Author: Nancy Vieira Couto

When my great-grandmother Maria Julia da Costa Frias, my maternal grandmother’s mother, died in New Bedford in 1909, her family of new immigrants didn’t have enough money to erect a gravestone. Her grave had only a round stone marker with a number on it, small and sunk into the ground. There were many graves with markers instead of monuments; people were poor and struggling, with children to feed. My grandmother visited her mother’s grave often, and then less often as years went by. And the grass continued to grow. One day, years after Maria Julia’s death, my grandmother went to the cemetery accompanied by my mother, a young girl with no memory of the grandmother who had died while she was an infant. But during this particular spring season the cemetery grass had flourished; in fact, it covered all of the markers in that particular section of the cemetery, and it was impossible to read the numbers. My mother and grandmother were in basically the right place, but there were two unmarked graves side by side, and they weren’t sure which one was Maria Julia’s. My mother was wearing a necklace, a cross on a chain, and suddenly, maybe because of all the anxiety in the cemetery air, the chain broke and the cross fell to the ground. Was it a sign? My mother and grandmother decided it was, and for months afterward they planted flowers on the grave that the broken necklace had landed on.

Here’s the problem: They did try to find out for sure. They visited the cemetery office and inquired, and by that time they weren’t even sure what the number on marker should have said. But the office had absolutely no record of anyone named Maria Julia Frias buried there at all, in any grave, marked or unmarked. She didn’t exist.

On São Miguel, in the Azores, where Maria Julia was born, families had alcunhas, nicknames, to differentiate them from other families with the same surname. The alcunha could refer to a physical trait or to an activity or accomplishment. The Frias family’s nickname was Malassadas, referring to the delicious fried dough that Maria Julia might have been known for. As my family later learned, when Maria Julia died my grand-aunt Inez’s husband made all the arrangements with the cemetery, but he gave his mother-in-law’s name as “Maria Julia Malassada.” She was there in the records after all, but it took a while to find her. And the grave chosen by my mother’s broken necklace? It was the wrong one. All of that was straightened out, and the cemetery crew did a better job of trimming the grass and keeping the markers legible. All was well.

Fast forward many years to when my grandmother was an old woman in poor health. She was troubled by the fact that her mother’s grave didn’t have a monument, and she had been saving up the money to buy one. She finally had enough, and she asked my mother and my aunt Linda to go to the monument yard, choose a stone, and have it engraved. My aunt, who was superstitious, didn’t like the idea. “As soon as we buy the stone, she’ll die,” my aunt said. Her premonition turned out to be correct.

There’s one more twist: My grandmother’s brother spelled his name “Farias” instead of “Frias.” Nobody knows why he did that. “Frias” is the correct version; I know, because I’ve seen the church documents. But one day the brother’s daughter stopped by the monument yard to look at the stone, saw the instructions for the engraving, and said “You have the wrong spelling.” That’s why my great-grandmother’s gravestone has the wrong name on it.

Here’s yet another twist: My paternal grandmother’s mother, Maria de Jesus Pereira Ferreira, died in New Bedford in 1920. A few years ago I went to the cemetery to find out where she was buried. I knew the exact date of her death, and the cemetery pointed me to a grave for someone named “Maria J. Faria.” To my ear, “Ferreira” and “Faria” don’t sound anything alike, but nobody consulted my ear, and a lot of people couldn’t read, write, or spell in those days. I checked the death notice in the newspaper microfilms at the public library, and it checked out; Maria’s parents were listed, and they were definitely my great-great-grandparents.

Just because something is engraved in stone doesn’t mean it’s correct. Two great-grandmothers, no relation to each other, have gravestones with nearly identical names on them. And it is the name of neither of them.

Margarida saw the Queen in that summer of 1901 when all the days were damp and filled with the smell of salt.  She couldn’t see the future through the fog, but she imagined machines, money, and motion, a city crammed with tenement houses and streetcars.  She was fourteen years old.  She and her mother, Maria Julia, had just arrived in Ponta Delgada, having said good-bye forever to aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, the living and the dead.  They had their freshly-issued passports, and their trunks were still in the cart that had carried them the short distance from Rosário, Lagoa.  Soon they would board the Dona Maria.  But what was that commotion?

They had forgotten all about it.  Yes, Queen Amelia and King Carlos were visiting Ponta Delgada, and there was the Queen right on the other side of a large group of cheering people.  Margarida, who was slim and quick, darted under elbows and between skirts to get a good look.  The Queen was tall and seemed kind.  She smiled and waved at the crowd.  I like to think that Margarida caught her eye, that she and the Queen were poised for a moment on a pivot in time, and that they would remember the moment always, even as they traveled in opposite directions, one to the New World and one back to the old maelstrom of political intrigues.  I know Margarida remembered.

Before she married Carlos, Amelia had been a French princess, the great-granddaughter of Louis Philippe, the “Citizen King.”  Louis Philippe had a long history of rolling with punches, starting with his years of exile when he earned a modest income teaching in a boys’ school and later traveled the world incognito.  Amelia must have inherited her great-grandfather’s talent for coping with sudden change, as she would demonstrate in 1908.  As the Royal Family crossed the Terreiro do Paço in an open carriage, a couple of assassins shot and killed the King and his older son, Crown Prince Luís Filipe.  But when a third shot hit the younger son, Prince Manuel, in the arm, Queen Amelia turned and whacked the gunman with a huge bouquet she had just been given, catching him off guard and saving Manuel’s life.  Those were big punches.  Amelia ordered some black dresses from her dressmakers.

Margarida went to the school for immigrants.  She learned to say “I see the cat I see the dog” but wondered where that was going to get her.  Not very far, she decided, and she didn’t go back.  She met José at a dance.  He was good-looking, and she was slim and quick.  Where else but in New Bedford could a girl from Rosário, Lagoa, meet a boy from Ribeirinha, Ribeira Grande.  They married on April 1, 1905, and in no time at all they became Margaret and Joseph, although at home they still used the old names.  Joseph was a fireman.  He worked in the cotton mills, not putting out fires but keeping them going.  He also kept a dream going, a dream of becoming a citizen of the United States.  He practiced writing his name, Joseph Vieira, over and over again on scraps of paper.  His handwriting was shaky.  “Joseph” and “Vieira” were the only words he knew how to write.

The courtroom was so full of hope that Joseph could hardly breathe.  Soon he would raise his hand and take the oath of citizenship.  At least, that’s what he thought, but he had some punches to roll with, too.  There in the courtroom Joseph had a stroke, his first, and wasn’t able to take the oath.  Afterwards he had to walk with a cane.  He never became a citizen.  Years later, on a summer morning in 1941, Joseph went into the bathroom to shave and get ready for the day.  His second stroke was as sudden as an assassin’s bullet.  He died on the Fourth of July.  If Margaret had had a bouquet of flowers, she would have wanted to whack someone with it.  But there  really wasn’t anyone to whack.  So she bought some black dresses and a black coat and a black hat.  What else could she do?