forehead was lacerated. Florcita had hit him with an iron bar. He called the police. When two policemen arrived, they first questioned Kevin in a formulaic tone, “How many times have you hit your woman?” Kevin laughed, saying “Look at me, she hit me.” An argument ensued between Kevin and Florcita in which each accused the other of being a golpeador/a (beater). Despite our contestations and pleadings, the police ultimately sided with Kevin. They arrested Florcita and took her into custody for the night. Later, Sra. Flora and I learned from Florcita that the argument had been set off by a missing piece of pizza. Florcita had brought home a pizza from the school where she worked. She shared it with her sisters, setting aside a piece for Kevin. The piece disappeared, however, and Kevin accused Florcita of eating it.3 This eruption of violence set in motion a daily struggle between Rodrigo and Sra. Flora over Florcita and Kevin's place in the home. Rodrigo simply demanded that they leave. Sra. Flora, on the other hand, wanted to help Florcita separate from Kevin, which would take its own time. Gradually, this struggle over letting time do its work became cast in economic terms. Rodrigo told me his unstable wages were barely covering monthly bills, department store quotas, and food. Florcita and Kevin, he said, were not contributing to the home. They were leaving the financial and emotional responsibility for caring for their own children to him and Sra. Flora. Tired of spending his income on paying the bills, he used his end-of-the-month pay to buy a new shirt, sweater, pants, and shoes. When the light was cut to the home for nonpayment, Rodrigo argued that it was her excessive care for family members that produced this darkness.4 His frustration with her defense of Florcita and Kevin bled into relations with her other kin. He said that she would “sit in the dark” until she “put limits” on her family visiting the home. As she told me, “How can I limit my own family members from coming here? I was not raised that way, and it's difficult for me to change at this point in my life.” After Rodrigo lost his job, she said, “Se puso machista, muy machista” (He's become very dominating).
In our conversations, Sra. Flora moved between the affective registers of time and space when speaking about Rodrigo. Time as possibility, an enduring patience with Rodrigo: “Let us see everything in its time.” Space as a declaration of the finitude of her relation to him: “I want him to leave the house!” Yet when she recounted how she met Rodrigo, she cast their relationship and their process of constructing a life together in the shadow of other intimate experiences of male violence. Sra. Flora had met her husband when she migrated with her family from Los Angeles in the south of Chile to Santiago in search of work. She was sixteen years old when she became pregnant with her first child, Carmen.
I was dating my husband when I was sixteen years old, and I was very sick, very sick. I went to the doctor, and they did some blood exams, and then afterward they did not explain anything. They gave me a letter from the doctor. I went to a meeting with my friend. I had the letter in my sweater pocket, and left it there on the chair [at home]. I still had not read the letter. My mother read it, and arrived to the [friend's] house furious. My mother beat me up [me sacó la cresta], took a stick and hit me in the face, in the mouth. I did not know why. And afterward, my father came and he beat, beat, beat me in the face, breaking all my teeth. And then all of my brothers—imagine it, I have four brothers; there were only two women in the family. All of my brothers and my father went to look for my husband, and they beat him up. I was in the hospital for one month, and he was there for forty-five days. They operated on my mouth and had to take out all my teeth. But I did not lose the baby. This baby was Carmen. Afterward, there was so much pressure for me to marry him. And, we married in ’66. He began to walk around with other women, drink alcohol. And my brothers saw him with other women, and they hit him, beat him. My father said to him, “You are walking around with another woman when my daughter is in the home pregnant with your child?” But when they beat him, he arrived to the house and hit me, saying that it was my fault that they beat him. And every time they beat him, he arrived to the house to hit me. And that went on for years.
In 1976, tío Ricardo came to live with her. Arriving in Santiago destitute and in search of work, by chance he saw Sra. Flora walking in the Plaza de Armas in Santiago's center. She had known him from her time in Los Angeles, and in Santiago she offered him shelter in the house she shared with her husband. He could stay if he worked and helped pay the bills. Some months later, Rodrigo arrived.
When Rodrigo came to the house is when the problems started. Because during this time, my husband continued to beat me…. Rodrigo and Ricardo heard everything. Ricardo never dared to do anything, because he was scared of my husband. But Rodrigo, on the other hand, did not have fear of anything. And he said, “I can't stand it, that you are sacando la cresta [beating yourself up] working to maintain the house and this desgraciado [wretched person] is arriving to the house to hit you and harass you. I cannot bear it.”
On New Year's Eve of 1977, Sra. Flora and Rodrigo threw a party. They waited for her husband, but he did not return home. After several drinks and much conversation, Sra. Flora woke up the next day in Rodrigo's bed.
I was so ashamed. I could not look him in the face…. He left for a few days, but returned. He looked for me at my work. He was persistent. He told me that he was in love with me, that he did not have any fear of my family or my husband. That he could care less about them. He told me he wanted to throw my husband out of the house. But I told him I could not do it, out of respect for my family. He was angry. Then he came back to the house [and stayed] for months…. After having relations with Rodrigo, I separated from my husband. We had separate beds, and I did not let him have relations with me. But one night, I arrived to the house exhausted…. And because I was not vigilant, my husband searched for me [me buscó], and he obligated me to have relations with him again. Three months later, I felt really ill, and I discovered I was pregnant again. I told Rodrigo I was pregnant, and he left the house for six months. But, when he returned, he said that he continued to be in love with me. And my husband left the house, because he could not stand it. And I never asked anything from him. Afterward, Rodrigo and I started to move up [surgir]. We constructed the room where Florcita and Kevin stay. We constructed the second floor. Rodrigo says that Valentina is his daughter because he raised her. And she calls him papá because she does not know her father by blood.
Sra. Flora's narrative reveals that there are two different elements composing “house relations”: blood and everyday labors of caring for another. In this case, these everyday labors “cut” blood relations, limiting the network of actual kin while producing new kin relatedness, paternity: Valentina calls Rodrigo “Dad,” while her biological father is an inactivated memory (see Strathern 1996). Her narrative also shows the ways in which a break with a male partner occurs in an “unstated” register. In maintaining her family's respect, Sra. Flora married her husband and endured his sexual violence. She also maintained this respect in the way she recounted these experiences to me, by focusing on the actions and desires of the two men while leaving her desires unstated. “He continued to be in love with me.” “He returned.” “He left because he could not stand it.” Yet, at the same time, she shows how her patience allowed for that break and allowed for new house relations. She took on this tone again with Rodrigo. She patiently absorbed the darkness of the home while protecting Florcita. Alongside this awaiting, however, she also asserted a determined ability to live without Rodrigo. As she told me after another argument with him: “But when we fought again last Saturday, I said, ‘If you want to go, then just go’ [said in a defiant tone]. Don't feel committed to me. I will lose weight and look for work. I don't need your contribution here in the house. I will not be here begging that you stay here.”
Then in early October, Sra. Flora fell ill. After her return from the hospital, I visited her. Covered by an old blue quilt, she convalesced in their cramped bedroom. I asked her what had happened. The night she fell ill, she and Rodrigo had fought. Rodrigo had discovered department store bills that Sra. Flora had been hiding and paying piola (“quietly,” or “without notice”). She had bought clothes for Florcita and her children. Rodrigo threatened to leave the home. Sra. Flora confronted Florcita, telling her to leave Kevin. Florcita refused. She loved Kevin, she said, and she hated her mother for bending to Rodrigo's demands. Sra. Flora felt a terrible
