The Mariposa Club
Rigoberto González
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright © 2009 Rigoberto González.
all rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published by Alyson Books in 2009.
This edition published in 2010 by Tincture, an imprint of
Lethe Press, Inc.
118 Heritage Avenue • Maple Shade, NJ 08052-3018
www.lethepressbooks.com • lethepress@aol.com
isbn: 1-59021-350-5
isbn-13: 978-1-59021-350-6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Alex Jeffers.
Interior illustrations: iStockphoto.com.
Cover photo: © Monart Design - Fotolia.com.
Also by Rigoberto González
Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing (editor) (2010)
Men without Bliss (2008)
Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)
Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (2006)
Antonio’s Card (2005)
Crossing Vines (2003)
Soledad Sigh-Sighs (2003)
So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks (1999)
Table of Contents
PART ONE: September Sadness
For the young mariposas we all once were.
For the young mariposas who are, and will be.
For Lawrence King, our fiercest mariposa.
PART ONE
September Sadness
The Fierce Foursome
The girls—yes, it’s what we gay boys call each other—are already sitting on our designated planter, the one farthest from the Senior Quad, which was our choice and not anyone else’s. Isaac, the only white boy among us, is also the only smoker, but that’s because he has an after-school job at his father’s jewelry store at the mall and can afford the cigarettes. Trini bums one or two on occasion, especially when she’s on the verge of some anxiety attack, which is often since anything from a math quiz to a pimple can push her over the edge. Liberace—yes, as in that Liberace—and I don’t even touch the things. Lib, our own delusional overweight beauty queen, because he doesn’t want to stain his teeth since he hopes to go into politics someday and “white teeth are essential for television appearances.” And me because both my grandparents died of cancer, and so did my mother. So sucking on a cancer stick is not as sexy to me as it is for Isaac who sits cross-legged on the corner of the Queer Planter, ogling the jocks through the lenses of his dark glasses.
This generic block of cement with nothing planted in it because we live in the desert and the school needs to conserve water has been our gathering spot since we started hanging out together. We dubbed it the Queer Planter soon after. We wanted to make it official and paint the name on it but Principal Beasley—that’s Boozely behind his back—made up some excuse that it was defacing school property and that if he allowed that to happen then the next thing we knew we’d be swimming in graffiti, which would be an improvement on this vomit-colored brain-dead institution of lesser learning we call Caliente Valley High School.
Freshman year we weren’t the Fierce Foursome we are today because yours truly wasn’t out to himself yet, and Trini had still to transfer from our rival high school in the next town. She was moved to CV High because she almost got herself killed by showing up in drag to Homecoming.
“What the hell took you so long, Maui?” Trini says. “We’re like, in a state of crisis here, trying to figure out if we want to highjack the Prom Committee or the Senior Trip Committee.”
“Easy,” I say. “The Senior Trip Committee.”
“Told you,” Lib says, flicking his finger at Trini’s shoulder.
“But the Senior Trip Committee is all of one or two snapshots with the cell phone and the Prom Committee is, like, the most influential part of the most important night of the year,” Trini argues. “I mean, guys lose their virginity at midnight and girls get pregnant two minutes later. What do you think, Isaac?”
Isaac shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t care,” he says. “I can’t lose my virginity ever again or get pregnant so what do I care about prom night? And I sure as hell can’t bake in the sun like the rest of you Mexican girls, so I’m not going to lobby for a trip to the beach, either.” Isaac lifts his chin and massages his throat as if he’s helping the smoke slide down.
“So, to summarize,” says Trini—and we all know this is how she begins to express her discontent—“you all are going to help make this the most miserably boring year of my miserably boring life.”
“Drama queen,” Lib sing-songs.
Trini takes a deep breath. “I mean, this is our last year together in this godforsaken town and in this godforsaken school. We already spent three years in the trenches, girls, crying into each other’s shoulders, sneaking around the parking lot at Menagerie, hoping some drunk will pick one of us up—”
“Yeah, that was a time to remember,” Lib chimes in, and I’m certain we’re all transported to the night Trini came up with the bright idea to wear our most provocative clothes and stake out a gay club in Palm Springs. The closest we got to any action was when a guy came over and hurled all over Lib’s shoes.
“But we did it together,” Trini insists. “We’re the Fierce Foursome. We have to do something to get into the yearbook. Otherwise no one will remember we were even here.”
“I’m looking to forget,” Isaac says.
“Oh, you shut up, Miss Sour Grapes,” Trini snaps, “Right now white girls should be seen and not heard. What about you, Passion Flower?”
I’m so used to hearing Trini take up most of the airtime that I’m caught by surprise. And when she calls me Passion Flower, I’m reminded of how I came out to myself in the first place: four years ago, Trini sashayed into freshman algebra class with faint traces of makeup over her dark complexion and plucked eyebrows.
Mr. Howard said, “I know you were a few chapters ahead in your old algebra class, Trinidad, so you’ll have to be patient with us.”
“That’s all right,” Trini said in a voice so loud and feminine that I cringed. Her head swiveled side to side on its neck. “I’ll let ya’ll catch up.”
I felt the group ridicule gather, but I wasn’t part of it. I admired the bravado, the fierceness. I knew I wanted to be just like her. Three years later I’m nothing like Trini, but she gives me something to aspire to, that’s for sure. That’s also why “he” is a “she” twenty-four-seven and not only when we’re the Fierce Foursome. She’s definitely the fiercest.
“Well,” I say, “I think there’s another way to make sure we have our photo op for the high school yearbook.”
“Oh,” Trini says. “How’s that? Joining the Drama Club—you know it’s the only theater company in the history of the world not to welcome fags.”
“Screw the Drama Club or any other school club,” I say. “I just came back from doing a little research. Did you know that we only need five office-holding members to start our own club?”
“Okay,” Trini says. “Are they going to let us count Liberace’s tits as two? Because there are only four of us here.”
“Maybe we can count your mouth,” Lib retorts. “It’s certainly large enough.”
“Or maybe we can count my dick,” Isaac says, and that stops the conversation because we’ve all seen it in the locker room. It’s what gets the rest of us any respect around here—the fact that we hang around (interesting choice of words) with the most endowed member (here we go again) of our high school.
“Uhm,” Trini says, temporarily shell-shocked. “Anyway, so what’s your plan, Einstein?”
“The plan,” I say, “is to form like CV High’s first-ever LGBT club, and to put it down in the books for future generations of queers. It’ll be like our precious victory and our greatest legacy.”
“I’m still waiting to hear who’s going to be our fifth member,” Trini says. At this point it’s clear she’s pissed she didn’t think of it herself because it’s brilliant. “Although we know there are, like, a hundred more homos at this school, they’re all closeted.”
“I said LGBT,” I say. “That means we can invite a dyke.”
We sit there, mulling it over for a minute or two before Lib speaks up. “Okay, I’ll say it: Maddy.”
As if on cue, Maddy comes lumbering down the sidewalk with a yellow slip of paper in her hand. Maddy, one of the few black girls in the school, is as big as football player. She gets thrown out of a classroom at least once a week because she doesn’t take any shit from anybody, but she can’t get tossed out of the school itself because her father is the town sheriff. So, she gets sent to the principal’s office, where a big chair is brought out for her to sit out the rest of the class period.
“Yoo-hoo, Maddy,” Trini calls out. Maddy looks at Trini as if she wants to break her in half.
“Can you let me handle this?” I say. I’m not Maddy’s friend exactly, but my older sister used to babysit her when she was younger, so she spent a night or two at my house back in the day. Like me, Maddy also comes from a single-parent home. I used to fantasize that she and her father would move in with us because Maddy’s father is hot and I’d still kill to see him in the shower.
“Maddy,” I say. “You want to join our new club?”
“What kind of club?” she yells back, all the while she keeps walking by.
“An LGBT club,” I say.
“What’s that? A sandwich club?” she says.
“Good grief,” Lib says.
“A Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender club,” I say.
Maddy pauses and stares me down. “Do I look like a queer to you?”
Isaac can’t hold back a snort.
“I ain’t no damn lesbo,” she adds.
“She’s not?” Lib whispers.
“I know you’re not,” I stutter, though I too am confused. My gaydar, I suddenly realize, doesn’t work across genders. “But we need a fifth member to get something started here.”
“Oh, forget her,” Isaac says. “She’s not rebellious enough for us. She couldn’t handle being part of the biggest ‘F.U., CV High’ moment of the decade.”
Isaac’s reverse psychology works like a charm. Maddy’s face forms a sheepish grin. “I’m in,” she says, and then lumbers off to the principal’s office.
“Good work,” I tell Isaac.
“What?” Isaac says, “I actually meant it.”
“I still don’t think it’s a great idea,” Trini says.
“Which?” I ask. “The club or Maddy?”
“Both,” she says. And on that note, the buzzer announces that senior/junior break is over. We all go back to our designated classrooms—Isaac and I to honors calculus, Trini to general calculus, and Liberace, who’s the only junior among us, to the front office because that bitch tested out of third-year math when he got, like, the highest score in the county on the PSAT when he was just a sophomore.
“I think your idea is awesome,” Isaac says.
When he’s away from the other two, Isaac is actually the warmest person. He lets his guard down. We also have this crush on each other that we’ve been ignoring all this time, but that’s part of the pact among the four of us: no sex or dating drama. We have sleepovers and lie next to each other all night like sisters, despite the rumors circulating that we suck each other off on weekends, weeknights, and between classes. I mean, we watch gay porn together and surf the hook-up sites together but that’s all in good fun.
“Thanks, Isaac,” I say. I have the urge to put my arm around him but that would look strange on all counts: I wouldn’t want him to misinterpret the gesture of affection, and I wouldn’t want some asshole homophobe to ruin the tenderness of the moment with one of those knowing sideways glances that annoys the crap out of me. Although the entire school knows what we’re mostly about, there’s still a little Maui inside me who’s afraid people will find out that I jerk off at night thinking about Mr. Trotter—that’s Hotter behind his back—the young history teacher who was hired last year to replace Mrs. Parker—that’s Barker behind her back—the old dog who retired because she was so senile she couldn’t even find her homeroom in the mornings.
“Hey,” Isaac says before we follow the stragglers into the classroom, “keep me company in the store after school? My father’s making me work the front counter while he does the numbers in the back on weekday afternoons. The mall’s pretty dead.”
“Sure,” I tell him.
I follow Isaac into math class. Mrs. Lemmons—that’s Melons behind her back, or rather, Melons front and center—rolls her eyes at us. “Any day now, boys,” she says, and I’m thankful that there’s no way the jocks in the room are going to take their eyes off her chest to even bother looking at Isaac and me take our seats in the back row.
Melons starts in on the hour-long lesson and I zone out suddenly because calculus isn’t that big of a deal. And since Isaac’s catching up on the reading for English class, I imagine he thinks so too.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate that Isaac is good-looking. He’s the tall, blond, blue-eyed white boy that broke every girl’s heart as soon as it became common knowledge what team he played on when he latched on to Trini and me, sophomore year. Our then baby freshman Lib came sniffing around soon after, more interested in Isaac than in the concept of safety in numbers. Before then Lib was content disarming everyone with his size—no one wants to beat up a big girl. He had no interest in Trini, and sometimes I suspect he still doesn’t, because Trini makes Lib feel invisible again with her over-the-top public persona. Isaac and I let those other two fight it out on the stage; we’re content keeping a low profile.
Personally, although I have sex in the brain most of the day, I don’t think I’m going to do anything until I find the right guy. Yes, go ahead, have a laugh. I’m seventeen and still a virgin. “Maui the Catholic Girl” is what Trini calls me, the unplucked Passion Flower. Besides Isaac, the only person I’d give it up to in a heartbeat is Hotter, but he’s so vain and self-absorbed he hardly even notices the rest of us. My purity is such an old joke now that it rarely comes up anymore. That’s another reason Trini feels superior to all of us, she’s actually had sex, many times, or so she brags. And when Lib tried to claim the same Trini shut him up with, “Oh, don’t even try it, big girl, we all know your pussy’s on your face.” Geez, no wonder Lib dislikes her.
Although Isaac says he’s had sex he doesn’t like to talk about it much. It’s like Murphy’s Law: the most desirable one in the room is the one who doesn’t show a libido. Even my sister Mickey—that’s short for Micaela—thinks Isaac’s hot and always hangs around when I have him over. And once it’s clear that Isaac doesn’t have time for her either, she goes off with her community college friends. My father, on the other hand, tries to stay away when Isaac’s around. He works late anyways, but he’ll call ahead or make a lot of noise at the door before he comes in from Las Cazuelas, where he’s the restaurant manager. It’s like he’s afraid he’ll walk in on a blowjob-in-progress or something. Really, Papi.
But then, I don’t blame him. Once Isaac and I did get close to doing something. It was one of those strange full-moon evenings when Trini and Lib didn’t bicker and decided to drive up to Palm Springs for spring break without us. It was only thirty minutes away but Isaac and I had wagered that they’d kill each other by minute five. We stayed behind because we thought it was stupid to cruise around the streets without being able to get into any of the homo bars since, hello, we’re still underage and look it. The two of them put on makeup and wore see-through tops and off they went to haunt the parking lots for action. And since my house was emptier than Isaac’s, we rented a few DVDs and had a sleepover.
It was awkward at first because we stripped down to our undershirts and boxer-briefs, and although we had seen each other naked in the gym, there was a strange sensation of intimacy that night, me in the kitchen keeping an eye on the microwave popcorn and Isaac fumbling with the remote, a can of soda in his hand. I couldn’t help myself from checking him out, and after I sat down next him with a tub of popcorn on my lap, I got aroused when he reached in to grab a handful.
When we’re alone, Isaac is quieter, maybe even sad. I suspect there’s a hurt in there, but he won’t reveal it. I should know. I walked around like that for years after my mother died when I was twelve. There I was, the shy kid who had withdrawn into himself even more than before just as I had grown comfortable with who I was because my mother loved me that way. And now that my mother was gone, so were my confidence and that feeling of security. Then Trini came along and I knew it wouldn’t be so bad after all. I mean, if she can walk around the way she does and even have people like my father be comfortable around her, well, there’s hope for me and for anyone.
But Isaac, beautiful boy Isaac, has both his parents, business owners who expect their handsome oldest child to take over the jewelry store one day. He’s the oldest of five, and the rest of his siblings are girls—all of them looking like cookie-cutter versions of their homely mother. Mrs. Dutton wears a tired expression all the time, as if she spends her energy breaking up fights between her son and her husband. As for Mr. Dutton, he’s still resentful that the only male in the bunch turned out to be, well, you know. That’s why I’m the only one of the Isaac’s friends who’s allowed in their house or even in their store. The flamboyant Trini and the effeminate Lib are not welcomed there. Not that they care, but it does hurt Isaac’s feelings.
We were talking about such things that night, ignoring the television, which was playing some forgettable action flick at low volume, when suddenly the room got quiet. Maybe it was the way the sadness took shape on his face, maybe it was the fact that his chest was looking hot beneath his tight undershirt, maybe it was the full moon, or the warm desert air, or the soft accidental grazing of our hands when we reached into the popcorn at the same time. Whatever it was, next thing we knew the tub was on the floor and Isaac’s mouth was pressed against mine and our arms around each other felt so comfortable and good.
“Mauricio,” Isaac whispered, and my name sounded so sexy because I had never heard him say it. It was always Maui—the shy gay orphan. But Mauricio was capable of kissing another guy and loving every second. It was my first excursion into the art of tongue wrestling. That’s how Trini always gauged her interest in a man: “I would tongue wrestle with him,” she’d say, nodding her head once.
And to think how far we would have gotten if my father hadn’t come barging in like an immigration raid! In that split second between the door knob turning and the door opening, Isaac and I managed to pull our bodies apart, pick up the tub of popcorn off the floor and turn the volume up on the DVD to pretend we were into the action hero and not into each other. My father wasn’t fooled, though, even after Isaac mustered up the most innocent-sounding “Good evening, Mr. Gutiérrez.” And so, after that, my father always made sure to announce that he was coming in, although Isaac and I agreed not to go there again, for the sake of the Fierce Foursome.
“For the sake of the Fierce Foursome,” I say in a low voice as I look over at Isaac behind his desk, looking so cute with his face over a copy of Pride and Prejudice. He turns to look back at me and winks. My breath stops.
At the Lame View Mall
Isaac’s the only one with a car. The rest of us are too poor for wheels, although Trini’s always taking out her Aunt Carmen’s ancient gold-colored station wagon with wood paneling on the side that she affectionately named Paulina Rubio, “because, like the pop singer, she’s also a Mexican blonde.” That’s how she and Lib drove to Palm Springs on that infamous spring break weekend. The other part of the story is that they got busted for driving around without a license or insurance. Trini still refuses to get a license but her elderly aunt won’t nag her about it because she depends on Trini to drive her to the market and to the doctor and stuff. Trini blasts Britney Spears at full volume on those cheap speakers that will one day explode. Poor Aunt Carmen—I bet she had no idea what she was getting herself into when she agreed to take Trini in so that Trini could change high schools.
The saving grace is that we all ride with Isaac to school most of the time, which spares us the humiliation of riding the yellow school bus. I think Lib is the only one who doesn’t mind either way. He lives in the housing projects for the farm worker families so he doesn’t even pretend he’s not where he’s from. Though where his grape-picking parents came up with a name like Liberace is kind of a great story.
It turns out Lib’s parents used to be part of this heavy-duty religious group, some branch of Christians that prays and preaches to the point of flinging themselves to the ground. When the kids started coming—conceived in, and then born into this state of feverish passion—Lib’s father decided to get clever with the names and use them as yet another way to witness. The first child was named Encomiéndate, which asks people to surrender themselves to the Lord; the second was named Reconcíliate, which asks that they then make peace with the Lord; and the third was supposed to be, quite simply, Libérate, as in achieving spiritual liberation or bliss. But something got lost in the transfer of information, or maybe it was just a typo, but in any case, Libérate García ended up becoming—quite fittingly it turns out—Liberace García. Though to all of us, including his parents, he’s simply Lib.
Well, it’s not that Lib’s older siblings do anything with the names either. They’re hard to spell or pronounce in either English and Spanish, so in the outside world—as in, outside of their parents’ home (they now exercise their faith in a less severe church)—they go by Ennie and Celie. Ennie, Lib informed us, married one of those white girls from the trailer park across the tracks and moved away to some horrible place like North Carolina.
Celie, well, she’s the cool older sister I wish I had. I mean, I love Mickey and all but she’s too conformist—a straight girl through and through. She’s all about makeup and diets and giggling around the boys and fantasizing about weddings and honeymoons. Celie, on the other hand, is an institution at the Plain View Mall—that’s Lame View to us. She’s the first person that catches your eye when you enter because she’s the Goth Cop, Lame View’s resident tough-cookie security guard, inch-deep in white-face and pitch-black eyeliner.
As the girls and I parade into the front mall, there, keeping the peace at the Hot Dog Factory is Celie—a veritable contrast in dark and light.
“Hey, sis!” Lib calls out and she beckons him with her finger, the nail painted deep black. “Okay, what does she want, another coat of charcoal on her lips?” Lib complains. “I’ll catch you bitches later.”
“Hello?” Trini says. “You’re not going to leave me stranded here all by myself, are you?”
“Just come with me,” Lib says.
Trini rolls her eyes. “Well, after we’re done running errands for Madame Celie, over there, I suppose we’ll catch up with you girls later tonight at McMurders or something. Gotta eat!”
“Call me on my cell,” I say and Trini flips me the bird because the only one of us with a cell phone is Isaac.
“Well,” Isaac says, “to the grindstone.”
Joyería Dutton is located in the corner of the center of the mall, which makes it difficult to ignore. In this working-class town it’s the place people come to buy cheap bling on layaway. Isaac says all of the pieces on display are floor samples. When a customer actually picks one out, Mr. Dutton orders it from the warehouse.
“What if someone wants it on the spot?” I asked.
“Not the expensive pieces,” Isaac said. “The cheaper shit we’ve got sitting around by the bag in the vault.”
When we get to the store, a Mexican couple is looking over the cheaper shit. Mr. Dutton stands over them, speaking in his strange Spanish. His voice soft and seductive because he wants to make the sale, no matter how small. Isaac once told me that his grandfather, a Scottish or Irish immigrant, had changed the family name from Duttenhofer to Dutton, to sound more American and fit in. It’s interesting how Mr. Dutton has to make yet another transformation, changing the store name from Dutton Jewelry to Joyería Dutton, to fit into the mostly-Mexican southern California.
“Ah, mis hijos,” he announces and the couple looks back and smiles at us.
“Hola, Mr. Dutton,” I say. “Buenas tardes,” I say to the customers.
“Buenas tardes, joven,” they reply and then turn back to the row of bracelets, long and thin as angel hair pasta.
“Hey, pops,” Isaac says as he moves to the back of the counter.
After we drop our backpacks in the back room, Isaac glances over the sale logs and I pick up the cleaning rag and the spray bottle to wipe off the glass on the display cases. I picked up this chore without pay on my own since it gave me something to do while Mr. Dutton switches roles with Isaac. As soon as he’s off to count numbers, Isaac relaxes and we can have a regular conversation again.
The Mexican couple makes their purchase, we say our polite goodbyes, and as soon as they’re out of earshot Mr. Dutton’s tone changes.
“What took you so long, Isaac?” he demands.
“What?” Isaac says, “I was only, like, five minutes late.”
“Five minutes mean nothing to you? Is this how you will run this business? Five minutes behind everyone else? Don’t make me scold you in front of Maui,” Mr. Dutton says as he takes the logs and scurries to the back.
I can’t help but blush at Mr. Dutton’s mind games. We all know it’s something else that bothers him, namely, that Isaac has never had a girlfriend. And never will.
“Asshole,” Isaac says.
“Hey,” I say.
Isaac raises his hand and says, “Don’t bother. I can’t even feel it anymore.”
Feel what? I want to ask him. His heart? But I can, I want to say. Instead, we do what we have been trained to do—we go numb, we make jokes, we pretend we’re so much Diva we’re made of steel and nothing can touch us. Isaac rubs the back of his neck and then he moves on. We both do.
“Oh, my God, will you look at that?” I say, grateful to be able to point out a distraction.
Trini and Lib are carrying a piñata shaped like a giant—well, it’s supposed to be like one of those Renaissance-inspired swords or something—but there’s no mistaking a penis when one sees one.
“Suck on this, bitches!” Trini calls out.
“Hey! Less talk, more action,” Celie yells from the other side of the piñata, but since we can’t see her it sounds like it’s coming from the penis itself. “We’re shoving this inside the truck.”
“Mercy!” Trini yells.
“We’ll catch up at school tomorrow,” Lib says. “We’re setting up Celie’s house for a Goth party this weekend. And we’re all invited!”
“I guess we’ll have to spike our hair and wear all black,” I say.
Isaac shakes his head. “It’s always something with those two.”
For the next hour or so we stand around and talk to potential customers. If somebody actually wants to buy something pricey, Isaac calls Mr. Dutton from the back, but nothing great goes down this afternoon so we don’t see Mr. Dutton again until closing. The only action we usually get is watching Celie escort members of Los Calis out of the mall because they’re being obnoxiously loud. Los Calis are the Caliente Valley’s dope-dealing, petty-thieving Mexican gang. But this afternoon, not even the gang members came to the mall.
“Slow today,” Mr. Dutton announces, matter-of-factly.
“I’m going to drive Maui home,” Isaac tells Mr. Dutton.
“Yes,” Mr. Dutton responds, disinterested.
We pull down the security barriers while Isaac’s father locks up the display cases inside. “Another day, another duller,” Isaac mumbles.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Your days are numbered here,” and as soon as the words slip out of my mouth I get chills. It suddenly dawns on me that the Fierce Foursome will break apart as soon as we graduate. Where will we go? What will we do? Will we stay in touch?
“What’s the matter?” Isaac says. “You look pale as butt.”
“I just had a crazy thought: we’re all going to split this banana we call Caliente Valley High,” I say.
“Oh, geez, you’re not going to get all cheesy are you?” Isaac says. “For us queers that’s a good thing. We hate high school, remember? And it hates us.”
“Isaac!” Mr. Dutton calls out suddenly.
“Give me a minute, will you?” Isaac says to me and then walks over to his father.
I know this part of the relationship all too well: it’s the scene where Mr. Dutton yells at his son for not doing something perfect. Mr. Dutton gets all emotional and red behind the barrier, which seems to keep him from reaching over and grabbing Isaac’s neck. Isaac simply stands there, one foot taller than his father but getting smaller by the second, until it’s over.
“Is that all?” Isaac says, loud enough to show me that he hasn’t been broken down completely.
“I’ll talk to you at home,” Mr. Dutton says, and turns away.
We get to Isaac’s little Honda Civic and climb in. The car faces Lame View Mall. The stragglers are dragging their feet out to the sidewalk and a few cars are slowly making their way out of the parking lot. Everything here moves at that pace, like a slug booger.
“And so what?” Isaac says, continuing a conversation I had no idea we were still having. I can hear the anger building up in his voice. “What are we going to leave behind, anyway? This stupid town of Caliente, California, and our stupid school and our stupid teachers and our stupid families.”
“I happen to love my family,” I say defensively, and I immediately regret it.
“Oh, yes, excuse me, I forgot,” Isaac says. “Little Maui loves his daddy and his big sis. Excuse me for hating my stupid-ass father and my stupid-ass mother. Excuse me for living—”
Isaac drops his head to sob inside his arms over the steering wheel. I’m not sure what to do. This is the part that we never figured out in the Fierce Foursome, how to be affectionate with each other without feeling weird. It’s always ha-ha-ha and hee-hee-hee and then when something serious comes along we’re clueless.
I let him exhaust himself with crying, and then his body relaxes after the release.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I feel like such a dipshit just sitting here not knowing what to do.”
“That’s because we can’t do anything yet,” Isaac says. “We’re not even high school graduates. We’re not even eighteen years old. And we’re queers. We’re invisible. We’re nothing.”
“No, that’s not true, Isaac,” I say. I reach over and hold his hand. “We’re friends. We matter to each other.”
But I can’t help but feel there’s a truth to what he just said. It feels more palpable suddenly as the parking lot empties and we’re the last vehicle left standing, alone and silent in the deserted asphalt. The cars driving past on the avenue might not even care to notice us, but there we are—two seventeen-year-olds on the cusp of adulthood and the overwhelming freedom that comes with it.
Trini’s Drama
After Isaac drops me off at home, I stand at the driveway for a minute, thinking about how complicated our final year of high school’s going to get, when Mickey comes rushing out of the house looking like she’s wearing a lamp shade over head to protect the proud beehive she has worked on all week for the retro-party at the community college.
“Oh, my God, Maui, get over here!” she screams.
Knowing that my sister is one of the biggest drama queens on the block, I don’t quite see through the urgency of her tone. I’m thinking she misplaced her car keys or something. But then I see that her eyes have widened to a shape I have seldom seen before.
“Papi?” I ask. My body stiffens.
“Trini has been calling non-stop,” she says. “His Aunt Carmen’s in the hospital. She fell!”
“Seriously?” I say since I can’t picture Aunt Carmen getting done in by anything, let alone something as everyday as a fall. She’s a tough old lady who used to be an actress in Mexican movies back in the sixties. “Nothing glamorous like romance or adventure flicks,” Trini said as she showed off shots and stills of Aunt Carmen in green neon knee-high boots from forty years ago. “She did tons of those go-go dancing films.”
“Is she all right?” I ask.
“He wouldn’t say,” Mickey says, and she’s digging into her purse for the car keys. It’s clear that Trini has asked for me, and that Mickey has already agreed to take me to the hospital.
On the way there, Mickey informs me that she’s only dropping me off. She had promised to give a friend a ride to work. “I’ll tell Papi to come pick you and Trini up after work,” she says. “I’m sure he can stay with us tonight.”
So much remains unspoken in those few sentences, that I’m grateful my sister is the understanding type. And that so will my father be about having Trini over. What neither of them has to say is that Trini can’t go back with her parents. Her father all but disowned her after that incident at homecoming. Trini, fierce and fearless, decided to run for Homecoming court, and no one caught that the gender-ambiguous name, Trinidad, was not a girl but that queer kid who walked around the school in eyeliner and dressed in girl’s sweaters, until it was too late to do anything about it. It became a joke that all the other outsiders and popularity rejects enabled as an affront to the jocks and school princesses. Everything had been engineered all the way up to the announcement of the king and queen, when Trini would walk up to the stage in an evening gown. But as soon as the jocks got wind of it, they cut her catwalk short by rushing her behind the stage and breaking her arm and two ribs.
For Trini’s parents, who thought they had long ago grown accustomed to their outrageous only child, showing up at the hospital to find Trini broken-boned in drag was too much. So, in the guise of fearing for her safety, they had her transferred to the neighboring high school and living with Aunt Carmen, the old eccentric relative who decades before had pranced around for the camera doing the mash potato.
When I walk into waiting room, I see Trini’s father sitting on the far couch, pretending to be asleep. Trini stands glassy-eyed next to the water cooler. They look so much alike—same thin frame, same full set of hair—that not even a stranger would have been fooled into thinking they were not here together.
“Hey,” I say, and Trini rushes over to bawl on my shoulder. Her father opens his eyes but just sits there, unmoved by the display of emotion.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, tugging at Trini’s shirt.
“Thank you for coming, Maui,” Trini says, “Oh, look at me, my makeup is running! I was going mad crazy here all by myself.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“She’s in there with Aunt Carmen,” Trini says. “She kicked me out of the room and I could tell Aunt Carmen didn’t like that, but she has no choice, she can’t speak.”
“What happened to her?”
“I think she had a stroke,” Trini says. “When Celie and Lib dropped me off in front of the house, I noticed the lights were off, which is rare because Aunt Carmen loves her afternoon novelas, you know, the ones with those beefcake Brazilian actors and oh, my goodness, look at the doctor over there in the glasses, he’s hot—”
“Are you frickin’ kidding me?” I shake Trini by the shoulders. “Focus!”
“I’m sorry,” she says, her face wrinkling with grief. “This is all too much for me. First I walk into the house and see my poor Aunt Carmen looking like she’s dead, and then I have to call my parents and they start accusing me of not taking care of her! I mean, I take great care of her. I make her dinners, I drive her to her appointments. It’s not my fault!”
“No,” I tell Trini as we walk further away from the waiting room. “It’s not your responsibility or your fault. Aunt Carmen adores you. She would never blame you for anything.”
“Try telling my parents that. The first thing they did when they got here was take away my keys to Paulina Rubio,” Trini says. “Oh, Maui, I’m so scared. What’s going to happen to Aunt Carmen? What’s going to happen to me? I can’t live on my own. Oh, my God, they’re going to take me to one of those third-world orphanages and force me into child labor or something. I can see it now, the label in the back of Kate Winslet’s Oscar gown: Made by little orphan Trini while sewing with no light. Do you think she’ll thank me in her acceptance speech at least?”
“Trini, get a hold of yourself, you’re acting stupid.”
“I can’t help it. You know I talk like this when I get anxious.”
Just then my father walks briskly through the sliding front doors.
“Maui, Trini,” he says. “Are you two all right? How’s auntie?”
“Oh, Mr. Gutiérrez,” Trini says. “It’s horrible. She can’t talk or walk and she can’t even open one of her eyes anymore. My parents are in there, but—”
My father nods, “I understand. Why don’t you and Maui wait for me in the car and I’ll be right out.”
Trini and I look at each other and then turn to watch my father take those same brisk steps toward the waiting room.
“Is your papi going to beat up my papi?” Trini asks.
“I hope so,” I say. “I mean, if that’s okay with you.”
“Well, by some bizarre sense of Mexican loyalty I have to object,” Trini says. “But my inner queen says, You go, Mr. G.!”
We walk past the receiving desk, where the receptionist tries to hide the fact that she’s talking into her cell phone. The autumn air outside is cool and it reminds me of the times I had to take my mother out for a walk. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and part of her afternoon routine to get out of her depression was an exercise regimen, usually a stroll around the block. She died this time of the year, which hurts still, especially when things like the clear southern California sky in September come around to remind me.
My father’s car is the nondescript Cadillac parked all wrong. For this I have another reason to be grateful to my sister—she taught me how to drive. She learned from her friends because my father is the most absent-minded driver in the town of Caliente. We don’t have to decide where to sit because my father’s passenger front seat is crammed with special menus and invitations to the upcoming banquet at Las Cazuelas. I had already volunteered the Fierce Foursome to help seat and serve. Only Trini of course, scoffed at that, until she found out we got to wear Mexican folk costumes.
“Dibs on the china poblana,” she announced. I have yet to break the news that only male costumes will be made available for the festivity and that she won’t get to wear the sequined dress with the seal of the Mexican flag in front.
We slide in the back and, after fifteen minutes, begin to get nervous.
“What are they talking about in there?” Trini wonders out loud.
“Hey,” I say, in an attempt to distract her. “So I almost forgot. Tomorrow we have an appointment to see Boozely about the LGBT club.”
“That should be interesting,” Trini says. “Frankly, I don’t see why you’re even bothering. I mean, those losers don’t even deserve our fierceness. We should do them a favor and burn the school down instead.”
I chuckle that Trini’s attitude is slowly coming around. “Well,” I say, “I’m sure Maddy would light the match.” We burst out laughing.
“Wasn’t that hilarious?” Trini says, and then does her best impersonation of Maddy: “I ain’t no damn lesbo!”
“It’s going to be great,” I say, suddenly excited about the prospect. “I’ll be president, you can be vice. We’ll make Isaac treasurer and Lib the secretary, and Maddy will be our combination bouncer and member-at-large. I’m already envisioning our motto—”
“Wait,” Trini says. “Why do you get to be president?”
“Well,” I say. “It was my idea. Check. I’m putting in all the paperwork for it. Check. And if we held an election, I’m sorry, Trini, but no disrespect to you but I think I would win by a landslide. Check.”
“Uncheck: two or three votes is a landslide to you?” Trini says.
“Compared to none, yes.” I say.
Trini purses her lips. “Well, I’m so pleased to know that the democratic process is alive and well as evidenced by this self-appointment going down at C.V. High.”
“You’re joking, right?” I say. “You want us to run against each other in front of our three voting members?”
“I’m only saying it’s a tad presumptuous to say that I could not be elected president over you.”
“And all I’m saying is that maybe voting members don’t want someone in office who doesn’t even notice that anyone else might have something to say because she does most of the talking.”
“Mauricio Gutiérrez!” Trini yells out. “I am shocked and dismayed that you should insult me in the parking lot of JFK Medical while my poor old dear aunt is in there bedridden and I’m sitting here crying my eyes out in the back seat of your father’s car!”
I have to roll my eyes at that one. “And I am devastated that you should manipulate the situation just to get yourself the sympathy vote.”
Trini clutches her invisible pearls. “Why, I do declare!” she says in her best southern belle accent.
I shake my head. “Trini, look, stop it. What are we doing?”
“We’re fighting like two kitties in a potato sack?”
“That’s not where we should be right now. I mean, I—”
The whole exchange halts when the driver’s side door opens. My father climbs in, turns the ignition and says in the calmest voice he can muster before we gun it out of the parking lot, “Let’s go boys. Trini, you’re moving in with us until graduation.”
“What?” I say. “Papi, what?”
Trini is overjoyed and does a little “raise the roof” hand gesture.
It turns out that the inquiry into Aunt Carmen’s health took a strange turn when Trini’s parents started arguing about what to do with Trini while the patient was in recovery. Certainly the kid couldn’t move back home and certainly the kid couldn’t live on her own since she had just turned seventeen over the summer and didn’t even have a driver’s license. Trini would have to be sent back to Mexico until she came of age. My father, the sensible grown-up that he was, understood A: how dangerous this would be to a gender-bending queer kid like Trini, and B: how disruptive this would be to her education, so there was a third option, C: for Trini to move into the Gutiérrez household in order to avoid both A and B.
“He’s your friend, Maui,” my father concludes the explanation. “And your friend needs us right now.”
I’m seeing Papi in a different light all of a sudden, as if he’s not as homophobic as I thought he was. “So...dealing with yet another crazy high school kid is not going to be too much for you?” I ask him, and he gives me the “we’ll discuss this further later” look through the rearview mirror.
All through the ride over to Aunt Carmen’s to pack some of Trini’s things and all through Trini’s whirlwind essentials-gathering, like her teddy bear pajamas and furry rabbit slippers, I remain numb, trying to process the idea of having to spend both day and night with the outspoken, overbearing, motor-mouth, Trinidad Ramos. Wait until the girls get wind of this!
Mickey’s waiting for us on the front porch without the lampshade on her head, which makes it easier for Papi to lean over and give her a one-minute run-down of the situation.
“You serious?” she asks. Papi nods his head. “Well, welcome to the family, Trini,” she says, and then just as quickly: “Though, around here, everyone pulls their own weight with the household chores. You’re not a guest. And, uhm, I’m still the boss around here, squirt, since I’m the oldest.”
“All in good time,” my father says as he drags over clean sheets and pillows into my room.
The Gutiérrez house is a three-bedroom deal: after Mami died, the master bedroom was handed over to Mickey, who got her own private bathroom and study space. And I got the next largest room because of the desk and the side entrance to the back garden. My father took the small bedroom in the back near the communal bathroom. He didn’t mind the twin bed and the efficiently-packed dresser since he didn’t bother to date after my mother passed away. So he’s never had any overnight guests and all he wears is one version or another of his manager’s uniform.
I have a queen-size bed and an open floor, where I usually lay out the sleeping bags when I host the Fierce Foursome sleepovers. But even with Trini’s lump of personal items now on display, I feel slightly invaded.
“We’ll bring out the extra bed from the shed tomorrow,” my father announces. “For tonight you can sleep with Maui.”
“Thank you, Mr. G.,” Trini says, and she runs over and gives my father a hug. My father blushes and so do I. We’re a close family, but we’re not into impulsive PDA.
Once my father leaves and shuts the door behind him, Trini says, “Well, here we are.”
“Here we are,” I say. “Look, Trini, about the whole incident back in the car—”
“Forgotten,” Trini says. “I need some privacy. I want to change into my teddy bears.”
I turn my back to her, though this is quite silly. We have seen each other naked in gym class, back when we had to take P.E., before Boozely allowed us all to opt out for the sake of our queer safety and their straight comfort. But now that I remember, Trini never did change for P.E. She got out of it from the get-go when she informed the school counselor that being around jocks in the locker room gave her post-traumatic stress since she was attacked at homecoming.
“Okay,” Trini says.
When I turn around I’m nearly floored. Trini stands in front of me in the nude, but covering her privates. A large burn, long-since healed, lies splashed across her chest, the nipple has been left discolored and misshapen. Satisfied that I have seen the front, Trini turns around to show me her back side, where a cigarette burn has been nailed in from the middle of her spine.
“Oh, my God, Trini,” I say. “Your father?”
Trini nods her head and reaches over for her pajamas and slips them on. “And my grandfather, back when I was younger.”
“Why did you show me these now?” I ask.
“Because I’m grateful that for the first time in my life I’m with people who don’t want to hurt me,” Trini says.
“What about Aunt Carmen?” I say.
“She does her best to protect me.”
“Geez, Trini, I’m so sorry.” But words don’t seem to do this moment justice. If anything it makes me feel that much more of a jerk for being mean to her about the whole LGBT club presidency. It also makes me realize how fortunate I am that I don’t have to deal with my father the way Isaac has to deal with his, or Trini with hers. No one gets to choose their parents, their high school, or their community. And if you’re one of the unlucky ones, life will be one big frickin’ burden after another. The only consolation I can offer Trini is a hug. I walk up to her and put my arms around her.
We stand there for a minute, my body leaning on hers more than the other way around because I want her to forgive me more than anything else.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, and then caresses my shoulder.
We crawl into bed and turn off the lights. I can hear the intensity in Trini’s breathing, but when I listen more carefully I realize that it’s coming from me.
“Thank you, Maui,” Trini says. “I’ll be on my best behavior. I don’t want to disrespect your family’s generosity.”
“Oh, don’t worry about any of that, girl,” I say. “You just be yourself. Here, we like you exactly as you’ve always been.”
“In that case, when the second bed comes in tomorrow, I get the one with the view of the garden,” Trini says. And then she adds, her voice buzzing like a mosquito in the dark, “And I get to be president.”
I swat the bug away. “In your dreams,” I say.
The Mariposa Club
“Oh. My. Goddess!” Lib squeals when he hears the news that Trini has moved in with my family. “Five dollars you kick her to the curb by Halloween.”
“Lib,” Isaac groans. Trini winces.
We’re at the Queer Planter before classes start. The sky is overcast though I don’t try to read too much into it since we have an appointment to see Boozely during study hour. First, however, we want to resolve the issue of the office holders. I show the group the requisite form and explain that we can make a better case for the club if we present it to the principal already filled out.
“Wait,” I say. “If we’re going to do this right then we have to have all our voting members present.”
A silence descends on the group.
“Good luck roping Maddy in,” Lib says. “She comes to school on her own schedule.”
But for the second time, as soon as her name is invoked, Maddy makes an appearance.
“Uncanny. It’s like chanting Bloody Mary,” Trini says, and then waves at her. “Yoo-hoo, Maddy!”
Maddy’s eyes narrow as she slowly makes her way over. It’s not that she isn’t agile or even smart. I remember in junior high, especially, both Maddy and I were part of the academic and athletic decathlons at Woodrow Wilson. We would even study and train together on the weekends when she spent them at our house since her father had those long shifts at the precinct. Ah, the gorgeous Sheriff Johnson. He’s still something of a catch, and unlike my own widowed father, he’s quite a ladies’ man.
I suspect that has something to do with why Maddy became the way she is—deliberately defiant of her natural talents. She started losing interest in sprinting and in spelling as soon as Sheriff Johnson started dating one of the school secretaries. The kids started making fun of her and asking her to pimp her new mommy out for hallway passes. It wouldn’t have been half as bad if Sheriff Johnson didn’t make such a public display of the whole thing, hand-delivering a dozen roses on Secretaries Day and stuff like that.
In the end, that secretary came and went, and so did a string of other love interests. I always knew about his love life because my father brought it up at dinner sometimes.
“That Raymond Johnson,” he would say, with no small hint of jealousy. “Brought around a beautiful Asian lady to the restaurant for lunch. One of those new gals at the bank, I hear.”
It must be difficult for my father, a homely restaurant manager, to watch how a police officer who rose so quickly in the ranks to became sheriff also became the city’s most eligible bachelor. And it must be hard on Maddy, who got big and held back a year in school, to watch her father move from flower to flower like the hardest-working bee in the hive.
“What do you bunch of sissies want from me now?” Maddy says. “I’ve got to get to the library.”
“You read?” Trini asks. I roll my eyes.
“Look, you better watch yourself, Trannie,” Maddy says and Lib bursts out laughing. “You too, Glib,” she adds.
“Never mind them, Maddy,” I say, trying to keep the peace. “Listen, we’re electing officers to the LGBT club and we need your vote.”
“Okay,” she says, “I vote for myself.”
“All righty, then,” Isaac chimes in.
“Well,” I say, waving the form in my hand. “That’s not exactly how it works. We’ve got to fill in these little slots.”
Maddy snatches the form. “Don’t condescend to me, Bow-Wowie,” she says. And then it hits me—it’s Maddy who came up with all those nicknames for people, from Boozely to Melons. Not Hotter, though, that one just named itself.
“I’d like to be money-keeper,” Maddy says. “I’ll collect dues and break kneecaps on late payments.” She takes out a pen from the back of her ear, writes in her name on the line naming the treasurer, and then gives me back the form.
“Sounds like a match made in heaven to me,” Isaac says.
Trini stomps her foot. “Well, if we’re just going to call it then I call president.”
“No effing way,” I say.
“Order, order,” Lib says.
Trini turns to him and says, “Hey, who made you president?”
“Girls!” Isaac says. “First of all, it says chair in the form, not president, so let’s get off that label train ASAP.”
“Chair?” Trini scoffs. “Can’t we at least call it something more interesting like ‘divan’ or ‘chaise longue?’”
“Look,” I say. “We can be co-chairs, is that all right, Trini?”
“I suppose,” she concedes. “Though it doesn’t sound quite as influential now.”
“Which one of you wants to be secretary?” I ask, and Isaac and Lib point at each other.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “It’s no big deal. You get to take down minutes at the meetings and stuff.”
“I can’t spell worth a shit,” Lib says. “Besides, I’d rather do something a little more dramatic, like publicity. I’d be perfect for that. I’m all about spreading the word and telling it on the mountain, you know me.”
I write Lib’s name down. “That means you get to be secretary,” I tell Isaac. “Learn it, live it, love it.”
“Yippee,” Isaac says, flatly.
“Okay, now comes the important part: what are we going to name the club?” I ask.
“How about the Fierce Foursome, what we’ve always been?” Lib offers.
“Hey, math girl, did you also forget how to count?” Trini says. “There are five names on this list.”
“Then we can be the Quite Fierce Quintuplets,” Lib says.
“What are we now, a singing group? Lame,” Trini says.
“Then you come up with something, your majesty,” Lib says, pointing at Trini with his chin.
We stand around for a minute contemplating names: The Diva Delightfuls (Trini’s idea), the Caliente Hot Babes (Lib’s), Valley Girls (Isaac), the Rainbow Crew (mine), Britney’s Queers (Trini again), the Hagless Fags (Lib), the Sun Queens (Isaac), The Out and Abouts (mine again), Madwoman and the ’Mos (Maddy, though it did get a chuckle out of us) and finally, after explaining to Trini that the Fire Island Fairies is not even within the realm of our West Coast reality, she nails it.
“How about The Butterflies: An LGBT Club,” she says. “You know, it’s what they call us homos south of the border—fluttering butterflies!” Trini bats her eyelids.
“Ooh,” Lib says. “I actually like it.”
“Me, too. It’s got flair, some nice metaphor potential—an out-of-the-cocoon thing going on. So then let’s vote on it since we have like a minute left before the bell rings,” I say.
“The Butterflies,” Trini says, breathing deeply. “As in mariposas. What do you think, Mads?”