mind filling with doubt. She battled helpless feelings of injustice through the night. In her mind, Stella’s dilemma was unfair. After all, her family had paid their marker in this life. They were poor, humble hard workers who helped others and lived the gospel. They had done everything right. Now it was God’s turn to reward them for their piety. Enza closed her eyes and imagined the angels and saints surrounding her sister, making her well.
Enza even pictured her family in the future. She imagined her mother and father as grandparents and her brothers and sisters with families of their own. Battista would teach the children the trails, Eliana would show them how to balance on the stone fence on one foot, Alma would instruct the girls in sewing, Vittorio would teach the boys how to shoe the horse, Stella would show them how to paint, Mama would keep the garden, and Papa would hitch the cart and take the children for rides. Their lives on the mountain would go forward as they always had; they would grow old together and happily in greater numbers, with a homestead that they owned free and clear.
La famiglia èterna.
Enza was mystified as she watched Stella’s labored breathing. She had taken the medicine from the doctor. Why was her sister getting worse?
Stella’s color was all but gone, the pink of her cheeks now an odd gray and her lips turned chalky white. When she opened her eyes, they were unfocused, the pupils like two black rosary beads.
Giacomina dabbed her daughter’s lips with a damp cloth and stroked her hair. Occasionally the soft din of Hail Marys said in unison was cut by a moan from Stella that sent a knife through Enza’s heart. Finally, unable to take another moment of watching her sister wither away, Enza stood and ran outside.
Enza ran to the end of Via Scalina. She buried her face in her hands and wept for Stella. There is no worse feeling than being unable to assuage the suffering of the innocent. Enza could not erase Stella’s expression of fear as she grew weaker, and the helpless look on her mother’s face. Giacomina had been through many fevers and long nights of worry for her children, but this time was altogether different; it had a velocity of its own.
Enza soon felt her father’s hands on her shoulders. As she turned, Marco took her into his arms and wept with her.
God had abandoned them, the angels had taken their leave, and the saints had turned away. Now Enza understood the truth of those terrible hours. They had not been waiting for Stella to get well; they were watching her die. For the first time in her life, in almost sixteen years of surviving blizzards, spring floods, and want, Enza was unlucky. The strong arms of her father could no longer protect her, and her mother’s touch had lost its power to heal.
Enza and Marco returned to the house. The fire had all but died out, and the morning sun was pulling itself up over Pizzo Camino, flooding the room with light. Eliana and Alma stood at the head of the bed, Vittorio and Battista on either side. After hours on his knees, the old priest stood up and kissed the silver cross on his rosary for the last time.
Giacomina draped herself over Stella’s body as she wept into her daughter’s hair. The mother then lifted her child into her arms, pulling her close and rocking her as she had done every night before the child went to sleep. Stella’s lifeless arms dangled outstretched from her mother’s body, palms up as if to be received by the angels who were nowhere to be found in the hours before her death. Stella’s brown eyes were open, her thick eyelashes framing her vacant stare. Her lips had turned pale blue like the underside of a shell.
Marco leaned over his wife and put his arms around her, unable to comfort her. He felt the strong hand of miserable failure upon him. Not only had the doctor in Lizzola, the priest, and the church failed him; he had not been pious enough in the eyes of God to spare his own daughter.
There was a sacrament happening in their midst, the uninvited moment of complete surrender to the spirit world, as life passes and death takes its hold. It was a sacred pause, a swinging bridge over the most perilous chasm, a moment that lasted only a second or two,