above our patch of cabbage in the back yard small white butterflies used to hover and rise. i would sit very still so as not to scare them, and my mama would run out from the house and wave her brown arms through them like a fierce, drowning sailor in the white of a wave and she would shout until they’d scattered, then turn to me, with a bleakness in her eyes to say:  “they eat the garden, mija. they might look pretty,  but we don’t want them here.”