Caridad “fell in love with Memo, her high school sweetheart, got pregnant, and they married the day after graduation. But two weeks had not passed before Caridad got wind that Memo was still seeing his ex-girlfriend, Domitila, who lived in Belen; and Caridad went back home.” Caridad had three abortions, but did not tell anyone outside the family “about it but said to Memo and his family that Caridad had miscarried from being so upset bout Memo’s cheating on her. It was agreed by all that the marriage be annulled” (26) Thereby Memo is spared any responsibility to Caridad or her children at great personal risk to Caridad and her sister. They both face ex-communication and La Loca risks arrest. (27)
Caridad continues to see “Memo for several years until he finally made his choice. It was not Domitila of Belen and it wasn’t Caridad of Tome. It was the Marines. And off he went to be all that he never knew he was. For while it was said that the Army made men, the Marines’ motto, he was told was that they only took men” (27)
Esperanza’s reunion with Rubén after he dumped her to marry an Anglo woman consisted of going to tee-pee meetings of the Native-American church. “Every time they went to a meeting, which was maybe once every two or three weeks, everything was good between them. They went to the meeting. Sometimes they also did a sweat. Afterward, they went home and made love all day. The problem was that then she would not hear from Rubén again until the next time there was a meeting. She was beginning to feel like part of a ritual in which she herself participated as an unsuspecting symbol, like a staff or a rattle or medicine” (38). He refused to get involved in her life “which Ruben referred to derogatorily as ’careerist’” (38). He refused to take her out on a regular date between meetings; “he simply declined with no apologies, regrets, or explanations” (37)
Esperanza gets a moment of clarity about her relationship with Rubén. “He talked to her on the phone like she was a casual friend. Whom he prayed with and whom he made love with, but whom he could not call to ask on a given day how she was doing. (Sic) A casual friend who accepted her gifts of groceries, the rides in her car with her gas, all up and down the Southwest to attend meetings, who called her collect the month he left on a ‘pilgrimage’ to visit the Mayan ruins throughout southern Mexico, where she had not been invited to join him, but who always let her pick up the tab some place for a few beers and burritos …” while she worked at the “job which he suspected her so much of selling out to white society for but which paid for all the food, gas, telephone calls and even, let’s admit it, the tens and twenties she discreetly left on his bedroom dresser whenever she went over, knowing he could use it and would take it, although he would have never asked her directly for it” (40).
She finally realizes she must end this one-sided relationship, but instead of breaking things off with him face-to-face and reaming Rubén out over his shameless use and cavalier abuse of her, she calls him on the phone and drops him, citing the job she accepted in Washington, D.C., far away from home, as the reason she is doing so. The culture of these women seems to expect that, instead of demanding that their men act like men, they act like they really are men and do everything they can to protect their masculine pride. Their own pride does not matter. Memo is allowed to have Caridad and Domitila, too until he tires of them both and dumps them, crowing about how the Marine Corps proves what a man he is. Neither can get tired of his philandering and dump him. Esperanza must use a job as an excuse to drop Rubén rather than his own disgusting behavior.
The culture also enforces a double standard, granting freedom to look outside the culture for a “better” spouse for the men without really turning their back on the community. However, it is such that it never even occurs to Esperanza, the most “liberated” of the sisters to do the same. She buries herself in her dangerous job instead. Caridad, too, involves herself in men who vaguely resemble Memo instead of looking outside the culture, where familiarity has obviously bred contempt, for a “worthier” man.
By accepting substandard treatment from their own men and the double standard that keeps them from looking elsewhere for men to marry, these codependent women not only contribute to their own marginalization but that of their community.
Work Cited
Castillo, Anna. So Far From God. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
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