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a Chinese grandfather. The rest of her features were a blend of African and European, mixed for centuries on an island without barriers between races. Her narrow lips were set, her expression sad, as if
she’d been waiting for something too long and now despaired of ever seeing it.
    The water was warm now, heating quickly above the blue and yellow flames dancing on the charcoal, and she dipped a little out and set the rest back till it should boil. She washed her face carefully, then under her arms, her neck. Crossing the room to a row of nails, she took down a work shirt and cotton trousers. Then, easing a door open, she went outside, under the stars.
    When she came back, the water was hissing and bubbling. She measured out a little ground coffee into a sieve, poured the water carefully into it, and set it aside to steep. She flicked a metal box open and set the bread on the table, which was, aside from the pallet and an old rawhide-and-hardwood chair, the only furniture. Then she took out a mirror. In the quiet, broken only by the steady drip of the coffee and the chirp of an awakened cricket, she brushed her hair back and tied it in place with a strip of red ribbon.
    She sat at the table and ate the bread and drank the strong black coffee, stirred thick with two spoonfuls of coarse raw sugar. She didn’t speak or look about, just stared in front of her as she ate.
    When she was done, she washed the mug in the remains of the water and hung it on a nail. She put the other things back, the sugar, the remaining coffee, and scooped the crumbs off the table and tossed them into the fire. Sitting on the pallet again, she pulled on a heavy pair of black military boots with worn-down heels and tears in the sides sewn up with twine.
    Getting up again, she took down from the thatch a two-foot-long, slightly curved blade of spring steel. Its cutting edge was wavy, concave and then convex, nicked and scarred with long use. From a handmade wooden haft dangled a loop of green cord.
    She sat again at the table, poured water out on a small flat stone, and set to work sharpening the machete. Each stroke began with a grinding rasp and ended with a faint musical singing. From time to time, she tried the edge with her thumb. Finally, satisfied, she fitted a slit-open length of rubber hose over it, thrust it into her belt, and opened the door.
    The hot dark wind came out of the night and fanned her sweating face. It brought with it the smells of smoke and dust and drying urine, but above all of the soil—a crisp checkerboard of cracks at the end of the dry season, la seca. The sky was gray to the east, over the next house, the door of which opened, and two shadows stepped out, as she just had.
    â€œBuenos dias, Augustín, Xiomara.”
    â€œGraciela. You’re working today? Feeling better, then?”
    â€œBetter, yes, thank you.”
    A woman’s voice, concerned: “Are you sure? If you don’t, we’ll let the comrade brigadier know—”

    â€œI’m well enough to work,” she said again, sharply now, and they said nothing more.
    As they spoke, more shadows emerged from other huts. They did not linger in the open area in front of the batey, the cluster of workers’ dwellings, but turned up onto an unpaved dusty road that led away between the still-dark fields. She moved with them, unspeaking. Bare feet and shoes and boots scuffed along as a faint light began to diffuse downward from the eastern stars, gradually bringing out the silvery surface of the road. Gradually bringing into view the nothingness that surrounded them, great expanses of flat earth stretching off till they met the sky. A month before, she remembered, the cane had hemmed in the road like two black walls. Now the fields were stripped bare, shorn, littered with the detritus of harvest; the cane leaves were like discarded corn husks, crackling-dry on the parched ground, rustling like a million insects as the predawn wind