Death 5 Rape （Marriage） #6
“No, Papa, it’s for the permanent wave. We need to go and get it professionally done. They have to put chemicals in your hair to make it—”
“Absolutely no permanent wave. Mannaggia, give them a finger and they take your whole hand.” Antonio had returned his attention to his food.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you each two dollars.
You, too,” he said to the boys. “You spend it on what you want, haircut, clothes, whatever. Just make sure you look good for the picture.”
TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS all six Fortunas dressed in their best and went down to G.
Fox to get studio photos taken. The girls had each spent fifty cents on their new short haircuts, which they had practiced rag-curling and combing to frame their faces.
The remainder of their budgets had gone toward blue cotton Stella sewed into matching long-sleeved dresses on Fiorella’s mechanical sewing machine.
Stella and Tina had begged Antonio for extra money for new shoes, but he had drawn the line.
The Fortunas posed with Antonio and Assunta seated in front, their sons on either side, and Stella and Tina standing behind them to disguise the old shoes they’d bought in Nicastro.
Tina is one inch taller and a bit less bosomy, and of course there is that standout mole above her lip.
Otherwise their smiles are identical, as are their dresses, their posture, the angles at which they hold their elbows—similar in the subtle and comprehensive ways only sisters are similar.
Assunta’s ankles are crossed and her feet tucked under her chair.
She is smiling this time. Antonio may be smiling as well, but as with the Mona Lisa, no one can ever be sure what he is thinking; most of his expression is concealed by his mustache.
Together, they are an impressive accomplishment of a family.
For fifty years, this portrait hung on various walls next to the grainier black-and-white of the first Mariastella. Somehow there is no other photo of the entire family, not even at any of the children’s weddings. This was the first and last time they were photographed together.
* * *
NINETEEN FORTY-ONE WAS BETTER THAN 1940.
Front Street was becoming less foreign. The Fortunas knew their favorite pushcart vendors; they understood the money and knew how much things were supposed to cost. They had learned to enjoy American food, its diversity and its rich ingredients.
They’d learned a little more English. They worked hard six days a week, steadily setting aside money for their house; they had enough pocket money now that they could afford to dress American.
They went to the Italian Society dances every Saturday night, meeting up in the evening with Fiorella Mulino, Carolina Nicotera, and Franceschina Perri to do one another’s hair.
Usually they met at the Nicoteras’ house, because Carolina had no fresh brothers who would harass the girls as they tried to get dressed.
There was live music every weekend, usually a three-man band who sang songs in Italian and English.
An ordinary Saturday here was a bigger party than the annual fhesta in Ievoli.
Stella loved to dance and was good at it.
Franceschina had taught her the fox-trot and the swing, and even Stella had been surprised by how quickly she shed her village-girl shyness about dancing with boys.
It was thrilling to think of the scandal dancing like this would have caused back home, boys and girls moving so fast together, skirts flying, calves bare, uncorseted breasts bouncing—the freest and most joyful her body had ever felt.
Stella had her pick of partners. She danced often with Frankie D’Agata, who was very popular among the girls, until she decided she was spending too much time with him and started turning him down, which incited gossip.
She said no to anyone who wasn’t taller than she was.
She rejected the wooing of Fiorella’s older brother Vittorio, who she thought was greasy.
She refused to ever, ever dance with either of the Perri boys on principle, especially the older one, Mario, who was particularly handsome and full of himself.
He asked her anyway to spite her and tried to pinch her bottom.
Sometimes she told boys no for no reason at all and danced with her girlfriends instead.
Franceschina admired Stella’s attitude. “Ooo, you can be such a bitch!” she’d giggle, and the other girls would giggle with her at the naughty word.
“When you’re pretty you have to be a bitch,” Carolina said, and they giggled again. “Otherwise the men will take whatever they can get!”
“At least none of you have such a pretty sister.” Tina said it as if she were joking, but she wasn’t. “I’ll always only be Stella’s sister. People will always say, oh! Pretty Stella is your sister? That’s surprising.”
The girls laughed again, protested—no, silly, you’re so pretty, you two look exactly alike.
Stella, feeling complacent, smiled at her sister. “Don’t be jealous, little bug. Jealousy will rot your heart.”
“It’s all right.” Fiorella patted Tina’s arm with her thin, smoothing hands. She winked at Stella and declared, “You’re the good sister, Tina. Everyone knows that.”
IN THE SPRING OF 1941, Stella and Tina went back to work in the tobacco fields. Fiorella thought they were crazy to give up the laundry jobs.
“But this way we can be with Mamma,” Stella explained.
“And really it’s actually more money, because it’s three people’s salary instead of two.
” Assunta hadn’t worked all winter because of swelling in her legs.
She had also miscarried a baby, and Za Pina had persuaded her to go to an American doctor.
The doctor told her she had better not have any more children and had diagnosed early stages of rheumatoid arthritis as well as varicose veins. Assunta, forty-two, was an old woman.
THE SWELTERING SUMMER OF 1941, when Stella had been living with her father’s flying fists and leering sneers for a year and a half, was when the nightmare started—when she almost killed herself by jumping out the window.
Who can say what poison had entered her mind and planted the dream there; maybe she’d brought down the Evil Eye on herself, showing off her prettiness too much, breaking too many hearts.
Stella’s life had been so comfortable, so happy lately.
She must have been due for some pain. It had, after all, been six years since the last time fate had taken a crack at her.
It was like the nightmare had broken down a dam in her mind, because once she’d had it, the dream came back to her again and again—her father backed her into a corner, night after night, to molest her.
The details changed; sometimes the dream took place in the tobacco barn, or in their old house in Ievoli.
The story was the same every time, though—Stella was exposed, trapped, and touched; as the dream blossomed over time, she was presented with a male organ, which was rubbed against her.
The dream never lasted long enough for her to know what happened after that.
But she woke with a real knowledge of being touched in a way she didn’t want to be.
She woke sweating, in terror and disgust.
Tony did as he’d promised and nailed boards over the girls’ bedroom window so that Stella couldn’t try to jump out again, but other than that, the episode was mostly reduced to a joke.
I’ve always wondered why no one took it more seriously; why later, when Stella told them, over and over, that she never wanted to get married, no one remembered that time her subconscious chose to die rather than be violated by a man.
ONCE THE WINDOW WAS BOARDED UP, the summer nights were stifling long hours of insomnia.
Stella became a victim of her own subconscious, so tormented by her exhaustion she couldn’t tell when she was drifting in or out of sleep.
Even as the nightmare became familiar to her, she never got used to it, or overcame her paralyzing dread as the man extended his calloused hand.
Her ten-hour days of field labor were an aching haze of misery; once she was so tired she had to miss work.
Stella would lie next to Tina in their narrow bed and press her fingernails into her palms, trying to keep awake.
She prayed to the Virgin for respite, and also to the ghost of the first Mariastella, whom she’d realized she had not left behind in Ievoli.
“Please make it stop,” she’d whisper, over and over.
“I know you’re there. I know you did this.
Please make it stop. Please let me be.” But the dreams didn’t stop.
What were they for? Punishment for being alive?
Or were they some kind of warning?
Stella couldn’t talk about the nightmare to anyone, not even to Tina, because the words were too ugly.
It had already taken its toll on her; she shouldn’t let it take a toll on anyone else.
So she kept it to herself. But the dream had an enormous and permanent effect on Stella’s life.
It taught her that some wounds couldn’t be stitched up, that some bad things happen not once but again and again.
This was the year Stella learned to smile with her lips closed, so no one would see the two missing teeth she’d knocked out in her fall.
This was when she began to feel an uncontrollable revulsion for her father, to dread when he came too close to her, put his hand on her shoulder, let his eyes pass over her curves, as they so often did.
Some days she trembled just sitting across the dinner table from him.
If Tony noticed his daughter’s changed behavior, he never let on.