A Semester Abroad

by Papa, Ariella

  She moved her horse in front of me on my white monster. Michelle whistled at the white monster and I touched it a little with my foot. Surprisingly, it began to move. I was holding my breath. My hands were tight on the reigns.

  “Relax, relax, you’re doing great,” Michelle kept saying. She was glancing back at me and smiling encouragingly. Finally, I started to relax a little. I kept my back as straight as I could; I relaxed my grip on the reigns and followed Michelle. Michelle kept chatting away. She was trying to calm me down, and I appreciated the effort.

  “So when are you guys going on your trip?”

  “In a few weeks. After the picking of the contrade for the Palio.” We were sticking around until the neighborhoods that would run in the race were decided.

  “That’s soon.”

  “Tell me about it. Did you book your flight home yet,” I asked.

  “Um, no.”

  “Are you gonna?’

  “I’m staying the summer. I’m renting an apartment in Lucy’s building. I’m not ready to go yet.”

  “Wow!” I said. I was really envious.

  “I know, pretty crazy, huh? I just think it’s something I want to do.”

  “It’s something we all want to do.”

  “Well, why don’t you stay, too?” she asked.

  “I barely have enough money for how long I’m staying.”

  “Do you guys want to stay with me for the Palio?”

  “Michelle, that would be fucking awesome,” I said, smiling. Staying with Michelle was the perfect plan. I couldn’t wait to tell Olivia. That would mean I might have more money for traveling later.

  “That would be cool.”

  “I know. I hook you up. C’mon let’s trot.” She gave her horse a kick, and then she and her horse were off. My white beast took off, too. We went through the green trees along the dirt path. I let out a surprised scream. I was scared but somehow laughing. I was high off the ground on an animal, a so-called domesticated animal, but an animal nonetheless. Suddenly, the horse stopped trotting. I didn’t want to kick it again; I wanted to let it be. It walked along the path. I was glad Michelle has gotten far ahead of me. I realized I was smiling, slightly terrified with my body tensed, but smiling. I felt silly bouncing up and down on this horse with a stupid grin on my face.

  There were birds chirping and the air smelled clean. It was spring in the air and summer on the way. I had my whole life ahead of me. More specifically, I had a European tour and all the unknowns that would happen on the trip. But now I knew no matter what, I could return to the city for the Palio.

  I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I felt completely opposite from the way I did before. Not alone but surrounded by the possibility of the world.

  “Gabriella,” Michelle called from somewhere beyond. “Vieni.”

  “Arrivo!” I gave the horse a gentle nudge with my feet, and he complied, taking me off to meet my friends, to where they were waiting for me in a place I could not yet see.

  Gaetano’s game just finished when we arrived at the stadium. His team won. He and Duccio kissed each other hello. Gaetano spoke in rapid Italian about his game strategy. He was breathing deeply. He looked at me and winked.

  “Mi segui?” he asked, wondering if I could follow his speedy descriptions, and I nodded, smiling. “Brava.”

  Gaetano had to shower, and Duccio went back to the locker room with him, to talk to some of the other guys on the team. Michelle and I plopped down on the grass and waited for them.

  “You’re going to have a great summer,” I said. My palms and elbows were on the ground, head back in the breeze, face turned to the sun. “You can feel it already.”

  “I know. I can’t wait to move into the new place. I’m going to do it sooner rather than later. As soon as I get my papers and speech done.” She was lying on her side, with her cheek in her hand.

  “Have you told Janine yet?”

  “No.”

  “You gonna?” I pulled my neck up to look at her while she answered.

  “Guess I have to.”

  “I thought you guys were best friends,” I said after a time.

  “It’s funny, I thought I knew her pretty well, but I didn’t. I mean, maybe she thought she knew me, but I changed, you know.”

  “I think we all have,” I said.

  “I got caught up in her excitement about this trip. And I’ll never regret that. If I wasn’t here I wouldn’t know Duccio. I wouldn’t know you or Gaetano. You know I wouldn’t be able to speak a whole other language. But I feel like she is so different from who I thought she was.”

  “Yeah, she’s lost her glow or something. I think I’d have liked her better if I didn’t have to live with her. If I didn’t have to see all the cracks.”

  “There are a lot of cracks.” She laughed and waited a minute before adding, “We all got these microscopic views of each other.”

  “Yeah, and some of us have been improved by it and some of us haven’t.” I took a breath. There was something I wanted to know. It was now or never. “Were you the food thief?”

  Michelle shook her head and held up her hand, like a witness on the stand. “I swear I only binged on my own foods.”

  I laughed a bit uncomfortably. I wasn’t going to ask her about it, but if she wanted to tell me I would listen. She laid her arm flat on the grass and put her face on it. “It’s okay. I know it’s a problem. I thought I had it under control. I’m trying. I’m trying to find a different way.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I asked

  “What’s your different way, G-dog?”

  “I don’t know,” I laughed. “I guess there are a lot of ways to torment yourself.”

  Michelle laughed. “Sometimes I think you think too much. There’s something you don’t say that keeps you down.”

  “I think you’re right. I should be more sensuous.” I slid the word sensuous around my mouth in an Italian accent that made Michelle hoot with laughter. Maybe I had deflected talking about my shit and her shit once again, but it felt good to not be so heavy for once.

  Later, we met a bunch of Gaetano’s teammates at a bar nearby. We all sat at a big table outside. Gaetano’s teammates teased that they wanted to sit between Michelle and me, but I wound up between Michelle and Gaetano. Gaetano ordered a birroza, a giant beer. I never heard that word before, but I liked it. I was still learning, only just getting the hang of it.

  At the table, I got lost in the conversations and realized I hadn’t been paying attention to Gaetano. He was talking to his friend across the table. I overheard the friend’s question.

  “Is that your girl?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced at me. I met his eyes, and he didn’t look away.

  “What did he say?” I asked when the friend wasn’t paying attention. He shrugged, and we smiled at each other.

  I was still wasn’t sure about anything, but that day it didn’t feel like I had to be.

  22.

  Michelle and I pulled another all-nighter to work on our papers. These were the papers that were about the subjects we were supposed to be taking classes for. Luckily, one of the classes was Italian culture and that was a broad topic. We had no real guidelines for these papers. I thought that Arturo was just testing us to see what we could come up with.

  We were both using English books about Italy and paraphrasing shamelessly. Michelle was doing her paper on the Palio and was doing elaborate drawings of all of the neighborhood flags. Duccio was trying to convince her to make the flag of his contrade, the biggest. She did take extra care over that one.

  “So are you and Gaetano hitting it yet?” Michelle asked out of the blue on the way back from the bakery at 4 A.M.

  “You’re getting punchy, missy.”

  “It just seems like you guys are a little bit different lately.”

  “Remember, I’m trying not to think so much. Honestly, I don’t know. We kind of kissed last week at the party.” I hadn’t admitted that to anyone.

  “Oh,
really.” Michelle said, cocking her eyebrow.

  “Yeah, it’s weird. Well actually it was weird and now it hasn’t been weird. I thought he would be, like, all over me. I thought I totally fucked up the friendship I was working toward, but you know, he hasn’t tried anything. He’s been the same. It’s like he’s giving me time to figure it out.”

  “He’s awesome. He’s so in love with you.”

  “I know. I mean, I feel like he really cares for me. He gives me space, though. It’s so nice.”

  “Nice, Gabriella. Because he’s pretty effing hot.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know where it’s going. I’m just going to let it go.”

  “Nice, Gabriella,” Michelle said and held out the bag for me to rip off another piece of bread.

  The next night, Gaetano came over after a soccer game. This time I was working on my speech, so I didn’t really look at him when I let him in. I was planning to read it to him one more time. He stopped in the middle of the dining room.

  “Gabi,” he said. I finally looked at him. His lip was completely swollen.

  “Oh, shit,” I said in English. “What happened?”

  He told me a long and detailed story of the other team’s unsportsmanlike conduct and how it warranted several members of his team getting rough on the field. He got an elbow to the lip in all the confusion.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. I sat him on the arm of the chair in the dining room, the chair he slept in. Of course we didn’t have an icemaker because it seemed that no one in Italy used ice, but I found a bottle of white wine in the fridge, which I held against his face. “You are crazy.”

  “Do you know what the worst part is?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “When I saw that it was bleeding I thought, If Gabriella decides to kiss me again, I won’t be able to.”

  I pulled the bottle of wine away from his face and looked at him. “If?”

  “It’s whatever you want, bella, however you want. I’m not asking for anything. But you know that I love you.”

  I walked over to the dining room door and locked it. I started to kiss him, being careful not to press too hard against his mouth. His hands move around on me, finding the places I wanted him to find. Second base at last. He wasn’t as persistent as the last time. I had the feeling that I was in control. He began to speak as I unbuttoned his shirt, teaching me again. This time I learned words I didn’t know.

  “Si, si,” he said. “Spolgia mi.”

  And we were on the floor, on his black jacket. My legs were bare against the silken inside of it, the smell of leather mixing with his strong cologne. He used his hands where he couldn’t use his mouth.

  But before things really progressed, we heard something. It was Michelle trying to get in. We saw her through the frosty glass of the dining room door.

  “Hey,” she said, surprised, not getting it at first, but then when she heard my voice, she said, “Oh.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, arranging my clothes and checking to see that Gaetano was okay before I opened the door. “We shouldn’t be doing this here, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, G, I just wanted water.”

  “Get it. I’m done slutting it up. I should go somewhere else.”

  “Look at him,” Michelle said, gesturing to Gaetano. “He’s ready to kill me. Mi dispiace, Gaetano. Shit, what happened to his face? Forget it. Tell me later. I’ll get out of your way.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s your house.”

  Michelle quickly got a glass of water, muttering sorrys and mi dispiaces as she left. I walked back over to him and scratched the back of his hair. He closed his eyes, enjoying it.

  “I’m sorry that happened,” I said. “We could go to my room.”

  “So then when Lisa hears us, she can decide she wants to look out your window.”

  “She probably would.”

  “Come back with me.”

  “To the monastery?”

  “Yes, we’ll sneak you in. All of them on the bottom floor will be asleep.”

  “You mean the monks? All of the monks will be asleep?”

  “Yes, faccia di cazzo. It will be fine. We will be quiet.” He whispered in my ear. “At least when we are on the first floor and later…”

  I smiled up at him, “Later I’ll brush my teeth and have a great breakfast.”

  He stopped the vespa just outside the gate. I had only been on the grounds that one time during the day, so I held his hand tight. We walked the bike over to the rack.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked, seeming a bit nervous himself.

  “Yes, are you?”

  “A little.”

  “Have you done this before?”

  “Never.” He moved his face close to mine so I could see him in the moonlight. “Really, never. I never wanted to risk this before.”

  “What will happen if we are caught?” I whispered.

  “Tutto finish,” he said, mixing our two languages so I took him seriously. I took a deep breath.

  A long hall, a long dark hall. It does feel like a monster. There are doors on all sides. He will not turn the light on. Before he opened the giant wood portone, he knelt before me and slipped off my shoes. I balanced on one foot, bending to hold his shoulders for support. He squeezed my leg.

  I follow his instructions. I run quickly down the long hall. There are a few windows, where the full moon shines in so I can see the doors on all sides. It is a straight hall, but without the moon I couldn’t find my way. He is still at the other end, watching me run through the moonlight. Waiting to make sure.

  My heart is beating fast as I make it to the first step. When he sees that I make it, he turns the light on. I am at the landing when the light comes on–before me, an illuminated giant statue of a saint. I am not expecting it, I squeal

  Then I get scared that one of the sleeping monks will hear me and tutto will be finished. I run quickly down his floor to the end of the hall as he’d told me. I’ve heard him running down this hall to get my phone calls many times, but he never ran as fast as I am running.

  His room is the last one on the left. I open his door and go in, relieved. Safe at last, at least until a few hours from now, when I have to do this again. I hear him coming, laughing all the way down the corridor. I am ready when he opens the door.

  I watch his face change as I turn to him. This is his gift. It is mine. Soon I will be going away.

  I undress him, moving around his body as if it were my own. He lets me. We stand looking at each other and then laugh at the strangeness of finally seeing each other like this. I like what the sight of my body is doing to his. My body changed since I’ve been here. The hills of Siena have made my legs stronger. The fresh food has done my body good.

  “You are beautiful,” he says. I step closer to him. I reach across to touch him. Without clothes, he seems different, less himself. I take his hand and bring him to the bed.

  What we do is new for us, and yet it feels familiar. He looks at me for a while and rubs his hands against me. I began to touch him, too. We kiss. I am careful of his lip. Hands on skin explore. He speaks to me, saying things that would embarrass me in my own language. They come to my mind in a musical string.

  “Mi fai morire. Quanto sei bella. Si. Si. Voglio fare amore con te. Mi piace quando mi tocci. Quanto mi piaci. Bella. Bella. Sei bella, tu sai. Mi fai morire.”

  We take turns, looking up at each other to see what makes the other’s eyes close. We grow more confident. The room fills with us.

  “Gira ti,” he says, turning me over on the bed, running his face down the length of my back. I cannot see him. I can only hear, feel and smell. The word for all of those is sometimes the same in Italian, sentire, to feel, and now I understand why. All of the senses are a part of what we do. My body rises up to meet his.

  Turning me again, he buries his face into me. I am no longer the girl on the plane. I am a woman now. Our bodies move together. I hear the sounds we make and worr
y briefly about the monks sleeping below, but it floats out of my mind when everything else does.

  And then I can’t think anymore.

  23.

  My final weeks in Siena were a blur. I kept catching myself trying to mark time, trying to hold it up, but it all happened so quickly.

  Gaetano and I alternated between sneaking into the monastery and staying in my tiny bed. He distracted me from my final papers, because he could, because he knew that he would spend a solid hour helping me work on them, so that I would do okay.

  I gave my speech on the Medici. Signora Laza complimented my pronunciation and research.

  Duccio and Michelle were thrilled about Gaetano and me. Duccio drove us to the restaurant where we went the first night together as a foursome. He gave a toast about how happy he was to have met these ragazze americane, he said. It wasn’t like him to be emotional, but that night, holding on tight to Michelle, he was.

  The next morning Michelle knocked on my door. I got up quietly to not disturb Gaetano. We crept through Lisa’s room and into the dining room, where I gathered Michelle was on her second cup of instant coffee. She was pale and antsy. I got nervous.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Duccio’s mom finally wants to meet me.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Right? Cool?”

  “I guess. They have a country house, which I don’t understand because we’ve driven to the grounds and it’s only, like, 20 minutes away from here, but his parents spend the summer there. They want me to come for cena tonight. They’re ‘opening up’ the house or something. His aunt is going to be there and his sisters and brothers. And their spouses. And his aunt’s kids. The whole fucking family.”

  “Michelle, that sounds awesome. Right? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just nervous. I think she’s been suspicious of me this whole time and now I’m suspicious.”

  “Maybe she is just accepting you’re Duccio’s ragazza and she wants to know you.”