He tilted his head and climbed back up the cliff to the helicopter landing. The pilot revamped the engine. The blades spun and the heavens roared. The officers flew above my now fully clothed parents toward the ocean.
“If this isn’t another bad omen I don’t know what is!” I screamed at my parents.
“Ma’am…Put your top back on, ma’am,” my father replied doing a nasal policeman impersonation.
“It’s not funny, Dad!”
“Oh come on, get a sense of humor—”
“I hate you. I hate this beach and I hate this city. I want to go back to Rome!”
“I want to go back to Rome as well,” my brother interjected.
My father put his arms around us and started walking. “Let’s get out of here, kids. These people are fascists.”
—
We pulled away from the windy coast into a cool, shaded canyon and climbed inside curve by curve, entering a great protective womb—the car like an old steady boat. The ocean wind ceased and the goose bumps on my thighs disappeared. I leaned back on the leather seat, calm. We all stopped speaking. My grandmother took my hand and looked at me with pity. Where the hell are we? her eyes asked. Minutes earlier on the coast I would have been comforted by that droopy, empathic look, but now it was me who had to reassure her. With each curve the forest precipices softened, and what seemed wild and dramatic from one position, transformed into something intimate and natural as we moved farther in. We were inside Topanga Canyon. In the twenties the place had been a weekend getaway for Hollywood stars. The rolling hills and vegetation created hidden alcoves everywhere. The indigenous Tongva people gave that land its name. The word meant “the place above” and I could see why. We were suspended in the air. I leaned back and closed my eyes. We were up high, where nobody could see us.
2
Dear Mary, this is the most important day of my life and you have to be part of it. I dipped my rosary into my grandma’s ashes for blessings. I hope that’s okay. I hate milk in the mornings. It makes me sick, but tea is too diuretic and I don’t want to have to look for a bathroom. I’m scared to ask for a bathroom. I’m scared I won’t find one and will look stupid trying to find one. My English is bad. I don’t want to have to ask anyone for anything. Please, make it so I don’t have to go pee. Or worse. Amen.
On my first day of public high school in America my mother dropped me off in front of the entrance gate and handed me a campus map the principal had given her when they went to enroll me. She kissed me goodbye in the car.
“Don’t worry. If you worry just pump your shoes.” She winked.
I wore Reebok Pumps that day. We bought them at Ross Dress for Less, my parents’ new favorite department store. The internal inflation mechanism of the shoes fascinated me, and when I pumped them I felt I had power feet. I could run faster, jump higher, and have quicker reflexes.
I stepped out of the car and reached the other backpacks swarming through the main gate. When I crossed the entrance I turned on my heels and walked back to the car. I climbed inside.
“I’m not going in. There’s a fucking metal detector!”
“I know,” my mother said smiling reassuringly, opening the car door again to let me back out. “That way you’ll be safer, no? No shootings!”
We picked the high school I would go to based on three elements: The first was the school having no record of firearms being brought in by students—as part of my parents’ “make love not war disposition,” they were conscious of the problem of guns in America. The second was the fact that the principal, Donald Peters, had a name that resembled our own family name, Petri. This was encouraging according to them. And the third was that it was in one of the San Fernando Valley’s rich residential neighborhoods, Woodland Hills.
“Oh, this place is awesome,” said Mr. Douglas, the man in charge of security who gave us a tour of the campus during orientation. We’d gone in through the side doors at the time, no signs of metal detectors. “Ice Cube came here,” Douglas continued. “He wrote the lyrics to ‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’ during his English class right over there. Smart motherfucker he was.” Douglas had been a stunt man for Bruce Willis in Die Hard and worked closely with the LAPD on gang control. He explained it was imperative that I not wear the colors red or blue in school.
“No C-walking. No gang clothes. No gang moves. Unless you want to get shot.” He winked. “Kidding, just kidding…”
I tried to smile and looked at my parents who kept walking down the hall, unperturbed. The Bloods and the Crips were the two biggest gangs in Los Angeles. Their gang colors were red for the Bloods and blue for the Crips. The two basic colors were banned from most public schools in the city. This complicated fashion policy made for very original color-scheme solutions. There were a lot of fluorescent pinks and greens around. “C-walking” meant any kind of jittery stutter-step combination of foot pivots and shuffles. The dance move originated with the Crips, which meant that nobody in school was allowed any kind of funky or playful walking style. We were to walk in straight lines and wear bland clothes.
My brother’s middle school in Van Nuys was worse. It had barbed-wire fences everywhere. The most stimulating class they offered was Hydraulics, which taught the basics of plumbing.
I stood in the hallway looking at the crowds pouring in, not knowing what to do next. My school in Rome had two hundred students. This one had four thousand. My Reebok Pumps were the wrong choice. Most girls wore heels.
Somehow I managed to get to my English class. Since I was Italian I had been assigned to a class for people who spoke English as a second language, but when I got there I realized it was more for people who didn’t speak English at all. I tried to put on the most American-sounding accent I could. I felt like a show-off when I approached the teacher and told her I desperately wanted to get out of there. It was true my English was not perfect, but I could read and write it, and put sentences together. The teacher was not interested. ESL was a standard class for anyone who came from another country. I’d just have to sit down and follow her lesson.