“The Lord is my shepherd,” came FrannyA’s thin voice, her eyes unseeing. “I shall not want, he makes me lie down in green pastures—”

“A, be quiet. Shush.”

“He leads me beside quiet waters, even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil . . .”

Her voice drowned under Beya’s booming song. Every corner of the hut had filled with a sickly sweet haze, as if the cigar was smoking itself in its terra-cotta dish; the air shimmered with heat and closeness, sickness and sound, the smell of hot blood like iron in my mouth. Beya dropped her face closer to FrannyA’s open abdomen, calling and calling; all the while FrannyB’s hands trembled, waiting. Time stopped, taffied out, stalled again.

Two tiny white dots poked through a thick intestine that descended her left side. In seconds the dots turned into knobby, worm-like protrusions with their own tiny sucking mouths, their tube-like bodies stretching, then wriggling out. They waved their blind heads in the smoky air, reaching toward the sound of Beya’s voice. FrannyB cut into a rope of intestine just next to them; a fistful of parasites burst to the surface, waving and twisting. My own gut heaved—I couldn’t look away—but FrannyB had long since stopped caring about what I did. Beya dropped her head still lower, her face just above FrannyA’s open abdomen, her voice pulsing in punishing beats. Stars burst inside my head. The big missionary pulled out the horrid things and put them on a cloth; dozens of them. She cut the length of blackened intestine where the creatures had emerged, a foot or more of it, and lay that out on the cloth as well. Beya kept calling, hoarse now, sweat rolling down her face and neck, drenching her cotton shirt, her necklace of jaguar teeth clacking, eyes swimming to the back of her head; she was only sound, only calling, until she suddenly stopped, threw her head back and gasped for air. With infinite gentleness, FrannyB drew the two ends of intestine together and began to sew, joining them with tiny stitches as FrannyA hummed a tuneless tune.

It was dawn when I finally descended the hill to our hut. Soon after FrannyB had sewn her up, FrannyA had gotten hold of my hand and wouldn’t let go, so I stayed with her while she slept. Bleary-eyed, I peered into my oven, despairing over how to get it lit. The night’s drenching rain had seeped into the main compartment, soaking the coals. I pushed the sodden burnt wood out the back, sweeping the damp inner walls as dry as I could with a straw broom.

Out of the corner of my eye, Doña Antonia appeared on the hill. I watched her side-to-side, bowlegged gait as she made her way—I realized with a sigh—in my direction. She carried something with both hands. Smoke escaped from its center. All I could think was, What fresh hell is this? I wanted to run away, but she had already seen me, and there was, of course, nowhere to run.