The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

by Juliet Grames

The first time I brought my husband to meet her, Auntie Tina told me admiringly, “He eats so nicely.” This is a thing Italian grandmothers say about men who don’t yell at them during dinner.

FAMILY MEMORY IS A TRICKY THING; we repeat some stories to ourselves until we are bored of them, while others inexplicably fall away. Or maybe not inexplicably; maybe some stories, if remembered, would fit too uncomfortably into the present family narrative. One generation resists them, and then the generation that follows never knew them, and then they are gone, overwritten by the gentler sound bites.

Modernity has stripped some of the magic out of the ways we live and die.

STELLA FORTUNA IS LIKE MOST WOMEN in that you can’t understand her life story if you don’t understand her mother’s.

In Italian mountain villages, hearts are strong, and those who survive life’s surprises live a very long time.

They were, as mentioned, women of total faith who trusted wholly in the saving grace of Jesus, but from a practical standpoint it never hurt to back up His good efforts with a little mountain witchcraft.

A woman who grows to adulthood is often a damaged thing;

She’d sworn to love him before God, and she wasn’t a woman to break an oath, but it would be much easier to love him if he didn’t live in her house.

This was the trouble with emigration—it dismantled the patriarchy. Because really, what did Assunta, or any woman, need a husband for, when she did every goddamn thing herself?

“You can only name someone else’s sins if you know those sins yourself.”

The Mediterranean is home to diverse ancient religions and ethnic cultures, but the Evil Eye is one thing Maghrebian Berbers, Andalucian Sephardim, Greek Orthodox, Turkish Muslims, Palestinian Arabs, and Catholics of the Italian Mezzogiorno comfortably agreed upon.

Without faith there are no miracles, just coincidences.

we pretend virginity is everything, a woman’s only asset, but the truth is the only thing about a woman that matters is whether she can work.

it is the moral responsibility of the incompetent to identify their own weaknesses and not accept positions of power.

History marches on, and names and destinations change, but not the injustices we let one another suffer.

“You can’t trust anyone in this world, no one but yourself. You have to know exactly what you believe, so you can stick to it. Otherwise people will always try to cheat you or confuse you.”

You step on a boat knowing it is forever, one way or another. But understanding what forever means—that is something your heart tries to protect you from.

Don’t waste sadness on the problem, she scolded herself. Sadness is weak. Think of how to fix the problem, instead.

there are no good good-looking men, for no good-looking man needs to be good.

She’d never known what it was she wanted out of life, only what she didn’t want. People can’t understand negative convictions. A man who is willing to die for something is a hero, but a man who is passionately not willing to die for something is a coward.

This was married life, Stella realized. Doing private things in front of another person without any comment.

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.

The vagina is an organ of trauma, though, and as intense as this misery was, when it healed it did so completely.

Bernie would be Stella’s only daughter and would grow up unintimidated by the prospect of telling whole roomfuls of men what to do.

Assunta was so young in that picture, only nineteen, so beautiful, Stella had realized as an adult—beautiful in her ordinariness, in her unflattering directness, in her strength. These were things you didn’t see about your mother when you were a child.

Stella had been disturbed by her mother’s behavior, had thought that manifestation of grief barbaric—inhuman. Now she understood. She wished she could shit out her own grief, pull it out by its roots. But she couldn’t—she wasn’t Assunta. All her life Stella had thought she was so strong, but now she learned that it was Assunta who had been the strong one—Assunta who had been truly in control of herself. Stella, meanwhile, had no means to excise her own demons.

But what if we said that the power of human faith is in making things real even when they are not—that by giving imaginary entities our credence we allow them to assume power over us—to step into being? Because what is faith but a willingness to believe?

The wine bottle was empty. A sign that she should go upstairs and let herself fall back asleep. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to be haunted, and if she couldn’t reach her mother’s spirit, she would just have to haunt herself.

How funny that her own children’s children have nothing left in them of her, just one generation removed.

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.

I know little of the occult, but it seems to me that a ghost must be remembered to do any haunting.