Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  “Once I had a dream; I was dead, and a shadow — instead of myself, here, with this body to house my soul. Suddenly I started to laugh, in the middle of the dream. I realized that I was still alive, only dressed up in bed sheets, like those on the clothesline the wind has just been whipping. I woke up and I was amused with myself; but I was also frightened. I told my husband the dream, and he waved me aside: ‘Don’t make more trouble for yourself; we already have enough.’ I was afraid to confide in the priest. I told my oldest child; she is thirteen, and I can open my heart to her, and she to me. She asked if she was anywhere to be seen in the dream, and I said no, not to my memory. She was disappointed. She said that God was probably whispering to me, when I was asleep; He was telling me that if I did a good job every day, I’d be all right. I didn’t understand what the child was saying — oh, she is no longer a child, I know it. Then my younger daughter, who is only ten, mind you, spoke up: ‘I hope the sheet you were wearing was clean — not a single spot on it.’ Then I understood myself better; my little girl had revealed my mind to me!”

  The girl is not so little, her mother realizes. The girl is watchful, active, helpful, if at times a touch morose. She is given to solitary walks; they worry her parents. Why should someone ten years old want to leave her family and her friends for the sake of paths that lead to the wide, cultivated fields? The mother will not talk with the girl about this habit of hers. Even a child of ten is entitled to her own preferences, her willfulness; even a girl: “My husband worries. Let the girl be like everyone else. She is, of course — most of the time. Occasionally she wants to go off, be alone. Is that so bad, such a terrible wish? I envy her the good sense she has. She avoids arguments and fights with the other children that way. To be honest, I think I was the one who taught her, a year ago, to leave a scene of noise and trouble. She listened to me; she took me seriously when I gave her a suggestion. For doing so, her father frowns upon her, and to her face calls her strange. But she will not easily break; no, that child has a mind of her own. At times I think to myself: she has a man’s spirit in a girl’s body. Maybe she will be unhappy later on. Maybe she will try not to let a man be the boss. But if her husband tells her never to leave on long walks by herself — then there will be a struggle; and I guess she will know to surrender.”

  She slumps in the chair; mention of surrender, even if the word came from her own lips, has surprised her and weakened her. She admits to periods of sadness: a woman’s life is hard. Not that she wants to compete with her husband; his life is hard too. Once he was a field hand; now he drives a pickup truck for a grower. Wages are slim. Anglo authority and power are a constant, unforgettable presence. And he is sick, that burly, forceful, hardworking man she married sixteen years ago. He gets severe headaches; often, inexplicably, has fits of hiccups and vomiting and shortness of breath. Neither of them has ever seen a doctor for any complaint. Their children were delivered by a midwife. They pray when they feel ill — and go on as best they can. For the man it is a matter of work that starts at six in the morning and ends around seven at night. For the woman there are children, always requiring her attention.

  The woman who has suddenly appeared tired and worn is not one for self-pity — or invidious comparisons. Her troubles are neither heavier nor lighter than her husband’s, she is quick to insist; they are different troubles. The ten-year-old daughter is a somewhat special person though; it has been upsetting to contemplate the child’s present characteristics or her likely fate in the years to come: “I wonder whether she will be as contented as the rest. She is too smart, I sometimes think. But the teachers don’t agree. They have told me, year after year, that she is like all the others in her class, no better and no worse. But how are they to know the truth about the children before them? They have no use for us anyway: Anglo teachers. I return the sentiment. My husband tells me that it is just as well the children meet Anglo teachers in school who are unfriendly; then our sons and daughters will be prepared for the world. I think that is what my ten-year-old girl isn’t ready to accept now — the life she will have to face later on.

  “My husband wants me to be tougher with the child. I hold my ground though. His word is law; I believe it should be. But a mother has her own way of enforcing the law! I tell him to be patient, and the child will come around; she will get tamed. She is a bit of a wild horse. But even a wild horse needs to learn to watch her step — or soon someone will tame her. Our children belong to this world; they learn about what it offers them — each differently. I would not have it any other way. My husband is less patient. He sees the child standing up for herself, walking off to be alone and collect herself, and he worries that she will get in trouble — at school now or later on when she goes shopping in town by herself. Someone will tell her to step aside; someone will call her a name — one of the Anglos — and she will glare and speak back, or she will run off. The police cars, with their lights and sirens, will catch up with her in no time, of course; her father knows that. Well, so do I — but I am ready to take a chance: the girl will catch on, as I did, as her older sister already has, as one must.”

  She is now feeling stronger; determination lightens the burden of a resignation that never quite leaves her. She wants to talk about herself; she wants to explain why it is that she is quite content that all the difficulties she has to count on will never leave her, at least while she is on this earth. She insists upon her essential good humor: a willingness to smile when things are at their worst — a quality she is certain she obtained from her own mother. But to her own surprise she finds herself making a more general kind of comment: “Women are not born to fight the world, as men do. Women are born to suffer. We must stand back and remind ourselves that there are others, whose daily needs require attention — so there is no time to become bitter. I think my husband is afraid that if our girl becomes too much of a fighter, then she will not only get in trouble herself, but her children will suffer even more than the children of our people have to suffer, and that will be sad. I repeat myself: a woman has to suffer. To bear a child, to give birth to it, to know in one’s heart what is ahead for it, to hear it cry and not have enough food for it, or good clothes, to think about what it will hear in school — memories of one’s own past: that is to suffer.

  “There are times when I wish I was a man. I have a dream: I am my husband, and I find some wild horses and tame them, and I give one to each of the children, even the smallest. And then, miraculously, they can all ride safely, and they do — no saddles, only us and the swift animals. We all ride off — away, away from this terrible Texas and the Anglos; back to Mexico. We find a village, and the horses graze, and we build a house, and we live quietly, and that is the end of the dream. I tell it to my husband each time I wake up and remember what I have been dreaming — always the same. He is annoyed. He thinks I am silly for repeating and repeating myself during the night. But what can I do? I have fallen asleep, and the rest is up to the Holy Ghost. I am quite sure that it is the Holy Ghost that puts things into our minds when we are lying on our beds at night. And there is one thing I don’t like to mention to my husband; I did once, and he has never forgotten: in the dream we lose him, the children and I, as we are riding on the horses. He is with us for a while, but all of a sudden I look around, and he is nowhere to be found. My ten-year-old daughter goes looking for him, but no luck. She seems glad, and I ask her why. She says that we can have a good time on our own. Later we can go find her father. He will show up, she is sure. That’s the part of the dream it isn’t easy for me to think about.”

  Her ten-year-old daughter has the name Carmen, and loves it. She was told once that she is indeed a Carmen — by an Anglo schoolteacher who wasn’t being all that complimentary: “She told me that I was like a woman in an opera, flirting with all the boys. I wasn’t doing that; I was just playing with them.” She doesn’t tell of her disagreement with shame; she was not upset by the teacher’s criticism. In fact, she wishes one day to see the opera that bear
s her name. Meanwhile there is school to finish, and a daily life to live: “I don’t like school. The teachers don’t like school, either. They look at us in the morning as if it’s our fault that they have to show up. But they need the money, like everyone else. I heard one telling another that if she only could find another job, she’d take it, because we’re no good, the Mexicans. The principal calls us Mexican-Americans in assembly. But he’s not very friendly either.”

  She is a thin, active girl. When she stops speaking she is ready for some other kind of activity. She flexes her thumb, waits a couple of seconds, unbends it. She moves her feet about as she sits. She looks at her dress, examines closely the pattern on it, then stares at the window: what is happening outside? When she is given a wish, any wish she might possibly come up with, there is no period of anguished hesitation: “I’d ask for a horse. I’d have it and ride it. I’d stop school and care for her. It would be a mare, like the one my father used to ride. Now he drives a car.” Her father rounds up not cattle but men; he makes sure that Chicano farmhands stay together and work on certain specified stretches of land. He is always afraid of losing his job, and his daughter Carmen knows exactly why: “My Papa is not cruel enough. He does not frighten the men to death. That is the only way to make them obey, but he won’t be an Anglo’s bad man. So, he’s afraid he might be fired.”

  The girl looks around. Her mother is outside with the chickens, and so not able to help explain what her father does all day. Carmen can’t understand how anyone would ever be unhappy with him, even the men he has to keep in line: “My father is a good man. He loses his temper only when it is right that he get mad. I have earned his temper a few times; I have disobeyed him. He has let me know that he won’t be fooled. He can tell when we are not doing as we should; he says he can tell by my face whether I have been good or bad. I try to practice in the mirror: how to smile, even when I don’t feel very happy. But my mother says that the truth comes out, through our eyes, whether we want it out or not.”

  Carmen closes her eyes briefly, then opens them wide and stares at a mirror across the room. She acknowledges shyly that if no one were there, she would examine her brown eyes with the greatest of care — an occasional indulgence that affords pleasure. Talking about her appearance has made her self-conscious; she moves her glance from a table to a picture of Jesus, to the mirror again, and finally, to her own legs, her knees: “I fell down a year ago, and split my right knee open. The blood would not stop coming out. I thought I would never walk again. My father got very upset with me when I told him that. He was standing there, shouting at my mother to press harder with the cloth, and I said she was hurting me, and please to stop. He said no, continue; then he shouted that I had better start learning right away about pain. My mother said no, it was the wrong time for me to have a lesson. My father did not like to hear her disagree with him. He picked up my brother’s slingshot and threw it at the door. He said my mother and I are alike, and I will be a spoiled wife to some man, if they don’t tame me. I thought he was going to hit me; I even thought he was going to hit my mother. But she ignored him; she kept the pressure on my knee, and she told me to help her in putting both my hands on the cloth, and then she put her hands on top of mine: four hands — and they won out over the blood.”

  With the mention of blood, she touches her knee, pulls the skin over it tight. The scar is still there, a tribute to her body’s ability to heal — and without the aid of stitches, which other children, of different background, would unquestionably have received. She begins to talk of the future. Will she again fall down and hurt herself? What would happen if she had broken a bone, as indeed her father had thought was the case? How much blood is there in the body — more than the amount needed to fill a Coke bottle? Two such bottles? She is sure, as a matter of fact, that she lost one bottleful at the time of that accident. As for the subject of fractured bones she recalls an incident: her brother had hurt his arm so badly that he screamed incessantly for a whole day and through the following night. Finally the father took him to the Anglo boss, the foreman, who in turn had driven the child to a hospital ten miles away. The arm was put in a cast, and eventually the boy had to return for the cast to be removed. Carmen had wanted desperately to go with him, to see the inside of a hospital, to watch the cast being put on. On television she has seen nurses taking care of patients, and imagined herself one day as a nurse. Outspoken child that she is, she once asked her teacher if she might study subjects that would help her become a nurse. The teacher was surprised and annoyed: no, not then, and not next year, and actually, never. Nursing requires a high school diploma, and Carmen was told she would soon enough be dropping out of school, just as others of her kind do all the time.

  She was not really made angry by that prophecy, even as, upon describing what took place, she does not stop and ask for reassurance by looking hurt, or through a self-pitying remark. She brusquely slaps her knee, as if to show how strong it has become, gets up, and announces that she doesn’t like school, may stop going, but would stay and stay — for years, if necessary — were she actually to decide to become a nurse. No Anglo teacher is going to tell her about what the future does or does not hold in store. When her father makes his predictions she takes exception, even if, out of fear, she doesn’t speak up. She tells her mother later and in confidence what has crossed her mind. The mother advises caution — but, significantly, does not chastise the girl or give her the impression that she has thought something wrong: “My mother says that you have to keep quiet about a lot of things, or else there will be trouble. She says even at home you mustn’t say everything that you think of saying. I ask her why, but she shakes her head and says she won’t explain anything to me; I’ll just find out. I know what she is thinking. She is thinking that if you’re not Anglo, you’d better be careful. You can’t be too careful, she tells us. But my older sister says you can’t just give in, all the time give in; the Anglos take, and we stand by, but if we fought them, they’d have to watch their step too. My father heard us talking one day about Anglos, and he didn’t say a word; he just stared at us, and we could tell that we had better go out and play. I hope my brothers grow up to fight the Anglos. I’d like to fight them too. I don’t think my mother should always put her hand to her mouth and tell us to be seen and not heard.”

  She has been speaking rather more softly than usual; and now that she has made her strong opinion public, she has some misgivings. Perhaps there are indeed reasons for her and others like her to learn to live with silence. Are not her parents older and wiser? Have they not gone through years of living, and thereby obtained a certain kind of education? Is it not presumptuous of her to challenge them so? Even now, as a grown man and a grown woman, her father and mother defer in dozens of ways to their own parents. And if Carmen’s parents are cautious and easily made apprehensive, her grandparents, she knows full well, are thoroughly circumspect, and never in any doubt about their fate, if not destiny: “My grandmother tells us that when she was young, and my mother a little girl, the Anglos wouldn’t let us walk on the sidewalk. My grandmother has a lot of bad memories. I tell her that the world is getting better, but she doesn’t believe me. I tell her that we should call ourselves Chicanos and stand up to the Anglos. She tells my mother that I have the Devil in me, and there will be a lot of trouble if we don’t get rid of the Devil. She wants the priest to stand over me and ask God to help drive the Devil out of me! My sister and I just laugh to ourselves; but we look very serious when our grandmother is nearby. She would be upset if we didn’t agree with everything she says.”

  How about her mother — does she also regard Carmen’s rising political consciousness and activism as the work of the Devil? The girl is emphatically sure of the answer: no. There is a difference between the generations, Carmen is quick to point out. The state of Texas is still no great welcoming friend, but its customs and laws have changed over the years. Carmen is, of course, brief in the comparisons she makes, but pointed too. She summon
s imagery that is connected to her daily experience: “Once we hid behind the trees; now we walk out in the open.” She knows that there are many exceptions to the observation she has made. She knows, too, that even in her own family, among her sisters and brothers, there are different hopes, worries, doubts. Her older sister has given up on the United States, would like to return to Mexico and spend her life there — no matter how terrible the poverty. Then there is Carmen’s older brother; at twelve he is anxious to leave Texas for a northern city, the larger the better — perhaps Chicago. He is aware of the risks — idleness in a strange, cold environment; but he believes that in far-off cities there is a different America: “He thinks it is better to leave and try to find a place where people are so busy, they don’t worry what you look like.”