The day I met Angel, Eileen had gotten into a bed of red ants, and she was wailing like a struck animal. I tossed my Vanity Fair magazine aside and bolted toward my screaming child when I saw someone else had gotten to her first. The woman appeared from behind the bed sheets hanging out in the yard next door. She darted across the grass, yanked Eileen up off of the ground, and began swatting her about the legs and ankles. Eileen wailed louder, and when I got to her, the woman had my daughter under the armpits and was shouting orders to me. “Get those shoes and socks off of her, quick! Diaper, too!” I did exactly as the woman said, and I stripped Eileen down to her birthday suit. Angry red spots began to rise all over her little body, and when a stray ant bit into my wrist, I understood perfectly what kind of pain my baby must be in. “Let’s get her to the hose,” the woman said, and she took off toward our spigot before I could say otherwise--not that I would have anyway. For several minutes, the woman and I ran cool water all over Eileen’s skin and checked every crease and crevasse for any ants that happened to escape the deluge. When we were finally satisfied we’d ridded her of every last one of them, we stopped for a breath and to gather our senses again. “You gotta watch those ants,” she said. “They’re something else out here.” She shook her head and settled onto a very curvy hip. She was a gorgeous woman. She cropped her black hair in a severely straight line at her shoulders and high across her forehead. Her eyes were a brilliant cornflower blue, and they flashed as she ranted about the poor extermination service out here. “They haven’t come to your yard yet, have they.” “Not that I know of,” I said, holding Eileen away from me so she wouldn’t soak me if she decided to pee. “I didn’t think so. If they’re not late, then they don’t come. You’ll see. That’s how it is every damned month. I call on the first, thinking those dopes will be out here if a sweet voice asks them to, but I figure they forget as soon as they hang up the damned phone. You can’t get a decent man to offer some decent help around here. It’s a wonder they’re hired to defend the whole nation when they can’t keep the damned ants out of their own backyard!” “I didn’t know there were ants in Hawai’i,” I said, slapping one off of my ankle. “Better believe it,” she said. “And worse. No need to worry about it now, though. Let’s get that baby inside and get her some calamine lotion. She’s got to be miserable.” We crossed the lawn to the backdoor. “I’m Angel, by the way,” she said, holding the door open. “I’m Rita,” I said as she followed me into the living room. “You look like a Rita,” she said. I set Eileen on the floor by her feet. “Do I?” I laughed. I’d never been told that before. I grabbed a diaper from Eileen’s bedroom and returned to find Angel seated on the couch lighting a cigarette. “Certainly. Haven’t you ever seen Gilda? Say, do you have an ashtray?” “Can’t say that I have.” “You don’t smoke?” “Oh, no--" I said, going to the cabinet for the ashtray we kept for guests. “I meant I’ve never seen Gilda.” “Oh, thank you. Well, you should. Then you’d know what I mean.” She tapped her cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” Angel eyed me as I pinned Eileen’s diaper onto her bottom before I let her squirm away. “Honey, if I had hair like that,” she said, leaning toward me and speaking low as if she were about to impart a national security secret. “I sure as hell wouldn’t be stuck in a camp like this with all those damned fire ants.” “Come ‘ere, Eileen,” I said as I pulled her back to me and inspected her bites. Angel clucked her tongue. “They chewed her up. Where’s your calamine?” “In the cabinet above the sink,” I said, motioning to the bathroom down the hall. “Oh, don’t worry. I know where the bathroom is. These houses are all exactly alike.” She strode to the bathroom, and her hips swung like they were oiled in the joints. I’d seen women walk like that on television and in beauty pageants, but never in my presence, nor in my own house. She returned with the pink bottle in her hand and was already dumping some of the runny liquid onto a cotton ball. She knelt next to me on the floor and cooed to Eileen. “Hold still now, Sweetie. Let’s get you fixed up.” I rolled Eileen over on her back and held her arms and legs still while Angel dabbed thick smears of calamine lotion all over the baby’s torso. Eileen stared wide-eyed at the blonde lady, wriggling her limbs and kicking at the woman’s knees. “Alright, alright, I’m almost done,” Angel said. She dabbed with one hand and flicked the ashes from her cigarette with the other, and it amazed me how a woman could medicate, smoke, and talk all at the same time. “There ya go,” Angel said, handing me the soiled cotton ball. “Thank you.” “Your husband have red hair, too?” she asked. “Normally, I notice things like that, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen your husband. He’s gone a lot, isn’t he.” “He’s in Asia,” I said, acknowledging to myself that was about all I knew of his whereabouts. When he left, he never told me more than that, and I didn’t ask, knowing well it would make no difference anyway. “And his hair’s brown.” Angel grinned and stood, picking up the ashtray and carrying it with her as she strolled around the room looking at the photos I’d mounted on the wall only a few short weeks ago. “Must’ve gotten it from your side of the family, then. You must have some awfully strong genes.” “Oh, that’s for sure. Every woman in my family’s been born with red hair. No exceptions.” “Well, I know plenty a girl who’d kill to have hair like yours. Or at least pay a fortune for it. Look at Lola Banks down the road. You think she got that red hair naturally? I think not. Straight from the bottle. Not that I judge her. You think this black is my natural color?” She paused and waited for me to respond. I shrugged my shoulders. “Not at all,” she said, snubbing out the butt of her cigarette. “My natural color is blonde.” “Well, why on earth would you wanna color it?” I asked. “I thought every woman in the world wanted blonde hair.” “Not me,” she scoffed. “Blondes are a dime a dozen, and not everyone wears blonde well. If you don’t wear blonde well, you look cheap. Either that, or distracted. And nobody wants to look distracted. When my hair’s blonde, I don’t look cheap or distracted, but I don’t look like a bombshell either. Men see a blonde, and bombshell is exactly what they expect. “Now see this black here,” she said, pinching a length of her hair. “Not every day you see a dark-haired woman around here who isn’t from this island. But me? It’s unexpected. And that’s bombshell effect for you right there. I think it’s something of a fetish for men, if you ask me.” I didn’t quite follow anything she was saying, but she seemed to know exactly what she was talking about, so I took her word for it. I’d gathered enough, that red hair was something terribly special, and I was damned lucky to have it. And I wouldn’t have ever known if Angel hadn’t come to Eileen’s rescue. To this day, I don’t know if Eileen was shouting more because of the ant bites, or because she thought she was being beaten by a stranger. In any case, Angel managed to rid my little girl of the ants and plant a tiny seed of vanity in me. That day, Angel won my gratitude and my admiration. That day was also the day when Angel skillfully and stealthily opened an aching Pandora’s Box.