ticuaabutterfly.

Serafina saw the creamy-white butterflies rise from the cauliflower field, like the little spirits of children. She lay in the bed of eucalyptus leaves in a farmer's windbreak, delirious with fever and pain. The smell of the fragrant bark and silver-knife leaves made her remember.

Yukon Avenue. The dead end of the street, where these ghostly trees shivered in the wind, where Elvia loved to peel the bark and then touch the tree-skin underneath. The smell in her fingers those nights, when Serafina washed her in the tub. Her backbone showing through her skin like a rosary.

She fumbled for the rosary under her breast. She touched the beads. Each bone, a prayer under her own now-swollen fingers, under the soapy water she remembered, under her tears.

Please. Take care of her. Keep her safe. Let me see her again.

The men slept. Florencio's rattling breath was nearby. Only her eyes moved. The hot wind scoured the field and the butterflies were disturbed, moving jagged in the currents of air, trying to settle.

She had dreamed when she slept of the tiny white dress. Back in San Cristobal, a girl named Guadalupe had buried her baby girl in a shimmering white dress. She had had a fever. She was only three. Like Elvia, the last time Serafina saw her.

The sharpest pain, sharper than the pain in her jaw or her feet or her stomach, ricocheted between her hipbones, the way it did each time she saw the small back in the tub, the almond-colored cheeks and eyes, the smile when she lifted her face. The hands at her knees, on her back. The terrible untethering from the ground of Serafina's whole body without those fingers in hers, on her, holding her.

She opened her eyes. A few of the butterflies rested on the eucalyptus trunk nearest her. She saw that some of them were yellow, a pale buttery color she didn't remember from her time here before.

Two more nights, maybe, if she could walk again. That was what she thought Florencio had said, though her jaw sent ringing into her ears and the constant walking jarred her hearing even more. They were closer. Rio Seco.

She made herself think of that night, the feel of her body floating away from the car in the parking lot, so that she would get up when this darkness fell, tonight, so that she would make herself walk again. She had to feel those fingers, even if she just touched Elvia's hand, even if the hand was larger than her own. She had to see her daughter's eyes. Some woman had to have taken care of her, all these years. Someone had to have taken her place.

It hurt to think that, but it hurt more to imagine that the soul had flown into a small, winged spirit trying forever to find a foothold.

baby teeth.

like little opals.

Small white dresses, shrouded in plastic, hung from the ceiling. Through the doorway, Elvia could see the larger dresses swaying in the trees, like ghosts rocking babies.

At least she fed me-I was born, Elvia thought wearily. Wherever she was when she was pregnant, here in TJ eating tortillas or in Rio Seco eating cactus or whatever-she didn't fuck me up with drugs or starve me.

So last week I would a been happy. I thought the baby was tiny and it would melt. But it must be like a geode now-a hollow sparkly place inside a bigger rock. Like a secret. Blood drying into crystals. No. What a fuck-up way to think. What do they do, if they die? They don't get smaller and smaller till they fade away. They just stay the same, floating there?

Hector's aunt stood near her now, asking her something in Spanish. Elvia didn't understand. The aunt's hair was short and curled into black waves, stiff and sprayed, and in her housedress and glasses, with her wobbly arms, she looked like any American grandma.

Elvia heard her talk to Hector in faster Spanish, then a long trickle of laughter. What the hell am I doing in Mexico? she thought. What will I do if I find her? I don't even know her. She rubbed the moths on her shoulder, made them burn.

Suddenly she wondered what her father would think of the tattoo. Probably get mad, even though that's the first thing I remembered about him, back at Sandy's house. She watched the plastic-shrouded dresses sway. This is it. If I don't find her here, there's just the two places in Rio Seco, and then what?

Hector said, "Me and Michael are tryin to find the right tire." He put a bowl of beans on the tiny folding table near her. "Tia Dolores says, 'Are you okay?'" he said, squatting close by, peering into her face.

She didn't want to look weak. "So I eat beans, act like I'm Mexican, and then Jesus will let me find my mother?" Elvia lifted her chin toward the religious portrait on the wall.

His aunt sat in the other corner, picking up her sewing. She murmured a long sentence in Spanish, ending with something Elvia understood. "Pobrecita."

"I'm not a fuckin poor anything," Elvia hissed at Hector. "I heard girls at school teasing each other like that. And even if I find my mom, I'm not turning into a beanorita."

Hector yelled, "No, you're just gonna be a-a witch."

"You mean a bitch!" she yelled back.

"I don't use that word. A bitch is a female dog. You're not acting like a dog."

Hector's aunt stood up, the satin slithering from her lap. "Shut up. Two of you. Nobody talk that in my house. Respect. Hector, aqui es el dinero para llantas."

She handed him money, and Hector went outside without looking back. His aunt turned to Elvia. "Your body es tired but your mouth okay." She picked up her sewing. "So don't eat beans. Who cares? I make frijoles todos las dias." She hesitated. "Every day, all gone."

Elvia felt stupid and scared. She hadn't known the aunt spoke English. And now Hector was mad. She went to the doorway, peering through the dresses. Hector walked down the street toward the truck. Michael was a faint figure down the hill.

She realized suddenly that Michael was more worried about the truck than about her. He had fallen in love with the damn truck. She was just another friend. Fool around. Get high. Kick it. But the truck-he was guarding that like treasure.

She studied the dresses hanging outside in the tree-large or small, each dress was made with white satin and lacy ruffles, pearls and sequins. Even the babies would look like angel brides.

"The dresses in los arboles, that for your quinceanera," Tia Dolores said. "You had one?"

"Quinceanera?"

"For when you turn fifteen," she said, frowning.

"I'm fifteen ," Elvia said, staring at the red-brown beans. I guess I am, she thought. Who knows? Who cares? She remembered seeing a girl her age in a white dress, in the date worker houses. People were clapping and taking her picture.

"Beanorita," the woman said suddenly, like she had read Elvia's mind. "Who is that?"

Elvia was embarrassed. "Girls who just came from Mexico. To California. Where I lived."

Tia Dolores frowned. "Funny joke. You don't think I speak English? But I work en San Diego. Ten years. I watch three kids, clean the house, cook everything. I take two buses from here, then walk. Back then, the border was nothing. How you say-a pain. Now is Operacion Gatekeeper. People go around to the desert and back to San Diego to work. Estupido."

"People from Colonia Pedregal?" Elvia asked. "My mom lived there."

"I don't know Pedregal. Maybe in the new colonias by the dompe."

Elvia paced in the doorway, thinking of the dead woman in the desert, the eerie smells of the mountain ravine. She looked down the street. The truck's cab was a pale blue skull facing up the hill, all alone.

Colonia Aguilar-Eagle's Nest, Hector had said. Dust devils began to dance in the road, and from this hill she saw the wind pick up trash and tongues of dirt in each ravine and colonia.

In the west, the sun hung like an old coin in a pall of rising smoke. Hundreds of seagulls wheeled like white crosses in the air, and something floated high above like white jellyfish. Hector's aunt stood beside her now. "The wind come from the sea. Over there. By the dompe."

"The dump?" Elvia stared at the floating jellyfish, lazy and then vicious with the wind. Plastic bags. That's what they were.

"People live en el dompe. They live everywhere. Maybe you don't find her. So many colonias, so many people." Elvia smelled strong perfume, felt fingers patting the moths on her shoulders. "Sit. For the llanteria take a long time. Sit. I work, and I cook. Not beans."

Elvia felt bad for a minute. "I'm sorry I said that. People called me beanorita before." She sat down and ate a spoonful of the beans, the flecks of red chile stinging her lips and mouth like pinpricks. "These are good." Hector's aunt smiled then.

A taxi labored up the road, bringing a brown cloud to the doorway. "Dolores?" someone called. Two women and a girl of about fourteen came bustling inside. They want a dress for that birthday, Elvia thought. But they put a bridal veil on the girl's head, laughing and nodding.

The girl glanced over. "Novia?" someone said. Hector's aunt shook her head, starting a long speech-Elvia heard "Pedregal" and "madre." She hated the sudden pity in their eyes.

She went outside. The taxi had turned around in the dirt lane. What if the guys come back after dark, with no tire? I don't want to hang around for days-I want to find her now. Or not. She stepped out to the street, trying to remember what Hector had repeated. "I want to go-me voy al Colonia Pedregal."

The driver, a pale man with a faint mustache like iron filings clinging to his lip, shrugged. "No se Pedregal."

Elvia took out ten dollars and said, "Me voy al-todos-las colonias. Please."

He nodded and she got in. She could do this herself. Now or never.

The taxi driver picked up people everywhere, standing by the dirt roads criss-crossing the main ravine. Everyone spoke in rapid Spanish. Two men were crammed into the front seat with the driver, and packed against Elvia in the back were four women, one holding a boy on her lap. Only the boy stared openly at Elvia. His eyes were slanted and dark as shards of slate. His mother wore a loose dress and a long, messy braid, and her plump body sat on stubby legs. Indians? Elvia thought, watching the boy.

The car headed back toward the main part of Tijuana. The taxi driver called out, "Clinica," where the boy and two women got out. Then the cab picked up a whole group of people and headed back into the valley. Elvia said loudly, "Colonia Pedregal?" to the driver, who answered back impatiently. They wound through neighborhood after neighborhood, a hundred dirt roads lined with a thousand plywood and tin shacks, and Elvia looked for stones. She saw box spring fences everywhere, their wires turning to pink coils in the sun, and wooden pallets made into houses and corrals for goats. Tires were piled like stacks of Oreos; Michael and Hector had probably found one for the truck by now.

The driver said to departing passengers a sentence containing the word Pedregal. People shook their heads, until one man shrugged and let loose a torrent of words ending with "dompe."

The cab was finally empty. Seagulls and plastic bags whirled in the near distance, and she smelled smoke. She was afraid now. They were heading farther away from Tijuana, even from Hector's aunt. He had to know she was American, even though her grimy jeans and big tee shirt made her fit in here. He glanced in the rear-view mirror as the cab bumped up another hill, another washboard path.

She stared at a group of white crosses with fresh flowers in a deep ravine along the road, and he said, "Agua," pointing to the hills. "Muerto."

Water, she thought. Death. Floods.

"Mucho?" he said. "Much cross." He pointed to shacks, to the sky. "Fuera. Y frio." He pretended to shiver. Fire. And cold. People had burned in tiny houses. And frozen to death. "Ninos," he said finally. He put his hand out, low.

Children.

Now she hugged herself. Was he giving her a clue? Was he taking her someplace to dump her? For ten dollars? How much was that here, where she didn't even know what a peso looked like?

They shuddered slowly up the hill, the driver shaking his head ominously, and she realized they were in a pall of thick, dark smoke. One or two shacks, low to the ground like tunnels covered with wooden pallets and cardboard, hugged the ravine not far from the crosses. At the top of the hill, he stopped the car, and she looked out onto the dump.

Dompe. Mountains of trash lay like distant whales breathing smoke from invisible blowholes, and then she saw people walking on the mounds, poking with long sticks, dragging sacks. At the edge of the dump were cardboard shelters and houses, people peering out at the taxi. Children with faces black-smudged as if they'd slept in embers, women with sandaled feet, also black. Three men came up to the taxi, and the driver spoke for a time.

Elvia sat up, heart rising painfully, sweat trickling down her back. She saw a few stones, piled in a wall, littering the ravine. One man peered inside at her and said something that made the men laugh roughly.

The driver had never moved from his seat. Now he leaned forward and pointed to the crosses in the ravine. "Pedregal. L'ano pasado." He spoke slowly, staring at her.

Elvia clutched the seat. Ano was "year," she thought. Pasado? He gestured behind him. Passed? He said, "Mucha lluvia," sprinkling rain with his fingers. Then he wiped away all the houses with the back of his hand.

Elvia was stunned. Gone? The whole neighborhood? Was her mother a cross in the ravine? The men said something else, and the driver nodded, holding up one finger in a gesture of waiting for Elvia. He maneuvered the cab around the shacks and along a canyon encircling the dump. The seagulls cried like screaming women. Elvia laid her head back against the seat.

"Pedregal," he said. Banks of tires flanked another arroyo, and a nest of houses perched along the ridge. Cardboard shacks, a few cement-block houses with protruding iron bars like antennae, and across the arroyo, a blue-painted tin house with blurry red geraniums in coffee cans.

No Miscelanea Yoli. No store or dress shop or anything except houses and people trudging down the arroyo, coming from the dump with bulging sacks and smoke-etched faces.

The driver called to a woman who'd come out of her shack holding a baby, suspicion tight at her mouth. Elvia leaned out her window, stuttering, "My madre. Serafina Mendez."

The woman frowned at Elvia. Her baby was wrapped completely in a black shawl, like a dark cocoon set against her shoulder. The woman shook her head.

"No. Serafina? No."

The other shacks were dark. When the taxi turned around, Elvia looked at the woman hovering in her yard, watching. Someone's mother.

The sun sank into the dump, the far-away smoke settling now, turning it into a small, unimportant apricot. She could see it from Aguilar, when the taxi dropped her off.

She was done. She couldn't imagine looking elsewhere in Tijuana, among the hundreds of arroyos and pedestrians and miscelaneas. Hesitating in the yard, she thought, Maybe she had to come back, and she didn't want me to grow up like this. Did she want me to be American?

Tia Dolores gave her a murderous look when she stepped inside the house. It looked like a jade palace compared to the dump and Colonia Pedregal.

"Wash your clothes. If you sleep here." She still sewed, brown fingers like plump Tootsie Rolls against the white satin. Elvia saw that her hands were swollen. "The boys get a llanta and I tell them you go. They go look for you. I don't know where. Now wash. Everybody wash at my house. No dirt." She sucked at her teeth. "Maybe your novio don't come back."

Elvia folded her arms. "Novio? My boyfriend? He wouldn't leave."

She humphed. "Novios go away all the time. Especially in Tijuana."

Elvia laughed bitterly. The woman thought that would scare her? "Happens all the time in California, too. Big deal. I'm a fuckin expert in 'go away.'"

Tia Dolores said, "No dirt. No dirt words." Then she said gently, "Hector tell me she go away. Because she was American then. Not Mexican. Mexican mama, she don't leave a baby. Your mama es in California. An American now. You find her easier on the moon. Use a-"

"A telescope," Elvia said, sighing.

"Si. She es alone up there, stick out like a pin." She held up a pincushion crowded with silver heads. "But here a million are come and go. So many lost. My nieto-Hector father, I find him. His mother is kill. A car. I find him on the street when he is four, five. He live with me all that time, then he go across to California. To work. He get married to a crazy woman. Hector mama. And they have so many children. I never have any. Only him." She pointed to Elvia's clothes, to the backpacks and bags piled by the door. "Limpia."

"Limpia?"

"Wash."

Sandoo, Elvia thought. She said, "My mother was Indian. Indio. She said sandoo for wash. Yoo for moon."

"You hear her say these?"

"I guess. My foster mother told me I said all these different words."

"Foster?"

"Like, my mom for a while. Five years."

"Why you didn't stay with that mother?"

"My dad came to get me." Elvia added quickly, "She wasn't my real mom."