“I was born under the stars,” she began melodically. I could tell she’d practiced. “I slipped from the womb to hoot at the moon like an owl when a storm is nigh. And, you know, a storm did come. For three days and three nights, the workers picked in the mud.”

I nodded, keeping pace with her. She spoke in the broken English of a half-feral, but I translated her words easily, in accordance with my training.

“Our mother had fine eyes,” she mused. “Close your eyes midday and look up at the sun. That was their color. Orange, red, black—very fine.”

She was quiet for a moment, then she took my hand and tugged me close, examining me.

“You have fine eyes,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, though I wasn’t allowed to talk during her story.

“My eyes, what color are they?” she asked.

I looked. “Black.”

“Anything else?”

I looked again. They were the exact color of spilled ink. “Just black,” I said.

She sighed and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Would you believe me if I told you they changed? When I went to work in the field, my eyes changed.”

I said nothing, continuing to transcribe. I didn’t believe her, but it was unkind to tell her so.

“You doubt me, but it’s true. My eyes changed from the color of the sky to the color of the earth in one cycle—and they ain’t gone back.”

I finished writing that sentence, and looked back at her. “Why did they change?”

“This is the question I have thought about every cycle since,” she said. “Real long and hard. Real long and real hard. All the time I’m in the field and when I’m bathing. Even when I sleep, I think about this one thing—why?”

She stopped talking, taking a sip of water.

“Did you find an answer?”

“I did.”

I sat forward, mildly curious.

“They changed,” she said, “because I toiled in the field.”

I frowned. “But, didn’t you always work in the field?”

“Not like this. In that cycle, we had a mean foreman and I was afraid to die. I forgot everything but the toil. I set my eyes on the dirt and produced three times the quota. Do you see?”

I didn’t.

“I set my eyes on the dirt,” she repeated. “On the dirt. On the dirt. Don-it hurt!”

Beads of sweat bubbled along her forehead as she chanted this rhythmically for a while.

“Set your eyes on the trees,” she rasped, “your eyes evergreen. Set your eyes on the dirt, don-it hurt!”

I patted her down with a cool cloth, as an old man within earshot wheezed with laughter. When his coughing fit subsided, he rolled onto one side. “That old hoot owl at it again, eh?” he said.

The woman crossed her arms, as if his jeering was nothing new.