Tina helped Stella drink juice from a paper cup and Assunta sobbed, grasping Stella’s hand so tightly both of their knuckles were creased with red and white.
“Mamma,” Stella said again, but Assunta only had air for tears and for her circular prayer,thank you God thank you Madonna thank you God thank you Madonna.
Stella swallowed, and Tina helped her drink again. Her pelvis ached, an onion of ache. She tried her sister this time. “Tina,” she said. Her voice, was that her voice? It sounded strange. “Tina. Where is my baby? Did they take away my baby?”
Tina looked at their mother, but Assunta was sobbing into Stella’s hand. She was going to let Tina do this dirty work. Half of Stella’s mind understood before Tina could say it; the other half couldn’t understand it even after it had been said.
“Your baby’s with God, Stella,” Tina said. She had made it that far, and now she was no good anymore, because she had fallen to the linoleum floor to cry into her skirt.
Stella looked up at the ceiling. Her mother wept on her left and her sister on her right. She hoped a nurse would come along and take care of them because she couldn’t speak to them anymore, or maybe ever again. She closed her eyes and dove into her pain.
STELLA HAD CARRIED TO TERMa healthy baby boy whose corpse weighed ten pounds, four ounces. He had been in a breech position going into the labor, and the doctor, a rookie, had tried to make the baby turn. When the labor didn’t proceed as expected, the doctor used forceps to reach up into Stella and try to pull him out. But the baby was just too big for the birth canal; his shoulders stuck. As the scene in the hospital had modulated into panic, the doctor performed a proctoepisiotomy, making a surgical incision that would marvel later generations—where, exactly, did he think the baby was? By the time they extracted the baby, he was dead, strangled with his own umbilical cord.
AGONY, DELIRIUM, DARKNESS, AGONY.
Had it been this bad when she was a child, being ripped apart? Was it just that there was more of her now, so she could feel more pain?
Stella had no control over whether she was asleep or awake. At the worst moments, sweat itching in her raw stitches, when the weight of loss on her chest was so heavy she battled to pull enough air into her lungs—in those moments, when she wanted nothing more than to leave herself, when sleep would have been the greatest reprieve, she had no access to it. She had to listen to the mourning and awkward bedside conversations of the terrible people who came to visit her. They were all terrible now.
Why did you let me live this time?she asked God, over and over.What was the point?
Sometimes she said it out loud, and if Assunta heard her she shushed her. That wasn’t how God worked.
TINA WIPEDSTELLA’S FOREHEAD WITHA COOL,damp towel. She plumped Stella’s pillow and dabbed water on her dry lips. “Good Stella, lucky Stella, lucky star,” she crooned, making a song out of Stella’s names.Brava Stella, Stella Fortuna, stella fortunata.
Stella waited until Assunta left the sickroom, then said, “You think I’m lucky?”
Tina was caught off guard by her sister’s voice after so many hours of uninterrupted silence. “Lucky to be alive,” she said, but it sounded like a question.
Stella felt the Eye on her. Her heartache compressed into a sickness she finally understood. “At least now neither of us has a baby,” she said.
Tina blanched. “Stella. No.”
“Admit it, get it off your chest so God can forgive you.” Stella was so exhausted she couldn’t put any fire into her words, but they didn’t need any fire. “You were jealous of my baby and now, deep in your heart, you’re happy that it’s dead.”
The expression on Tina’s face made Stella’s gut roil with hate—her big, stupid tears; Tina would try to cry her way out of this like she had every bad thing that had ever happened to her. Stella hated her sister more intensely than she had ever hated anyone before, even Carmelo, even her father. Even her father hadn’t killed her baby.
“No, Stella, you’re wrong.” Tina wiped clear mucus from her chin. “I only wanted to love it. I wanted to love your baby and I am so sad for you.”
“There’s nothing you can say that would ever make me forgive you,” Stella said. She had used up all her energy. She turned her face away and closed her eyes.
“Why are you crying, Tina?” Assunta asked when she came back.
“I’m not,” Stella heard her sister say, then snuffling and nose-blowing.
Tina didn’t sing anymore, but she didn’t leave Stella’s bed, either.
MOSTLY WHENSTELLA’S EYES OPENED,there were Assunta and Tina, no matter what. But this time it was dark—the only light came from the hospital wing outside, and it was a man sitting next to her in the chair with the wooden arms.
“Carmelo?” she asked the darkness, because for a moment she wasn’t sure.
“Stella.” He was crying. She heard it in his voice—typical Carmelo, he made no effort to hide it from her. “My Stella, my star. My precious Stella. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She realized he had been holding her hand when his grip tightened. “Please come back to me. Please don’t leave me. Let me take care of you. Let me make it better.”
Maybe Stella was the weakest she had ever been in her life, because she felt her heart turn. When she wondered how she would put all the bad things behind her, she realized that her mind did not even want to remember what they were, and the path was suddenly quite clear. She would bury the first year of her marriage with her baby boy. That was how she would save herself.
Stella Maglieri squeezed her husband’s wet hand. “I’m here, Carmelo,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
THE HOSPITAL DISCHARGED HER AFTER FOUR DAYS,with the recommendation that she spend at least five weeks in bed. The doctor prescribed her a painkiller Stella took sporadically the first few days, but it made her so disoriented and ill at ease that she stopped. Anyway, the worst pain was in her mind and her heart, and the pills did nothing to divorce her from that.
