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horizontally, you know, for the roof, and then I tied the palm fronds on to the horizontal crintin to finish off the roof. It’s different from everyone else in the village, but it was faster and easier to build. And anyway, we are different from everyone else in the village.”
    Ruth liked the look of the place. It was easy to understand: one room, with the “bathroom” over by the dunes. The crintin allowed in air and light, while clearly indicating the border between their space and the other members of the family compound. As Ruth had already experienced, they were a source of immense curiosity in the village, so borders were important. And the eighteen-inch gap between the top of the walls and the roof provided a perimeter of picture-window.
    â€œHere’s your cot,” Vivian said. “I thought you’d like it in the east part of the hut, so you can watch the sunset in the west, over the ocean, like if you’re having a beer and writing letters at the end of the day, but if you’d rather, we can move it over there, to the corner where the kerosene refrigerator is right now. I call the refrigerator Ada, you know, from refrigerADA. But if we moved the bed, Ada would have to go over there, by the door, and then, when we sweep the floor we’d have to go around Ada on the way to the door and that could be a pain, and we have to sweep the floor all the time, really, or the sand piles up like crazy, so why don’t you just try it this way for a while and see how it feels?” Then she took a breath.
    It took Vivian about a week to exhaust her pent-up need to communicate in English. Other than the few hours a day they spent at their “jobs”—Vivian working with villagers to plant a vegetable garden to provide the vitamins missing from the traditional diet of rice and dried fish, Ruth setting up a dispensary by sorting and labeling American-style medicines—and the time they slept, the remaining time was devoted to conversation. If Ruth had something to talk about, fine. If not, Vivian filled the gap, having no tolerance for silence when English was possible.
    Ruth learned that Vivian was the oldest of three children, that her father owned a bar and, when his first child disappointed him by being a girl, and no other children appeared to be forthcoming, he resigned himself to teaching her the business, including training her to be tough as nails. When her two brothers followed, ten and fourteen years later, he not only dropped Vivian’s training and withdrew his special attention, but also did a complete turnaround, suddenly expecting her to wear pink and bat her eyes.
    â€œLots of luck, Pop,” Vivian said as she took a long drink of beer, then continued with the story of her parents’ divorce. “They divided us up like so much property. I went with mom and my brothers went with dad. So I lost a parent and two brothers. I haven’t seen them for about four years now. Or maybe it’s five.”
    â€œOh, Vivian, you poor thing, how terrible.” Ruth secretly thought she could have done with a little estrangement from the suffocation of her own family.
    â€œYeah, well, that’s the way it is. What about you?”
    Vivian’s interest turned out to be genuine, not just a step she had to go through until she’d get another turn in the spotlight. Ruth could gradually open up about her own family bones, not knowing if they qualified as skeletons or not.
    There was her father, effusive and loving until things weren’t perfect. “Then he just blows up. It’s like he’s just got all this rage inside and it’s only a thin layer of skin holding it in. Meanwhile, Mom is flitting around, repeating her theme-song, “It’s all right, he didn’t mean anything by it.”
    â€œSisters and brothers?” Vivian asked.
    â€œJust one. My sister Marge.”
    â€œOlder or younger?”
    â€œNeither.