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in spite of the fact that she was a difficult child. She often thought of the other baby, the one her child’s spiritual godmother, her comadre Flores, had taken with her but by all rights belonged to Digna. Her husband consoled her, saying that the other baby seemed healthier and stronger and certainly would grow up better with the Flores family.
    â€œThe Floreses own some good land. I’ve even heard that they’re going to buy a tractor. They’re higher up in the world. They belong to the Farmers Union,” Hipólito had reasoned years ago, before adversity crushed the house of Flores.
    After the births, the two women had attempted to claim their own babies, swearing that they had seen the infants born and from the color of the hair realized there had been an error; but the hospital director would hear nothing on the subject, and threatened to send them to jail for slandering his institution. The fathers suggested that the families simply trade babies and everyone would be happy, but the women did not want to do something illegal. They decided temporarily to keep the one each had in her arms, until the muddle could be cleared up by the authorities, but after a strike in the Office of Public Health and a fire in the Civil Registry, where the personnel was replaced and all the archives were destroyed, they lost any hope of obtaining justice. They decided to bring up one another’s babies as if they were their own. Although they lived only a short distance apart, they had few occasions to meet, for they lived isolated lives. From the beginning they agreed to call each other comadre and to baptize the baby girls with the same name, so that if one day they reclaimed their legal surnames they would not have to get used to a new given name. They also told the girls the truth as soon as they were old enough to understand, because sooner or later they would find out anyway. Everyone in the region knew the story of the switched Evangelinas, and there would always be someone eager to repeat the gossip.
    Evangelina Flores was a typical dark-haired, solidly built country girl, with bright eyes, broad hips, opulent breasts, and heavy, well-turned legs. She was strong and happy by temperament. To the Ranquileos fell a weepy, moonstruck, frail, and difficult child. She received special treatment from Hipólito, out of respect and admiration for the rosy skin and light hair so rare in his family. When he was in the house, he kept an eagle eye on the boys; he wanted no liberties taken with that girl who was not of their own blood. Once or twice, he surprised Pradelio by tickling her, fondling her under cover of play, nuzzling and kissing her, and to rid him once and for all of any desire to paw her, Hipólito gave him a couple of licks that knocked him halfway to the next life, because before God and man, Evangelina was the same as his own sister. Hipólito was home only a few months, however, and the rest of the year his orders could not be enforced.
    From the day he had run off with a circus at the age of thirteen, Hipólito Ranquileo had followed that life and had never been interested in any other. His wife and his children bade him goodbye as the good weather began and the patched tents flowered. He went from town to town, traversing the land, showing off his artistry in the bone-crushing circuits of the carnivals of the poor. He had performed many different jobs beneath the big top. First, he was a trapeze artist and juggler, but over the years lost his equilibrium and dexterity. Then, during a brief incursion, he cracked the whip over a few miserable wild animals that stirred his pity and ruined his nerves. Finally he resigned himself to playing the clown. His life, just like that of any farmer, was ruled by the state of the rains and the light of the sun. Fortune did not smile on second-rate circuses in the cold, damp months, and he hibernated by his hearth, but with the awakening of spring he waved