by Oscar Lewis
I was well off in Acapulco, but my papá wanted me and the children back, so I kept telling Baltasar I had to go home. He didn’t want to leave Acapulco. He said, “I’m not used to it there. Here we have meat every day, and bread, not just tortillas. When I am short of money, I can go fishing with my friends, or play dominoes and win thirty or forty pesos. Here we always have enough money for the movies. How can I go to the capital without money, to live like a dog?”
I was stubborn and kept nagging. My papá wrote that we could live in his house in the El Dorado Colony because Lupita was leaving him and moving out. That crazy Marielena kept saying her mother was living in sin with my father and that if he wouldn’t marry her the priest said she would have to separate from him. Maybe that was why Lupita finally left, but I believe it was because she couldn’t stand to see how Delila had won over my father. He almost never went to see Lupita and when he did, it was to take care of his pigeons and pigs.
So my papá said we could live there as soon as Lupita moved, and he would give us a pig to begin with, so that Baltasar could be a butcher and sell the meat among the neighbors. Baltasar thought it was a magnificent opportunity and set about raising money for the trip. He had to lie a little, but he did it to please me. He went to a friend who worked in the Department of Health and asked him for a letter saying he had to go to Mexico City for a hernia operation. He really did have a hernia because when he had his appendix taken out, the doctor told him. So he takes this letter to his companions at the slaughterhouse to see if they would take up a collection for him. Baltasar had only one hundred pesos at the time, and we couldn’t very well go with only that, could we?
Well, his friends got together one hundred and fifty pesos. It wasn’t enough and Baltasar went around as if he was in pain and it was an emergency. His friend from the Health Department came and told them his was a bad case, so they collected fifty pesos more. They said if he needed more after the operation, to let them know and they would send it.
We left in a hurry. Baltasar wanted to take the night bus, so that we would not have to spend money on food on the way, but there was a misunderstanding with the driver, who demanded eighty pesos just for taking our furniture. We waited in the station until one of the drivers agreed to take it for seventy. Baltasar loaded the bed and chiffonier and other things on the roof of the bus, and bought us tickets for another forty-six pesos. There were more expenditures later for food for the children, for a jacket for Baltasar, and for a truck to take everything to the Casa Grande, so the trip was costly, right?
Lupita was still in my father’s house, so we moved in with Manuel and María. Roberto and his Antonia were there at the time, and my cousin David, his mother, wife and four kids. The place looked like a barracks with all those people stretched out on the floor at night. They slept with the candle burning on the altar and Baltasar began to complain to me that in such a setup he couldn’t even calm his desire. In Acapulco, at least we could send out the children during the day and enjoy ourselves alone. He wasn’t voracious and took care not to overdo it, but even so, he missed my caresses. Thank God, my cousin moved out with his family as soon as he could find a room of his own. Later, Antonia deserted poor Roberto and he went to live with my high-class sister, Consuelo. He lost his job and kept getting into fights. His only consolation was the bottle.
So there we were, sharing No. 64 with Manuel, María and their little baby girl, Lolita. Manuel’s four other children were staying with my papá and Delila, in the little house he was still building in the Ixmiquilpan Colony. Delila had had another baby, and people were still gossiping about it, saying she got it with someone’s help, that it wasn’t my father’s. This business of doubting who is the father is bad, as I know from bitter experience. Who could know better than the mother, who is the father of her child? For my part, I am willing to take the mother’s word for it.
Well, we began to have trouble right away. We were supposed to pay the rent one month, and Manuel the next month, but after we moved in, the landlord told us Manuel owed for five months and if it wasn’t paid up, my father would lose the room. To get off to a good start with Manuel, Baltasar offered to pawn his new radio and pay five months rent in advance, so that we would have a place to live. So Manuel took the radio and gave the landlord 165 pesos, three months back rent, and only God knows what he did with the rest of the money. He said that was all he received but Baltasar didn’t believe him because the radio was worth five hundred pesos. At first, I defended my brother, but when Manuel took the pawn ticket and sold it, I sided with Baltasar.
By that time, Manuel and Baltasar were compadres because it had occurred to me to ask my brother to be godfather at my son’s confirmation. So there was Baltasar having to behave respectfully to him, while trying to get justice. He would say, “With all due respect, compadrito, stop screwing around and give me back my radio.” But no matter how he said it or what he did, he never saw that radio or the money again. Manuel promised to pay it out little by little, but before he paid even one centavo he decided that the radio must have been a stolen one, so why should Baltasar worry about it.
Baltasar looked for work in the slaughterhouse, but he had no city license and they wouldn’t take him. He tried the bakeries but he needed money to buy a place in the union. My father got him a job at a key factory, but Baltasar quit because he said the union was run by the boss and was good for nothing. When he was sick for three days they deducted from his pay, and anyway, they paid only twelve-fifty pesos a day.
At other factories, they laid down too many conditions … they wanted to know who his family was, how long he had been in the capital, if he had a certificate from primary school, a letter saying why he left his last job, a letter of recommendation. He explained that he was a stranger here and couldn’t get a letter from anyone, but they didn’t understand. They said, “A letter or a bond. A letter or a bond.”
Baltasar was beginning to hate the Mexicans. He said they were dogs and selfish, that Acapulqueños give work to anyone who asks because if he didn’t need it he wouldn’t be asking, that Mexicans were all thieves, that if there was stealing in Acapulco, it was always someone from the capital who did it. He was ready to go back to his homeland.
My uncle Ignacio wanted him to sell newspapers, but how could we live on such a pittance? Finally, Manuel offered to show Baltasar how to be a “coyote” in the Tepito Market. Baltasar started by selling my table. He used the money to buy a pile of unwashed shirts from a laundry. When he sold those, he bought up other things. With both men working as peddlers, our room was cluttered with mirrors, broken toys, second-hand clothes, shoes, tools, and things like that. When they had nothing to sell, María and I had to hide our clothes because those two would grab anything to raise money for the day’s expenses. Once Manuel took off Lolita’s sweater and sold it to a customer, then and there!
We got along better for a while, because Baltasar gave me my ten pesos a day and we had enough to eat. He even paid the back bills to the Power Company so that the electricity could be turned on again. But when Manuel didn’t pay for the next two months, the company cut us off again and Baltasar left it that way. He said we were better off with candles, because that way Manuel and María couldn’t turn on the lights and wake us up when they came in late. They ate all their meals at Gilberto’s café and stayed there every day with Lolita, until past midnight.
Baltasar needed capital, so when Roberto asked to borrow twenty-five pesos to go to Acapulco, Baltasar remembered the fellows at the slaughterhouse. He was crazy to think of sending my brother to collect money from them, but Roberto was going anyway, to dispose of something “hot,” and it wouldn’t cost us fare. Besides, Roberto told Baltasar that if he sold the stuff for a good price, he would get us another radio.
I didn’t believe my brother. I was angry with him because he had pawned a ring that Antonia had borrowed from me, and wouldn’t give it back. I had scraped together the money to buy that ring with so much sacrifice
! If he wanted to steal, why didn’t he take from the rich, not from us? But he said, “Little sister, don’t upset yourself. I’ll get you a better one some day.”
Baltasar didn’t listen to me, and borrowed twenty-five pesos from my father, to lend to my brother. Four days later Roberto came back from Acapulco with only fifty pesos for Baltasar. He said he had spent the rest of it on food, hotels and bus fare. We never found out how much the butchers had collected, but Baltasar believed that my brother had robbed him of more than half. He began to feel hatred for Roberto.
One day, they were both mixing punch for a party at my aunt Guadalupe’s house, drinking as they went along. The more drunk they became, the more they spoke from their hearts and their rivalry came out. Baltasar told Roberto not to come to the Casa Grande any more, because he arrived like a big shot, pushing in the door as though he owned the place. Baltasar had paid three months rent and figured he was the boss there. He wouldn’t let María’s brothers come to sleep there any more because, he said, if either of those bastards got hold of one of my girls he would feel responsible.
Roberto said it was his father’s house and, as my brother, he had the right to come and go as he pleased, and to eat and sleep there too, if he wished.
“Are you saying I am obliged to support you?”
“Yes,” says Roberto, “so long as I want you to.”
“Well then, you are charging me for your sister’s affection. That means you are selling her!”
“Yes? And what are you? Didn’t you come like a sharp one, to be supported and helped by my father? No one knows better than you how to get something for nothing. My father does more for you than for his own sons.”
One word led to another, and they ended up insulting their mothers and taking out knives. My aunt got her fingers cut trying to separate the two of them. Baltasar then told me he was leaving for his homeland, with me or without me, because he didn’t want to depend upon my family for anything. It took some time for me to cool him down. He said, “All right, I’ll stay, but if your brother kills me, it will be your responsibility.”
I stopped speaking to Roberto after that, and, for the first time, ordered him to keep out of my house because he came only to cause trouble. The truth is, no one wanted him around. He cried and got drunk but, thank God, he agreed to stay away, for the sake of the children.
At last, Lupita and Marielena left my father’s house in El Dorado, and we moved in. It was a humble place, but it had a high wall around it and the courtyard was for us alone. It was clean and quiet and had two bedrooms, a real kitchen, and a window in every room. Water was brought each day by a truck, but we had electricity. In short, it was the nicest house either Baltasar or I had ever lived in. I said, as a joke, we ought to put up an antenna on the roof so the neighbors would think we had a television set and were real high-class.
I wanted Baltasar to know, at last, the warmth and affection of a home. He had never had that from any of his women. They were all sluts who drank and left him and the children for other men. His life saddened me and that’s why I stuck it out with him. He was like a child who needed me. I, too, had never felt I had a home, even though I always had a place to sleep and enough to eat and wear. I saw my brothers and sisters but we were not united. We might have worked together, like others, to make a nice home for ourselves, but instead we each went our own way. I had never envied the rich, who were above me, because there were always those who were below me, but I did envy people who had good families and nice homes.
I wanted to show Baltasar I was not like those women he had known. True, we had simple quarrels and told each other off, but it was never worse than that. The only thing we quarreled about at first, was the baby, Chucho, as we called him. I said Baltasar loved the child too much and was doing him harm. When I spanked Chucho for wetting the bed or his pants, Baltasar would get angry. He wouldn’t let me put pants on the boy after that. He would carry Chucho on his shoulders to the market, on the bus, and even to the park on Sundays, with the child dressed in no more than a shirt. When Chucho urinated on him, Baltasar would only laugh. If the baby cried for something, Baltasar would give it to him, even though it was something the girls were playing with. Though Chucho was only one year old, he seemed to know that when his papá was at home, I couldn’t say, “Don’t do this, don’t touch that.” Baltasar warned me that if he saw me spank Chucho, I would be given mine, and when he left the house, he would say, “Remember, let the boy do what he pleases.”
I never spoiled my children that way. Baltasar says I am hard on them. I think that because of all the things that have happened to me and the anger I have felt, I am becoming neurasthenic. I don’t have the patience to answer the children’s questions, “Mamá, what is that? Mamá, where are we going?” I shut them up right away. I am becoming more like my papá. If I am reading the papers or the weekly story, I don’t let them interrupt me. My poor little girls are becoming withdrawn, the way Consuelo used to be, because I don’t hold them or embrace them any more.
When I became pregnant again, I was resigned to it. Baltasar deserved at least one child from me, I thought, especially since he had married me in court even before he knew another one was on the way. My family believed Chucho was his son and I had never set them straight because it would have been embarrassing to admit that Crispín had given me another child. So I had married Baltasar even though my papá told me not to, because he had no faith in stepfathers, I had heard what some stepfathers do to their stepdaughters, but that could never happen in my home so long as I was alive.
I thought Baltasar would be happy to have his own child, but he wasn’t. He said the new baby would only rob love from little Chucho and make him chipil, ill of jealousy. Instead of Chucho getting ill, Baltasar did. At night, he would twist and turn and complain that his heart felt heavy and that he couldn’t breathe. My aunt Guadalupe wanted to take him to the Temple of Light to be cured by the Spiritualist, but Baltasar preferred to go out and drink with his friends. That’s when he changed for the worse, when he took up with his lousy friends and left me without expense money.
He would come home tipsy and we would quarrel. I’d say, “If you don’t find happiness here in your home, if you find it with your miserable pals in the market, better leave me and go with them.”
He complained that I had changed, that before, I would at least give him a hug or a kiss. And I would answer, “Yes, frankly I am losing my affection for you. If I have changed, it is your own doing.”
“Well,” he’d say, “in that case, the day I find another pair of buttocks, I won’t stay here for anything.”
“But until you get her and while you are wondering whether you want apples or pears, don’t come bothering me. Screw the next one, because I’m not going to the dogs for you. When I met you I didn’t go around the way I do now, badly fed, badly dressed and badly treated. What would it cost me to get another man to give me things? It’s the easiest thing in the world to lead the gay life, to begin with one, then two, then with every man who came along. But I’m not like your other women who threw themselves away. While my father exists, I will never take the easy way. No, Baltasar, better pray to God that my father doesn’t die.”
I told him that even if I had a dozen children, I wouldn’t cry if he left me, that no man was worth crying over, especially a drunkard. Men like that were better dead, because then everyone lived in peace. I would rather get a job sewing in a shop, even though I’d leave my lungs in a place like that and would earn a miserable eight or nine pesos a day. And I warned Baltasar, that if he stayed, he would have to work. “Don’t think that I’m going to let you be a burden to my papá. Do you want to become like another son? It would be a thousand times better for you to leave.”
We didn’t have a single centavo in the house, and Baltasar had no money to work with, so we sold the pig my father had given us, before it was fully grown. If my father knew, he would be angry and would say we couldn’t hold on to anything and were t
he kind who would never progress. I wanted to use fifty pesos of the money to go to Chalma with my aunt, but then I thought it would be better for Baltasar to work, so we stayed. After all, if we don’t have some centavos when my time comes, who will deliver the baby?
So Baltasar took the money and started to work again. I don’t know what happened, but he got himself a partner called the Pig, who took him to the cantinas and ended up carrying the money. I waited and waited for Baltasar to come home because I needed money for some medicine. My father didn’t like the way I looked and had sent me to Dr. Ramón, who gave me a prescription for a tonic.
Baltasar had been coming home very late, or not at all. I warned him that it was dangerous for him to be out alone when he was drunk, but he thinks it’s like in Acapulco. The other night a bunch of boys … all rebels without cause … chased him and he barely escaped. I told him that if anything happened to him, his relatives would come and blame me. They would come and chew me up alive because that’s the way his race of people is. But he doesn’t think of that. He says all I do is scold and get angry, that all I want is to keep him tied up at home.