by Oscar Lewis
But he didn’t let me go. His words came out, little by little. They sounded different, very hollow, very thick. “Do you think I am going to leave you here, eh? How innocent you are. I brought you here for you to decide. Either you be mine or—”
Jaime pulled out a stiletto. It was very close to my stomach. All it needed was one little push and it would have gone into me. I felt my sight get hazy. I didn’t answer for a few seconds. I just squeezed my purse and inwardly begged my mother to help, and the Virgin of Guadalupe, too. The worst of it was that he was in complete possession of his senses, so I couldn’t fight with him. I could already feel the chill of the point in my stomach.
Without moving, but trembling inside, and wishing I could bolt and run, I said, “Come on! If you are going to kill me, why don’t you do it? You know you will be doing me a favor. I ask you to do it, as I would ask for alms. You know nobody needs me, and so it doesn’t matter to me if I die here or someplace else. You would do something that the rest would thank you for. You would be getting rid of the proud one, the cynic, the disrespectful one, the vain woman you say I am. I have no feelings, so do it.” There was a silence … I felt as if I were going to fall.
Finally Jaime lowered the weapon and began to cry. I drew a deep breath. I heard his sobs, like those of a child. He threw down the weapon and embraced me. “Forgive me, mi vida. It’s that you drive me crazy, you are so indifferent. But I love you, I love you.” His words kept getting louder and louder until he shouted. “I don’t care if they see me cry. I love you, I love you.” I took advantage of the moment. “Let’s go, mi vida, forget all this. After all, I love you, too. Why should we make each other suffer like this? Let’s go, negrito. I promise that I won’t be so harsh with you any more. I love you, mi vida.”
We went back to my aunt’s house. I was more dead than alive. I felt as though my legs were made of rubber, and I began to sweat and tremble. My stomach ached dreadfully. “What’s wrong with you?” the people who were there asked. I couldn’t say anything in front of them. My aunt gave me some camomile tea and that was the end of it. I did not see Jaime again until two weeks later when he showed up drunk, raving about Rebeca, Bélica, Estela, Yolanda, Adelaida, and I don’t know how many others.
About this time I got to know Mario better. He was now the one who took charge of me, saying, “I haven’t much to offer you, only these two hands that will work for you. I have no profession, but I promise that I will do everything possible so we won’t lack anything. Even if we eat only a pot of beans at least you’ll get away from all of this.” Mario, who worked near my aunt’s, had already proposed to me on two or three occasions. But I still had the hope of getting out of the city and making another life for myself without tears, without humiliations, and with a will to live, even to study.
I made one more try to enter a convent or some religious order. “I wasn’t born to be outside. I want peace. I want tranquillity.” That is what my thoughts were. “But money, money, a thousand pesos, a thousand—” They had told me the amount of money necessary to enter a convent was a thousand pesos. I never confirmed this but I did ask a nun what I had to do to get in.
“If you have your parent’s consent—”
“I have no mamá.”
“Well, if your father agrees, you can get in.”
“What else do I need?”
“To be a legitimate child.”
This cut off cold my desire to enter. My father had never married my mother, either by church or by civil law.
I found a job, but it proved to be temporary. I saw Mario the day I was fired and he promised he would talk to his father and get me a job. I didn’t want to give my aunt the bad news that day and, besides, I wasn’t really welcome with my uncle, so I decided to go and live with Santitos. My aunt regretted it very much and was also a little angry.
After I moved to Santitos’ house, I found work at the CTM union, the Confederation of Mexican Workers. Irma, an ex-classmate of mine, helped me get the job. I began to feel good and I never would have gone back to my aunt’s house if it hadn’t been for the fact that I worked until eight-thirty or nine at night. After work, I went to a dance hall with Irma for an hour or so and didn’t get home until about 10:00 P.M. The section where Santitos lived had no electricity or water, or pavement, and scared me at those hours. It was near the canal where there were holdups. When I finally got home it was because I had said all the prayers I ever knew, with my heart in my mouth and my eyes bulging, trying to see in the dark.
A girl at the union accepted another job and her boss had me work for him at more pay. But my bad luck hounded me. Irma got jealous and began to intrigue behind my back. I couldn’t take more trouble, so I left that job and moved back to my aunt’s.
I was coming around to deciding to stay at Mario’s house. What irony! I, who had promised to be as humble as a saint, to follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi, who had so ardently desired to have the purity of a nun and the dedication of a priest, would go with this man to have peace. Little by little I had changed. What was happening hurt me deep inside but I never showed my feelings. I tried to act cynical. What difference did it make? I closed my eyes to everything and decided I could do it. After all, if my father didn’t care, it certainly didn’t matter to others.
One afternoon, Mario and I came back from the movies and went to his house. He said, “Stay, don’t go.” If he only knew the whirlwind that went through my mind at that moment in spite of all the deciding I had been doing. If I stayed, it meant I was his. But what was the point of going home? For them to throw me out? For my father to ask me what I came for? I couldn’t stand it at my aunt’s any longer. I had no job. I had hoped others would open their doors to me, but they hadn’t.
“Be it as God wills!” I closed my eyes to everything at that moment. Nothing interested me any more but getting out of that world that was smothering me. I wanted to stop the stabbing pains in my eyes and the daily humiliations, to put an end to my hunger, to get rid of Jaime.
“All right,” I said and felt my head whirl. Mario was very pleased, of course, and told his mother. She accepted but I could see that she didn’t like me. That night, she had me sleep with her, and Mario slept with his father, Señor Reyes. The next day, even the sun seemed different and the streets prettier. How calm everything was in that house. Mario’s mother insisted on renting a room on the next block for him. I went there only to do the household chores after he had left for work. His mother wanted to keep us apart, she said, until after we married. Mario was impatient, but I was happy with the arrangement.
Then one morning when I came in with the bread, I heard Mario and his mother quarreling. She was shouting and accusing him of wanting her to support him and his girl friend. “Don’t tell lies, mamá. I give you money for her,” he answered. I acted as though I hadn’t heard but when he went to work and his mother left for the market, I threw all my clothes into a paper bag and went to my aunt’s house. I wasn’t afraid to look for a job again and support myself. But it killed me to go back to my aunt’s house.
I was sitting in my aunt’s chair having a cup of black coffee when Mario arrived. He was terribly pale and when he saw me, he began to cry. He blamed his mother for everything and embraced me and said I must never stop loving him. (I had to he to him about that.) He refused to go home and moved into the shoemaker’s shop next door to my aunt, selling his clothes and other things to get money for the rent and food. He had only one suit left.
I had been telling him that I didn’t like the neighborhood, that it was doing me harm and that I wanted to leave it. I managed to convince him that we had to move out of Mexico City. That was when he confessed to me that Señor Reyes was not his real father. His father was in the Sindicato of the Department of Communications and could get Mario a transfer to some other city. By then I didn’t believe anything. But his father did come through with a transfer to a job in Monterrey.
All the neighbors promptly knew I was going to
leave. The afternoon we said good-bye they were at my aunt’s house. My aunt had told me, “Give them something, daughter, so they’ll remember you.” I thought this strange, but I complied. They were only humble gifts, a glass to one, an old skirt to another, but they received them with pleasure. When I had given four or five gifts my aunt said, “With these things you won’t forget her, will you?” They thanked me and left, asking me to write them often. My aunt was crying.
Poor Mario! He took me to Monterrey, hoping to find true love. He was looking for a love so abstract, that it could not be touched or understood or explained in words. He thought he would find this love in me. But love is something both people must feel, a beautiful light that falls from above upon man and woman. The light fell upon Mario, but not upon me. I still loved Jaime and there was no room in my heart to love Mario. I was using him as a life rope to help me get out of the deep well into which I had fallen. I planned that once he took me to Monterrey, I would remake my life alone.
Marta
IN CRISPÍN’S HOUSE, MY MOTHER-IN-LAW GAVE THE ORDERS, THE CHILDREN paid no attention to my father-in-law. Crispín was very mean to him, and acted like his equal. Once he scolded his father for coming home drunk, as though the father were the son and the son the father!
My mother-in-law pampered Crispín, who was the youngest. He was the type of man who was always taking sides and who didn’t like to be left behind in a discussion. He quarreled a lot with his older brother Ángel and when his mother intervened, Crispín would say foul things to her.
This brother, Ángel, was married by church and civil law, to a woman named Natalia. They separated and got together a few times and being so Catholic, they really carried the cross. Ángel got a job in Acapulco and took her there to live. His work kept him away from home a lot, and once, when he came home early, he found her in bed with another man, a fruit vendor. He beat them both, although to my way of thinking, he was to blame for leaving his wife alone. Ángel spent three days in jail, and then he brought Natalia back to Mexico City.
My mother-in-law wanted Ángel to kick Natalia out, but he kept her for revenge. At night, I could hear her crying and begging to be allowed to go home. Then came a slap or a blow and more howls. This went on for fifteen days, night after night. Crispín, too, let her have it. He was a great admirer of the fair sex, but when he heard of a woman betraying a man, he wanted to wipe her off the map.
During the day, Natalia was not allowed out alone, not even to the bathhouse. When she went to see her mother, they accompanied her. She was just like a prisoner. I asked her why she didn’t leave, once and for all, and she said they had threatened to take away her son, her only child. She and Ángel are still together and have two more children.
Crispín’s eldest brother, Valentín, also had trouble with his wife. At sixteen, when the family still lived in Puebla, he had married a woman much older than himself. They were married by both laws and had two children, but that didn’t mean a thing because when they came to Mexico City she took up with another man. She finally went off with him leaving her children with Valentín, which was unusual, because most women who go off with another man leave their children with their own parents. So Valentín took the children to his mother-in-law and got a divorce.
Crispín’s family never liked me because I didn’t know how to do a thing. I helped my mother-in-law very little. She was one of those exaggeratedly clean housekeepers who changed the bedsheets every eight days and was always scrubbing and dusting.
I found it hard to attend Crispín properly. He was very fussy about his clothes and his meals. When I washed his pants, my hands blistered and my mother-in-law had to finish the job. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wash and iron his shirts the way she did. No wonder she was annoyed with me! But I tried and it is not true that I spent all my time in the street, as she said.
Crispín wanted to continue living with his mother, but I couldn’t stand it. After two weeks, we set up a place of our own. We had one small room and a kitchen, in a vecindad of about fifteen families. Crispín bought a bed and his mother gave us a table and two chairs and some pots and pans.
At first I liked it. I admit our life was disorderly. I realize I was useless and not fit to be a housewife. I kept the house as best I could; it was not perfect but at least it was not too dirty.
I didn’t become pregnant for about nine months and Crispín was angry about the delay. He would follow me to the toilet to see if I was taking douches. Then he took me to a woman doctor to check whether I had taken anything to keep from having a child. After that he suspected the doctor of having made me sterile! But the very next month I became pregnant with Concepción.
For three months I felt nauseated and kept vomiting. I couldn’t take anything but liquids. Everything bothered me—my breasts, my belly, the baby moving … until I got used to it. I thought Crispín would be pleased about the pregnancy, but it was then that he showed me what he was really like. Do you know what kind of a man he turned out to be? One of those who like to have a wife and children, but without being responsible for them! While I was pregnant, he began to go out with other girls, and I learned that he had a child with another woman.
Now that I had a husband, I had a presentiment that I should not trust my girl friends. I noticed that Irela and Ema would talk to Crispín about their problems and ask him for advice. I was waiting for Ema to do me dirty but my bullet missed its mark because it turned out to be Irela. She was my best friend and already married and I just didn’t expect her to fool around with Crispín.
Crispín had always chased women. He was without morals. One day he invited Irela for a soda, then to the movies, then to the fair. He was out enjoying himself, while I was shut up with my mother-in-law. I noticed how he changed even before I knew about Irela, because a woman can sense these things. He’d come home and dress up. If I didn’t have a clean shirt for him, he’d bawl me out right in front of his mother. I tried to have one always ready for him. No sooner did he take off his dirty shirt when I’d have the water full of suds to wash it.
When he went out, he never said anything to me, but to his mother he’d say, “Mamacita, I’ll be right back.” He’d come home at midnight and instead of using his key, he’d make me get up and unlock the door for him. I really think he began to hate me. He’d get mad and say I was incapable and that only his parents knew how to take care of him. He didn’t drink, but he hit me anyway, like a drunkard, over insignificant things. I couldn’t find any way to please him.
Crispín had forbidden me to go home, but I would rather die than not see my father, so I went secretly almost every day. My husband didn’t like the way my papá helped me with money and food. Crispín gave me only twenty-five pesos a week and for a woman who was beginning to run a house and who didn’t know where to buy things, it wasn’t nearly enough. So my papá would give me fifteen or thirty pesos in cash and would send milk, sugar and other things. But Crispín didn’t care whether I had enough or not and he wanted me to cut myself off completely from my family.
It was during one of my visits home that Antonia told me Crispín was fooling around with Irela. I didn’t want to believe it, but one day, as I was leaving my mother-in-law’s to buy kerosene, I surprised the two of them. I was passing through the alley when I saw Crispín making signals to Irela about what time to meet her. Irela saw me and realized that I knew what was going on. I just kept walking.
The next day Crispín took me to the movies. As we were going home, we saw Irela and Ema talking together. They caught sight of us and began to laugh. Crispín said, cynically, “Are they laughing with you or at you?” That made me very angry and I said to myself, “I’m going to get hold of that bitch, Irela.”
When I went for bread, I met her in the entrance of the Casa Grande. Right away I said, “Listen, Irela, what are you trying to do, fooling around with Crispín?”
Instead of keeping quiet, or denying it, the way any married woman would, she said nervously, �
��It’s Crispín’s fault. He insisted on taking me to the movies and I had to go so that my husband wouldn’t come home and find him there.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?” I asked. “And what were you and Ema laughing at?”
Then she had the nerve to say, “Well, it was very funny because Crispín had asked me to go to the movies with him, and when I couldn’t go he took you.”
I began to shout, without caring who heard. “Watch out, Irela. All you do is fool around with married men. I don’t intend to make a fool of myself every time Crispín goes after some skirt, but I’m giving you warning. If you don’t leave him alone, there’ll be trouble!”
Then I noticed a silver slave bracelet on her arm. It was one my brother had given me. Crispín had taken it and then said he had lost it. So that was what he did with my bracelet! I ripped it off her and ran to look for that cynical bastard husband of mine. I told him to marry Irela and let me have my baby in peace. I also told my mother-in-law so that if we did separate she wouldn’t blame me. But Crispín denied everything, and his family believed him. We didn’t separate that time and things went back to normal.
When my sister Antonia first told me about Crispín’s wanderings, she had advised me to pray to the Santa Muerte at midnight for nine nights, with Crispín’s picture and a candle made of suet in front of me. She promised that before the ninth night, my husband would forget all about the other woman. I bought the novena prayer from a man who sold these things in the vecindad and memorized it. It went like this:
Jesus Christ, Triumphant, who triumphed on the Cross! I want you to intervene, Father, and bring Crispín to me so that I can overcome him. In the name of the Lord, if he is like a fierce animal, make him as gentle as a lamb. Make him as mild as the romero flower. He ate bread and gave of it to me, he drank water and gave of it to me. Now, Lord, I want all the things he promised me. With Your infinite power, bring him to my feet, beaten and tied, to fulfill his promises. For You, Lord, all things are possible and I beg you insistently, to concede this to me, promising to be your most faithful follower for the rest of my life.”