A Semester Abroad Read online

  “Wow!” He whispered at last. Him, not me. “I could kiss you for a long time and never get tired.”

  I was so happy about that and didn’t think until much later that our definitions of a long time might be two different things.

  But he was kissing someone else as I lay in that tiny bed in Siena. Someone he kissed before me. She had endured through it all. It didn’t hurt so much to think of him kissing someone else as to think that those lips could kiss someone else’s. How would those lips fit to anyone else’s? They should slide off another’s—never quite matching, never quite locking in.

  But they did.

  My first night in Siena, Arturo came to pick everybody up at our doors for dinner. We walked up and down the hills through the narrow, windy, carless streets of this tiny medieval town. We were a group of foreigners, a caravan of stranieri.

  We ate pizza with a crust like a crispy cracker with rucola and pecorino. I had heard of the salad green arugula but never tasted it and it was delicious and spicy. The cheese also had a kick, it was made from the milk of a sheep.

  There were about thirty of us in the exchange group. The number was less than I originally thought when I got on the bus. Though more than half of the group were people from my school, I didn’t recognize anyone because my university was so big. I liked that about it, that you could get lost, that you could avoid certain people or always meet someone new.

  Some of the kids, mostly ones from the private schools, spoke Italian. I followed the gist of their conversations but didn’t attempt to speak this language. It all seemed a bit pretentious, like they were exaggerating the accents. Lisa was one of them; she kept speaking to Arturo, showing off for him.

  “I don’t even speak Italian. I took French,” said the taller of my two blonde roommates to no one in particular. The other one stayed in, claiming not to feel well. I suspected she was planning ways of making an entrance. “I just came for the trip. I just came because Janine said it would be cool.”

  Right, this was Michelle.

  “They’re going to give us a test on Monday at the university. They’ll put you in a class that suits you,” Lisa, who acted like she knew everything, said. She turned to Adam. “I knew before I came that I was going to wind up translating a lot for my roommates.”

  Adam was the guy with the biggest accent. Lisa wanted to impress him. He had mentioned several times in English and Italian that he had spent a summer in Rome. She continued talking to him in Italian. While her accent was bad and American, his was an exaggeration of vowels. They were posturing for each other and for us.

  My head was spinning. Part of me wanted to go back to that little room that would be mine and crawl under the thin pink blanket and not worry about speaking to or knowing anyone. But instead, like everyone else, I drank glass after glass of Chianti and hoped that things would improve.

  2.

  I slept through Saturday morning into the early afternoon, waking in the tiny bed with my mouth feeling dry. I grabbed my watch and tried to calculate the time difference. It was after one or maybe after two; I was having trouble remembering how many hours ahead we were.

  I got up and I stuck my tongue out at myself in the foggy mirror in my room. My mouth was stained purple, like I had been on a Popsicle bender. But the slight throbbing in my head wasn’t a brain freeze. I tried to remember if I did anything stupid, but I didn’t even talk to anyone.

  I dreamt of Jonas again. He was standing in nothing but his boxers, his body long and lean. His stomach and the muscles in his upper arms were perfectly clear. He was still tan from the spring we spent together. I could see the freckles on his shoulders, but this was just a dream. He was above me on a terrace in one of the arched windows with deep red shutters open around him. Every building I passed yesterday had shuttered arched windows, and in my dream he stood in one. He was yelling at me, yelling at me for leaving, for being who I am. I could not make out all of what he was saying, except that he was telling me that I was wrong about everything.

  It would have been nice to believe that. To believe that there was some excuse for all of this. But in reality, there was no reconciling the Jonas I believed in with the truth of the one that existed.

  It could drive a girl crazy, and it almost had. It still could. But so far in this country, I was okay. There were things I hoped would distract me. The newness of everything battled old memories. Maybe Crazy got stranded in Brussels.

  I left the apartment quickly. Lisa was still asleep. The blonde best friends were nowhere to be found. I didn’t shower. I was not ready to be naked yet.

  On the street, I studied the buildings around me, worrying that I would not be able to find my way back to Via Stalloreggi. I considered for a split second going back in. But that was foolish. I couldn’t hide forever. I needed to explore the city, see what it had to offer, discover if the brochures told the truth.

  I walked through the town, circling the piazza, the center square. I hadn’t expected it to be so cold, although it was January. For some reason, I believed the brochures of Siena with pictures that had probably been taken at the height of summer. I hadn’t packed my heavy jacket, hadn’t wanted to waste the space. I regretted it. I would have to buy a new one, though I couldn’t. I was on a budget, and food was more important.

  The scent of crackling fire surrounded me. It was a cross between a campfire and the Italian restaurant I went to back home. Behind the tall stone buildings people were cooking and laughing. They were cozy. They were not lonely.

  I thought of how I would describe it in letters back home. I had to mention the hills, the way I braced the front of my feet as I went up and down the random slopes of cobblestone streets. I would describe the dark shutters of windows that Jonas would never be behind. I would compare the color of the buildings to one of my pale peach shirts. The streets were narrow and windy with the piazza the center of a spider web.

  Around me, people walked. They knew where they were going; they had a purpose. The women were well put together. Their hair and makeup were perfect, and in their stylish wool coats, they weren’t cold. I couldn’t focus long enough on the bits of conversation that drifted by me to make sense of it. They shouted ciao at each other. Even those ciaos sounded different to me, like it was two syllables, the end ringing out harder, almost a howl. I formed my mouth into an o and said ciao, letting the end ring out, quietly to no one but myself.

  I called my parents collect, to say that I made it safely. I vowed to be grateful for everything. I did a good job of convincing them that I appreciated the sacrifices they made, saving the money to get me here. I thanked them for all of this and told them how lovely the city was. I tried to convey how certain I was that I would be fluent in a matter of weeks.

  I didn’t tell them how cold I was. I didn’t say that I felt trapped in the lack of language or that I didn’t feel particularly close to my roommates. They had always maintained I should stay with a family. And I certainly couldn’t have mentioned that as I walked the Italian streets I should be enjoying, the name of an American boy was just below the surface, repeating over and over like my mantra.

  At last indoors in a coffee shop, I stood and tried to remember the system. The men behind the counter were handsome. They held themselves taller. They had the confidence lacking in American boys. They didn’t hunch their shoulders or jut out their chins. What would it take to forget him? Try and replace this set of memories with another. It’s what you were supposed to do. Forget. Move on.

  I ordered my cappuccino, unsure of the words and my pronunciation, but the man understood me and placed a cup before me on the bar. For something to do, I added sugar and swirled it into the foam carefully, watching it dissolve.

  Older men surrounded me, watching. No one was really openly looking at me. No one was a real threat. The cappuccino warmed me, but it took only so long to drink. Then I had to pay. How to say this?

  “Pago?” I asked the man, hesitant again. He leaned closer, smiling. I r
epeated myself, feeling my eyebrows knit closer together. He said something in his language gesturing toward the door. He nodded at me to see that I understood. I didn’t but pretended that I did, to get out of it. I managed a smile. I nodded. Fortunately, he began helping someone else. He did not return to help me. I was helpless.

  I couldn’t figure out how to settle it, what to do. And so I left.

  On the street, I was frustrated. I looked ahead five months and wondered if I would ever be able to speak to anyone. What if I could talk only to the women I lived with? What if I starved? Worse, what if I had to rely on Lisa? What if I somehow got grouped with her?

  I was warned about this. This was the program to go on if you really wanted to learn the language. No one speaks English in Siena. It’s what I thought I wanted.

  Then I heard it. English, American English, drifted toward me on the street. I turned and saw the short brown bob of Olivia, a girl who was in my Italian class for two straight semesters. We studied for an Italian final once and we compared our programs’ Financial Aid packages. Now she was in Siena with a group of Americans.

  “Olivia,” I shouted. Olivia looked up at me and then, like some sort of long-lost siblings, we rushed to each other and embraced. I couldn’t believe how happy I was to see Olivia, to hug a girl I barely knew. She was smiling, too. I was something not quite known but familiar. The last time we saw each other was over coffee in the student union, and now we were standing in a medieval town. It felt like a miracle.

  Olivia told me where her hotel was. She used the Italian word for hotel, albergho, giggling. The hotel was further down the street from my apartment. She and her group would live there for three weeks before going on to Florence. She introduced me to four people from her program, and I forgot their names immediately, my brain was already full of the people on my trip.

  “We have to meet up with our group,” Olivia said. “Do you want to meet up later at the Barone Rosso?”

  “Sure,” I said, trying not to sound desperate. If I could have, I might have held her leg and dragged along to keep my eye on something familiar. “Where is that? What is that?”

  “I’m not sure where it is.” Olivia laughed. “It’s a bar. I’ll give you the address.”

  When we said goodbye, I was thrilled to have a plan for the evening with someone I barely knew.

  I turned into the Piazza del Campo, the town square surrounded by stores and restaurants. Inside the piazza, there was a narrow pink tower, Torre del Mangia. It was the tallest thing around, nothing beyond it but gray sky. There were steps to the top. Arturo told us that it was bad luck to climb the tower as a student; you must wait until you finished your studies to climb. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like in five months at the end of May when I could climb the tower. I wondered if I would be able to make any sense of this language by then.

  After the tower, I looked to the shell shape of the piazza fanning open and up. It was there on the sloping ground that everyone sits or stands and gossips and watches. I walked up, looking for people. I was looking for Jonas for some reason, thinking there was a chance he could be among these strangers, even though he was still across an ocean. But maybe if I sat down and waited, he would eventually some day pass by.

  Instead of Jonas, I ran into some of the people from my group by the white fountain directly across from the tower. They were sitting on the pink tiles in spite of the weather. I joined them and felt the chill through my jeans but decided to stay. Of all the people in the cluster of them, I only remembered Lucy’s name. We all reintroduced ourselves. Lucy told us about her apartment outside the walls of the city. For some reason Arturo couldn’t explain to her, she was not matched up with anyone from our group or a family. Maybe it was because she was older. She was way into her twenties with the oily skin of a teenager and a kind smile. She lived with other stranieri, a Brit and a Greek. There was something reserved about Lucy that I liked immediately. Another guy, Tim, was also older; he had been in the army before becoming a student. Pam was from the Midwest, and she spoke in non sequiturs, pulling out a menacing shot of adrenaline, that she instructed me to plunge it into her heart if a bee ever stung her.

  “Are there bees here in Italy?” Pam asked in her friendly accent. I shrugged and looked to see if anyone else knew. Pam didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she asked, “Do you know where to get some hash?”

  The piazza was the meeting place. Another bunch of the kids from the group showed up. We traded names again and information. Where we would take the placement test for the university? How hard was it going to be? Where does someone shop for food? What about toilet paper? The climate eventually bested us, and we decided to go to a café for panini. It was Lucy’s idea. Lucy spoke with an authority about this city that I envied.

  My panino was delicious. It seemed impossible that a sandwich could taste so good. I ordered one with speck. I had no idea what speck was—I still forget sometimes if it’s beef or it’s pork—but my life has been better for trying it that day. It was delicious. Lisa showed up with Adam. They sat with us but insisted on speaking Italian to each other. They brought the optimistic vibe down. We all knew that was what we were supposed to do, but I was overwhelmed by everything and happy to not have to try hard. We were caught up in excitement for a minute over our prospects, instead of fretting about an unknown future in a little-known language. With their arrival, that minute was over.

  Instead of joining their conversation, most people stopped talking and stared blankly ahead. I felt myself pulling out, wanting to go back to my room and close my eyes and try to remember Jonas’s face again. I was trying to remember it there, but the language distracted me. At last, Pam obliviously interrupted Lisa and Adam to ask if they knew where she could get hash.

  The table laughed, and I doubted Lisa knew what hash was. I felt a breathy voice in my ear.

  “This is really something else isn’t it?” It was Lucy, smiling.

  “That girl is my roommate.”

  Lucy offered me a cigarette. I didn’t really smoke, but I took it, happy for another smile.

  My mood turned again.

  Janine and Michelle were home when I got back. I stopped at a tabac to get postcards and stamps and to get away from Lisa. For some reason they sold stamps at a candy and tobacco store according to reports, from the other kids in my group.

  It took forever because I tried to do business in Italian and the woman behind the counter kept asking me to repeat myself. She kept saying cosa? and non ho capito. I could understand her, and I didn’t believe she couldn’t tell what I wanted. I was holding postcards. I knew the word for stamps and the word for the United States. I double-checked it in the damn dizionario.

  It would have been comical if it weren’t happening to me. I questioned whether I was even in the right place, but the cigarettes and postcards made me believe that I was. I waved the postcards around again and again, pointing to the box where the stamps went. Finally, she handed me the stamps I needed and gave me a sigh when I counted my change, trying to figure out if it was correct.

  I never went back to that tabac again.

  Lisa returned to the apartment right after me and looked at me suspiciously. Janine and Michelle were there in sweats and sneakers. I was finally learning to tell them apart. Janine’s sweat pants sat low on her hips, revealing stomach, the top of a thong. They said that they spent the day running around the city. They found a supermarket and bought a ton of supplies and food. They even cleaned up the place. They scrubbed the floor. Then Janine asked Lisa and me for money. It was a little presumptuous, but since they got stuff like toilet paper and dish soap, and dealt with whatever communication difficulties on their own, I gave them 25,000 lire, the equivalent of around seventeen dollars. Lisa demanded to see the receipt and then handed over only 15,000 lire.

  “I’m on a budget and besides, I don’t drink milk.”

  “Well,” said Janine, “we just got stuff I thought everyone could use. Milk does not
equal 10,000 lire.”

  “Well, no one talked to me about it before hand.” When Lisa talked her eyes kind of fluttered underneath lids that were half closed. It was as if she had already explained whatever she said and couldn’t believe that she had to go over it again. I thought Lisa was one of those people who don’t really understand how to interact with people and thus she was a little intimidated by Janine, who was more than a little intimidating. Michelle left to fix instant coffee in the kitchen.

  “Look, Lisa,” I said. “It was cool of them to go shopping for us. We need that stuff. We’re all on a budget, right? Why don’t you just give her some more money and in the future we’ll all do our own shopping.”

  Lisa sighed. She got another 5,000 out of her purse and handed it over to Janine. “This is all I have right now.”

  “I just think it’s pretty stupid and cheap,” Janine looked directly at Lisa for a full second, “for us to all buy our own toilet paper. And if we want to keep this place clean, we’re going to need soap and shit.”

  Michelle’s tentative voice came from the kitchen. “Maybe we should make a list of supplies and take turns buying it.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  Lisa looked annoyed again. Janine grimaced at me behind her back, and I tried not to laugh. In her own way, she would be just as bad but more entertaining.

  “Look, Lisa, I can’t see how you have a problem with that. We are living together we are going to have to make some sacrifices,” I said.

  “We have to wipe our asses,” Janine said cracking up everyone up. Lisa laughed the loudest but nervously.

  We sat around the dining room table for the remainder of the afternoon. Lisa brought some Italian book she had and kept thumbing through it, saying words and their definitions to us. Janine wanted to talk about the boys she had seen on the trip to the grocery store.