Mawnkey

“Mawnkey” he says pointing a long, skinny finger at me through the chain link. I smile, but just in case I didn’t understand him, Francesco says one more time “mawnkey,” rolling his arm upward to scratch beneath his armpit, the other arm hanging limply, swaying from side to side in some prehistoric, Neanderthal dance. At this point, Christina, Brandy, and I are laughing, not so much at Francesco’s joke, (I mean, let’s face it, I’ve been called worse than a monkey.) but at the sheer absurdity of a tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, twenty-five year-old Italian guy mimicking an ape just to make sure that I understand that he is calling me the one English word he knows.
In the three weeks we have known Francesco, this is the first time he has spoken any English except in parroting repetition, and now, feeling sufficiently adored, Francesco resumes his soccer game. He walks away from us, goofy smile on his face, muscular legs protruding from shorts short enough to make any American guy uncomfortable.
“So he does know some English,” Brandy says.
“Yeah, and now he’s so proud of himself for making us laugh. He’ll be calling us
mawnkeys for the next three weeks,” Christina says staring across the field at him. Turning back to me, she continues. “Seriously, you’ve already got one, so why do all the rest of them feel the need to flirt with you too? Can you please just share SOME of the Italian boys?”
“Aww, did you want Francesco to call YOU a monkey, Christina?” Brandy mocks, a smile playing its way into her eyes.
Again, they are laughing as I turn my attention back to the guy Christina says I’ve “got.” Unlike Francesco, Andréa Miceli fits the Italian stereotype, short to medium build, dark hair, equally dark eyes, olive skin. He even works in the wine shop his family owns. I met him after only three days in Montepulciano, Italy. His older brother, Eliseo (who HAS taken an interest in Christina, by the way), works as a waiter in the restaurant where our study abroad group eats every night. Eli is a warm guy with a broad smile and a fairly good conversational English, so my table of University of West Georgia students took to him almost immediately. So much so, that we invited him to come to Café Polizziano for coffee with us after he got off work that first night we were here. He came, and two days later he brought Andréa with him.
Always the leader, Eli was the first to come into the café that night. It wasn’t until they had almost reached our table, that I realized there was even someone with him. Eli slid into the tan, leather seat across from me and suddenly I found myself staring at a pair of what we Americans had come to affectionately call man-pris, a navy blue fannypack and a fitted black shirt with the word Yes in white block letters printed across it. As Andréa slid into the booth, his face slid down to eyelevel and stopped directly across the round table from me. Andréa was quiet, reserved, mirroring nothing of the open, jovial mood of his brother, but I often caught him looking at me as our group of about five American students were tutored in the Italian language by his brother. Noticing me notice him, Andréa would smile, but quickly look away, usually dropping his eyes to the glass of Coke in front of him.
Later, our group filed out of the café and walked the wrong way down the one-way streets of Montepulciano, my flip-flops slapping the ground beneath me. Even warned that Italian girls don’t generally wear shorts as short as American girls do, I had packed and was wearing a light blue pair of jersey cheerleading shorts and the cool summer breeze felt wonderful against my bare legs. While the others stayed to the main road through town, it wasn’t long before I was ducking away alone to explore the smaller side roads, rejoining the group as the streets looped around and emptied back into the main thuroughfare. As I sneaked off to one such road, I heard a heavy accent behind me,
“Where she go?”
“She has a habit of wandering off; she’ll be back,” my friend Nick laughed.
I rounded a corner onto an amazing view, or what I assumed in the daylight would be an amazing view of Italy’s domesticated, pastoral beauty, but that was then an amazing view of darkness pricked a million times with pinpoints of light. I climbed onto the wall overlooking the valley that fell away into the darkness when the same heavy accent startled me.
“You fall.”
I turned to find that Andréa had followed me. Ignoring the hand he held open to me, I practiced walking the balance beam across the wide wall.
“You fall,” he said again, taking my hand before I had time to deny it. Laughing, I pulled my hand away and jumped off of the wall myself.
“What do you call the stars?” I asked.
“Stelle.”
“Stelle?”
“You speak good Italian.”
“Si,” I laughed.
“Why you walk solo…only?”
Ignoring the question I caught up with the others.
“See. I told you she’d be back.” Nick told Andréa. “He wanted to make sure you’d be okay.”
I spent the rest of the night asking Andréa to name random things in Italian, and he spent the remainder accompanying me on my “solo” excursions and stealing brief glances in my direction.
Tonight at his soccer game, however, Andréa looks over openly and frequently to make sure I’m watching him. Each time a smile spreads across his face momentarily before he sprints back into the game. Running around in his red and black AC Milan jersey and black shorts, he almost looks professional until he stops to look at me. Then, he looks much like a child just learning to play, scanning the sidelines for his mother and father’s approving faces. The first night he asked me to come watch him and his friends play, I believe he thought I would say no. “Yes?” he said, for yes was always a question with him. The truth is, I love soccer and had played it in high school, but the doubt was apparent on his face when I told him this. I soon learned why. Their soccer game was now a weekly event for Christina, Brandy, and me, but not one time that we came did we ever see any other girls there, although many of Andréa’s friends assured us that they had girlfriends.
“Girls don’t like soccer,” Andréa had told me. Even when I assured him that that was most certainly not the case, and that I had even played co-ed soccer, WITH BOYS, in high school, I still had yet to receive an invitation to play with these boys. But he was right, the concrete bleachers beside the field did remain empty except for three American girls, two of which sat and talked most of the time, waiting for the guys to be done so we could go out to a restaurant, and one of which wished she could play rather than watch.
But now the guys are finishing up, filing off of the field, and I look back at Christina and Brandy. They are huddled over Brandy’s I-pod, filing through what seems an endless list of music. “I have Brass Monkey on here” Brandy beams. “I’m gonna let Francesco listen to it” Christina says taking the player from Brandy’s outstretched hand. They run over to Francesco, pushing the buds into his ears. He waits, eyes glancing upward to the right, expectant, bouncing his head with the beat until he latches onto the one word he knows. “Mawnkey!” he yells over the music and our laughter. From the corner of my eye, I see a soccer ball skirting toward me and instinctively my foot is out to stop it, shift it to my right foot, and pass back to whoever it got away from. Andréa stands, hands on his hips, smiling at me. Smirking I take a soft, chip shot on him, hitting him square in the stomach. Laughing, he feigns injury as he follows Francesco to the showers in the field house. I rejoin Christina and Brandy on the bleachers as the sound of running water and a clear, distinct voice rise from the building. “Na nana na na MAWNKEY na nana na na MAWNKEY.”