Defending Irene Read online

“Then I will tell you ours. It is very simple: twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one. Please call her. It would please her very much. Really.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will.”

  Emi grinned. “Very good. Well, let’s go before the mister calls us.”

  Luigi scrambled to his feet. He lowered his voice to imitate the mister’s bellow: “Dai, ragazzi!” Come on, guys!

  “Dai is the mister’s favorite word?” I asked.

  “Look out. The Americana learns fast,” Emi said.

  “How bella, tall, and intelligent, you are, Irene,” Luigi murmured.

  I ignored him and joined the group trotting back down to the field from the clubhouse. I was starting to feel a part of things now, despite the earlier comments from some of the boys that playing with two girls would be gross. I thought back to my last team in the U.S. We had been like family. In other words, we fought all the time. Maybe playing soccer with these boys would be that way, too.

  The mister rattled off names and positions for the scrimmage against the other team. Luigi trotted off to the goal. Matteo and Emi, both of them forwards, headed for the center. And I—for the first time in my life—was left on the sidelines. I had a vision of the games to come. Instead of playing the whole game and pushing myself to the limit, I would be standing, watching, waiting.

  Waiting a long time. The other two substitutes went in before I did. The mister paced the sidelines, chanting “Dai, dai, dai!” He told his players to pass, spread the field, lengthen their legs, and not be afraid of the ball. At one point, he noticed me. I saw an unhappy, unguarded look flicker across his face, and I knew that he didn’t want me there any more than Matteo did. I could tell. I wasn’t one of his players so much as an unwelcome problem. His eyes left me and returned to the field. He watched the action for a moment, shouted dai a few more times, and then asked me, “So Irene, what position do you play?”

  “Attack. Sometimes midfield.”

  “Hmmm.” Then he nodded. “First, we will try you on defense.”

  Defense? A place where I would do the least damage? With a good goalkeeper behind me to stop anyone who made it past me? But I knew better than to complain to this coach. He didn’t act like someone’s dad or a friendly, enthusiastic college student. From the way the other players responded to him, I could tell he was used to being obeyed promptly and without question. If I argued, he might keep me on the sidelines even longer. So I studied the way the defense moved up and down the field and the way they covered for each other if a boy was pulled out of his area. Finally, when the ball rolled out of bounds, the mister sent me in.

  I moved up and down the field as my team controlled the ball. And then one of the other team’s forwards broke free at midfield and charged down my side of the field with the ball. I felt strange. I wasn’t used to challenging someone who was making a breakaway down the field.

  My legs were fresh. He was tired. I matched speeds, staying between him and the goal and forcing him down the sidelines. In a foot race, he would have beaten me, but he had to control the ball. A tackle—stealing the ball—wasn’t an option. The forward was protecting it too well. If I could put the ball out of bounds, the rest of the team could catch up with us.

  The mister seemed to agree. “Put it out! Put it out!” he roared. The slight note of alarm in his voice told me that the other team had more people attacking the goal than we had defending it.

  “Center it! Center it, Montegna!” the mister from the other team called to my opponent, confirming my suspicions.

  That meant Montegna’s teammates were probably behind me in the penalty area, staying behind the ball and the defense to avoid the offsides call. I told myself to go after the ball, to ignore the fear. As long as I was going for the ball, no one would call a foul on me. Before Montegna could reach the penalty area, the large chalked-in area in front of the goal where a foul by the defense results in a free kick on the goal, I made my move. Our legs tangled. I went down.

  Montegna’s cleats struck my thigh and upper arm. As the first intense pain faded, I could feel the bruises forming. Blood trickled down my leg. Back in the U.S., I might have spent a few seconds on the ground to recover. Here I couldn’t. What if the mister decided to take me out of the scrimmage? I had only played for three or four minutes.

  Don’t pull me. Don’t pull me, I thought as I rolled onto my knees and stumbled to my feet.

  4

  Schifo (SKEE-foe)

  Disgusting

  “And so then she galloped off, bruised and bleeding, pretending nothing had happened,” Mom told Dad.

  We were still sitting in the kitchen after dinner, having one of our bilingual family discussions. (The muddle of Italian and English always seemed to fascinate people seated near us in a restaurant.) I wanted to escape from Mom’s analysis of my performance at practice, but I was stuck in the middle of the U-shaped bench that ran along three sides of a matching rectangular pine table. When we’d moved in, I thought the built-in furniture with its old-fashioned alpine design was charming. Now it felt like a cage.

  “I didn’t try to trip him,” I insisted. “It was an accident. I was going for the ball.”

  “There was no whistle?” Dad asked in Italian.

  I shook my head. “No. Nothing.”

  Dad nodded. “Good. You must be careful. A free kick is too dangerous near the goal. You know, Irene, I think it will be good for you to play on defense here. It will make you a complete soccer player. After all, everyone must play defense from the very second that the other team takes the ball. No?”

  “Sí,” I grumbled. “But it is impossible to make any goals from the wrong side of the center line.”

  “You’re both missing my point,” Mom cut in, moving the conversation back into English. “Irene could have been hurt. Some of these boys are bigger than she is.”

  “Yeah, like Emi.” I held my hand palm-down at chin level.

  “You know what I mean. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” said the same woman who less than four hours ago had insisted the experience would be good for me.

  “Aren’t you the one who plays co-ed softball?” Dad asked her.

  “Softball isn’t a contact sport.”

  Dad grinned. “Really? I’ve seen you slide over home plate.”

  Mom turned to me. “How did it really go out there? And don’t just tell me ‘fine’ the way you usually do.”

  What could I say? That I hated being stared at? That I hated being stuck on defense and—even worse—the sidelines? That my coach didn’t want me there? That the only time I really wanted to keep playing was when somebody wanted me to quit? Like right now.

  “It was fine,” I insisted. “I mean, not everyone is happy that I’m there, but some of the guys are nice. One even gave me his phone number.”

  “Ooooh!” said Max, my younger brother.

  “—so I could call his twin sister, Giulia,” I finished, glaring at him. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

  “Fantastico!” Dad said, looking suspiciously relieved. Did he feel a sneaking sympathy for these boys who were stuck with a girl on their team? A romance at practice? How gross. How disgusting. How…schifo. The Italian word seemed to say it best.

  “Julia?” Mom said. “That doesn’t sound like an Italian name.”

  “No, it’s Giulia. G-I-U-L-I-A.”

  “She could be a friend for you,” Mom said. “Would you like to give her a call right now?” Without waiting for an answer, she slid off the bench in order to let me past.

  I wasn’t ready to call Giulia right then. Not with an audience. I hadn’t thought of a single thing to say to her other than “Your brother told me to call you.” But at least it was a way to escape more questions about the soccer team.

  I picked up the phone, punched in the city code, and then the number Emi had given me: twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one.

  The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times.

  “Pronto,” a voice greeted
me. It sounded like Emi, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Is Giulia there?” I asked.

  “Irene?” It was Emi.

  “Sí.”

  “Ciao, Irene! One moment. I’ll get her.”

  I heard a woman’s voice complaining in the background.

  “I know, Mamma,” Emi said, his voice distant. “But it is Irene, the Americana I told you about.”

  I heard a thump, thump, thump. Then a breathless voice spoke: “Ciao, Irene? This is Giulia. Emi told me about you. I’d like to meet you, but tonight I’m in a rush. We’re going out for the birthday of my grandma. Tomorrow, I am also busy. I’m sorry. But listen, do you know where the middle school is on Via Roma?”

  She talked fast, but I was pretty sure I had followed everything she said. “Sí,” I answered.

  “All right. Can you meet me there the day after tomorrow? At two?”

  “One moment.” I covered the mouthpiece with my hand, but before I could even ask the question, Mom nodded enthusiastically and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  “I can come,” I told Giulia.

  “Very good! We’ll meet each other at the steps where there’s a bit of shade. Until Wednesday. Ciao!”

  “Ciao,” I echoed.

  “See? Wasn’t that easy?” Mom beamed at me. It was the same expression she’d worn when I stepped off the bus on the first day of kindergarten. “And you were so worried about making new friends. What will you and Giulia do together?”

  “Oh, she’s planning on jumping off a bridge, so I probably will too.”

  “No, really,” Mom said.

  “We’re just going to hang out at the middle school after lunch the day after tomorrow. That’s all.” I walked back to the table and started piling silverware onto a serving platter. The sooner I could clear the table, the sooner I could get away.

  Instead of continuing the interrogation, Mom told Max to help me. My brother and I dodged around each other in the narrow space between the table and polished granite countertops, murmuring insults in Italian. The kitchen was half the size of the one back home, and so was the fridge. Fortunately, the dishwasher was full size. I managed to load most of the pots and pans instead of having to scrub them by hand.

  While we worked, Dad talked to Mom about his first few days in the plant as the new manager from corporate headquarters. Mom told Dad about our trip to the grocery store and how the cereal took up a scant six feet of shelf space while pasta had almost an entire aisle. Eventually, their conversation drifted back to soccer: the fields, the lights, the clubhouse, the coaches, and the low price. By the time Mom reached the absence of concession-stand duty and fund-raisers, she sounded much more positive.

  “Irene can even ride to practice on her bike. I won’t have to drive her to the field and watch her being run over by the other players. And there’s even a team van that takes them to away games.”

  “I want to go to all the games,” Dad said.

  And so on.

  I left quickly, sliding my stocking feet along the polished wooden hallway all the way to my tiny room. At least I had a room of my own. A lot of Italian kids didn’t. We were very lucky that my dad’s company had been able to find us this three-bedroom, furnished apartment. It took up the entire fourth floor of a late–nineteenth century house. The stone walls were two feet thick, covered with a smooth yellow stucco on the outside and plaster on the inside. It was a big change from my two-year-old house in Missouri with plastic siding on the outside and plasterboard on the inside.

  I dodged my cleats, which were lying in the middle of the floor, and tumbled onto my bed. The wrought iron bedstead rattled, but held. The only other pieces of furniture in my room were an old, slightly scratched desk of inlaid wood and a wardrobe for my clothes. It must have been assembled where it stood because it would have been too large to fit through the door. Faded prints of local landmarks and people wearing old-fashioned dirndls and woolen jackets hung on the walls. My bulletin board, with its bright color photos of Lindy, Dorothy, Jeanie, and my other friends and teammates, filled what had been a bare spot over the desk. It looked so out of place. Like me on the soccer field this afternoon? Maybe. Probably. Definitely.

  I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands. Why did we have to come here? I blamed Mom as much as Dad. At least Dad had been worried about pulling Max and me out of school for a year. But Mom had swept aside every objection. Wouldn’t it be good for us to immerse ourselves in our Italian heritage? Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Max and me to see the nonni, our Italian grandparents, once every few months instead of once every few years? And just how would Dad explain turning down the job to his mother? The last question had put an end to the discussion. Now I had to live with the consequences.

  At least my chance to meet Giulia was a bright spot. Would she be a friend? Or maybe even a teammate?

  5

  Impossibile (im-poh-SEE-bee-lay)

  Impossible

  Giulia. Friend and teammate? Neither friend nor teammate? Even a potential enemy? These thoughts worried me as I walked to the school on Via Roma. Emi had seemed nice enough, but what if this was some double-edged prank designed to get both me and his sister? What might Giulia be expecting of the Americana? Someone straight from MTV? If so, she would be disappointed by my soccer camp uniform.

  My stomach had an uncertain, empty feeling as I walked down the chestnut-lined street toward the middle school. The buildings I passed all told me that I wasn’t in Missouri anymore. A hundred-year-old Liberty-style building sat next door to a modern five-story apartment house with a distinctly Italian air in its flowers and balconies. Next came a miniature castle complete with towers, an enormous, solid-looking door, and the red and white shutters that meant the building had once belonged to the minor Tyrolean aristocracy. Maybe it still did. Curious, I peered through the wrought-iron fence at the twining ivy, ancient pine trees, and massive rhododendrons.

  Procrastinating. I was procrastinating. I checked my watch: 1:55 p.m. Five minutes and a few hundred meters separated me from my meeting with Giulia.

  Why was I so worried? Giulia had seemed very happy to hear from me, just as Emi had promised. But we hadn’t had time to talk much.

  Minutes later, only the long shiny leaves of a laurel hedge hid the grounds of the middle school from my view. My steps slowed. I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, and then picked up my pace as I turned the corner. I had to look confident even if I wasn’t.

  I saw movement under the shadows of an enormous tree. A small dark figure with the unmistakable bounce of an athlete darted down the steps and stepped into the light. A barrette held thick, black hair away from her face. The rest of it fell six inches below her shoulders.

  “Irene? You’re here! Ciao! I’m Giulia. A pleasure to meet you! Emi described you to me. Come and sit down. It’s much cooler on the steps.”

  I blinked at the rapid flood of words and Giulia’s keen interest. Maybe I looked confused, because she continued more slowly, “You understand me? Was I talking too fast?”

  “No. I understood you perfectly. A pleasure to meet you,” I echoed. I followed her to the steps. The gray stone was cool and welcoming.

  Giulia sat down cross-legged and rested her elbows on her knees. “How do you speak Italian so well? And with such a good accent? Did you study it in school?”

  I shook my head. “My papá is Italian. From Milan. He met my mother at the university in America.”

  “Really?”

  “He was a graduate student studying materials sciences, but they asked him to teach a few Italian classes. My mother was teaching German literature. One day in the office, they started complaining about their first-year students and that was it.”

  “Ah. How romantic. And why do you live here now?”

  I explained how my dad was doing some work for the Italian branch of his company and my mom was taking a year off of teaching high school German to live among German-speakers and study the local dialect.r />
  Giulia immediately pounced with another question—a whole series of them, actually. How old was I? What class would I frequent? Who was my favorite music group? Had I heard of Eros Rammazzotti? Did I really have every single one of his CDs? What did I think of the mister, of Emi, of Luigi, of Matteo?

  Our conversation finally stopped sounding like a magazine interview when Giulia began slipping a few facts about herself into the stream of talk. We exchanged our favorite soccer stories about last-second goals, blind referees, unreasonable coaches, difficult opponents, and even more difficult teammates. I learned, for example, that when they started soccer seven years ago, Matteo had been the last kid on the team to learn how to tie his shoes. At every practice, the grandfatherly coaches had knelt at his feet and tightened his laces. Matteo had stared off into the distance with the attitude and confidence of the great Brazilian soccer player, Ronaldo.

  “Matteo is so full of himself,” I complained. “He acts like no one belongs on the field with him.”

  Giulia’s upper lip curled. “No one is worthy to be on the same field as Matteo. Not even Matteo.”

  “No one is worthy to tie his shoes,” I said. “Too bad he can’t do it either.”

  Giulia giggled. “Well he can now.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe his mamma does it for him at home.”

  “Ah, we are making his ears whistle today,” Giulia said with satisfaction. “The other girls don’t understand the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of soccer.”

  “He’s different at school?”

  “Oh, sí. The girls are crazy for him. Some of them have his photo on a key chain with the English words ‘I love you!’ Really! It is too funny. It pleases me to meet someone who understands.”

  “Agreed,” I said, finally seeing the perfect opportunity to ask my big question. “So, would you like to play soccer with me this year?”

  Giulia jerked away from me, her fingers closing into fists. “No! Never! It is impossibile.”

  “Why?” The word slipped out before I could stop it.

  Giulia uncrossed her legs and hugged her knees to her chest. “Of course, it would be possible. It is very simple to ask Signora Martelli for a practice uniform. But wait, I do not even have to ask. My old one is not too narrow for me yet. And my papá would pay. It would not please him that I play soccer with the boys. It never pleased him. Soccer is not for girls, he thinks. But since Emi plays, he could not say I was too busy with school.”