“Electric eel! Everybody out! Go! Go! The fish gate is torn!”

My heart pounded at the cage of my body, the terror in their voices and Beya’s words planting me where I was. Only she and I remained in the water.

I looked down.

A dark purple eel, man-length, thick as a car tire, quivered as it circled my laundry basket, its warty flesh rubbery and cold looking. Part snake, part catfish, its wall-eyed stare seemed to see nothing as it banged its head over and over against the weave. I stood an arm’s length from it, the water lapping just above my kneecaps. I forced myself to be still, to remember what Omar had told me about these creatures; their vision was bad, but their touch could stun and kill a horse; they were attracted to a heartbeat, to movement of any kind. In a distant part of my awareness, the women called to one another, pointing at me as they ran up and down the shore. I pictured my legs as two stone pillars, the blood in my veins thick and unmoving, a cold sludge. I slowed my breathing, made my heart a dull, muffled clock. Still the thing circled the basket, as if it felt something were alive inside of it, and was trying to figure a way in. My bare feet sank deeper into the silt.

“Stay where you are, Lily!” Anna’s voice, like a balm over me. Moving slower now, quivering, every cell of its flesh listening for life, the eel still looped itself around the basket, its paddle-like tail nearly touching its pocked face. Two tiny fins like ears on either side of its flat head shuddered and waved in the murk as if listening closer, as if it knew something living was within striking distance. I forced myself to look up and toward the bank. Anna stood at the water’s edge, her beautiful face creased with fright.

“Lily, don’t move, okay? Just look at me. Come on, look at me, Lily.”

Tears leaked out of the sides of my eyes. Her face smeared until I blinked them away.

Several of the women reached into the pockets of their dresses and pulled out stones, which they hurled into the water, crying, “Come on! Come on, eel, come over here!”

Anna held out her arms as if she could lift me up and out of the nightmare soup I stood in. “You’re already on the shore with us, Lily, okay? You’re already here . . . just look at me, please, now don’t stop . . .”

Doña Antonia came thundering down the shore carrying a foot-long live sunfish. A liana cord was tied around its wide middle, the other end wrapped securely around her wrist. Panting, she whipped it out underhand. The fish flew high up, twisting against the hot blue sky before splashing down into the water several yards to one side of me. It jumped into the air a few times, eyes popping, as if it knew what was in store, before Doña Antonia dragged it back, looping the cord in efficient circles around her elbow and the heel of her hand.