Doña Antonia, halfway down the hill, turned and squinted up at me. I got to my feet, mugging my inability to lift the basket with a lame smile and shrug. With a look of disgust, she turned back toward the river, machete swinging from one hand, her wide-hipped, pigeon-toed walk flinging out her loose skirt from side to side. A couple of bright-eyed little girls sat down next to me with a bunch of green bananas, chattering too fast for me to understand a word. I got that they were asking me questions, but when I couldn’t answer, they grew sullen and silent. They opened the tough peels of the bananas with their teeth, making their way steadily through the fruit.

I turned again and faced the basket—my new enemy—bent down, wrapped my arms around it and did a dead lift, pitching backward so hard I almost lost my footing, but turned toward the river, determined. Staring into the thatch, I blindly made my way down to the shore. Charlotte followed me so closely I kicked her now and then; she squealed with indignation but never left my side.

Already most of the women had waded into the river up to their thighs. They rubbed pieces of clothing, mostly cushma—the sack-like dresses several women and many men wore—over slabs of rock, dousing them in the water to rinse them. A few sat near the shore, one arm around their tiny babies as they worked the clothes with the other. Everyone spoke nonstop and too fast for me to grasp what they said, but at least they seemed to be looking at me with something like curiosity—as in: How’s the gringa going to handle this? Will she be able to hack it?

Several yards away, Beya stood hip-deep in the water with her own armful of washing, skirt hiked up high and tucked under her belt, her painfully thin brown thighs parting the thick warm water in slow, thoughtful steps. She seemed in her own world, gazing down into the murky depths as if we didn’t exist.

I stole glances at the brilliant red, turquoise, and yellow macaw feathers that sprung back from her earlobes; the tattooed lines, swirls, and dots on her face; her narrow, sun-bronzed chest, breasts flattened to nothing by the years under the ragged man’s cotton shirt she wore. A beat-up derby hat perched high on her forehead, her long braid glowed silver down her back in the sunlight. She stood near the fish gate, a semicircular stretch of fine mesh wire sheeting that reached from the silty bottom of the river—weighted by stones—to about a foot above, circumscribing a twenty-five-foot stretch of beach where we did all our washing of clothes, bathing, and gathering water for cooking and to boil for drinking.

I stood ankle-deep in the amber-colored water, my arms piled high with clothes, wishing I could wash my own, but they were all I had. Charlotte sat at the shore, her front hooves just touching the water. Warily, I watched the fish gate.