Most students stayed about as far away from Lila as they could get, but Guthrie didn’t mind her one bit. “She’s a pistol,” Guthrie would say, “a real pistol,” and he’d laugh when he said it.
If Lila were coming down the walk, someone would inevitably mutter, “Here comes the witch,” but Guthrie would say, loud enough for Lila to hear, “Watch out everybody. Here comes the pistol. Better duck.” He’d smile and stand right in her path. “Is it loaded?” he’d say. “Spare me, Lila, spare me—”
“Very funny, Guthrie,” Lila would say. “Very amusing, I’m sure.” But she liked it, I could tell. She’d toss her hair back and smile at Guthrie.
Lila and Guthrie were in two classes together. I didn’t have any classes with her, and only one with Guthrie. Often I saw them walking together after class, and what surprised me was that Guthrie was usually doing the talking while Lila listened. When I was with Lila, she talked—or complained—and I listened.
And sometimes when I was listening, I’d think of things my sister Stella had said. Stella had kept a journal of all the places we’d lived and had recorded things she’d learned in each town. There was one whole page from when we lived in Ohio, about how to take a bus. In Indiana, she wrote: Don’t talk. Just listen.
“What does that mean?” I asked her. “Why not talk?”
“Because people will laugh at your accent. Just listen. Wait and see how people talk and then talk like them.”
In Oklahoma, Stella wrote, Expect the worst.
“Why?” I asked. “Why expect the worst?”
“Because then,” Stella said, “you’ll be prepared. You won’t be caught off guard.”
I figured that because Stella was older, she knew what she was talking about, and I followed her advice. I listened, and I expected the worst, most of the time.
In Oregon she wrote, Dress plain the first day.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because if you wear cowboy boots in Oregon, people are going to laugh at you. Wait and see what people wear, and then dress like them.”
My mother overheard this. She said, “Stella! What a boring way to live. Don’t you want to be different from everybody else?”
“No, I do not,” Stella said. “I want to be the same.”
Sometimes I wanted to be the same, because then you’d have friends, and you wouldn’t be just the new kid, but inside, deep inside my bubble, I also wanted to be different. I wanted to be interesting, but I didn’t know how you got to be interesting.
Guthrie was different and he was interesting, and so was Lila. What I liked about them was that Guthrie was complete Guthrie through and through, and Lila was Lila through and through.
Guthrie was like no one else. He’d be walking down the hill and all of a sudden, he’d shout “Sono libero!” (I am free!) He pronounced libero like this: LEE-bear-oh. “Libero, libero, liberoooooo!”
He’d dive into the pool and shout, “Fantastico!” People liked being around him because when you were around him, you were happy, and you felt as if you could do anything he could do.
Lila was different in other ways, in ways that made people hate her much of the time. But what I thought was interesting about her was that she was always Lila. She knew what she thought and she wasn’t afraid to say what she thought, even if it was wrong or stupid or mean, although she herself never thought that what she said was wrong or stupid or mean. She thought that she was right and that everyone else was wrong, and she didn’t seem to care if she had friends or not.
I’d always felt as if I were in a sort of suspension, waiting to see how things worked, waiting to see who I was and what sort of life I might lead, and then moving on to a new town before I could figure out any of those things. Lila and Guthrie, though, seemed to already know who they were and they were already living their lives.
Sometimes Lila would say, “I’m the kind of person who—” and she’d finish that sentence in various ways: “I’m the kind of person who needs a room of my own”; and “I’m the kind of person who needs to talk about my feelings”; and “I’m the kind of person who has to have time to think.” And every time she’d say something like this, I’d wonder how she came to know what kind of person she was.
I felt like Miss Average. I was neither tall nor short, neither chubby nor slim. People often said I had nice eyes, but no one knew what color they were. “Are those hazel? Brownish? Gray? What color is that, anyway?” Teachers often said I had “a sweet face,” but when I looked in the mirror, it didn’t look all that sweet to me. On my report cards, teachers usually wrote things like Coming along and Satisfactory work and Very observant and Ought to speak up more.
I was all jumbled up most places, but especially here in Switzerland because it didn’t seem to be like any place I’d ever lived. This wasn’t just another new town and this wasn’t just another new school. Here everybody was from different places, not just me. Most of the people were new, not just me. Everybody had a different accent, not just me. At the beginning, you looked at people, and you’d think, “He’s Japanese,” or “She’s Spanish,” but after a couple weeks, you forgot about that and you’d think, “There’s Keisuke,” or “That’s Belen,” and if someone were to say to you at the beginning of school, “Where’s that person from?” you’d probably make a pretty good guess: Japan, Spain, China, India, but after a couple months if someone asked you that, you wouldn’t be able to answer.
You’d first have to stop and think, “Let’s see, Keisuke, his parents live in Osaka, but he was born in Lagos—” And people who looked Japanese might be American and never have lived in Japan, and people who looked Spanish might have been born in India of Spanish parents, and might have lived in Spain later for a couple years, but then gone on to live in Nigeria or Sweden or Belgium.
If someone asked me where I was from, I could just say, “the States.” I didn’t have to go into that whole long story of my first life, about how I was born in Kentucky but then lived in Virginia and North Carolina and Tennessee and on and on and on. I wasn’t the only nomad here. Lots of people were nomads. Nomads were normal!
During the class day there was a dress code, and everyone dressed pretty much the same, not in uniforms, but in plain clothes. The boys wore sport coats and ties and plain slacks; the girls wore skirts or slacks, and regular tops. Jeans weren’t allowed during the school day. After school you could dress however you liked and it didn’t matter if you didn’t dress like anyone else. Everyone borrowed everyone else’s clothes, and so you’d see people wearing an odd mishmash: a roommate’s Saudi scarf with someone else’s T-shirt printed with a Spanish slogan and American jeans and Italian shoes.
I liked this, because during the school day when everyone dressed pretty much alike, you didn’t have to worry that your shoes or your clothes were uncool, and after school, no matter what you wore, someone else thought it was terrific because it was different from what they had. In my other schools, the first month after I’d arrive was always the worst, as I frantically tried to figure out if socks were in or out, and if people were going to make fun of my shoes or my clothes.
The classes at the Swiss school were small, no more than fifteen students, and some of my classes only had ten students in them. The teachers knew everyone’s name by the second day, and you couldn’t hide in the back or in the crowd. If you hadn’t done your homework, it was real obvious, and so you did your homework, and you spent more time on it because you didn’t want to be discovered to be completely lacking in brains.
At my other schools, my teachers would eventually discover that I had huge gaps in my knowledge. Somewhere along the way, I’d missed learning how to multiply and divide; I’d learned about nouns and pronouns but only had a vague idea what an adverb was; and although I could have described dozens of towns all across America, I’d never learned the state capital cities.
But at the school in Switzerland, with new students zooming in each year, coming from all over the world, from all sorts of
schools, it seemed that there wasn’t a lot of common knowledge that could be taken for granted. Some students my age knew calculus, but others, like me, were still struggling with multiplication and division. Some were fluent in three or four languages, but some, like me, were still trying to figure out what an adverb was in their own—and only—language. At least I could speak and write English, so in most of my classes, I felt as if I had a head start over those whose native language wasn’t English.
If you were having trouble in something, you could go see a teacher during a free period, and the teacher would explain things to you. Sometimes they’d even introduce you to an upper school student who was really good in whatever subject you were having trouble in, and the older student would help you.
When I was having trouble in geometry (starting about the second day of class), my geometry teacher introduced me to Sonal, a sophomore girl. Every day during my afternoon study hall, Sonal would sit down with me and show me miracles. I couldn’t understand her accent at first, but it didn’t seem to matter because she drew things and cut things out and shuffled them around and it made sense that way.
Another thing that was different about this school was that it was cool to study and to try out for the play or the soccer team or swim team. It was cool to take art or photography even if you weren’t “artistic,” and it was cool to sign up for weekend trips and go hiking or skiing. You could go to Florence on an art history trip and stand around and learn about paintings and architecture. You could go to Milan and see an opera.
We read a poem by Herman Hesse and then the whole class trooped up to Montagnola to see the house in which he’d written that poem, and then the whole class trooped down the hill to the St. Abbondio cemetery and stood at his grave.
These weren’t nerdy things to do. In some of my other schools, it had been cool to go to the mall or to the movies or parties. It was cool to take a test without studying. It was cool to drink and smoke and swear. Those things were definitely not cool at this school in Switzerland.
If you got caught drinking or smoking here, you got suspended, and for most students this was dire punishment, because it meant their parents had to pay for them to fly home (even to Japan) to wait out their suspension, and then fly back, and I don’t know anybody’s parents who were very thrilled about that. If you got caught with even a piece of drug paraphernalia on you, you got expelled. Just like that.
At first I thought this was severe and cruel. In the first month of school, four students were suspended and one expelled. But after that, nothing. It was easier for students to refuse temptation. They could say, “No thanks, my parents would kill me if I got suspended/expelled.”
Uncle Max made a speech about how drugs and alcohol did not mix with education. He said we were here to learn. If we wanted to mess around with our bodies and our brains, we could do that somewhere else. It might have sounded a bit corny if someone else had said it, but Uncle Max had a way of saying it that made you think he wanted you to be a healthy, decent human being, as if he really cared what happened to you.
I’m not trying to suggest that everything was perfect about this school, because it wasn’t. Not every student was friendly, and not every teacher was kind. During the second week of school, one scowling boy who was standing behind me in the dining hall line, said, “Don’t take that last taco. If you do, I’ll chop your hand off.” In the gym one day, a girl asked me if I had a comb, and when I handed mine to her, she immediately stuffed it in her purse and walked away.
My science teacher was Mr. Koo (at home, Aunt Sandy called him Mr. Cuckoo), and on the first day of class he talked for forty-five minutes solid: “I don’t want to hear any whining or moaning or complaining from you wimps, and don’t you even think about crying or running to the headmaster or your parents to tell them I’m too mean. I’ve been here for a long time, and I’ve seen headmasters come and I’ve seen headmasters go, and believe me, if it comes to a fight between me and the headmaster, I’ll win. And I don’t want to see anyone messing with the Bunsen burners or I’ll string you up by your toes, and if you break anything, you’ll pay for it, and…”
On and on and on he went.
So not everyone was kind and not everyone was friendly, but most people were, and even more startling than that was that so many people wanted to show you how to do things—not things like how to burn down a barn or smoke a joint or steal a bike—but things like how to swim or develop film or climb a mountain.
My mouth was hanging half open most of the time.
13
Val Verzasca
One weekend I was on a school trip to Val Verzasca with Guthrie, Belen, and Keisuke. The chaperone was our Italian teacher, Signora Palermo. She was young and wore jeans and a T-shirt which said Viva Italia! I liked the way she said Viva: VEE-vuh! She punched the air twice with her fist when she said it: VEE-vuh! (punch, punch) VEE-vuh! (punch, punch).
It was October, but we were having a sudden hot spell. We climbed an arched Roman bridge and leaped off it, down into the clear cool green water. Guthrie shouted “Viva Verzasca! Sono libero, libero, liberooooo—”
Keisuke said he didn’t want to jump. “That’s stupid,” he said, but he pronounced it stew-pod. Then he jumped and laughed all the way down, but when he bobbed up, he pretended he hadn’t liked it. “That was stew-pod.”
We climbed over plains of granite—gray swirls of stone, smooth and cool, with puddles of water trapped in bowls of rock. We hiked across a grassy ridge and all around us were the tall jagged mountains, beige and purple in the haze. And all the way back in the school van, we spoke Italian, and if anyone made a mistake, Signora Palermo would say, “Are you being a stew-pod?”
It took us forever to get home because Guthrie kept thinking of places we had to see. “Signora!” he’d say, “Ferma la macchina, per favore!” (Stop the car, please!) And he’d point out a vineyard terraced all the way up a hill, row upon row of grapevines as far as you could see. “Fantastico!” he’d say. “Pura-mente fantastico!”
Guthrie asked Signora Palermo to turn down a narrow lane and then stop at a rocky hill over-looking a clear river. He made us all climb out of the van and breathe the air. “I am a transparent eyeball!” he shouted. It sounded very funny at the time. “It’s from Emerson,” Guthrie said. “He was into nature in a big way, and he’d go out in the woods and he felt transparent, like he was nothing and yet he could see everything and was a part of everything: one big huge transparent eyeball! Wow!”
Guthrie made Signora Palermo stop at a castle in Bellinzona and made us rub our hands across the old, old stone. He made her stop in Locarno for gelato, the smooth, creamy ice cream that slid down your throat. We’d be riding along and he’d shout, “Guardate! Look—look—” and he’d point out a thin waterfall streaming down the side of a cliff or a man leading his cows across the hills or a bell tower or a village perched on a mountain.
And all the way, I was having double vision. I’d look at what Guthrie was pointing at and I’d see something else laid thinly over it, like a transparent photo. The grapevines on a Swiss hillside were overlaid with grapevines I’d seen in Ohio, along a winding road, near a lake. The castle slid behind an image of a stone tower I’d seen in Virginia. Even the gelato was submerged beneath an ice cream cone I’d eaten in Wisconsin, walking down State Street with Stella and Crick.
It was as if I were carrying around all the places I’d ever lived, and nothing I was seeing was just what it was—it was all of the places, all smooshed together. My bubble was fairly bursting by the time I got home, what with all that stuff crammed in there.
14
Goober
In the middle of October, I finally got a letter from my mother in which she said, among other things, that she wasn’t much of a letter writer, but that she beamed me good thoughts every day. Inside the envelope was a wee picture she’d painted. It was of a girl fishing by a river, and the girl was me.
My father, she said, was “exploring a
new opportunity,” but she didn’t say what it was. Stella was learning that “being a mother is hard work,” but the baby was “real real real cute.”
I carried the letter in my pocket for weeks, until it ended up in the washing machine with my jeans. And even then, although it was bleached of most of its writing, I ironed it and placed it in my top desk drawer, where I’d see it each day.
The same day I got my mother’s letter, I got a postcard from Crick, and one each from Aunt Grace and Aunt Tillie. This was Crick’s:
Hi, Dinnie, you little goober—
I miss you. Hope you are being better than me.
How much does it cost to mail a postcard to
Switzerland? I guess I’ll find out.
Love from Crick, your Cool Dude brother
And Aunt Grace’s:
Dear Dinnie,
It sounds like maybe you’re not still feeling like a prisoner? Been fishing yet?
Lonnie’s toe is okay, thanks for asking, just a little purple. I got a bum knee.
Tillie’s coming over tonight. I’m gonna try some of my apricot chicken on her. It’s real good.
This is soaked in a bazillion hugs—
Love, love, love,
Your Aunt Grace
And Tillie’s card said:
Dear Dinnie,
Your daddy frets, but that’s your daddy. He don’t show anybody, but I know when he’s fretting.
Did you find a river yet?
My teeth didn’t end up like Marilyn Monroe’s but they look pretty good. Take care of your teeth, honey.
Gotta get on my scooter (ha ha, I don’t really have a scooter) and get on over to Grace’s. She says she’s cooking up something with apricots. Lord have mercy!