Her steps were almost feeble. She could barely make the last
steep slope before reaching the house. When she finally stood
in front of us, a few yards away, she was panting so heavily
that I attempted to help her sit down. She made a gesture that
seemed to say that she was all right.
I heard Lidia and Rosa giggling. I did not look at them
because my total attention had been taken by assault. The
woman in front of me was absolutely the most disgusting, foul
creature I had ever seen. She untied the bundle of firewood
and dropped it on the floor with a loud clatter. I jumped in-
voluntarily, due in part to the loud noise and in part to the fact
that the woman nearly fell on my lap, pulled by the weight of
the wood.
She looked at me for an instant and then lowered her eyes,
seemingly embarrassed by her clumsiness. She straightened her
back and sighed with apparent relief. Obviously, the load had
been too great for her old body.
As she stretched her arms, her hair fell partially loose. She
was wearing a soiled headband tied over her forehead. Her
hair was long and graying and seemed dirty and matted. I
could see the white hairs against the dark brown of the head-
band. She smiled at me and sort of nodded her head. All her
teeth seemed to be missing; I could see the black hole of her
toothless mouth. She covered her face with her hand and
laughed. She took off her sandals and walked into the house
without giving me time to say anything. Rosa followed her.
I was dumbfounded. Dona Soledad had implied that Josefina
was the same age as Lidia and Rosa. I turned to Lidia. She was
peering at me.
I had no idea she was that old, I said.
Yes, she’s pretty old, she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Does she have a child? I asked.
Yes, and she takes him everywhere. She never leaves him
with us. She’s afraid we are going to eat him.
Is it a boy?
A boy.
How old is he?
She’s had him for some time. But I don’t know his age. We
thought that she shouldn’t have a child at her age. But she
didn’t pay any attention to us.
Whose child is he?
Josefina’s, of course.
I mean, who’s the father?
The Nagual, who else?
I thought that that development was quite extravagant and
very unnerving.
I suppose anything is possible in the Nagual’s world, I
said.
I meant it more as a thought to myself than a statement made
to Lidia.
You bet, she said, and laughed.
The oppressiveness of those eroded hills became unbearable.
There was something truly abhorrent about that area, and
Josefina had been the final blow. On top of having an ugly,
old, smelly body and no teeth, she also seemed to have some
sort of facial paralysis. The muscles on the left side of her face
appeared to be injured, a condition which created a most un-
pleasant distortion of her left eye and the left side of her
mouth. My oppressive mood plummeted to one of sheer an-
guish. For an instant I toyed with the idea, so familiar by then,
of running to my car and driving away.
I complained to Lidia that I did not feel well. She laughed
and said that Josefina had no doubt scared me.
She has that effect on people, she said. Everybody hates
her guts. She’s uglier than a cockroach.
I remember seeing her once, I said, but she was young.
Things change, Lidia said philosophically, one way or
another. Look at Soledad. What a change, eh? And you your-
self have changed. You look more massive than I remember
you. You are looking more and more like the Nagual.
I wanted to say that the change in Josefina was abhorrent
but I was afraid that she might overhear me.
I looked at the eroded hills across the valley. I felt like flee-
ing from them.
The Nagual gave us this house, she said, but it is not a
house for rest. We had another house before that was truly
beautiful. This is a place to steam up. Those mountains over
there will drive you nuts.
Her boldness in reading my feelings gave me a respite. I did
not know what to say.
We are all naturally lazy, she went on. We don’t like to
strain ourselves. The Nagual knew that, so he must have fig-
ured that this place would drive us up the walls.
She stood up abruptly and said that she wanted something
to eat. We went to the kitchen, a semienclosed area with only
two walls. At the open end, to the right of the door, there was
an earthen stove; at the other end, where the two walls met,
there was a large dining area with a long table and three
benches. The floor was paved with smooth river rocks. The
flat roof was about ten feet high and was resting on the two
walls and on thick supporting beams on the open sides.
Lidia poured me a bowl of beans and meat from a pot which
cooked on a very low fire. She heated up some tortillas over
the fire. Rosa came in and sat down next to me and asked Lidia
to serve her some food.
I became immersed in watching Lidia use a ladle to scoop
the beans and meat. She seemed to have an eye for the exact
amount. She must have been aware that I was admiring her
maneuvers. She took two or three beans from Rosa’s bowl and
returned them to the pot.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Josefina coming into the
kitchen. I did not look at her, though. She sat facing me across
the table. I had a squeamish feeling in my stomach. I felt that
I could not eat with that woman looking at me. To ease my
tension I joked with Lidia that there were still two extra beans
in Rosa’s bowl that she had overlooked. She scooped up two
beans with the ladle with a precision that made me gasp. I
laughed nervously, knowing that once Lidia sat down I would
have to move my eyes from the stove and acknowledge the
presence of Josefina.
I finally and reluctantly had to look across the table at Jose-
fina. There was a dead silence. I stared at her incredulously.
My mouth fell open. I heard the loud laughter of Lidia and
Rosa. It took an endless moment for me to put my thoughts
and feelings in some sort of order. Whoever was facing me
was not the Josefina I had seen just awhile ago, but a very
pretty girl. She did not have Indian features as Lidia and Rosa
did. She seemed to be more Latin than Indian. She had a light
olive complexion, a very small mouth and a finely chiseled
nose, small white teeth and short, black, curly hair. She had a
dimple on the left side of her face, which gave a definite cocki-
ness to her smile.
She was the girl I had met briefly years ago. She held my
scrutiny. Her eyes were friendly. I became possessed by de-
grees with some uncontrollable nervousness. I ended up des-
perately clowning about my genuine bewilderment.
They laughed like children. After their laughter had sub-
sided I wanted to know what was the point of Josefina’s his-
trionic display.
She’s practicing the art of stalking, Lidia said. The
Nagual taught us to baffle people so they wouldn’t notice us.
Josefina is very pretty and if she walks alone at night, no one
will bother her if she is ugly and smelly, but if she goes out as
she really is, well, you yourself can tell what would happen.
Josefina nodded affirmatively and then contorted her face
into the ugliest grimace possible.
She can hold that face all day, Lidia said.
I contended that if I lived around that area I would certainly
notice Josefina in her disguise more readily than if she did not
have one.
That disguise was just for you, Lidia said, and all three of
them laughed. And look how it baffled you. You noticed her
child even more than you noticed her.
Lidia went into their room and brought out a package of
rags that looked like a bundled-up child and threw it on the
table in front of me. I laughed uproariously with them.
Do all of you have particular disguises? I asked.
No. Only Josefina. No one around here knows her as she
really is, Lidia replied.
Josefina nodded and smiled but she remained silent. I liked
her tremendously. There was something so very innocent and
sweet about her.
Say something, Josefina, I said, grabbing her by her fore-
arms.
She looked at me bewildered, and recoiled. I thought that I