Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Ghost Whisper to My Lover

Tell you something else about my father? Claro, querido. My father holds a peculiar fascination for extraterrestrial life. He was pleased to discover that a magazine existed for people like him, the Spanish version of UFO—OVNI: Objetos voladores no identificados, which came packed with firsthand narrative accounts of close encounters with space aliens. He sought out the magazine for years even though his reading skills weren’t very strong, but it didn’t matter since the stories came fully illustrated with amateur drawings depicting these intriguing and evasive creatures. In the afternoons when he came home from work he parked the car behind the back porch since only my grandfather was allowed to park in front. When he wasn’t having a beer with my uncle after dinner, he liked to stand against the car through the evenings and look up at the stars. I never got tired of him pointing out Polaris. I pretended to be surprised each time. And on one occasion he confessed to me that one of his fantasies was to be abducted by a UFO. “For what?” I asked, shuddering at the idea of space travel. At the time, our favorite show was Battlestar Galactica. Our favorite reruns: Star Trek and the black-and-white Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes. But I suspected that the imagination of special effects and costume artistry did not even begin to address the disconcerting reality of what was out there. 38 6 Ghost Whisper to My Lover 39 GhostWhispertoMyLover “Just,” he responded quizzically. “Just to know.” I didn’t ask what it was exactly he wanted to know. I simply gazed up at the stars with him and tried to imagine the extraterrestrial forces that had mesmerized my father so much he wanted to become part of it. I also suspect he has kept his fantasy alive after all these years, even if tucked safely in his house, his weary eye catching a glimpse at the evening sky from his living room or the kitchen as the day comes to a close and his mind escapes however briefly from the turmoil of worries and responsibilities . My father, the farmworker and cosmonaut, floats out into space with his back turned to the world, his face looking fearlessly into the great abyss of things mysterious, unknown, and new. ...