Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir Read online

  As I got ready to leave for Perugia, I knew I hadn’t become my own person yet, and I didn’t quite know how to get myself there. I was well-meaning and thoughtful, but I put a ton of pressure on myself to do what I thought was right, and I felt that I always fell short. That’s why the challenge of being on my own meant so much to me. I wanted to come back from Italy to my senior year at UW stronger and surer of myself—a better sister, daughter, friend.

  While I was figuring out what I would need in Italy—my climbing gear, hiking boots, and a teapot were among the essentials—old friends from high school and new friends from college dropped by with well-wishes, little presents, and gag gifts.

  I received a blank journal and a fanny pack and tins of tea. Funny, irreverent Brett brought me a small, pink, bunny-shaped vibrator. I was incredulous; I had never used one.

  “Until you meet your Italian stallion,” Brett said, handing it to me. She winked.

  I laughed. The bunny was typical Brett. She liked to tease that I was regrettably behind everyone else. In high school she tried to coax me into straightening my hair and wearing makeup. I tried the first and thought it was okay. I tried the second and felt like an imposter. Her newest cause was to convince me to give casual sex a chance. I’d heard the same thing from other friends. It seemed to make some sense. I yearned to break down all the barriers that stood between me and adulthood. Sex was a big one—and the one that scared me the most. I’d bloomed late and didn’t kiss a guy until I was seventeen. I lost my virginity after I started college. Before Italy, I’d had sex with four guys, each in a relationship I considered meaningful, even though they had turned out to be short-lived.

  I left for Italy having decided I needed to change that. For me, sex was emotional, and I didn’t want it to be anymore—I hated feeling dependent on anyone else. I wanted sex to be about empowerment and pleasure, not about Does this person like me? Will he still like me tomorrow? I was young enough to think that insecurity disappeared with maturity. And I thought Italy would provide me the chance to see that happen.

  On the day I was leaving—in a rush to get to the airport and without a single thought—I tossed Brett’s pink bunny vibrator into my clear plastic toiletry bag.

  This turned out to be a very bad idea.

  Chapter 2

  August 30–September 1, 2007

  Italy

  It seemed totally harmless. My sister Deanna and I were taking the train from Milan to Florence. Our seatmate, Cristiano, was tan, blond, and wearing a tank top that showed off his lean, muscular frame. He had the chiseled good looks of a California beach bum and the alluring accent of an Italian—a combination I found incredibly attractive. His English was even more limited than my rookie Italian. We made up for the gap with lots of gestures and smiles. Flirting, I realized, is a universal language.

  Rolling past bright green fields, I wondered if Cristiano thought I was cute—the word I used to describe myself back then. The leap to beautiful or sexy was too huge for me to make. In my mind, if that ever happened, it would only be after I’d grown into a sexually confident woman. When that would be, I couldn’t guess. But I was also increasingly aware, as I noticed Cristiano stealing glances in my direction, that some men saw in me something they found appealing.

  Cristiano was going to Rimini, a seaside resort known for discos. Deanna and I were spending Thursday night in Florence and leaving for Perugia early the next morning. I was giddy. After reading about Perugia for months, I was finally going to see it. Deanna and I were giving ourselves two days to find me a place to live near the Università per Stranieri—the University for Foreigners—where my classes would start on October 1. Then my sister and I would take the train to Hamburg to vacation with our German cousins.

  I thought of this side trip as the unofficial kickoff of a new phase in my life. I’d hang out with Italians and make new friends. Just being in a new environment would stretch me as a person.

  We all got off the train in Florence. Deanna and I had planned the stopover, but Cristiano missed his bus to Rimini and got a room in our hotel. The three of us sat outside and shared a large tomato, mozzarella, and basil pizza and a carafe of wine. By then it was so obvious that Cristiano and I were into each other that I’m sure Deanna felt like an add-on. As soon as we finished eating, she announced that she wanted to go to bed and left us alone. Cristiano and I were walking around the city arm in arm when he said, “Hey, do you like spinelli?”—“joints.”

  “Yeah, do you have any?” I asked.

  We shared a joint, and then, high and giggly, we went to his hotel room. I’d just turned twenty. This was my first bona fide one-night stand.

  I’d told my friends back home that I couldn’t see myself sleeping with some random guy who didn’t matter to me. Cristiano was a game changer.

  We didn’t have a condom, so we didn’t actually have intercourse. But we were making out, fooling around like crazy, when, an hour later, I realized, I don’t even know this guy. I jumped up, kissed him once more, and said good-bye. I went upstairs to the tiny room Deanna and I were sharing. She was wide awake, standing by the window. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I didn’t know where you were or if you were okay.”

  She was right.

  I tried to make it up to her by waking at dawn and racing around Florence taking snapshots of us funny-posing and face-making on the Ponte Vecchio and in front of the copy of Michelangelo’s David and the Fountain of Neptune. It kind of worked.

  We boarded the first train of the day for Perugia and arrived in my new town while the early morning was still hazy. Our mom’s cousin Dolly, who’d booked all our reservations, had instructed us to catch a bus to our hotel. A lifelong resident of Germany, Dolly, whom I call “aunt,” had traveled all over Europe and would know what to do. But I’m a walker, and it seemed ridiculous to take a bus. Besides, we didn’t have a clue which one, and my Italian wasn’t good enough to ask or to understand the answer. “Let’s walk,” I told Deanna. “It will help us get our bearings.”

  That was my second mistake in twelve hours.

  Downtown Perugia is on top of a steep hill, and the train station is at the bottom. The climb up the stairs from the platform to the station left us breathless. I assumed the hotel wasn’t far, and when we passed a kiosk, I bought a map. I found our hotel at the edge of the foldout. I figured the distance was doable, even though we were carrying backpacks filled with clothes and books in the late summer heat.

  I led Deanna across a trestle over the train tracks and up a steep, winding road. As we walked, we looked out at cypress trees and olive groves, church steeples and terracotta houses. I breathed in the city’s earthiness. I was already feeling like I owned the view. Soon, I thought, this will be as familiar to me as the Space Needle in Seattle.

  After we slogged for an hour and a half, the sidewalk unexpectedly ended. The terrain grew even hillier, and when we came to a ramp for the highway, we had no choice but to walk alongside it. Tall, dry grass scratched our legs, and in no time we were dotted with bug bites. The trek was turning out to be at least twice as far and four times more rugged than I’d expected. The sun was high in the sky.

  Sweating, miserable, and close to tears, Deanna finally said, “Amanda, this cannot be the right way.” She lay down on top of her overstuffed backpack.

  “You look like a turtle that’s flipped over onto its shell,” I said, trying to lighten our situation.

  “I can’t walk anymore,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

  I was still pretty sure I was right about our direction. Sitting down next to her, I pointed. “Here’s where we are on the map. It’ll get easier at the top of this rise. Then I’ll find somebody who can tell us the way.”

  But before we got to the crest, a nondescript car pulled onto the shoulder. The driver looked perhaps a few years younger than my dad. I had no idea what he was asking or saying, but I’m sure he could tell we were lost Americans. Trying to communicate, we looked li
ke we were playing roadside charades. But between his sparse English and my slight Italian vocabulary, we found two of the few words we had in common: Holiday Inn. He pointed to his car and traced his finger along the full length of our map, offering us a ride.

  I’m trusting by nature—too trusting, as my dad had said—and I just assumed our driver was a decent guy. Really, what choice did we have? It’s not like we could turn around. I was so relieved to find someone who knew how to get us to our hotel that I was happy to take a risk.

  “Grazie,” I said.

  I rode shotgun and did all the talking. On the off chance that he did anything crazy, I’d be the buffer between him and Deanna. As the oldest, I automatically reacted this way to any possibly dicey situation that included a sibling. I also felt safer when I had the illusion of being in control. Now, looking back, I see that I had a ridiculous amount of unwarranted self-confidence. Why did I assume I knew the way to a hotel in a country I’d been in once, years before, and a city I’d never been in at all? I hadn’t been in a physical fight in my life. What could I have done to protect Deanna if the ride had gone wrong?

  Fortunately, my take on our driver was better than my grasp of kilometers. After exiting the freeway, he made a series of sharp turns—there were no street signs—while cocking his head toward me to make small talk. I gathered that he either owned a disco or was inviting us to go dancing. I understood when he asked, “Disco stasera?”—“tonight.” For ten tedious minutes I smiled and said no—the same word in English and Italian. Our driver wore an expression of cheerful, you-can’t-blame-a-guy-for-trying resilience when he dropped us at our hotel.

  By the time we’d checked in and left our bags in our room, we’d lost four crucial hours of apartment hunting. It could have been a lot worse. Done with walking, we took a bus back to town, where I bought a cheap mobile phone with prepaid minutes. Deanna and I stopped at a coffee bar on the main drag, spent five minutes trying to describe a mocha (espresso + latte + cioccolato!) to the good-humored barista, and I searched Perugia’s classifieds for an apartment to rent—without success. My anxiety shot up. This trip had begun awkwardly. I wasn’t superstitious, but I hoped it wasn’t a sign of the way my year in Italy would go.

  Deanna and I walked down a steep cobblestone street to the university and went into the ornate administration building. If I couldn’t snag a place to live, at least I could find out how to register. Dozens of flags waved on poles on the balcony above the entrance, making the building look like a scaled-down United Nations. The students attending the university came from as many different countries as there were flags. As we were leaving, I saw a skinny brunette who looked a little older than I was. Wearing super-short cut-offs and a yellow tank top, she was taping a sign on a wooden railing crowded with all kinds of notices. She looked like a student, and I could see a phone number on her sign. I grabbed at the possibility. “Do you have an apartment to lease?” I asked tentatively in English. She answered—also in English, luckily—that she and her best friend were subletting two rooms in their rented house.

  “How far is it?” I asked.

  “It’s right here, down this lane—two seconds,” she answered. “Do you want to see it?” I couldn’t believe that a likely solution to my biggest worry was standing right in front of me.

  Her name was Laura Mezzetti, and I liked her immediately. Deanna and I followed Laura across the tree-lined piazza and past a series of redbrick high-rises. We were practically sprinting from one busy street to an even busier one. We crossed an intersection and came to a tall iron gate. Laura stopped and swung it open. We stood at the end of a driveway in front of a cream-colored stone villa with a terracotta roof fit for a fairy tale. It was on top of a hill that sloped down to a tangled, untended garden. I was flabbergasted. A villa in the middle of downtown!

  “No way,” I whispered to Deanna. “This is too perfect.”

  “The top floor is ours,” Laura said. “The basement is rented by a group of guys—students.”

  Laura and her roommate, Filomena Romanelli, led us through the kitchen/living area. The house had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a terrace. One of the available bedrooms faced the driveway, with just a sliver of the valley view. The room next to it was slightly larger and had a picture window looking out on the countryside. Both cost the same, but I liked the smaller room better. It had everything I hoped for—a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a cozy feeling. The rent—three hundred euros, or just over four hundred dollars at the time—seemed expensive, but the place was close to the university, and a villa. It was worth it.

  No. 7, Via della Pergola also felt like a happy place, probably because Laura and Filomena had a go-with-the-flow attitude toward life. “We go to work, we come home, we watch soap operas, we cook dinner, we hang out with friends,” Laura said.

  They were both in their late twenties and working at law firms. Laura was offbeat, with multiple piercings in both ears. Filomena seemed more girly but, like Laura, relaxed—a little bit of a hippie—and really funny. They reminded me of my friends in Seattle. I felt it was a good fit.

  Laura’s English was better than Filomena’s. When she asked me about myself, I told her that I played the guitar but hadn’t been able to bring mine to Perugia.

  “Oh, I have one,” Laura said. “You can use it anytime.”

  And when I said I did yoga, she replied, “Wow, can you teach me? I’ve always wanted to learn.”

  “You’ll love the jazz and chocolate festivals,” Filomena added. She offered Deanna and me fresh figs from the garden.

  They said I wasn’t the first roommate they’d interviewed. A guy they called “totally uptight” was interested in renting, until he found out they smoked—cigarettes and marijuana. “Are you okay with that?” Filomena asked.

  “I’m from Seattle. I’m laid back,” I answered. “I don’t smoke cigarettes, but I’ll share a joint.” A few minutes later they rolled one and passed it around. I inhaled deeply and relaxed. I felt so lucky—and capable. Six thousand miles from home and without the help of my mom or dad, I’d organized the next chapter of my life. I’d found this amazing place to stay, and I would get to live as a local—Laura, Filomena, and their four downstairs neighbors were all Italian.

  “I love it,” I said. “I’ll bring my deposit tomorrow. As soon as I can get to an ATM.” Before we left, Deanna took a picture of Laura, Filomena, and me at the front door, smiling and with our arms around each other’s backs.

  Mission accomplished, Deanna and I left for Hamburg to stay with Aunt Dolly. I figured that when I returned in mid-September the last bedroom would be rented. Laura and Filomena had said they’d prefer another female but cared most about finding someone easygoing who would fit in. I liked them so much that I knew I’d get along with anyone they chose.

  About a week after I got to Germany, Filomena and Laura e-mailed me that a British exchange student named Meredith Kercher was moving in. They said she was quiet and nice—from outside London. They urged me to come back soon so we could “get the party started.”

  I couldn’t wait to return. But I’d also been chastened by my first trip to Perugia. A few days after Deanna and I got to Germany, I broke out with a gigantic cold sore on my top lip that Dolly and I figured must be oral herpes—from Cristiano. To my great embarrassment, Dolly had to take me to the pharmacy to find out how to treat it. I couldn’t believe this was the first wild thing I’d done in my entire life and—bam! I’d made an impulsive decision, and now I’d have to pay a lifelong consequence.

  I was bummed knowing I’d have to take medication forever. Even more humiliating was that from here on out I’d have to explain to potential partners that I might be a risk. I gave myself a hard time, but after a few days and a lot of conversations with myself, I settled down. I vowed I’d be more careful in the future. After my luck had changed in finding the villa, I’d had a stroke of bad. I told myself if this was the worst thing that happened, I could deal with it.

 
Chapter 3

  September 2007

  Perugia, Italy

  I met Meredith on September 20, 2007, the day I moved into No. 7, Via della Pergola. Half Indian, she was exotically beautiful, a Brit majoring in European studies. In the month she’d been in Perugia, she had already become part of a close-knit group of British girls. As she stood in my doorway chatting while I unpacked, I understood how that had happened so fast. She was friendly and game. “Come out with me tonight and meet my friends,” she said. “I’ll introduce you to all the people and places I’ve gotten to know in Perugia. You’re going to love it here.”

  The newest and youngest of four roommates, Meredith and I had a lot in common. We were both children of middle-class, divorced parents, and, at twenty-one, she was just a year ahead of me in school. We’d each pushed ourselves hard to make this year in Italy happen. Now that I was finally here, the hours and hours I’d worked in Seattle—early in the morning as a barista, late into the night for a local catering company, and training a girls’ soccer team in between—seemed unquestionably worthwhile. Meredith, a longtime Italophile, had been crushed when her British university turned her down for the program abroad, but she fought the decision and won. Maybe that’s why we each brought once-in-a-lifetime determination to our experience.

  Talking to her that first day, I was shocked to find how truly little I knew about my new city. I assumed Meredith and I would be classmates at the University for Foreigners, but she was enrolled at the University of Perugia. I couldn’t believe I’d been so laser-focused on my own program that I’d overlooked a local college, with a whopping thirty-four thousand students, just a ten-minute walk from our villa. I could have found out all about it if I’d only bothered to do a search on Google. But I had such a brochure image stuck in my head of Perugia as a tranquil, almost monastic place. As it turned out, more than a quarter of the city’s population were students, and while Perugia is more than two millennia older and way more picturesque, it’s a college town much like Ann Arbor or Berkeley or Chapel Hill.