The Italian Girl on the Quad
Ciao, bella!
Two recognizable words rung loudly, followed by her fluent string of Italian.
I sat, tired, legs crossed in blue jeans and a pit stained t-shirt, feeling utterly un-exotic. It was a crisp, sunny day, unseasonable for March. The quad was littered with students.
Italian Girl’s thick, brown hair, straight as a pin, splayed majestically down her back. She cocked her head and pinched the flip phone between her jeweled ear and shoulder as she fiddled, cooly with her manicured nails.
I imagined her watching me the way I watched her. Somehow, the girl with red hair, orange-ing in the sun, the ends split and dying, didn’t have the same appeal. Still, I let her lilting, unfamiliar language catch the wind and hover over me and keep me company.
I was often alone that spring. Back at the University of Rhode Island after a long and difficult semester as an exchange student in Humboldt county, California. Where I thought for sure I’d fit in with my weird dresses and old bandanas. A Pentax K-1000 always hanging from my neck. A portrait photographer in training. But as it turned out in my only occasional pot consumption and desire to wear shoes to walk to town, I was less of a hippie than I realized. And all I really did for four months was cry from loneliness and sit at the base of redwood trees writing angsty poems and calling my boyfriend. Coming back to Rhode Island was a transition less seamless than I’d hoped, too. On campus, I clung to art classes and a friend who liked me a lot more than I like her.
50 feet away, Italian Girl didn’t know I found her on the day I needed her the most. In contrast to the gaggles of sorority girls and other exclusive cliques on the grassy knoll, she almost felt like a friend. I had come out into the sunshine after a two week stint of deep depression. My sketch pad in my lap, I scanned through poetry, prose and paintings of my previous year, flipping to a blank page and staring just as blankly. I’d look up every few minutes and catch her out of the corner of my eye, laughing like she invented the language. There was ease in her existence.
Once a friend asked me why I was looking at a group of girls in the mall. My adolescent face grew hot, feeling caught in some shameful act. I didn’t even have an answer, then. I had always noticed girls. As intently as I noticed boys. But noticing boys felt simple. Primal. In noticing girls, I felt like I was looking for myself.
As she sputtered another bout of beautiful Italian, I wanted to start living in the world again. She got up and walked off, without ever having glanced my way. I watched her leave, squinting in the afternoon sunshine, lifted my pen, smiled and started to write.
