When Stella said good-bye to Stefano for the last time, she let him kiss her on the cheek. She wanted to do him that little favor in case she never saw him again.
FIVE WEEKS—IT IS NO TIME AT ALL,especially when it is followed by “forever.”
The entire family made a trip to Nicastro to have their passport photos taken. When Stella saw the developed picture of herself, she was surprised at what her own face looked like. It reminded her, dismayingly, of her father’s.
Stella and Cettina washed and perfumed their hair with lemon for their last Ievoli mass, and they wore their fanciest dresses. Stella wanted the village to remember her at her best. The sun shone hard on the black wool and she sweated into the puffed sleeves as they knelt in the Fortunas’ family pew. She had tucked basil leaves into her armpits to disguise the body odor, but she would still have to wash the dress before packing it for the journey. She could hardly guess she would never wear it in America, that nothing American women wore looked anything like her best dress. She couldn’t keep her mind on Father Giacomo’s homily, and instead prayed to the statue of the dolorous Virgin that the boat they were about to get on wouldn’t sink in the middle of the ocean.
That Monday, with little Luigi tagging behind, they took their last load of dirty clothes up the mountain to the laundry trough. As Stella scrubbed her clothes against the stones, she thought about Antonio’s world, where water came into houses all on its own, like having your own private fountain in your own kitchen—a world where you never carried a bucket down the mountain on your head, or scrubbed laundry against stones in a stream. She wouldn’t be unhappy if she never had to do laundry again, she decided. She had no way of knowing how badly she would yearn for the cold, clean taste of the Ievoli cistern’s mountain water, or that in the years to come, the rest of her adult life, there would be nothing she would do more than laundry.
ONMAY 15, THE DAY BEFOREthe journey to Napoli, Stella snuck out of the house—alone; she did not want Cettina coming with her, for once—and climbed the mountain toward Don Mancuso’s chestnut groves. The trees were full of rosy-silver catkins, and the flat, knife-shaped leaves buzzed with bees and fruit flies. There was no human but Stella for miles, no reason for any human to come here as the trees did their summer business. She found the tree where her first period had come—she was almost sure it was the right tree—touched its bark, which was striated like wool.
She would never again split open her finger pads on a chestnut husk, or accidentally drive a spine into her nail bed. Her days of farm labor were over. She didn’t know where Americans got their chestnuts, but she knew that it wasn’t from Don Mancuso. She sat under the tree and closed her eyes, trying to absorb the hum of the grove and the scent of the warm summer wind.
AT DUSK, AS SHE WAScoming back down the mountain, instead of going home Stella continued down via Fontana past their house, past the alleys of stone and stucco buildings. Without letting anyone catch her eye, she crossed thecentroand took the dirt road down toward the cemetery.
Stella hadn’t been inside in years. She remembered coming with her mother when she was a little girl to care for the lost Mariastella’s grave. Now Assunta prayed every day in front of the shrine she’d made at home, but Stella didn’t know if she visited the grave often at all anymore.
The bougainvillea was in bloom, the magenta lanterns of the blossoms tapping against the cemetery’s wall in the breeze. Bunches of flowers balanced on the ledges beneath nameplates, making it easy to see who was missed most. Stella passed them all, turning down the last aisle, shadowy and chill. She started as a lizard scuttled off a late patch of sunlight. She tried to guess if she was alone.
There it was, her name carved in the marble, the most expensive thing her young mother had ever purchased. There were no flower offerings. Did her lost sister feel neglected? The priest would say there was no one here to neglect, that the first Mariastella was with God in heaven. But if everyone believed the priest, why were there so many flowers on the other graves?
“Mariastella,” she said out loud, her voice sounding dry and powerless. How strange it was to say your own name to someone else. She swallowed to wet her palate and tried again. “Mariastella.”
Was she there?
Goose bumps had risen on Stella’s bare, scarred forearms, but she’d made herself so nervous she didn’t think it was proof of anything.
“I wanted to tell you—” But she didn’t, she didn’twantto tell her. “I thought you should know, we are leaving here.” The breeze seemed loud in her ears. Because she felt she was supposed to, Stella extended her hand, ran a finger along the wedge-shaped indents of the carved letters. “We have to leave you. I’m so sorry.”
It was as she said it—I’m so sorry—that Stella felt the cluster of pressure in her sinuses, saw the wetness at the edges of her vision. She had not cried in many years, and of course she wouldn’t cry now.
When she had come back in control of herself, she said, stiffly, “We will never forget about you, though. Please don’t be afraid of that.”
Her voice echoed off the stone without any warmth. Feeling confused and not knowing why, Stella wrapped her arms around herself and left.
***
ASSUNTA HAD TO SAY GOOD-BYEto Maria the night before they left—it was too difficult for the blind woman to make the journey to the Feroleto train station. Stella had never seen her mother as silent as she was that morning. Assunta looked like an old woman herself, harrowed by her separation.
None of the Fortunas had ridden a train before, nor had cousin Cicciu, who would accompany them to Napoli. They were all a little awed by the concept and keen to do it correctly. It was a hazy day for May, a weird dampness rising up out of the marina. They were too early, and milled in the Feroletochiazzafor two hours. When it was finally time to board, short, round Za Violetta pinched Stella’s cheek affectionately. “I’m going to miss you, Stella,” she said plainly. Looking into her aunt’s clear brown eyes, Stella believed she meant it.
“God bless you, Zia,” Stella said, and she meant it, too.
The train had come from Catanzaro, and there were already people on board. Nervously Stella waited, holding her silent mother’s elbow, as Cicciu tried to find them seats. “We must not take our eyes off our bags for even a moment,” he warned them. “There are thieves everywhere.”
They would spend today on the train, which would arrive in Napoli late tonight. Tomorrow they would meet with Signor Martinelli and have their medical exams, and the day after that they would sail with theMonarchat first tide. Stella had portions of food allotted for each of the meals between now and their departure, and kept the coin purse with all the family’slire. She’d waited for Cicciu, the chaperone, to ask her to hand over the family funds, but so far he had not. Stella thought Cicciu was just as nervous about this journey as any of the Fortunas.
The train descended, somewhat jerkily, from the mountain villages, the roads and groves Stella knew so well, and into the less familiar yellow plains of lower Nicastro, where they stopped for half anhour to pick up more people. Some passengers took the opportunity to walk their goats up and down the train platform. After Nicastro, the scenery changed drastically. There, so close she felt she could touch it if she stuck her hand out the window, was the sea.
Stella had seen the marina from the top of her little mountain, watched the far-off bowl of water change color, silver under a passing rainstorm, gold at sunset. But now, as the train waddled by on its tilted tracks, the sea filled the entire window. There was no horizon, only ripples of turquoise waves that turned white as they curled against the beige sand of the shore—Stella had never imagined the waves of the sea, or the endlessness. The day after tomorrow she would sail out into that nothingness. She was filled with an eerie but familiar sense of dread.
They reached Napoli two hours after sunset. Passengers crowded and pushed to exit, bumping Assunta with their elbows and packs. The Fortunas assembled their belongings, Cicciu entreating them worriedly to hurry, hurry before the train pulled away with them still on it, until one by one they tumbled down the wooden steps onto the platform. Stella’s eyes struggled to fix on a single face in the unending blur of hats and kerchiefs. She stood dazed for a heartbeat as the crowd pressed into and past her, everyone headed in tacit union toward the exit, before her survival instinct shook her awake and she grabbed Giuseppe’s arm. “You stay close by me,” she snapped, then called, “Mamma!” Assunta, her face still blank with her grief, came to Stella’s side, Luigi clutched in one arm. Cettina, the good girl, followed Stella without instruction, hugging the Fortunas’ satchel to her chest like a fat toddler. “Zu Cicciu, we’ll follow you,” Stella told her cousin pointedly, and he rallied his wits, hefted their trunk, and led them into the rush.
The Fortunas were sleepy and sore from twelve hours on the train, but they were not too tired to be overawed by the terrifically strange scene they met outside the station. The night streets were lit by glass-globed lanterns, the buildings rising as tall as trees. It was warm and muggy here by the sea, where the air felt wet and dense. There werepeople everywhere, despite the hour, walking, loitering. Clusters of Gypsies, whom Stella recognized now, stood in the shadows under the station’s arched stone porticos. Neopolitan men of all ages strolled arm in arm on their eveningpasseggià,or chatted with women with uncovered heads and dresses in all colors. Stella assumed they were Gypsies, too, and wondered why any men were talking to them—were they not worried about being robbed? Cicciu saw her staring and bent to whisper,“puttane.”His voice was almost gleeful. Maybe Cicciu had never seen a whore himself and was as fascinated as Stella was. These were the fallen, the defiled, women whochoseto do the job with men, who took money for it. Were they born deviant? Or had men made them so? Could she see the difference in their faces?
A horse-drawn cart clattered to a stop in front of her. “A ride?” the thick-accented driver shouted at them, shaking Stella out of her reverie. How stupid, to stand there staring like idiots, hanging themselves up like an offering to the thieves and con artists of this famously dangerous city.
“You need a ride?” the driver shouted again. Stella looked at Cicciu and saw the uncertainty on his face. She felt her gut clench. Cicciu didn’t know what to do.
