Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

said. “We broke up because I was coming here and he was going to China for the year. We’re still friends, though.”
    “What’s he like?” Meredith asked.
    “Completely eccentric,” I said. “He has a Mohawk, wears this shabby red kilt, and goes everywhere barefoot, except when he goes climbing. Then, I promise, he wears shorts and shoes.”
    Meredith laughed. “He sounds like your type. Do you think you’ll get back together?”
    “I can’t tell,” I said. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”
    “I dated a guy pretty seriously,” Meredith said. “We were together for a few months. I have real feelings for him, but I’m too young to get serious. I still have two more years of university. We broke up right before I came to Italy.”
    “Well, you don’t want to feel weighed down by decisions while you’re figuring life out.”
    We encouraged ourselves with affirming smiles and cheap local red wine.
    Meredith and I did a lot of routine things together—like walking to the grocery store and going to the rental office. She asked me to snap photos of her standing in front of the picture window in her bedroom. “I want my family to see my view,” she said.
    One afternoon, when I discovered a vintage clothing shop downtown, I was so excited that I went home and immediately brought Meredith back with me, the sort of thing I’d usually do with Brett or Madison.
    “These clothes are definitely more offbeat than I’m used to,” Meredith said, “but they’re awesome.” She tried on a few things, coming out of the dressing room to model each one and discuss all the places she could wear it. She bought a sparkly silver vintage dress she said she’d wear for New Year’s Eve in London.
    It made sense that Meredith and I were closer to each other than to our other flatmates—we were both trying to learn a city and a language we didn’t know. Filomena and Laura were longtime friends, older, finished with college, and Italian. To them, Perugia was the same old, same old.
    While I waited for the semester to start, I tried to read in Italian and tested new vocabulary wherever I could. One day, I went to the Coop, a supermarket in Piazza Matteotti, gathered my groceries, and went to the register to pay. “ Busta? ” the cashier asked me.
    I didn’t know the word. Was it envelope ? Was she asking me if I wanted to buy envelopes? I could feel the people behind me in line shuffling impatiently. I was about to respond no, but she read my confused expression before I got the word out. She shook a plastic shopping bag in my face. “ Busta? ”
    I reddened. “ Sì, sì, busta. Grazie. Scusa, ” I said.
    I knew I shouldn’t have been embarrassed, but I didn’t want to be regarded as a tourist. I didn’t want attention brought to my ignorance of the language.
    I didn’t let my mistakes keep me from getting to know my neighborhood or my neighbors a little better. Each time I went to the Internet café to Skype with DJ or chat online with Mom, I’d talk to the guy who ran it, Spyros, a Greek in his late twenties. We talked about the same things that filled my conversations with my UW friends—mainly our ideas and insecurities. He graciously welcomed my sputtering attempts to speak in Italian about more than the weather. This was a little different from home, where Laura and Filomena found my deficient Italian entertaining and chuckled at my slipups.
    A few times a week I hung around the coffee shop chatting with Mirko about what we each liked to do and about our personalities. Me: serious, goofy early bird. Him: playful, easy-going night owl.
    One afternoon I asked, “Do you know where I can go hear live music?”
    “No, I like sports,” he said. “Do you like Inter?”—Milan’s popular professional soccer team.
    “I prefer to play soccer than watch it. I was a defender on a premier team,” I said. I could tell he was picturing me in a kid’s church league.
    “Are you good?” he asked.
    “Do