During most of my childhood the image of a mysterious girl hung to one side of my father’s bed, in the area where he kept his constellation of amulets. Each amulet on the wall told its own story, real or imagined, and emitted its own aura. Their positions would shift whenever there was an earthquake. A bronze pendant of a man once sent by a shy northern European poet hung diagonally to the right of a cross woven by an indigenous Huichol artist. Childhood photographs of me and my sister lit up the wall nearby. Only the painted girl returned my gaze, and whenever I’d look over I would find her staring back at me.