Defending Irene

by Nitz, Kristin Wolden;

  “They are embarrassed to show their faces here after Saturday,” Luigi whispered.

  “Dai, Luigi. We won by only one goal,” I pointed out. “It was a good game.”

  It had actually been a very good game, with a larger audience than normal. Parents, brothers, sisters, and classmates, including Elena and about half of her giggling followers, had come to watch the Esordienti of Merano I take on the Esordienti of Merano II.

  “Brava, Irene! But how dangerous!” Elena had said, hugging me. “You are the craziest girl. I don’t know how you do it.”

  During the pause between the drills and the scrimmage, I learned why so many on the other team were absent. “Some of my players are home sick today,” I heard their mister tell ours. “Will you give me a calciatore?”

  “Let me see…” Luigi’s father was silent for a moment. “I’ll give you a calciatrice.”

  “Va bene.” I could hear amusement in the other man’s voice.

  “Irene!” the mister called.

  I turned and blinked, as if I had heard nothing.

  “You’ll play with the other squad today. They don’t have enough players.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  The other mister motioned to me. “Come with me, Irene, and we’ll talk.”

  I followed him to the other side of the field. A circle gathered around us.

  The Merano II coach began with me. “We’ll put you on defense, Irene. You have watched our system?”

  I nodded.

  Montegna put a hand on my shoulder. “Remember, Irene: Matteo is the enemy.”

  “That will not be difficult to remember,” I said.

  I heard snorts of muffled agreement. It appeared that my feud with Matteo was more public than I had realized.

  A grin spread across the coach’s face. “Ah, sí. I have an idea. Irene, you mark Matteo. Everyone else play zone. If Matteo gets past you, Irene, don’t worry. Someone will help you. If it doesn’t work, we will change things. All right. Venturi, Beccari, Montegna: attackers. Gasperi, Corte, Sartoi: midfield. Tedeschi, Zanella, Ritter: on defense. Irene, what is your last name?”

  “Benenati,” I said.

  “Va bene, Benenati. You have D’Andalo. Is everyone ready? Dai!”

  I found a place in front of the three defenders but behind the midfielders. I wouldn’t shadow Matteo until after the kickoff. The whistle blew and the scrimmage began.

  Montegna and Venturi pushed the ball forward about twenty feet across the centerline before Gianlucca tackled and lofted the ball to Matteo.

  Instead of running forward to meet the ball, Matteo went off on an angle to match speeds with it. No one would be near him, he must have reasoned. No one usually was.

  But I darted in front of him. With a one-touch pass, I sent the ball flying back toward Montegna.

  Matteo walked up the field and to the right. I trotted after him. He looked over his left shoulder, saw me, grimaced, and moved again. Grinning, I followed. This might be fun.

  “What are you doing, Irene?” Matteo asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He bolted left, sprinted two-thirds of the way across the field, and stopped. I jogged after him. Montegna still had control of the ball, so there wasn’t any immediate danger. I took up my position behind Matteo’s right shoulder this time.

  “Leave me alone,” he said through his teeth.

  “No.”

  “Stupida! You’re not playing midfield.”

  “Today, no,” I said with no further explanation. Matteo was smart. He would realize soon enough that no one was yelling at me for being out of position.

  I continued to shadow Matteo up and down the field, staying between him and the goal. He was fast; I was completely outclassed. But all I had to do was slow him down and make things as difficult for him as possible until Tedeschi, Zanella, or Ritter came along to help out.

  He broke away from me every chance he got. Once I let him go and even drifted a few steps in the other direction. Emi sent a crossing pass into the box and Matteo slammed it in for a goal.

  Matteo held up his fists and swung around to face me.

  A whistle blew. “Offsides,” Luigi’s father called.

  “No!” Matteo mouthed. He stomped off to midfield to await a free kick from the spot of the penalty.

  Tedeschi, Zanella, Ritter, and I came together to exchange high fives. Then I struck out after Matteo.

  Overall, the plan seemed to work fairly well. Matteo only scored once. During the last ten or fifteen minutes of the scrimmage, Matteo walked with his hands on his hips. His bursts of speed were shorter and less frequent. The rest of my usual team, Merano I, didn’t look much livelier. They might have been suffering from letdown, but Merano II—led by Montegna with two goals—had something to prove. When six o’clock arrived, the informal score was 2 to 1.

  “Brava, Irene. You stopped Matteo,” Montegna said as we walked over to the goal nearest the clubhouse for the usual round of penalty shots.

  I would have loved to take the credit for shutting Matteo down, but I couldn’t. “No. He stopped himself.”

  Montegna’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe he is coming down with the influenza. It could be. Several others in our class are out sick.”

  Montegna’s guess was right. Tuesday morning, Matteo left class midway through third period. Wednesday, he did not come to school. Thursday brought the practice I had dreamed about: a Matteo-free zone. Giuseppe was present but silent.

  Federico took over the center forward position. Emi and I played on either side of him. The mister yelled at me almost the entire time: “Dai! Dai! Dai! Lengthen your legs. Pass, pass pass. Center it! Make the cross!” But it was the same way that he would have yelled at Emi, Luigi or Matteo. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Except to score a goal or two. That didn’t happen, but at least I made the goalkeeper work, and Emi scored off a rebound from one of my shots.

  The mister’s closing lecture was a bit different from his usual one. “Wash your hands often,” he told us. “Drink lots of water and juice. Avoid sick people. Get plenty of sleep. We will see each other at fourteen-thirty, not later. Until Saturday.”

  I turned to go with the rest of the team. Then the mister called me back. “Wait, Irene. I have a question. When does your family move back to America?”

  “In June. After school finishes,” I told him.

  “Fine. You are able to play with us next spring.” It was a more of a statement than a question.

  Able to play: yes. Want to play: no. But I had planned to slink away between the fall and spring seasons, not announce my plan to the mister. I had two seconds to pull together an answer.

  “S-s-sí, I can.”

  The mister made a mark on his clipboard. “Thanks. It is going well. We’ll see each other Saturday.”

  I smiled, nodded, and felt like I was about to throw up. Step by step, week by week, game by game, I had nearly made it to freedom. How could I have committed myself to three more months of Matteo?

  Go ahead, a small voice inside my head dared me. Turn around. Tell the mister that you can play but you won’t. Tell him you’ve been counting the days until soccer was over.

  But I couldn’t.

  I expected sympathy from Giulia on Friday morning. Instead, she laughed.

  “Ehi!” I protested. “It’s not funny.”

  “I know,” she said and continued to giggle.

  “There’s nothing to laugh at. This is serious!”

  “I know. But fortunately, you want to play soccer.”

  “When I return to America, yes, I want to do it. But here…no.”

  Giulia shook her finger at me side to side like a metronome. “You’re wrong. You enjoyed yourself this week, true?”

  “Of course. Matteo was absent yesterday.”

  “Don’t forget Monday. You enjoyed yourself Monday.”

  “Sí, but—”

  “Dai, Irene. Think. Matteo said all the same things as usual, but they did not both
er you.”

  “It was different.”

  “How?”

  “We were not on the same team.”

  Giulia tilted her head and waved her hands in encouraging little circles. “What else?”

  I looked up at the bare tree limbs for inspiration. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s clear.”

  I changed the subject. “I haven’t seen Matteo yet this morning.”

  “Maybe he is still sick.”

  “If only. Too bad the team has need of him.” A worse thought struck me. “Where is Luigi?”

  This was the first sign that my dream (no Matteo) and my nightmare (no Luigi) were about to collide.

  19

  Portiera (por-tee-AIR-ah)

  Female Goalkeeper

  On Saturday afternoon, the mister stood waiting for me outside the bathroom. He held out Luigi’s gloves and the goalkeeper’s jersey. “Here, Irene.”

  I took them between my thumb and pointer finger.

  “Don’t worry yourself, Irene,” the mister said. “They are clean. They should not make you sick.”

  That was not the reason I wanted to hand the shirt and gloves right back to him. A familiar lift to his eyebrows—the one Luigi used when he was teasing—suggested that the mister knew that.

  “How is Luigi?” I asked.

  “This morning he told us he was fine and even dressed himself for school. But he had a fever of 37.8°. Ai, ai, ai.” The mister shook his head.

  That translated to a temperature of over 102° Fahrenheit.

  “Poor Luigi,” I said out loud. Poor me, I added silently to myself. It was going to be a long game.

  Five minutes later, we began our warm-up in the usual way: jogging around the field evenly spaced, in step and single-file. My ponytail streamed behind me like a banner. For the first time in weeks, I wished that I’d chopped my hair off. I knew the other team had noticed me, the girl in the gray and blue goalkeeper’s shirt.

  After stretching, we took turns shooting into an empty goal. But as I pulled my fourth or fifth shot out of the orange netting, the mister held out his hand. “Stay there, Irene. Emi, dai!”

  Emi dribbled forward with the ball, his legs a blur of motion. He booted the ball diagonally across the penalty area. It bounced off the pole and across the white line: a goal. Werner came next. He lacked Emi’s speed, but could put a lot of power and swerve on the ball. It hooked into the upper-right corner of the goal.

  I unclenched my fingers and shook them out. I needed to stay loose. I hadn’t faced a line of shooters since the end of fourth grade. But as person after person attacked, I learned which shots I could catch, which ones I should block, which ones I should punch over the net, and which ones were hopeless. Terror kept me focused.

  When everyone else moved on to a passing drill, the mister motioned to a figure leaning against the fence. The person came forward with a familiar walk. My heart contracted. I recognized Luigi’s nose, his chin, his hair. But the height was wrong.

  “Irene, this is Renzo. He will help you prepare yourself while I work with the others.” The mister nodded at us both before walking away.

  “A pleasure,” Renzo said, looking down at me. “I have heard much about you, Irene. Every evening after soccer, it goes like this: ‘Irene has done this. Irene has done that.’ And that is just the mister. Luigi is worse. Much, much worse.”

  If Renzo had been six instead of sixteen, I think he might have launched into a chorus of “Luigi plus Irene.” Instead, he merely said, “Let’s go.”

  He started with soft kicks and easy throws. I caught the ball and threw it back to him. He sent other shots bouncing across the penalty area. I charged forward to fall on top of those and wrap them in my arms. The shots came faster and harder. My percentage of saves dropped. I didn’t even touch the last six balls he sent me. Finally, he had me punt the ball downfield a few times. Then it was time to go back to the clubhouse until just before game-time.

  As we sat on the built-in wooden benches, the mister warned us about various players, pointed out our weaknesses from past games, and told us what we must do well in order to win. I bounced up and down, full of nervous energy.

  Federico leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Stay calm, Irene. Emi and I will make goals. You will stop them.” He dusted off his hands as though that would be that. I wished I could be so confident.

  “All right,” the mister said. “We have only eleven players. I want to finish with eleven. But please tell me if you do not feel well—if you cannot continue. Irene is our goalkeeper. Protect her. If they put it in the box enough times, they will score. But don’t forget: if we put it in their box often enough, we will score.”

  For most of the first period, Werner, Manuel, and Giuseppe kept the ball away from me. It rolled into the penalty area a few times when a booming kick overshot the fastest forwards. Each time, I ran out, scooped up the ball, and punted it down the field. I started to relax.

  Halfway through the middle of the second period, the team from Ora had its first breakaway. No one stood between me and Number 17.

  “Schnell, schnell, schnell!” shouted their mister in German. “Fast!”

  “Dai, Werner, dai!” shouted ours in Italian.

  Werner was gaining. He pounded after the player, his arms pumping, his long strides covering the ground.

  The forward must have heard Werner’s footsteps getting closer. Instead of bringing the ball all the way in, he made a blistering shot from the corner of the penalty area. I managed to punch it up and over the crossbar. For a horrible second I wondered whether it would have gone over all by itself. If so, our team would be setting up for a goal kick to send the ball flying away from me instead of facing a corner kick.

  No second-guessing, I told myself firmly. It was always better to be aggressive.

  Players poured into the penalty area. Manuel took up his position next to the post. A player from Ora placed the ball in the corner next to the orange flag and stepped back.

  The kick went up with plenty of lift and power. An orange-shirted form launched himself into the air. His head snapped forward. His forehead connected with the ball. A goal.

  His teammates celebrated. I called myself a few bad names and reached down to pick up the ball.

  “Don’t worry, Irene,” Werner said. “Luigi could not have stopped that one either.”

  Not from where I was standing he couldn’t have. But he might have judged it in the air better.

  Luigi would have definitely stopped Ora’s second goal. Instead of knocking down the first shot as I barely managed to do, he probably would have caught it. The second player would never have had the chance to tap in the rebound.

  Stay calm. Stay calm, I told myself as I paced back and forth. Don’t panic.

  Right. Even though I might wind up being personally responsible for our first loss. Even though I could almost hear Matteo say that leaving the goal empty would be just as good as having me in there.

  Fortunately, Federico made a move to hold up his end of his whispered deal when he and Emi made a break of their own. Emi sent Federico a beautiful crossing pass. Federico ripped a shot from about five meters out.

  Goal!

  Federico jumped up and down, shaking his fists above his head in celebration. Then he picked Emi up and spun him in a circle. I think it was our youngest player’s first official goal as a member of the Esordienti.

  A few minutes after the kickoff, the referee’s whistle stopped play when the ball hit Giuseppe in the wrist: a handball. Since the illegal use of the hands happened in the penalty box, Ora was awarded a penalty shot. The only defender would be me.

  As I expected, Number 17 stepped forward. The referee placed the ball on the penalty spot and stepped back. I stood with my legs just over shoulder-width apart and my arms out to the side. Which way would he go? The left corner? The right? Or straight at me?

  Number 17 stood for a moment with his right leg behind his left. Then he made his m
ove. His right leg came back. The angle of his body suggested the ball was going to my right. He made contact. I lunged. My fingertips struck the ball, but it was only enough to change the ball’s angle of flight, not stop it. Another goal. The score was 3 to 1.

  But Emi and Federico were ready to answer. Federico intercepted a slow-rolling pass at midfield and passed it to Emi. Emi drove down the right side of the field and faked out the other team’s keeper for another goal, making the score 3 to 2.

  Less than a minute later, two whistle blasts signaled the end of the second period. We trotted to the bench, feeling energized. The game wasn’t out of reach. Not yet. Only Gianlucca walked.

  “Dai!” the mister shouted at him. The boy ran a few steps and then settled back into a slow motion jog.

  “I’m sorry, mister,” Gianlucca gasped. “I don’t feel well.”

  “Do you need to lie down?”

  “No, but…” Gianlucca’s voice trailed off.

  “I understand. Those in the midfield must run every moment. All right. Seat yourselves.” The mister pressed his fingers to his lips. Then his gaze came to rest on me.

  “Irene…”

  Free at last! My hands reached down and crossed to grasp the hem of my goalkeeper’s shirt, ready to rip it off. Eleven males ducked their heads or covered their eyes.

  I stopped.

  “No. No, Irene,” the mister said, still gazing away from me. “I changed my mind. Continue as goalkeeper.”

  “But I’m wearing my jersey underneath,” I said.

  I meant to explain why I could change in public, but it came out like I was questioning his decision. No one ever did that to the mister. I hunched my shoulders, waiting for him to roar.

  Instead, one of his rare half-smiles appeared. “That is not the problem. What if Gianlucca faints in the goal, and no one sees it until Ora shoots the ball?””

  Gianlucca made a face but said nothing.

  “Gianlucca, you are on defense. Remain near the penalty area. Do not go to the centerline with the others. If you cannot continue, fall down. The referee will call time out and we can organize ourselves. Werner, Manuel, and Giuseppe, go forward a little. Keep it on their side. It’s possible to win this game. It’s possible. The other team can change players. We cannot, but you have strength, energy, the forza vitale.”