“Do you?” Her father was pinching her so hard she could feel the blood throbbing in her soft tissue. “This is for your husband. No one else. You let anyone else touch you here and I’ll kill you myself.”
He released her flesh and pulled his hand away; the removal was awkward and his arm became tangled in Stella’s nightdress for an absurd stretch of moments. Stella’s mind and body were a murk of fear and disgust and rage and pain and fluids. She was barely aware of her mother’s embrace as Assunta climbed into the children’s bed, wrapping her arm around her daughter’s shivering torso.
“You must not upset your father, my little star,” Assunta whispered in Stella’s ear as she stroked her hair. “You must not be stubborn with him or make him angry so he hurts you.”
Stella wasn’t listening. Her shaking grew worse, into uncontrollable spasms. Her tender private skin ached and swelled, and pain shot up through her pelvis and into her gut. She never would letanyonetouch her there again. And she would never again wonder if she loved her father, or if he loved her.
IT WASN’T CLEAR HOW LONGAntonio was staying. Was he going to be a permanent part of their lives now? He spoke of America as if that were his home, so maybe he would eventually leave again. But the days dragged by and still Antonio stayed.
Every night since he’d pinched her, Stella was terrorized by the idea that her father might attack her while she was asleep. It kept her awake past the point of exhaustion. If Stella woke during the night she would hear her father’s snoring and be unable to think of anything except his presence across the room. She slept on the outside; she felt obliged to use her body as a vanguard to protect Cettina, who Stella knew would be too stupid to protect herself.
WHENSEPTEMBER CAME,Stella went to work at her first job, down the mountain in Barona Monaco’s olive groves. It was Stella’s idea to goto work, but Cettina came with her, of course. They weren’t going to school anymore, and there was no point sitting at home when they could be making money—especially if it meant they could avoid their father.
To get to thebarona’s groves, you crossed the stone bridge over the gully, but then instead of continuing right toward Feroleto, you headed straight down the steep forested hillside, following the winding mule path. And then in one breath the wet, spicy fragrance of the forest gave way to the hot, soily smell of the cultivated fields, the gray-green expanse ofuleveti. The olive trees were like bushy animals huddled together, furry with their slender two-tone leaves that changed color in the wind. When Stella crossed her eyes the valley became a soft, uninterrupted blanket of blue-gray-green, the color of the lichen that grew on the cistern where she helped her mother wash their clothes.
Gaetano and Maurizio Felice, neighbor brothers who were a few years older than the Fortuna girls, introduced them to thebarona’s overseer.The first day, Stella and Cettina helped the Felice boys, but the second day they knew what to bring for themselves: old blankets, bread for lunch, one empty glass bottle apiece, a small cloth purse. The boys demonstrated the technique: you shook a tree, hard. The olives that were ripe enough would fall to the ground. Stella and Cettina knelt to pick them up and stashed them in their cinched-up aprons. You had to be careful not to pick up any that weren’t firm to the touch, and which might have been lying on the ground before the tree-shaking, because even one rancid olive could leave a greasy smear on the millstone and poison the flavor of the oil in that batch.
Around 4P.M., when the day was noticeably cooling, the girls would knot the olives in the harvest cloths, balance the loads on their heads, and follow the path through the groves down to the press, which was near Barona Monaco’s enormous house. A good day of picking would yield olives enough for five bottles of oil. As the miller inspected their olives and scattered them evenly over the great stone plate of the press, the girls would siphon off their own single bottle of olive oil—their pay for a day’s labor.
The cloth purse the girls brought to the fields each day was, of course, for stealing. At stopping time, as they knotted their bundles, they also each packed a fat pouch with smooth, firm olives, which their mother would preserve for the winter. Stella and Cettina knotted their pouches under their skirts, making sure no telltale bulge would arouse suspicion if they were stopped by the pinch-faced overseer on their way home.
Stella loved fieldwork. She loved the leaves and the sweat and watching her progress build on itself, apronful by apronful. Her mind became empty, like a long prayer, as if God were speaking to her through the warm dirt on her hands and the burn in her thighs. She relished the disorienting moments of putting down her foot too quickly and feeling a cool, smooth olive splay her bare toes.
After the war, a land reform bill would force the heirs of the absent Barona Monaco to sell off this land.Contadiniwho had harvested for her could harvest it for themselves, now, if they could scrape together the capital to buy a piece. Stella would be long gone by then, but a second cousin she never met would own the very acre of olive trees Stella worked in on her first day.
AUTUMN BECAME WINTER,and Antonio stayed and stayed. Eventually all the olives would be harvested and Stella would be trapped at home with her father. She hoped by then he would have moved on.
It was too late for Assunta, anyway, who had begun to swell with another baby. She became bloated and would have to lie down for the whole afternoon. Her legs were cinched with bulging veins and her feet wouldn’t fit into her church shoes anymore. An unfair consequence of her father’s lust, Stella thought, the price her mother had to pay for something she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place.
THE NIGHT BEFOREANTONIO FINALLY LEFT,in February 1930, Assunta prepared a going-away feast of thicktagliatellepasta with garlic and herpeperoncinoolive oil. Antonio didn’t like beans—he saidno one but poor people ate them in America—which put a limit on Assunta’s cooking, given what was available in the winter.
Over this dinner, Antonio informed his family he was never coming back. “I’m done with this garbage way of life,” he said. “No meat to eat, no running water, worrying that the wolves will come for you when you take a shit in the woods. It’s so backward here and you don’t even know because you live like animals, you can’t even imagine anything better than animals.” Antonio downed his wine and refilled his glass. “I waste so much money going back and forth, giving up jobs and having to find new jobs. This is it, this time. A one-way trip.”
Stella tried not to let her hopes rise too much that he was telling the truth. She had known her father to bluster before.
“That’s why I stayed so long this time,” he was saying. When he ate, he pushed pasta onto his fork using a piece of bread. “To spend some time with my mother. I’ll probably never see her again, unless she comes to America.”
Assunta adjusted the rag tied over her hair. She was studying her husband, who hadn’t looked up from his food to tell this lie. Cettina caught Stella’s eye, and Stella shook her head so her sister wouldn’t interrupt. Stella picked up pieces of pasta between her fingers, one at a time, and watched her parents, waiting for something to happen.
When it had been quiet for long enough, Antonio said to the table at large, “We’ll all be Americans soon. The first thing I do when I get there, I’m going to take my citizenship test, and then I’ll bring you all over to live with me.”
“I’m not leaving,” Assunta said suddenly. “Ievoli is my home. My family is here.”
Stella was as shocked to hear her mother talk back as she was disturbed by her father’s threat.
“Weare family, woman,” Antonio replied. “One flesh, before God and man. These are my children I gave you.”
Stella felt dread spreading across her chest.Please don’t cry, Mamma. He would beat her, he would beat them all.
But Assunta didn’t cry. “I meantmyfamily,” she said, her voice as hard as a chestnut. “Who will take care of my mother if I leave? Who will take care of the baby’s grave?”
Antonio shrugged. “You all will come to America and we’ll be a family there. I will buy a big house on an acre of land and we will drive from place to place in an automobile. You’ll never have to see a donkey again.”
This was a mean thing to say. They all loved their donkey.
“I don’t need another house. I have a house,” Assunta said. “This is my house, which you’re eating in right now.”
For the first time, Antonio seemed stimulated by the conversation. He brought his hand down flat on the broad planks of the table. “Eating food you bought with my money that I gave you.”
