Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 26

I was being treated differently from the other prisoners. While I exercised, I could see other inmates through the barred gla.s.s doors, chatting and moving around freely inside without an agente. A guard watched me at all times. There was no conversation.

During that hour I also noticed toddlers being led through the halls by a nun. The sight of them delighted and perplexed me. Who were they? Where had they come from? I thought they might be orphans, but when I asked an agente about them, I discovered that the female prison had a separate nido-literally "nest," or nursery ward-where women lived with their children until the children turned three. It made sense not to separate mother and child, but why did they live in prison? Couldn't these women be held under house arrest, or in religious communities, so the little kids wouldn't have to be behind bars?

For the first few days, the toddlers I saw were shy. They either scampered off or stood watching me wave to them, their hands in their mouths, expressionless. I didn't know where the nun was taking them, but I was thrilled that their pa.s.sage coincided with my outside time. After a couple of days the children in the mini parade would stop and watch me through the bars. I tried everything to make them laugh-I danced, sang, played peek-a-boo, and we chased each other on opposite sides of the window, with them on the inside, me on the outside. Some days, the nun had to cajole them into leaving.

My pa.s.seggio was in a small courtyard outside the chapel-really just a wide path surrounding a muddy, round patch of a garden with a crudely done abstract sculpture in the center. I could never decide if the matte-gray metal blob was supposed to be two wings or splashing waves rising out of the ground and tipping toward each other. But I was sure of one thing: it was ugly.

Prison was not the place to find inspiration.

I exercised as much to stay warm as to stay in shape. Breaking a sweat cleared my mind and tamped down my anxiety. After I exhausted myself, I'd walk in the tight, hypnotic circles available to me, singing or repeating the mantra It's going to be okay. Just hold on. It's going to be okay. Or I'd pace and cry, remembering how scared I was during my interrogation, remembering fragments of my time with Meredith and trying to process her death. And I thought about my family; I hated that I'd put this burden on my parents.

No matter what mood I was in, I'd stoop to pick up earthworms that were washed onto the pavement when it rained and lay them gently back in the dirt.

The person inside the prison who came closest to taking care of me was Don Saulo Scarabattoli, the Catholic chaplain for Capanne's women's ward. A few days after I moved in, he appeared at my cell door, introduced himself, and asked, "Would you like to come talk with me in my office?" He was smiling and grasping my hands through the bars.

"I'm not religious," I said. "I wouldn't really have much to say."

"That's not a problem. You're always welcome," he answered.

A short man with a large bald spot and a little gray hair, Don Saulo was in his early seventies. His wire-frame gla.s.ses and the white stubble on his jaw made him appear gentle. But I was put off by the small cross pinned on his navy blue sweater and the Virgin Mother medallion around his neck. I was not interested in being converted.

I wasn't baptized as a baby. Growing up, I never went to Sunday school, never said grace before meals, never prayed before bed. I stereotyped religion as a backward inst.i.tution that offered false comfort and prevented people from coming to their own conclusions. Early in my freshman year at my Jesuit high school, I figured out that by showing up late on Fridays I could ditch Ma.s.s without repercussions, and I gave short shrift to my required religion cla.s.ses. Once, when we were a.s.signed a paper on how our belief in G.o.d had influenced our life, I curtly wrote that it hadn't affected mine because I didn't believe in G.o.d. My tone made it obvious that I thought the a.s.signment was inane, and earned me my only C in high school, which frustrated me even more. Who was my teacher to grade me on my personal beliefs?

I a.s.sumed that people who dedicated their lives to religion were trained to be nice-that it was part of their professional code of conduct and not always authentic. I had a cautious reaction to Don Saulo even after he said that the priesthood bound him to keep in confidence whatever I told him. I didn't trust him. My lawyers had warned me that whoever was asking me questions was likely to be a police informant.

But I quickly came to believe that Don Saulo's decency and compa.s.sion were genuine. This made our first few conversations painful for me. Each time, I'd ask him, "Do you believe I'm innocent?"

"I believe you are sincere," he would answer. Tears rolled down his cheeks and mine.

Sincere is not the same as innocent. But I soon stopped needing that affirmation from him. I could tell that he was an intelligent, caring person interested in me as another human being. He didn't push to know about my case or even to get me to talk.

Of course, Don Saulo did offer me many opportunities to join the Catholic Church, and G.o.d came up in all our conversations. Although I still didn't believe in an omnipotent being or revere any faith as inarguable Truth, I slowly moved away from the rebellious stance I'd taken in high school. Instead of thinking that religion inhibited individuality, I came to see it as the collective wisdom of countless generations. I respected it as a way to examine fundamental questions. What does it mean to be human? What defines a good life? Why do we exist? Religion was Don Saulo's language, and it gave me a way to talk with him about my feelings, insecurities, and ideas.

I tried not to discuss my case with anyone but Mom, Dad, and my lawyers. But I confided in Don Saulo about my interrogation, how guilty I felt about naming Patrick, and how confused I was by what had happened to me. "If you did not knowingly wrong someone, Amanda," he said, "you did not sin."

And Don Saulo did look out for me. Every Tuesday he screened a movie in the women's ward under the guise of "rehabilitation." To my amazement, he convinced prison officials to let me attend. The theater was a large room, empty except for rows of plastic chairs and a piano, which we weren't allowed to touch, and a retractable movie screen.

Movies, like everything else, brought out Don Saulo's emotional side. I can't remember the lights once coming back on at the end of a movie when his cheeks weren't wet and his voice didn't quaver, whether we'd just watched The Pa.s.sion of the Christ, Bruce Almighty, or The Princess and the Frog.

And he burst out laughing as easily as he cried. One day, when we were talking in his office, I shifted in my hard chair, clearly uncomfortable. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"My culo hurts," I answered.

He chuckled. "You mean your sedere hurts," he corrected me, smiling.

Culo-"a.s.s"-is a word I'd picked up from Gufa. No one would use such a vulgar term in front of a priest unless she were trying to offend him. I was embarra.s.sed, but Don Saulo was amused.

My visits with him were optional. I saw Don Saulo for half an hour a few times a week because he was the only person I met at Capanne who liked sharing and debating ideas. Most conversations I had were with people I didn't like-my cellmate, some doctors, Vice-Comandante Argir, the cops who came to Capanne to confiscate more and more of my things. I had no choice but to speak with them. Not being able to choose where I went and whom I saw made me anxious. It seemed as if everyone around me was trying to chisel their way into my head. Even the letters I wrote had to be turned over to the guard in an unsealed envelope-to be photocopied for the police, I later discovered. I felt I had to protect myself from invasion.

Each morning, after the other prisoners had filed outside for pa.s.seggio, an agente would escort me to the infirmary for the first of my required twice-daily visits. All prisoners are under some sort of observation, but someone-probably the prosecutor-had ordered that the doctors question me regularly for my first six months at Capanne in the hope that I'd say something incriminating.

It would never have occurred to me to take anything to improve my mood or help me sleep, but almost every doctor recommended antidepressants and sedatives. The psychiatrist seemed particularly determined to get me to succ.u.mb to drugs. I countered with an emphatic "No!" each time. I wasn't about to give the prison officials more control over me than they already had.

Doctor-patient confidentiality didn't exist in prison. A guard was ever-present, standing right behind me. This bothered me so much that, as time went on, I skipped a needed pelvic exam and didn't seek help when I got hives or when my hair started falling out. Whatever happened in the infirmary was recycled as gossip that traveled from official to official and, sometimes, back to me.

How each visit went depended on the doctor, and I was grateful for any gesture that wasn't aggressive or disdainful. A female physician liked to talk to me about her trouble with men. And one day, when I was being seen by an older male doctor, he asked me, "What's your favorite animal?"

"It's a lion," I said. "Like The Lion King-Il Re Leone."

The next time I saw him he handed me a picture of a lion he'd ripped out from an animal calendar. I drew him a colorful picture in return, which he taped to the infirmary wall. Later, when he found out that I liked the Beatles, one of us would hum a few bars from various songs to see if the other could name the tune.

But sometimes what I thought was a kind overture would take an ugly turn. I was required to meet with Vice-Comandante Argir every night at 8 P.M. in his office-the last order before lights out at 9 P.M. I thought he wanted to help me and to understand what had happened at the questura, but almost immediately I saw that he didn't care. When I ran into him in the hallway he'd hover over me, his face inches from mine, staring, sneering. "It's a shame you're here," he'd say, "because you are such a pretty girl," and "Be careful what you eat-you have a nice, hourgla.s.s figure, and you don't want to ruin it like the other people here."

He also liked to ask me about s.e.x.

The first time he asked me if I was good at s.e.x, I was sure I'd misheard him.

I looked at him incredulously and said, "What?!"

He just smiled and said, "Come on, just answer the question. You know, don't you?"

Every conversation came around to s.e.x. He'd say, "I hear you like to have s.e.x. How do you like to have s.e.x? What positions do you like most? Would you have s.e.x with me? No? I'm too old for you?"

His lewd comments took me back to the pickup lines used by Italian students when I'd relax on the Duomo steps in Perugia. I wondered if I should just chalk up his lack of professionalism to a cultural difference. Sitting across the desk from him, I thought it must be acceptable for Italian men to banter like this while they were on the clock, in uniform, talking to a subordinate-a prisoner.

He had me meet with him privately and often showed up during my medical visits, but I had always been so sheltered, I didn't think of what he did as s.e.xual hara.s.sment-I guess because he never touched or threatened me.

At first when he brought up s.e.x I pretended I didn't understand. "I'm sorry-Mi dispiace," I'd say, shaking my head. But every night after dinner, I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach. I had no choice but to meet with him. After about a week of this behavior, I told my parents what Argir was saying. My dad said, "Amanda, he shouldn't be doing that! You've got to tell someone!"

Knowing that Dad thought this was wrong validated my own thoughts. But Argir was the boss-what could I do? Whom could I tell? Who'd take my word over his?

Silently, I rehea.r.s.ed what I would say to him: "These conversations repulse me." But when we were face-to-face, I balked, settling on something more diplomatic-"Your questions make me uncomfortable," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

I thought, Because you're an old perv. Instead I said, "I'm not ashamed of my s.e.xuality, but it's my own business, and I don't like to talk about it."

It didn't do a bit of good. He ended that night's meeting telling me that my hair looked nice. It was in a ponytail. He tried to hug me before I left. I backed away.

I still wasn't sure this was something I should bother Luciano and Carlo with. But when it continued for a few more days, I did.

Luciano looked revolted, and Carlo urged me, "Anytime Argir calls you alone into an office, tell him you don't want to speak with him. He could be talking about s.e.x because Meredith was supposedly the victim of a s.e.xual crime and he wants to see what you'll say. It could be a trap."

But I was so lacking in confidence I couldn't imagine it would be okay to resist Argir directly. I reminded myself that the pressure I felt during these sessions wasn't anything close to the pressure I'd been put under during my interrogation. Argir usually sat back and smoked a cigarette, and I knew that I could just wait out his questions. Eventually he'd send me back to my cell. I didn't tell him off because I'm not a confrontational person. When something bothers me I try to ignore it and get over it or address it in a roundabout way. That's why I wrote all those apology letters to my mom when I was young, instead of approaching her outright.

One night, Argir asked me if I dreamed about s.e.x, if I fantasized about it.

Finally I got up my courage. I took a deep breath. "For the last time," I said, my voice pitched, "No! Why are you constantly asking me about s.e.x?"