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dresses or skirts, only pants, pants that I will have to lower below my knees in order to pee, and even then, walking away with dry feet and pants is pretty unlikely. All the women I’ve seen are wearing skirts. They just have to hike them up a bit and they can pee unobserved. They probably don’t wear underpants.
    “Each morning,” says Margarita in broken Spanish as we walk back to the house, “I will bring you a pail of water to wash with.” Then she drops me off at my cement block and goes back to her house. I decide to go for a walk.
    The village is almost totally vertical, steep ups and equally steep downs. There is only one car-size road that goes from the main road to the square. The rest of the village is for walking. As I walk down each gravel- and rock-filled hill, I place my feet on the ground carefully, slowly, making sure I have secure footing before I lift my other foot. I am halfway down one of the hills when a man walks by. No, he runs by. And so does everyone else. The villagers point themselves downhill and sort of fall, letting gravity take them down. Their legs paddle beneath their moving torsos and keep them standing upright. If the gravel or rocks slip under their feet, it doesn’t matter, because they don’t wait to be secure, they’re already on to the next bit of rock and gravel. For the whole time I live here I try to walk the hills the way they do. I succeed on the lesser hills and on the steep ones that are mostly grassy. But on the rocky ones, I continue to go down inch by inch, securing each foot as it touches the ground.
    The first children I see are playing marbles. Two are squatting, getting ready to shoot. Four others are standing and watching. I am more than ten yards away when I’m spotted. Someone squeals and shouts something. I don’t understand what he says, but suddenly the game stops and they run in all directions. Only one boy stays long enough to gather up the marbles. Then he disappears like the others. As I walk on, little heads peek at me from behind bushes.
    The women are not any friendlier. Some rush into the nearest house until I pass. Some hide, like the children, behind a tree or bush. No one returns my smile or my
“Buenos días.”
Only the men in the plaza talk to me, and most of them are drunk most of the time. It is the dry season, they tell me, as they touch my arm, my shoulder, my neck. Their work is farming and they cannot farm, so they drink.
    I return to my cell and study Spanish. Margarita comes with lunch: two hard-boiled eggs, two pieces of white bread, and coffee. She places the tray on a small table in front of my house and leaves. During the month that I live there, she never sits with me; nor am I ever invited into her house to eat with her family. Meals for me are always solitary. I feel like an object to be served, never a friend.
    For four days I continue to disperse crowds of children. When I stand at a distance and try to watch them playing soccer, they stop the game. Except for Margarita and a raving old woman, not a single woman talks to me. I continue to smile at them all, but my smile is getting weaker and phonier. I have read that there are many cultures that consider blue eyes witchy. Not only are my eyes blue, but my hair is blond (they all have dark hair) and my skin is pale (theirs is a rich light brown). One day I put on sunglasses to hide my blue eyes, but no one else is wearing them and I feel as though I am putting even more of a wall between us.
    The men, on the other hand, gather round me whenever I come near them, usually trapping me in the middle. They ask questions, they tell me stories, and they touch me. After the second day, I avoid the plaza hangout of the drunk male population.
    Usually I spend my days wandering around with a notebook, pretending I have something to do. Every once in a while I take notes or draw a diagram. Sometimes I sit and read. With no one to talk to and nothing to do, I am bored and lonely.
    My