Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir Read online

  Around our house, marijuana was as common as pasta. I never purchased it myself, but we all chipped in. For me, it was purely social, not something I’d ever do alone. I didn’t even know how to roll a joint and once spent an entire evening trying. I’d seen it done plenty of times in both Seattle and Perugia, but it was trickier than I thought it would be. Laura babysat my efforts, giving me pointers as I measured out the tobacco and pot and tried rolling the mixture into a smokable package. I never got it right that night, but I won a round of applause for trying. Either Filomena or Laura took a picture of me posing with it between my index and middle finger, as if it were a cigarette, and I a pouty 1950s pinup.

  I was being goofy, but this caricature of me as a sexpot would soon take hold around the world.

  Chapter 4

  October 2007

  My big lesson on the first day of school at the University for Foreigners had nothing to do with academics. I’d shown up early for my 9 A.M. grammar class and then waited, alone, checking and rechecking my schedule, wondering if somehow I’d come to the wrong place. Finally, just when I was about to give up, everyone arrived, en masse, at 9:15. That’s when I learned that Italian time means T plus fifteen minutes, a tidbit I thought would probably be more useful to me than any verb I might learn to conjugate. I was even more charmed and appreciative the morning my pronunciation teacher announced that she needed a cigarette and suspended class while all fifteen of us walked outside for a quick shot of espresso or a smoke. Italians, I was coming to see, embrace any chance to have a good time. It was something I wasn’t used to.

  I went to school for two hours, five days a week. Besides grammar and pronunciation, I had a third class, in Italian culture. We all went home for lunch at noon, and I spent the rest of the day and night doing whatever I wanted. My teachers didn’t give homework, so I’d sit on the terrace or, when the days cooled, at my desk with a grammar book and a dictionary, making my way, one word at a time, through the Italian translation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

  A lot of people would have traded places with me in a nanosecond. I was living in Italy, young and unfettered. But I quickly found that, for me, all the freedom came with a downside: the empty hours made me feel irresponsible, and I knew I needed somehow to fill them.

  When I told my roommates in early October that I wanted a job, Laura arranged a meeting for me with a friend of hers. After lunch one day, she walked me over to Piazza Grimana, by the University for Foreigners, and introduced me to a scruffy young guy. “Juve, this is Amanda. Amanda, this is Juve. Good luck!” she said, turning to walk away.

  Juve smiled and shook my hand. He spoke perfect, albeit stilted, English. “So you are looking for a job?” he said.

  “Yes, I have experience as a barista.”

  “You are American?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m from Seattle.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and started walking me down the street, away from the university. I felt awkward, because I was looking for a job, not a boyfriend. “My boss, Diya Lumumba—people call him Patrick—owns a new bar, Le Chic,” Juve said. “It’s a good place, small, and we are building up our clientele. I give out flyers during the day and bring in customers in the evening. I make sure business happens.”

  “Is that where we’re going?” I asked.

  The answer was no.

  Instead we walked to Juve’s apartment, where he made us espresso and we took turns playing his guitar. It was the weirdest job interview I’d ever had. I wasn’t sure what to say or do. Was I supposed to talk about my work experience pulling coffee at a café and working for a Seattle caterer? Or were we two coworkers just hanging out? I’d expected him to ask me questions, but I had the feeling I’d already gotten the job on our handshake. Like so many other experiences in Perugia, this one made me feel off-balance.

  “About the job,” Juve finally said. “It is straightforward and easy. I will give you flyers to hand out in school. Invite your classmates to come to Le Chic. Keep asking them. Around nine P.M., we will meet at the bar, Patrick will open the doors, and we will help him get ready. Then we will go to Corso Vannucci and hand out more flyers and direct people to Le Chic. When we have no flyers left, we will help Patrick get drinks, stock snacks, and make sure people are having a good time. When customers leave, we bring in more.”

  I was hired to work at the bar from 9 P.M. to 1 A.M., making €5.00—about $7.25—an hour. “Handing out flyers doesn’t count as work time,” Juve said.

  “Okay,” I answered. “So, what’s next?”

  “You need to meet Patrick. I will tell him I know you and will teach you how to do the job.”

  I met Patrick at lunchtime the next day, at the university snack bar. He was originally Congolese and spoke Italian but no English. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked.

  “Pretty well,” I said.

  Like Juve, Patrick wasn’t interested in my work experience. Looking back now, I’m sure they hired me because they thought I’d attract men to the bar. But I was too naïve back then to get that. I still thought of myself as a quirky girl struggling to figure out who I’d be when I grew up. I now realize that the point of the job “interview” was to see if my looks were a draw or a liability.

  Patrick said, “Sometimes the job is serving, sometimes cleaning, sometimes being friendly and welcoming.”

  “I’m outgoing,” I said, still trying to sell myself as a hard worker. “I love talking to people.”

  “Good. Juve will train you, and I will see you tonight!” Patrick stood up and kissed me on each cheek. Juve handed me a stack of flyers. “The students are leaving classes,” he said. “Hand these out. And congratulations!”

  Just before nine o’clock I went to Juve’s apartment, and we continued on to Le Chic together. The wooden door was open, revealing a dim, tiny vestibule with a bar and a seating area beyond. The walls were brick, and the whole place was dark. It looked like a cellar.

  Patrick was standing behind the bar. “Welcome,” he said, as he handed me a menu and started pointing out which beers were on tap, which in bottles, and the different liquors for cocktails and specialty drinks. “Would you like something?”

  “I’m good for now, thanks,” I said, translating the American idiom directly into Italian. Patrick looked at me blankly. “No, thank you,” I said, correcting myself.

  It turned out that working at Le Chic wasn’t nearly as easy or as straightforward as billed. In fact, it was bewildering. I didn’t always understand Patrick’s directions, especially over the pulsating music, and I had to rely on Juve to translate. It was hard to keep track of orders let alone customers, whom I could hardly expect to stand in one place all night. I couldn’t maneuver trays and had to hand-carry the full glasses two at a time. It was my job to make sure customers kept drinking, and I had to watch carefully so I could pounce on not-quite-finished cocktails and replace them before the last swallow. It felt like a lot to juggle, even without the added challenge of trying to stay awake until 1 A.M. on school nights.

  “Have a good time” was my main instruction from Patrick. If I was having fun, the customers would, too. This wasn’t at all what I had thought I was getting myself into. As a barista at home, I was friendly with the regulars, but I wore an apron and stayed behind the counter, protected. At Le Chic, I liked being out and around people, but the job made me feel used and unsure of myself. Still, once I commit to something, it’s hard for me to admit that it’s not working out.

  Patrick always offered me drinks on the job, and I couldn’t figure out what kind of message he was sending me. Since I wasn’t a big drinker I’d either turn him down or nurse a single glass of white wine all night.

  Every day, Juve met me outside my grammar class with a new stack of flyers, and I’d hand out a few between and after my classes. I dreaded the hour between 9 P.M. and 10 P.M., when I’d have to stand by myself in Perugia’s main square, Piazza IV Novembre, calling out, “Le Chic
. Via Alessi. Le Chic. Via Alessi.” I felt vulnerable.

  Piazza IV Novembre, home to both the Duomo, a massive fifteenth-century Gothic cathedral, and an elaborately carved pink-and-white marble fountain, was the town’s main meeting spot. At night it filled with loud students milling around drinking beer from plastic cups. It reminded me unhappily of the fraternity bashes I’d attended as a freshman at UW. I’d gone to those parties, danced with those people, drunk too much. It took me less than a semester to figure out how much I disliked it. Being in school in Perugia, I felt as if I’d circled back to the same spot—ironic, since I’d come to Italy to figure out how to be my own person.

  My job made me feel like a bull’s-eye in the middle of the chaos. Guys continually came up to me to flirt, saying they’d stop by Le Chic only if I promised to be there. Brushing them off, as I would have liked, would have been bad for business. So I hoped my chirpy “You should come by” came off as inviting for Patrick’s sake and not too suggestive for mine.

  It was confusing to me. I was open to new people and experiences, but I kept ending up in situations I didn’t want to be in. Working for Patrick and Juve was part of that.

  Since most of my days included standing there mute with my arm outstretched to passersby who didn’t acknowledge that I was at the other end of the four-inch-by-five-inch sheet of colored paper, I was always relieved when my stack of flyers dwindled, and I could leave.

  But no matter how many flyers I gave out, Le Chic wasn’t catching on. Meredith came to visit me there a few times so I wouldn’t be bored or alone, and once, she brought her girlfriends. But I could see why they didn’t come back. Le Chic didn’t get a lot of foot traffic, so the dance floor was usually empty. The bar felt forlorn—not exactly a recipe for a good time. Patrick was jovial and did his best to make it welcoming, but it was still noisy and dark inside and attracted a crowd of older men—often friends of Patrick’s—and not students.

  There was nothing truly dangerous about Le Chic, but its seediness did hint at Perugia’s dark side. What I didn’t know when I arrived was that the city had the highest concentration of heroin addicts in Italy. I never heard about the high level of trafficking and drug use until I was in prison, bunking with drug dealers. During my trial, the prosecution and the media seemed to take for granted that our neighborhood was bad and our little villa a deathtrap.

  Even without knowing this, my mom worried about my safety—a lot. One day, while I was e-mailing back and forth with her at the Internet café, she asked, “Who should I call if I can’t reach you?”

  “We don’t have a home phone, but I can give you Laura’s number,” I wrote. “But honestly, Mom, I think I’m safer here than in Seattle. My friend Juve walks me home from work most nights, and Perugia is much smaller than Seattle. I’ve really made a lot of friends.”

  “Okay,” Mom wrote back. “I feel better.”

  I believed what I said—not because I had reason to but because I was in love with the city’s many charms. And I didn’t pick up on some obvious clues.

  One night, when Le Chic was closing and Juve couldn’t walk me home, I saw an acquaintance of Meredith’s. I didn’t know his real name, only that Meredith and her girlfriends had nicknamed him Shaky because of the way he danced. He offered me a ride home on his scooter. I figured a friend of a friend was close enough to trust. I figured wrong.

  We whizzed through the narrow streets. As we approached the intersection where the villa was, he slowed and yelled over his shoulder, “Would you like a cupcake? I know the best bakery in Perugia, and it’s open all night.”

  “No. I’m tired. I just want to go home.”

  “Come on. It’s nearby.”

  “No, thanks,” I said, just as we passed my house.

  We went to the bakery, where I refused to get anything. “I don’t even like cupcakes,” I said. “Now home.”

  “My home,” he said.

  “No!” I glared.

  “Just for a minute. I have to pick something up.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling that it was not okay at all. But I had no idea where I was and no other way to get where I was going.

  Shaky’s apartment was tiny and cramped with people. He took me to his bedroom to wait while he went off to do something. After a few minutes, he came back with a beer for me.

  I said, “If you don’t take me home right now I’m going to walk.” Luckily for me, since it was an empty threat, he shrugged, turned around, and we left. When we got to my driveway I climbed off the scooter without saying good-bye and stormed inside.

  I was angry, and bursting to tell Meredith. She sighed. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “He tried to do the same thing with my friend Sophie. But he was so responsible the night our friend was sick, I still really trust him.”

  After that, Meredith came up with a plan. She always went out with a group of girlfriends, so she felt protected by the pack. But knowing I was often on my own, she said, “If you come back to the villa at night and I’m not here, make sure to text me to say you’ve gotten home safely.”

  It was comforting to know that if she didn’t hear from me she’d realize something was wrong and would get help.

  One night when the bar was slow, Patrick decided to close early. I texted Meredith, who said she’d meet me at the fountain by the Duomo, three minutes away.

  As I made my way through the mass of drunk students in Piazza IV Novembre, I saw two of our downstairs neighbors, Giacomo and Marco. Giacomo handed me a beer, and I pushed my way through the crowd to find Meredith. When we had rejoined the guys, they introduced us to a friend who, I’d later learn, had moved to Italy as a kid, from Ivory Coast. His name was Rudy. They sometimes played pickup basketball with him.

  The five of us stood around for a few minutes before walking home together. The guys invited us to their apartment, but Meredith and I first stopped at ours to drop off our purses.

  “Ready to go downstairs?” I asked her.

  “You go. I’ll be down in a second,” she said.

  When I opened the door to the downstairs apartment, Giacomo, Marco, Stefano, and Rudy were sitting around the table laughing. “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” they said sheepishly.

  I didn’t think another thing about it until months and months later, when it came out in court that just before I’d opened the door, Rudy had asked the guys if I was available.

  A short time later, Meredith came in and sat down next to me at the table. The guys passed us the joint they were smoking. We each inhaled, handed it back, and sat there for a few minutes while they joked around in Italian. Tired and a little stoned, I couldn’t keep up with their conversation. After a little while I told Meredith, “I’m going up to bed.”

  One day in mid-October, about three weeks after I arrived, Meredith and I were walking down Via Pinturicchio to try out a new grocery store that was supposed to be cheaper than the Coop we usually went to downtown. I didn’t know it then, but it was just a few doors down from Perugia’s courthouse.

  “Have you met any guys you like yet?” I asked Meredith.

  “Giacomo,” she said, shyly but decisively. She had talked about our downstairs neighbor before. “I think he’s cute and nice.”

  Not many nights later, the guys invited all of us in the house on an excursion to Red Zone, a popular club just outside of town. I was excited. It wasn’t usually my scene, but I’d decided to try something different and had already been to two downtown dance clubs, Domus and Blue Velvet. To my surprise, I’d had a decent time.

  Laura and Filomena stayed home, but Meredith invited her friend Amy to come. The guys brought a friend from Rome named Bobby, whom I’d met once before. I had a cold sore then and was so self-conscious about it I just wanted to hide. Bobby said, charmingly, in English, “Why does it bother you? Many people get cold sores.”

  Red Zone took up an entire warehouse. It was the largest, most over-the-top dance club I’d ever been to. The line to get in s
naked around the building, and people were crammed in as if the place had been vacuum-sealed. It was hard to find any air. Bright lights flashed red, green, and blue, and the heavy bass seemed to travel through the cement floor and into my bones. Somehow we snagged a table, and Stefano ordered a round of sweet, electric blue drinks. I don’t know what was in them, but I got drunk almost immediately. We were listening to the music and laughing, getting up to dance every now and then. It must have been 102 degrees, and I was sweating, dripping. Bobby tried to talk to me, yelling over the music.

  When I went to the bathroom, he followed me and waited outside the door. As I stumbled out, I grabbed onto him and kissed him on the mouth.

  “Do you like me?” Bobby asked.

  I nodded.

  Then he kissed me back.

  Just then, Marco passed by and started whooping and congratulating Bobby on our hookup. I have no idea how long we stayed at the club. When it was time to go, Stefano went for the car, and Bobby and I stood on the curb outside, kissing. Giacomo and Meredith stood slightly apart from us, entwined.

  When we got home, Bobby followed me to the front door.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. This was the first time I’d invited a guy into my bed since I’d arrived in Perugia. We went to my room and had sex. Then we both passed out.

  The next morning I got up before he did, got dressed, and went to make myself breakfast. Bobby came into the kitchen a few minutes later.

  We were eating cookies when Laura came out of her bedroom. I’d never entertained a lover at the villa for breakfast, and it was awkward, despite Laura’s proclaimed sense of easy sexuality. All three of us tried to ignore the feeling away.