The target is buried in a heaving mass of flailing white. The savage slap of lash on flesh.
Thank God it isn’t me, she thinks. Please never let it be me. Please give me a life without temptation.
The wall of white opens up, and a woman, face slick with blood, is kicked down the steps to the flagstones.
I hate this, thinks Mercedes. I hate it. That women can do this to women.
‘Oh, God,’ says someone. ‘It’s Camila.’
‘Garcia?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she do? What has she done?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’
‘She must have done something. Isn’t she getting married in the autumn?’
‘Lucky she’ll be wearing a veil, then.’
‘Yeah – if he still marries her now.’
Camila Garcia, the dressmaker, collapses at the foot of the steps, excluded from the grace of God and from her neighbours. The solteronas tuck away their scourges and accompany each other to the front row seats for Holy Communion. Smiling, satisfied. For this is their day.
All safe now, for another year.
‘So what happens now?’ asks Tatiana, suddenly.
Mercedes turns and sees that she doesn’t look shocked at all, but – excited. Her eyes are bright, and a strange, toothy smile plays across her lips.
‘She walks home,’ says Paulina.
‘Alone,’ says Larissa.
‘What if she can’t?’
‘They always can, in the end,’ says Paulina. ‘They have no choice.’
She steps over the stricken woman’s feet, the sooner to reach her destination and the cool draughts of water within.
Mercedes saw a sirena make her way home once, when she was six. Feeling her way blindly, along Via del Scirocco, passers-by en route to the festa crossing the road at her approach, for a woman disgraced must be shown that she is disgraced. Shoes long lost, hands clutching the torn bodice of her Sunday dress to cover her shame. A face so swollen Mercedes couldn’t tell who she was – just that she was black and sticky and stinking with the old eggs and rotten vegetables, chicken feathers and fermented molasses that the more pious like to throw at them as they carry their shame homeward, just to ensure that they know their sin is unforgiven. Because nothing says festa like pelting a woman with rotten fish guts.
‘Come on,’ says Larissa. ‘They’re going in,’ and she starts to usher her charges towards the church.
‘And the men … ?’ asks Tatiana.
‘Just stop,’ snaps Paulina. ‘It’s done. She’ll stay indoors and heal, and by the time she comes out everyone will have forgotten all about it. By next year she’ll have forgotten all about it.’
Mercedes very much doubts that. It’s a small island, and she’s passed former sirenas in the street many times. They never look as though they’ve forgotten it. Not even the old ones. You just have to see their eyes to know that they have been broken forever.