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

  “I can,” I say.

  “So you're going to pay for a first-class ticket when second class is half the price?”

  “Absolutely,” I insist.

  “You could buy two tickets with that money.”

  “Look,” I say, exasperated. “I can let you borrow some money for your ticket as well, just make sure you get good seats.”

  “Give me the money, then,” he says.

  I hand over the money because I don't want to hassle with the lines. I'm already hot and uncomfortable, and the constant flow of people has begun to make me edgy. Engentarse, my grandmother calls this claustrophobia that comes from getting swallowed up by a flood of people. I stand over our bags like a chicken roosting over a nest. My father returns fifteen minutes later.

  “You bought second-class tickets!” I complain as soon as I look at the flimsy paper stubs.

  “You said you were going to pay for my ticket. And I'm going second class, so I bought one for you as well. Aren't we traveling together? Here, I saved you some money. Can I borrow it until we get to Michoacán?”

  Unbelievable, I think as I shake my head. My father has done it to me again. But I let it go. It'll be my give to his take this time. We've had plenty of practice this past week: I took the photograph and he didn't protest; he asked for gas money for the ride from Indio to Mexicali and I opened my wallet; I told him I didn't want to talk during the one-and-a-half-hour car ride to the border and he kept his mouth shut.

  We make our way to the gate, nonrefundable tickets in hand. The run-down bus waits at the end of the station, edged out like the runt of the litter by the newer buses. I suspect our bus will stop at every town with a station en route from Baja California to Michoacán to load and unload passengers. At that pace, the trip will take over three days, maybe four. Incensed, I make my father take the aisle seat. I want the advantage of the window, but to my dismay, it doesn't open. I scowl at my father.

  “Now what?” he says.

  “It smells in here,” I say.

  “I don't smell anything,” my father says.

  “No, of course not,” I reply.

  The cramped bus begins to incite my claustrophobia so I stare out through the green glass to watch the soda and pork rind sellers gravitating like bees toward the bus windows, their goods precariously balanced on tin platters. Despite the condition of the bus, I'm glad to be safely inside, away from the flurry. More people climb on board, filling up the bus with bodies, boxed packages, a crying baby and whining children, and the odors of armpits, evaporating perfumes, and oily foods. When the bus finally pulls out of its parking space, I breathe a sigh of relief. The journey back to Michoacán has officially started. For the last decade I've been going back and forth between México and the United States an average of every three years; the length of each stay varies depending on the temperament of my adult companions. My father likes the long stays, my grandfather loses steam quickly and heads back to the States on a whim. Regardless, I feel a sense of renewal each time I depart, as if whatever has happened up to then could be left behind like belongings too bulky to take along. I look forward to emerging from the bus at the last stop, stretching out my arms to a new beginning.

  My disposition begins to soften as the bus slowly inches forward. I even turn to my father and exchange a complicit smile. He throws in a knowing nod for effect. An open window a few seats up begins to ventilate the acrid odor of sweat mixed with the polluted fumes. “Here we go,” I declare with childish excitement. If this journey were a musical, this scene would be the perfect place to break into song. As if on cue, the bus driver turns the radio on. Los Tigres del Norte—or one of the group's many imitators—plays an upbeat norteño, heavy on the brass. The tune isn't exactly what I have in mind, but it will do. Suddenly I'm easy to please. I make myself comfortable against the itchy seat, relax my head against the rest, and sigh once more.

  And then the bus pulls over to the side to let the first-class buses exit first.

  “Santa mierda,” I say. I'm positive I'm not the only one on board to curse.

  When the bus driver turns off the noisy engine, the music grows obnoxiously loud. The old bus stands parallel to the back wall like an overworked boom box sentenced to the misery of its cheap speakers.

  When I look over at my father he grins apologetically. I can say something now or save it for later. Since I get motion sickness when I read, I don't bother bringing a book on board with me. Speaking to my father will be the only way to kill time. He'll be the intimidating tome I get through by consuming it piecemeal. Except that I'll be forced to reckon with my father more frequently since he's sitting next to me on a bus. I cannot escape him. I decide to save my complaint for later.

  When the bus finally squeezes out of the station, picking up speed as it makes its way through the blackened façades of Mexicali, the tension in my muscles begins to ease. It takes only minutes for the bus to reach the outskirts of the city; the arid desert looks reddish and damp through the green tint of the glass. And once I'm visibly relaxed, my father pipes up as if he's been waiting to seize the moment. He asks me abruptly, “Do you remember your mother?”

  I hate it when my father comes at me like that. Invoking the memory of my mother is the fastest way to make me raise my defenses.

  “Of course,” I say, slightly indignant. I immediately turn my entire body toward the window, my reflection superimposed on the passing desert and a row of wooden shacks with clothes on the lines that look like party decorations the day after the party.

  “You must never forget her,” he says.

  I see my chance. “You mean like you did,” I say.

  “I haven't forgotten your mother,” he says in alarm. “Why do you say that?”

  I think the answer is obvious so I don't bother with it.

  I focus on a child bent over a basin with water. He stares out at the passing bus as if he has to pose for the passengers because in the next instant he's gone, quickly forgotten. On the glass I see my father pinch the small scar on the right side of his chin. He had a mole removed a few years back because he kept cutting it open when he shaved. Now he fondles the flesh when lost in thought—a habit he didn't have when the mole was still there.

  “Does your grandfather still work in the mercado in Zacapu, you?” he asks.

  “Don't change the subject,” I say. “And quit asking me these dumb questions. You know he still works there.”

  “Look, son,” he says to me in the low tone he adopts when he grows serious. “We don't need to start the trip like this. We have three days to go and plenty of time to throw punches, so can't we just have a friendly conversation for now?”

  Bajar la cresta, my grandmother calls the act of calming down your anger. I picture the agitated rooster lowering its neck, the corolla of neck feathers folding down, his comb becoming flaccid.

  I nod my head in agreement. My fingernails are already dirty, the edges looking like inked-in frowns. My father tries to chat again but I'm not in the mood, so I simply rest my head against the window and close my eyes. I want to remove my glasses, but without them I can't see the view through the window each time I open my eyes, so I leave them on my face. With the vibration of the bus the frames keep tapping against the glass. I hear my father sigh with exasperation. All around us people are talking and laughing. The baby stopped crying when the bus started rolling and I imagine him collapsing with relief into his mother's arms. I zero in on the hum of the motor.

  When I feel my father elbow me on the side I'm ready to turn around to object and ask him to leave me alone for a while. But when I turn I realize he has accidentally bumped into me as he twisted his body around to talk to the people in the row behind him.

  “To Michoacán,” I hear him say.

  And then a little later, “Oh, that's my son. He goes to college in the United States. He studies letters.”

  I imagine the people nodding politely, perhaps picturing me hunched over an old book and a magnifying g
lass, an amplified Cyclops eye scrutinizing the varying lengths of the ls, the dissimilar bubble-mouths of the os.

  Letters. What had I learned about letters? That they were the building blocks of words that went unspoken, of words that were hurtful, of words that became worthless.

  Apá, I have called my father since I was a child. My mother was Mami. I lost both. One to death, one to fear. I have forgiven only one.

  No, I have not forgotten my mother, or our relationship through letters.

  Just before she became too ill to continue, my mother had been making a concerted effort to master two skills: driving and speaking English. The driving classes were the most difficult because my father was the designated instructor. My father had no patience for such things, which is why I myself didn't get any lessons from him until my sophomore year of high school, the day before I was scheduled to go behind the wheel for driver's ed class. Even then I begged, afraid I'd embarrass myself (which I did anyway) in front of the instructor and the other students. My father agreed to take me out to maneuver through the back roads a few evenings and whenever he slammed his fist against the dashboard I had flashbacks of his teaching technique with my mother.

  My mother was more emotional about my father's firm instructions, which became repeated in a severe tone when she failed to follow them to his liking.

  “Turn the wheel, Avelina!” he yelled. “Turn the goddamn wheel!”

  Of course I had the pressure of driver's ed the week of my lessons and had to pick up the ability quickly, but my mother simply wanted to keep up with my aunts, who were also learning how to drive. Everyone knew that since we were all single-vehicle house-holds, the chances of the women taking possession of the car were nil. Learning to drive was a symbolic gesture of assimilation into this country we had all migrated to where women also drove, to the frustration of my father, who claimed women were nothing more than road hazards. When my father scolded my mother she would push on the breaks, forcing the car to a stop, and then she'd fall over the steering wheel to cry. My brother and I had to observe silently in the back seat under the threat of a knock on the skull if we distracted either the instructor or the student.

  I was saddened by my mother's sense of helplessness because I knew she was trying her best. It was my father who made no effort to be patient, or to at least recognize that my mother was capable if not able. My father didn't necessarily subscribe to the stereotypical sexist notions of the Mexican male, but he was somewhat of a stereotype himself: he drank, stayed out late, and came home penniless, the sullen drunk, to ask for my mother's forgiveness. My mother could have taken advantage of his vulnerability but she didn't, which always surprised me. Like the good suffering wife, she forgave him. Perhaps this was why my father's sensibilities didn't soften when he took my mother out for instruction. Not only was he missing out on beer time with his buddies, he was also entertaining my mother's crazy notion about becoming just another woman driver.

  I knew about my mother's will to learn because of her second endeavor. Since she had enrolled in night school, taking English classes at the elementary school I attended during the day, I was forced to go with her. For the longest time I didn't understand why since she only had to walk across the street. Years later I realized I was chaperoning, another one of my mother's self-imposed rules, since she was stepping out of the house in the evenings without her husband. I didn't know about such codes of conduct until my female cousin was in her teens and every time she went out on a date, my aunt would force one of her youngest sons to tag along. I also remember my many visits to my grandparents in México, and how my grand-mother insisted on leaving the front door ajar and sitting within ear-shot whenever the young women from the neighborhood, my old childhood friends, came over to chat.

  At night school, my mother was playful and excited to be among her former coworkers at the fruit and vegetable packinghouse. Since her health had been failing her she had to quit the strenuous shift, so night school was her reunion with familiar faces. The class was predominantly female. A few women dragged along their spouses, who by the second week all agreed to hang out in the parking lot to drink a few beers while their wives were inside taking notes. The instructor was a handsome young man from the community college who sometimes brought in his guitar to teach the women children's songs in English like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” At this point the men in the parking lot fled altogether, perhaps embarrassed for their wives who were stuttering through nonsense verse. At least that's what I was feeling for my poor mother who I knew had the worst singing voice in the class. She fumbled her way through the lyrics in her telltale choppy accent. But this didn't stop her and I admired that eventually. The English instructor was instrumental in improving my mother's courage because he was everything my mother's driving instructor was not: he was kind, he didn't raise his voice, and he avoided pointing out his students' weaknesses.

  Usually I didn't sit next to my mother during these sessions. Since there were other kids forced by their mothers to come along, we had an instant community and we wandered around the classroom or close by in the schoolyard. We ran around until we heard the desk chairs grating against the floor, signaling the end of the lesson for another week.

  My mother, I noticed, was extremely taken by the teacher and tried hard to please him. She made an effort to go up to him at the end of class to show him her work in the bright orange spiral note-book from Pick 'n Save. Yes, she had been practicing both her letters and her words. My mother, I discovered, was only functionally literate. She had not completed the third grade in México. Neither had my father. But even at this my father took a lead since his writing was easier to read than my mother's. My mother wrote very slowly, with a deliberate calculation meant to disguise the fact that she could barely write. When she wanted to correspond with her mother in México, my mother would dictate the letters to me. When my grandmother responded, I had to read the letter back to my mother. Each time the handwriting on my grandmother's letters was different because I knew she had dictated them to one of various school children in her block. My mother used the explanation that she wanted me to practice my Spanish when she asked me to mediate in these matters. My grandmother, I knew, had her own method of hiding the truth of her illiteracy, announcing to everyone that she was nearly blind even though we'd all see her knitting for hours in the afternoons every day of her life. When my mother opted to write an entire letter herself, the process was a long-term commitment, much like the illustrated magazine dramas she kept on the nightstand next to her bed—always the same one for a period of weeks. I could read through one of those, and I usually did, in fifteen minutes. But I never told her that.

  As I nod off to sleep on this first afternoon on the road to Michoacán, I promise myself that I will try harder at communicating with my father the next day. Promises are so easy to make in a warm bus steadily approaching the falling night. My grandmother used to say that in order to remember a thought, she had to go back to the place where that thought was originally conceived because place triggers her memory. By dawn the bus will be in a different town—a different state altogether, in fact. Tracing the promise back to its source will be impossible. My father and I are both headed forward, at the same speed for a change. And yet, we continue to go our separate ways.

  On the first night on the road I sleep with my head against the window and when I'm not sleeping I nod off from drowsiness, my head thumping against the glass. At the front of the bus, staring out like a clock in a clinic waiting room, is a speedometer that marks up to eighty kilometers per hour. Whenever the bus surpasses that speed an alarm goes off, alerting not only the driver but also the sleeping passengers. All night the goddamned alarm rings, disturbing any peace that might have crept up on us during the dead hours of the night. Reports of devastating bus plunges begin to circle in my head. I've seen enough photographs in the sensationalistic papers ¡Alerta! and ¡Alarma! that glare out with bright yellows and reds from
every newsstand in Mexicali. These reports come with very little text and an abundance of photographs because showing is more efficiently graphic than telling.

  I'm exhausted the next morning, my neck and shoulders sore and stiff. I'm in no mood to face a crowded bus already buzzing with talk. The driver has the radio on low but it's still irritatingly audible. Throughout the night I sucked some of the music into my dreams and the song lyrics reverberated out of the mouths of people I knew. The juxtaposition was surreal and disturbing, like dubbed foreign films where the voices don't quite match the faces on the screen.

  I have no idea about any of these small towns the bus drives through, but I deduce the name of the state by the political candidate flyers and posters nailed to the light posts or glued to the murals along the highways. The PAN and PRI parties dominate the publicity overkill. Faces smile amiably, declaring themselves the worthy leaders. Their names and photographs are the only differences from the posters of the last election year's candidates who had affirmed the same thing. I imagine there must be a master plate on file at the party headquarters. This group of bureaucrats lobbies for political seats in Sonora.

  The bus stops do not last very long, but there are plenty of them. Every time I see a road sign announcing a new town I brace myself for another fifteen minutes of staring out at the gritty terminals and taking in the chaos of exchanging passengers.