L. Marie Adeline- S.E.C.R.E.T

“Sit here next to me, my dear,” said a small Indian woman, easily in her sixties,
wearing a vivid sari and a very kind smile. She pulled out a chair and patted it.
“Thank you,” I said, and sank into the seat. I wanted to look everyone in the face, and
at the same time to look at no one. I alternated between clasping my hands tightly in
my lap and rmly sitting on them, trying hard to keep myself from dgeting like a
teenage girl. You are thirty-five, Cassie, grow up.
As Matilda introduced each woman, her voice sounded far away and underwater. My
eyes oated from face to face, lingering, as I tried to memorize their names. I noted how
each was a different kind of beautiful.
There was Bernice, a red-headed black woman, round, short and busty. She was young.
Maybe thirty. There were a couple of blondes, one tall named Daphne, with straight
long hair, and the other named Jules, with short perky curls. There was a curvy brunette
woman named Michelle, with an angelic face, who clasped her hands over her mouth
like I had done something adorable at a dance recital. She leaned over and whispered to
a woman sitting across from me named Brenda, who had a toned, athletic body and was
dressed in gym clothes. Roslyn with the long auburn hair was next to her. She had the
biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. There were also two Hispanic women sitting side by
side, identical twins. Maria had a look in her eyes that was determined; Marta seemed
more serene and open. It was then that I noticed each of the women at the table wore a
familiar gold charm bracelet.
“And nally, next to you is Amani Lakshmi, who has been on the Committee the
longest. In fact, she was my guide, as I will be yours,” said Matilda.
“So very nice to meet you, Cassie,” she said with a slight accent, lifting her slender arm
to shake my hand. I saw that she was the only one in the room wearing two bracelets,
one on each wrist. “Before we start, do you have any questions?”
“Who’s the woman in the painting?” I heard myself say.
“Carolina Mendoza, the woman who made all of this possible,” Matilda said.
“Who still does,” added Amani.
“Yes, that’s true. As long as we have her paintings, we have the means to continue
S.E.C.R.E.T. in New Orleans.”
Matilda explained how she met Carolina more than thirty-ve years earlier, back
when she was an arts administrator for the city. Carolina was an artist, originally from
Argentina. She ed in the ’70s, just before the military crackdown made it impossible for
artists and feminists to create and speak freely. They met at an art auction. She was just
beginning to show her work, large vivid canvases and murals that weren’t typical of the
paintings women were doing at the time.
“Are these her paintings? And the ones in the lobby?” I asked.
“Yes. Which is why security is so tight here. Each is worth millions. We have a few
more in storage in the Mansion.”
Matilda explained how she and Carolina began to spend time together, something that
surprised Matilda because she hadn’t made a new friend in a long time.
“It wasn’t a sexual relationship, but we talked an awful lot about sex. After a while she
trusted me enough to share her world with me, a secret world where women gathered to