The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

  When they did go to school, the school day lasted from 9 A.M. until noon; sometimes they adjourned earlier. During chestnut or strawberry season, Maestra Fiorella would have the whole class stump out to the fields and collect fallen fruit, which she’d take home for her own dinner. The children were not supposed to tell their parents about this kind of recess, but of course people caught sight of the little girls all marching out of the chiazza together, and the parents gossiped unhappily about how Fiorella was stealing their children’s labor when she was supposed to be teaching them. No one stepped in to stop her; it would have been too awkward a conversation.

  ON THE OTHER HAND, Maestra Giuseppina, who taught the boys, was a devout fascist. Every morning when she stepped into the classroom at five of nine it was expected that the little ragazzi were already assembled in a row in their matching uniforms to perform the official salute to her and to the picture of Mussolini on the wall. But at least the boys learned to read.

  THERE WERE SO MANY THINGS a girl needed to learn at home, anyway—cooking, horticulture, the tending of baby siblings, cleaning. There was endless needlework—linen to be spun, clothing to be stitched or mended. A girl needed to prepare her trousseau, all those bedsheets and kitchen linens and underwear she’d need for her marriage, and she started working on that grand project when she was nine or ten. That was the age, too, at which she would start taking part in the village’s cottage silkworm industry, which would occupy her twenty-four hours a day for the month of July.

  But for a little girl, the most important education of all was spiritual, so that she might grow up to be a good Christian wife and mother. Stella and Cettina had started catechism classes after Easter of 1928, when Stella was eight, a little on the old side, and Cettina was six, a little on the young side.

  Catechism classes met on Saturday afternoons in the vestry by the church. In 1928 the teacher was Signora Giovannina, who owned the peach grove, and who felt the great weight of the responsibility of all of these children’s immortal souls if she couldn’t knock the fear of God into them.

  Stella was good at catechism. She memorized the incantations and Bible verses as easily as she remembered folk songs. Cettina was not so good. She struggled to remember things from week to week. When Stella tried to whisper her sister prompts, Signora Giovannina yelled at Cettina, which made Cettina freeze up and abandon any thought that might have been in her head. This was a tricky moment; Stella hated watching her little sister suffer, but if Stella tried to help it would only get Cettina in more trouble.

  Stella always thought of what her mother had told her—that she had to look out for Cettina, that Cettina was just little, not smart like Stella. It was hard to tell as they grew up if Cettina actually wasn’t smart, or if it was just that she could never quite catch up with her older sister, even though she was always expected to follow by her side.

  They were old enough now that their adult characters had emerged out of their baby fat. Stella already realized what kinds of things the women in the village said about her, and what kinds of things they said about her sister. They said Cettina was a good girl, an obedient girl, a hard worker, a bit of a brute because she had no common sense. Stella, meanwhile, was pretty and sharp—quick, clever, and hardheaded, capotost’, the most stubborn and willful little girl anyone had ever seen. She was proud to be called all those things. Stella wanted to be tough. She had survived, against all odds, two near-death experiences. She liked to think of herself as harder, stronger than anyone else around her.

  They said Cettina was the better sister, but secretly they all were more interested in Stella. Stella was nine years old, but she had already realized that. And as much as she loved her sister, she did not mind it one little bit.

  STELLA MADE HER FIRST COMMUNION the Easter of 1929. But Cettina was not ready to make Communion. She would need a second year of catechism, at least. This was very upsetting to Cettina, who felt left out. She loathed catechism and now would have to go without her sister, who was henceforth exempt. Making Communion, however, was not optional; Cettina’s place in God’s kingdom depended on it. She would have to figure it out on her own.

  Cettina cried the whole day she learned about Stella’s upcoming Communion. She was still crying when she and Stella got into bed.

  “You’ll be all right, little bug,” Stella told her, fanning her legs in the cold blankets to warm them up with body heat. “You still have Marietta and Vicenzina to keep you company.”

  Cettina snuffled into the pillow. Stella imagined it was covered in snot.

  “I wanted to wear a white dress,” her little sister said when she was ready to talk. “I wanted to carry a . . . what do they call it? With the flowers?”

  “A bouquet,” Stella answered.

  “I wanted to carry a bouquet and walk into the church with you and make Communion.”

  “You’ll make Communion with the other girls your age, next year. If I don’t go this year I’ll be too old. The biggest one.”

  Cettina was sobbing again. “What if I never make Communion because I’m too stupid?”

  “Eh!” Stella said, a reprimand. She’d learned this noise from her mother. “Enough. Everyone makes Communion, and you’re smarter than lots of those other kids.”

  The most upsetting thing was, if Cettina had gone this year, she would have had her own white dress to wear in church. Instead, next year she would have to wear the white dress Stella had already worn. But that’s just the way it is, being the second sister.

  “CHI TUTTO VO’, TUTTO PERDI,” Assunta reminded her daughters. A favorite of her many proverbs: whoever wants everything loses everything. Assunta’s enemy was still the invidia; she did what she could to teach her daughters not to be jealous, especially of each other.

  Stella had a new white dress; Cettina did not. “But look what you have.” Assunta gave Cettina a lemon, the sour kind with the thick skin. Other citrus wouldn’t grow this high up the mountain. “You have a lemon, and if you want, you can have a lemon tree.”

  Cettina loved plants, and she wanted to love a lemon tree. Stella had a white Communion dress, but Cettina had a future lemon tree, maybe.

  Spring passed into summer, and the little sprout grew. In July Assunta helped Cettina transfer it to the garden. She made a special spot for it right by the house, where Cettina could see it from bed if the window was open.

  AFTER SHE HAD MADE HER FIRST COMMUNION, Stella stood up with her mother to get the Eucharist at mass; meanwhile Cettina had to sit in the pew and hold Giuseppe so he wouldn’t climb down into the aisle. Stella also now went to confession with Assunta each Thursday.

  It was at confession the last Sunday of July that Father Giacomo mentioned the Verginelle to Assunta. Stella was just within earshot, outside the confession vestibule, where she was sitting, absolved, and saying her rosary.

  “I want to invite Mariastella to join the Verginelle procession this year,” the priest said to Assunta. “Would you let her?”

  “Of course,” Assunta said immediately. She felt proud heat in her chest and her eyes had already filled with tears. On the eve of the Assumption, thirteen little girls between the ages of nine and twelve would lead the annual pilgrimage down into the valley and through olive groves to the ancient shrine to the Virgin at Dipodi, which had been built in the year 314 by the Emperor Constantine. The Verginelle, dressed in white, would kneel and pray by candlelight all night, offering their sweet virgin prayers to the Madonna. The faithful would file into the wooden benches behind them and together they would pass the whole night chanting the liturgy. At dawn, they would begin the journey back to the mountain villages, where upon arrival the women would immediately start cooking because the feast itself would commence at midday, everyone in a euphoric sore-footed delirium.

  The Verginelle was especially close to Assunta’s heart, as she was herself dedicated to the Madonna’s Assumption by her name. She had never missed a pilgrimage except that one year she was seven months pregnant wi
th Cettina and had been in such a horrible state. Assunta herself had been selected for the Verginelle when she was eleven years old. She cherished the memory—she had felt like an angel for those holy hours. Now she pictured her pretty little daughter Stella with a crown of white flowers on her head. No doubt this delightful image had also occurred to Father Giacomo.

  AT DINNER, WHEN ASSUNTA MADE the announcement of Stella’s selection for the Verginelle, Stella let her aunt and grandmother’s cooing die down before saying, “Mamma, I can’t be in the Verginelle.” She put her arm around her sister, whose eyes were darkly shining with misery. “Not if Cettina can’t be in it, too. Please tell Father Giacomo.”

  “Stella!” Assunta laughed. “Cettina is little. She’ll be picked some other year.”

  “No, Mamma,” Stella replied. “We are sisters. We’re supposed to be together.”

  Stella had been turning this idea over since she’d been in church and was extremely pleased with herself for thinking of it. By taking this stance, she would look like a martyr of selflessness, which would be even better than just being selected for the Verginelle. She would be a hero—a saint.

  Assunta was worried about offending both the priest and the Madonna by heading back to negotiate for her daughters’ participation in the pilgrimage. On the other hand, she was overwhelmed with pleasure at the way Stella took care of her sister. She would figure out a way to convince the priest, a special offering of some kind, although she had no money this summer. She had not heard from her husband in six years. But she could probably spare a chicken.

  Stella was glad her mother didn’t seem to realize how conniving this plan was. If she could convince her mother of her good intentions, she didn’t need to convince anyone else.

  ON AUGUST 14, 1929, leading the pilgrimage to the shrine of the Madonna for the feast of her Assumption were fourteen, not thirteen, little girls in white dresses, with crowns of white paper flowers. One of them was too young, not even eight years old. She fell asleep during the all-night prayer vigil and snored in her sister’s lap. Everyone was very happy.

  MAYBE THE MADONNA KNEW THE TRUTH of Stella’s dark little heart, because it was the day after the Assumption that Stella almost died for the third time.

  It was an oven-hot August afternoon, and the chiazza between the church and the school was full of children. Stella and Cettina joined the fray after they had finished their lunch, keeping an eye open for their favorite all-black street cat. They played a hopping game across the courtyard with Giulietta, a sallow, birdlike girl who also had no father. She was five years older than Stella, too old to be playing in the chiazza, really, and a bit simple, but she was about Stella’s size and she was fast, and Stella liked to race her along the forest paths.

  The hopping game was adequate at first. But the joy of physical exertion passed, and Stella began to feel listless. She stopped and stood aside with her arms crossed over her scarred abdomen. After Stella had missed a rotation, Cettina paused by her sister. “What’s wrong, Stella?”

  “It’s too hot to play here anymore,” Stella said. She felt bored and itchy. The smell of cook-fire woodsmoke mingled with the sweat soaking her dress. “Let’s go into the schoolhouse,” she said. “It will be cool.”

  The school was supposed to be closed up, because it was vacation. But everyone knew the back door wouldn’t lock, since the bolt connecting the top and bottom halves was broken. If you gave the bottom a good shove, it would swing in, and you could stoop in under it. Mothers told their children not to play inside the schoolhouse because older boys went into the deserted classrooms to do bad things. But the ceilings were so tall that the air inside was cold and moist even in August, and the village children often played there until Maestra Giuseppina scattered them.

  Cettina, always the goody-goody, didn’t want to break the rules. “That’s naughty, Stella. What will Mamma say?”

  “Nothing. Why would she say anything?” Stella now had a satisfying idea in her head of lying on the cool stone floor of the boys’ classroom, where she wasn’t allowed.

  Cettina didn’t like it, but she followed Stella, the way she always followed Stella. Stella leaned hard against the thick wooden door and nudged it open. Giulietta stopped hopping and trailed them in. Giggling, they pushed the bottom half of the door closed behind them and padded on their dirty bare feet into the silence of the dark chambers.

  They passed an hour in the schoolhouse, rooting through the boys’ facilities, trying to find what masculine secrets were hidden there. They lay on the classroom floor, just as Stella had imagined doing, feeling the cold stones absorb their body heat until they drifted off, napping in the dim afternoon light.

  When Stella woke up, her skin was chilled, goose bumps standing on the side of her arms. Cettina was dozing beside her, Giulietta singing thinly to herself. The sun was descending into the olive valley, and as the grogginess cleared from Stella’s eyes her vision fixed on a dark splotch on the wall, a disconcerting blemish in the thin lemony light. She felt a cold tickle race up her arms, and she tried to figure out what about the splotch was wrong. Then it moved, and she shrieked—it was one of those thick-bodied long-legged brown spiders that hide in stacks of firewood.

  Stella did not like spiders at all. She was on her feet, and gave her sister a kick in the ribs, although Stella’s scream had already woken Cettina.

  “It’s just a spider, Stella,” Giulietta was saying, but she scrambled to her feet, too. They had all had enough of this adventure.

  The three girls dashed out of the boys’ classroom and through the main hall. Stella fumbled for the door’s broken latch; the sun had sunk enough that no light fell along the doorframe.

  She located the latch and gave it a tug, but the door didn’t move. Stella felt an irate frustration mounting, a weird discomfort in her stomach and that creeping cold along her arms. She pulled again, adding all her body weight. This door had swung open easily earlier. Why was it so stubborn with her now? There was a flash in Stella’s mind, an image that flared like a bonfire, of another hand on the other side of the door, its supernatural aura burning through the wood, holding it so that Stella couldn’t wrench it open. Stella, taken aback by the image, released the latch and stared at her hands. She realized, as she blinked, that it had been her own hand she’d seen, the way silvery spots appear when you rub your eyes too hard.

  “What’s the matter, Stella?”

  Stella looked at Cettina, who in the shadows was nothing but a pair of dark, accusing eyes.

  “Nothing,” Stella snapped. What was wrong with her, she couldn’t even open a door? “The latch is just stuck,” she said.

  She reached up again and seized the latch, pulling with all her body weight, but this time the door was unresisting. She stumbled backward as it swept open. But there was Cettina’s foot, under hers, and she slipped, overcompensating, throwing out her arms as she plunged toward the door.

  THAT WAS IT, just a little conk on the head. But as unlikely as it seems, this may be the closest Stella came to death in all her eight near misses, because no one knew how to bring her back from the brink.

  The schoolhouse door was made of heavy oak, and Stella was exactly the right—or wrong—height. When she fell forward, her temple split against the sharp lower edge of the bolted top half of the door, and her head rebounded and she fell to the ground on her back, cracking her skull against the flagstones.

  The screaming of the little girls brought Suora Letizia from the nearby priory. There was blood everywhere, as there always is with a head injury. The tiny nun wrapped her apron around Stella’s gushing wound, scooped her up in her arms, and carried her home to Assunta. Stella breathed, but she did not wake up, not even after they splashed her with water. Her body was floppy and unresponsive. Cettina was hysterical and Assunta was tearing out her hair in panic. This time it was eighty-year-old Suora Letizia who made the run down the mountain to Feroleto.

  The doctor brought his surgery kit, and for the thir
d time he stitched Stella Fortuna up like she was a sock for darning. The gash on her scalp was long, and the skin up there is thin and difficult to bring back together once it has been parted. Although he made the tiniest stitches he knew how, the doctor’s handiwork would leave a long silver crescent scar, faint but visible, and a hitch in her hairline.

  Stella didn’t wake up. It was a very weird thing that happened this time, everyone said. Stella lay unconscious for four days. On the second day, when she still hadn’t woken up, Za Ros went down to Feroleto again to ask the doctor what to do. The doctor didn’t believe her at first, and said Stella was probably just healing and would wake up soon. On the third day, when Ros came back again, he made a second trip up to Ievoli. He was not able to hide his reaction from Assunta; his face was as gray as liver. She had not been pulling out her hair for nothing; Stella was going to die.

  The doctor didn’t know what to do. He had never seen anything like it before. He tried every remedy he could think of to restore consciousness, but nothing worked.

  FOR STELLA THE LONG TWILIGHT lasted only a moment. When she woke, her hunger was a fiery cramp in her gut. She sat up and was nauseated by her dizziness, a combination of dehydration, starvation, and concussion.

  “I want a tomato,” she croaked. The sun was yellow-bright on the walls, the open door, the flat surface of the table. Pain shot through her head as her unaccustomed eyes squinted defensively. There was her mother, and Cettina and Za Ros, all looking at her dumb with surprise. “A tomato,” she repeated.

  “She wants a tomato,” Za Ros said, and swatted Cettina, who leapt to her feet and scurried out to the garden.