Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Summer’s Passage

165 Once we board the third bus to Michoacán on our third evening, I resolve not to antagonize my father for the remainder of the trip, though all the bus interiors look exactly alike and it feels as if we’re climbing into the same cabin containing all the negativity I’ve been dispelling into its air. We have approximately seven hours to go and most of that time the bus will be cutting through the winding mountainous roads of the region in nighttime, which I know will turn my stomach and keep me quiet. I smell the faint odor of roasted pumpkin seeds. My mother used to make my brother and me eat them with salt when we were little to fight intestinal parasites. “Did I ever tell you about that time I sat next to an old woman who died on the bus?” my father says. I have heard this story before, about four times. But I decide to let my father tell it by not answering his question. “I can’t remember her name anymore, but when you travel long distances like that, well, you know how it is. You make friends a lot faster. She talked to me about this and about that, and so did I. I wish I had had a tape recorder or something because now I regret not paying more attention to what she had to say. “Anyway, she liked to talk about everything. She talked about her pets, her family, and her plants. She reminded me so much of both 6 Summer’s Passage of your grandmothers. Not just because she was an old woman, but because she gave her words a certain flavor.” I know what he means: the taste of language that is only spoken and never written because the speaker most likely doesn’t read or write. My father has it, too. “She told me about how she sewed her money inside her quilt because she didn’t trust banks. She told me about how her dead husband came to bug her on Sundays because his spirit thought it was still alive and kept reminding her it was time for church. She told me how her favorite afternoons were spent alone in a plaza with a piece of goat cheese on a slice of bread. I can certainly respect those simple pleasures.” My mind flashed through those imagined scenes of my father’s poverty in childhood, of times my grandparents refused to talk about. The oldest sons were sent to scavenge the mercado trash bins for edible fruit, and my grandmother used to grow cilantro and chives to sell to the butchers. In those days, butchers provided all meat orders with garnish, and my grandmother was one of their suppliers in exchange for scraps. “Well, if that bus trip had lasted two years, she wouldn’t have run out of things to say. But luckily that trip was going to last only a few days. Even less for her.” My father pauses for dramatic effect. “So the bus pulls up at a strip of restaurants on the side of the road, you know, like the ones we’ve been pulling into all this time. The people have to stretch and get some air. And they have to eat, why not?” My father pauses again. “And I ask la doña if she cares to step down to grab a bite. I mean, I couldn’t guarantee her a piece of goat cheese but there were other good things: shrimp, enchiladas, maybe a sope with beans and nopales . Whatever. But she refused. She said she was feeling tired and wanted to stay on the bus to rest. 166 zacapu days and nights of the dead 167 Summer’sPassage “I can’t argue with her. She’s old and she knows what’s best for her body. So I go down and buy a piece of fried chicken, I think. No, I lie. It was a ham sandwich. Just like the ones that el Chavo del Ocho used to eat on television.” I want to roll my eyes at my father’s embellishments, but I allow him to proceed uninterrupted. “I speak to a few other people from the bus. We joke around a bit and exchange destinations until the bus driver calls us all back on board. Well, I walk in, take my seat, and notice...