Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

In Zacapu, the family moved into a half-finished home owned by the extended family in Colonia Miguel Hidalgo, a neighborhood. Rigoberto describes how the second story of the home was incomplete and the family made do with the first-story rooms. Zacapu is an agricultural town near the monarch butterfly sanctuary in Angangueo. During the season, the town is filled with them, and they are a positive memory from Rigoberto’s childhood. He writes, “[W]hen I see a monarch pictured in a magazine or television screen I’m swept back into the strange but comforting intimacy of their winking presence” (49).

While in Zacapu, his father took him on hunting trips in the mountains, which Rigoberto did not enjoy. During one trip, his father put him on a donkey and made him ride up the mountain by himself. Later that day, his father lifted him high up on a rope swing, terrifying him, until he threatened to tell his mother about his father’s drinking.

His father’s drinking worsened. One day while his father was supposed to be watching him, Rigoberto split his head open while jumping on the bed. His maternal grandmother was furious and called his father a “useless drunk” (52). Not long after, his father returned to the United States. Because he wasn’t sending money home, the family sold off their possessions and went hungry. Rigoberto’s mother threatened to leave his father, so he returned to Zacapu to make amends. The whole family planned to return to the United States, together, despite the misgivings of Rigoberto and his brother. His maternal grandmother convinced them by telling them that they would have free school lunches there.

Rigoberto remembers that the last time he saw the house in Colonia Miguel Hidalgo was in 1984, when he went there with his grandparents who were arranging its final sale. He felt sad upon seeing it in its dilapidated condition because his childhood house was “no longer [his] home” (54). Its sale meant that he would never again live in Michoacán, and he lost the first home he remembered.

In 1972, Rigoberto’s family moved to Thermal, California, in the Coachella Valley to work in agriculture. He puts their migration into historical context, describing how since the Bracero Program of the 1940s, people from his family’s home state of Michoacán have made up most of the Mexican migrant agricultural workers, in “an echo of the region’s famous monarch butterflies who do the same for survival” (55). In Thermal, he lived in a house with his paternal grandparents, his aunts and uncles, and all of his cousins. Despite the number of people in the household, they were very poor and dependent on the vagaries of the growing season, which is dependent on the weather. He describes how there was no privacy in the house because they were all crammed together.

His paternal grandfather was the head of the household. Rigoberto describes him as a skinflint who constantly insulted and criticized his father and the other members of the family. In order to get away from the chaos of the household, Rigoberto took to lying on the floor in his parents’ bedroom and spying on the house next door through a small hole in the wall. He describes the people who lived there. First, there was a group of four women in their twenties. When he saw one of them in her underwear, he was stricken with shame. Then, there was a young couple with an infant. One night, he saw the man’s penis. He describes it as “pale and stubby” and felt embarrassed on behalf of the man for seeing him “in such a vulnerable state” (61). Finally, a sickly old white man with a dog moved in. Rigoberto became worried by how sick the man was, but he was too afraid to tell anyone because then they would know he had been spying on the house next door. Eventually the family learned of the man’s illness anyway, and his aunt took to taking care of the old man with a tenderness that she did not display at home, where she had a reputation for being fierce and beating the children. After the man left, his dog was left behind. They took care of it for a little while until they grew tired of doing so and chased it off.

One day, Rigoberto heard someone next door. He rushed to his spyhole to see his aunt, having kept the key, taking a moment to herself. She caught him spying but doesn’t say anything. They shared “a secret, a private moment—the hard-to-come-by appreciation of a space burdened by neither touch nor sound” (66).

Rigoberto recounts the story of the curse of the Carrillo family, his paternal grandmother’s family line, as told to him by his grandmother. His great-great-great uncle, tío Demetrio, a Purépecha man living in the mountains, inspired by tales of the power of the Devil he heard at the Catholic church, decided to make a deal with the Devil to get out of poverty. At the crossroads (the traditional place where one meets the Devil), tío Demetrio made an offering of his bodily fluids—blood, urine, feces, spit, and vomit—to summon the dark spirits. A goat-like creature appeared and told tío Demetrio that he must return for three nights in a row and take a stand against whatever el Diablo (the Devil) sent. If he succeeded, he would have a chance to deal with him. If he failed, his family would be cursed with poverty for five generations. Tío Demetrio took the deal, but on the very first night, he fled from the creature the Devil sent, leading the family to be cursed. Rigoberto notes that he and his brother are the fifth and final generation to be cursed.

Rigoberto then describes how the adults in his family would convene in the bathroom to discuss “serious matter[s]” (70). One day, his cousin told him that they did witchcraft in the bathroom. Curious, after one such meeting, Rigoberto snooped in the bathroom and found a Ouija board, which is used to communicate with the spirits.

After some bad growing seasons, Rigoberto’s father got a job working for the Buxton Ranches driving a tractor. However, his grandfather wasn’t impressed, and soon after the Buxton Ranch went bankrupt. The family experience a time of extreme poverty and hardship. Despite this, his grandmother made an effort to give Rigoberto, his brothers, and cousins presents for Christmas: a small bag of candy each with part of a $5 bill hidden inside.

Because of the difficult financial situation, tensions in the house rose and people became more abusive toward each other. In just one example, Rigoberto’s grandfather “raised a menacing hand to” his mother (74). While his grandfather didn’t beat his mother, because Rigoberto witnessed the exchange, later his grandfather beat Rigoberto with a gardening hoe. The situation became untenable and Rigoberto’s family moved to a trailer park and then quickly to a small apartment above a garage.

The family’s situation improved somewhat as Rigoberto’s father worked in construction, his mother worked in agriculture, despite her bad heart, and they had some privacy. Rigoberto attended John Kelley Elementary School, where he was made to take speech therapy “to learn and pronounce proper English” (77). He worked with a white woman named Dolly who helped him feel more comfortable reading and writing in the English language. She gives him a book of classic poetry to read, which he did, and she made him feel understood.

Rigoberto also describes the relationship he built with his teacher, Ms. Burnett. In his private class journal, he wrote about his difficult family life. Ms. Burnett responded in an understanding way. With her support and encouragement, he became the school spelling bee champion and for the first time got some attention. He began to prepare for the district spelling bee, but he didn’t have anyone to help him and he told Ms. Burnett that he didn’t think that his parents would want him spending time on preparing. The school arranged for a secretary to explain the situation to his mother and a tutor to help him prepare. While he quickly lost in the district competition, his parents and the school were very proud of him for competing. However, around that time Rigoberto noticed that his mother was sick. He told Ms. Burnett about her illness, and she responded that perhaps his mother was simply “homesick” (85). Rigoberto was disappointed in her response.

Rigoberto then describes his father’s guitar and how his father tried to teach him and his brother to play. To Rigoberto’s father, playing the guitar was a way to please women, but Rigoberto was only interested in pleasing his father. However, Rigoberto had a hard time learning to play because he is left-handed, and he was forced to use his right hand. Further, when Rigoberto sang he had a high, feminine voice—he did not sing “like a man”—and his father was ashamed of this. Rigoberto quickly gave up trying to learn the guitar, although his brother Alex continued the lessons.

Around the same time, Rigoberto’s mother was hospitalized. While she was away, Rigoberto spent the time going through her things. He tried on her clothes and attempted to put on her nail polish, which his father caught him doing, although he ignored it. Rigoberto reflected on how his mother constantly tried to correct his feminine mannerisms. For example, as a child, he made himself dolls out of bandanas. His brother told on him to his parents. While he wasn’t punished, his mother later told him privately never to play with dolls like that again. His mother corrected him in order to spare him from his father’s violence, because “for extreme offenses in [his] father’s presence [he] got the belt” (95).

Rigoberto’s only friend was a child named Carlos, whom everyone calls Carla. Carlos was open about his femininity and queerness and his family supported him in his identity. He didn’t understand why Rigoberto was so ashamed about who he was. Rigoberto went to Carlos’s birthday party but left early because he was disgusted with how open Carlos was with his feminine mannerisms.

Rigoberto describes his close relationship with his mother. He would wait up with her, waiting for his father to come home from drinking. Meanwhile, the boys were growing up. Alex started getting in fights and skipping school. Rigoberto realized that he had a crush on a man in his father’s band simply from looking at his picture, which hung on the wall.

Like in the other “Summer’s Passage” chapters, Rigoberto describes his trip on the bus down to Michoacán with his father in 1990. Rigoberto’s father asks him if he is seeing anyone, which leads Rigoberto to think about a conversation he had with his lover. One night, his lover was smoking a cigarette when he told Rigoberto that his father raped him when he was a child. When Rigoberto asked if he ever told his mother or the police about the incident, his lover burned him badly with the cigarette.

Later, when the bus passes a plantation of maguey plant, which is used to make tequila, Rigoberto asks his dad if his mouth is watering, a reference to his drinking. Rigoberto reflects that his alcohol and drug use is different—classier—than that of his father. Thinking about doing crystal meth makes him panic a little, and his father expresses concern, which Rigoberto rejects. This leads him to think about how he felt when his grandmother told him, a year after his mother had died, that his father had left him and his brother to live with another woman and start a new family. On hearing the news, Rigoberto “flung [himself] across the room in a fit of spasms and tears” (105).

Part of the cause for Rigoberto’s distress was that, the night before his father left, he got on top of Rigoberto while Rigoberto was working out in the living room. While pinned, Rigoberto got an erection, and he let his father feel it, and his father hastily retreated. After his father left, Rigoberto had a mental health crisis. He wants to confront his father about all of this, but he doesn’t.

Rigoberto falls asleep on the bus, and he has a dream about his mother’s funeral. When he wakes up, he thinks about her actual funeral and how he thought he saw her moving in her coffin at the wake.

In Jalisco, the bus breaks down again and while waiting for the next one, Rigoberto talks to a young man who collects American cans, to whom he is sexually attracted. Rigoberto and his father argue again about buying second-class tickets, and then they get back on the bus.