Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Rigoberto describes how his mother collapsed in the grape fields from a stroke. She was taken to the hospital while the white landlord’s wife looked after Rigoberto and Alex. When their mother came home from the hospital, she was partially paralyzed on her left side from the stroke, and Rigoberto helped her with her recovery. They returned to her parents’ house in Zacapu in 1982. Rigoberto and his brother attended the local primary school, where they were fish out of water, having become more American during their time away from Mexico. On September 12, his mother died. The day of the funeral, the priest didn’t show up because he was hungover, and Rigoberto’s father had to drag him out of bed. After the funeral, Rigoberto and his brother returned to California with their father. His mother’s family was against this because his father beat them.

Shortly after returning to California, Rigoberto’s father left them with his paternal grandparents in the Fred Young Farm Labor Camp, or “el campo,” in Indio. His father’s drinking and reckless behavior worsened. Rigoberto had a mental health crisis and went to his aunt’s house in Mexicali to recover. Then, he returned to Indio to help with the grape harvest. Rigoberto describes the conditions in “el campo”: “a thriving nest for thieves, drug dealers, drug addicts, and gangs” (130). The house itself was infested with cockroaches.

Rigoberto was diagnosed with myopia, and he had to get glasses. When he could finally see, he noticed for the first time men giving him “look[s] of mutual attraction from a distance” (132). However, he also noticed for the first time that the bus driver didn’t return his smile when he boarded the bus in the morning.

Throughout high school, Rigoberto used reading to escape the realities of “el campo.” He was allowed to stay in school because Rigoberto’s grandfather got a social security check while Rigoberto attended. When Alex dropped out of school, his grandfather was furious because it meant that he would lose the money, and so his brother left and moved in with his father and his new family. During this time, Rigoberto became closer to his grandmother, and they became allies against his grandfather. Rigoberto describes his grandfather’s eccentricities, which included cutting the tails off neighborhood cats and cooking exclusively Filipino food.

Rigoberto excelled in school—not having many other things to do—and he was placed in the college prep courses, which was where he met Gerardo, his “first lover” (140). Rigoberto recalls how he had known Gerardo in passing in elementary school, where Gerardo had been something of a bully. However, in high school they bonded, and under the pretext of tutoring Gerardo in the challenging college prep courses after school, they began doing cocaine and having sex. Rigoberto had had sex with other men before, but they were all older men, such as the foreman at the grape fields. Gerardo was his first lover his own age. One day, Gerardo said that he would be leaving school to deal cocaine, and their relationship came to an end.

Rigoberto describes how his family would watch the piano player and entertainer Liberace together. He admires Liberace for being so openly flamboyant even while being fat, like himself. Rigoberto describes how being fat was a source of shame for him throughout childhood, such as when he could not fit into the elf costume for the fifth-grade Christmas pageant. Rigoberto’s own mother and aunt were constantly trying to lose weight with diets and they roped Rigoberto into some of these schemes, like when his mother put a supposed fat-burning ointment on him that burned him. He describes his shame at being “feminine fat” and how the bullies on the school yard call him a “f**” during P.E. (150). As a result of the shame around his weight, he developed bulimia.

Rigoberto then describes his struggles with his sexuality in high school. He had secret affairs, “which wasn’t hard in a Mexican community, where it’s possible to be a f** and not a f**” (150). As long as the men acted macho in public, they were able to meet their queer desires in private. However, when Liberace died of AIDS in 1987, Rigoberto was devastated, saying, “[H]e should have shown me it was possible to be buried in the closet” (153). Later, during his first year of college, when Rigoberto lost a lot of weight, students in the dorm shunned him, thinking he had AIDS.

During his final year of high school, Rigoberto applied and was accepted to the University of California at Riverside, which he kept secret from his grandparents. The day before his graduation from high school, he asked his father if he would go to his graduation ceremony, and his father refused, saying that he had to work on his grandfather’s truck. Rigoberto was furious. Instead of attending the ceremony, he went to his aunt’s house while his aunt and uncle were out, and he ate a gallon of vanilla ice cream on his own.

The week before he was to leave for university, he told his grandmother of his plans. She agreed to keep his secret. The day of his departure, Rigoberto told his father and grandfather he was going to college. His father initially refused to drive him, but when he caught Rigoberto trying to climb out the window to steal his car to go, he agreed begrudgingly to drive him himself, as long as Rigoberto paid for gas.

When they arrived at the campus, it was full of families helping their children move in. Rigoberto’s father and brother, however, simply dropped him off on the curb in front of the dorm with all of his things. The residential counselor helped him move into his room instead. Rigoberto unpacked and thought “about how lucky [he] was to have gotten out of Indio” (161).