SHE STANDS, SHE WALKS, SHE DANCES.
Her language comes back to her. Not always the right language.
She crochets—fast. She can make anything—spreads, hats, scarves. They don’t always look very nice. She combines colors like Christmas Blend with Valentine Pink.
The grandchildren watch TV with her while she crochets. She loves them. None of them are old enough to remember what she was like before. The Maglieri grandchildren will grow up thinking it is standard to have an unintelligible crocheting grandmother engaged in a blood feud with her sister, and who might at any time stop strangers in the street and hand them Mardi Gras beads or miniature sticks of deodorant she hides in her red purse. The Maglieri youth will be so conditioned by the Accident that even as adults, when they are old enough to be used to the world, they will marvel at their friends’ alternate grandmother experiences.
AT MASS,STELLA TRIES TO PRAY,but all the words are gone. She tries to think of God and the Virgin, but she can’t concentrate.
She doesn’t speak of her mother. Maybe Assunta was one of the parts they cut out of her mind with their surgical knives.
SHE DOESN’T DRINK ANYMORE, EITHER.The doctors say not to let her, but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t want to drink anymore, or maybe she does, but she doesn’t correctly identify what wanting to drink feels like.
CANAUNTIETINA COME OVERfor Christmas dinner, at least?Stella’s children beg her.
They don’t understand. They don’t understand the danger.
“She’s jealous,” Stella tells them, over and over. She killed my baby, she wants to say, she almost killed me seven times because of the evil in her heart. But when she tries to explain why, she can’t find the words.
SHE CAN’T REMEMBER THEMAL’OICCH’unfascination spell, because she never believed in it enough to learn it back then and now she believes and it’s too late. Instead she makes the sign to ward off theinvidiawhen she sees her sister, a fist with index finger and pinky sticking out, two horns to pierce the Evil Eye.
“Stop that, Ma,” her children say. “That’s rude.”
These children, who have never had to fight for their lives, who have never struggled for anything, are worried about rudeness.
THEY START HAVING TWO DIFFERENTMother’s Day parties, one pink and white cake at 3 Alder Street for Stella, then a second at 5 Alder Street for Tina. They have pasta at the first party, coffee at the second. Tina makes the pasta for the first party, which she isn’t allowed to attend. Stella pretends she doesn’t know about the pasta’s provenance.
Stella has eleven grandchildren now. Tina has none.
MARIO ANDCAROLINAPERRI COMEto visit from Las Vegas, where they moved when Mario retired. They can only visit one of the Fortuna sisters at a time, because of the rules.
She’s still angry, five years later?Carolina asks. She was Stella’s maid of honor forty-five years ago.
You can’t take her seriously,Tommy tells her.She’s not right in her head.
She always was very stubborn,Carolina says, reaching over to pat Stella’s knee.
Stella smiles and pinches Carolina’s arm so hard, Carolina shrieks and pulls away.
STELLA’S SONTOMMY TAKES HERto the seven thirty mass every day. He walks her to the altar to take Communion, and she lets the priest put the wafer in her mouth. She doesn’t remember what it felt like when she used to believe it became the body of Christ on her tongue. She has not felt absolved of her sins for many years.
SHE CROCHETS FAST TO DISTRACT HERSELFfrom the memories that they didn’t cut away, and buried memories that are lying there like potatoes now. Baby Bob, the hotel in Montreal, Nino.
She makes so many blankets, she can’t give them all away. Tommy leaves them in the Goodwill bin.
You gonna make me go broke, Ma,he says.Buying all this yarn.But he takes her to Jo-Ann Fabrics three times a week for more.
When crocheting fails to distract her, she repeats her stories. She can no longer emote, so to her audience they are only words. Maybe to her they are also only words; maybe the doctors cut away her pain and left only her obsession. We’ll never know.
“My husband raped me on my honeymoon,” Stella says to a young man and woman eating breakfast together at Franklin Diner. They smile at her. She doesn’t realize she spoke in Calabrese.
“Shhh, Mommy, that’s not true,” her son Freddy says as he guides her away. “You don’t go around saying things like that to people.”
INAUGUST 1996 THEMAGLIERISthrow Auntie Tina and Uncle Rocco a surprise fiftieth-anniversary party. They rent out DiMarco’sbanquet hall on Franklin Avenue and lure Tina by telling her it’s a baby shower for Franceschina Carapellucci’s granddaughter Angie. The family will joke for years about how Tina brought six trays of angel wing cookies to her own surprise party. Sweet little Mikey Perri brings an extra suit jacket for Rocco, who arrives thinking he’s only dropping off Tina. Tina and Rocco are so stunned, they both cry.
Almost eight years have passed since Stella and Tina have been in the same room. Carmelo and his children trick Stella into attending by pretending the party is for her. They guide her up to the high table, where, half a century after the event, the entire bridal party has been reassembled for a photo (except, of course, Fiorella Mulino, who died so young,benadic’). Carmelo sits between Stella and Tina, gesticulating jovially to block his crazy wife’s line of sight.
Stella realizes the truth, but she lets them all think she’s been duped. She doesn’t want to miss the party. She dances to “Pepino Suricillo” and the Chicken Dance. She claps her hands and waves her arms and chews her chicken parmigiano with the new dentures Tommy got her.
