This Was Our Childhood: Así Fue Nuestra Niñez

Por Teresita Luévano

En este libro, yo, Rosa, te llevo a través de mi vida, desde la niñez hasta la actualidad. Recuerdo personas, abusos y buenos momentos. Este libro comenzó como un diario. Yo anoté pensamientos que vinieron a mi mente. No todas las piezas están en orden secuencial y los nombres de personas han sido cambiados, pero la historia es la misma. Mi esperanza es que mi historia toque el corazón de personas y paren la violencia doméstica, y los abusos de niños y animales.

Así Fue Nuestra Niñez

Extraordinary, Riveting, Inspirational...

In this book, I, Rosa, take you through my life, from childhood to the present. I recall times of struggle, abuse, and good memories. This book began as a journal, and because I wrote thoughts down as they came to me, not all parts are in sequential order. Names of people have been changed, but the story remains the same. My hope is that my story will touch someone’s heart and bring attention to issues of child, domestic, and animal abuse.

This Was Our Childhood

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 8 feb 2021
• ISBN: 9781643341538

Vista previa del libro

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This Was Our Childhood

Así Fue Nuestra Niñez

Teresita Luévano

Copyright © 2020 Teresita Luévano

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced (except for inclusion in reviews), disseminated or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system or the internet / World Wide Web without written permission from the author or publisher.

ISBN 978-1-64334-152-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64334-153-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Capítulo 1

Capítulo 2

Capítulo 3

Capítulo 4

Capítulo 5

Capítulo 6

Capítulo 7

Capítulo 8

Capítulo 9

Capítulo 10

Capítulo 11

Capítulo 12

Capítulo 13

Capítulo 14

Capítulo 15

Capítulo 16

Capítulo 17

Capítulo 18

Capítulo 19

Capítulo 20

Capítulo 21

Capítulo 22

Capítulo 23

Capítulo 24

Capítulo 25

Introduction

The life recounted in this extraordinary book was lived in Mexico.

Rosa describes her childhood and that of her brothers and sisters as lacking in love from the time they were very small, and through her memories, she takes us back to the time of our own innocence, adolescence and youth.

As children, we were afraid of our parents. When our father became upset, he would yell at us, cursing and using foul language. They would lay into us with blows or with any other blunt object…

This story is based on real-life events. The original Spanish language version, transcribed from the author’s handwritten manuscript, as well as the English translation, are both included in this single, powerful book.

Chapter 1

The Beginning

My father was a tall man, medium structure with light brown eyes, in February 24, 1941. My father Serafino married my mother Josie in a small town in Northern Mexico called La Paz. La Paz translates to The Peace. The name of the town is ironic because, soon after they were married, my father began physically and mentally abusing my mother. Peace is one thing that she never had with him. In 1943, their first son, James, was born. Soon after, the abuse grew to include him.

According to my grandmother, when James was just a few months old, my father had once lost his patience with James because he was crying, and my father tried to kill him with a hatchet. The following day, while my father was at work, my mother put some clothes in a bag and asked a neighbor to help her get away from the abuse that they were suffering at my father’s hand. She got a ride to the town where her mother—my grandmother—lived. She explained the situation and stayed there. Most of what I know about things that happened before I was born, I found out from two of my older sisters and my grandmother.

While my mother and James lived with my grandparents, the boy had a very nice childhood. My grandparents loved him very much and would often spoil him. My grandparents had an adopted son named Victor, they were almost the same age and both kids use to play together. For some reason, after being separated for seven years, my parents decided to live together again. They took their son, who was now seven years old, to live with them. It wasn’t long before the abuse of the boy, and my mother started all over again.

One Sunday, when James was nine years old, he was walking to the church, then he left the church, but he came back to it to say goodbye to his mom. When he left the church, he saw the owner of the nearby store, slowly approaching in his truck and heading in the same direction. James grabbed on to the side of the pickup truck to hitch a ride but couldn’t hang on. He fell and died as the truck’s rear tire crushed his head.

Though it all appeared to be an accident, my father lost his temper with the owner of the truck. At that time, there wasn’t any established law enforcement in our town. Issues were settled on their own. To put an end to the problem, the man gave my father a sum of money. My father used that money to purchase one lot of land, as the time passed he purchased more land on which we planted corn, beans, and fruit trees. He also purchased cows, mares, calves, pigs, mules, lambs, turkeys, and chickens.

By that time, when the kid died, my mother already had her second child, a daughter they named Lucretia. As the years went by, the rest of us were born one after the other, with a year and a few months in between. Lucretia was born, then Castor, then Beatrice, then Leticia, then Frank, then John and then James, who was named after our deceased brother. I, Rosa, was next, born May of 1961. The youngest, Alfredo, followed soon after. All the girls had green eyes and blond hair besides myself. I’m brunette with brown eyes. The boys were tan-skinned with brown eyes, besides John, who was blond with green eyes.

Most of us have never seen a picture of ourselves when we were born or as infants. I have seen one black-and-white photo of Lucretia and Castor from when they were about two or three years old. I’ve also seen a colored photo of my sister Beatrice. It was a professional studio picture taken when she was seven or eight, wearing her dress from her first communion. That photo was taken when she lived with my grandmother. There might be one or two black-and-white pictures of each of us when we were in school. I’ve never seen pictures of my parents from when they were young. They were very reserved; they never talk about their infancy. I’ve seen one black-and-white picture of my mother from when she might’ve been around thirty-four years old. I don’t remember seeing any photos of my father from when he was young.

Chapter 2

The Daily Grind

In those days, wherever we went, it was on foot. To church, the store, school, everywhere. We would walk to school at eight in the morning and walk back home at two in the afternoon for lunch. We were back in school by three and out by five. Eventually, another school was built, but it was farther from our home. We also attended that school.

There was a doctor that lived across the street from the school to whom my parents sold milk to for years. On our way to school, we had to take the pot of milk to the doctor and pick up the empty pot on our way home. I remember it was my turn, I had to use a rock to knock on the door so they could hear me, knocking all the way from the kitchen. The doctor paid monthly. My father would use that money to buy a big box of lard, a large sack of sugar, and a large sack of flour.

One day, the cows didn’t get milked until the sun was coming down. My sister Leticia was sent to deliver the milk by herself. By then, it was dark. When she got to the river where she had to cross, she got so scared that she threw the milk in the river and ran back home. As it came closer to the end of the month, Leticia worried that my parents would notice that she didn’t take the milk. When the payment was due, she lucked out because the doctor paid for the whole month. My parents never found out.

One of our daily chores was to sweep the yard. Though the yard was all dirt and chickens, other animals would be in the yard feeding and leaving their feces around, so it had to be swept often. It was a big yard and a tiresome job. We used a limb broom, which is made of very thin branches tied together. We never knew what plant he uses to tied together. We used another broom made of straw to sweep the house. We worked to earn beans and tortillas that was the food we ate daily.

When it was time to shear the wool off the lambs, my brothers would do the shearing, and the rest of us siblings would wash it thoroughly and lay it out to dry under the sun. My father would then have blankets made from that wool.

When my father would send my brothers to fetch the cows from grazing, they would go on horseback. If they came across a cow that had just given birth or was nursing, they would lift its calf onto the horse with the rider and bring them back to the corral. Once the corral was filled with cows, my brothers would help my father brand them to mark them as his.

Back then, they plowed the land with a plow pulled by mules. My father would have James, Alfredo, and myself (who was around six or seven at the time) sow the seeds while my older brothers would come up behind us, plowing with the animals to cover the seeds. Sometimes, I would trip and fall with the seeds.

My father would yell at me, Lift those legs, you lanky girl!

We were afraid of the animals when they would get too close to us but were even more afraid of my father when he came around to check on our progress because it usually resulted in a reprimand, at the very least.

Sometimes he would yell and curse at us and beat us with his hands or with any other nearby object. He kept us fearful while we worked. All of us helped him work year after year, season after season. Without his sons and daughters, my father would never have been able to harvest the crops. There’s no way he could have done all that work without help.

The house had an adobe oven outside that was used for making bread. Nobody liked that oven. When it rained, the adobe would soften up, and if my father wasn’t around, we would climb on top of it and jump until it collapsed little by little. One time, my father swung at John with an iron pulley wheel. John climbed on top of the adobe oven and hopped over the adobe fence that was next to it, barely avoiding the hit. We just thanks to God that he didn’t kill us.

Chapter 3

The Well

Back then, when my mother and dad lived alone, years past and Castor put a pump in one of the wells that took the water to Castor’s and to my parent’s house, the deepest well was dug by Castor, my dad and another man just by pick and shovel, in that well two of my brothers and me the smallest of the family had to get water from there, it was eighty two feet. We had to get all our water from a well. The well is at the bottom of a hill behind the house. Standing at the bottom of the hill, one could barely see the top of the house. We had to lug the water in pails up that hill for everything. There were times when the pail would accidentally drop to the bottom of the well, which was seventy-two feet or almost eighty feet deep. My father would tie an end of a rope around one of my brothers and send them down while he was at the other end. I was always afraid that he would drop them one day. One time, when the lid was off the well and my father was nearby, he tripped and barely saved himself from falling inside. Jaime once told me that my father would put him in the well, Jaime was only eight or ten year old, he put him inside a basket, they were made of strips skin, those baskets they were used to put on horses, mules and donkeys, they would use two of them, one on each side to put items inside. this basket was tied with a rope holding with only my dad and my older brother’s strength, he wanted to put Alfredo in there; but he took off running and my dad couldn’t catch him.

To get the pail to the water, the cable holding the pail would unwind through a pulley. Someone would wind the cable while someone else would wait for the pail to come up and pull it to the side. When I was younger, it used to scare me when I had to grab the pail because, being short, one had to lean in to grab it. Several years ago, a mule fell in the well and died. It had to be tied up and pulled out with a tractor.

When we did laundry, two of us would carry the tub full of clothes, covers, sheets, and anything else that needed washing down the hill to the well. All the washing was done by hand. There were times when we would last all day and very well wash. The pants and everything that had pockets we turn them inside out, when we were rinse them, they would be very white, when we wash them in the well, we took the water out, there were time we would help to bring the clothes while mom would washed them or vice versa. The whites would be washed, rinsed, and then placed in a tub with water. Then we would make a wood fire by the well to boil the whites with water and soap. When they were done boiling, we would hang them on the mesquite trees to dry under the sun.

There were times when we would carry the tub down to the well and my mother would do the wash. Those times, my siblings and I were left to do the housework and the cooking. Of course, my father could afford a washing machine, but he was so tight with his money and preferred that we did it by hand. They have an old wringer-type washing machine now. I don’t know who bought it, but they’ve rarely used it.

Sometimes, when the water was clear, we would wash the clothes in the river. It was much better because we didn’t have to pull water from the well. We would go down the hill with the tub full of clothes and wash. Then we’d lay them out to dry on a patch of tightly packed rocks that had been washed by the river.

Back then, we ironed the clothes with actual, old-school, heavy irons. It was the way most people ironed when there was no electricity in town. We would put wood in the stove and light the fire to heat the irons and iron clothes for hours

Sometimes, if the weather was nice and the water was clear, we would bathe in the river. But usually, to bathe, we had to get the water from the well, heat the water, and bathe in a tub. We suffered through the cold in the winter season. The only warmth in the house was in the kitchen with the woodburning stove. We’d put the tub right next to it and bathe there in the kitchen. We didn’t have any air conditioning or even fans in the summer, so that was just as bad as the winter. During the hot season, we would usually have the tub in one of the rooms. Along with no running water, we also didn’t have a toilet. If we had to go, it was usually in any private or hidden spot outside. If we had the urge at night, we’d usually go in the dark to the corral.

We had to split tons of wood because the wood stove was used often. We had a gas stove in the kitchen that ran off a small propane tank. It was rarely used because it consumed gas, and gas cost money that my father wasn’t trying to let go of.

On one occasion, we ran out of gas and my father yelled, It’s already used up!

Though we had that same tank for six months, to him, we used it too fast.

My father didn’t allow us to leave the pilot flame on the gas stove. Between the gas and woodburning stove, we used a lot of matches and lighter fluid. They probably spent more on matches and lighter fluid than they would have leaving the stove’s pilot light on. Sometimes my mom would sent me to wash the nixtamal in the night, we would wash close to the well, there was one time I was bent over washing the nixtamal, when apparently one man grab me attempting to rape me, I defended myself how I could. I screamed and he try to shut my mouth, I kick him and pull his hair, I could finally escape from him, I ran real fast and got up the hill, when I got home my mom asked me where is the nixtamal, and I told her I bring it back, I stood by the door with my heart accelerated from the fright and the running, whose name is Beltran, he lived right in front of our house, when I saw him enter his house, I ran real fast with a lot of fright, I went to get the nixtamal, it was there just the way it was, I didn’t finish washing it, I was scared that he would try to get me again, I didn’t tell my mom or anyone what had happened, now that I am bigger I told two of my sisters and one sister in law. To tell my parents about what happened, to me it was taboo, with my mom was not confident to tell her what happened, and she never gave us any advice.

Chapter 4

Alone in the Darkness

There was a room at the pasture where my father would keep us when we worked with him. That room is basically an adobe shed, with one window to the rear and the door at the front. It didn’t have electric lighting, and it was out in the middle of nowhere. When Alfredo was seven years old, he was left alone in the room by the pasture. Alfredo said that he was so scared, he left and went to the corral. Once inside the corral, he stood on a bench to climb on a mule. He slept mounted on that mule until dawn.

When I was nine years old, my father would also leave me there alone at night, watching over a heap of beans. I would sit on the ground with my head down. I would close my eyes because it frightened me to look around in the dark. I remember that I could hear the coyotes howling close by, and all I could see out there was the sky, outlines of the hills, and in the distance, the lights of some small ranches. It was November, and the night was very cold. I didn’t have jacket or clothes suitable for cold weather to keep myself warm. I just sat there with my head down, lonely, scared, and freezing. Once, I was there alone, and someone knocked on the window, frightening the life out of me. It was a little Indian boy asking for food. I gave him tortillas and what food I had, and he left.

Another time they left me there, I ran off because I couldn’t stand how scared I was. I left on foot at night, passing the brooks, hills, and the trees until I reached Rafaela’s house. My sister-in-law hid me under