In My Day, Women Were Women, And Men Were Men

We grew up in South Texas. It was farm and ranch country and we lived on the ranch, went to school in town. Most of the people that lived around us were Hispanic, except in that time we called them Mexican. We had a Mexican maid, Rosa, and she had a daughter my age, Heather. They lived in a small trailer behind the main house, closer to the stables. I went to the only private school in the area, a small school affiliated with the Methodist church. Heather went to the public school.

Growing up on a ranch exposed us early to everything. Coyotes that were shot on site. Deer for venison. Dogs that 'bred' out in the open. It came and went and we hardly paid attention. My mother was a bit younger than my father, about fifteen years. A good age difference for a young girl to get her wings with. Of course my mother had babies. The more the better. At fourteen I had four siblings, one more would come a bit later.

Heather got pregnant at fourteen by one of the wetbacks. My father stood him up and tied him to a tree and sent Esteban the foreman for his long gun. We stood in the clearing, the wetback saying his prayers and my father contemplating what he was going to do with him. Rosa said shoot him. In the end, Esteban and another ranch hand took him with them and lost him in the brush with a canteen and a kick in the ass and told him not to be seen again, or they would shoot him. Heather had a baby.

Heather's experience was used constantly with us girls. That is the reason you don't talk to them, you don't get close to them, you don't help them. Or, we were warned, we would end up like Heather, and no decent man would ever want us. Heather went on to get pregnant again with an older boy from school and this time my father made her get married. He gave them a trailer and put the boy to work for Esteban.

I was 18 and we celebrated my birthday. It was family, we didn't have birthdays with a lot of other people. My family, and Rosa and Esteban, and Heather, and that husband and those two kids of hers. In the Fall I was going off to Austin and the University of Texas. I had already been indoctrinated, a lawyer or a doctor, nothing less was permissible. That meant that as a freshman I hung out with older students in law school. My fate came early to me, I was passed around at a party, by the time the passing around stopped I had lost my virginity five times to five different guys. I liked sex. I really did. Maybe as an adult it wasn't the Christian way to lose your virginity, but as a college girl it introduced me to sex for pleasure. I didn't tell my parents.

By the time I finished my degree I had had sex with a dozen guys, other than those five the first time. I was experienced and picked them for their prowess, not their degree plan. And one of the guys I picked was Alberto (big Al) from San Antonio. A Mexican. He was a law student and he wanted more than anything a white girlfriend. I guess there are a hundred ways for a man to screw you, Al did them all until I was a whimpering little nothing fixing him breakfast. I went Mexican when it came to being Al's girlfriend. I got pregnant, on purpose, to push him into getting married and told Al about my father and how he dealt with coyotes that got to his livestock, and wetbacks that got to his 'women'. Al had no choice as I saw it. Al was getting married.

We got married in a big Mexican way, with all the fanfare. Al stood with his white girl and his Mexican pals accused him of trying to improve the race of his children. On my part, I was there to do just that, have children. The more the better, even if I had to live in San Antonio.