Every time ArtCorps Artist Isabel Carrío sets out for the community of Guachcuz, she goes with the knowledge that something unexpected will happen.

Almost always, the “unexpected” turns out to be the people who come into my life as if they were bells: announcing something, calling out.

This week I met Doña Feliza. I had noticed her face before, with its open smile, but I hadn’t yet had the chance to get close to her-her present and past, her little home hidden between the corn stalks. Doña Feliza is 65 but she looks older. That long white hair with that fresh face–it might be because she laughs so often. She was born in a neighboring community called Las Pacayas. She says that she raised herself because her mother died when she was a little girl. She never married and doesn’t have children.

We speak in perfect Spanish. It’s rare that a woman of her age from a Pokomchi’-speaking community speaks Spanish with such clarity and fluency. It’s even rarer that she lives alone. She invites me to stay the night in her house and I accept without thinking twice about it. I’m enthused and intrigued to enter the world of Doña Feliza.

Her home is a windowless wooden cube with a palm thatch roof. The path that leads to the doorstep is undefined and muddy. “Muñeca” welcomes us, barking. Muñeca is her puppy, with a tummy swollen with parasites and the attitude of a dog that’s always tied on a short leash. They bark and bark with their tails between their legs and they avoid eye contact.

There is a stump outside the house and that’s where we sit to chat. She tells me that when she was young she went with a friend to Guatemala City to find work as a maid. She says she worked there for 35 years, living in her bosses’ homes. Five years ago, she returned to Guachcuz. She says that she misses the electricity and her bathroom; that sometimes she regrets having come back because she doesn’t like to have clay and mud under her feet all the time. When I asked if she’d been able to save a little money throughout those years of working, she said no. She said she’d spent it all on new clothes. That money is the ultimate downfall.

It’s hard for her to sit still for too long, and she begins to straighten up around the house before nightfall. She offers me her little wooden bed to sleep in, near the fireplace where she cooks. Next to the bed there’s a cardboard box with a hen and her ten recently-hatched chicks beneath her wing. To one side of that, there’s another box with four nearly-adult turkeys.

Feliza doesn’t have a tank for collecting rainwater like the other houses do, but she offers me some dark water from a plastic bucket so I can wash my hands. Where does she get the water to bathe and cook? It’s a mystery. But I can’t turn down the eggs she cooked with tomato and tortillas that we eat by candlelight.

The night silence is so great that our breathing echoes off of the plank walls. I ask if she listens to the radio; she says that she would like to, but she doesn’t have one.

She doesn’t know what time it is, either. She always guesses at the time. If she has to meet up with someone, she waits for them.

The sky is still light when she announces that it’s time for us to go to bed. She shows me the cornfield in case I need to go to the bathroom during the night. In bed, I begin to think about Feliza’s future. What will become of her when she can’t walk the two hours to the market anymore to sell her fried bananas and earn a few Quetzal coins? I think and think that night, to the background noise of my neighbors, the turkeys. In the morning, as we talk while making tortillas for breakfast, I ask her if she receives any monthly stipend from the government and she tells me no. But I shouldn’t worry, she says, because God always helps her out. She says that in the bible it says that some single women are the wives of God, and he protects them.

When we say goodbye, I feel glad to have stayed in her home and kept her company. I want to show my gratitude for her generous hospitality and for sharing her reality with me. My words get all tangled up. We say goodbye with a Guatemalan hug, taking each other’s arms in our hands.

Meanwhile, Gladys and her sisters wait for me in the rain, under their umbrellas made of malanga leaves.

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