Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 36

Just like that. While I was being investigated, I was under judge's orders to be kept separate for my own safety. But now, as an accused criminal, I pa.s.sed from the judge's responsibility to the prison's.

Up to that moment, I didn't believe this would ever happen. Only a few days had pa.s.sed since I'd been moved out of Cera's cell due to mutually agreed-upon incompatibility-I wasn't fastidious enough for her, and to me, she was intolerably controlling-and switched to a cell with two big-bosomed, middle-aged sisters named Pica and Falda, who defined themselves with the politically incorrect word zingare-the feminine for "gypsies." They were kind and uneducated-neither had learned to tell time, and when I tried to explain that Seattle was on the other side of the globe, they didn't know what I was talking about. Finally, I realized they didn't know the earth was round.

Prison officials had always claimed I was kept separate-I had cellmates but, with the exception of a few prescribed events, couldn't interact with the broad population-because other inmates would probably beat me. Now, with only the mildest caution-"Be careful of the other girls!"-Argir opened a second door. Instead of having pa.s.seggio by myself, I was in the company of fifteen sweaty women.

As soon as I walked outside, the gaggle of prisoners started hooting and hollering, "She's out! She's with us! Way to go!"

I was in a concrete-walled area about a third the size of a football field. The ground was covered with hard, orangey-purplish-red rubber. It was the angriest red I'd ever seen-and bare except for a few white plastic benches and dozens of cigarette b.u.t.ts. I didn't care. This was the most open s.p.a.ce I'd seen since coming to prison. I took off in a sprint, making wide loops, skipping, and whooping, "I'm out! I'm out!" My fellow inmates stared, probably thinking I was just as incomprehensible as the media made me out to be.

I introduced myself to women I'd seen around Capanne-at movie time or Ma.s.s or guitar cla.s.s-but hadn't been able to meet. I'd had only my cellmates for company before, and those relationships were ultimately frustrating and upsetting.

At 3 P.M., when pa.s.seggio ended, we lined up to be patted down by an agente. A girl I didn't know came up to me. "I'm Wilma," she said. "Will you buy me two packs of cigarettes?"

"I guess," I mumbled. Caught off-guard, I didn't know what to say.

I amended. "I'll buy you one pack."

That night, I went to my first socialita full of pent-up energy I didn't even know I had. Being thrust in with all these new people-talking and playing Foosball and cards-reminded me of my freshman year in high school. All I have to do is find my clique and get along.

My excitement didn't last long. A couple of women came up and started heckling me. "Why are you buying cigarettes for Wilma?" they demanded. "She doesn't deserve anyone's help."

That started a chorus of grumbling: "Fricking infame."

Infame-"infamous person" or, in prison, "snitch"-was the worst label you could have there. At best you'd be ostracized. At worst you'd be abused by other prisoners.

Wilma, it turned out, was an outcast in this small circle of prisoners. I didn't know her story, but I felt bad for her. Just as in high school, when I hung out with the less popular crowd, I instinctively sided with her. I spent hours listening to her mope about how sad and confused she was. One day she said, "Amanda, can you explain why everyone hates me?"

By then I'd heard enough of the gossip to figure it out. "It's because you talk about people behind their backs and tell on prisoners to the guards," I explained. "Maybe you can change your behavior and people will start liking you."

Just like high school.

I didn't expect her outburst at socialita that evening. Wilma screamed, "All you people talk badly about me."

Another prisoner came up to me and demanded, "Why did you tell Wilma everyone hates her?"

I said, "Well, it's true, isn't it?"

"Yes, but you're not supposed to talk to her! Why did you side with her?"

Wilma's behavior wasn't that different from that of other prisoners-most were manipulative and liked to stir up drama-but she wasn't smart enough to recognize this and to fake loyalty to the other women. People were able to see through her actions.

Raffaele was charged the same day I was. But I was so consumed by figuring out how to navigate this new larger prison world, I hadn't given him much thought outside of the facts of the case. Within days of our indictment an envelope with his name printed on the back arrived for me. I had never seen his handwriting before, and at first I suspected it was a nasty joke.

As soon as I read the letter, I realized it was real. I was shocked that he was writing me. I'd felt betrayed by the months of silence and by his comments in the press distancing himself from me. And of course there was the issue of his previous claim that I had left his apartment the night of the murder and asked him to lie for me.

He wrote that he'd been aching to contact me, and that it was his lawyers and family who hadn't permitted him to get in touch. He said everyone had been afraid when we were first arrested, but that now he realized it had been a mistake to abandon me and wrong to submit to police pressure and acquiesce to their theory. "I'm sorry," he said. "I still care about you. I still think about you all the time."

I understood. My lawyers had given me the same strict orders.

I felt completely rea.s.sured by his letter. It wasn't lovey-dovey, and that suited me fine. I no longer thought of us as a couple. Now we were linked by our innocence. It was a relief to know we were in this fight together. It was only much later that I learned how his interrogation had been as devastating as mine.

I wrote him back the next morning. I was explicit about not wanting a romantic relationship anymore but added that I wanted the best for him and hoped he was okay. I knew I shouldn't write about the case, so I only said I was optimistic that our lawyers would prove the prosecution wrong.

As soothing as my correspondence with Raffaele was, I got another letter that summer that undid me, making me realize again how much my situation was affecting my family. My youngest sister, Delaney, who was nine, wrote, "Dear Amanda, I was at the pool a few days ago with Mom, Dad, Ashley, and Deanna. A boy came up and asked if they were my sisters. I said, 'Yes, but there's Amanda, too.'

"The boy said, 'That sister doesn't count.'

"It made me so sad. What should I say when someone's mean about you?"

Delaney's letter had taken two weeks to reach me. My reply wouldn't get to her for another two. I was as low as I'd been since my first days in prison.

Still, it meant a lot that she'd asked my advice. As the oldest, it meant the world to me that my sisters came to me when they were upset. I was afraid that connection had been lost. I was terrified my family would stop being honest with me for fear that it would somehow wound me.

Besides the prison vice-comandante, Argir, men were rarely allowed in the women's ward. One exception was the workers who came on Fridays to fix plumbing and electrical problems. When I was living with Cera, the guard in charge, Luigi, told her he thought I was cute. He often stopped to chat. Once, he sat on my bed and waved in his workers to have their cigarette break in our cell.

On July 4 the shower in my new cell was clogged. I didn't know how to say "drain" in Italian, so I said, "The hole in the shower won't let the water down."

"What hole?" Luigi asked.

I was alone-Pica and Falda were at their prison jobs-and Luigi followed me into the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to him, leaning forward as if to kiss me. I ducked my head and went stiff, as though a steel rod had been jammed down my spine. Somehow I managed to wriggle out of his grasp. I stumbled out of the bathroom, sat on my bed, and pulled my knees to my chest, shaking.

He didn't look at me as he came out of the bathroom. He just mumbled that his guys would fix the shower and left.

I knew I couldn't tell anyone. Luigi could turn this incident against me. What if he called me a liar? Or said I'd come on to him, that I was obsessed with s.e.x-as the prosecution was saying? No one would believe me.

I went to the window and cried-not out of sadness, but from a place of deep, black anger. It was one thing to have people saying things about me on TV and another to be overpowered.

The unwanted attempt to kiss me happened five days before my birthday. So this is the gift the prison has to offer me, I thought cynically. A reminder of my helplessness.

My mom and Deanna came to visit me on July 9, the day I turned twenty-one. They sang "Happy Birthday," but bringing in cake was not allowed. "Don't worry, Amanda," Mom said, putting her best spin on it. "We're not celebrating anything until you get home. And I'm sure that will be soon."

I erupted into sobs when I hugged my mom and sister good-bye. Back in my cell, I'd barely pulled myself back together when I was called down to the ground floor again. Raffaele had sent me a huge bouquet of white lilies. The guards were shaking their heads and chuckling about it, as though they'd never seen anything so absurd. When I reached for the vase, the guard said, "Prisoners aren't allowed to have flowers."

I guess that was another hiding place for drugs.

Nothing eased my pain that day. Ever since I was a little girl, I'd always dreamed of being older, counting off the years until I'd be a teenager and then again to the day I'd finally be grown up. The previous year, when I turned twenty-not long before I left for Italy-everyone in my family had said, "Next year's birthday is going to be the real party."

Instead, here I was now, literally sweating out my twenty-first birthday in a sweltering Italian prison. I learned strategies from the other women for how to stay cool. We took frequent cold showers, wetting our hair over and over. We drenched our sheets and tied them to the bars of the windows in a vain attempt to cool any whisper of a hot, dry breeze that might pa.s.s through.

All this happened while Luciano and Carlo were preparing the defense for my pretrial. They didn't have everything they needed to break down the case completely-Meredith's DNA on the knife and my "b.l.o.o.d.y" footprints were going unanswered.

Two days before the pretrial started, we got news that was both heartening and unnerving. Police investigators revealed that they'd found an imprint of the murder weapon in blood on Meredith's bedsheets, making it clear the weapon wasn't in fact the knife with the six-and-a-half-inch blade the prosecution was claiming. The imprint was too short to have been made by Raffaele's kitchen knife.

I'd thought that being charged marked the true end of the investigation. Now I felt catapulted back to the spot I'd been for the past several months-back to wondering what the prosecution was going to spring on us next.

At the same time, we had evidence that Carlo called "the murderer's signature."