Death 5 Rape （Marriage） #13
When Tina came in and called under the stall doors for her, Stella ignored her. “Stella. Stellll-la. Come out. Stellll-la.” Stella was stubborn in her silence. Finally, after the attempted interference of several other women, Tina went away.
Stella closed her eyes and tried to draw her mental picture of the mountain, the blue-silver olive leaves rippling like water in the breeze.
She waited in the stall until the roiling in her stomach had subsided.
Before going back to the party, she took the opportunity to pee.
When she pulled down her panties she found blood in them—she must have lost track of the days again.
She pulled down a handful of toilet paper from the roll, squashed it into a wad, and plugged it in, feeling better already.
Perhaps it wasn’t a premonition that had given her chills, just regular cramps.
NEVERTHELESS. SHE COULDN’T LET CARMELO MAGLIERI get too close.
“Did you ever think,” said Stella to her mother the next morning as they were setting the table for lunch, “that blue eyes, like Carmelo’s . . . that you need to watch out for mal’oicch’?”
“That’s silly,” Assunta said immediately.
“You know what they say about blue-eyed men,” Stella said. “Nothing to stop the devil from looking out.”
“That’s superstitious nonsense,” Assunta said. “You know that’s not how it works.”
“I know,” Stella replied, chastised.
But before bed that night Assunta pronounced the fascination banishment over each of her children.
THE WAR WAS A HARD TIME, a literally dark time, a world muted by blackout curtains. Between the curfews and the absent young men, the social gatherings were short, stultified. There was no more meat; there was no more sugar. There were memorial masses for the boys who wouldn’t come home.
Meanwhile, the Fortunas worked hard and got by.
Tony rented out the second and third floors of the Bedford Street house to paying tenants, so there was rental income on top of their salaries.
He still took his daughters’ pay, but he gave them spending money for movies, haircuts, soda fountains.
They were becoming more American by the day.
Every year, Stella’s yearning for Calabria faded a little more, the pain of her separation softening into nostalgia.
She felt guilty when she noticed, but she couldn’t help herself.
Ievoli was healing over, an old wound Stella, the survivor, had overcome.
There was plenty in America for her to love—her colorful dresses, the delicious rich food, the cinemas and cars and toilets that flushed.
You work hard, time passes. Even hard times pass. For Stella, this wasn’t hard times—she would have happily lived this way, working hard, eating her fill, spending her evenings with her mother and sister and friends, for the rest of her life.
* * *
JOEY HAD ENLISTED IN THE ARMY IN 1942, and after two years of preparing for deployment he was shipped out with his unit to Europe in late autumn of 1944.
He sent one letter, a single sad page addressed to Assunta and written in censor-proof English.
The letter ended with one line in poorly spelled Italian: I wish I was home.
No one heard anything else from him for six months, until the day in March 1945 when the Western Union boy came to Bedford Street.
Stella knew why he was there as soon as she saw him through the curtain. The uniform, the high-brimmed hat with the gold seal—they only sent a telegram for one reason.
“I’ll get the door, Ma,” Stella shouted to the kitchen. Her mother must be protected from this—at whatever cost Assunta must not answer the door. Stella took a deep breath as Tina appeared at her elbow.
“Stella. What is he here for?” Tina’s voice was already ragged with tears.
Stella took another breath. Her heart was pounding. She was about to be told her brother was dead. She had to prepare herself.
Stella opened the door three-quarters and stood solidly in front of it, blocking Tina from running out onto the porch. “Yes?” Stella said to the messenger boy. Her throat was tight.
He was probably only fifteen years old, with an acne-blistered forehead and thick, rimless glasses. “Ma’am. Is this the home of Anthony and Assunta Fortuna?” He pronounced Assunta’s name “Uh-suhn-ta.”
Behind her, Tina was squeezing Stella’s arm so tightly it hurt. “Yes,” Stella said. “Those are my parents.”
“He has a telegram,” Tina said in Calabrese, and began to sob.
“Ma’am, I have a delivery for them.”
“I will take it.” Stella pressed her weight into the palm that was bracing her against the doorframe, letting the sharp edge of the wood cut into her skin. Behind her, Tina’s sobbing had risen to high-pitched gasps.
The boy rubbed his nose uncomfortably. “I’m supposed to deliver it to either Mr. or Mrs. Anthony Fortuna.”
Stella stepped forward and snatched the telegram out of his hand.
“My brother is dead?” She felt the knot in her stomach convulse as she pictured Joey, in his uniform as she’d last seen him, dashing, handsome Joey, then her mind’s eye flashing to his little fleecy head nestled against her shoulder in the bed they had shared as children.
She heard the smack of Tina’s hands on the foyer tiles behind her as her sister collapsed, wailing.
The messenger boy took a step backward and Stella seized his wrist so he couldn’t leave.
“What does this say?” she demanded. There were only a few lines of text, but Stella couldn’t understand anything except Joey’s name and the date.
She searched for “dead” or “kill” but the English in the telegram was unfamiliar, too officious. “My brother Joey—he was killed?”
“Uh.” The boy leaned forward and studied the text. “Not dead, no. Is she okay?” he said, pointing to Tina, who was prostrate weeping, her open mouth pressed into the floor tiles.
“She’s fine.” Stella’s dark tunnel of dread began to recede. “My brother’s not dead?”
He shook his head.
Still squeezing the boy’s wrist, Stella turned to Tina. “Get a grip,” she said. “Joey’s not dead.”
Tina instantly stopped sobbing. “Not dead?” She hiccupped. “Then what?”
The boy said English words Stella didn’t understand. When she looked at him blankly, he repeated himself, and pointed to the telegram.
“He’s hurt?” Stella tried. “Hurt bad?”
“No, geez,” the boy said impatiently. He had a whole sack of visits he still had to make. “Is there someone in your house who speaks better English?”
AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS IN A military hospital in France, Joey was sent home to Hartford.
He’d been recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his left forearm.
At least, that was how his discharge papers described the injury; Joey himself would never admit it, so people would always shrug and say, “We’ll never know exactly what happened. ”
After two years of army training, Joey had apparently not been mentally prepared for combat; when his unit landed in France, his misgivings overwhelmed him. The rest of the 103rd headed north to invade Germany, but Joey Fortuna never made it out of Marseilles.
The army had court-martialed Joey as soon as he was released from the military hospital and sent him home with a dishonorable discharge.
Despite his criminal act of self-mutilation, the Hartford veterans’ hospital offered him an operation to fix his arm at no cost. Joey declined the surgery; he was afraid that if he were able-bodied they would send him back to war.
A pointless sacrifice—if only Joey had been smart enough to ask around a little, he’d have learned DDs were never redeployed.
Despite his long sojourn in the French hospital, Joey’s arm healed incompletely; the radius and ulna had both shattered on the bullet’s impact, and the arm had been somewhat sarcastically reset by a harried military surgeon who only suffered malingerers because of his Hippocratic oath.
Joey had avoided jail time, but the dishonorable discharge together with his new physical impairment became a long, dark shadow over his life and prospects.
Furthermore, as was protocol for a noncitizen soldier who had been dishonorably discharged, the INS had terminated Joey’s naturalization application.
Tony dragged Joey down to the army office on Asylum Street to protest. He made Joey wear a suit. “You can’t do that,” Tony roared at the soldier on desk duty. “He went to war for you! The paperwork, it’s already done. He’s a citizen.”
The soldier had no sympathy for cowards. He was cold and calm. “In the event of dishonorable discharge, they can put a stop to the naturalization application, even retroactively.”
“Retroactively?” Tony repeated.
“Meaning even if it’s already done. They can undo it.”
Joey stared at the linoleum as Tony became outraged. “He fought for your country!”
“My country?” the soldier said neutrally. “Look, Mr. Fortuna, your son committed a crime against the U.S. military during a time of war. He’s lucky to not be subject to more extreme disciplinary measures.” For clarity, he spelled it out: “You’re lucky he’s not in jail.”
That was the end of that negotiation. Tony stormed off to the bar without anything further to say to his son, who walked home alone.
If Joey had died during active duty, his whole family—parents, siblings—would have been immediately eligible for United States citizenship.
But that was the root of the problem; Joey had been unwilling to die, or even get too close to risking death.
And now he was a disgraced small-time criminal with no GI benefits and a bum arm.