The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

  The dizziness—it was hard to fight. Stella put her hand against the wall, and the silver spots sliding across her vision reminded her of the ghostly hand she had seen on the other side of the school door. It was her most recent memory, the weirdly stuck door and the invisible hand.

  “Stella mia, you’re awake, she’s awake.” The women were all ringing her bed now, blocking the bright sun. They were touching her and praying. She didn’t care what they were saying. She was ferocious with hunger.

  Cettina came running back with her small hands full of tomatoes. Their dark red flesh was hot with the August sun. They were perfect, wet and smooth and the flavor of the earth.

  “Bread,” Stella said, gasping, and they brought her bread, and water, and olives and beans. They fed her until she was finally satisfied.

  Assunta couldn’t talk; she was weeping with relief. Ros said to Stella, “Tell me, amore, why are you so unlucky? No one else I ever heard of has accidents like your accidents.”

  “I’m not unlucky,” Stella replied. The vision of her ghost was vivid in her mind; three years ago, she’d suspected she was haunted when she’d felt that hand close around hers in the pigpen, but she was certain this time. “It’s the ghost of the other Stella. She is trying to kill me.”

  Ros clucked her disapproval of this idea, but Cettina said, “She’s cursed.”

  Now Ros laughed. “Cursed, or haunted? Is it a ghost or a hex?”

  Stella shook her head, which pulsed with pain. “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was like a goat’s bleat.

  “Maybe both,” said Cettina.

  AFTER THE DOOR BLUDGEONING INCIDENT, Stella never went back to the schoolhouse. Neither did Cettina. At the end of their formal educations, at ages nine and seven, respectively, they’d learned how to make the letters of the alphabet. They’d learned some basic Italian. They could perform a Roman salute. They could add and subtract numbers, which their mother had already taught them at home, and they could sing Maestra Fiorella’s favorite songs. They’d learned that it was important to segregate boys and girls, and that when resources were limited, the boys should get them first. They had learned by their teacher’s example how to force charity, manipulate favors, and not feel guilty about taking advantage of any situation. Some of the lessons would have more impact than others.

  * * *

  THE WEEK AFTER STELLA’S third almost-death, Antonio Fortuna showed up in Ievoli unannounced. His wife hadn’t heard from him in seven years. Assunta tried to hide her dismay, but she couldn’t fool Stella.

  It was the first time Stella was old enough to remember her father’s visit. In general he created a very strong impression on her that life was better without a capo famiglia, a man of the house. His voice and smells were too big for their one-room home. He did not talk to his children much, but when he did have something to say it was always at the top of his voice. The girls endured rump-smackings for unladylike offenses, like running in the house and speaking at the dinner table. These had not been punishable before, and Stella’s pride smarted and temper soured under Antonio’s new regime.

  Stella had been told she loved her father and that her father loved her, but now that they’d met they were two differently sized strangers with nothing in common except Assunta. Stella wasn’t sure Antonio even knew her name, for the number of times she’d heard him say it. Most of all she disliked the change he effected in her mother. Assunta’s face was pinched and her eyes drooped; she seemed simultaneously annoyed and exhausted. She cleaned up his extra messes and bowed her head when he shouted at her. She must have been lonely, because Za Ros and Nonna Maria no longer stopped by to visit. In general, the house was a dour, joyless place. Stella was exactly old enough to wonder what the point of having a husband or father was, when he seemed to be a source of arbitrary disorder and suffering.

  I fear that the timing of Antonio’s visit was very bad indeed. I wonder how Stella’s life might have turned out differently if she had had a father earlier, when she would have been too young to be critical of his dominion; whether she might have grown into a teenage girl with more predictable desires who would have seen romance and marriage as a prize to be won and not a sentence to be endured.

  The most disgusting thing about her father was watching him use her mother’s body. It happened almost every night, in or near the second bed Antonio had built against the northern wall of the house on the first day he came back to the village. Stella was used to nestling into Assunta’s fleshy bosom to be petted and caressed to sleep, but now her mother slept in the new bed on the other side of the room, and Stella would be dragged out of sleep by the whisper of her mother’s voice: Tonight, again? Aren’t you tired? or Be quieter, the children will hear you. These susurrations would blend into other noises, slap-slapping and suppressed grunting that Stella could hear even over her brother’s and sister’s heavy sleep-breathing. And Stella would watch whatever she could see, because it made no sense to her why her parents did this same meaningless thing over and over again, her father’s yellow buttocks bobbing in the light of the summer moon and her mother’s thighs jiggling in the wrinkles of her gathered nightdress. When she caught a glimpse of her mother’s face in the dark, it always wore what looked like an expression of worry.

  The week before the annual Ievoli fhesta of Santa Maria Addolorata, the Blessed Lady of Sorrows, was when the Thing happened. Somehow it had not happened before, in all the nights Stella had sucked on her cheeks and watched her father do the job to her mother—but that night, he looked up mid-exertion and he caught his daughter’s eye. Stella’s gut seized and she pressed her face into the mattress and pulled her arm over her head, but it was too late. When he finished with Assunta, Antonio came over to the children’s bed.

  “Tonnon,” Stella heard her mother whisper from her bed.

  “One minute.”

  “Let them sleep.”

  Peeking under her armpit, Stella trembled in sickened fear as she saw his bare legs come to a stop in front of her bed.

  “I know you’re awake,” he said to her. “You little pervert.”

  Stella felt like she was going to vomit. She had heard the word before, although she wasn’t sure what it meant. She tried to lie completely still.

  “Look at me,” her father said. Stella didn’t move.

  “Tonnon!” Assunta called with more urgency.

  “Quiet, woman.” His feet shifted on the floor. The black hairs on his calves were as wiry as a pig’s. “Mariastella. Look at me or I’ll whip you till you’re dead.”

  There was nothing for it. Pretending she wasn’t about to be sick, Stella removed her arm from her face and pushed herself up to prim sitting position. She couldn’t make herself say anything but she scowled up at her father. In front of her face was his penis, which she forced her eyes away from, although it shone slickly in the gray starlight from the window.

  Antonio looked down at her for a moment. “You like to watch? Eh?” He grasped her chin and stepped closer so that the odor of his groin, sweat-thick and ferric, filled her nose. “You like to look at your papa’s thing? Why’s that? You like to dream about men’s things? Are you growing up to be a little slut?”

  Stella bit on the inside of her cheeks. Her mouth was sour with bile and she swallowed back a semi-solid reminder of her dinner.

  “Are you gonna be a slut?” He dug his fingers into her jaw; Stella never cried, but the crush of his grip brought tears to her eyes. “You better not be.”

  “Antonio, leave her alone.” There was an edge of panic in Assunta’s voice. “She’s just a child.”

  “A child whose mother has been raising her to be a slut,” Antonio said. “Good thing I got here when I did. No daughter of mine is gonna be a slut. You hear?”

  Stiff with terror and fury, Stella said nothing. She focused on fighting down the bile, on willing the tears pooling in her eyes to be reabsorbed.

  “I said, did you hear me?” Antonio repeated. Then in one abrupt motion,
he bent over, jammed his hand up the skirt of her nightdress, and pinched the tight, delicate skin of her private area. Stella cried out in shock as much as pain.

  “Antonio!” Assunta shrieked.

  “Do you?” Her father was pinching her so hard she could feel the blood throbbing in her soft tissue. “This is for your husband. No one else. You let anyone else touch you here and I’ll kill you myself.”

  He released her flesh and pulled his hand away; the removal was awkward and his arm became tangled in Stella’s nightdress for an absurd stretch of moments. Stella’s mind and body were a murk of fear and disgust and rage and pain and fluids. She was barely aware of her mother’s embrace as Assunta climbed into the children’s bed, wrapping her arm around her daughter’s shivering torso.

  “You must not upset your father, my little star,” Assunta whispered in Stella’s ear as she stroked her hair. “You must not be stubborn with him or make him angry so he hurts you.”

  Stella wasn’t listening. Her shaking grew worse, into uncontrollable spasms. Her tender private skin ached and swelled, and pain shot up through her pelvis and into her gut. She never would let anyone touch her there again. And she would never again wonder if she loved her father, or if he loved her.

  IT WASN’T CLEAR HOW LONG Antonio was staying. Was he going to be a permanent part of their lives now? He spoke of America as if that were his home, so maybe he would eventually leave again. But the days dragged by and still Antonio stayed.

  Every night since he’d pinched her, Stella was terrorized by the idea that her father might attack her while she was asleep. It kept her awake past the point of exhaustion. If Stella woke during the night she would hear her father’s snoring and be unable to think of anything except his presence across the room. She slept on the outside; she felt obliged to use her body as a vanguard to protect Cettina, who Stella knew would be too stupid to protect herself.

  WHEN SEPTEMBER CAME, Stella went to work at her first job, down the mountain in Barona Monaco’s olive groves. It was Stella’s idea to go to work, but Cettina came with her, of course. They weren’t going to school anymore, and there was no point sitting at home when they could be making money—especially if it meant they could avoid their father.

  To get to the barona’s groves, you crossed the stone bridge over the gully, but then instead of continuing right toward Feroleto, you headed straight down the steep forested hillside, following the winding mule path. And then in one breath the wet, spicy fragrance of the forest gave way to the hot, soily smell of the cultivated fields, the gray-green expanse of uleveti. The olive trees were like bushy animals huddled together, furry with their slender two-tone leaves that changed color in the wind. When Stella crossed her eyes the valley became a soft, uninterrupted blanket of blue-gray-green, the color of the lichen that grew on the cistern where she helped her mother wash their clothes.

  Gaetano and Maurizio Felice, neighbor brothers who were a few years older than the Fortuna girls, introduced them to the barona’s overseer. The first day, Stella and Cettina helped the Felice boys, but the second day they knew what to bring for themselves: old blankets, bread for lunch, one empty glass bottle apiece, a small cloth purse. The boys demonstrated the technique: you shook a tree, hard. The olives that were ripe enough would fall to the ground. Stella and Cettina knelt to pick them up and stashed them in their cinched-up aprons. You had to be careful not to pick up any that weren’t firm to the touch, and which might have been lying on the ground before the tree-shaking, because even one rancid olive could leave a greasy smear on the millstone and poison the flavor of the oil in that batch.

  Around 4 P.M., when the day was noticeably cooling, the girls would knot the olives in the harvest cloths, balance the loads on their heads, and follow the path through the groves down to the press, which was near Barona Monaco’s enormous house. A good day of picking would yield olives enough for five bottles of oil. As the miller inspected their olives and scattered them evenly over the great stone plate of the press, the girls would siphon off their own single bottle of olive oil—their pay for a day’s labor.

  The cloth purse the girls brought to the fields each day was, of course, for stealing. At stopping time, as they knotted their bundles, they also each packed a fat pouch with smooth, firm olives, which their mother would either serve fresh with dinner or would preserve for the winter. Stella and Cettina knotted their pouches under their skirts, making sure no telltale bulge would arouse suspicion if they were stopped by the pinch-faced overseer on their way home.

  Stella loved fieldwork. She loved the leaves and the sweat and watching her progress build on itself, apronful by apronful. Her mind became empty, like a long prayer, as if God were speaking to her through the warm dirt on her hands and the burn in her thighs. She relished the disorienting moments of putting down her foot too quickly and feeling a cool, smooth olive splay her bare toes.

  After the war, a land reform bill would force the heirs of the absent Barona Monaco to sell off this land. Contadini who had harvested for her could harvest it for themselves, now, if they could scrape together the capital to buy a piece. Stella would be long gone by then, but a second cousin she never met would own the very acre of olive trees Stella worked in on her first day.

  AUTUMN BECAME WINTER, and Antonio stayed and stayed. Eventually all the olives would be harvested and Stella would be trapped at home with her father. She hoped by then he would have moved on.

  It was too late for Assunta, anyway, who had begun to swell with another baby. She became bloated and would have to lie down for the whole afternoon. Her legs were cinched with bulging veins and her feet wouldn’t fit into her church shoes anymore. An unfair consequence of her father’s lust, Stella thought, the price her mother had to pay for something she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE ANTONIO FINALLY LEFT, in February 1930, Assunta prepared a going-away feast of thick tagliatelle pasta with garlic and her peperoncino olive oil. Antonio didn’t like beans—he said no one but poor people ate them in America—which put a limit on Assunta’s cooking, given what was available in the winter.

  Over this dinner, Antonio informed his family he was never coming back. “I’m done with this garbage way of life,” he said. “No meat to eat, no running water, worrying that the wolves will come for you when you take a shit in the woods. It’s so backward here and you don’t even know because you live like animals, you can’t even imagine anything better than animals.” Antonio downed his wine and refilled his glass. “I waste so much money going back and forth, giving up jobs and having to find new jobs. This is it, this time. A one-way trip.”

  Stella tried not to let her hopes rise too much that he was telling the truth. She had known her father to bluster before.

  “That’s why I stayed so long this time,” he was saying. When he ate, he pushed pasta onto his fork using a piece of bread. “To spend some time with my mother. I’ll probably never see her again, unless she comes to America.”

  Assunta adjusted the rag tied over her hair. She was studying her husband, who hadn’t looked up from his food to tell this lie. Cettina caught Stella’s eye, and Stella shook her head so her sister wouldn’t interrupt. Stella picked up pieces of pasta between her fingers, one at a time, and watched her parents, waiting for something to happen.

  When it had been quiet for long enough, Antonio said to the table at large, “We’ll all be Americans soon. The first thing I do when I get there, I’m going to take my citizenship test, and then I’ll bring you all over to live with me.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Assunta said suddenly. “Ievoli is my home. My family is here.”

  Stella was as shocked to hear her mother talk back as she was disturbed by her father’s threat.

  “We are family, woman,” Antonio replied. “One flesh, before God and man. These are my children I gave you.”

  Stella felt dread spreading across her chest. Please don’t cry, Mamma. He would beat her, he would beat them all.<
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  But Assunta didn’t cry. “I meant my family,” she said, her voice as hard as a chestnut. “Who will take care of my mother if I leave? Who will take care of the baby’s grave?”

  Antonio shrugged. “You all will come to America and we’ll be a family there. I will buy a big house on an acre of land and we will drive from place to place in an automobile. You’ll never have to see a donkey again.”

  This was a mean thing to say. They all loved their donkey.

  “I don’t need another house. I have a house,” Assunta said. “This is my house, which you’re eating in right now.”

  For the first time, Antonio seemed stimulated by the conversation. He brought his hand down flat on the broad planks of the table. “Eating food you bought with my money that I gave you.”

  “I have a house already,” Assunta said again. She stood and began stacking the children’s dirty dishes. “I fed your children for years when you didn’t send any money. We have everything we need right here.”

  Antonio laughed angrily. “You think I need you? You think there aren’t plenty of women in l’America? I have all the women I want over there. Women who give me less trouble.”

  Assunta looked as if she had been struck. She placed one hand on her belly, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps making a point.

  Stella felt the masticated paste of the pasta congealing into an uncomfortable clump in her gut. She was only ten, but she knew what her father meant. She had the picture in her mind, the shining buttocks waving in the moonlight, his expression of concentration fixed on the back of some woman besides her mother.

  Antonio understood that he had behaved badly, but he was not a weak man, as he would show them, and it was his prerogative to upset them when there was disorder and his wife spoke back to him. He stood up so that his stool fell and he gripped his wife’s chin with one hand.

  “Listen,” he said. “I don’t need you and you don’t need me. But you promised God to obey and serve me.” He released her chin and she took a step back. “I’m offering to take care of you and of our children, which is the right thing to do. Now you decide. You can come be my wife in America, or you can stay here and not be my wife. But I’m not going to argue about it anymore.”