The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

  The Fortuna house was among the shabbiest now. The Fortuna girls were at a social disadvantage, with their missing father and no dowry. But by 1935, when Stella was fifteen and Cettina about to turn fourteen, they had established themselves nonetheless as the Ievoli town beauties. They were good-looking to begin with, all clear skin and plump lips. But Stella had made them the most beautiful by making them the best dressed.

  With the little bit of extra money she’d made from selling silk and lace pieces, Stella had purchased cloth from the peddler to make herself and Cettina fine new dresses. She experimented with stylish puffed sleeves and narrow, tailored waists. The girls changed into these dresses for mass in the evening, which was a vanity the Lord surely sanctioned because it gave everyone in town a reason to come to church, to gossip about the pretty, vain Fortuna girls.

  Ever ambitious, Stella spent the summer of 1935 making herself and Cettina each a pacchiana, a festival costume. They were enormously complicated, as Stella was learning piece by piece. Most women commissioned a pacchiana from a specialty dressmaker. Fathers saved up for years for a daughter’s pacchiana, which would last the rest of her life, albeit with a changeable second skirt—green for the maiden, red for the married woman, black for the widow.

  Well, Stella didn’t have much money, but she did have a will to conquer this task. She and Cettina were going to the festival this year—they were going all the way to Nicastro for the first time in their lives. Her neighbor Gae Felice had told her the Nicastro festival was much bigger than Ievoli’s, two days of dancing and music and vendors selling everything from anise candy to gold jewelry to painted postcards from the monks of San Francesco in Paola. Assunta had promised she would allow her daughters to go to the Nicastro fhesta if Stella could make the costumes, which seemed safely impossible, but she should have known how stubborn Stella was when she wanted something.

  Stella needed a model to base her project on. Assunta’s pacchiana was not ideal. It had been made cheaply the year Assunta was courting, when her father had dropped dead and left Maria with so little money for Assunta’s dowry. Instead Stella modeled her work after her Nonna Maria’s well-made pacchiana, which was nonetheless fifty years old and needed a little modernization. Her blind grandmother put on the pieces one by one, showing Stella how they must attach. Together they ran their hands over the seams, Stella studying and reconstructing in her mind, her nonna spinning to demonstrate how the skirt should lift, how the shawl should drape. Maria’s wilted eye socket disappeared behind her cheeks as she smiled like a carefree girl.

  There were many pieces to a pacchiana, and Stella had to make two of each, one for herself, one for Cettina: long white underskirt, then the second linen skirt, bright green like the leaves of an orange tree, which a girl wrapped voluminously around her waist to create a bustle. Then the black wool bodice, which fell in a knee-length fringed apron. The torso must be close-fitted over the rib cage; here Stella had the opportunity to show off their figures. Black sleeves hung to the elbow, below which Stella would attach the eyelet lace she was crocheting. Above the bodice, demurely covering the cleave of the breasts, the costume allowed a single vivacious strip of red cloth to peek out from the swaths of black and white.

  Cettina’s contribution to the costume was the belt. It was the width of a fingerprint and would be cinched as tightly as possible to reinforce the hourglass effect of the waterfalls of cloth. Cettina was a patient embroiderer as long as she had a pattern to follow, and Stella stitched some flowers and vines that her little sister copied in tiny detail.

  The week of Ferragosto, after their pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin at Dipodi, Stella finished the costumes. Cettina helped her lay them out on the bed for their mother to see. Assunta wasn’t satisfied; “You have to make sure it all does what it’s supposed to do, Stella,” she said. So the girls helped each other dress. Even though they had tried on the pieces one at a time over the last few months, it still felt strange, like crossing a bridge, when Stella put on the entirety of the costume and saw the way her mother and sister were looking at her. And there was her little sister in the full regalia of an adult lady—her little sister, an inch taller than Stella herself, her bosom exploding so energetically from the tight-fitting bodice that it was impossible not to look. Well, that’s what the dress was supposed to do. Stella looked down at her own bosom, standing forth so buoyantly proud of itself. People would be looking at that, too.

  “Fhijlie mie,” Assunta said. She was crying, her open-eyed tears. “My girls, you are ladies.” She touched Stella on the forehead, creating the tiny cross three times with her thumb to banish the mal’oicch’ before moving on to Cettina. “Now is when you have to be the most careful. Now is when everyone will be jealous.”

  THE FORTUNAS LEFT FOR THE NICASTRO FHESTA AT DAWN, the girls sitting stiffly in the Felice brothers’ cart in their bosom-plumping pacchiana corsets. Stella’s heart was racing with anticipation at the thought of visiting bustling Nicastro, of a festival attended by thousands of people. As the cart wended down the rutted mountain road, Stella’s breasts bounced ostentatiously—much closer to her chin than they usually were, which was both thrilling and unsettling. Men would look at her. Was that something she wanted, though? The memory surfaced, inexplicably, of her father’s naked injunction, of the way he had pinched her in the dark. As the sun rose on their party, pinking the silver undersides of the olive leaves, Stella tried to shove away the nauseating thought of her father.

  Gae and his brother Maurizio jovially walked the whole way beside the cart, chatting with Assunta like they were old friends. The Felice boys had a knack for flirting with older ladies, and Assunta didn’t mind pretending she wasn’t onto them. She had her habitual black hair cloth tied over her head—no getting too festive—but her face was bright with excitement, which smoothed away the worry lines.

  Nicastro was an ancient city, cascading down a mountain below the ruins of a Norman castle. All the streets were paved with flagstones and lined by crumbling but immortal mortared Norman walls. The central corso was a grand boulevard, wide as a field. By the time they arrived, it was already roaring with hawkers and music. There were more people than Stella had seen in her life, or even imagined. Black skirts and men’s long black cloaks eddied between the carts and wooden stalls filling the cobbled chiazza. There were rich, cream-skinned girls with gold crucifixes or cornetto charms sparkling on chains that lay weighty on their bosoms, rising and falling to catch the sunlight. Stella tried to imagine how much those necklaces must have cost.

  The Fortuna women walked timidly among the vendors, with Gae leading them like a friendly sentinel. Giuseppe had taken his allowance from Assunta and followed Maurizio off into the crowd, and they didn’t see that contingent again until it was time for lunch. By then, Stella had grown accustomed to the hot energy and loosened up, happy to drink wine and clap along to the music.

  The throng of black pacchiana skirts was interrupted by splashes of unexpected color. Stella first noticed a woman in an eye-catching dress as pink as mandevilla. Stella stared—she could not even imagine what dye might make that color. The woman’s black hair was uncovered, and—Stella realized—she was coming toward them.

  Assunta, who was holding on to Cettina’s elbow, also saw the woman approaching and tugged her daughters around in a quick about-face.

  “Zingara,” Assunta whispered to them. Gypsy. In fact, Assunta would not have felt confident making such a pronouncement if she hadn’t overheard another woman alerting her companion a moment earlier.

  Cettina’s head whipped around for a second look, and Assunta smacked her daughter’s hand. “Don’t look at them or they’ll steal your purse.”

  Stella felt her heart speed. Real Gypsies. She tried to sneak a look without turning her head.

  “Just look away,” Gaetano told her. “And mind your money at every moment.”

  “Why are they here?” Cettina whispered.

  “To beg,” Gae said. “And to ta
ke advantage of people who don’t know any better.”

  Cettina’s face was red. “No, I mean, why are they here, in Nicastro, if nobody likes them? Why don’t they go somewhere else?”

  “No one likes them anywhere,” Gae said. “There would be nowhere to go.”

  Cettina spent her allowance on an oil-fried batter pastry. Stella watched, rapt, as the vendor dropped liquid batter in the skeeching oil, fished out the fluffed dough, dipped a spoon into a jar of chestnut flower honey—how much must a jar of that size cost!—and shook amber droplets onto the hot pastry. He served it to Cettina on a thin piece of pinewood. Cettina shared with Stella, of course.

  Stella chose for herself a piece of anise candy, liquirizia. It was salty and spicy and made her tongue curl, Stella who could chew the hottest chili peppers without shedding a tear. She browsed with longing through the wares of the cloth vendors, through tables of ribbon and glossy threads and buttons. It was good to understand what she was missing by only buying from the peddler, and also whether there were items she could haggle harder over in the future.

  Assunta bought a few things: a special hard cheese; dried Sila porcini mushrooms that were said to be more delicious than meat. There was a fat bareheaded gold seller with a retinue of swarthy young men protecting his table. Assunta stopped and inspected every piece on display. She was looking for something particular.

  “How much is this?” she asked the man behind the table.

  Before the fat man opened his mouth to answer, Gaetano stepped forward to stand at Assunta’s shoulder, tipping his hat respectfully to the gold seller, who tersely quoted a price. Assunta looked at Gae, who nodded; it was fair.

  Stella, grudgingly impressed by Gae’s gallantry, moved in closer so she could see what the prize was. It was a tiny cornetto, to protect against the Evil Eye, shaped like a pepper and carved from white bone.

  “This is what you need now, at your age,” Assunta said. She hadn’t turned around, but Stella knew her mother was talking to her. It was because of all that cleavage Stella had on display. “To keep away the fascinations.” Assunta asked the vendor, “Do you have another one?”

  “No, signora. Just what you see here.” The vendor leaned over his own belly to point to another piece on the table. “There’s this one that’s carved bone, as well, but it’s black, not white.”

  Assunta considered the piece, stooping over the table so her nose was inches from it. “It’s different,” she said.

  “Yes, the color is different.” The fat man’s voice sounded both patient and tired. “Otherwise, same thing, carved bone, same price.”

  Assunta straightened and turned to Gae. “Please tell the man I want to buy both.” She patted her right breast a little more energetically than was appropriate in public, not realizing she was letting everyone around her know where she kept her money. “We’ll come back for them in a minute.”

  Stella and Cettina retreated with their mother to the closest alley, where, looking very suspicious, Assunta crouched to retrieve her wealth from between her bosoms and spread the coins in her palm for Stella to count. The two charms would cost almost all their money. On the other hand, wasn’t this what festivals were for, splurging on the things they couldn’t get every day?

  They returned to the gold seller’s table, where Assunta handed her money to Gae, and Gae presented it to the fat man. The charms were strung on leather thongs before they were passed along to Assunta.

  “Someday someone will buy you a real gold chain for this,” Assunta told her daughters. “Maybe me, maybe your husband.” She tied a charm around each of their necks, the white one for Stella, the black one for Cettina. “Remember, when the time comes, the big gold chain looks shinier, but the little chain actually has more gold in it, because there’s less space between the links. You’ll know you’ve found a good man if he buys you a very small chain.”

  In the afternoon, the music took over, and the shopping gave way to singing, drinking, and dancing. Stella felt shy watching the other girls dancing at first, but also felt envious of their comeliness. It was impossible not to look at them with their smiling cheeks and swirling hair. Soon any shyness had melted away and Stella and Cettina joined the circle of laughing girls they had never met before, spinning on the bare balls of their feet to the sharp, endless music of the concertina and violin—that was the secret of the tarantella, to keep dancing so the spider had no chance to bite you. Stella especially enjoyed sneaking glances at the concertina player, a handsome and animated young man in his mid-twenties, with a friendly face and curling hair. The music he made with his hands stirred her blood and almost wiped away the tainted memory of her father that had been dogging her all day.

  Stella was off her guard, indulging her warming thoughts, when a voice behind her said, “Hello, bella ragazza.”

  If she hadn’t been so startled, she might have reacted differently—defensively, or sarcastically. Instead she whirled around, her eyes wide, and said, “Me?”

  The young man who stood there behind her, close enough that she’d heard him over the music and laughter, was five inches taller than Stella, and maybe three years older. He had curling dark hair and unruddied skin. He lifted his black cap and bowed.

  “Ah, I should have said beautiful girls,” he corrected himself. Stella felt Cettina breathing heavily, excitedly at her shoulder. “Beautiful sisters?” Neither sister said anything to affirm or deny. “You’re not Nicastro girls. I would never forget your faces if I had seen them before. Where are you from?”

  “Ievoli,” Cettina replied, and probably would have said more except Stella pinched the skin of her sister’s forearm hard enough to make her squeal.

  “You don’t just tell strangers where you’re from,” Stella chided.

  “Your sister is right,” the man said. Without looking, Stella knew Cettina’s eyes would be reddening with embarrassed tears. The man might have sensed it, too. “But anyway, I’m not a stranger, so you shouldn’t feel bad.” He indicated with his chin. Gae Felice, their chaperone, had somehow drifted into the conversation. Moments earlier he had been half the corso away with a group of young men, but he must have been watching his mice like a hawk. “Are you related to this man? He is my friend.”

  “Not relatives, but they are like sisters to me.” Gae stepped forward and clapped the dark-eyed man on the shoulder. “Stefano. How is it?”

  “Oh, not too bad, Gae.” Stefano smiled at Stella, who felt goose bumps rise on the warm skin of her arms. He liked her, he was making no secret of it. He said to Gae, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your sisters here?”

  Gae smacked Stefano’s chest—not gently—with the back of his hand. “Like sisters, I said. Let’s not go too far.” To Stella and Cettina, he said, “Ladies, allow me to present Stefano Morello, of Sambiase. You know Sambiase?” The girls shook their heads, and Gae pointed toward the far side of the chiazza, where the Nicastro road led toward the sea. “If you go on in that direction, it’s the next paese.”

  “A pleasure,” Stella said, although since she didn’t know anything about this man she was careful not to sound too sincere.

  Stefano removed his hat and bowed. “And may I ask the names of your mysterious lovely friends?” he asked Gae.

  Gae did not answer immediately; he stared at Stefano, a territorial challenge. “Mariastella and Concettina Fortuna. And just over there”—he gestured to the rock where Assunta was leaning, clapping her hands to the music, happily unaware that young men were imperiling her daughters’ virtue—“is their mother, Signora Assunta Mascaro.”

  “I look forward to being introduced,” Stefano said, unaggressive, confident. Under the pressure of his attention, Gae’s gentlemanly chaperoning had taken on a new flavor, a proprietorial one. Stella couldn’t decide whether the two men were good friends teasing each other or if there was something more at stake.

  Gae and Stefano chatted for a few minutes while Stella and Cettina stole glances at each other, not quite
communicating their opinions. It was impossible not to compare the two young men. Stella knew Gaetano was admired by all the Ievoli girls, but Stella rather preferred Stefano’s look, slender and clean and dark. His face was small and fine under the shaking array of black curls.

  “Now,” Stefano said, and the music was shifting as if to help him along, “might I have the honor of a dance with you belle?”

  “We don’t dance with men,” Cettina said. The rules were one thing she was secure in.

  “Oh, no,” Stefano said. His face was exaggerated chagrin, but he was not surprised. “Well, then, perhaps we can join your mother and enjoy the music together?”

  That was what they did. Assunta was wary of the new man but happy to be his friend the moment Gae, who was very high in her esteem, gave Stefano his endorsement. Stefano bought them a flask of wine, which they shared as Giuseppe ran among the dancers, madcap as a street cat with everywhere to be. As Stella relaxed, she decided she rather liked Stefano Morello, who was smart and smooth and who wasn’t chasing down other dance partners but was content to spend his holiday charming her mother. Would she want him to court her? To hold her hand, to kiss her? Her mind reeled away from that idea, and she focused on the music.

  They stayed at the fhesta until the bells rang for the six o’clock mass, then took communion in the cavernous Nicastro church and set out for home. As the Felice brothers escorted them up the mountain path, Mauri walking ahead of the cart with a lantern so the donkey didn’t take a turn off the road, Stella, who was exhausted and exhilarated all at once, dozed and awoke again. She had a song in her head, “Calabrisella Mia,” a song the musicians had sung twice that day. It was the story of a young man whose heart is broken by a beautiful dark-eyed girl who does not love him back.