Scent of Butterflies by Dora Levy Mossanen

we went to check on the iguana.
    The animal was dead.
    â€œIt couldn’t adapt to the new environment,” Aziz announced.
    â€œIt’s a bad omen!” I sobbed. “It died on my birthday.”
    I realize now that the insufferable air of duplicity in our house had suffocated the poor creature’s love heart.
    Aziz paid an expert embalmer to preserve the dead iguana. Its embalmed body, storing memories I could not abandon, has traveled from Iran to Los Angeles and now stands on the dressing table opposite my bed, stiff legs firmly planted in a bar of gold-flecked onyx, arms raised in eternal prayer. The vibrant colors of the animal’s skin remain intact. The colors of our Persian carpet. The colors of butterflies. Purple and blue and blood-red. They hurt my eyes in the morning when I wake up and at night before I fall asleep.
    I grab the embalmed iguana and hurl it across the bedroom. It crashes against the mirror, then falls with a muffled thump back on the dressing table. The cracked reflection of my face in the broken mirror is pale and haggard, green eyes lifeless, the pupils dilated, full lips twisted. A fragmented collage.

chapter 11
    Tens of thousands of petrified Monarchs crunch under my shoes as I trudge deeper into the eucalyptus grove. The air is laced with the saccharine smell of rotting pumpkins. I can hardly breathe. What could have wreaked such havoc on my Monarchs? What disaster could have struck my eucalyptus grove last night in the dark to eliminate such a large population of Monarchs in the span of a few short hours?
    Two days ago at half past three in the afternoon, hardly a day after the landscapers completed work on the eucalyptus grove, an orange cloud had darkened the skies overhead. Gardening shears in hand, I watched droves of purposeful Monarchs sail in my direction and make their way straight ahead to settle among the eucalyptus. In no time, the grove was transformed into a flurry of activity with tiny orange flames weighing the younger branches and sending leaves aflutter, thousands of fanning wings raising the scent of camphor.
    What caused these Monarchs to lose their sense of direction and deviate from their normal course? What magical secret could have jumbled their inner compasses, steering them off course toward Bel Air, a place Monarchs do not normally migrate to? At that moment, strolling among them while they set up home, occupying every leaf, branch, and shallow nook carved into tree trunks, I turned my gaze upward and thanked Mamabozorg. Thanked her profusely for the blessing of her gift. Hordes of Monarchs to catch and dissect and experiment on, to study one after the other to discover what makes this breed so fertile, so flirtatious, so poisonous.
    Now, surrounded by dead butterflies in my grove, I realize that they’re not such a resilient species after all. For example, although known for their long migrations—southward in August and northward in spring—the life span of butterflies born in early summer is less than two months, and none live long enough to survive the entire round trip. Still, during these migrations, females drop millions of eggs, ensuring the birth of the next generation. I am not surprised that barren females born in late summer live longer than the fertile ones, three or four times as long. It makes sense that females who don’t experience the rigors of producing eggs would live longer than those that do. Do women who take the pill extend their lives, too?
    Mansour catches up with me in the eucalyptus grove. He warns me of hidden dangers. He prays under his breath, murmurs that he’s never seen anything as macabre.
    He is right. The grove is a mass graveyard. A lethal plague has infected every Monarch. They are everywhere! Dead at their roosts in the trees, carpeting leaves and branches underfoot, spread around roots and stuck to tree trunks, hanging on flaking bark. A few Monarchs that managed to survive huddle