Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Ghost Whisper to My Lover

115 Don’t be surprised, querido, but you’re the first Mexican I’ve ever known who isn’t a Catholic. No wonder you’re fearless. But I can’t say I’m much of a Catholic myself. The Eucharist entered my body only once, on the day of my First Communion. My brother and I went through the religious ceremony one hot summer in 1984 because this was one of my mother’s last wishes— that we fulfill the third of the holy Sacraments. Usually, an entire group of children takes communion at once, after a long year of study at catechism class. But my aunt was enterprising and convinced a Sunday school teacher to make an exception for this special circumstance. The teacher squeezed the lessons into a month, after which we presented ourselves before God, the ordained priest, our chosen godfathers , and a small congregation for the symbolic mass. The ceremony was not particularly eventful, except that the priest insisted on changing into a more colorful tunic when my aunt asked to take pictures. He stretched out a light blue robe to display the image of the Virgin Mary at prayer, white doves hovering above her as if they were about to descend on her head. Most memorable was the day before the mass, at confession. I had always known about the confessional, a large wooden box that allows the priest to listen to a sinner’s most intimate admissions without the shame of meeting eye to eye. I had been coached by 6 Ghost Whisper to My Lover the catechism teacher for everything except the shock of finding no confessional when I entered the rectory. I looked around uncertainly. “Sit down, my son,” the priest said. He was a short Mexican Indian wearing sandals, a trait of the Franciscan order. I took a seat. He pulled out a second chair from behind the desk and positioned it in front of me. He sat down and bowed his head, asking me to proceed. I stuttered, mumbled, and cleared my throat repeatedly but managed to reveal what I needed to confess: use of offensive language, disrespect for my elders, masturbation, jealousy, envy, rage—the typical wrongdoings of a fourteen-year-old Catholic boy. I didn’t dwell on any details and neither did the priest ask for them. When I stepped out of the church that afternoon I was supposed to feel liberated, absolved, cleansed. But I felt none of those things as I was greeted by the blinding glare of the summer sun. Behind me the stone saints whispered among themselves the sacrilege that was my incomplete confession. I had not told the priest everything. How could I tell him that the holiness of prayer was powerless before my fury of desire for other males?—a sin, according to the Catholic Church. I can trace back the moment I first got a taste of this lust: my childhood days in Zacapu. The neighbors from across the street were rigorously religious, the three daughters and two sons subject to the strictest of censures. They were not allowed to cuss or engage in any type of physical contact with another child, even in play. For the longest time I thought it was because of our susceptibility to contagious head lice. When the crowd of children gathered outside to shoot marbles or to play hopscotch, the mother or father stood like an apparition at a nearby window, keeping an eye on their charges. They remained invisible until one of the other children said something or did something they perceived as inappropriate . “Come inside,” the voice would command from behind a curtain , and the game would suffer all of a sudden because of the surprised betrayal that an adult had been present the entire time. We could hear the children being slapped or spanked, punishment for having been exposed to the vulgarity of others. 116 adolescent mariposa 117 GhostWhispertoMyLover The parents were overprotective at every moment. Once, when our family went over for dinner, we were asked politely to leave after my brother, five years old at the time, pointed out that a woman on the television screen was pregnant. But that didn’t stop their children from sneaking into the second floor of our house, or to the cornfield behind the house where we engaged in sexual experimentation over the years. With the youngest daughter, who...