visibly in their hands.
Joanna could imagine how reluctantly most of those poor folks had been drawn into the fray, yet here they stood—or sat—united both in their grief and in their determination to put a stop to the killing. Listening to the speeches, Joanna was jolted by a shock of self-recognition. These people were just like her. The survivors were all ordinary folk who had been thrust unwillingly into the spotlight and into roles they had never asked for or wanted, compelled by circumstance into doing something about the central tragedy of their lives
By the time Matilda Hirales-Steinowitz read the fifteenth name, that of Serena Duffy Grijalva, Joanna’s pain was so much in tune with that of the people sitting on the stage that she could barely stand to listen. Had she come to the vigil by herself, she might have left right then, without hearing any more. But Joanna had come with Leann Jessup, whose major interest in being there was the last of the sixteen victims—Rhonda Weaver Norton.
And so, instead of walking out, Joanna waited aIong with the silent crowd while a gaunt old man and a young child—a girl—took the stage. At first Joanna thought the man must be terribly elderly. He walked slowly, with frail, babylike steps. It was only when they turned at the podium to face the audience that Joanna could see he wasn’t nearly as old as she had thought. He was ill. While he stood still, gasping for breath, the girl parked a small, portable oxygen cart next to him on the stage.
“My name’s Jefferson Davis Duffy,” he wheezed finally, in a voice that was barely audible. “My friends call me Joe. Serena was my daughter—the purtiest li’l thing growin’ up you ever did see. Not always the best child, mind you. Not always the smartest or the best behaved, but the purtiest by far. When Miz Steinowitz over there asked us here tonight, when they asked us to speak and say somethin’ about our daughter, the wife and I didn’t know what to do or say. Neither one of us ever done nothin’ like this before.”
He paused long enough to take a series of gasping breaths. “The missus and I was about to say no, when our granddaughter here—Serena’s daughter, Cecilia—speaks up. Ceci said she’d do it, that she had somethin’ she wanted to tell people about what happened to her mama.”
With a series of loud clicks and pops, he managed to pull the microphone loose from its mooring. Bending over, he held the mike to his granddaughter’s lips. “You ready, Ceci, honey?” he asked.
Cecelia Grijalva nodded, her eyes wide open like those of a frightened horse, her knees knocking together under her skirt. Joanna closed her own eyes. How could the people from MAVEN justify exploiting a child that way, using her personal tragedy to make what was ultimately a political statement? On the other hand, Joanna had to admit no one seemed to be forcing the frightened little girl to appear on the stage.
“I have a little brother,” Cecelia whispered, while people in the audience held their breath in an effort to hear her. “Pablo’s only six—a baby really. Pepe keeps asking me how come our mom went away to wash clothes and didn’t come back. At night sometimes, when it’s time for him to go to to sleep, he cries because he’s afraid I’ll go away, too. I tell him I won’t, that I’ll be there in the morning when he wakes up, but he cries anyway, and I can’t him make stop. That’s all.”
Ceci’s simple eloquence, her careful concentration as she lit her candle, wrung Joanna’s heart right along with everyone else’s. When will this be over? she wondered. How much more can the people in this audience take?
While Joe Duffy and his granddaughter limped slowly across the stage to two of the last three unoccupied seats in the row of chairs reserved for family members, Matilda Hirales-Steinowitz stepped to the microphone once again. “The latest victim, number sixteen, is Rhonda Weaver Norton, thirty, who died sometime last week.”
Matilda moved away from the mike. Yet another mourner—a tall, silver-haired woman in an elegant black dress—glided to the podium. “My name is Lael Weaver Gastone,” she said. “The man who was my son-in-law murdered my daughter, Rhonda. I’m tired of killers having all the rights. I’ve been told that Rhonda’s killer is innocent until proven guilty. Everyone is all concerned about protecting his rights—the right of the accused. Who will stand up for the rights of my daughter?
The man who was here a moment ago, Mr. Duffy, is lucky. At least he has two grandchildren to remember his daughter by. I have nothing—nothing but hurt. I’ve never had a grandchild, and now I never will.
