The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

  “I think . . .” Stella had to clear her throat again. “I think I want to go to bed.” She made a show of lifting the pillow and placing the steak knife under it. “Maybe it would be best if you slept on the floor.”

  “No, thank you,” Carmelo said. “I’m not feeling tired. I think I’ll go have a drink.” He tipped his hat to her and said in English, “Have a very nice evening, Signora Maglieri.”

  She had saved herself for one more night. She lay in bed, trying to dispel the panic of the encounter. Her heart ached from pounding; it had been pounding and pounding for so many days.

  ON THURSDAY SHE WOKE at the weak blond light of dawn, again to a half-empty honeymoon bed. She hadn’t thought to close the blinds. She lay where she was among the cascade of decorative pillows and watched the ceiling change color as the dawn yellow deepened and brightened. What a bed this was; she would never sleep in another like it. She wished she had been able to enjoy it.

  She finally got up when she had to pee too badly to put it off any longer. Locking the bathroom door behind her, she took a long shower, letting the hot water run over her wantonly, then spent some time reassembling her curls in the mirror over the sink. She would wear her last dress today, her pink Easter dress.

  Stella had just pinned on her hat when she heard the key in the lock. She was standing by the window, emptying ticket stubs that had collected in her handbag onto the bedside table. Carmelo closed the door behind him, tossed his hat onto the bed, and took off his winter coat. He was rumpled-looking, his hair awry, like a man, Stella thought, who had slept in a chair.

  “Take off your dress and get in the bed,” he said to her.

  Immediately Stella’s heart was pounding in her ears again. Her fingers tingled numbly on her ticket stubs. She made herself laugh, as if he were joking.

  “Take off your dress and get in the bed,” he repeated. “You’re not my wife until you do it, and I’m returning home with a wife.”

  “No,” she said, turning her back on him. The knife was far away, and he was coming toward her; she could hear the compressions of his feet in the plush carpet.

  “You’re my wife, Stella. Wives do what their husbands tell them to. And now I’m telling you to take off your dress.” His fingers closed around her upper arm.

  “Get your dirty hands off of me,” Stella said, twisting out of his grip. She could have opened the door to the hallway and run down the stairs, but instead she did what was most familiar and ducked into the bathroom, throwing her weight against the door to close it. But no—he had jammed his foot in, he was forcing it open. She fought back with all her strength, her high heels sliding on the shower-wet tile floor, her mind white with panic. He was so strong—she was nothing in comparison. The door opened, inexorably, and he was there in the bathroom with her.

  He shoved her shoulder so she spun around, her face to the mirror. He used his left arm to hitch her elbows behind her back; her shoulders twinged at the strain. He kept her pressed to the sink with his pelvis against her rear end as he yanked her dress up over her hips, then roughly jerked down her girdle and stockings. It took a long time, because the elastic was strong; when he tried to tear it, it pulled taut against her tenderest flesh.

  Stella was trapped in her dream—it was the same listless helplessness, the hands rough and unstoppable as her mind sank into lassitude. Cold marble pressed against her belly, and she stared at her meaningless face in the mirror through that strange, terrifying moment of skin chafing skin, a dry, uncomfortable contact rub that was only a prelude to the real pain. Her mind was empty, a sleepy wipe the gray-white color of a dream.

  You hold on to it so tightly and so fearfully for so long, and then it’s gone so quickly, like a pot of water emptied into a stream.

  She felt her own blood dripping down her left thigh in a fast-moving pearl, the sink marble heating up against her belly. Carmelo’s face in the mirror bore an expression of intense concentration as he thrust, thrust, and thrust toward a deliberately speeded conclusion. His liquid followed the pearl of blood down the same trail of her left thigh, and as Carmelo pulled away from her with a noisy sigh she looked down to see pinked-up semen had landed on the white tile floor, milky-clear like the albumen of a fertilized chicken egg. As Carmelo left the bathroom, shutting the door on her behind him, Stella knelt to the ground and began to clean up the sticky mess with a fold of toilet paper.

  Part III

  Maturity

  Fhijlii picciuli, guai picciuli; fhijlii randi, guai randi.

  Little children, little problems; big children, big problems.

  —CALABRESE PROVERB

  U lupu perde llu pilu, ma no llu vizzu.

  A wolf may lose his fur, but never his vices.

  —CALABRESE PROVERB

  Chi sulu mangia sulu s’affuca.

  Those who eat alone choke alone.

  —CALABRESE PROVERB

  Death 6

  Exsanguination

  (Motherhood)

  ONE MORNING IN SEPTEMBER 1954, Stella Maglieri woke up alone in the bed she shared with her husband; he’d left for his 5 A.M. shift at the electric company several hours earlier. Dawn lay tangerine-orange on the slats of the venetian blinds. Stella stared at the sheet where it pulled taut over the perfect ball of her belly. Inside the ball was her restless fifth fetus; if she delivered it alive it would become her fourth child. In the crib beside her was her third baby, ten months old and fussing; in the converted closet were her first and second, stacked in bunk beds. As she watched the sun slide over her stomach, a voice sounded in her head: You are nobody.

  For a moment Stella lay frozen, wondering if there was someone in her house. The voice was as clear as a factory boss on the claxon. You are nobody. But she hadn’t had a boss in six years, and besides, the voice sounded just like her own.

  You are nobody, it said again.

  And she wasn’t.

  THIS IS THE STORY of the sixth way Stella Fortuna almost died, of motherhood.

  * * *

  BEFORE THE MOTHERHOOD, THOUGH, there must be the pregnancy, which happened pretty much right there in that Montreal honeymoon hotel bathroom. The fact was, Stella Fortuna, who had survived five near-death experiences, had endured the thing she’d feared even more than death. This time, no one had any sympathy for her.

  For the thirteen hours of their train ride home, as the New England foliage burned by along the waterways on the other side of the window, Stella had seen none of the loveliness. Her mind was gray, and it grayed out the entire world. Someone could have snatched her hat right off her head and she might not have noticed. In the grayness there was one circle of thoughts: she was not a virgin anymore. She had given up the rosetta. A piece of someone else’s body was inside her even now. It was over, it was over, her choices, her chances to run. She could never have it back.

  THAT WAS THE BEGINNING OF HER MARRIED LIFE.

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN HARTFORD, Carmelo Maglieri took his new wife to visit her family before heading home to his tenement. Carmelo and Stella drank coffee at Assunta’s dining room table, eating angel wings left over from the wedding. Tina had made an orange cake, and Assunta served them on her yellow glass as though it were a special occasion.

  Stella sat through the visit feeling weary and ashamed. She let Carmelo do most of the talking, although she knew they were judging her for that, too—he’s subdued her, they must be thinking to themselves; he’s mastered her, finally someone has. The one thing everyone at the table knew was that Stella had been deflowered since they last saw her. They were marveling at how the act had changed her, the way people always talked about the change that came over a woman once she “knew.” Stella just needed the job done to her, and now she acts like a wife. Stella knew there was no one here, even among her dearest, who felt any compassion for her. As Carmelo told sugarcoated stories of Montreal and forks clicked against Assunta’s delicate dessert plates, Stella stole looks around the table, gauging. Her stooped, smiling mother, eyes we
t with affection for her handsome new son-in-law. Her frankly curious sister, stealing looks right back. Her smirking brother-in-law, Rocco. She couldn’t control what Rocco was imagining about her, and the fact that it probably wasn’t far from the truth made her ache with weakness.

  For once Stella wished Tina would hassle her, ask her too-blunt questions. She wanted to pour out her heartsickness, but she wasn’t sure how; maybe plainspoken Tina could drag it out of her. But the sisters had no private moment.

  As dusk fell Carmelo carried two boxes of Stella’s clothes to his car. He opened the passenger door for Stella, who got in the car as her family saw them off. Stella belonged to Carmelo now, and her lot in life was to follow where he led her. Tina waved as Carmelo drove away, but Stella couldn’t make herself wave back.

  CARMELO’S FRONT STREET APARTMENT was in a bachelor building, five floors of single-occupant rooms with a shared kitchen and a lone bathroom on the ground floor. The building was sixty years old and wasn’t up to any of the current residential codes; it was mildew-damaged from the floods of the 1930s. The arrangement was temporary, but noxious. The corridors were low and dim; the kitchen was full of dark scurrying.

  Carmelo’s room was on the third floor. The bed was only a single, nailed to the wall. There was a dresser for clothing and shelves on which Carmelo kept his pots, pans, and food, so neither the roaches nor the neighbors would have the opportunity to get into it. The room’s remaining space contained a card table and a folding chair that looked just like the ones they brought out from closets for parties at the Italian Society.

  Carmelo had courteously cleared two-thirds of his closet and half his dresser to make room for Stella’s clothes. He also kept the promise he’d made on their first date and never asked her to help with cooking. That evening he gathered various items from the pantry case into a pot. “I’ll get out of your way so you can unpack,” he said, and he did.

  Stella felt as if the world around her weren’t entirely real. Methodically she shook each dress out in the still, flat silence of the room. The street on the other side of the window was already fading, the October sun having set. As the room got progressively darker Stella looked around for a light switch, but couldn’t find one. Ten years earlier she had never imagined electricity, and now she wasn’t sure how to function without it.

  Carmelo returned half an hour later. She sat in the wooden chair in the dark as he set a steaming pot down on the card table. He opened the dresser and brought out three small candles, which he set together on a saucer and lit with the cigar lighter he always carried. He was humming to himself, a melody she didn’t recognize. In the light of the low candles, Stella saw the heat stains on the table between them. The pot contained pasta e fagioli, and it didn’t smell bad.

  Carmelo spooned soup into a bowl for Stella, then unwrapped a rind of very fine Parmigiano, sparkling with salt crystals, which he grated on top. She watched the shreds curl in the heat, a bounty of cheese from this man who wanted to show her now, again, how generous he was. Did they both already know it was too late? Or did only she?

  They were tired from the train journey and the disrupted, emotional evening previous, so they didn’t talk much. Carmelo told her what time he would leave in the morning, where to keep emergency change and valuables. When he ran out of things to advise on, he turned on the radio and tuned it to a station that played big band music. They finished eating, drank down glasses of red wine poured from a two-gallon jug. Then Carmelo took the dirty bowls and pot and left for the kitchen again.

  Stella’s stomach was a hard ball. She couldn’t fight anymore, fight only to lose again. As the saxophones on the radio hawed and rumbled, she changed into her white nightgown, took off her girdle and underwear, and got into Carmelo’s bed. Her mind was bright with the needling memory of what had happened in Montreal, of the warming marble pushing into her stomach as he thrust into her. As she waited for him to come back from the kitchen, she wondered if there was already the makings of a baby in her stomach, if it was already too late. She had to believe it was, that all hope was lost; otherwise, it would be unbearable every time she had to do it, to be thinking, Is today the day he will put a baby inside me? Was I safe up until now?

  When Carmelo came back, he arranged the clean dishes on the cold radiator to dry. He blew out the candles, and in the streetlight from the uncurtained window Stella could see him remove his shirt, which he hung in the closet, then his belt and pants, which he draped over the chair, and finally his undershirt and briefs.

  How did he seem so sure of himself in front of her? Had he been with so many women that undressing in front of one really didn’t trouble him at all? Or did his lack of shyness mean he didn’t care what she thought of him? Why should he, she supposed. He had no need to woo her anymore.

  Today she saw what he looked like naked, surprisingly diminished without his neat clothes, even a little comic with his exaggerated laborer’s tan, the unthreatening dough ball of penis and testicles swinging soft from a bird’s nest of black pubic hair. Her stomach cramped, the physiological anticipation of what was coming. The fact that Carmelo didn’t look so scary right now made her feel even weaker, more pathetic, for having given herself up to him yesterday.

  Her husband came to the bed and pulled back the blanket, revealing the shape of her legs under the lacy nightgown. Kneeling on the bed to her left, he peeled the nightgown up her legs. If Carmelo was pleased to see she was not wearing any panties—that there would not be that kind of conflict, at least, tonight—he didn’t give any sign. He shifted her buttocks away from the wall with one strong, decisive movement. Before her eyes in the half-dark, the shadowy shape of his penis began to change, bulging out from his darkened ball sack.

  Here it was, it was going to happen again. Stella was outside and away from her body, just like that day in the pigsty when the invisible hand had closed around her own. She watched from that remove as Carmelo arranged her knees. Her husband—the man she would spend the rest of her life with—he actually didn’t care how hurt and afraid she was; he would put her to use. A cold gush of air prickled up her hot, secret skin as he spat into the palm of his hand and reached down to rub himself. She could feel her heartbeat in her groin as his stomach came to rest for a moment against hers. Her dread and disgust gathered in her belly, a hard round stone. And then—there—it was inside her again.

  Her female skin was tender and she shuddered as he first penetrated her. The soreness abated quickly, and for a while it was an absurd but otherwise unremarkable rhythmic activity she watched Carmelo engage in: push, and push, and push. His expression seemed distant as she watched his face above her. Periodically he cupped her breast through the nightgown, giving it a gentle squeeze.

  After a few minutes of this, though, a different soreness took over as his plunging into her passage became drier and more abrasive. The discomfort increased steadily, and Carmelo seemed to feel it as well, because his thrusting sped up. Just as it was starting to become so painful Stella was wondering if she could ask him to stop, he made a noise in his throat and froze, his torso bucking backward, exactly as she had seen her father do over her mother. A few seconds passed, then Carmelo pulled himself away somewhat clumsily, his kneecap coming down on hers so that she gasped in pain and he apologized.

  As Carmelo stepped into his briefs, Stella lay still, the draft emitted by the thrown-back cover slowly chilling the wetness that lay on the jelly-soft skin of her thigh. She would very much have liked to get rid of the wetness, but she was unwilling to touch it. The thought of feeling it on her fingers made her clench her hands together.

  “Didn’t you want to use the bathroom?” Carmelo said.

  Stella shook her head, which was a silly thing to do in the dark, but she couldn’t find her voice. He must have understood because he got back into the bed, pulled the covers halfway up his chest, and said, “Well. Good night.” That was really it for him—all it took. After only a few loud, deep breaths, he was snoring.


  Stella lay in the narrow bed with one hip against the cold plaster wall and one against her husband’s hot thigh. There was nowhere to put her arms, so she folded her hands on top of her stomach. And in her exhaustion there was no more miserable thinking or terror or disgust or despair or confusion—somehow there was sleep.

  THIS IS WHAT MARRIAGE TURNED OUT TO BE: shared life in a small space. Keeping on, but with a man whose personal habits she was unfamiliar with, instead of with the family from whom she had learned all her own personal habits.

  Stella hated Carmelo’s apartment building. They didn’t have much, so it wasn’t crowded. Their wedding gifts would stay at Bedford Street until they had a place of their own. But the shared bathroom was a daily humiliation. She had to walk down two flights of stairs and stand in line; everyone coming in through the front door could see who was waiting for the bathroom—a better setup for burglary or molestation Stella couldn’t imagine. The toilet line was all men, and you could always count how many people were planning a number two because they came with a wad of toilet paper. Stella had spent her childhood shitting in the woods, but this—this was somehow worse. At least in the woods she had shat alone.

  There was the oddness of all-encompassing intimacy with Carmelo, even aside from offering him her body for his use. There was, for example, the fact that if she needed to do things like tweeze hairs out of her underarm he was going to be there to watch her do it. Dressing in front of each other was awkward, although Carmelo seemed to take it into stride that his wife would see him do silly-looking things like tug his trousers and briefs down to his knees, then pull them back up for manly adjustments before buckling his belt each morning. This was married life, Stella realized. Doing private things in front of another person without any comment.

  STELLA WAS NOT TRULY SUICIDAL, because she never wanted to die. She had fought death too hard for that. But, as the distinction goes, she often wished she did not have to be alive. Her current existence was a perverse realization of her greatest fear.