Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (14 page)

The guard looked at me like I’d asked for caviar and Prosecco.

I spread the thin blanket on the sheetless bed and lay down on the rough wool. I curled in on myself as the door clunked shut. “Stay here,” the guard said, as if I had an option, and left.

With that, there was nothing left for me to do. I’d been at the beck and call of the police for five days and under their absolute control for nearly twenty-four hours. Being left alone was all I’d wanted during my interrogation. Now that I was, I was helpless and angry and terrified.

Now all I wanted was Mom. She had to be in Perugia by now, but I felt as far from her as I could ever be. I was sure she was freaking out about me, but there was nothing I could do. I wondered how she’d even find out where I was, what had happened to me. A horrible thought flitted through my mind:
What if she thinks I’m dead? That I’ve been killed, too? Like Meredith.

I began to weep. Alone, I didn’t even try to hold back.

My cell had its own bathroom and kitchen—two equal-size spaces together measuring about eleven feet by four feet and separated by a thick glass door. You had to go through the kitchen, just a long aluminum sink with an aluminum counter, to get to the bathroom, where the standard European fixtures—a sink, bidet, toilet, and shower—were lined up in a row.

Later, while I was sitting on the toilet, the redheaded guard came by and watched me through the peephole. So there was no privacy at all, then.

When I returned to the main part of the cell, someone passed a plastic plate through the barred door’s single opening. Canned tuna, cut-up raw fennel, and rice smothered in tomato sauce. I had no appetite. I picked at the rice, which tasted comfortingly like the Uncle Ben’s I was used to at home. I couldn’t eat anything else.

I tucked myself back into the fetal position on top of the bed. A little while later, an
agente
walked by and closed the metal door over the bars. I thought,
I’m being sealed into a tomb.
Too claustrophobic and panicked to look in that direction, I rolled onto my other side to stare out the barred window into the dark.

Then I sobbed until I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

Chapter 13

November 7, 2007

I
’m not religious. I don’t believe in miracles. I’m not sure what I think about God.

But the nun who visited me on my first full day in prison had an extraordinary effect on me. She was about eighty and wore a full habit, pale gray from head to toe.

She stuck both her hands through the bars of my cell and, grasping mine, told me, “
Dio sa tutto.
Ti aiuterà a trovare la risposta
.”

Even though she uttered words I’d probably never have said in any language, I understood: “God knows everything. He will help you find the answer.”

I had been alone in my cell, bent over a piece of white paper, a pen in hand, trying desperately to sort out the scraps of scrambled memories from the night of Meredith’s murder, when the nun arrived. I had to remember exactly what I’d done the night of November 1.
Could the police be right? Did I have amnesia?
As the sister was leaving, she wished me
buona fortuna
—good luck. She smiled.

From the moment Meredith’s body was discovered, I’d been searching the police’s—and then the guards’—faces, silently pleading for reassurance that we were working together. But it was this nun with watery blue eyes, thinning gray eyebrows, and nearly translucent skin who gave me the strength to reconnect with myself.

Argirò had said this seclusion was to protect me from other prisoners—that it was standard procedure for people like me, people without a criminal record—but they were doing more than just keeping me separate. In forbidding me from watching TV or reading, in prohibiting me from contacting the people I loved and needed most, in not offering me a lawyer, and in leaving me alone with nothing but my own jumbled thoughts, they were maintaining my ignorance and must have been trying to control me, to push me to reveal why or how Meredith had died.

But I had nothing more to tell them. I was desolate. My scratchy wool blanket didn’t stop the November chill from seeping bone deep. I lay on my bed crying, trying to soothe myself by softly singing the Beatles song “Let It Be,” over and over.

I sat up when Agente Lupa came by my cell with another
agente
to check on me. “
Come stai?
” she asked.

I tried to answer, to say, “I’m okay,” but I couldn’t stop the surge of tears. Lupa asked her colleague to unlock the door and came inside. She squatted in front of me and took my cold hands in her large ones and rubbed them. “You have to stay strong,” she said. “Everything will be figured out soon.”

Then she hugged me like a mother does her distraught five-year-old. I buried my face in her shoulder and, in an explosion of emotion, bawled, as loudly as if I were screaming. I so desperately needed my mom that I took comfort from a stranger.

I ached to see my mother. A day had passed since she was supposed to have arrived, since I’d been out of contact. I could no longer fathom where she might be. I only knew that she must be trying to see me. She would get to me eventually. If only it had been sooner.

Six days ago I believed that I could, and should, cope with Meredith’s murder by myself. But everything had broken down so quickly. I was sure that if I’d asked for Mom’s help sooner, I wouldn’t have felt so trapped and alone during my interrogation. I could have stopped it. If my mom, my lifeline, had been ready to jump to my defense on the other side of the door, I’d be staying with her now, not in prison by myself.

Lupa held me until my crying grew weak. “Do you need anything?” she asked.

“No,” I whimpered. “Thank you.”

When Lupa had gone, I returned to my scribbled memories about the evening of the murder. At the
questura
, when the police demanded I give them an hour-by-hour accounting of what Raffaele and I had done that night, I couldn’t perfectly remember. We’d watched
Amélie
, eaten dinner, smoked pot, had sex, fallen asleep. But in what order? And what else? What had we talked about?

And then, right after the nun had left, detail after detail suddenly came back to me.

I read a chapter in
Harry Potter
.

We watched a movie.

We cooked dinner.

We smoked a joint.

Raffaele and I had sex.

And then I went to sleep.

What I’d said during my interrogation was wrong. I was never at the villa. I’d tried to believe what the police had said and had literally conjured that up. It wasn’t real. That’s not what happened. I hadn’t witnessed anything terrible after all. I thought,
Oh, thank God!
I felt such a massive wave of relief.

I quickly wrote at the top of the page: “To the person who must know this.”

Unlike my first
memoriale
, this one expressed less doubt and more certainty about where I’d been the night Meredith was killed. I rushed to get it down, so excited to finally be able to make sense of my memories for myself, and to be able to explain myself to the police. It read:

Oh my God! I’m freaking out a bit now because I talked to a nun and I finally remember. It can’t be a coincidence. I remember what I was doing with Raffaele at the time of the murder of my friend! We are both innocent! This is why: After dinner Raffaele began washing the dishes in the kitchen and I was giving him a back massage while he was doing it. It’s something we do for one another when someone is cleaning dishes, because it makes cleaning better. I remember now that it was AFTER dinner that we smoked marijuana and while we smoked I began by saying that he shouldn’t worry about the sink. He was upset because the sink was broken but it was new and I told him to not worry about it because it was only a little bad thing that had happened, and that little bad things are nothing to worry about. We began to talk more about what kind of people we were. We talked about how I’m more easy-going and less organized than he is, and how he is very organized because of the time he spent in Germany. It was during this conversation that Raffaele told me about his past. How he had a horrible experience with drugs and alcohol. He told me that he drove his friends to a concert and that they were using cocaine, marijuana, he was drinking rum, and how, after the concert, when he was driving his passed-out friends home, how he had realized what a bad thing he had done and had decided to change. He told me about how in the past he dyed his hair yellow and another time when he was young had cut designs in his hair. He used to wear earrings. He did this because when he was young he played video games and watched Sailor Moon, a Japanese girl cartoon, and so he wasn’t a popular kid at school. People made fun of him. I told him about how in high school I had been unpopular as well, because the people in my school thought I was a lesbian. We talked about his friends, how they hadn’t changed from drug-using video game players, and how he was sad for them. We talked about his mother, how she had died and how he felt guilty because he had left her alone before she died. He told me that before she died she told him she wanted to die because she was alone and had nothing to live for. I told Raffaele that wasn’t his fault that his mother was depressed and wanted to die. I told him he did the right thing by going to school. I told him that life is full of choices, and those choices aren’t necessarily between good and bad. There are options between what is best and what is not, and all we have to do is do what we think is best. I told him that mistakes teach us to be better people, and so he shouldn’t feel nervous about going to Milan to study, because he felt he needed to be nearer to his friends who hadn’t changed and he felt needed him. But I told him he had to be true to himself. It was a very long conversation but it did happen and it must have happened at the time of Meredith’s murder, so to clarify, this is what happened.

Around five in the evening Raffaele and I returned to his place to get comfortable. I checked my email on his computer for a while and then afterward I read a little Harry Potter to him in German.

We watched Amelie and afterward we kissed for a little while. I told him about how I really liked this movie and how my friends thought I was similar to Amelie because I’m a bit of a weirdo, in that I like random little things, like birds singing, and these little things make me happy. I don’t remember if we had sex.

Raffaele made dinner and I watched him and we stayed together in the kitchen while dinner was cooking. After dinner Raffaele cleaned the dishes and this is when the pipes below came loose and flooded the kitchen floor with water. He was upset, but I told him we could clean it up tomorrow when I brought back a mop from my house. He put a few small towels over the water to soak up a little and then he threw them into the sink. I asked him what would make him feel better and he said he would like to smoke some hash.

I received a message from my boss about how I didn’t have to come into work and I sent him a message back with the words: “
Ci vediamo. Buona serata.
”

While Raffaele rolled the joint I laid in bed quietly watching him. He asked me what I was thinking about and I told him I thought we were very different kinds of people. And so our conversation began, which I have already written about.

After our conversation I know we stayed in bed together for a long time. We had sex and then afterward we played our game of looking at each other and making faces. After this period of time we fell asleep and I didn’t wake up until Friday morning.

This is what happened and I could swear by it. I’m sorry I didn’t remember before and I’m sorry I said I could have been at the house when it happened. I said these things because I was confused and scared. I didn’t lie when I said I thought the killer was Patrick. I was very stressed at the time and I really did think he was the murderer. But now I remember that I can’t know who the murderer was because I didn’t return back to the house.

I know the police will not be happy about this, but it’s the truth and I don’t know why my boyfriend told lies about me, but I think he is scared and doesn’t remember well either. But this is what it is, this is what I remember.

I folded it up, gave it to the guard, and said, “I need this to go to the police.”

I was a little girl again. I was doing what I’d done since I was seven years old, whenever I got into trouble with Mom. I’d sit with a
Lion King
notebook propped up against my knees, write out my explanation and apology, rip it out, fold it up, and then either hand it to Mom or, if I wasn’t brave enough, put it somewhere I knew she’d immediately find it. When I was older I had a small, old-fashioned, beat-up wooden desk with a matching chair and a drawerful of pens. I felt so much more articulate writing than speaking. When I talk, my thoughts rush together, and I say things that don’t always seem appropriate or make sense.

Writing brings order to my thoughts.

It always worked with my mom when I handed her my letter. She’d open it right away, while I stood by. She almost always cried when she read it. She’d hug me and say, “Thank you!” and assure me that everything was okay.

That’s what I wanted to have happen now. Somehow the kindness from the nun and that embrace from Agente Lupa had encouraged me that it would.

I believed it was only a matter of time before the police understood that I was trying to help them and I would be released. The guard would unlock the cell. Without leading me by the arm, she’d escort me to an office where I could reclaim my hiking boots, my cell phone, my
life.
I’d walk out and into my mom’s arms.

I thought I’d made it clear that I couldn’t stand by what I’d said during my interrogation, that those words and my signature didn’t count. We would have to talk again. This time they would have to listen and not shout.

I thought about what to do while I waited for my
memoriale
to get passed to the right readers and the paperwork to get filled in. Since I’d never been in a prison before—and I’d never be here again—I decided to record what I saw so I wouldn’t forget.

I felt I had a duty to observe and collect information, just like a tourist who writes a travelogue or a war correspondent who witnesses devastation.

I inspected the gray-green paint on the walls, faded with age, and the splotches of white where the plaster was crumbling. A message had been left by a former occupant. Near the door, below eye level, in bright red lipstick, was an imprint of her puckered lips. Next to it, written in block letters, was a message: “
libertà, si esce, esco presto
”—“FREEDOM, ONE L
EAVES, I LEAVE SOON
.”

It was as though these words had been left for me. It was a message that added to my hope. I continued my inventory.

The barred window, about three feet by four feet, was thankfully large enough to let in light and allow me to look out onto the world I thought I’d left behind only temporarily. I saw a row of cone-shaped cypresses lined up on a hilltop. They reminded me of the trees Deanna and I saw two months ago, on the long, winding, and miscalculated hike from the Perugia train station—back when I’d been so sure of myself and so excited to see how my Italian adventure would unfold.

As I gathered this insider’s information, I felt more like an observer than a participant. I found that being watched by a guard every time I peed or showered or just lay on my bed seemed less offensive when I looked at it with an impersonal eye. I saw the absurdity in it and documented it in my head.

But no matter how much I tried to distance myself from my physical surroundings, I was stuck with the anger and self-doubt that were festering inside me. I was furious for putting myself in this situation, panicked that I’d steered the investigation off course by delaying the police’s search for the killer.

I thought back to the night of my interrogation—the police hovering over me, crowding in on me, pressing my cell phone in my face.

I imagined what I should have said: “
No! You’re wrong!
”

That’s what people believe they would have done in my place. They’re certain they’d have held to the truth whatever the cost. They’re certain they wouldn’t have broken down and not known what the truth was anymore. That is what I would have imagined for myself: I would not have crumbled.