Defending Irene

by Nitz, Kristin Wolden;

  “What are you looking at? Is there something in my teeth?” Luigi asked. He ran his tongue back and forth a few times, curled back his lip, and asked, “Better?”

  “Oh, sí.”

  “All right. What was I talking about?”

  “The team from Bolzano?” I said, hoping he hadn’t switched topics.

  “Exactly. I told you about Antonio Russo? How he is left-footed?”

  I nodded. The name did sound familiar.

  “You must stay attentive. Of course, it is possible that the mister will put you on the other wing. Russo is very dangerous. Very. Very.”

  “Okay.”

  “Russo?” Davide cut in from Luigi’s other side. “He scored three goals against us last spring.”

  “Three?” I said. “No one has made that many goals against us all year.”

  “Eduardo Gozzi was our goalkeeper in that game,” Luigi said. “I was sick.”

  “I don’t know him. Did he quit?” I asked.

  “No. He plays with the Giovanissimi this year. He is too old for the Esordienti.”

  “So players change levels depending on their age here?”

  “Age and ability,” Luigi said. “For example, Federico came up early this fall. The mister will ask for a few more pulcini in the spring. Then a big group will come up next fall.”

  Luigi’s explanation of the system made me think of just how strange the names for the various Italian soccer categories were. We were part of the Esordienti, the beginners. Even though the Giovanissimi were older than we were, their name meant “the youngest.” But the Pulcini had it worst of all. They were the freshly hatched chickens, the “chicks.”

  “Do you think that Russo still plays for Bolzano?” Davide asked.

  “I’m certain. The mister has heard stories.”

  “Tell me,” Davide said.

  Luigi never needed a second invitation to talk. In other parts of the van, similar conversations were going on. I could feel the energy, the bottled excitement.

  Outside, it was dreary. The light rain continued. Volvos, BMWs, Audis, and the occasional Mercedes Benz blew past us, sending fine bursts of spray across the windshield of the van. Low clouds still hung over the valley. The long rows of apple trees on either side of the autostrada faded into the mist.

  Visibility didn’t improve when we reached Bolzano. I knew from an earlier trip that the Castel Marreccio—Schloss Maretch to the German speakers—was just a few hundred yards away. If it was clear, would the orange tile roofs of its towers be visible through the trees? I couldn’t remember.

  The Talvera River roared past us. The grassy playing fields were in no danger. Not yet. But if the rain continued for another week, that could change.

  As usual, I watched the opening kickoff from the sidelines. Matteo tapped the ball to Emi and both of them surged forward into a sea of yellow and white uniforms. Even without Luigi’s warning, I would have known to study Russo. Like Matteo, he was a player who drew the eye. When the mister put me in during the second period, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop him. My job would be to get between him and the goal, slow him down, and wait for reinforcements. If I played him too closely, he would be able to throw me off-balance with one of his beautiful fakes just as he had with Manuel, Werner, and Davide.

  Our teams were evenly matched: both of us were still undefeated. I could sense Bolzano’s growing frustration on the field as the score stayed zero to zero. Luigi had said in the van that our opponents were used to getting an early lead and then holding it. There was some bumping going on—some words being exchanged. But then a player deliberately smashed into Davide just as he was coming down from a header, “making the bridge.” Davide skidded a few inches on the wet grass before hitting the ground hard.

  The mister shouted—a wordless cry of outrage. My dad, our one fan who came to all the games, echoed it.

  Davide sat up, tried to stand, and then fell back with a stifled cry, clutching his ankle. The mister handed me his purple and green linesman’s flag and trotted onto the field.

  The referee reached into his pocket, pulled out a yellow card, and held it over his head. It was the first I’d seen since I’d left the U.S.

  Roberto, the other substitute who stood a few feet away from me, shook his head. “Davide is not an actor. He is not pretending.”

  The player who committed the foul stepped forward and opened his mouth. Two of his teammates dragged him back, muttering in his ear. No doubt reminding him what a red card would mean—his removal from this game, leaving his team a player short.

  Davide continued to lie on the wet ground. The mister knelt beside him, talking quietly. Finally, Davide nodded and sat up. At a motion from the mister, Matteo and Gianlucca stepped forward to lift him up under his armpits. With their help, Davide hopped over to the sidelines. Roberto hovered by the white line, waiting to go into the game. But the mister had a different idea.

  “Gianlucca, play midfield. Irene, take the spot of Gianlucca on attack.”

  Attack? Me? The last time I’d played forward was back in the U.S.

  Squerch. Squerch. Squerch. I trotted through the soggy grass onto the field and joined players from both squads in the penalty area.

  Werner stepped up to the ball. It was a direct kick, but he was so far away from the goal that it was unlikely that he could put it in. He could, however, loft the ball into the penalty area. I was taller than Roberto. Was that why the mister had put me in?

  The ball didn’t come anywhere near me then or for the next few minutes. Then Gianlucca passed me the ball. I turned upfield.

  From the defender’s smile, anyone would think that he had already stolen the ball from me and sent it sailing down toward Luigi. He closed rapidly. Too rapidly. He had too much forward momentum to stop himself when I kicked the ball past him down the sidelines to the empty corner. Full of energy from all the time on the bench, I caught up with it.

  “Center it! Center it!” the mister yelled. “Pass, pass, pass!”

  I sent a line drive of a kick into the penalty box. Without waiting to see how Matteo would handle it, I raced to the box myself. An assist. Maybe I would get an assist. My first since I’d left Missouri.

  Matteo’s shot sliced through the air toward the goal. The keeper dove with both hands extended and deflected the ball right to me. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet. But he didn’t have time to fully extend his body before I smashed the ball over his head, just a foot or so below the crossbar. Not an assist. A goal!

  “Yes! Yes!” I shouted in English. With my fists raised over my head, I sprinted back to midfield.

  “Bravo, Irene!” the mister roared. “Brava!” he corrected himself. But the damage was done. For a moment, I was a full-fledged member of the team. Not the ragazza. Not the calciatrice. A player.

  Luigi waved wildly from the goal and gave me two thumbs up. Manuel thumped me on the back. Werner hugged me. Then he stepped back, but kept his hands on my shoulders. “I understand now,” he said. “You are not a defender. You are an attacker. You have always been an attacker.”

  “Not always.”

  “Oh, you also played midfielder in the United States, too.” He shook his head. “Come, Manuel. We go on defense.”

  “Without a doubt, I’ll join you in the second half. It was a trick of the mister,” I said.

  A trick that had worked really well. The other team looked bewildered. The defender, whose lack of respect for me had made the play possible, stood slump-shouldered in the corner while his coach yelled.

  I ran to my spot near the centerline. Some of my teammates waited there to give me five: Gianlucca, Emi, and Matteo.

  But instead of a passing slap, Matteo’s fingers wrapped around my hand. Our thumbs entwined. “Let’s do it again,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  But the Bolzano goalkeeper wasn’t quite in on our plan. Instead of deflecting Matteo’s next shot, he let it go past him without even putting a fingertip on
the ball.

  As I predicted, when the third period started, I returned to my spot on the defense, replacing Giuseppe. While Luigi finally let one of Russo’s blistering shots past him, midway through the third period, we held on to win 2–1.

  A goal. I had scored a goal. In the U.S., that had been an exciting but fairly regular event. Here, it was just short of a miracle. And Matteo had spoken to me like I was one of his teammates. Had I finally earned his respect? I didn’t need all of the reindeer to love me. I only wanted them to let me join in some of those reindeer games without being called a cucciola.

  15

  Furbo (FOOR-bo)

  Tricky

  I stood alone in the school courtyard, studying the strange behaviors of irregular German verbs for the afternoon remedial class I attended twice a week. At the bottom of the list, I had written a quote from Professorin Schneider: “German is a very logical language.” My mother would probably agree with that, but the eight of us who had to struggle with things like strong and weak verbs did not.

  “Ciao, Irene,” Matteo said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. And you?”

  “Well enough. But I’m so tired of the rain.”

  “Me too.”

  “And now there isn’t soccer today,” he grumbled.

  “Really?”

  “Signora Martelli has not called you yet?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “She said that it’s too wet—that we would destroy the field. Can you believe it?”

  That made sense. The ground probably couldn’t absorb another drop. I remembered the skid marks that our feet had already made in the field. And yet....

  “No. You do not believe me. I understand.” The right corner of Matteo’s mouth twisted. He scanned the courtyard and then shouted, “Ehi, Nicolo!”

  Nicolo Montegna, the forward from the other Merano team who had run me over on the first day of practice, turned around. “What?”

  “We’ll beat you at soccer today.”

  “Today, no. Soccer is cancelled. Hadn’t you heard?”

  “Oh, thanks. Wait for Thursday then.”

  Matteo turned back to me. “There,” he said. “A message probably waits on your answering machine. So, what are you studying? German?” He peered at my notebook.

  “It’s difficult,” I said. “Everyone knows more than I do.”

  “Patience. It takes time. Everything takes time.”

  Including Matteo’s acceptance of me as a teammate? It seemed that way. But things between us seemed to be improving just a little.

  I had trouble keeping my mind on German that afternoon, even though Professorin Schneider spoke much more slowly and simply in our class than she did in my regular one. We took notes, played games, and read simple stories. Or at least the other students did. I only managed to pick out a few simple words: and, but, is, you, they, then.

  We broke up into groups of two to talk about our families. For the other kids it was a review. I had to have notes in front of me. I sat across from Wei, whose family owned one of the Chinese restaurants in town. She spoke slowly, using easy German words, so I would be sure to understand.

  “My grandmother lives in China. She calls herself Wu Anling. My grandfather lives in China. He calls himself Wu Shilong. My aunt and uncle live here in Merano. My cousin calls himself Maurizio. He is Italian.”

  “Oh, is your aunt Italian?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “No.” Her eyes sparkled.

  “I do not understand.”

  “Maurizio is born here. He speaks Italian perfectly. He says, ‘I am not Chinese. I am Italian.’” She giggled.

  “Interessant,” I said. It was a surprisingly long word for my limited Germany vocabulary, but it was one of my mother’s favorites.

  Professorin Schneider clapped her hands and said something. I managed to recognize the words for “minute” and “write” as she waved her hands at the clock and the white board. It was clear what she wanted. We had another set of strong verb conjugations to copy.

  The bell rang before I finished, but for once there was no need for me to scribble frantically, toss things into my backpack, and hurtle out the door. There was no soccer practice today. I had plenty of time.

  As I walked down the hall a few minutes later, a voice said, “Buona sera.” Professoressa Trevisani, my Italian teacher, stood in the door to her classroom, holding a wooden recorder in one hand and a folder full of music in the other. In the cold, wet weather even she had switched over to jeans and her eye makeup was much simpler.

  “Buona sera,” I said.

  “So, Irene,” she asked. “You have almost finished your first month with us. How goes it?”

  “Very well,” I said. “I must study a lot, of course. It isn’t easy.”

  “You have impressed me. You even know some words that many of your classmates do not. For example, you gave me the best definition for irony yesterday.”

  “There is a similar word in English,” I said. “I guessed that they were about the same.”

  “Mmmm. That makes sense. And your other classes?”

  “Well, math is math,” I began, shrugging. “But—”

  Just then, Professorin Schneider stepped out of her room and closed the door behind her.

  “Ah!” Professoressa Trevisani said. “The proper person to ask about your progress in German. Tell me, Professorin, how is Irene doing?”

  “Very well. Very, very well. Her pronunciation and accent are very good. Her homework is correct much of the time.”

  “Um, my mother helps me a bit,” I admitted. “In the United States, she teaches German at the high school.”

  Professorin Schneider touched her hand to her stomach. “Ah, then you heard the language before you were born. That explains much. Listen, Irene. Some friends and I have started a book club. Would it please your mother to join us? Or perhaps our opinions would not interest her.”

  “No. Please. It would interest her very much,” I said quickly before my teacher could take back the invitation. I had never thought of my mom as shy, but I knew that she had been lurking in cafés taking notes on the Tyrolean dialect instead of actually talking to people. Since we went to Italian schools, she was finding it more difficult to meet people from the German half of the population.

  I reached into my backpack, tore a piece of paper out of my notebook and scribbled down our number and my mother’s name. “Please call her. For my mother, it would be a pleasure.”

  Two minutes later, I bounced out of the sheltered courtyard of the school onto the sidewalk along Via Roma. I had done a good deed for the day. My teachers thought I was doing well. There was no need to race home and choke down a snack before spending a wet ninety minutes on the pitch.

  I recognized Luigi through the scratched plastic of the bus stop’s shelter and knocked. “Ciao,” I said.

  “Hello, Irene. How are you?” he asked in English—an English with long, pure vowels, strong diphthongs, rolling r’s and a slight British accent.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Tomorrow will be a nice day,” he continued in English.

  “Really? Will the rain stop?” I replied, putting small spaces between each word so that he could follow me better.

  “Stahp?” Luigi repeated.

  “Stop,” I said, giving the word its Italian pronunciation. I waved toward the red and white traffic sign on a nearby corner.

  “Ah. I understand. No. The rain will stahp never.”

  I giggled. “We say ‘never stop’ in America. Are you waiting for a bus?”

  Luigi considered my question a moment before answering. “No. I wait my father. He brings me to—how do you say it…?”

  “Home?”

  “No. There is a word in German. Ah, yes. Football. He brings me to football.”

  “Football? You mean soccer? Calcio?”

  “Sí, calcio.” Luigi slid back into Italian. “Have you f
orgotten today is Monday?”

  “But Matteo and Montegna said—” I stopped myself.

  “The Passirio would have to run over its banks and through the practice field before our mister would cancel. We play upon the carpet today.” Luigi stopped and frowned. “What have Matteo and Montegna said?”

  Telling the coach’s son was a lot like telling the coach.

  “Nothing.” I backed away. “I’ve got to go. Don’t want to be late. We’ll see each other in a bit. Ciao, Luigi. Ciao.”

  It would have been much more dignified to wait until I had turned the corner before launching into a trot. But I didn’t have time for dignity. I tightened my grip on the strap to my backpack to keep it from bouncing against me.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I have been so stupid? I had never expected a romantic ending to my troubles with Matteo: my Miss Elizabeth Bennet to his Mr. Darcy, my Meg Ryan to his Tom Hanks. His friendly words to my nonno, his sad words about his nonno, the high five after my goal—they were all just part of his plan to gain my trust. Not that he had. Not quite. I wouldn’t have believed him except for Montegna. And why did I believe Montegna? Because I was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The chorus repeated itself as I jogged three blocks uphill past hundred-year-old houses and fences covered in ivy. My calves burned. My shins vibrated every time my thick-soled boots hit the pavement. But when I reached the final—and thankfully flat—two blocks leading to my house, I accelerated into a run.

  When I reached our gate, I leaned hard on the buzzer.

  “Si?” Mom asked an eternity later.

  “It’s me. I’m late for soccer!” I yelled.

  Without a word, she buzzed me through the gate. Another long buzz was waiting for me when I made it down the flagstone walk. I plowed into the massive door with my right shoulder and made it up a flight of stairs before it slammed shut behind me with an echoing boom. I cringed. The family on the ground floor had a new baby who liked late afternoon naps.