5 TALL MARY
S
he stands on a glass shelf display in the middle of the room, directly in the line of sight from the front entrance. We all have to work around her. She is the biggest Mary in the place, made of painted chalk composition and twenty-four inches tall, counting the base with the snake. This is the classic Our Lady of Grace, which is the pose Mary chose for herself when she instructed Catherine Labouré in nineteenth-century France to have a medal struck, the one that quickly became known as the Miraculous Medal. Mary wears a white ankle-length dress, blue belted in an Empire waist, and draped in a deeper blue mantle. Her hands are down and spread palms out. She stands on a half-globe, a hissing, writhing snake daintily pressed under her instep. She looks worried, but not in a neurotic way. More of a concerned empathy directed slightly downward, as if she is watching small children who have eaten too many sweets and are feeling it. Mary Kay, one of our volunteers, calls her our “makean-offer-Mary” because she resides over the used rosaries and crucifixes that we let people take away for a donation. 23