--Debi Springer

The pink dresses roll their eyes and mock her. Shouting loudly between giggles they say that Vitelina is too ugly to be photographed. Vitelina's smile drops from the corners of her mouth and her thick body slumps under her apron. She looks at the ground, tugs at her skirt and turns to walk away. The other pink dresses snicker and say they want their pictures taken without Vitelina because she had hers taken too much already.

Vitelina is shy and speaks only of her family. She wishes her daughter would work with her. Sighing and holding her hands in her lap, Vitelina knows this will never happen. "My daughter is too sensitive to work here," Vitelina said. "The girls here are joking, but mean, too."

Wearing a flowered blouse and bright blue skirt, Vitelina greets me with a hug and ushers me into her home. There is a small front room where three deer heads hang on the wall. Her sons were hunters. Pulling away at cobwebs and wiping at flaking fur, she hands the heads to me for closer inspection. In Vitelina's kitchen, a small table and a sink cover all of one corrugated tin wall. A wooden table with a corn grinder bolted to it takes up the other side of the room. Vitelina's daughter, Rose, washing dishes in the kitchen, gives me a smile as her mother and I pass by.

Vitelina's grandson races past us in pursuit of a teacup-sized kitten. Towering trees dotted with lime green iguanas shade the entire backyard. Bright pink flowering vines trail along a broken wood fence, and fresh linens blow almost horizontal on a piece of twine. We sit beneath a sprawling mango tree and listen as the wind rushes past the leaves.

A clay oven, its belly brimming with firewood, sits ready for Vitelina to bake the sweets and tortillas that she sells to local businesses.

Vitelina takes my hand and brings me into the kitchen. She pulls down an orange bowl and three husks of corn. Her grandson skids into the room on the dirt floor and begins to shuck the corn. Rose retrieves another bowl. Vitelina places the bowl underneath the grinder and turns the crank as though she were grinding marshmallows. I try it. It takes all of my body weight and two hands to get the crank to move one inch. Laughing and patting my arm, Vitelina continues to grind the corn. She kneads the mashed paste with both hands and rolls it into a ball.

Pinching the ball with her fingers, Vitelina flips the ball between her hands, slowly rotating the dough she gradually flattens the sphere into a foot-wide disk, producing a perfect tortilla in less than one minute. Out at the clay oven, she places it on a skillet above a flame. Her hands, chaffed from doing dishes, move the tortilla to cook it evenly. Stepping back, she gestures for me to try flipping the tortilla. She grasps my fingers and guides them to the tortilla. After I singe my fingertips, she takes over. From the kitchen window, Vitelina's daughter watches and smiles.

Sunlight floats through a filmy window above a deep sink where Vitelina, wearing the bright pink CoopeTortilla dress, scrubs dishes. Pouring pink liquid soap into a big pot, she scrubs away at remnants of breakfast. After spending the morning watching the women cook, the photographer calls Vitelina outside to shoot some pictures of her. This causes quite the stir. The other pink dresses are up in arms about Vitelina being photographed. They follow her outside, pointing and laughing. Vitelina ignores them and starts to warm up to the camera. Her smile radiates far beyond her face, revealing a set of teeth so crooked it appears as though each tooth is continuously rotating in opposite directions. She smiles and straightens her apron, smoothing out the wrinkles.