The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

  Her fingers vibrating, her conscious self retreating into the high-up window ledge of her mind, Stella turned away from her father so she faced the wall, toed off her shoes, contorted her arms to undo her own zipper. Her body undulated with shudders. She folded her dress and dropped it onto her shoes.

  “All of it,” Tony said. “Everything.”

  She unclipped her brassiere and watched it fall to the ground below the wealth of her hanging breasts, her elbows jerking, shivering as if she were freezing to death. Gooseflesh covered her arms, her scars rippling with cold fuzz. She hooked her thumbs into her girdle and, choking on saliva, peeled it down over her hips. Behind her the metallic click of her father’s belt buckle, the zzzziff of the leather strap being pulled out of its loops.

  But he didn’t rape her, like the dream version of her father would have. Because whatever other forms Tony Fortuna’s perversions took, he was not a man to throw away his daughter’s only asset, her virginity. He might have stared at her breasts and pinched her fat and given her nightmares about his unquenchable desires, but Tony knew where he drew his own line. A woman’s virginity was for her husband; that was a sacred rule. Tony had learned that rule from his own mother, whose father had not protected hers.

  No, he didn’t rape her, he only beat her. He told her to get on the bed, and when she resisted and screamed, he brought down his fist on her cheek, the same gesture as if he were slamming a glass down on the table. Later the molar and incisor he’d loosened with this blow would fall out, creating the third and fourth holes in Stella’s gums. After this impact, which made Stella’s head ring, she didn’t resist anymore, but lay on the bed and took the beating, leather belt and metal buckle against bare ass and thigh and back.

  “You’re worse than a donkey,” Tony said to her. She couldn’t see him, but his breathing was heavy, staggered. “I have to break you like a donkey if I’m going to teach you to obey your master.”

  Staring at the wall as she absorbed the pain, turning herself over to the ordeal so that it might end faster, she thought of the ciucciu they had left behind in Ievoli and wondered if Tony would have really done the same thing to him.

  THAT WAS WHEN STELLA FORTUNA GAVE UP. She gave up resistance. She gave up everything.

  STELLA MISSED TWO DAYS OF WORK because she couldn’t walk normally or sit in a chair. There was broken flesh all over her thighs and back that seeped blood for days before scabs finally crusted over. She lay on her belly on a blanket spread over her mother’s living room sofa, where she was allowed to sleep now because of the medical emergency. If anyone walked past her through the living room, Stella kept her eyes closed and her face turned to the upholstery.

  When Carmelo came over for dinner, Tony entertained him in the kitchen. Stella lay staring at the stitching on the cushions, listening to Carmelo’s booming laugh as the gray darkness within her spread. He brought her a bouquet of sunflowers, which Assunta arranged on the coffee table where Stella could see them, but the Fortunas didn’t allow Carmelo into the living room. What had her family told him? That she wasn’t feeling well? Or had they told him the truth? Soon he would own her broken body. The thought left her coldly empty.

  Her mother brought her a bowl of pastina and stroked her hair. “Your eye will be all better by the wedding, piccirijl’,” Assunta said. Stella didn’t answer. She had nothing to say to her mother.

  She had even less to say to her sister. Tina came in and sat on the chair next to Stella’s sofa. “I’m so sorry, Stella,” she said. “I didn’t know Rocco was going to tell Papa about the money. I couldn’t lie to him when he asked me. He’s my husband. I had to tell him the truth.”

  Stella heard her mother’s voice in her head, Cettina’s just little. She’s not smart like you. Concettina muscarella, my little bug.

  “I couldn’t lie to him when he asked me,” Tina said again.

  When Stella didn’t respond, Tina gave up and left Stella alone in her misery. Tina gave up awful fast these days.

  IN SOME SECRET PART of her suffering heart, had Tina wished this on her sister? Had Tina, with her controlling husband and unresponsive womb, desired to see her pretty, smart, charismatic sister thwarted?

  This thought pricked at Stella’s mind as she lay facedown on the couch. But she couldn’t live with it, and she suppressed it—so successfully that it would not surface again for forty years.

  SINCE TINA WAS ALREADY MARRIED, Stella’s maid of honor was Carolina Nicotera. I can’t tell you who the other bridesmaids were, because all the photos of the Maglieri wedding have been destroyed, and those details have been lost. If the photos had survived, though, Stella would have been smiling in none of them. She never smiled in a photo for the rest of her long life, because she now had four missing teeth to hide.

  Stella’s dress was made of white silk—a more expensive dress than Tina’s stiff, formal linen had been. Tony bought Stella a floor-length lace veil, just like Tina’s. What a waste, that she couldn’t just wear Tina’s. Of all things to throw away twenty-five dollars on—half the money she would have needed to run away.

  Stella did not remember having her hair done, taking photos, or even saying her vows. She was numb, almost blind, with fear so potent it became an enfolding blanket, a protective layer between her mind and the world. To the wedding guests, she appeared calm, beatific with her close-lipped half smile.

  The one part of the ceremony she did remember was their first kiss. Carmelo cupped her face in one white-gloved hand and leaned in cautiously, kissing her gently on her closed lips. Stella was shocked by the sensation of the kiss—its softness and electricity. She had never felt a man’s lips on hers before and the impact was unexpected. Her body recoiled in a shudder of fear, and she gripped Carmelo’s hand to regain herself. He was smiling into her face; he was so happy.

  The reception was at the State Armory, which had just opened its Officers’ Club, rentable as a special-occasions venue. Stella sat on the gold bridal chair on the head table dais. She sat and watched the dancing, and Carmelo sat beside her in solidarity. Seeing these happy people dance, this party ostensibly for her, Stella felt nothing but a sense of remove. She had no control over anything here. The feeling reminded her of one of her earliest memories, her child-hand clamped indelibly around a piece of bread as the pigs circled. She was about to be trampled, and there was nothing she could do, because someone else had seized her hand.

  THE HALL WAS RENTED THROUGH MIDNIGHT, but Stella left the party at nine forty-five. In the room cordoned off for the bridal party, Stella changed into her blue traveling suit, a large-buttoned jacket and trim-fitting skirt with matching pillbox hat, which Assunta had bought her at Sage-Allen. They were headed to Montreal for their honeymoon, where October could be cold. Her winter coat was folded on top of her waiting suitcase.

  Her mother and sister, who helped her take off her wedding dress, cooed over the suit, smoothing the fine blue fabric over her shoulders and breasts with their sturdy, affectionate hands. She was glad there was no mirror in the room, because she didn’t want to look herself in the eye. Her name was Stella Maglieri now, and her perfect blue-suited body was a package for a man to unwrap, to consume and interrupt and dismantle.

  Assunta took Stella’s arm; Tina took Stella’s suitcase and coat. Stella was escorted down the hallway, which seemed so dark, the music of the band so far away. Outside, Carmelo and Tony waited by Rocco’s idling Buick. Assunta and Tina, both crying, kissed Stella good-bye. Carmelo opened the sedan’s back door for Stella, then walked around the car to get in on the other side. He was nervous, too. He kept his hands carefully in his lap so there was the whole middle seat of space between them. Tony sat in the front passenger seat and Rocco drove them away. Her father was there to make sure she got on that train, by use of his bodily force if necessary.

  Stella had drunk nothing at all during the reception, lest alcohol make her even more vulnerable. Even wrapped in her numbing blanket of remove she couldn’t think of anything but
the threat of sexual intercourse. Her entire body was tense with anxiety, pulled into a hard curl like a snail disappearing into its shell.

  The Maglieris’ first night together as man and wife would be spent on a combination of trains. They would take the Boston & Maine Railroad service, which left Union Station at 11:15 P.M. In Boston they would transfer to another train, which would take them all the way up through New England to Canada. Carmelo kept the tickets folded in a leather travel wallet, together with a paper of instructions he had written down for himself. Stella stared out the dark window, feeling exhausted and hollow-eyed, until they reached South Station in Boston. It was almost as big as the train station in Napoli had been, although comparatively empty at this hour of night. For a bleary moment Stella imagined stepping on board a different train and riding it not to her own deflowering in Canada but instead home to Ievoli. There were no trains at the station, though, except the one she was getting off and the one she was about to get on; her choices were to carry on with her husband or go home to her father—not that she had any choices, or even a penny to her name. She had nothing at all except her traveling suit, two new holes in her mouth, and a cold invisible hand clamped around her own.

  * * *

  THEY ARRIVED IN MONTREAL at two in the afternoon on Sunday, worse for the wear. Carmelo’s twin sister, Carmela, and her husband, Paolo, met them at the station. Stella’s new sister-in-law was tall, maybe five six, trim but sturdy. The family resemblance around the nose and eyes was strong.

  Carmela presented them with a basket of food she had prepared for them: ham sandwiches, apples, a jar of homemade wine. Paolo drove them to their hotel, a stately building that reminded Stella of the manors on Prospect Avenue in West Hartford, minutely attended to and fragrant with wealth. The cut glass of the front door glittered in the drooping October sun as a white-uniformed bellhop held it open for them.

  Stella had never spent a night in a hotel before, with the exception of those awful nights in Napoli. A “hotel” in her imagination was shadowy and insidious, a place where men took a woman to do the job, where a girl’s father or brothers couldn’t walk in—a place where everyone knew what you were up to, a place full of complicit, smirking strangers. But this hotel was all marble counters and waxed floors, glowing with luxury—everything was finer than anything Stella had ever seen or touched.

  Carmela used her French to help the Maglieris check in. The hotel stay, five nights, was Carmela and Paolo’s gift to the newlyweds, and their apology for not attending the wedding. “Why don’t you take some time to relax and freshen up?” Carmela said. “We’ll come back at five o’clock and take you out for dinner.”

  Carmelo was given the key to room 6, which was on the second floor. As Stella followed her husband up the staircase, a roil of nausea swelled in her stomach. Her situation wasn’t any different from that of any other woman going to any other hotel—no more subtle or mysterious than any whore’s. Right now, everyone she knew—all the men she had ever rejected, all the women who had ever called her stuck-up—was imagining her checking into this hotel so she could have the job done to her. She imagined them imagining her indignity, how in that moment when Carmelo put his dirty end in her, she would have to think about the paesan’s collective amusement.

  Her breath came in shallow, grasping whuffs by the time they got to 6. Carmelo turned to her at the door. He had probably been lost in his own sexual reverie, for all she knew, anticipating the consummation of his four-year courtship. There was concern on his still-smiling face. “Are you all right?”

  Compulsively she waved off his arm. “Just lady troubles.” That might mean anything to him—it had just popped into her head, but it could buy her some time.

  The room would have seemed enormous if there had been any focal point in it besides the bed, which was fat with duvet and piled in red and gold pillows. The fabric on the pillows shone slightly. Strangers had drooled on those shining pillows, Stella realized. How could the hotel people clean shiny fabric like that? Carmela had sent a bouquet of white roses; they were waiting on the polished black dresser with a stiff gray card that said Congratulations Stella & Carmelo Maglieri. Stella thought of the money the Martinos had spent on her for this wondrous place. It was a shame she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

  “You want to lie down and rest?” Carmelo gestured to the heap of red and gold silk. “It’s been a long trip.”

  Yes. “No.” Her spine was creaking from the train ride. She couldn’t look at him, began to pull off her gloves instead. “I—I think I better go to the toilet.”

  “Yes, yes.” He bowed broadly and stepped out of her path. As she closed the door between them, she took a final look at her husband. He stood at the window watching the street, a square of sun lighting up his oiled black hair. He was still smiling.

  STELLA TURNED ON THE FAUCET for aural privacy and studied herself in the mirror. She tried to think about her situation. She wanted to feel nervous or angry or crafty, but instead she just felt tired.

  After a few minutes she couldn’t let herself run the water any longer; she felt guilty about the hotel’s water bill. Tucking her gloves into her handbag, she sat down on the lowered toilet lid and stared at the dirt patterns her heels had left on the white tile floor. She was sweating from the climb up the stairs, but when she thought about undoing the buttons on her coat, she ruled it out. There was too much bed on the other side of the door for her to take off any of her clothes.

  All right. All right. Now what are you going to do?

  She was on her honeymoon. She had avoided a wedding night encounter by virtue of their travel arrangements, but every hour was borrowed time. It was going to happen, there didn’t seem to be a reasonable possibility that she could avoid it anymore. She would endure the violation of her most private places, the bestial reduction of labor and childbirth, the tearing and stretching, maybe even death. The thought sprouted unhelpfully in her mind, like clover in a stone wall, that she had misjudged Joey, that she finally understood why he had shot himself rather than offer his body up to circumstances beyond his control.

  Was she just going to let it happen? Let her whole life be the choices other people made for her? But she had never made a choice for herself—that had been her mistake. She’d never known what it was she wanted out of life, only what she didn’t want. People can’t understand negative convictions. A man who is willing to die for something is a hero, but a man who is passionately not willing to die for something is a coward. Maybe that was why no one had listened to her, thought she’d been doing anything but playing hard to get.

  She hunched on the toilet in her wrinkled blue travel suit. A heaviness had settled low in her chest, a weight hanging from the bottom of her heart. She wondered if this was despair. What was she going to do? She had spent most of their courtship sitting on the toilet hiding from Carmelo. She doubted the same strategy would get her through an entire marriage.

  STELLA AND CARMELO SPENT THE AFTERNOON walking through the cobblestone streets near the hotel. They stepped into shops and stopped for pastries. Stella let Carmelo carry the conversation, and she accepted his arm when he offered it. It was not a bad feeling, strolling through a pretty city with her hand resting on a good-looking man’s elbow. But even as she enjoyed herself, Stella suffered a swelling nausea of fear. Those complacent thoughts were the dangerous ones. If Stella let herself like a piece of her marriage, she might succumb to the whole thing.

  For dinner Carmela and Paolo brought them to a restaurant Tina would have considered “fine dining.” There were pink cloths covering the tables and short candles in glass tumblers. Carmela took Stella’s hand in her cold one for a long moment—Stella was wearing her gloves, but the cold passed right through them.

  “My brother told us you were very beautiful,” Carmela said.

  Carmelo touched Stella’s elbow, where her sleeve had creased into a pinch. “Now you see for yourself,” he told his sister.

  Paolo summoned the
waiter and ordered for the table in French. They shared several dishes so Stella and Carmelo could sample them: sea mussels cooked in white wine, the giant bones of a cow split and served shimmering with their own marrow, long soft French-fried potatoes. Stella had never eaten such fancy food. She noticed only after she had gnawed all the meat off a duck bone that Carmela had left hers on the plate, separating the meat from the bone with her knife and fork.

  Carmela and Paolo seemed to be kind, solicitous people. Paolo had a job at the docks, and Carmela was a cleaning woman at a university. Paolo was a soft-spoken man. He said little throughout the whole meal. Carmela, who looked so much like her brother, listened intently as Stella answered her questions about her family, about Ievoli, about presents she had received at her shower. She asked Stella if she needed anything for her kitchen, and Stella smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, I don’t cook, so you had better ask your brother what he needs for the kitchen, instead,” which shocked Carmela into silence. Carmelo laughed it off ruefully and his sister’s expression lit up in a grin. “You’re lucky he spent years cooking for all those railroad men,” Carmela told her. “They made him a great cook. At least twice as good as me.”

  For dessert, Carmela ordered a small, soft chocolate cake that was hot on the inside. The cake, a surprise to Stella, arrived as Paolo was insisting on picking up the check for dinner. Carmelo fanned colorful Canadian bills on the tablecloth and made good-natured threats about never coming to visit again if Paolo was always going to pay for things. Meanwhile, the cake sat primly under its orange peel garnish, giving off a cakey aroma. Stella had eaten so much she had begun to feel turmoil in her gut, but Carmela insisted Stella try it. “Just one bite. Just one forchetta.”

  “Not forchetta,” Carmelo interrupted. “That’s Italian. We have to learn Calabrese now, Carmela.” He winked at Stella. “You have to say, ‘Na bròcc.’”

  The light from the table candles rippled in his smile lines, and Stella couldn’t help but think that this man had done more than his twenty-seven years’ worth of smiling. That was something someone else would have loved about him, but it made her feel sad. She did not love him, and she never would. Some other woman would have wanted badly to make him happy. But he had to be so damn stubborn. The thick chocolate coating her throat made her want to cough. How stupid Carmelo was, forcing them into this arrangement that would make them both unhappy.