by Oscar Lewis
Marta
THE REASON I WENT BACK TO CRISPÍN … WELL, NOW, HOW WAS IT? The thing was, after all that time, his mother was asking to see the girls, Concepción and Violeta. Trini was just one and a half years old and Crispín had never asked about her or made her a single fiesta. I took the two older girls to see their grandmother in December. Crispín and I talked things over, though there was really no need to discuss, because he knew very well he was to blame for Trini.
Well, it was a long time since we had spoken and we kept looking at each other, you know what I mean? So he said, “All right, then, so what?”
“Well, so what?” I said. ’Concepción needs shoes and clothes because she hasn’t any. And Violeta, too.” I really didn’t have anything else to say to him.
“We’ll buy them on Saturday,” he says.
“All right, fine.”
“Your papá is with Delila, isn’t he?”
“No, I don’t know.” I think my cheeks got red, because then he said, “Well, you don’t have to be ashamed.”
“I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Is it a shame to live with a woman?”
“No, don’t get embarrassed.”
And that was as far as we talked. He said he would wait for me at the Social Security building on Saturday, and I went home with the girls.
Saturday came and we went and bought Concepción a pair of shoes, and Violeta, too. I didn’t mention Trini at all. The only thing he said to me was that I was too proud. I told him it wasn’t pride, but shame, that after what he had done, he shouldn’t even have spoken to me again.
“What did I do?” he says, as if he expected me to overlook everything and go back to him without mentioning Trini. It seemed he was willing to recognize her as his daughter, as though she was just going to be born starting from that moment. Imagine, he hadn’t left me until I was seven months pregnant; that was when he tried to make out that she wasn’t his daughter. If a man knows his wife is going to have a baby and it is not his, right away he would say, “Okay, where did you get it, because I am sure it isn’t mine.”
But Crispín didn’t do that. He didn’t leave me until two months before Trini was born. He wasn’t ashamed to go around with me all that time. If it was like he said, he would have left me from the first minute, don’t you think? I really don’t know what was the matter. His mother and sister had a big influence over him and told him I was going around with other men. And I wasn’t going with anyone at that time. Wherever anyone saw me, I was alone or with the girls, so I have nothing to reproach myself with on that score.
When we were through buying, I said good-bye and started to leave.
“You’re going? Just like that?” said Crispín.
“What do you expect? What do you want?” I said. Then I got mad. “Do you expect me to pay you back? What do you want me to pay with, my body?” I talked like that ever since the time I had tangled with him on the street, when we beat each other. You might say that was the day I freed myself from him. From then on, I said what I had to say with strong words. Lots of times I would even tell him that he should be ashamed not to support his little girls and all that, things I couldn’t say before because I was afraid to go too far.
“Don’t be like that, Marta,” he said.
“Why not? That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? I knew just what to expect from you, that you would have to get something in exchange for what you give your daughters.”
“No,” he says, “it’s not that … I don’t know how to explain it.”
“If you were fed up with me, why do you want to go back to the same thing?”
“I never said I was fed up.”
“The proof is that you left and didn’t even say a word.”
He kept quiet and we walked on, until we came to the door of a hotel.
“Come on,” he says.
“No!” I say.
“Don’t make a fuss.”
“I’ll make one if I feel like, even if you bust me in the mouth.” Then I said all of a sudden, “Sure, you have to receive some kind of payment, don’t you?” So I up and go in. After being without a man for so long, I went into that hotel with him.
Why did I do it? Because I felt like? Because of desire? Not exactly. There were several men around who hadn’t just proposed taking me to a hotel, but who had offered to set up a home for me. Nevertheless, I didn’t because I knew perfectly well ever since Trini was a year old that if I went with a man I would become pregnant again. I have always gotten pregnant after the girls were a year old and that was precisely why I held myself back.
But I really couldn’t say that Crispín forced me into that hotel, not in a certain sense. You might say I had my next baby for two pairs of shoes. He knew when he bought them that I had no other way to repay him. I fell in, because I said to myself, “This man is not going to change.”
So we had this interview in the hotel. As far as whether I enjoyed it … well, I didn’t because I did it with anger. The second time we went to the hotel … the thing was, we went again to buy clothes for Concepción but, as a matter of fact, we didn’t buy anything because we went straight to the hotel. That time I made him mad because I got away from him. I began to see that I was being a fool; all at once it made me mad to see that we were going to do the same thing all over again. We were in bed and he was just on the point of making use of me when I got mad and got out of bed.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Why are you leaving?”
“Because I feel like it.”
“You just try to go out and you’ll see what will happen.”
“You won’t do anything to me. Not you or twenty like you will stop me. You’re not dealing with the same dupe as before.”
This had happened other times in hotels, but I never got past the door because he would catch me and slap me around. He must have figured I would be afraid to go this time. He was still lying there when I left. I was nervous in the street, wondering when he would catch up with me and start a fight.
That was in December. In January, I waited for my menstruation and it didn’t come. I didn’t even have time to tell Crispín I was pregnant because when he came on the sixth of January, the Day of the Kings, to give Concepción and Violeta their toys, he was angry with me and wouldn’t come in. Then, that evening I saw him in the street as the girls and I were going to visit Lupita. When he saw us, he crossed the street to avoid me, but Concepción yelled, “Look, there goes Crispín,” and he came back.
“Where are you going?” he says to me.
“To Lupita’s.”
“Ah, you are going to see your lover there.”
“What lover?” I was fed up with his suspiciousness and to change the subject I told him about the circus in the El Dorado Colony. He gave me five pesos to take the girls.
“What about me?” I asked, and he gave me another five pesos. Then he said to Concepción, “I’ll come for you on Saturday, daughter, to buy you candy.”
The week went by without me seeing him. On Saturday morning, my friend Raquelle came in and said, “How do you like that! There’s Crispín standing in the doorway of his house and that Eustakia is walking up and down in front.”
“Yes?” I say, “I’ve got a yen to see them together.”
“Okay, then let’s go.”
This Eustakia had gotten mixed up with Raquelle’s novio and came out of it pregnant. Then she took up with Crispín and told him he was the father of her child. So Raquelle and I were both sore at the girl.
We walked by Crispín’s house but nothing was happening and we kept going around the block. The next thing I knew, I saw Crispín in the distance, walking with his arm around another woman, who turned out to be an old friend of his family. She was married and had children and I had often seen her in Crispín’s house. I had always thought there was something queer about her, but how was I to know she and Crispín … I was such a kid then, anyone could mak
e a sucker out of me.
“Just look at that snake,” I said to Raquelle. “Here I am expecting to see him with one woman and I find him with another. And look who it is! It’s Amelia.”
Crispín went into the Social Security building and Amelia sat down on the steps to wait for him. Just to be mean, I up and very calmly sit next to her, just like that. I don’t know what saint she commended herself to, but at that moment a man she was acquainted with rode by on a bicycle and she went over to talk to him, acting like she didn’t know what was happening.
I figured Crispín would come soon, so I hid in the corner beauty parlor, which was run by Nicha, a friend of mine. When Nicha saw me she said, “What do you say? What are you up to?”
“You’d be surprised,” I say. “My old man … my ex-old man, is running around with that bitch there and I just want to see them together.”
“Really? Are you that thick-skinned toward the louse?”
“Why not? We haven’t been together since I-don’t-know-when and I want to catch him with one of his women. But I have no way of making demands on him or of accusing him.”
I saw Crispín coming. Amelia had crossed the street and had passed the beauty parlor, where I was watching from behind the curtains. He was following her. Just as he came by the shop, I sent out Concepción to greet him.
“Papá, give me a quinto!”
Crispín turned around, very surprised. I came out carrying Trini. He was saying to Concepción, “Saturday, I’ll come and take you on Saturday.” He was real nervous and kept looking toward Amelia, who had turned around to watch. Then I said, “Come, daughter. Can’t you see you’re not wanted here. Come on, why are you making a pest of yourself? You are interfering with your papá.”
And instead of him asking, “What makes you say that?” because after all we were beginning a reconciliation, what he came out with was, “You and I have nothing to say to each other.”
It made me furious to see him turn toward that woman with a frantic expression on his face. He must have been saying to himself, “Now I’ve given away the show!”
I said, “You are right. We don’t have anything to say to each other, so don’t get the idea that I am going to fight. That’s where you are making a big mistake. Come on, daughter, let’s go.”
I was still calm. Then all at once he came out with it.
“If you want me to support you, why do you go whoring around?”
“Look, I don’t go whoring around. I didn’t get my children on the street. You know very well who gave them to me.”
We were in front of the machine shop and there were plenty of people listening. I kept on talking.
“It’s too bad about the skirt you got hold of. Maybe you were right to change me, but not for such a woman. You like the kind who already has some sucker hooked so that you have no obligation. You are a man who likes to take advantage. A real man doesn’t do what you did.”
“You shouldn’t talk, because you’ve got your pimp.”
“I don’t have one, but I’m going to find myself one just to break your jaw.” I called him bastard and a bunch of foul names. I was plenty vulgar to him. “And don’t bother me again. That’s all I ask. Just don’t bother me again.”
That was one of the biggest fights we ever had. I had once warned him that I would stick with him until I saw with my own eyes that he was going with someone else. Other people would tell me he was going with girls, and I would try to forget what they said. But what I saw with my own eyes, I could never forget. “So watch out that I don’t see you,” I had told him. “For if I do, don’t count on me from that time on.”
I should have been able to develop a shell and be like other women who do not pay attention to what their husbands do outside the house, especially since mine was trying to get me back. But when I saw him making a fool of me by taking up with that old woman, I couldn’t contain myself. I preferred to renounce everything again. I could never accept the idea of him being able to have another woman and me at the same time. No! It would be better for him to abandon me, or me to leave him, once and for all. So I up and got on the bus, and I haven’t spoken to him since.
In February, on the thirteenth, I had my big fight with Consuelo. Delila had gotten tired of taking care of Manuel’s children, so I had charge of all four of them, in addition to my three. Roberto was working in the factory and had been giving me money toward expenses, but after a while he stopped. He just didn’t want to any more and there was no way of forcing him. The only one who helped me was my papá. He gave me ten pesos daily besides bringing me coffee, sugar and oil. When the children were brought to the Casa Grande, Manuel agreed to give me ten pesos a day for their food. His new wife, María, came over once in a while to help me with his kids.
I had warned Manuel that the day he didn’t leave me expense money, I wouldn’t have anything to give his children. I said it without raising my voice but it didn’t do any good. Twice, he didn’t give me money and I had to send the children to Gilberto’s café to look for him. I gave them their breakfast early and then said to Mariquita, the oldest one, “Go on, go to your father and tell him that you haven’t had breakfast yet because he didn’t bring me money.”
I had to step lively to feed all those kids and send them off to school. I brought Roberto his dinner at the factory at twelve o’clock sharp and the children had to eat at twelve-thirty to get back to school. And I always sent them to school bathed, or at least washed.
So this day it got to be time to go to school. I said to Mariquita, “Now, I’m late. I am going to let you bathe them. But don’t bathe them with cold water, daughter.” Well, she bathed them all with cold water … Alanes, Domingo, Conchita and Concepción. I managed to bathe Violeta and Trini and was hurrying the older ones off to school when Consuelo came in.
Well, right off Consuelo saw Concepción come over with a pencil and a notebook of Domingo’s. So Consuelo began to scold her, saying, “I told you not to be taking things that belong to your cousins.”
Consuelo and my oldest daughter had had a few quarrels because Concepción did not want to lend her toys to Alanes and Domingo, who destroyed everything. She was very careful with her things and, naturally, she didn’t want the boys to smash them. That made Consuelo mad. She had always favored Manuel’s children, especially Mariquita, and rare was the day she gave anything to mine.
So I up and say, “It seems like you don’t understand your aunt, Concepción. Apparently you like to be scolded.”
“Yes, from now on I’m going to be as mean about your cousin’s things as you are about yours,” went on Consuelo. That made me mad and I threw the pencil to her.
“Here’s your stinking pencil. Is that what you are fighting about?”
We had been half sore at each other for some time anyway, because Consuelo was butting into my obligations too much. I was the one who had those kids day in and day out, and she came only in the evenings to make their supper and to boss everyone around.
Just think! Manuel usually gave me the food money the night before, so that I had it for the next day. When I gave the kids supper, I served them coffee with milk and bread and what was left over from dinner. That was what everyone I knew ate for supper. But not Consuelo! No, Consuelo, the presumptuous one, would go and buy eggs for them, just as if I had plenty of money. Ever since she went to school and worked in offices, she became so high-class she looked down on the way we did things. La Presumida kept insisting that we didn’t eat right … she even bought herself a knife and fork … and when she went out to buy food, she would come back with things like cornflakes and canned soup and tomato juice. She would spend all the house money on things we didn’t need. Why should I buy a can of peas when with the same money I can get each of my children a slice of meat? I knew how to stretch the money so we could all eat well, but she didn’t understand.
There were times when she left me with not over two pesos. Imagine having to face the day with two pesos! She did this to me
four times, but I didn’t say a word, I would just receive my money from my papá, without complaining to him about her, and would use the money to feed all of us. I didn’t fight with my sister, but we weren’t getting along well.
After I threw the pencil, Conchita complained to my sister that I had bathed her in cold water. That made Consuelo angry. She turned to me and said, “If you had any shame you wouldn’t even show your face.”
“Shame? What have I got to be ashamed about?”
“Sure. Even though my papá is supporting you, even though Manuel buys you your clothes and puts food in your mouth, you aren’t able to take care of his children properly. It is obvious they are not your childen. Manuel is supporting you and you do this to his kids!”
“Supporting me? He is not that good-hearted. If he barely gives enough for his children, he won’t be giving to others.” Would you believe it? She said that to me, and it wasn’t only Conchita who was bathed that way, but all of them. My sister kept it up, too.
“Your children are being supported, and you still have the nerve to be touchy.”
“Yes,” I said, “but you are not the one who is supporting me. When did I ever ask you for anything?”
“Oh,” she says, “then give me back all the clothes I gave you.”
“What clothes?” I had a few clothes then, but they were made out of dress lengths my papá brought me, or were ones I bought myself on payments. Consuelo had given me a little jumper and robe that didn’t fit her. Her boss’s wife had given her a bunch of clothes, but that was all she had passed on to me, because they were of no use to her. She kept telling me that she was the one who had been clothing me and it was a lie. If she ever gave me anything, it was old stuff that didn’t fit her any more.
So I up and open the wardrobe. “Go ahead, take out your dresses. If you think I have clothes of yours here, take them out.” It made me mad because she said that all I did was whore around, opening my legs so that they could give me kids. “If it comes to whores, who knows who is a bigger one! All my children are from the same father. So far you haven’t been a procuress for me, have you?”