After that, she felt the baby every day. Now that she’d understood the proverbial spark of life inside of her, she couldn’t forget it. Even when the baby wasn’t moving, she knew it was there and thought about it. Stella could barely bring herself to talk to Carmelo, but she could talk to the baby, for many hours. She had never been able to sing very well, but now whatever songs she thought of came out just fine. Her voice bounced pleasantly off the apartment walls, and the echo she heard sounded happy.
Carmelo was stupid with joy at becoming a father. He rubbed his wife’s belly and bragged about how big his son was getting to anyone who would listen. Let him brag. Stella had stopped caring about Carmelo. She still hated him, but the heat was gone. Her body was tired from the pregnancy and she needed to focus her energy.
Stella wondered about God’s tricks in this matter of the baby. This had been the thing she had wanted least in her life, and God had changed her heart to make her want it more than anything. At least, that was her mother’s explanation for Stella’s attachment. Stella thought it was more like an infection in her mind; her thoughts were not her own anymore, no more than her body was hers. She remembered—vividly—that only months ago she had not wanted to live; now not only had that shadow fled her psyche but she was also desperately devoted to making something else live, as well. Her richness and her darkness had been filed down to one fist-size glowing globe she carried in her womb.
TINA SMILED.TINA THREW HER A BABY SHOWER.Tina loved Stella and stroked her stomach. But Tina had an honest face and couldn’t hide her envy even when she smiled.
Stella knew it was confusing to Tina—it was confusing to Stella, too. Tina had spent her whole life training to be a mother, wantedthat life so much. Stella had not wanted it at all, had walked a dark road to motherhood, lived through days when she would rather have died. And here she was, swollen and beatific, the change accomplished within moments of the consummation of her marriage, while Tina tried and tried and nothing came. The doctor had run tests but hadn’t found anything wrong with her.
Behind Tina’s back—and sometimes not—the women would ask Stella whether it was Tina’s fault or Rocco’s. It was usually the woman’s, everyone knew. Stella was tongue-tied by the question, although it was not an uncommon one. How could people be so stupid and cruel? Did they not see how much they hurt Tina? Did they want to hurt her, on some level? Make her pay for not making the sacrifices they had?
When Tina’s face betrayed her—sad, confused envy—Stella would squeeze her sister’s hand. “You are going to be the best aunt,” she told her. Tina smiled harder, and Stella added, “It’s too bad. My children are going to love you more than me. They’ll say, oh, Mommy can’t cook anything, we want to go to Auntie Tina’s house instead.”
Tina laughed and looked down at her skirt. “Well, Carmelo can cook for them.”
“He better be planning on it,” Stella said, snappishly to make Tina laugh again.
Stella loved Tina because those thoughts weren’t her fault, and also because there was no room in Stella’s heart now for any coldness or resentment.
Assunta saw Tina’s envy, too. She made the unfascination on Stella’s forehead at least once a day. She came up to the third-floor apartment to hang mint in the windows.
“First baby,” she would say. “The most vulnerable time.”
CARMELO WANTEDSTELLA TO QUIT HER JOBat Silex as soon as she knew she was expecting, but she loved to work. She managed to defer until May, by which time she was so large that the factory work had become unpleasant.
On Stella’s last day, Tina brought a small portable party: a stacked-high plate of starchy S-shaped cookies and a tray of coldravioli. The ladies of the assembly line picked theraviolis up out of the pan with their fingers, taking tiny bites and catching the sauce in their paper napkins. Everyone giggled like crazy. Stella had put together thousands of coffeepots with these women, but most of them she would never see again.
STELLA WENT INTO LABORon the morning of July 24. Down in her mother’s kitchen, she walked in circles while they waited for the expected things to happen: the cramps accelerating, becoming more painful. Stella was cranky with hunger; Assunta wouldn’t let her eat anything, on doctor’s orders. It was an infuriating, endless day of bouts of intense pain and miserable summer heat, wet-hot with Connecticut humidity. She had just stepped into Assunta’s bathtub to splash cool water on herself when her water broke, so at least she didn’t make a mess.
This was when they called Carmelo. He rushed Stella to the hospital, where there was more painful, sweaty waiting. The hospital was as uncomfortable as Stella had anticipated it would be, as was being handled by an English-speaking male doctor.
Miserable, boring hours passed in repetitive agony. They laid her down on a paper-covered hospital bed and put her feet in stirrups. Stella had not been prepared for that. She was horrified to have herself on display, but the humiliation was completely overwritten by the intensity of her pain. The thought of her mother giving birth like an animal on her minty bed in Ievoli flashed through Stella’s mind. She didn’t feel like an animal, she felt like a monster, a monster tearing her own self apart with her claws. At least there were only strangers around her and no one she loved could see her this way.
The time dragged on, and the contractions, and the pain. Stella had lost any sense of how long, how many, how much. Being trampled by the pigs—it hadn’t been this bad, had it? It couldn’t even hurt thismuch to die. The window on the far side of the paper curtain was dark. It was night, and night would never end.
“You need to push, Stella,” the doctor said to her.
“I am push,” she said, scrabbling for English words that wouldn’t come out. “I doing push.”
This is the end of what Stella remembered.
LATERSTELLA ANDCARMELO’S CHILDRENwould tell the story of what happened that night. The doctor left the surgery room to ask Carmelo whose life he wanted to save, his wife’s or his son’s.
“There is no choice,” Carmelo had answered. “I want them both.”
IREMEMBER HEARING THAT STORYwhen I was a kid, about how Grandpa had to pick between Grandma and the baby, and he told the doctor no way, give me both. And I remember thinking, Wow, Grandpa, he’s so tough and loyal, such a family man. A hero. No compromises.
Now I think about that story and I feel furious. He risked my grandmother’s life for his stubbornness and pride; he valued a baby he knew nothing about over the woman he supposedly loved. And my heart breaks for Stella, who had to live in that marriage. How lucky I am that I can’t imagine being married to a man who wouldn’t immediately pick me.
STELLA DID NOT DIE THAT DAY, FOR THE SIXTH TIME.
WHEN SHE WOKE UP,she burned in that way a body burns after surgery, every capillary straining to reconnect, to seal, to fight infection. The pain was familiar to her, but not its magnitude. Her body had been exhausted by the hours of pushing, by the removal of so much matter, by the loss of so much blood.
The hospital room was pink and her mind was as fuzzy as yarn. She saw her mother sleeping in a low chair with wooden arms. Sheturned her chin and saw the pink gown stretched over her own bosom. She struggled to figure out why she was in the hospital, and then when she reached her answer she began to panic, her mind sharpening, because she was not pregnant anymore. The feeling of the baby pulsing inside her was gone, a hole she now, abruptly, noticed. Gripping her deflated abdomen, she lurched up in her bed, or tried to, but was blinded by a wave of pain so intense she lost the hospital room for a flash—maybe for minutes, or hours, who could know.
She opened her eyes again, eventually, and tried to call out to her mother, but her mouth was dry. A tube ran into her arm; the skin around the needle prickled with bruise. She focused on that tiny discomfort, tried to build a wall between herself and the rest of her body. It was daylight; light came in pinkly through that damn paper curtain.
“Mamma,” she said. Her voice was the sound of a piece of paper being crumpled in a fist. But Assunta was awake this time, and there was Tina, too, standing beside the bed. “Mamma. Where is my baby? My baby.”
