THE WOMEN OUTSIDE HAD BEEN THERE ALL AFTERNOON, SOME of them eating watermelon and trying to spit the seeds at her bare feet. They had made a game out of trying to hit her toes with the seeds. The big toe got them a hundred pesos.
“Golpeé el dedo gordo del pie,” one would shout.
I got her big toe.
“No, no hizo,” Mary would stand up at the bars and yell out.
No, you didn’t.
She realized—yes, just like the girls at the Rhonda Cottage so long ago—she was in a fight with three women.
She had never bribed anyone—well, bribed them with a donkey here or there—but if she was to get out of Mexico, she knew she must bribe the right person now. And she had not thought of the prosecutor or the police—or Señor Gabel, the judge—all of them justifiably outraged, or pretending to be justifiably outraged, at her—because that did bring themselves a great deal of attention—no, she thought of the three women who taunted her—and turned her sights toward them. After watching them for weeks, Mary knew a lot more than people might think. She knew Principia knew the truth about Victor but was frightened. She felt this because of the way Principia did not want to look at her when the others called her a murderess. Did not join in the exultation. Why was this? Mary had watched her for weeks now and knew her well. She saw, a crack in the armour of sisterhood. That is, she knew too she would sooner or later have to play them one against the other.
Then there was Lucretia—yes. She was the one who above anything and anyone wanted to be Mary. And Mary knew this—so she gave her things—but she distrusted her, and would never ask her for help. For Mary, honour was implicit, and her character was such that she would go hungry rather than ask for help from those who tried to undermine her.
Who, as she said:
“Pissed in my face and called it rain.”
Nor did it matter at this time if she lived. But in her fury, she wanted the truth. She wanted Principia to finally admit something. That is, she wanted to get back at Lucretia Rapone, for her sneering. If it was revenge—well, Mary was human too.
“Ver que ella no salirse,” Lucretia yelled whenever she took a break.
The guard, always helpful, smiled and translated:
See that she doesn’t get away.
“How kind everyone has been,” Mary said.
She had lost weight, had diarrhea and was worried about a sore on her hand. But not overly—that is, Mary did not worry so much anymore.
Mary Cyr at moments of tension or fear had learned to do one unnerving thing: smile. She smiled now at the old scratch on the wall:
“¡Viva Cristo!”
Did she even believe in that anymore? Oddly enough she did not know. Maybe Christ lived, maybe his great grace still lit the world; but where was it? Not for her—but where was it for those Mexican miners buried alive?
She stood and looked out at the stars, so far away in the purple sky—and the moon over the sad little donkey in the old field beyond her. The donkey for the past three weeks had been left alone. Now no one came to see it anymore except little Gabriella.
“Maybe they will eat you,” she said to the donkey.
Yesterday Sharon came, to ask for another picture. Mary complied. She stood, in a simple white smock and a pair of shorts, and Sharon started to snap her photos.
“Una mujer muy bonita,” she whispered. Then she looked up over the camera and then focused once more and snapped the shutter again. Yes, and Mary saw in those nervous, temperamental artistic movements money and privilege—private lessons and schooled leftism, concern about the world taught by unworldly professors. Suddenly Sharon stopped snapping, and lowered the camera, and stared at her, pensively, her own face white. And she knew that Mary Cyr suddenly understood that her own family had money and power, that she was the daughter of Carlos DeRolfo, former governor of the state, and what she was doing was probably inexcusable, deplorable and a lie.
That is, her photography, like Ned’s activism, was nothing much more than a fashion statement in a world where fashion statements mattered more and more, and more.
And quite suddenly Sharon’s arms began to shake. Mary smiled, the very same way she had at Ned Filmore once long ago.