Gabriela had been watching a movie when she heard the news. The film suddenly stopped, and everyone in the theater went home. Many people, mostly women, started crying. Her husband Ramon squeezed her hand tightly. She squeezed back, avoiding his gaze.
She felt nothing. She knew that Eva Peron had been sick, but she hadn't known just how quickly the cancer would take her. She didn't see why a whole nation had to go into mourning just because one woman had died, even if that woman was the First Lady. Even though she didn't especially like the movie, she would rather have finished it in peace.
Besides - and she had never told Ramon this - she had met Eva Peron. Once, and only once, back when she was Eva Duarte. She was just a few years older than Gabriela, and far more glamorous, with dyed-blond hair styled in tight curls topped with a large hat.
At the time, Gabriela was lying in the bed of Juan Peron. She had loved him, and thought he loved her. Her father had abandoned her when she was young, and she had seen in him something of a father as well as a lover. He was powerful and respected, and she was in awe that someone so important could take an interest in a nobody like her.
All he gave her to remember him by was a wad of cash and a letter of recommendation. As his "personal assistant", of course, but everyone knew what that meant. She never showed it to anyone. He didn't even spell her last name right.
The money was much more helpful. She knew that it was hush money as much as anything else. Not that she had any desire to talk about her relationship with him. It would last her a month, maybe more. But she still smiled to think that somewhere beneath the cold, would-be dictator facade, Juan Peron had a heart.
Gabriela was lucky. She had a supportive family she could return to - her mother, aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins. With their help, she was able to finish school and become a secretary at a small office. There she had met Ramon, and they had fallen in love and gotten married. She never told him about her past, and he never asked. Without her family, she shuddered to think where she would have ended up. Probably homeless, begging or selling her body on the streets of Buenos Aires. She was also relieved that she did not become pregnant; as a single mother, her reputation would have been ruined.
She didn't attend Peron's inauguration. But she did listen to his and Eva's speeches on the radio. Peron's speech was the same sort of red-meat populism she had come to expect from him, though he had never expressed such views (or any political views, really) while she had known him. Eva had given a self-aggrandizing speech about how she had come from the people, and the crowd had eaten it up. She neglected to mention the people she had stepped on in the way, Gabriela thought bitterly.
She did attend the funeral. Everyone at the office had to. She stood in line with thousands of people from Buenos Aires and all over Argentina, as well as foreign admirers come to pay their respects.
She and Ramon were herded into the room where Eva's body was on display. Juan Peron was standing right beside her. For the briefest moment, he caught her eye. Or maybe it was just her imagination. Would he even recognize her? Was his grief genuine?
Gabriela and Ramon finally arrived at Eva's glass coffin. Ramon bent down to kiss it. Gabriela now stood over Eva, as Eva had stood over her so many years ago. If things had gone differently, she would be the one in that coffin, the one being mourned by all of Argentina.
So share my glory
So share my coffin.
No thank you, Gabriela said to herself. I'd rather live an ordinary life and die at a ripe old age.
She bent down, kissed the coffin, and moved on. But as she and Ramon left the building, she imagined Eva's voice singing softly to her.
Don't cry for me, Argentina
For I am ordinary, unimportant
And undeserving of such attention
Unless we all are
I think we all are.
Si, Gabriela thought. We are all undeserving of such attention. For every Eva Peron, there were millions of ordinary people just like Gabriela and Ramon. It would be impossible to give every one of them a grand state funeral. Perhaps people saw Eva's funeral as being for them as well.
She had no right to condemn Eva Peron. They were playing the same game. Eva had won, and Gabriela had lost. Or was it the other way around? They were both women trying to get ahead in the only way women could in their world. And Eva, to her credit, had done her part to make that world a little fairer for the fairer sex. Gabriela wondered, would she have done the same thing in Eva's place?