by Oscar Lewis
Things got worse at home. My dishes and spoons were kept apart and the children were forbidden to come near me. I can’t begin to explain how I felt when my sister-in-law pulled them away from me by their arm or hair. Paula gave Mariquita terrible spankings for disobeying the new orders. I couldn’t mix in because when Manuel had first brought his wife home, my father had said, “The day I find out that any of you has been disrespectful to Paula, I’ll break your necks.” She never bothered us and, indeed, I thought my sister-in-law was very nice.
The time Manuel beat Paula without pity, Marta and I and Paula’s mother, Cuquita, mixed in and tried to defend her. Marta was living with us again, with her babies, because she had left Crispín for the third time. I was in the kitchen and didn’t see when the fight began. Paula was lying on the bedroom floor, crying and insulting him, and he was kicking her in the belly. He seemed crazy and didn’t care where the blows fell. I felt a tremendous desperation and screamed for him to stop. I got the children out first and left them crying in the courtyard. Marta and Cuquita were pulling at Manuel’s clothes, but he continued to hit Paula. Her abdomen was big with child, and that was precisely where he kept kicking her, there in her womb, her beautiful womb.
I don’t know who it was who forced the knife out of my brother’s hand, but, thank God, he didn’t get to use it. In desperation, I broke a clay jug over his head, fearful that he would turn on me, but he didn’t even notice it. I remembered how they knocked out men in the movies and I put my palms together and brought them down hard on the back of his neck, once, twice, four times! But that barbarian didn’t stop until he finally got tired.
I defended my sister-in-law more than once, so I couldn’t understand why Paula told something to Manuel which made him hit Marta and me. All I know is that something woke me up suddenly one morning and I heard Manuel saying “Get up, you! Do you think you’ve got servants or what? Just lying around all the time!”
Paying no attention, I spit on the floor. I was still half asleep when I felt that my eye was swelling up. I rubbed it and sat up. I saw my brother sitting on the other bed, swearing at me. The cardboard horse that Jaime and I had bought for the children was lying on the floor, where it had landed after hitting my eye. I said nothing, but spit again.
Manuel shouted at me, “Stop spitting! You are not the one who has to clean up.” But I was stubborn and spit again and at that Manuel leaped from his bed and hit me.
“Why are you hitting me? Who do you think you are? Imbecile, idiot, stupid!” He kept hitting me. Then my sister Marta jumped up and hit Manuel.
But how could we two women get the better of a tough guy who was used to street fighting? I was terrified when Manuel kicked my sister on the floor. I tried to help her, but couldn’t. If I managed to get a blow in, I got three or four back. I tried to run out even in my underwear, to call Yolanda. I had one foot in the courtyard when I was pushed so hard I rolled to the next room.
When Manuel finally stopped hitting us, Marta and I were black and blue all over; she was bleeding, my face was bruised and I had a black eye. But Manuel had also got some scratches and kicks. Marta cried a lot. I told her to get dressed, that we were going to leave the house, that I was going to get money. I was sure Jaime would not refuse to help me. I telephoned him and he came immediately in a taxi. He took us for breakfast, then to Lupita’s house, saying I should stay there until Manuel moved out. I argued against this because I thought if Paula left the house, the children would suffer. I knew my brother wouldn’t take care of his children. He didn’t even on Christmas Day; I was the one who bought them their toys.
We told my father what had happened and he said Manuel was the one who should leave. When we got back, Paula had already left, taking the children. Marta and I lived there alone. But Paula dressed up my Mariquita and sent her once a week to see us. To be sure, this caused gossip. People whispered that the little girl was mine. As a matter of fact, I really did feel as though she were part of me.
I found a temporary job addressing envelopes for a Bacardi rum firm. But we had no one to take care of the house because Marta by now had gone back to live with Crispín. Only my father, Roberto and I lived at home. One afternoon a girl, Claudia, came looking for work. She said she had just arrived from Zacatecas without a centavo. I felt sorry for her and gave her the job. That night when I told my father, he didn’t want her, but I said I would pay her and, in spite of my father, she stayed.
A number of months went by when my father told me he was going to bring Paula back to the house because she was very sick. I was alarmed, but since he always exaggerated, I didn’t believe it when he said she was like a corpse. She had been very fat at the time she left our house. I warned Claudia that there would be a little more work, but said I would help. The clothes would be sent out to be washed and it didn’t matter if she couldn’t finish the housework. The children were to be looked after first. She agreed.
When my father brought Paula, I was almost struck dumb to see her. What my father had said was true, she was unrecognizable, just skin and bones. She kept on her feet only because of her great love for her children. I pulled myself together and greeted her, smiling. “Hello, Paula, come on in and he down.”
When she lay down, I went into the kitchen to cry. I loved Paula very much, much more than my sister. Now she looked so ill, I couldn’t believe it was she. However, here were the three children and the new baby to prove it. When Mariquita saw me, she ran to hug me, and Alanes, too. Paula, in a very faint voice, said, “Give my little girl some milk. She’s hungry. I haven’t any to give her.” I heated the milk and gave it to the baby in a soda bottle. She was beautiful; her eyes were enormous and she was very fat, like the other three, who had grown big and filled out with life and color.
Claudia took care of the children while I was at work. Things had been going well and I was satisfied with her. When I got back, I would fix the food. Once a week I would clean the house, washing everything—floor, tables, chairs, the stove—and finish up exhausted. The baby was just seven months old and I had to give her her bottle early in the morning and change her diaper.
The house was very crowded now. Paula, the baby at her side, slept with Manuel and the three children crosswise on one of the beds. Roberto slept on the floor in the kitchen, and I in my bed. Later, Manuel made his old “bed” on the floor in front of the wardrobe because “the damned brats don’t let a man sleep.” At night, sometimes one of the children would wet the bed and Paula would pull his hair or pinch him and make him cry. Rather than witness that, I took the three children into my bed. I didn’t get much sleep but I didn’t complain.
In the mornings, it was difficult too, for I had to pick my way quietly among the piles of clothing, benches, chairs and get dressed while the others slept. Manuel’s sleeping form usually blocked the wardrobe door and I bumped him when I tried to get my clothes.
“What the hell are you doing, you damned brat?” or, “I’ll break your snout if you wake me up again,” he would say.
“Let’s see if your man enough!” I would answer. “What a fine fellow and he doesn’t give a centavo into the house!” And a quarrel would continue until everyone was awake and the children crying. I would escape with a bang of the front door and, with a smile on my face and usually nothing but coffee in my stomach, I would be off to work.
This situation didn’t last long, because Paula died soon after. When she died, I almost died. I would rather it had been me. I wished it with all my soul and shouted that they take my life and leave hers. I screamed for her not to die. Only He knew why He did it.
The night she was dying, we took the children to another house after she had blessed them. Paula looked like a corpse already, but that tiny flame that gives us our thirst for life made me keep hoping she wouldn’t die. Dr. Ramón came to give her a plasma transfusion. Dr. Valdés was taking care of her also. But she died. It was the most terrible blow of my life. It was as if suddenly a hand made of wax was pressing on
my brain. The color of the sunlight changed to a whitishness, like that of the bones I had seen in the graveyard. I don’t even know what I felt when she expired. I just cried. I cried so much my eyes ached.
The day we buried Paula I got another awful blow. When we came home from the cemetery, I asked Roberto to spread out some sacks for me, so I could lie down. I had no strength at all, I didn’t even feel like talking. Claudia sat down to eat with my father and my half-sister Marielena before serving my brother. I watched them eating together. It made me mad to see Claudia sitting there with my father. I became suspicious that there was something going on between them. I couldn’t take it when my father shouted at Roberto, “You, loafer! Take the knife and get to work and scrape the floor and wash it.”
I don’t know where I got the strength but I said to Roberto, “Why should you do it? It seems to me that’s what we pay this girl for. It’s her job to do it.”
I didn’t finish speaking before my father, with one leap, was right on top of me, shouting with real fury, “And who are you, you miserable creature? You’re not worth a five-centavo piece! Just look at yourself!”
That night he made me sleep in the bed in which Paula had died. Perhaps he thought this was a punishment. Once the light was out, I began to cry, not from the pain in my body now, but because I felt that my heart had been hurt.
After this, I had to swallow the presence of Claudia. She wasn’t the one who had to do the work, but I was. When I called her attention to the fact that she hadn’t brought water, or something else, she would complain to my father and I had to take humiliation and ill treatment. I couldn’t order Claudia to do anything. Again, I felt like nothing in the house.
But I remained in charge of the four children. My father said Manuel should support the children while Roberto and I help with the household expenses. My job for Bacardi came to an end just at that time, but I didn’t have to worry yet about paying rent or light. Later, Manuel said that what he earned wasn’t enough and I had to look for work so we could cover expenses.
In the meantime, I was happy with my little nephews and nieces, taking care of them, bathing them, and once in a while spanking them for misbehaving. They began to fatten up. I tried to feed them the best I could—raw sliced tomato with salt in the mornings, and milk during the day. I kept them clean, and the house too, and I was a little fatter myself. I wanted to keep these little children from suffering. The ideals and dreams I had had for my own family now centered on them.
My father began to show more favoritism to Claudia. My father gave her money or authorized her to get things on credit. Almost every day, she showed me new clothes she had bought. Whenever she asked for an advance he gave it to her, but when I asked for a peso or two to look for a job he would refuse. I saw that I was losing ground in my rights as the unmarried daughter. Marta had her home with the father of her children, Antonia and Marielena lived with their mother, I had come to know the run of the house and now that Paula was dead, I wanted to be the woman of the house. I saw danger in Claudia.
My father told me one night he was thinking of marrying her. I said he could do as he pleased but that he should recognize my rights and give me my proper place in the house. I fought to make my father see I wasn’t mad at his wanting to marry her but rather because of the way he treated me. He criticized and belittled me; he said I was conceited and arrogant, that I was trying to get out of my class. He told me to beat it because he was fed up with me. His words became harsher and harsher. One night he told me, “You look like your mother’s drunken race and you are as foolish as you look.”
“My mother is dead, papá, what harm is she doing you? Say anything you like to me but not to her.” His words hurt more because Claudia was there. And how I hated that woman!
The next day I went to my aunt’s and told her what my father had said. I cried and beat my forehead, cursing my bad luck. Again I began asking, “Tell me the truth, Auntie, am I not his daughter?” My aunt was very angry with my father and said she was going to take back my mother’s photo which hung next to one of my father on our wall.
“My sister isn’t going to be laughed at by any wretch!” she said. We both went to my house to get the picture. When I saw my father’s photo I said, “There’s no reason for that picture to be here. I’ll treat him the way he treats us.” I pulled it out of the frame I had bought in installments and began to beat it on the floor while Claudia and my aunt watched in amazement.
I was yelling and crying and tearing the picture when Roberto came in. He was furious and hit me, but the thing that made me cry most was that my father, my saint, had fallen from his pedestal. And that night he punished me in a way I did not expect. I came home late and found him sitting with all our baby photos on his knee and tears rolling down his cheeks. He was smoking, which was unusual. He asked me, rather gently, why I had torn up his picture and I didn’t know what to say. I cannot describe the terrible remorse I felt at that moment. I knelt at his feet, crying and begging his pardon. My papacito didn’t answer or move; he just held the photographs in his hand and the tears kept falling.
But my rebellion continued and I told Claudia we didn’t need her any more. When my father came home and didn’t find her there he chased me out and sent Roberto to bring her back. “If that girl doesn’t come back, you’ll be sorry, both of you, because I’ll rent this place and throw you out on the street.” Claudia came back and naturally after that did what she pleased. I spent all day at my aunt’s house, coming home only when my father was there.
That’s when I thought of Delila, Paula’s sister. She had left her husband, who was a drunkard, and needed a home for herself and her son. “She is of the same blood as the children, she is their aunt. How can she not take good care of them?” I said to my father. I kept insisting that Claudia was not a good worker and that the children were being neglected. Manuel had disappeared and was not contributing any money for them. My father was convinced and went to fetch Delila, although he still kept Claudia.
How could I have known when I said to my father, “Let Delila come, papá,” that I would grow to hate her! The few times I had had the opportunity of seeing her, I took her for a sweet, long-suffering girl who needed help. But now I know that she used that pose as a mask behind which to study the person she intended to attack. She thus gained an advantage which she used without scruple. She was like a snake who lay in the grass to spy on the fat victim she intended to destroy. She was astute and tricky and all that was evil.
When Delila moved in she behaved very well at first. She left her son Geofredo with her mother, so that he would not be in the way. We would talk and go to the movies. But this began to change little by little, or rather, she didn’t change but my father kept getting more difficult with me. I couldn’t touch anything any more. He would accuse me of taking things to my aunt and treated me like a thief. I couldn’t explain why my father hated me more than ever.
My father was also annoyed with Jaime, who was becoming unbearable even to me. His drinking became almost continuous. At night, Roberto would have to get up to take him home or put him in a cab, but thirty minutes later he would be back again, banging on the door. Rather than console me for what he saw was happening at home, he would get angry, insult me, shake me by the shoulders and say that I was annoyed with him because there was someone else. One time, completely drunk, Jaime smashed my picture against the door frame. Another time he tried to cut his veins and gave me a terrible scare. I couldn’t break with him because whenever I tried, he would make an attempt on his life. Besides, his mother cried and begged me not to be cruel to him.
One night I thought I should make him face things; the time limit my father had set was soon going to be up. “Three years,” my father had said when I introduced Jaime. If we lasted that long, we could get married. When I told him that I was thinking about the time limit being almost up, he said, “Look, Skinny, I had the money saved up for us to get married, but because you got mad, I spent it with
my friends.”
I felt as though the sky had fallen in. I had clung to the illusion that we would be married. His mamá had assured me we would. “You and my son will marry in August. We will make a lovely fiesta for you. I’ll pick out a dress with lots of lace and a long veil.” She would say how proud she was and how understanding my father would be.
Her words had made me go off into a thousand rosy dreams, like when I was fifteen. To honor my father was my greatest ambition; to enter on my father’s arm, in my white dress, and to go up to the altar with him, where the one who was going to give me his name would be waiting for me; to have the bridesmaids all around as I danced the waltz and to see the pleasure my father would feel when the daughter whom he had treated the worst and for whom he had the most contempt, had honored him. After the wedding, I would have my house, all furnished, and every week my family would come to have dinner with us. I had no intention of being disobedient to my husband in anything. I could stand next to him and hold my head high. Through all the trouble with Jaime I still had cherished this dream. But with his money gone there was no hope left.
But Jaime wasn’t my only problem. One morning Delila was preparing breakfast and my little nephew, Alanes, was sitting in the doorway trying to lace his shoe. Delila gave him a slap and told him to go to the store for something. The child said, “Right away, Aunt, I’m lacing my shoe.” Delila began to scream at him and hit him on the head with a spoon.
“Why do you hit him?” I said. “Don’t be unreasonable. The child can’t do two things at once.”
That was enough to bring Delila over to me shouting, “What business is it of yours? I’m breaking my back here, and I can do what I want with them. Don’t stick your nose in where you don’t belong.”