Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (Writing in Latinidad) Read online

  “God,” my uncle said. My cousin giggled nervously. My aunt threw her an admonishing look.

  “God,” my uncle began again. I could hear the effort in his voice. “Please receive in your glory those who have left us.”

  I was stunned. I never thought I'd ever hear that level of sincerity coming from the man whose favorite expression was: ¡Que chinge su madre Cristo!

  “And please forgive our sins,” my uncle added, finishing his two-line prayer.

  He then attempted to make the sign of the cross, but he couldn't finish it because he didn't remember the verse that went along with each key point, so he broke down in a tearful apology that we all knew was not about the botched gesture, but about him kneeling there next to his recently-widowed brother. The rest of us, affected by the sight of my uncle weeping, also began to cry. There we were, six people on our knees, sobbing as one, as if grieving for the shared fate of our bodies sunken to the ground.

  Zacapu, July 1990 (Imago)

  As soon as I walk in the door, my grandparents smother me with hugs and kisses, an affection that makes me feel awkward. The banter that transpires between them is usually comic yet somehow intimate, as if no one else has a place in the conversation.

  ABUELO: How is your father, you?

  ME: Fine.

  ABUELO: And your brother?

  ME: Fine.

  ABUELO: Isn't your president Bush as stupid as our Salinas de Gortari?

  ME: Without a doubt.

  ABUELO: You're still going to church, right?

  ME: Of course.

  ABUELO: Catholic, right? Not those fanatic ones that have you jumping around like you're holding in your bladder.

  ABUELO: Both of these sons of bitches are taking us to war with the Iraqis. I'll bet my right foot on it.

  ABUELO: Will you be quiet with your politics? This boy didn't come a long way to listen to all your nonsense.

  ABUELO: (pointing at Abuela): Look who's talking nonsense. “Holding in your bladder.”

  ABUELO: This man is just waiting for me to die. So that he can get himself another old lady.

  ABUELO: “Old lady.” A younger one! And much taller too.

  After the initial excitement over my arrival, my grandparents quickly slip back into their quiet routines: my grandfather pretends to read, finger on each word of the newspaper; my grandmother knits. They sit in the living room, lost in their intimate pastimes and speaking up only to ask each other for the box of unfiltered cigarettes. Here, I feel in the way, just as I do whenever I visit my grandparents in California. On the walls, I see the evidence of my past. Nowhere do I feel the traces of my present. I sit outside on the cement sidewalk my grandfather has elevated into a stone bench. There is enough space on the street for kids to spread out for a challenging game of soccer. There is a patch of unpaved road that makes an ideal surface for marbles. In front of other houses, other women sit to knit or chat before the mosquitoes start to bite.

  When the soccer match is interrupted by a cargo truck that's getting maneuvered into a garage across the street, my heart pirouettes. After all these years I still have my crush on the neighbor's son. He has aged, just like me, but his hardworking life as a cargo shipper has toughened his features and his body. When he sees me he nods. I nod back. And then he drives the truck in reverse into the black cave of the garage. For the next week we will meet and make eye contact like this: me, his admirer, waiting for him to arrive; he, my voiceless adoration, coming home to claim my breath. Our history of clan-destine glimpses is long, reaching back to the time of my mother's death, to the marching drills at Vasco de Quiroga. But neither of us has been brave enough to do more than yearn for each other from a cowardly distance.

  At night my grandparents give up their bed to me. This is the most comfortable bed in the house, they say, and I deserve it after the long trek to Michoacán. I don't argue. This is the room where my ceremony begins. I wait until my grandparents say goodnight, and then I start to dig through my mother's things.

  I don't remember when any of these photographs were taken, but I know what they mean. This collection of pictures was lost to me for many years after my mother's death, since my grandmother hid away my mother's two albums, afraid that my father would claim them as easily as he had taken Alex and me. The albums I remember clearly because I once made fun of their gaudy colors—swirling bright yellows and oranges with black shiny borders, like psychedelic monarchs. My mother had bought them at Goodwill, and they were now discarded remnants of a different era.

  Among the pages is a series of snapshots taken during the California grape boycotts and strikes of the early 1970s, when César Chávez rose to national acclaim as a champion for the downtrodden farm-workers. In one picture I'm holding a red flag with the familiar UFW Union logo—a black eagle, or upside down Aztec pyramid, depending on how it is viewed. In another, Alex has joined the march, his hand held by my aunt, still childless at the time. Still another photo shows me with my paternal grandparents and their youngest son, all four of us standing at the shoulder of a road in front of the grape fields. Noticeably absent are my parents. But since my aunt is present, I always assumed my mother had been the eye behind the camera, capturing what can now be considered historical photographs.

  When I first discover my mother's albums in my grandmother's closet, I have been looking for something else. I want to know the truths about my mother's sickness and why that surgery had not saved her life. I want to find out if there is something more to know about her sudden death. Perhaps the answer is written in one of the prescription records, hospital document printouts, or appointment reminders. All of the orange plastic medication bottles that had cluttered the top of the chest of drawers vanished the day of my mother's death. I have wanted to decipher their labels, hold the bottles tightly and shake them with my hand like rattles, twist them open, sniff the exposed powdery mouths, count the pills and tablets, perhaps even press one of them against my tongue like a solitary Eucharist. But they are gone.

  I come across the photo albums with their records of pictures, many with people I don't recognize and many taken in places I have never been. These photographs capture an entire history that unfolded even before my brain began to store memory, and this history goes back to the days even before my birth.

  Between the pages are also hidden treasures: old letters sent to my mother by her mother, each with a different handwriting; the newspaper clipping from my District Spelling Bee competition, my name underlined in red ink; and a series of plastic cards used for identification imprints, all of them issued by hospitals except for one. The red one with the UFW logo in the corner is my mother's union card registered in 1972.

  With the farmworker strike pictures next to it, I suddenly have this image of a political woman raising her fist up in the air, demanding better working conditions and better pay. I see her marching in synch with the other farmworkers, their bodies linking together to create one palpable force plowing through the stunned avenue.

  The only other time I recall my mother marching was during a pilgrimage the year before we left our house in Colonia Miguel Hidalgo to move to Thermal. The route went from la Parroquia de Santa Ana in Zacapu to la Catedral de Morelia, eighty kilometers to the west. Only women took part in these pilgrimages, offering a strenuous sacrifice as proof of their faith and devotion. At the end of the journey, they would kneel in front of the church to heal and pray, many seeking solutions to their ills or to the ills of someone dear to them. In my mother's case, she had gone to ask the Virgin to cure my father's drinking problem. Since the journey was long, most of the pilgrims were not expected to make it to the end, so a series of trucks crawled along with them to pick up those women who passed out from exhaustion. They were then driven the rest of the way and their bodies were deposited on the church steps. My mother was one of these women carried off, and my grandmother, who had been waiting at the finishing line of the pilgrimage, shook with rage for days after that, furious at what my father
's drinking had forced my mother into.

  I like to sleep in this room because this is where my mother spent her last night alive. She was not alone that night. One of her younger sisters had been keeping her company. They had joked that it was now the designated sick room because my aunt had been suffering from a leg injury and had to sleep sitting down on a small easy chair next to my mother in bed. As my aunt tells it, neither of them slept that night. Both of them were in pain and from this pain a sisterly conversation arose with the sole purpose of getting themselves through a sleepless, agonizing night.

  “She kept repeating that if anything were to happen to her, we should look after her sons,” my aunt insisted. “The last thing she wanted was for them to return to live with that hateful, greedy father-in-law of hers.”

  Throughout the night, the moon rained in through the window, showering the room with brightness. My aunt said that my mother would turn to the moon and her pale face would light up with white light. When my mother cried, my aunt had assumed it was because of the pain, but now she knew it was because of something more unbearable than that: the fact that she knew she was going to die and lose her children the next day.

  I lie down on the bed that held my mother's body for the last time. When she was brought out of the car, already deceased, her body was laid to rest on this same bed and then was later cleaned and robed for the gray coffin. She had been dressed in navy blue slacks and a matching jacket, and a white blouse printed with colorful confetti bubbles. When I run across a picture of my mother looking out at the mechanical hippos on the safari boat ride during our trip to Disneyland, I recognize the blouse. Since she is turned away from the camera, the camera seems to be looking over my mother's shoulder as if guided by what my mother is watching.

  When my aunt said that she and my mother had been talking all night without sleeping, I knew it wasn't true. That night I woke up to a murmur of chatter and I thought I'd surprise my mother and my aunt by crawling out of bed and joining them in the sick room despite the late hour.

  I tiptoed down to the hall, the cement floor cool beneath me. There were no doors on any of the bedrooms, only thin curtains, which was why I needed to be silent, which was why I was positive I had heard my mother and my aunt talking. When I finally reached the last bedroom—the one with the window facing the street, my grandparents' bedroom, the sick room—I discovered my aunt slumped over in the chair, slightly snoring. My mother was sitting on the end of the bed, her fists to the mattress, looking out the window and whispering to herself as if in prayer. I thought about sneaking up and tapping her on the shoulder, but was afraid I'd startle her, and then startle my aunt awake as well. So I pressed my body back against the threshold, hiding behind the thin curtain. I simply observed my mother for a few seconds before I felt sleepy again and I regretted I had wasted my time coming over. Now I would have to steal back to my bed.

  When my aunt mentioned the light coming in through the window that night, I didn't contradict her. Perhaps there had been light at one point. But not when I stopped by. When I peeked into the room on the last night of my mother's life, there was no moon at the window and little light. My mother was a shadow of a body, more an outline than a three-dimensional figure. She was one shade of dark superimposed on other shades of dark, as transparent as a photo negative. She looked hypnotized, her stare fixed so steadily on the starry sky that I wanted to sit down beside her and learn the secret of looking at the night through her eyes.

  My mother gave birth to me when she was nineteen years old. This year, on my twentieth birthday, I honor her pain by visiting her grave. I buy a large bouquet of red gladiolus at the mercado down-town and then walk all the way back to the panteón because mine is indeed a pilgrimage. Anyone who sees me cradling flowers and heading toward Colonia Obrera knows this. My path is cushioned by respectful silence.

  Summers are warm in Michoacán, but also rainy. In the two weeks since my arrival I have watched the sky darken each morning. Passing storms are furious with thunder and heavy with rain, but they don't last long. Like the many afternoons before, the clouds will disperse and leave the soil damp, the mountain air refreshed.

  I enter the panteón. The grave keepers, four children and one supervising adult, quiet their chatter. They relax on the tombs. The trash barrels full of dry wreaths and other cemetery debris stand close by. I avoid looking at the structure housing the bier where the final blessing is given before the coffins go to burial. I pass to the left and walk back to the water faucet and cement basin. The blue tiles on my mother's grave have chipped in some places. Cans have been used as makeshift vases and have rusted, leaving behind a pair of unsightly rings. Because of the lack of plots, relatives are permitted to bury one loved on top of another. My mother's tomb was built over her grandmother's. I regard that photograph of my mother sitting on her grandmother's knee as prescient suddenly.

  The simple white cross on top of her grave is as blank as bone and faces out across the cemetery to stare at the front wall. But the white stone book on the center of the tomb has her name engraved, as well as the dates of her birth and death. The book looks like an encyclopedia opened at the exact middle, and the two stone pages also mention the fact that she left behind a husband and sons. She lies buried here in the Panteón San Franciscano, but Zacapu is still alive with anecdotes and made-up stories about her. With each visit to my grand-parents' house I hear a little more about my mother, and slowly I piece together this woman, trying to figure out if she would have approved of me as a gay man. In México the homosexual has many names: joto, puto, marica, maricón, margarita, and my favorite, mariposa, butterfly, an allusion to the feminine fluttering of eyelashes. To my mother, I was simply, mijo. My son.

  Our time together lasted very little, and those last months were painful for all of us. The morning of our departure to Michoacán, my mother had been trying to change in her bedroom right after a shower. I walked in on her as she was putting on a bra. She faced the other way and I realized this was the first time I had seen her so naked. The folds of her skin and breasts were beautiful to me. She looked over her shoulder and slurred her words—a plea for me to help her with the bra.

  I was stunned at first. The only other time I remember being thrown into a situation like this was when my female cousin sent me to buy a box of feminine napkins at the store on the corner. I didn't understand any of it: why did my cousin lock herself inside the bathroom and why did she yell at me when I brought her back tampons and not Maxi pads? What was the difference? Similarly, the workings of a bra were a complete mystery. All of those straps and hooks meant nothing to me. After much guessing and deciphering of her directions, however, I managed to maneuver the bra into place. My hands had trembled during the entire ordeal and afterward my mother thanked me with a kiss. It was an awkward kiss for two reasons: first, she had never kissed me on the eyes before; and second, a string of spittle fell from her partly paralyzed mouth and stuck to my eyelash. I was embarrassed to wipe it off in her presence so I simply walked away and rubbed it off after I had closed the door behind me.

  I can only speculate on the reason she had given herself permission to trust me to see her naked. Had she recognized something about me? I want to believe she knew that eventually I would be twenty years old, a man, and gay. I want that gesture to be a sign of acceptance. I will never know because I came out to myself many years after she died. My mother never knew me as a gay man and I never knew her as the mother of a gay son. I can only search for clues and wonder.

  One of those clues is the story about my teenage mother accompanying her father to charreadas, the Mexican rodeos. My grandfather was a skilled horseman in his youth and is still a good shot, he claims, with the hand pistol. Back then he enjoyed showing off his marksmanship as well as his beautiful daughter. My mother matched my grandfather's sombrero and holster by wearing her own charro gear, a denim skirt and riding boots. As is customary at such functions, one young woman is chosen to be the crown jewel of the ev
ening. She presides over the horse parade and leans out of the judge's box to wave at the jinetes. On one of those trips to the rodeo, my mother was selected to hold that honor—to have her hair ribbons replaced with a festive charro hat stitched with sequins and silver thread. And on that night, all decked out and the center of attention, my mother learned what it was like to be a queen.

  My recollection of that story is the only moment of levity in my daylong ceremony. Next, I wipe clean the blue tiles with water and my hands; I place the flowers as an offering to the base of the cross, taking a few to the graves surrounding my mother's because they had been keeping hers company all this time; and then I make my two-word statement: “Aquí estoy.” I'm here. I don't talk to my mother or to my mother's spirit. She's no longer here. I no longer believe in God or in a heaven or in any fantasy afterlife. My mother is simply gone. The grave is no different from a photograph—a symbol of what has been, a memory of what has happened. I rest my palms flat on the tile. There is no transfer of energy, no sudden vibration or supernatural force connecting with my body. My senses are numb.

  I walk back to my grandparents' house just down the street. Growing up in Zacapu, I remember visiting my grandparents and knowing all that time that they could see the white cemetery wall from their house. The road ends at the panteón.

  I'm pleased to see that on the living room table my mother's sisters have on display the confetti Jell-O, a flan, and a pastel de tres leches. My grandmother has fixed a pot of mole poblano, my favorite Mexican dish. The smell of the thick chocolate and chipotle sauce thrills my senses. At my request, my birthday celebration will be intimate and quiet. As I make my way to the kitchen, I anticipate a cool glass of water to coat my dry tongue, but suddenly I see my father's image through the doorway.