Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [86]
Then composing her placid face, the old harridan ignored the Marines' applause, smiled sweetly at the next SeaBee, and began fumbling his skirts. When he drew back, she patted him on his shoulder and reassured him in Pidgin English, "Me look, me look, me buy."
On the way home Atabrine Benny told me how Mary had acquired her vocabulary. "After the new laws she sneaked out here. Does a very good business, although I expect they'll close her out one of these days. Well, after she had been here a little while, this bunch of Marines from Guadal moved in. Rest cure. They came to like the old devil." Then Benny went on to tell of how the Marines, with nothing better to do, would hang around the betel-stained old Tonk and teach her their roughest language.
"Stand up like a man, and tell them to go to hell, Mary," the old, tough Marines would tell the old, tough Tonk. Mary would grin, not understanding a word of what they were saying, but after they came to see her for many days in a row the old miracle of the subdued races took place again. The yellow woman learned dozens of white words but the white men learned not one yellow word. When she had mastered their vilest obscenities, they made her an honorary Marine, emblem and all.
The words Mary learned were hardly ones she could have used, say as a salesgirl in Macy's or Jordan Marsh. For example, if a sailor just off a boat asked her the price of a grass skirt, she would smile sweetly and say, "Fo' dolla'."
"'At's too much for a grass skirt, baby."
Then Mary would scream at him, thrusting her nose into his face, "Bullshit, brother!" She wasn't quite sure what the words meant, but from the way new men would jump back in astonishment as if they had been hit with a board, she knew it was effective. And so she used it for effect, and more men would come back next week and say, "Four bucks for that? Not on your life!" just to hear the weathered old Tonk scream out some phrase they could report to the fellows in the saloon back home, "and then, by God, maybe those guys would know us guys was really seein' somethin' out here!" And for Mary the best part was that after she had cursed and reviled them enough, the astonished soldiers and sailors usually bought what she had to sell, and at her price.
When it became apparent that Bloody Mary was not going to abide by the island order, plantation owners asked the government to intervene with the American military authorities.
"Would the island command place Bloody Mary's kiosk out of bounds?"
"Certainly!" An order went out forthwith, and two military police were detailed to see that no Americans visited the kiosk.
But who was going to keep the kiosk from visiting the Americans? That was a subtle problem, because pretty soon all that the military police were guarding was an empty chunk of canvas strung across a pole about five feet off the ground. Mary wasn't there any more.
She was up the island, hidden among the roots of a banyan tree the Marines had found. She was selling her grass skirts to more men than before, because she was the only woman who dared defy both the civil and military governments.
"But commander," the civil representative protested. "Your men are still trading with her. The whole purpose of the law is being evaded."
"What can we do? We put her place under restriction. But she doesn't live there any more. It seems to me that's your problem."
"Please, commander! I beg you. Please see what you can do. The plantation owners are complaining." The civil representative bowed.
The island commander scratched his head. His orders were to keep peace and good will, and that meant with plantation owners, not with Tonkinese or sailors off stray ships. Accordingly he dispatched an underling to seek out this damned Bloody Mary what's her name and see what the score was.
The officer, a naval lieutenant, went. He found Mary under a tree with