“If you don’t pick her up and get rid of her,” she said to me, “her relatives will come looking for her.”

The old woman gracefully bent down and picked up the corpse in her hand and wrapped it in a napkin. There was a certain solemnity about her, as if she were performing a funeral rite. She then opened the back door to the patio we shared with neighboring houses and placed it in a potted plant.

We went up to our rooms in silence. Once on the terrace, Clemencia began her lamentations.

“What got into you?” she said, as if to herself. “They will probably invade us now.”

I lay in bed for hours, turning it over in my mind. Even to an eleven-year-old, what Clemencia had said sounded a little absurd. In my insomnia I wondered what would happen if Clemencia were right and, if so, what were family ties between cockroaches like? What obligations and rights did they have within their clan? And this family, was it just one, interminable family that inhabited the whole earth, or were there distinctions between the different branches? When at last I fell asleep I dreamt of a funeral procession of cockroaches. The one I had flattened with my foot was lying amidst a throng, like a fallen hero or beloved poet. I felt certain they would never forgive me.

Clemencia was not wrong. Shortly thereafter, cockroaches invaded my aunt Claudine’s house. They didn’t all come at once, like hordes of Vikings ready to conquer the land. But like guerrillas avoiding detection, surreptitiously they took over the cupboard. Then the entire kitchen. A few days later Isabel called her employer in to tell her the news. I found myself near them just at that moment, and so I saw my speechless aunt’s severe and commanding frown. I couldn’t get it out of my head that the invasion was my fault. I thought she was going to fire Isabel, but instead, when at last she decided to say something, it was to establish a plan of attack. It would begin with the lowest-grade poison. If that didn’t work within seventy-two hours they would call the exterminator. Isabel nodded gravely. Her legs were close together and her back was straight, like a soldier’s. Before she left, Claudine paused in the doorway and asked the maid to make her lime blossom tea and bring it to her in bed.

“Don’t tell anybody,” she said. “This is to stay between us.”