Defending Irene

by Nitz, Kristin Wolden;

  “It’s okay,” he muttered, shrugging. He turned away, his lips a thin line. Giulia and I had probably hurt his and his friends’ poor masculine feelings. Well, so be it. It was worth the trouble. I probably wouldn’t have liked him anyway. At least this demonstration would put an end to the questions about whether or not I could really play.

  And Giulia! Her performance made me wonder again exactly why she had quit. Maybe she wouldn’t have made it into the Terza Categoria, the 16-years-and-up traveling team. But she could have lasted easily through this year and maybe the next one. It was true that male hormones were already at work, giving the guys an unfair advantage. But the honor of being the first girl in town to wear an Esordienti uniform should have belonged to her. Instead, on Saturday, it would be mine.

  9

  In difesa (een de-FAY-za)

  On Defense

  “Irene!” the mister snapped.

  “Here I am,” I said. I felt a rush of energy. A light breeze made the soft, smooth, almost slippery fabric of my game uniform flutter against me.

  “Stay by me, Irene,” the mister said, his eyes still locked on the game. “At the beginning of the second period, I must put you in the game for Giuseppe. You will be terzino…or terzina?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. In any case, it is the same. You will be a wing on defense. Understand?”

  “Sí.”

  “If a player gets past you, do not chase him. Run to the nearest goalpost and you will find yourself between him and the goal. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Watch well the Lana player Number 44. He is very fast. If he is in your area, mark him. Stay with him. If it is safe and appropriate, do not hesitate to kick a ball back to Luigi. Don’t worry yourself. He can stop any pass from you.”

  “Without a doubt,” I said. For the first time, the mister’s eyes left the game and focused on me. The left corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile, giving his face an expression that I could not read.

  My stomach lurched. Had I been disrespectful? Or did he think I had complimented Luigi to get on his good side?

  “Without a doubt,” he echoed. The barest hint of smile defrosted the other side of his face. “All right, Irene. Watch and wait.”

  I nodded. Watching and waiting had been my job, and I was becoming very good at it. My legs and arms had stopped demanding “Put us in! Put us in!” when I stood on the sidelines. It was an adjustment, though—one of the many that I had made that week.

  At the beginning of the second period, I trotted onto the field with my hair braided tightly against my head. It seemed less conspicuous than a ponytail. I had thought seriously about having it all cut off, so I would blend in more with my teammates.

  “Forza, Irene!” Giulia cheered from the stands. “Come on, get tough!”

  Werner, a tall, solid boy with light brown hair, smiled at me as we ran onto the field together. “Listen to me and Manuel. We will tell you what to do.”

  Werner usually played in the middle of the defensive line. There he was allowed to dash into our opponents’ territory, break up a play, and go deep into their penalty area for a corner kick. As the tallest player on the field, he had a chance to head the ball into the goal. It had taken me a few practices to figure out that Werner was part of the local German-speaking population. He usually didn’t say much to me beyond “Go forward” or “Come back,” and when he did, it was without an accent.

  I didn’t have much to do at first. Werner, Manuel (the other wing), and the midfielders kept knocking the ball down to Matteo and Emi. Since most players tend to drive toward their right, I knew that Manuel and Werner would see most of the action. There was no better place to put a weak player than where I stood.

  So I watched the red uniforms from Lana work against my Merano teammates in blue, adjusting my position every time things moved in my direction. I tried not to wish that the ball would head toward our goal. That wouldn’t be good for the team. Still, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to test me: the girl, the tempting target. Maybe I should have worn the ponytail.

  Finally, trouble arrived. With a beautiful fake, Number 44, the player the mister had warned me about, drove past Manuel.

  “Dai, Mendichela, dai!” his coach shouted.

  Werner rushed to cut him off, and I sprinted back into the penalty area to help.

  Thirty feet from the goal, Number 44 dropped his eyes and shot the ball. Luigi batted it away with two hands.

  Like any good player, Mendichela followed his shot in, looking for another chance if the first one failed. He and I raced to the ball. I heard footsteps behind us. My teammates or his? It didn’t matter. Not yet anyway.

  This sprint felt like that drill I had done against Davide at the second practice. The first person to reach the ball would be on offense. I had one or two steps on Mendichela. I reached the ball first and kicked it straight at the goal.

  A gasp of surprise went up. My stomach dropped. Was my aim off? Was it too hard? No. The ball sailed right to Luigi. He caught it and wrapped his arms around it.

  He took only a second to scan the field before racing to the right hand in order to punt the ball. The low, hard kick made the other team scramble back on defense.

  “So, trying to score on me, Irene?” Luigi asked.

  “No!”

  “Only joking. Well done. And grazie, eh?” He retreated to the goal.

  When our opponents moved the ball back down the field toward Luigi, I backed into the penalty area. But then I saw Number 44 again, Mendichela. He was standing alone on my side of the field. Danger.

  I pelted back toward him. His teammate passed him the ball. He must not have seen me coming. Or if he did, he must have assumed I wouldn’t be a problem. He was wrong. I intercepted the ball and sent it spinning to the sidelines. Since none of my teammates were there, I chased after it. A pass isn’t complete until it reaches a target.

  Players converged on me, cutting off the pass to the center, so I dribbled the ball down the field instead, protecting it as best I could. A player caught up to me and knocked the ball out of bounds.

  I glanced back at the mister. He pointed his linesman flag in my direction—the direction of our opponent’s goal. Our ball. I picked it up for the throw-in.

  “No, Irene!” the mister shouted.

  “What are you doing?” Matteo asked. He did not add the word idiota, but I could still hear it in his tone.

  “Have you forgotten your place, Irene?” asked a third voice I barely recognized. It was snotty with distinct overtones of Matteo. Not Federico? But it was, and he wasn’t joking.

  My face burned. Yes, I had forgotten my place. Or at least I hadn’t realized I was twenty feet over the centerline. No one could criticize me for bringing the ball down the field and staying with it. But picking up the ball for a throw-in? A definite mistake.

  I jogged backwards to my spot, so I could keep an eye on the action. When I arrived, Werner smiled at me. “I would prefer to play midfielder too, you know,” he said.

  “Me too,” Manuel added. “But we are on defense. We are the brutes.”

  “We do not score. We only stop the enemy before he can do so,” Werner went on.

  “Hey, sometimes we score. I had one goal last year,” Manuel interrupted.

  “And I had two. All right then. Sometimes we—”

  “Pay attention, defense!” the mister shouted. “Don’t chatter!”

  My neck muscles tightened. People seemed to talk on the field when I was around. The mister would not consider that a good thing. No coach would.

  I was still thankful to Werner and Manuel. They knew how it felt to be back on defense instead of getting the chance to score. A brute, huh? I rather liked the idea.

  We, the brutes, worked together well. We stopped Number 44, Mendichela, like a pride of lions taking down a lone antelope.

  Time ticked away. We kept a narrow 1–0 lead into the third and final period. For five tense minutes, Luigi, Manuel, Wer
ner, and I had more action that we would have liked as the other team controlled the ball on our half of the field. We barely managed to get the ball to the centerline before they forced it back in the direction of Luigi and the goal.

  In what must have been the fifth or sixth attack, Mendichela swept past Manuel with another of his convincing fakes. Instead of dribbling closer to the goal, he decided to shoot the ball. It rocketed into the air. If I hadn’t been directly in the ball’s path, I could have done nothing to stop it. But since I was, it slammed into the bottom of my ribcage, forcing the breath out of my body.

  My mind urged me to stay with the ball—to pass it to safety. My lungs said no. I dropped to my knees. If the ball had hit an inch or two lower, I would have been flat on my back.

  Whump!

  It was not the sound of someone taking a shot. More like a high pass spinning twenty feet above the field. I glanced up. Manuel? I wanted to cheer, but only a choked squeak came out.

  A hand touched my shoulder. “Irene. Irene? You have hurt yourself?” Luigi asked.

  “No. Mendichela has done it,” I whispered.

  Luigi snorted. “Do we need to call a time-out for you?”

  “Where’s the ball?”

  “Far away, or I would not be here.”

  “I’ll be okay. Only a second.”

  “Brava.” His fingers tightened briefly on my shoulder.

  I lurched to my feet and made it back to my area with about twenty seconds to spare before the next attack. One of Lana’s forwards dribbled the ball up the sideline on Giuseppe’s side of the field.

  “Put it out! Put it out!” our mister roared. Mendichela and another forward were waiting in the center of the field for a crossing pass from their teammate.

  Giuseppe put it out. The whistle blew. With a sideways gallop, I made my way into the penalty area to join the fight for the ball. But the mister called me: “Irene, come here. Federico, you too.”

  Reluctantly I went.

  “Everything all right?” Werner asked as our paths crossed.

  “Sí,” I said.

  “Gut,” he said, switching to German. He sounded relieved.

  “How do you feel, Irene?” the mister asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Well done, Irene. Bravo, Federico,” the mister said. Instead of taking us aside and commenting on our play, he was already looking past us to the action on the field.

  Federico was the one person who didn’t seem interested in my health. He stared right past me, as if I didn’t exist. Matteo had gotten to him. I was sure of it.

  Between a punt from Luigi and a header by Davide, the ball finally moved back down to our forwards. Emi and Matteo managed a few more shots on the other team’s goal before a long blast on the whistle signaled the end of the game. Another win.

  Federico pumped his fists in the air. He turned to me, his face bright with enthusiasm. His mouth opened to say something. Then it closed to a tight, horrified O when he realized his near mistake. He spun around.

  Mom and Dad waved from the stands. Dad’s wide smile told me that he would have a lot to say when I met him at home. Most of it positive.

  In the locker room, the mister distributed a few compliments and a lot of criticism. He was greatly disappointed by our lack of stamina. We did not pass well. We did not play our positions. He made his way around the circle for personal remarks, but skipped right over me. When he finished, I grabbed my blue backpack with our team name and sponsor stenciled on it and headed for the bathroom to change.

  Three people were standing in line when I came out. But they weren’t waiting to use the bathroom. They were waiting for me.

  “Poverina,” Matteo said softly. “How are you?”

  I glanced back over my shoulder, as if looking for the “poor little girl.” Then I stood up as straight as possible. Even though I had changed into tennis shoes and Matteo still wore his cleats, I was taller than he was.

  “To whom are you speaking, Matteo?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I fear it is too dangerous for you here. I saw how that ball knocked you to the ground. Poverina,” he repeated. “And I heard what the mister said to you after the game.”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “Exactly.” Matteo smiled.

  “Maybe there is too much for you to remember here in Italy, Irene,” Giuseppe said. “If you are on defense, you must stay in your area.”

  Federico smirked from his spot behind Matteo. “Or did you forget you were on defense, Irene? You tried to score on Luigi.”

  “That’s not true!” I shouted. A mistake. Now they knew they were getting to me. I kept my voice even. “I passed the ball to Luigi.”

  Matteo laughed. “Luigi said that the only time he was afraid during the game was when you “passed” him the ball.”

  “It’s true,” Federico said. “I heard him say it.”

  Not Luigi too? For an instant, my brain froze. Fortunately, my mouth did the same thing. No, not Luigi. He had even told me that he was scared for a moment, but then he had thanked me. I had done the right thing. I had done what the mister told me to do. I took a deep breath, ready to tell them so.

  “Ciao, Irene.” Giulia appeared at my side and tugged at my elbow. “Let’s go.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Ciao, ciao, ciuccio,” Giuseppe said.

  Bye, bye, baby pacifier? I stiffened. The ch sound, which started every syllable he spoke, landed on my ears like a series of slaps.

  “Ciao, ciao, cucciola,” Matteo added.

  The different meanings of cucciola ran through my brain: kitty, puppy, little darling. This was definitely not a compliment.

  I was ready to turn and face them, but Giulia said softly, “Dai, Irene. Don’t listen to them.”

  “I am not a cucciola,” I said through clenched teeth. “I am a brute. Werner said so.”

  Giulia giggled. “Werner would know. But I like him. He’s fair.”

  “Agreed.”

  So many people were being fair to me: Werner, Luigi, Emi, Manuel, and maybe even the mister. So how could three idiots ruin everything for me? Or was it just one idiot—one extremely talented idiot?

  10

  Uaou! (oo-WOW-oo)

  Wow!

  The story traveled through the middle school of how I had tried to put the ball into my own goal. I smiled a patient smile and told everyone how I was feeding it to the goalie. Hadn’t they ever seen a defensive player do that on television? Yes? Well then, they understood.

  Luigi overheard me repeating my explanation to a group of popular girls. I had picked them out quickly in the first few days by their hair, nails, clothes, and tendency to travel in packs. He promptly stepped between Giulia and me and into the conversation. His voice took on the rhythm of an announcer doing a play-by-play:

  “Both Mendichela and Irene Benenati race for the ball. My heart beats in my chest. I know the signs. The crazy Americana plans to shoot the ball into her own goal—my goal.”

  “It was a pass,” I said.

  Luigi ignored me. “Irene’s eyes drop. She brings her foot back. Puuut! The spectators gasp. Mendichela gasps. The ball comes directly to me—to my chest. It is a pass. I know it. But I am still afraid. Will it knock me backward into the goal?” Luigi paused. His eyes slid sideways to look at me, offering me a chance to protest. I did not take it.

  “But no!” Luigi continued, gesturing widely. “I pull the ball into my arms. For now, it is safe from Mendichela and his team.”

  “Uaou!” said one of the girls. “How bello! Brava, Irene!”

  Luigi grinned at me.

  “But Luigi, isn’t it dangerous for Irene to play with the boys?” a girl named Elena asked. As far as I could tell, she tended to do most of the talking for her group.

  “Weren’t you listening to me?” he asked. “It is my head that is in danger.”

  “If only,” I said.

  “Monte Catino at Merano 2000 is more danger
ous, Elena,” Giulia pointed out. “And you ski down that like a crazy woman.”

  “Monte Cattivo,” someone else said, which could be translated as “Bad Mountain.”

  Elena smoothed down the front of her shirt, looking pleased. “Sí. But the trees and course markers don’t move themselves on the mountain. Matteo told us how the ball hit you in the stomach and the mister called you off the field. Matteo was so worried.”

  Oh, yes. Worried that I might get up again. Worried that I would keep getting up no matter what.

  “It was so cute,” another girl cooed. “Maybe Matteo has fallen in love with you.”

  “Ha!” I said. The syllable jumped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Giulia snorted. Luigi covered his ears with his hands.

  “Madonna!” he said. “Has Matteo asked for your phone number too?

  “Too?” echoed an appreciative crowd.

  “No.” I said, trying to sound calm. “Emi asked for my phone number so I could meet Giulia. Matteo promised me that if I wanted a boy to fall in love with me, I was in the wrong place.”

  “Too bad,” someone murmured. “Or I would start to play soccer.”

  “And be a maschiaccio?” a girl named Sonia asked. “Not I. It’s not worth the trouble.”

  Ma-ski-AH-choh? I didn’t recognize the word, but the “choh” sound at the end almost guaranteed it was not a compliment.

  Elena frowned at Sonia. “Don’t worry, Irene. Maybe it is like an American film. A man and a woman—they do not like each other when first they meet. Then everything changes. Love!”

  Denials crowded through my brain so thick and fast they paralyzed my vocal cords.

  Giulia stepped in before the silence ran too long. “In this case I think not,” she said.

  “But this morning, I heard him say to Irene, ‘How are you, cucciola?’” another girl said.

  This brought on another round of giggles. And horror of horrors, I blushed.

  “Oooh!”

  “Enough!” ordered Elena. “I have a favor to ask of Irene. There is an American song that really pleases me, and I want to know what it means. Will you help me?”