by Oscar Lewis
If anything wrong took place, if something was missing, whatever it was, Roberto was blamed. Once he was punished for something I did and I felt bad about that ever since. It was the only time I did such a thing. My friend Santiago had said to me, “Take something from your house so we can go to the movies.” The first thing I saw was a crucifix my father had gotten from my grandpa, so I took it and we sold it.
That evening they looked and looked for the Christ and couldn’t find it. Then they beat Roberto for stealing it. I wanted to confess, but when I saw my father so angry I got scared and kept quiet. I never told anyone about this incident. That’s the way it was, when anything went wrong it was Roberto who always, always got the blame.
It was after mamá died that Roberto first began to filch things from the house. Most of the time when things were missing, he was the one who took them. After the Christ, I never took anything from the house. Roberto’s stealing, when he was young, was petty thievery, something his friends told him to do. For example, papá would send home a dozen eggs and Roberto would grab one or two and go out and sell them. That’s how he got spending money. My poor papá had a hard time making ends meet. He always bought shoes and clothes when we needed them, and he provided us with the best school supplies, but there were days when neither my brother nor I had five centavos between us. I used to envy my schoolmates who could buy lollipops or tidbits. Well, you always feel bad then. But papá couldn’t make enough for so many of us. I understand this now.
By the time I was in the fifth grade I had my first girl friend. She was Elisa, the sister of my friend Adán. I used to go to Adán’s house to sing because he played the guitar. Elisa’s parents watched her very carefully, but they accepted me as a friend of her brother. I took advantage of the situation and asked her straight out to be my girl friend. She was older and taller than I; I was about thirteen and I had to stand on something to kiss her. I took her to the movies where we could kiss and embrace. But that was all you did with a novia. If you go to bed with your novia you are practically married.
Because of my friends I began to neglect my studies, but my teacher, Professor Everardo, was a decent fellow and you might say that, man to man, I was a friend of his. When I was still a new boy in that school, something happened which gave me pleasant memories later in life. There was a boy named Bustos in my class. He was the school champion because he could lick all the runts in fist fighting. The first day there was a teachers’ meeting and Bustos was left in charge of our room. He called me to order, but not in a polite way, and so I said to him, “No, you shrimp, you can’t yell at me.”
“I can’t?” he said. “So you’re a tough guy, well, well.”
So I said, “I’m not so tough but if you think you’ve got as much guts as I just because you’re a big shot here, you’re making a mistake, pal. I’m from Tepito, and we don’t take any crap from anybody.”
Well, I punched him in the nose, right there in the classroom, a hard sock and his nose and mouth were covered with blood. Then the boys all said, “Bustos, ay! that’s some wallop the kid gave you.” After that they nicknamed me “No. 20” because that was my number when they called the roll. Since I had licked the biggest kid in the school I became famous and everybody kept saying that No. 20, No. 20, won the fight. After that none of the boys ever bothered me because, even though I was very short, I was strong and had powerful arms.
Josefa Ríos was the first girl I really fell in love with, a blond, with white skin and very pretty. There was a boy, Pancho, whose parents were, well, sort of better off, and he sure was handsome. Well, I was madly in love with Josefa and she was in love with Pancho, and Pancho paid no attention to her. I became so jealous that I tried to provoke Pancho to fight, so Josefa would see I was better than he. But Pancho never wanted to, because he knew I had licked Bustos.
Then one time the principal’s Saint’s Day was coming up, and all classes had prepared something to perform in her honor. Our room had nothing prepared. I got to school early one day and nobody was there and, as I always do when I’m sad or happy, I started to sing. I didn’t notice that Professor Everardo was listening. He came in and said, “Look, Manuel, you have a good voice; now we have something to perform on the principal’s Saint’s Day.” But I really didn’t know why he said that until several days later when the affair took place. The first grade put on a dance number, the second a declamation, the third something else and so on until they reached the fifth grade, and then they announced, “Fifth grade, Section A, a song dedicated to the principal, sung by pupil Manuel Sánchez Vélez.” Holy Mary! I hadn’t known anything about it, and I was scared to death, and there was Josefa in the first row.
I hid under the benches, and didn’t want to come out. Everybody looked and looked until Bustos saw me and dragged me out. They took me as if I was a prisoner. Well, I got up on the platform and sang a song which was popular at the time, “Amor, Amor, Amor” … “Love … love … love … created by you, by me, by hope …” At that time, my voice was clearer, it really was, and I could sing much higher. I sang through my tension and fear, and kept looking at Josefa. Then, just like awaking from a dream, I heard applause, a lot of applause, very loud, really. Ah, then I felt very proud, Josefa was applauding me more than anybody, and I said, “Oh, God Almighty, can it be that she will notice me?” Well, after that I wanted them to let me keep on singing.
That same afternoon I said to Josefa, “I have something to tell you. Will you allow me to see you from now on?” I remember how happy I was when she said, “I’ll be waiting for you at six on the corner near my house.” I was very happy, naturally, and I came at six on the dot, but she didn’t show up. Pancho had spoken to her that very day, so, of course, she went out with him and left me “whistling on the hilltop,” as they say here.
Well, school continued and I played hooky at least one day a week. That’s when I started smoking with my friends. We’d be going along and one of the fellows would say, “How about taking ‘three drags’?” He’d hand me his cigarette and I’d take three puffs, and pass it to the next guy.
I had to hide my smoking from my father. I have even popped burning cigarettes into my mouth when he came home unexpectedly. He caught me once, when I was twelve, smoking in the courtyard with my friends, and right in front of them he said, “Aha, you bastard, so you already know how to smoke? Now you have to work to keep yourself in cigarettes. Just wait until you get into the house, you’ll see, you little son-of-a-bitch.” After that, my friends kidded me when I asked for a cigarette. “No, kid, why should we, if your papá is going to hit you!”
It wasn’t until I was twenty-nine that I first smoked in my father’s presence. It was a kind of small rebellion against him, no? I am still uneasy when I do it, but I want him to see that I am a man now.
In looking back, I seemed not to have had any homelife. I didn’t have much to do with my family and spent so little time at home I can’t even remember what we did there. Besides, I have no memory for everyday things. I have an aversion for routine and only the very good or very bad things, the exciting things, stick in my memory.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but about my father … the truth is, he always mistreated my brother and me. What I mean is that he made us pay for the piece of floor we slept on, and the bread we ate, by humiliating us. True, he was very loyal and responsible, but he imposed his strict personality upon us, and never permitted us to express our opinions, or to approach him. If we asked him something, he’d say, “Slobs! what do you know? Shut your snouts.” He would squelch us every time.
In a way, it was his fault that I didn’t come home. I never had the feeling that I had a true home because I wasn’t free to bring my friends there. In the afternoons and evenings, when my father liked to read, he chased us into the courtyard. “Get out of here, you mules. A man works hard all day and he can’t even read in peace. Get out!” If we stayed inside, we had to be absolutely quiet.
Maybe I am hypersensitiv
e, but my father’s lack of feeling for us made me think we were a burden to him. He would have been happier with Elena if he didn’t have us; we were like those heavy loads that one carried only because one must. I will never forget the look of hatred he gave Roberto and me, while we were having supper that day. I went into the kitchen to cry, and couldn’t eat because of the lump in my throat.
Many times I wanted to say, “Look, Father, what have I ever done to you? Why do you have the worst opinion of us? Why do you treat us like criminals? Don’t you realize that there are sons who are addicts, who abuse their families right in their own house? Or who even kill their own fathers?” Someday, if I dare, I would like to say this to him, in a nice way, of course.
But whenever I tried to speak out to my father, something stopped me. With others, I had more than enough words, eh? But with him, something formed in my throat and didn’t let me speak. I don’t know whether it was the profound respect I felt for him, or whether it was fear. Perhaps that is why I preferred to live my life apart from my father, and from the rest of my family, too. There was a gulf between us, a disunity, and although I respected them, and was hurt to see what was happening to them, I shut myself off. A selfish attitude, yes, but I believe I hurt them and myself less that way.
I used to go out with my friends all the time. I practically lived in the street. I went to school in the afternoon; in the mornings I sometimes went with my friends to work in a tannery, to make engravings on leather. I only went home to pick up my books. I still ate at home, but I ducked out as soon as I finished. I really did it to avoid getting into difficulties with my stepmother, to avoid getting beatings. My father didn’t say anything to me about it because, I guess, it was better for him that way.
I liked to work when I was a boy. I must have worked since I was very small because the first job I had my father used to call for me and when I got my money I handed it right over to him. I remember how good I felt when my father hugged me, and said, “Now I have someone to help me.” I was a shoemaker’s assistant in a workshop a few blocks from our house. I used to work until late at night; there were times when we worked all night long. I don’t think I was over nine years old then.
My second job was making belts, then I sold lottery tickets in the street, and for a while I worked with Elena’s younger brother, as an assistant to my grandmother’s cousin’s son, who was a mason. While I was still in school I was night watchman in a bakery shop. My uncle Alfredo worked there and he taught me how to make biscuits. As I look back, almost my entire life has been spent working—even though the work wasn’t very productive—so why do they say I am a lazy bastard and a son-of-a-this or that?
At the end of the school year they handed me my flunk notice. Professor Everardo was very fond of me but he failed me anyway. It hurt me on account of my father, and I thought my teacher had been unfair. After that, I lost interest in my studies. I was stupid when it came to grammar, to conjugating verbs, and only average in arithmetic, but I was outstanding in world history and geography. These studies fascinated me.
When it came to sports, to physical strength, I was first in my class. I have always been a good runner and in the sixth grade I came in first in the 100 and 200 meter races. I also liked anything that had to do with motors and once in a while I dreamed of becoming a mechanical engineer, of having a career. But I’ve left all that behind.
We still lived on Cuba Street, near my grandmother. She kept coming to visit, bringing us little cakes and sweets or clothing, and asking how our stepmother was treating us. Once I ran to her house because my father had hit me. I wanted to live with her, but that night my papá came and made me go home.
I have a poor memory for dates, but I remember the day we moved to the Casa Grande because it was my father’s Saint’s Day and it was the day my grandmother died. When my uncle sent word of her death my father had said, “What a nice little present for me!”
The day before, she had sent for us and I was impressed because she knew she was dying; she died with all her five senses intact and she had a word for everyone. To me she said, “Kneel down, child, I’m going to sleep. Now take good care of your brother and sisters. Behave well in life so that life treats you well. Son, don’t be wicked, otherwise your mother’s spirit and mine won’t rest in peace.” She asked us always to pray an Our Father in her name because it would be like food to her. Then she blessed us. There was a knot in my throat but by that time I felt like a man and tried hard not to cry. My uncle José was drunk as usual and was dancing outside her room.
My aunt Guadalupe and my uncles washed and dressed my grandma for the funeral. They put a clean sheet on the bed that day and laid her out while they went to buy the coffin. The four of them lifted her into the coffin and put under it a tray of vinegar and onion to absorb the cáncer that leaves the body of a dead person. There were two candles at her head and two at her feet, when we arrived for the wake. All night people sat around drinking black coffee and eating bread and telling off-color stories which made me very angry. My father sat on one side, talking to my uncles. I heard him say, “You see, Alfredo, look at our case. What is the use of all the rivalry and disagreements, when this is the end, the reality of things?” They had always had conflicts, but anyway my father helped them with the funeral expenses.
Well, then we began life in the Casa Grande. The boys there, the Casa Grande gang, tried to provoke me to fight. I had not lost a single fight at school and so, when the gang surrounded me, with the strongest of them egging me on, I just said, “Well, come on, brother, you’re done for.”
What a fight we had! We were covered with blood but he got the worst of it. There was only one of them that dared fight me after that, a fellow nicknamed the Donkey, because he had a very big penis. One day he knocked a tooth out of my brother’s mouth and that was when I took him on. The Donkey and I had a wonderful fight. I gave him a sock that made him cry, but when he saw that he couldn’t manage with his fists, he bit me. I still have the scar on my shoulder where his teeth dug into me. After that we became close friends, closer than I was with my own brother, because we kept nothing secret from each other. The Donkey was none other than my present compadre and best friend, Alberto Hernández.
From our first fight, I was attracted to Alberto. I liked him a lot, although I usually had opinions contrary to his. I don’t know why, but no sooner did he come out with an idea, than I said the opposite. But in the things that counted, like if someone picked a fight with one of us, we always stood together. We saw each other every day; wherever Alberto was, there I was too. In a word, we were inseparable. We confided in each other, all our joys and troubles, our conquests and secrets. And he always treated me, because he worked and had more money to spend.
Alberto was a year or two older than I, but he had had a lot more experience, especially with women. He had wavy hair and big eyes and the girls liked him, even though he was a country boy and talked like an Indian. I was impressed by the things he knew. While I was still a schoolboy, he had worked in a mine in Pachuca, had washed cars, waited on tables, and had traveled the highways. He had never gone to school because from the beginning he had to support himself. His life was harder than mine, because his mother had died when he was a baby, and his father had abandoned him. First, his mother’s mother took care of him, then his mother’s sister. He was living in the Casa Grande with this aunt and her husband.
Even though I was younger than he, Alberto talked to me about matters of the bedroom. He told me of different positions, about women with “dog,” and things like that. What a cabrón he was when it came to women! To this day he is a great one with the ladies. We nicknamed him Three Daily, because he was so puñetero, so hot. Why, once when we went out selling newspapers, he stood next to a car and saw the woman driver with her dress up and her knees showing, and right then and there, he put his hand into his pocket and began masturbating.
We kids used to go to the bathhouse and peek through holes in the walls to see
the girls bathing. Once Alberto came running to tell us that a pretty girl, Clotilde, was taking a bath, so four of us hired the bath next to hers and watched her. We saw her naked and she sure had everything! There we were peeking, with our hands in our pockets, rubbing away, racing to see who would come first.
Alberto and I were members of the Casa Grande gang. There were about forty of us then; we played games, like burro, or told dirty jokes together, and we were always very proud of keeping up the name of the Casa Grande. The guys from the streets of the Barbers, the Painters, or the Tinsmiths could never get the better of us. At dances we kept our eyes peeled to see that they didn’t hang around trying to make the girls of the Casa Grande.
Every sixteenth of September a certain gang would come with sticks to make war against us. We would let them come in through one of the gates and, meanwhile, the janitor’s son, who was a member of our gang, would lock the other gate. When all of the gang was inside, he would run and lock the first gate. Then we would let them have it in all the courtyards, with stones, pails of water, and sticks.
We never let anyone get the better of us, Alberto and I were the first to take on any others … we were known as good fighters and were always put up front against other gangs. We fought so much in those days, I began to dream about it. I dreamed that Alberto and I were surrounded by five or six guys and I jumped to escape them and went up and up until I reached the electric cables, out of everyone’s reach. I said, “Ay! I can fly! I can fly!” Then I made myself go down by putting my feet vertical, toward the ground, and I said to Alberto, “Compadre, get on.” And he got on my back and I began to fly again. “You see? They can’t do anything to us now!” I kept flying until we passed the cables. Then suddenly I lost the power and I felt myself fall. I kept dreaming this for many years.
