Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Rigoberto tells his lover that “none of us really knows how to grieve” (175). Then he tells the story of the time his neighbor, Tony “El Jorobado” (the hunchback) died. His widow asked for donations for the burial plot, prompting his grandfather to talk about how burial is a waste of money and it is better to be cremated. That year, for el Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead, his grandmother bought a candle to remember El Jorobado.

Rigoberto recalls that when they first moved to the United States, his family didn’t do much to celebrate el Día de Muertos. However, after the death of his mother, the family gathered to commemorate the holiday. One of his uncles got on his knees on the living room floor to pray, even though he wasn’t particularly religious, and the rest of the family joined him. After the prayer, they all stayed on the floor and cried together “as if grieving for the shared fate of [their] bodies sunken to the ground.” (177)

Rigoberto arrived at the home of his maternal grandparents. They welcomed him and then left him to his own devices. Sitting outside of the house, Rigoberto saw the neighbor’s son, on whom he has always had a crush. That night, in his grandparents’ bedroom, he went through a collection of his mother’s things. He found a series of pictures of her marching in the UFW protests and her union registration card. He recalls that the only other time he knows of her marching was when she attempted the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Morelia to ask the Virgin “to cure [his] father’s drinking problem” (181).

Rigoberto liked to sleep in his grandparents’ bedroom because it was where his mother died. According to his aunt, who was in the room with her, neither of them slept the night before she died. However, Rigoberto recalls that that night, he had gone to the room to see his mother, but his aunt was asleep and his mother appeared to be praying, and he didn’t want to disturb them.

The next morning, Rigoberto went to see his mother’s grave in the cemetery with flowers. He wondered if “she would have approved of [him] as a gay man” (184). He describes the morning they left for Michoacán, and he walked in on her struggling to put her bra on. She asked him to help her, and Rigoberto wonders if she allowed him to see her naked because she knew that he is gay.

Rigoberto returned to his grandparents’ house, where his father was visiting. His father gave him a gift of cologne, even though Rigoberto was allergic to it. Then he asked him for money. Rigoberto gave him all the cash he had and his father left.

Later, Rigoberto was sitting on the roof of his grandparents’ house when he caught the eye of neighbor boy. They had sex on the roof in the rain, and his aunt saw them while she was taking in the laundry, but she didn’t say anything. The neighbor left, and Rigoberto stayed on the roof in the rain, thinking about how it had rained during his mother’s funeral. There had been a drunk man at the funeral, Ramiro López, who approached Rigoberto saying that it is terrible for children to lose a mother, especially when the father remarries a stepmother who beats them. Later, López confronted Rigoberto’s father and told him to love his children and to believe them if they say that their stepmother beats them.

The next day, Rigoberto took the bus back to Riverside.