worked our way up and into the lower middle class. But without the gas station, we tumbled so far from that rung that we had to struggle to obtain the bare necessities—including the money needed to feed a growing family.
This descent was a shock to our system, as it was for much of the country, which had been enjoying relative prosperity and improvement since the 1930s, when American companies and other foreign investors had come in to develop rural areas and outposts like Palaco. The influx of outside investment created jobs and helped lift many families out of poverty. But in many cases when the companies left (or were forced to do so when the laws in Mexico changed to limit foreign-owned business), so did jobs and family security. The middle class sank to lower levels, and the poor became the really poor.
The other factor that contributed to the loss of the gas station only came to light after my father had to sell it for next to no profit. To do so, he had to first turn it over to his brother, my uncle Jesus, in whose name the government had originally issued the PEMEX (Petroleos Mexicanos) permit and who had wisely renewed it over the years—to his credit, since few such permits were available anymore. When Uncle Jesus tried to turn the gas station over to new management, a survey of the property revealed a startling fact. All those years, unbeknownst to Papá, there had been holes in the gas tanks and they had been steadily leaking their contents into the ground. So much gas from the underground tanks had seeped out that everyone’s first reaction was to thank God that no stray lit match or mechanical explosion had ignited an inferno that would surely have swallowed all of us up. During all the years in which we had lived in the apartment at the back of the gas station, we had been unaware that such a horrific event—of a type that was all too common in our area—could have occurred and ended our lives.
Why had it taken so long to realize we were paying more for the gasoline than we were selling at the pumps? It should have been more obvious that the profits were literally leaking away into the earth under our feet.
Papá may have had distractions that kept him from noticing our sinking bottom line. And he was young and inexperienced, never having had the chance to explore the world before settling down, instead going from marriage at the age of twenty to becoming the father of six children within ten years. My father might have been fighting depression, which became more evident as our financial status worsened and as alcohol became a more frequent means of escape, a way to self-medicate.
Looking back, as I try to understand what my father went through, I truly believe that he was destined for great things, as my grandfather had foreseen. But Papá wasn’t on steady ground when sudden misfortune capsized him, so finding his way to terra firma became that much harder. Losing the gas station also represented a decline in our standing in the Quiñones family and in the community—even though my aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandparents, maintained a policy of denial about how much trouble we were in. Still, despite our attempts to keep up appearances, they must have known of our struggles.
But within our household, the reality couldn’t be ignored. It is hard to be in denial when your stomach is empty. One scene is burned into my memory: my mother standing over the stove making tortillas, just flour and water and a touch of oil in the pan to feed us children—me at ten years old, Gabriel at almost nine, seven-year-old Rosa, Jorge at about four years old, and baby Jaqueline not yet six months, then asleep for her nap. There we sat at the table, hands folded, waiting quietly to split the tortillas as they came from the pan. Decades later, I can still conjure the smell that told us how delicious every morsel was going to taste. Remembering that near silence in the kitchen, I can still hear the music of the tortilla sizzling in the oil—the most hopeful sound in the world at that time. To this day, the mere mention of the word “hunger” summons that scene to my mind.
That was dinner—flour tortillas with homemade salsa. Gone were the days of eating meat once a week. Gone were the nights of imagining that my father was out somewhere picking up bread or something hearty for our breakfast. Gone were Christmas mornings waking to the smell of my mother’s tamales. Now, as I lay on the roof, instead of looking up at the sky and dreaming of traveling beyond the stars, I dreamt of more practical desires—a piece of pan dulce and a time when we would have beans and potatoes at our table again.
Every now and then, I dreamt of things that I’d like to do or own for myself that weren’t food or family related—like the time I became very focused on owning a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. Back then, they were the essence of living la vida loca!
Strangely, it was in this darker period that the nightmares that had plagued me for most of childhood suddenly ceased. Now actual threats to our security occupied my waking thoughts. But instead of feeling helpless, as I sat up on the roof late into the night, I was emboldened by thinking of ways to help. Surely real problems could be met with real solutions.
I was also convinced, as I told Mamá, that the many hours spent in church, as an altar boy and in confession, could be better spent working to help the family. Besides, sitting in church was boring and my attention span was not my strong suit. My mother thought for a moment and then pronounced her decision. “Alfredo, if you continue as you are until your First Communion, after that, it will be up to you to choose whether or not to attend church anymore.”
She had only two conditions: first, I must remain observant and good during Easter week every year; and second, before taking First Communion, I would have to go on my knees from outside of the church into the sanctuary, confessing my sins as I crawled all the way to the altar.
Now I had a tough decision to make. Easter was actually a dark, somber holiday in my estimation. The rituals were strange to me, unlike those of my favorite celebration, Día de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead—when we ate candy, danced, and dressed up in skeleton costumes and skull masks, giving death its respect but mocking its finality. Still, if these gestures meant that much to my mother and I only had to go to church one day a year, this wasn’t a bad deal. The real challenge would be coming clean, in public, about my many misdeeds.
And yet, at ten years old, that’s just what I did. On that long crawl, as I shuffled on my knees up the steps and down the aisle on the cold, hard, marble floor, I asked to be forgiven not just for the past but for future wrongdoing as well. These sins of mine were not generic or abstract; they weren’t extreme, but they weren’t inconsequential. They included the little pyrotechnic experiments I had conducted in the fields with my investigative team in tow, as we created geysers of flame high in the air. As I had admitted to our priest in previous confession, I also had a habit of not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when interrogated by my elders. Though I didn’t lie outright, I had found a way of avoiding the truth by saying nothing—like the time when I was seven or eight years old and my father questioned me about a particular boast that I had made to the older boys out in the schoolyard.
Rather than asking me if it was true that I had bragged that I was so fast I could run around and pull up girls’ dresses without their realizing it, my father asked, “Are you behaving yourself at school?”
I was outraged. “Of course!” This was true when discussing my behavior in the classroom, where I was an angel. Out in the yard, a little devil got the better of me.
“Tell me the truth, Alfredo, were you trying to look up girls’ dresses?”
“What?” I put on a disgusted, shocked look. Very convincing, I thought. “Who said I did that?”
“Never mind. I’m asking if you did or didn’t. Well?”
“And I’m saying that is a terrible accusation, and whoever made it must not have known what they were talking about!”
We could go on like this for hours. As long as I wasn’t caught in the act, I figured, I couldn’t be convicted. But I knew deep down that my action counted
