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family-run, named for the matriarch, Dora. Three of her kids worked in the restaurant. Pepe, nineteen, and Nuria, seventeen, took turns tending bar and waiting tables, while their older sister—also Dora, in her twenties—worked in the kitchen with her fiancé. Pepe had bristly brown hair and a five o’clock shadow, and was immediately friendly, asking me about Seattle and patiently waiting out my answers. He was doing his mili —his military service—by day, which involved a lot of zipping around in a Zodiac on maneuvers. Sometimes they pulled in at El Portet Beach, where I took the children. He said he would look for me there.
    My employers’ version of family life was fascinating and strange. I couldn’t imagine my parents so socially engaged, every day of the week, and I’d never lived with extended family so close: Cousins and grandparents were people I saw at most a few times a year. But observation of the Spaniard in his natural habitat could hold my interest for only so long. About a week in, it became clear that I wouldn’t have any days off. Nor did I really have any freedom of movement. I could walk to the beach or swimming pool, but the center of town was too
far. When I ran out of sunscreen, I couldn’t even do something as simple as go buy some myself—I had to ask Maria José, or arrange to be taken to town. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected of the family—sightseeing trips?—but I was boggled at the tight circle that formed their world. With a growing sense of alarm, I saw that this was going to be my summer. My days were spent talking to a four-year-old, and my evenings to adults who were older than me and alien, or reading the handful of novels I’d brought. If I stayed in I could read, but I feared running out of English books, since I had no way to get more. This wasn’t the way it was meant to be at all. I wanted adventure. But as the baby-sitter, I was also baby-sat. My tower, with its glamorous and enviable view—a view to write home about, which I did, in misleadingly jaunty tones—was a jail.
    I had to take emergency action. I sensed a possible loophole in my well-monitored world, and that was the nighttime. After dinner Toni and Maria José couldn’t possibly need me—couldn’t possibly demand me, I thought, after I’d been on tap all day—and going out at night seemed to be accepted local young-adult practice. Abby, the Californian, had told me that her brother went out all night with his Spanish hosts. All I needed was an entrée. A native guide.
    One night as the extent of my prisonerlike status was sinking in, we were down in the town taking the evening paseo , and, unusually, Maria José and Toni accepted an invitation at a restaurant that was not Casa Dorita. Antonito began playing with a friend, and little Maria José fussed noisily and tried to climb onto her mother’s lap. I saw an opportunity, possibly my only one for who knew how many more days, and I didn’t want to spend another evening in my tower. “Why don’t I take her for a walk?” I suggested. Her mother looked grateful, and I picked up the child and sat her astride my hip. “Now don’t you start screaming,” I whispered to her as we walked away.

    I had maybe twenty minutes to accomplish my goal, plus the possibility of toddler mayhem at any second. I didn’t think I could have the conversation I hoped to have with Pepe in full view of Maria José, Toni, and their crowd, so I had to succeed before they descended on Casa Dorita. I rounded the corner toward the restaurant rehearsing Spanish words in my head. Luckily Pepe was behind the bar, which opened onto the plaza. “Hola,” I said. He tickled Maria José under the chin, free from the intergenerational fear that afflicts my own culture. He asked me what I’d been up to, and seemed genuinely distressed to learn that