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And there was Segundo, slouched on his mount, and watching it all with a small smile on his lips. “Adios!” she called to the big vaquero. His dark hat turned toward her, and one finger rose and touched the brim.

Teresita had told Huila that Tía called her mother a whore. “That is not correct,” Huila told her. And Tía also called Teresita a whore. “That is a sin,” Huila said.

Teresita pushed through the crooked door of the shack. Tía was sitting in the one chair at her small table. Teresita’s bedding was wadded up against the wall. Tía’s children were still outside.

“I wish I had a cigarette,” Tía said. “Did you see any cigarette butts lying around out there?”

Teresita shook her head.

“No, Tía. But I brought you something else.”

She pulled the cookie out of her pocket, brushed off some lint, and handed it to her auntie.

“Oh?”

Tía actually smiled for a moment. She grabbed the cookie and bit off its head and closed her eyes. She knew she should save the rest for her children. Any mother would save it. She took another bite. The children were small—they’d need less of the cookie than she did. Didn’t she deserve it? A little bit of cookie after all this shit she had to live with? One last nibble, and—ah cabrón!—the cookie was gone.

“Do you have another?”

“No, Tía.”

Tía drummed her fingers.

“Where did you get it?” she asked. She was thinking that perhaps La Tunita might have a cigarette. She knew women who traded kisses to the vaqueros for smokes, but she was not going to do something like that. Not kisses.

“Huila gave it to me,” she said.

“Where did you see Huila?”

“I went and found her.”

Tía looked at her.

“What do you mean you went and found her?”

“You told me to go ask Huila who I was, so I did.”

“What do you mean you went and found her? Did you go to her at her work? Was she visiting someone?”

“No.”

Tía was scaring her a little. The crumbs of the cookie were still in the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were too bright. She bent to Teresita and grabbed her arms.

“What do you mean, then? What do you mean?”

“Tía. Tía, stop. I went there. To the house.”

Tía simply froze. Her eyes seemed to look far beyond Teresita. Then she looked back into her eyes.

“The house,” she whispered.

Tía let her go. “You Goddamned idiot,” she said. “Oh, you little fool.”

“I —”

“Shut up!” Tía tore at her own hair. “Shut up!” She turned in every direction, as if she could find a hidden door in one of her walls. “Goddamn you!”

Her boy came through the door. She wheeled on him and screamed: “Get out! Now, pendejo!” He glanced once at Teresita and ran back outside.

Tía took up her heavy wooden spoon.

“You stupid little shit,” she said.

“Tía?”

Tía snagged Teresita’s hair as she tried to escape, and she twirled her hand in it, forming a painful knot that pulled Teresita’s scalp taut.

“Ay!” she cried. “Ay, ay!”

And the spoon fell.

Hitting the ground awoke her.

Tía had carried her outside and tossed her over the top of the pigpen fence.

“If you are going to act like a pig, then live with the pigs. I’m through with you!”

The People did nothing. They stepped back into their huts and dropped their blankets over the doorways. Tía ushered her children inside. Teresita rolled over and got up on her knees. Pig shit burned in her welts.

Tía reappeared.

“And don’t you die on me!” she said. “Do you hear? That’s all I need, more trouble like that!”

The rough door slapped shut.

Teresita felt golden ants swarm her. A rush of tickling up her arms and legs, relentless feet strumming her tissues like guitar strings. Her eyes closed.

Then she was falling. Falling through the earth, through the spaces between the stones, into the deeper nothing of the sky. Falling, where the sky itself became small again and was contained inside her own eye. Falling through her eye into the place where dreams harden into stones and become the ground.

Corridors of flame.

Obsidian rooms.

Her days rose about her, from womb to playtime, from this moment to far ahead of herself: womanhood and mirrors. Rings of light fell through houses she did