Marcelino

 Marcelino

 

 Marcelino


In the Mexico of my childhood, in the Mexico where I grew up, every slum had one. Their families hid them with much shame in the back rooms of their homes. They called them by different names, lunatic, crazy, unhinged, mad, insane, nutcase, loony, cuckoo, or worse.

My mom had taught me to be respectful to everybody and never laugh at anyone with mental or physical deficiencies. She never gave me a lesson or mentioned the subject. I learned from her example.

In my poor neighborhood, I had a friend my age. He had a brother that most people in the community never knew existed. His brother was kept apart and secluded in a small room behind the kitchen. With his face deformed, I could never guess his age, and he was mentally impaired. I only saw him once, and I felt sad about his misery. I know it doesn't sound good, but when I saw Quasimodo in the movies, he reminded me of him. He had to be dependent on his parents.

Then, there was Marcelino, he was a little less dependent, but anybody could see that he was crazy from a mile away. He was mentally deficient or disabled. He was able to work (more or less). He needed to work to support his younger sister and his mother. (as I later found out.)

He didn't live in my neighborhood. I only saw him every two or three weeks. That's the time it took him to travel his route. Sometimes I saw him in other parts of town, but always in the city's poorest areas. I didn't know his family or where he lived. I was curious to know where he slept. Marcelino sometimes changed his route to avoid the rotten food and vegetables that kids and adults threw at him. Occasionally old ladies would defend him, but their presence was never permanent.

Going door to door, Marcelino would offer to sing your favorite song for some coins or leftovers. He would only beg for something free, maybe an old 45 for his record player. He would exchange his services as a troubadour for a taco or ten cents.

He carried a little wooden box with a rusty nail sticking out of the middle. It was probably the only possession of his that wasn't a hand-me-down or rescued from the back alley. Ten cents would buy you a song. Not singing anything, he'd hum and mumble the same tune no matter the request. Turning his treasured records with his stubby fingers on his wooden box, he'd perform for you, your song.

To hear the fading man whining, older kids from town would snatch Marcelino's records. All the kids did something to him at some point. Frisbeeing the records over his head into the hands of another kid, they make him chase them around until someone finally drops one. Marcelino would pick it up, clean it off with his dirty shirt and walk straight to his record player to start singing again. Maybe he was too slow to see it, but it was excessive innocence; he'd fall for their pranks every time. Spotting him a block away, kids would climb trees and roofs. When Marcelino was close enough, they'd jump out of their hiding places to throw a bucket of water or watermelon rinds, rotten eggs, tomatoes, or whatever was at hand.

Our mothers would defend him then, but they didn't realize they had embedded resentment in our little minds years before, saying, "Do as I say, or Marcelino will take you." Comparing him to the boogie man.

I was no saint. I was mischievous too. I often waited, crouched on my balcony, armed with rubber bands and orange peels, ready for unlucky victims to walk past my house. I had dirty tricks but was choosy, no grandmas, pretty girls, or Marcelino.

When his route brought him to my house, my mom always had a taco or whatever we had for lunch waiting for him. She'd never forget to give me ten cents so I could hear my song. Some days he would show up with bruises and gashes on his face and arms, and then we'd pay for two songs. Everybody knew when he'd get all bloodied up that somebody had been ruthless, and everybody would feel bad about it. Still, all that temporary compassion would fade away before he moved to the next neighborhood.

On some occasions, my dad would give me money to take to church on Sundays, and I never thought of using that money for my pleasure. I never kept it for me, not even once, except to give it to Marcelino when he was beaten and defeated.

He sang obscure or invented on-the-spot songs, whatever came to his mind. We could never understand the words. But there was one that he would sing endlessly. It sounded like a lullaby. If you requested that one, he would smile mischievously because he also knew it was the best in his repertoire. While he was humming that sad tune, you could find a little happiness behind his eyes.  
                                                                                                                       
He had dark skin after all his life under the sun. He was eternally tanned; no, that's not the right word. He was eternally sunburned. You could see he had extraordinary strength. He had the power of a hard-working peasant, but he could never use it to its full potential to defend himself because he could quickly be punished by the law or overtaken by a mob.

He could never win; he was always alone. No matter what, he'd be the guilty party, even if he'd win, but he could never win. And he never won. Nobody could be on his side in those instances. The loony, the mentally deranged, is always a loser in these parts of town or elsewhere. If he acted "irrationally," his final destiny could be in jail, a hospital, or the cemetery.  

Sometimes we would try to guess his age, but it was tough. Our guesses varied from twenty to forty-five. But his mind was of a seven-year-old child. (I could cry just thinking about that.)

Perpetually abused, Marcelino remained innocent. I say this because it was easy to make him smile. He didn't ask for much. If you smiled at him, he knew you were a friend, but he could easily forget that, and the next minute you were the enemy again. It was hard for him to trust in a good soul because he had been abused by so many and for so long.

One of the kids my age was incredibly mean to him. Years later, he wanted to date my sister, but I highly recommended her against it. I was glad she followed my advice.

One time I came out of my house, and immediately, I knew I had missed him when I saw many tiny pieces of black, hard plastic on the ground. I was sure it was one of his records.

After a while, I saw less of Marcelino. By winter, he had left almost everyone's mind but mine. I missed his rusty muttering and his toothless smile. After apologizing to my older brother for purposely leaving his records in the sun and warping them, I asked if I could give them to Marcelino. My brother agreed, and immediately, I set out to find Marcelino.

To my ten-year-old legs, it seemed no one had ever walked as far as to reach a tiny house at the edge of town, a modest home that had experienced all possible repairs. An old lady opened the door, "Yes, Marcelino lives here. He's my son, and this is his sister, "They took his leg from the knee down. One of his bruises never healed." Too scared to go inside, I left the records with her and returned home.

Summer came, and so did Marcelino, with a wooden leg and crutches. Around his neck hung his record player by a string, and swinging from his hip, his 45s in a cloth bag. It was good to see him again, but I was deeply saddened to see him like that. His new appearance softened very few hearts.

He never learned to avoid the produce alley, where the men tease him. They would ask if he had a wife or had ever been with a woman. And now, the mean grown-up men thought it was funny to watch him hobble back down the alley to fetch the crutch they'd just thrown.

One day, I saw a kid playing with my neighbor's little girl from my balcony in the front yard. Throwing her in the air and catching her, they were both laughing. Suddenly, the girl's dog growled and cornered the kid against the fence. When the little girl began to scream, Marcelino appeared at the gate and hit the dog with his crutch. The dog then jumped at Marcelino's neck, and the kid scared that it had been his fault, started yelling. Immediately people came from everywhere.

And the kid said that Marcelino was trying to take the girl.
 
 Was it the dog or the enraged mob who ended Marcelino's life? In the end, nobody knew, and nobody cared.
 
 Most people believed the kid was telling the truth about Marcelino. After all, the dog was defending the master's daughter.

 Nobody believed me: only my mom and dad.

Only a handful of people were at his funeral. My heart broke when I heard his mom her sing a beautiful song. It sounded like a lullaby.
 
 The same song I heard Marcelino hum dozens of times throughout my childhood.




Michelle Solano / Edmundo Barraza
 Lancaster, Ca. July-2014
 http://edbar1952-accomplishedignorant.blogspot.com
 
 
 
 *I first told this story to my daughter Michelle when she was seven or eight. Later she wrote it in High School. Most of the story happened in real life when I was ten or eleven years old. What seems incredible is that my daughter wrote the story ten years later with such great detail. I added a few paragraphs and changed the ending a little bit.