by Oscar Lewis
Baltasar was beaten so much that strangers took pity on him. One time, in Cuernavaca, some men bought him a ticket to send him back to his relatives in Acapulco, but his stepfather saw him on the bus and pulled him off. After that, he punished Baltasar by not giving him food. His mother had to steal tortillas for him, as though he were a stranger in the house.
When he was nine, Baltasar was apprenticed to a butcher in the mornings, and to a baker in the evenings, so he learned two trades at once. They paid him with a piece of meat and some bread, and he wasn’t hungry any more. Then Baltasar got sick and when his parents went back to Cuernavaca, they left him with his mother’s sister until he was well enough to travel. That’s when he lost his affection for his mother, because she abandoned him to his aunt. His aunt was the kind who wanted only to put money into her purse and never take out any. Out of pure self-interest, she kept Baltasar there to work for her son in the slaughterhouse. He worked all day long, washing and drying cows’ intestines and stomachs and carrying the waste to the garbage dump. Then all he got to eat was one taco. They beat him if he said he was hungry, or if he cried or wanted to go to his mother. His mother sent money for the bus ticket, but his aunt put it in her own purse.
Later, Baltasar had a fight with his stepfather, who tried to hit his mother with a hammer while she was drunk and couldn’t defend herself. So they threw Baltasar out of the house and that’s when he struck out for himself. When he was twelve, he got a job in the slaughterhouse for fifty centavos a day. They also gave him tripe, which he cleaned and dried and ate when he had no money. He slept on the beach or on hotel steps with other boys. They would catch fish and cook it on the beach and stretch out for the night, covered with newspaper. He would wash his own shirt and pants, spread them out on a hot stone, and bathe in the ocean while they were drying. It was a sad life. He felt like an orphan because he had no one to cook for him or take care of him.
Baltasar didn’t see his real father until he was sixteen. His father was a fisherman who lived in a different village. He was a good man and received his son well, but Baltasar didn’t go to see him and his stepmother and half-brothers again for several years. Baltasar had lots of women, but not one knew how to make a home for him. He said they didn’t understand him … all he asked of a woman was that she be for him alone, that she wash and cook for him at the proper hour, and when he came home drunk, to take off his shoes, put him to bed and forget about it.
The first night Baltasar and I slept together, it seemed to have been all arranged beforehand. His uncle didn’t sleep there that night, why, I didn’t know. I suppose it was already too much for Baltasar. I was expecting it by then. Anyway, there I was on the cot and he on the floor. It was very dark.
“Marta, I want to talk to you,” he says.
“What is it?”
“No, come over here.”
When I heard that, I thought to myself, “Hmmm, this is what he wanted. This was what he was waiting for.” So I said, “No, I can hear you fine from here,” making out that I didn’t know what was happening.
“No,” he says. “Look, I’m tired of going back and forth. If you want to live with me, I can’t offer you much, but at least you won’t go without food.”
I said no, that I had to go, that I had to wait … that I couldn’t. I knew I was pregnant. How could I tell him that there was still another child coming, in addition to the three girls. No!
“Tell me the reason. Is your husband coming?” He thought Crispín and I had separated only for a short time. I kept saying no and no and no.
“Look,” he said. “Stay and if you see that I don’t suit you, tell me, and if you don’t suit me, I’ll tell you. It will be like putting me to a test because I don’t know how I’ll be with a woman. I haven’t been with a woman for a long time.”
“Whew, this fixes me!” I thought. “Being a long time without a woman, he is going to want it all the more.” I was just about to tell him I was pregnant, when he said, “Why? Because of the baby that’s coming?”
“Yes, that’s why.” I have always been very, very honest with him, like I never was with Crispín.
“Well, then, what you have to do is not leave until the baby is born properly. He is innocent … children are not to blame for anything. I myself was the same. My true father only inseminated my mother. He knew nothing of me … it was a different man who took on the obligation of bringing me up, and I want to repay that, even through another person. I’m not jealous about your past. What is behind is not important, it is what is ahead that interests me.”
By that time, I had gotten out of bed and was moving closer to him.
“Be quiet or you’ll wake the little girl,” I said. I got under his blanket. “You are like the rest, looking for payment for everything.”
“No, don’t accuse me of that. What I want is to live with you.”
“Even if I didn’t want to, I’d still have to pay you back, wouldn’t I?”
“No, don’t take it like that. That’s not the way it is.”
“I can’t take it any other way.” When he embraced me, I felt myself getting mad. I tried to stop him but he said, “No, whatever has to happen, let happen, once and for all.” To make a long story short, it happened.
Then I cried. I said, “I didn’t think you were like that. I was going to pay you back for everything some day. I wasn’t going to take it for nothing. I don’t want you to think I came for that reason … to earn money with my body. Now I’m carrying a child inside me and I am afraid it will come out mixed with other blood. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have left the first day.”
But from then on, Baltasar wouldn’t let me go. He wouldn’t let me work. He had all the more reason to give me money and to bring me meat. After that, we started looking for another room.
Life in Acapulco was very peaceful. I really had miraculous luck to have met Baltasar at all, especially since he had almost missed the bus that time. Little by little, I began to care for him. As the saying goes, “Husbands and children are loved for their actions.” Baltasar was good and generous and though he shouted at the girls, he did it to keep them from getting bad habits. He would light the stove and help with the cooking. If I couldn’t go out, he wasn’t ashamed to take the basket and go to the market, or to carry a child. From the start, he gave me his money and an account of what he spent. These were things Crispín never did. I don’t know why, but the men I know in Mexico City do not treat their women this way.
With Baltasar, I was no longer sad. I had more courage because I saw that at least I received more respect from people. Before, I led the disagreeable life of an unmarried mother, with even my own brothers and sisters calling me a whore and marrying me off to any man that came along. And as for Baltasar, he didn’t bother me too much. He wasn’t like Crispín, who wanted it every day and in different positions. No, Baltasar didn’t clown around. He was normal. But if I didn’t want to, he would say, “If you don’t give it to me, I can find a pair of buttocks anywhere.” Sometimes I would refuse, but usually I did it, whether I wanted to or not.
I may not have loved Baltasar the way I loved Crispín, but we got along better in every way. It could be because I wasn’t afraid … because I knew how to defend myself. I had more freedom and could do and say what I pleased and take anything I wanted. I could turn the house upside down and no one said a thing about it.
And I wasn’t afraid to speak frankly to Baltasar. I had such self-confidence that I sometimes came out with strong things. I’d say, “You are already old, so what can you expect? The day you no longer please me, I’ll leave you,” or, “I won’t die of grief if you go off with someone else.” He told me he had loved me from the first moment he saw me, but I said bluntly, it hadn’t been that way with me, except when I fell in love with Crispín. Why should I tell Baltasar I loved him if I didn’t? Because I didn’t beat around the bush with him, he said I was cruel, that I had an iron breast and a heart of stone.
&nbs
p; It is true that I had liked Crispín from the very first time he spoke to me. What had impressed me most was his appearance and his good manners. He was thin and short and had nice features. His ears were as small and fine as those of a mouse, and his eyes were light brown. Right away I could see he wasn’t a roughneck like the other boys in the neighborhood. I could tell by the way he spoke that he was not so common. He had a better vocabulary and didn’t use dirty words with girls. His work clothes were always clean and on Sundays his shirt and gabardine pants were well ironed. He didn’t dress like a Pachuco or keep his hair long like Tarzan, and, at that time, he didn’t drink or smoke or mix much with his gang. He was a steady worker and altogether a better class of man. I felt lucky that he liked me.
Baltasar was just the opposite. The truth is, he was very coarse. He knew only vulgar language and even in the street or on a bus talked about intimate things in a loud voice, without caring who heard. I would feel embarrassed and that’s why I didn’t like to go out with him. And the way he ate! He made so much noise with his mouth that I could not sit at the table with him, especially when there were others present.
I was always correcting him. “Shut your mouth, man,” “Lower your voice,” “Button up your shirt, haven’t you any shame?” But he would say, “What business is it of others? I feel better this way,” or, “No, Martita, I’m too old to learn.” That was his excuse when he corrected the children for eating noisily. “I can’t change because I’m on my way down. But I can teach them good habits because they are young and on their way up.”
And his famous earring! When we got on a bus, people looked and began to whisper to each other. It bothered me and I told him that he might as well put one on the other ear, since he looked like a pansy anyway. I don’t care if he did make a vow to wear it! What kind of a vow is it that made him act like a clown?
Baltasar kept saying, “Write home. Write to them. Your father and brother will be worried.” But for two and a half months I felt so hurt by my papá, I just wouldn’t. I would say, “I haven’t anybody to write to.” But Baltasar bothered me so much, that I finally wrote. My father answered right away. The next time, he didn’t send a letter but came himself.
Baltasar was still asleep because he worked in the market from four to six in the morning, and again in the slaughterhouse in the evening. I knew it was my papá as soon as I heard his knock. He came with my half-sister Marielena. Baltasar took them to the market and to the beach and they left on the night bus.
My papá would never miss a day’s work, unless he was so sick he couldn’t walk. If my father wasn’t there to open the café, it was never opened in time. That’s why his boss valued him and kept him for so many years. He trusted my father with money and everything and I had always believed my papá was the manager. It wasn’t until recently that I found his union card and learned that he was listed as only a helper. And all the times I had boasted to my friends that my papá had an important job!
Then Roberto came, bringing some of my things. He was serious with Baltasar at first, asking his intentions and things like that. Baltasar told him he loved me, and the girls, too. He said, “If I love the tree, I have to love the roots, too, no?”
Roberto was satisfied and that was all there was to it. But from the start, Baltasar didn’t like the way Roberto put his arm around my shoulder or held my hand when we walked. My brother and I had a secret language which we used together and I noticed that it annoyed Baltasar. He told me to quit and I said we always did that in Mexico City. “Well,” he said, “you are in Acapulco now. Here if we see a brother and sister behaving that way, we take it badly. I don’t like it.”
He told me he had been “burned” once, by a brother and sister act. One of his women introduced him to her “brother,” who turned out to be her lover. He knew very well Roberto was my brother, because of my father, eh? but he was scarred once, and couldn’t forget it.
Just think, when the baby was born, Baltasar had to help the midwife. I had a hard time. The baby’s head came out all right, but it was choking, because I didn’t have the strength to labor any more. Baltasar didn’t know what to do, but he pinched me hard on the shoulder tendons at the base of the neck. He said later he did it because he knew it would relax my lower muscles and let the baby come out. It hurt a lot and I screamed and the baby was born. For a while, Baltasar was angry because he thought the baby looked like my brother.
Baltasar tied the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby and buried the afterbirth. He did everything, and looked after the other children, too. The next day, Roberto and Marielena came … my father had sent them to help me … but they went to the beach instead and spent the whole day bathing. Baltasar was annoyed and wanted them to go home. Before they left, he told them he planned to marry me in church. Roberto became serious and asked him to think it over carefully, and Marielena said the same, because marriage was complicated and one had to learn all the Church rules. Baltasar said, how could he, if he barely knew how to read? “Look, Marielena,” he said. “I know I’m Catholic because I go to church. I commend myself to a saint, but more than that, no. I barely know even how to make the sign of the cross!”
“Uuuuh, then you won’t be able to get married,” she says. Marielena was the most Catholic person in our family and she knew all about these things. She discouraged him, but he said, “God will say what we should do to get married. Meanwhile, we’ll marry by civil law so that I can adopt these children and make them my legitimate property. I want the ‘bill of sale,’ so that son-of-a-bitch Crispín can’t take them away. Señor Jesús told us Crispín was looking for Concepción and when the poor kid heard that she got scared and started to cry.”
Baltasar wasn’t jealous of my past and didn’t reproach me, but he was afraid Crispín might go after me again, on the pretext of seeing Concepción. He would say, “I’ll bet you even prefer him and want to see him on the side, eh? I don’t understand you. You say you didn’t live with him and here you are with four of his children! What is he your pimp or something? If he comes here, I’ll meet him with a knife and split the bastard in two. And why is Roberto against me marrying you? Does he want you for himself or something? What business is it of his?”
I would get angry and tell him he was crazy. We would quarrel a lot because I didn’t let him push me around, but usually he was nice Even when he was drunk, he would come home in a good mood. He only hit me twice, there in Acapulco.
The first time, before the baby was born, it was because of his two cursed brothers. They had come to visit him for the first time in two years. I heated supper for them and served them on a table outside the house. They talked and talked among themselves, about old times, about some of the women Baltasar had had, and other things that didn’t interest me. They didn’t call me or invite me to sit down, so I thought I would mind my own business and stay inside. When they left, I was in bed, pretending to be asleep. I heard Baltasar apologize for me, but he didn’t say anything to me that night.
The next day, he came home drunk and began. “You old she-goat! When my brothers come, see that you attend them the way you should. You went off and left us like dogs. Is that the way I treated your father when he came? Or your brother?” Then he hit me twice with his strap. It made me angry but he was drunk and I was afraid he might really get rough. I only cried and began to get my things together.
“You’re a fool if you think I’m going to stand for this,” I said. “If I left the father of my children because of his blows, why should I take them from you, who isn’t even my husband?” I told him off, but that was all that happened. A little later, he took me to the movies to calm me down.
The second time he hit me, he was also drunk. He had bought a hog, legally and all, and they had agreed to let him pay for it after he slaughtered it. But the meat was confiscated by the Courthouse because Baltasar hadn’t taken out a slaughter permit. He came home and said, “Imagine, they took the hog and charged a fine.”
“Well,�
�� I said, “next, they will be taking you!” That’s the way he was, not responsible for his acts and then complaining about what others did to him. He went down the hill again, to do some errands, and didn’t come back. The clock struck four, five, eight, and he didn’t appear.
“They must have put him in jail, with the hog. That’s where he is for sure.”
This happened after my son, Jesusito, was born. I remember very well, because I had already made the chocolate for his baptism. That evening, the baby and Trini were asleep. Concepción was in Mexico City visiting her grandmother, so I said to Violeta, “Ay, daughter, Baltasar might be in jail and we don’t even know. Let’s go down and look.”
First, I went to the pool parlor, then to the cantinas. I said, “Look under the doors, daughter, and see if your papá is there.” I turned and saw Baltasar coming out of a cantina across the street. It made me furious to think I was worrying about him being in jail when he was out having a good time. He had his arm around a girl. “Ah, the cursed fellow will pay for this!” I told Violeta, I followed them and saw the girl leave. Then Baltasar took some money out of his pocket and gave it to a friend. A car stopped and they both got in and drove off, in the direction of the red zone.
“The twice-condemned one! He’ll see!” I went straight home and started to pack my things. I had saved up one hundred pesos and planned to leave before he got back. “So, in addition to drinking, he goes around with other women. The bastard!”
He came back, saying, “Ay, old girl, now I really am good and drunk. Be nice and take off my shoes for me, won’t you?”
“You son-of-a-bitch, of what interest is it to me that you are drunk?”
“Uy! the old she-goat is very angry, eh? When have you spoken like that to me!”
Then he up and punched me. He noticed my packed valise and cut it with his knife. I thought he would knife me next, so I kept my peace. We were angry for only one or two days. After that, he didn’t know what to do for me. He took me to the movies and bought me this and that and even protected me from drafts. He thought my anger would cool, but he was crazy to believe he could buy me that way. Since that argument, I lost a lot of my respect for him. Before that, I had never used bad words in his presence and I wasn’t as vulgar with him as I am now. He thinks I am real depraved, the way I talk, but if one doesn’t speak up, one is left behind. Like Paula with Manuel. When Manuel was carrying on with that other woman, Paula kept quiet, so as not to make a big thing of it. Manuel didn’t even notice that she was suffering, but how could he believe that she didn’t know what was going on? No, when a man makes a woman suffer, she should speak right up, so God will hear her. If I am uncouth with Baltasar, it is because he made me this way.