week for expenses, although I was making one hundred and fifty. The rest I kept for going out with Graciela. Life was pleasant for me. I had the love of my wife and of Graciela; I needed both of them to be happy.
Ana’s house was in a colonia far from the center. Few people lived there at that time, and it was frightening for me to go home at two or three in the morning. There were lots of assaults and robberies, and in the morning they’d often find dead bodies in the river or in some field. But scared or not, I’d still get home very late every night.
A year later, Ana needed the room for some relative, and asked us to move. So Delila and her mother found a place for themselves and Paula and I again lived alone. Paula found a room with an outside entrance in the same section, because rents were low there. I was earning less and we were not eating well Our fourth child, Conchita, was born soon after we moved in.
Graciela was working and would never accept money or anything from me. She said her conscience hurt when I spent the money my children needed. We’d go to a restaurant for supper, and instead of being like other women and ordering a good meal, she’d just ask for coffee and milk. I got sore on account of this, but she always said, “No, I’m not hungry.” If I wanted to buy her a skirt or some little thing, she always said she didn’t need one. Why, I even bought two pairs of pants for her son, but I had to work hard to make her accept them.
Graciela told me, one day, that a certain Señor Rodolfo kept coming to her house and that her mother was trying to get her to hook up with this man. “What shall I do, Manuel?”
“Mi vida, what do you want me to say? What can I tell you? Unfortunately, you have to solve this problem alone.” Then she disappeared from the café for three days. I kept going there, as I always did. On the fourth day she returned. I was very angry but pretended to be calm.
All evening she busied herself with little things and didn’t come back to sit with me. I was convinced that something special was up. When the café closed I said, “You’re hiding something, and you’re going to come clean right now.” I grabbed her arm and took her to a hotel.
In the room, I said, “Look, mi vida, I want you to understand completely my love for you. For me you are God on earth, and therefore you have an obligation to be frank with me. Tell me what’s come between you and me. I love you more than anything else and I have faith in you. I know you didn’t do anything wrong. Tell me, but be frank about it.” Well, that’s the way I kept talking to her for a long time.
Graciela was sitting on the edge of the bed. She lifted her head and said, “I’m going to get married.”
I felt as if I were hit by an electric shock; everything turned black all around me. She burst into tears. “I swear to you by the life of my child, which is the most sacred thing I have in the world, that the only one I love is you. I know I’m going to suffer, but give me a chance to find a future for my son. You have your wife, unfortunately, you have your wife. Let me live, Manuel, don’t stop me.”
I felt a terrible sorrow inside me. I understood that she was absolutely right. She said, “Answer me, say something, strike me, beat me, but don’t remain silent,” and she fell to her knees and put her arms around my legs, crying bitterly.
“Graciela, you know something, get out of here … but get out of here right now, while I have the strength to see you go. Because I swear to you if you don’t, later I won’t be able to let you go. You are absolutely right, you have a right to be happy, and all you’ve had with me is suffering, beatings at home and the contempt of people for keeping company with a good-for-nothing like myself. Get out of here, Graciela.”
“No, Manuel, don’t chase me out; I don’t want to leave you this way, Manuel, for the love of God. Look, even though this is the last night we’ll spend together in our whole lives, Manuel, I want to say good-bye to you in a different way.”
She didn’t want to leave, so we spent the night together. In the morning she said, “I’m not getting married. I won’t marry anybody. I was going to do it for my mother because I don’t want to hurt her, but I don’t care about my mother, I don’t care about anything in the world, you’re the one I love. I’m not marrying anybody.” So that’s the way it stood.
After that, I went to visit Graciela’s mother. I had always had the power to persuade people, at least those in my class, and that is why they called me “Golden Beak.” It must be true, because I was able to convince Graciela’s mother to accept me. I told her, “Look, Soledad, I can control everything in life but my feeling for your daughter. I have the blindest passion for her and she is the most beautiful thing in my life. I am poor and cannot offer her anything, but do not deprive me of her company. True, our situation is ambiguous, but I swear that your daughter is and will be the only great love of my life.” The señora was very sentimental, she even cried, and I won her over to my side.
It was at about that time that my wife told me she was not well. She had not yet lost weight and I swear that I never believed she was seriously ill. I told her to go to Public Health and see what the doctors thought. That night she said they wanted to hospitalize her, because they didn’t know what was wrong. But she didn’t want to go because she was afraid of hospitals. Besides, she was nursing Conchita and had no one to take care of the children.
I didn’t pay much attention to her. All I could think about was the problem I had with the two women. I went about in a state of terrible confusion, like a crazy person. I didn’t notice that Paula was getting thin, that she urinate
d a great deal and was thirsty all the time. She never told me that her health was getting worse.
One day my father came to visit us. He had become fond of Paula, as if she were his own daughter. He liked her more than me. He realized that she was self-sacrificing, hard-working and clean. She never complained about anything. When he saw her, he said, “Listen, child, what’s wrong with you?” He insisted that she go back to his house so he could take her to a doctor.
I was so blind, so stupid, so unobserving that I hadn’t seen how ill she was. I thought it was something simple, like a cold. I said to her, “Old girl, get well; you must get well. We must go to Chalma this year.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m going to get well.” She made a vow to walk there on her knees if she recovered. But to my mother-in-law she said, “Mamá, I know if I go to my father-in-law’s house and lie down, I won’t get up. Please take care of my children.”
She was so anxious to spare me pain that she told me she was going to get well. She had a feeling she was going to die and kept it from me, a good-for-nothing who didn’t deserve to have anybody care about him.
She went to my father’s house and that night I moved our furniture to my mother-in-law’s. I saw her in the morning: “Mi vida, here I am, but I’ve got to leave for work.”
“Fine,” she said, “and may God bless you.”
When I got back from work in the evening, my father met me at the door. “Come in, you good-for-nothing, you god-damned son-of-a-bitch, see what you’ve done, pinche cabrón, you’re the one who’s responsible. It’s your fault if she dies.” I don’t know why but I had a feeling it was the truth. While he was talking to me I couldn’t look at him.
Paula heard him bawling me out. She looked at me with eyes full of love … and he said that in front of her! My answer? Nothing! I wanted to shout that he was wrong but, as always, I swallowed my words, because he was my father, no? But that time, more than others, I felt mortified.
I got down on my knees by the bed. “Here I am, old girl.” She put out her hand and held me. I can still feel her fingers. She caressed my head and pulled at my ear. She smiled at me, then she lay there as if she were sleeping.
The baby began to cry, and I was very much upset because she woke up Paula, who then had to nurse her. In those days, when I saw how ill my wife was, I had an aversion toward the baby. It seemed to me as she nursed at the nipple, that she was sucking away Paula’s life. And when she cried at night, disturbing my wife, it made me angry. I felt this rancor toward my youngest child for a long time.
The next day Paula was worse and when I came back from work, my father again greeted me with, “Hijo de la chingada! Son-of-a-bitch! You see, you didn’t give her enough to eat. Why do you bastards marry if you cannot see to things. Now what? If this woman dies, what will you do with your children?” I wanted to hold my ears and tell him, for the first time in my life, “Shut up! Shut up!”
Someone, Delila I believe, sent for a priest to give Paula the last rites. Seeing him there scared me, and I said, “Father, I want to marry this woman.” He turned to look at me.
“Hmmm, now that she is dying you want to marry her. And you had all those years to do it!” He didn’t marry us! I was going to pay him … they usually ask if you have money to pay before they come … but I didn’t, because he had refused to marry Shorty and me. He went out angry. But I was angry too. He was a servant of God; if God saw one of his children … no matter who … suffering, he wouldn’t go and give him another blow, the way that priest did to me.
After that, my father told me to run for the doctor because Paula was failing. “Yes, papá,” and I ran, forgetting to take bus fare with me. It was past midnight and I hurried all the way to Rosario Street on foot. Dr. Ramón lived in the same house as Lupita. Antonia greeted me and told me that the doctor had been drinking. She went upstairs to see him, because I was so tired, and soon came down with a prescription.
“He said to inject this immediately.”
I had to walk back to the Casa Grande. I had been on my feet all day at the shop, and they swelled up on me. When I got to the house, my father gave me money for the medicine and I had to walk again, looking for a drugstore that was open, “de turno.” After that, back at the Casa Grande, I began knocking on doors to find someone to give the injection. It was about 4:30 A.M. and no one opened his door.
At five o’clock Paula was in a coma, and I desperately went to try again. This time a woman woke up and agreed to give the injection. Damn her for waking up, damn her for giving the injection! I have always cursed that moment, but now I believe my wife’s time had come, that possibly it was her turn to die, because a little while … a few minutes … after the injection, Antonia came running yelling, “Don’t give the injection! Don’t give it or she’ll die!”
My wife began to move her arms frantically. We could see her heart palpitating hard. Then the doctor came running in. “Did they give the injection?” He told us that the medicine had to be mixed with blood first, or it would bring on a heart attack. Then, what he did, was to take blood from my brother (he had the universal type) and inject it into her. She began to move, then, little by little, she opened her eyes. And then she died. She died.
“Papá, she’s dead, my wife is dead!” I shouted with desperation, with rage, with all the anxiety of life. He ran in and embraced her and cried. I banged my head against the wall, I tried to break it with my hands. And I shouted with all my soul, “It isn’t possible! There is no God! God cannot exist!” It pains me now, but that is what I blasphemed. I had so much faith that she would get better! Not for a moment did I believe that she would die. I remembered that God had said faith can do anything. So when she died, I blasphemed.
I believe that the good-for-nothing, worthless doctor killed her. The bum was dead drunk, and without seeing the patient, he prescribed the medicine. A few days before he had analyzed her urine and said she had diabetes. We had called in Dr. Valdés, a high-priced doctor, who said it was not diabetes. But seeing how ill she was, he washed his hands of the case. Later the doctor told me she was intoxicated, or perhaps had tuberculosis of the stomach. My father latched on to that to say that I had killed her, I had starved her to death.
It is true that I didn’t spend enough time with my wife and children. I should have come home early every day. Yes, I neglected her, but I swear that never, never did I leave my wife without money for food. I could have given her more, but she had at least enough to eat. It was the medicine that killed her!
Consuelo says that I didn’t love Paula, that I never showed her affection. But it is that I followed my father’s school, because even when he was living happily with Elena he never permitted himself to show affection for her in our presence. I was the same way with Shorty. The only time I loved her up was in bed, in the dark. In front of my father and brother and sisters, I was tyrannical with her. I was very strict in my way of speaking, but she must have felt affection on my part because she continued to love me all those years.
My father kept throwing it into my face that it was my fault … that I wasn’t man enough … that I had neglected her … that I didn’t take her to a doctor in time. He lowered me to the level of assassin. I wanted to shout, “Isn’t my suffering enough? I lost part of my life, part of my heart has left me! It isn’t true, what you are saying.” But he said it in anger. Right or wrong, he was my father and had worked to support me and, at one time, had had illusions of love for me. So I wasn’t able to answer him, though I knew he was lying. He was my father. As far as I am concerned, my father can do anything with me he wishes. Even if he tried to kill me, I wouldn’t defend myself.
I kept my wife laid out two days … a day and a half … I don’t know how long I kept her. When I saw her lying cold and stiff, I wanted to die. I even grabbed a knife to kill myself, but my son came in and asked me for five centavos. I burst out crying and thought, “How can I kill myself? My poor children!” I was going crazy, so crazy that I didn’t e
ven know how much the funeral cost. My friend Alberto and my father, took care of everything. Lots of people came to the wake … they came from the cafés Paula had worked in, from the cafés I ate in, from the market, from the vecindad. I wanted to tell them all to go away and leave me alone with the corpse.
She was buried in the Dolores cemetery, in the same grave as my mother and cousin, for after seven years they remove the bones and bury someone else on that spot. I have a horror of funerals. They say that just before the coffin is lowered, the corpse breaks out in goose pimples, because it is aware that it is about to be buried. The coffin gets heavier and heavier, because the body doesn’t want to be buried. That is what happened to Paula’s coffin, even though she had lost so much weight and was all bones.
I hope that when my turn comes, when I get the final kick from “el coco,” that they leave me on top of a hill, in the open air, or that they wrap me up like a mummy the way the Pharaohs did, or at least, that a surgeon removes my brain, so that I won’t suffer in my grave. I don’t know why, but I have a horror of being buried. I’d prefer to be devoured by coyotes on a hill, than by worms under the earth. Yes, I am more afraid of worms than of wild animals.
I’ve never gone to the cemetery since. I don’t go because I believe that my wife will feel my presence and that instead of bringing her peace, I will bring her torment. She would get restless in her grave because she had loved me so. Feeling my presence, she would want to get out to speak to me, to embrace me, and she wouldn’t be able to.
I believe that crying over the dead is sheer hypocricy, because I noticed that I cried a lot for Paula, showing, after her death, the love I should have shown while she was alive. It is not love that makes a person cry like that, but a feeling of guilt. That is why I say I will never go to the cemetery again, not until my own funeral.
The day I buried my wife, in the midst of my despair, in the middle of my great sorrow, I thought, “I still have Graciela. I still have her.” I clung to the thought like a drowning man to a raft. But when Graciela heard about Paula’s death, the deep remorse and the whole combination of passions she felt, made her do the last thing she should have done. The day I buried Shorty, Graciela went off with Señor Rodolfo, the man her mother had always been trying to get her to live with. She loved me with all her soul, she adored me, right? But she wanted to punish herself, and her first reaction was to go off with him, a man she didn’t love.