“We fix the gate all the time, but”—Anna shrugged—“you know, we can’t always be sure there isn’t a tear.”

Machete in hand, Doña Antonia brushed by us and splashed into the water. She looped my basket’s leather strap around one shoulder and dragged it back to the shore, setting it beside me with a huff. Balancing her own basket of wet clothes on her back, she charged past us, motoring up the hill with shocking energy.

The incident with the eel firmly in the past, the women resigned themselves to lugging the baskets filled with heavy, wet clothes up the hill to the longhouse. With a sinking feeling, I watched them repeat the carry-the-basket routine, this time with a full cargo of sodden clothes. I tried it their way, then mine. No luck. I tried dragging it, but gave up and sat down, Charlotte at my heels the whole time—walking where I walked, sitting where I sat, totally psycho-fixed on me.

Anna watched me and laughed. “Wait here. I’ll bring Perla. I use her when I’m too tired or too pregnant.”

In minutes, Anna appeared at the top of the hill leading the village donkey, Perla, who honked and brayed as she yanked at her liana leash. Sullenly she picked her way down the slope, her huge belly swaying back and forth under the knotty cord of her spine, big square teeth gnashing, a comical tuft of yellow hair curling over one fly-buzzed eye. Anna tossed my basket’s wide leather strap over the donkey’s back, trussed it up cleverly on the other side, then hoisted the heavy load off the ground, smacking the donkey’s flank as she directed it back up the hill.

The women were stoking a fire, heating irons that had been wedged between hot rocks. Woven mats wrapped around their hands, they picked up the heavy rusted irons and pressed down on the clothes, which were spread out flat on the rocks. Steam rose up carrying the smell of fish, stones, mold, and rotted cloth.

Doña Antonia gestured at an iron heating in the fire, my pile of sopping clothes next to it. At a totally separate fire several yards away, Beya ironed her own clothes.

“Why not just let them dry in the sun?”

Doña Antonia looked at me as if my stupidity would never end. “You think there are only big things that can eat you in the water? These clothes are clean but not safe. There are still bugs, you know. Very, very small ones. We need to kill them, otherwise they’ll make your skin white, even more white than you, hah!” She disappeared in a cloud of steam as she pressed down hard on the front panel of a dress. “Also, there’s a fungus that can grow if we don’t iron. Very, very bad.”

I wrapped my hand in the woven mat she gave me, took my own heavy iron and pressed it into the wet clothes, observing her technique as I went. It was tedious, hot, boring work, and she eyed my every move, making sure I’d steamed over every square inch of fabric. Nearby, Beya had finished her ironing and was already heading up the hill, back to the manioc fields. Doña Antonia caught me staring after her.