A Semester Abroad

As the plane began its descent, I was fighting sleep. My head bounced from side to side on my neck as it had for the entire seven hours of the flight. I hadn’t wanted the dream to come. I sat in darkness that night as around me people snored. I wasn’t startled by the flash of light from the shades the flight attendant opened in the morning. But even still, he remained behind my eyes, the boy I was leaving behind.

For a minute, I lost the battle with myself and dozed, long enough to get the image but not quite sure I was dreaming, half believing that it was real.

I dreamt that Jonas was touching me the way he did. He started with my ankles, grabbing on and worked his way up. Over my legs, hesitating momentarily on my hips, he looked at me, waiting, as always, to get permission to break my heart. I smiled at him, encouraging. I reached to touch his shoulder, the other hand searching for his hair. It was good. He came to me.

But when he got to my shoulders, he was no longer there. The plane bounced as the wheels dropped. I was not with him in the room that would be our only venue. I was going to Siena. I was about to start the process of my escape.

This happened many years ago when I was barely twenty. I was not quite enjoying my youth or the freedom that came with it. When I stood to walk off the plane my shoulders hunched over, my steps were shaky. In those days, I often clasped my hands together in front of me, scared that free they might strike someone or reach out for an unwelcome embrace.

At any minute, I might find tears coming to my eyes. I had stopped trusting myself. If you held a mirror out to me with a smile, I would have shaken my head and walked away.

In Brussels, I had to check in again, so that I could continue onto the flight to Florence. But I couldn’t find my ticket or passport. I panicked. Kneeling on the dirty airport carpet, I searched all the compartments of my brand-new backpack, tearing out the crumpled clothes I had tossed in when I packed frantically the morning of my flight. I denied help from my family, who tiptoed around me. I refused to get out of bed and pack before that, saving it to the last minute, not really thinking through what clothes I would need for five months.

My pajama pants went flying out along with three socks I hadn’t bothered to fold. I could hear the sighs of the people behind me as they almost stepped on one of my shoes. I grabbed it out of the way quickly and looked up apologetically. I was just a girl taking up space in the middle of the floor. They had their documents ready. I couldn’t find mine. My heart raced and sweat formed on my forehead. My breath became gulps. I looked at the guard.

“Miss, you must locate your papers. If you cannot locate your papers, you cannot board the plane.” His harsh accent scared me. It was like German with a twist of French, elegant and sinister at the same time. Maybe I had seen too many movies about foreign interrogations. I felt like a drug smuggler about to get pinched. I wondered if everyone could hear my heart beating. There was sweat rolling down my back; my T-shirt would absorb it before they saw it through my sweater. I searched again the compartments in my new bag. I bought this monstrosity so I could travel farther and farther and farther away, but now I might be sent back.

“Miss, your papers!”

Would they send me back so soon? Could they? I explained that I was a student with the university. All of the students in the program should be on the flight. I wasn’t sure if my English was making any sense to anyone.

“Miss, we cannot hold the plane. You must find these documents.” His voice was louder now, scarier. Could he see the circle of sweat around the collar of my shirt?

I stopped. Thought. I could feel Crazy sneaking up behind me as she had so many times before I left, trying to seduce me with the release that she claimed would make it all okay. I knew it was my mind, but Crazy followed me everywhere I went those days. Like the stalker I had forbidden myself to become, she was there for me, in every shadow, every doorway, around every corner. She lurked, she taunted, and she waited for me to give in. I didn’t want that temptation here. I couldn’t allow her to catch me this time. I’d spent far too much time considering her seductive offers. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t want her to find me. She had caught up to me once, took me into her sweet embrace and tried to prove to me how easy it would be to let go, but I fought her. I ran. Still, I had to get farther. Away.

Where were the documents? They could not be in the suitcase that was checked through because I showed them when I boarded the plane. It was right before I turned to my parents to wave goodbye. Their smiles were big, forced. On the way home from the airport, they would avoid talking about why I had come home early for Christmas break and hadn’t come out of my room for almost three weeks.

If they sent me back, it would not be Jonas waiting to embrace me. No, he was locked up with someone else. If they sent me back it would be to the other one I ran from. 
If they send me back Crazy will take me in her arms and never let me go.
 That terrified me.

I ripped open the back of the bag. It wasn’t a compartment, but a place to hide the straps to turn the bag from a backpack to a carry-on. And there they were—my precious documents. I was still kneeling when I thrust them up to the guard’s stomach. He handed them over to the flight attendant, but he watched over her shoulder to make sure they were in order. I crawled around collecting my belongings, as other passengers grumbled in various languages. At last they nodded for me to go ahead. I got to my feet, slung on my backpack and continued my journey.

They did hold the plane for me. Several of the other girls smiled at me as I walked down the aisles. Their smiles were suspicious and not returned.

The first word I said in Italy was 
grazie
 to a customs agent in Florence who fingered the visa in my passport and said my Italian last name assuming I could speak Italian. I had studied it, but when he heard me thank him, he knew I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t yet learned the right way to work the 
e
. Italians take all the letters in every word and give them the respect they deserve.

Arturo met us at the gate and began to herd us to the bus. He was our chaperone. He was a grad student, a sweet-faced man who was studying the neighborhoods of Siena, the 
contrade
, for his thesis. He was speaking slowly in Italian, but still I couldn’t understand. I looked around at the faces of the other students, doubting they could understand either. I was edgy and tired and that boy named Jonas returned to my head, giving me some stability, something I was used to. The idea of missing him calmed me only because it was something familiar; the only recognizable feeling I had in this country of strange words and people smoking in front of 
NO SMOKING
 signs. I wondered if anyone would ever speak to me in a language I could understand again.

We piled onto the bus, maybe forty of us. I hesitated before taking the step on. It was too late to go back. But again I thought that maybe I should return home. I doubted. I didn’t know what was ahead or if I had the energy. I felt the anxious stare of someone behind me and stepped on.

On the road to Siena, Arturo announced the housing in English. I was hoping to be placed with a family. I would learn more that way and assumed that they wouldn’t really understand me or hold me accountable for anything. I felt that I could hide in a language I didn’t really know. Instead, Arturo revealed I would be rooming with three other women; a pale girl who was saying things in Italian to no one in particular, the blonde girl I saw painting her nails on the plane and her less blonde friend with great posture and a bulky sweatshirt bearing the name of our university. We would live in an apartment. Arturo said something in Italian. I glanced at the other three quickly. Only the pale girl nodded smugly, understanding.

“It’s inside the walls,” said Arturo, clarifying in English.

And in moments, we all saw those large gray walls that once protected Siena and behind them a zebra-striped building that I knew from brochures to be the Duomo, the cathedral. Beyond it, a salmon-colored tower, Torre del Mangia. I had one orientation class with Arturo before I left. He called himself Arthur then. He explained that Siena was a still a medieval city. He said the mentality had remained. We would find that the people in Siena were closed to us, like the walls that protected their city. They had their own traditions, centuries old, but he reminded us that the locals would note whatever we did. We, the 
stranieri,
 the foreigners, would always be seen.

I rallied myself out of my dorm room for that orientation two months earlier, without even my roommate, Kaitlin, reminding me. I had known that Kaitlin was going to Paris second semester, and I didn’t know how I was going to make it without the one friendly face I still trusted. So I listened carefully to my Italian teacher when he told us about the semester abroad and went to the orientation in the student union.

It was the first time I saw Arturo and pictures of Siena. The town was beautiful and full of sun. I learned the story of how Siena had once been a political power in Tuscany in the thirteenth century. It had rivaled Florence long ago. Then, eventually, Siena became the sleepy town that it is. And Florence thrived.

That’s when I decided to come here. I wanted to live inside those stone walls, behind a fortress. I believed they could protect me, too. And I wanted to come because Arturo said that in spite of this loss, Siena remained beautiful, proud and trapped in time. It kept its dignity somehow.

That was for me.

In Italy there always seems to be some random holiday sneaking up on you when you least expect it. A 
festa.
 I arrived in the country on a 
festa,
 though I didn’t feel like a holiday or remember how to celebrate
.
 It was the feast of the Three Kings. L’Epifania. Nothing was open. We were lucky to get cabs, Arturo said. Only small cars were permitted in the city, beyond the walls, through the skinny gray cobblestone streets. It was freezing; that’s what I noticed as I put my bags in the tiny cab.

My new home, my home for five months, was supposed to be welcoming and warm. The sun was shining in all the brochures. The reality, as I watched the driver shove our bags into the tiny trunk and encourage us to get into the car with words I didn’t understand, made my teeth chatter.

Turn back, I heard Crazy whisper. Imagine the bed in your room at home. Your parents will leave you alone to wallow with me. All of this is going to be too hard.

But I didn’t know the words to work my body back over the road, to the airport and onto the plane. And I thought of my parents opening the door to their lost daughter and wondered if their first thought would have been for me or for checks that had already been cashed.

So I got in the cab with the pale girl and our squished bags. We took off through the walls. The cab raced down the skinny streets. The buildings were so close to us. I wondered how we weren’t hitting them. There was no room for a mistake. I glanced at the speedometer. He was going almost a hundred! Kilometers, I reminded myself. It wasn’t as bad as it felt. I tried to glance up at the gray and brown stone buildings that made me feel like I stepped back in time, but from my vantage I couldn’t see the top. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see the bottom.

I had a quick twinge of claustrophobia, but that came more from the girl, Lisa, than the tight pass through the city. Lisa spoke Italian the entire time. I didn’t know if she was saying the right words, but her accent was crap. Even I could tell that her vowels didn’t flow like Arturo’s or the cabbie’s. But she wouldn’t shut up. The cabbie was just nodding and not responding. She filled every space with her droning voice. I should have admired her efforts for trying out the language, but it had been a long flight and I wished I could will her to stop talking.

I glared at her. She had long 
Brady Bunch
 hair, but it was a mousy brown instead of sitcom blonde. There was a half moon of pimples below her chin. If I could reach over and erase them, I thought, I could make her normal, I could make her shut up. My mind was wandering out of control again. I needed sleep

The cab stopped in front of what would be our building on a street called Stalloreggi. Via Stalloreggi 6
.
 The other two were already there. Janine and Michelle. They went to my university. I could tell what dorm they lived in by looking at them. They lived in Sullivan with football players and sorority sisters waiting for the rush. The blonder one looked me up and down. I had already forgotten which one was which, just that one was taller and one was blonder. I suspected that the blonder one had the upper hand. But I was jealous of both of them for having each other.