Uncle Max looked bewildered. “Why, Dinnie, why? You’re allowed to be lucky. Maybe one day you can make someone else lucky.”
“It’s an opportunity, Dinnie,” Aunt Sandy said.
Oh, that old word, it rumbled around in my head, round and round and round.
“And,” Aunt Sandy said, “it’s your choice. You can either take advantage of the opportunity—or not. It’s up to you.”
I thrashed around all night long, feeling miserable. Here I had all these opportunities, while the refugees had none. I wanted to give them everything. “Here,” I would say to them. “Take them. Take Switzerland and the mountains, the church bells, the skis. Take them all. You deserve them.”
But I didn’t know how to find the refugees and how to give them Switzerland.
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I was in my room at Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy’s house, and I looked out the window and saw my family climbing up the hill: my mother, my father, Crick, and Stella, carrying her baby. They were barefoot and their clothes were torn.
When they came in the house, my mother tried on my ski jacket and Crick ran his hands over my skis. Stella said, “Is this all yours, Dinnie?” and I said, “No!” and then I pulled out my old box of things and said, “See? Only this is mine,” but when I opened the box, all kinds of new things were in it: a radio and ski boots and gloves and hats and sweaters and jewelry, and then my father and mother and Crick and Stella and the baby climbed out the window and left.
Global Awareness Month surged on. Lila went mute. Her new “amazing” and “incredible” and “fantastico” self was silenced. In classes and in the dorms, all around her, she heard people complaining, just as she had used to do, but they were complaining about real trauma. She couldn’t revert to complaining about the food, because people were afraid to eat it, thinking of all the starving humanity, all the millions of starving people in the world.
Three weeks into Global Awareness Month, Uncle Max stepped in. He made a speech about the necessity of being globally aware, but he said our job was to educate ourselves so that when we were adults, we would make informed decisions. He said that we not only needed to know about disaster, but we needed to know about the spirit, too. We needed to know about art and beauty and music and laughter, so that we could change the world.
It helped. We didn’t all buy it, but it helped. After Uncle Max’s speech, I saw Guthrie standing on the villa balcony, looking down over the lake. He was crying.
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I was sitting in a chair in my bubble ball on top of a hill, looking down on a long, long line of refugees weaving in and out of the narrow paths below. Children were screaming. Soldiers barreled down the hill shooting their guns. Acid rain fell on their heads, and the trees fell over, crashing into the people and disintegrating in a cloud of black dust.
I rolled down the hill and started passing things through my bubble to the refugees. I gave them church bells and skis and even a whole mountain.
The rain was pecking at my bubble, eating its way through, and when a drop fell, sharp and stinging, onto my forehead, I woke up and saw a mosquito buzzing above me.
25
Phone Call
At the end of February, the Christmas package from my parents finally arrived. The box looked as if cows had trampled over it and munched the corners. Inside was a small photo album, which I opened eagerly, excited at the thought of seeing pictures of my family. But there were no photos inside. Tucked in the front was one of my mother’s paintings on which she had written Dinnie Fishing. It showed a girl standing on the bank of a river, holding a fishing net. There was an empty space in the blue sky—a ragged brown splotch—and in the net was the sun.
On the next page, my mother had written this note: Dinnie: A place to keep a record of all your adventures there in Switzerland….
The rest of the album was blank.
Also in the package were two cards. One was signed Mom and Dad. They had each written their own signatures. The other card was signed in Stella’s handwriting: Love from Stella, George, and Michael.
George? Michael? Who were they? And then I remembered that the baby was Michael, and George was the name of her Marine husband.
A week later, another package arrived. In it was a red hand-knitted scarf, and a note from Grandma Fiorelli:
Domenica, carissima,
Buon Natale. Adesso non ti raffredi piu.
Nonna
She’d said: Merry Christmas. Now you won’t be cold anymore.
The day after her package arrived, my parents phoned. Their voices were clear but strange because I wasn’t used to hearing them. I kept pressing the phone harder and harder against my ear, as if I could slip into the phone and down the wire and be there in the same room with them. There was a delay in the transmission, so that we’d start talking at the same time and would end up saying, “What? No, you—you go ahead,” and “I—what? What’d you say? No, you—go ahead.”
They took turns on the phone. They said they had a timer set, because it was very expensive to call all the way to Switzerland. Each one could talk for three minutes; that’s what they had agreed. We were each asking questions a mile a minute, and there wasn’t time to answer the questions.
I did find out that they were in Taos. Dad had a great opportunity there, he said. Stella was back in school, and Mom was watching the baby in the mornings, and a neighbor was watching the baby in the afternoons until Stella got home.
“Crick?” I kept asking. “Where’s Crick?”
They’d say, “What? No, you—you go ahead, what’d you say?”
“Crick? Where is he?”
Finally, they told me he was in the Air Force. A judge had given him a choice. He could go to jail or he could sign up for military duty.
Dad said, “The Air Force will be good for him. It’s a great opportunity! He can start all over!”
I asked him if he knew where Grandma Fiorelli had lived in Italy, before she came to America. I should have asked my mother, because Grandma Fiorelli was her mother, but my mother’s turn on the phone was done, and I’d forgotten to ask her. When I asked my father where Grandma Fiorelli had lived, he said, “Why do you want to know that?”
In the background I heard my mother say, “What? What does she want to know?”
My father told my mother, “Nothing. Never mind.” I heard the ding of a timer, and he said, “Time’s up! Be good—” There was a crackle in his voice, and he added, “We love you, Dinnie.”
My mother grabbed the phone and said, “We do, we do, ’bye, Dinnie, ’bye—”
There was a click and a buzz and then silence. To the silent phone, I said, “I love you, too. I miss you and I love you and I haven’t forgotten you and I miss you and I—”
“It’s okay, Dinnie,” Aunt Sandy said, replacing the receiver. “It’s okay.”
That night I consulted my Italian dictionary and put a new sign in my window: LOTTANTE.
When Aunt Sandy came in, she said, “What’s that mean? Doesn’t it mean struggling? Is that what you meant?”
“Yep,” I said.
She patted the top of my head. “I know, honey, I know.” She tapped my pillow. “If you want to talk about anything, let us know, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I was standing on Mt. San Salvatore, and a plane, slim as a black bullet, went over. Crick was the pilot. I was holding a sign that said DON’T BOMB ANYONE! but after the plane was gone, I realized that I’d written it in Italian, and Crick couldn’t read Italian.
26
Hamburger and Peaches
Two more cards arrived from Aunt Grace and Aunt Tillie:
Dear Dinnie,
Did Tillie ever send you my Christmas letter? You didn’t mention it. I bet she forgot to send it. She’d forget her head if it wasn’t stuck on her neck.
My bum knee is still bum, but Lonni
e got me a cane. I’m turning into an old lady.
When are you coming home? Don’t turn into a Switz, okay?
I’m making hamburger-peach casserole tonight. It was in a magazine.
Love, love, love,
Your Aunt Grace
Dear Dinnie,
I got a letter from you and your daddy on the same day, isn’t that something? He is worrying over you, and missing you, like always.
I heard about Crick. Don’t fret. The Air Force won’t put up with any shenanigans from him, so he’ll have to do some real work for a change. It won’t kill him. He’s a good boy, I know it.
I was walking by the river the other day, and I was thinking about you. I think I might do a spell of fishing myself.
Guess what your Aunt Grace is making for dinner tonight?? (I’m invited.) Hamburger-peach casserole! Lord have mercy! Maybe I won’t chew.
Two truckloads of kisses,
Love from your Aunt Tillie, Champion Cheesecake Jello Maker
I also received a postcard from my mother, which arrived six weeks after she’d sent it because she had the address wrong. Instead of Via Poporino she’d written Via Popcorn, and instead of Montagnola, she’d written Mount Holy. Her card said:
Dear Dinnie:
We are in Taos and it is beautiful.
Beneath that, she’d drawn a picture of a mountain, with a little cabin hanging off the side of it.
27
Italian Invasion
By March, Italian was taking over my brain. In my dreams I was not only jabbering away in Italian, but I was also thinking in Italian while I was watching my dream-self jabber. In my dreams, I didn’t stumble over words. I barreled on; I pulled Italian words from the air.
But in my waking life, in Italian class, I was not so proficient. Words would come out of my mouth and Signora Palermo would look at me as if I were speaking Arabic. “Mm,” she’d say. “Puoi ripetere, per favore,” and so I’d repeat and new words would come out, some right, some wrong. “It sounds like it ought to be Italian,” she’d say, “but I think you’ve thrown some Japanese in there.” The Japanese I’d picked up from Keisuke and his friends, but I’d say the Japanese words with an Italian accent. My Italian tongue was taking charge.
Since I hadn’t yet mastered the past tense, I was limited in what I could say. I could talk about today and now, but I couldn’t talk about yesterday or last week or month or year. I’d end up saying things that, when translated, went something like I eat a pizza yesterday or I buy this shirt last month but it does not fit and I take it back last week. It was like being snagged on a rock in a river: I couldn’t go back, and I couldn’t go around the next bend. I was just flopping there in the right-now middle.
Words I’d hear in English, I’d automatically be converting into Italian in my head. At home, Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy and I spoke a hodge-podge of English and Italian. “Pass the latte, per favore” and “Have you seen my giacca?”
Guthrie thought I understood more Italian than I did. He’d yammer away in Italian, and I’d catch about four words out of ten, and I’d mumble, “Si, si,” or, if it looked like he were telling me something I should be surprised about, I’d use my favorite phrase, “Non é vero!” (No such thing! or Not true!). It made me feel very cool to say Non é vero!
I threw my hands around a lot in extravagant gestures, which is what Guthrie did and what the locals did. What you said sounded more Italian if you sliced the air with your hands as you were saying it. Your whole body could help the words—the flip of your hands, the jerk of your head, the crossing of your legs.
At the end of March, my mother sent me a postcard with one line on it:
Your grandparents were born in Campobasso, Italy.
Aunt Sandy saw the card and said, “Were they really? My own parents, and I didn’t know where they were born! Shameful!”
Campobasso, Campobasso. I couldn’t find it on the map in my Italian classroom. Signora Palermo said she’d never heard of it, “but it means low ground. Campobasso must be a low flat place,” she said.
“I’m going to go there,” I told Signora Palermo.
“Oh?” she said. “Quando?” (When?)
I gave my best Italian shrug and said, “Una zanzara.” I thought I was saying some day, but she informed me that I’d just said a mosquito. I’m not sure where that mosquito came from.
By March, we’d all become used to Mr. (Cuckoo) Koo, the science teacher, too. If you’d asked me which I preferred: a teacher who said encouraging things like “Nice job” and “Great improvement!” or a teacher like Mr. Koo who said things like “You beanhead, read that chapter again!,” I’d have chosen the encouraging teacher any day. But there was always a frizzle of excitement as we entered Mr. Koo’s class. What was he going to say today? And since he doled out his insults to everyone in turn and didn’t have any pets, it was easier to take it when he zeroed in on you. Afterward, your classmates would be very sympathetic.
We did learn a lot. We were afraid not to learn.
“Okay, Mr. Exuberance Guthrie, stand up and explain the difference between a tropical rain forest and a jungle. Up, up, up! Stand up, stand straight!”
Guthrie was smiling. He knew the answer. “Well—”
“I’m not asking you about wells,” Mr. Koo said. “Did I say anything about wells?”
Guthrie began again. “A jungle is usually found by rivers—”
“By rivers? You mean on the riverbanks?
“Yes.”
“Then say ‘riverbanks,’ don’t mumble along saying things you don’t mean, sharpen up that vocabulary, and straighten your tie.”
Guthrie straightened his tie. “A jungle might become a rain forest—”
“And what is a rain forest then, come on, we don’t have all day, speed it up, don’t be a beanhead—”
It was in March, too, that our English teacher got radical. Mr. Bonner said we’d had too much homework, too many essays, and so we’d have no written homework for a month. (Aunt Sandy said he was probably just tired of grading essays.) Mr. Bonner also announced that we’d have no reading homework either. In class, we were going to read Romeo and Juliet (the boys groaned), but outside of class, our homework was “to think.”
“That’s all?” Belen asked. “Only think?”
“‘Only?’” he said. “Thinking is the hardest thing of all.”
Keisuke said, “So how you grade? How you grade thinking?”
“Very good question. Very good indeed. So that will be the first homework. Think about how we could grade thinking.”
Everyone looked as if he’d asked us to solve a ten-page mathematical equation. Mari leaned over to me and said, “Do you think he’s drunk or something?”
He passed out copies of Romeo and Juliet and said it was a story about two people our age who were in love, but their parents were enemies, and so they couldn’t be together. Belen and Keisuke stared at each other. Guthrie whispered, “It’s about them! It’s about Keisuke and Belen!”
Keisuke opened his book. “This English?” he said. “I understand nothing.”
Mr. Bonner said, “Don’t worry about the words right now.” He asked us to imagine two families, fairly well-off, living in the city of Verona in Italy. (I wondered if Verona was near Campobasso.) “Or anywhere,” he said. “You could imagine these two families anywhere you want: in Germany, in Japan, in France, in Spain—”
After class, Guthrie said, “Hey, Keisuke! Brilliant! We’re going to read about you and Belen!”
“Shut up,” Belen said. “Mr. Bonner said this play’s a tragedy. I want no more hearing about tragedies.”
“Why can’t we read comedy or something?” Keisuke added. “Why always people dying dead?”
Guthrie stared at his feet. “Because that’s what happens. All the time. Every day.” He slung his book bag over one shoulder and waved at the sky. “But guardate! Sun! Anyone signed up for skiing this weekend? Let’s all go—there’s a trip up to Andermatt.
Let’s go! We’ll conquer the mountains! It’ll be such the best!”
28
Thinking
I thought we’d probably discuss “how to grade thinking” for about two minutes. Instead, we discussed it in class for three days. Our discussions began very civilized, with people suggesting that we could write down what we think and the teacher could grade it, but then people said if we had to write it down, it was written homework, and besides, how was the teacher going to grade the thinking? What was good thinking and what was bad thinking?
By the second day, discussion had erupted into heated arguments. The teacher was American, so wouldn’t he favor American thinking? Why was American thinking better than Korean thinking? Mari nearly punched Keisuke when he suggested that Japanese think more clearly than Italians. “Japanese think with head,” he said. “Italians think with foot. No, no, I mean heart.”
“That’s stew-pod,” Mari said.
By the third day, we’d all come to the same conclusion: You could probably grade thinking, but it wouldn’t necessarily be fair grading, so we proposed that thinking should not be graded at all.
“Fine with me,” Mr. Bonner said.
“Fine? You agree?” Mari said. “We can think whatever we want?”
It seemed a revelation. Daring. I didn’t tell Uncle Max about this new plan of Mr. Bonner’s, because I was afraid he might fire Mr. Bonner.
Sometimes Mr. Bonner suggested the topic for the thinking homework, and sometimes students did. If we wanted another night or two to think about something, we got it. Usually one thinking question led to another one, and another and another.
“It’s brilliant,” Guthrie said. “Absolutely brilliant.”
Most of the thinking questions seemed to pop up while we were reading Romeo and Juliet. These are some of the things we thought about: