Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 41

"I noticed that Amanda had a wound on her neck when we were in the questura," Laura answered, "precisely because Meredith had been killed with a cut to her neck. I was afraid that Amanda, too, might have been wounded."

I liked Laura and had looked up to her. She'd lent me her guitar and thought it was cool that I practiced yoga. There was only one reason why she would turn a love bite into a sign of my involvement in the murder. My stomach plunged to my knees. I can't believe Laura, of all people, thinks I'm guilty.

I felt completely betrayed.

Even though my speaking up over the vibrator had been a disaster, I couldn't keep myself from addressing Laura and Filomena's testimony. So I asked to make another spontaneous declaration.

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said. "It truly and sincerely troubled me to hear that after all this time there's a certain exaggeration about the cleaning. This was an absolute exaggeration. It wasn't a thing of conflict. Never. In fact I always had a good relations.h.i.+p with these people. This is why I'm truly troubled-troubled, because it wasn't like that. So, thank you."

Hours of watching TV courtroom dramas hadn't prepared me for how tense and uncomfortable an actual courtroom can be-or how defendants in the real world don't have a script handed to them. Standing there with the eyes of the world on me-my every word, gesture, and inflection scrutinized-I might as well have been naked in Piazza IV Novembre.

Still, I wished I'd pushed my lawyers to let me speak more often. Luciano and Carlo's intentions were good, but I believe they underestimated the power of my voice and the damaging effect of my silence.

Even with my clumsy efforts to defend myself-and with other people describing me as the girl with a vibrator, a slob, a girl with a "scratch" on her neck-what did the most damage in those early weeks was a simple T-s.h.i.+rt, and that was my own fault.

My stepmother, Ca.s.sandra, had sent me the s.h.i.+rt. It had fat, six-inch-tall pink lettering that blared "All You Need Is Love"-a line from one of my favorite Beatles songs. I loved it, and I wore it on Valentine's Day-the day Laura testified.

When I pa.s.sed the press pit on the way in and out each day, I never paid the journalists or photographers any attention. When my parents visited me, they'd fill me in on what "those idiot journalists" were writing about. "They aren't talking about the cross-examination. They're only talking about your hair," my dad said more than once.

Luciano and Carlo had said that what mattered was what happened in court-that we had to show that the prosecution was wrong. "You're a good girl. Just be who you are," Luciano said.

One person, trying to be helpful, suggested that I wear a cross on a chain around my neck to court. I rejected that outright. I couldn't pretend I'd found religion.

I thought that if I dressed in my usual jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt, the judges and jury would see me for who I really was, not as Foxy Knoxy, not as someone who was dressing to impress the authorities.

I'm glad I didn't wear a cross, but in hindsight I do wish someone had told me that my clothes should reflect the seriousness of the setting and my situation-that they were another way to convey my respect to the court.

So when I wore the "All You Need Is Love" T-s.h.i.+rt, the press dwelled on what I meant by it. Is Amanda trying to say all she needs is love from the jury? One British newspaper headlined its story about that day's hearing, "Obnoxious: Murder Trial Girl's Love-Slogan T-s.h.i.+rt. "Knox's narcissistic pleasure at catching the eye of the media and her apparent nonchalant att.i.tude during most of the proceedings show the signs of a psychopathic personality," the article said.

I felt foolish after the T-s.h.i.+rt episode. I never again wore anything that might be seen as attention-grabbing. The press still commented on my clothes, my hair, and whether I was happy, sad, tearful, bored. Their zoom lenses tried to capture what I wrote on my notepad.

The press wrote that I had to be the center of attention. In reality, prison had taught me I was nothing. Nothing revolved around me. Nothing I said mattered. I had no power. I was just occupying s.p.a.ce. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to be me anymore.

The hearing days were often exhausting-as were our off days.

For the first few months of the trial, I was still an infame, with no one among the prisoners but Fanta, whom I'd since moved in with, to talk to. Then, early one morning, without warning, Cera was told that she had a half hour to gather her things. She was being transferred to a prison in Rome. By the time the prison day started, she had already left. I felt sorry for her-she had made a sort of home for herself at Capanne.

I was also sorry that we had never managed to make up, to be on good terms, even talking terms, with each other again. She had taught me a lot about prison, and had ultimately seemed more damaged than bad.

Later that same morning, at nine, when I went outside for the first pa.s.seggio, everyone I pa.s.sed as I walked my laps said, "Good morning."

Just like that! The silent treatment ended as abruptly as it had begun.

One prisoner who had been at Capanne for months but whom I'd never met came up to me and introduced herself. "I'm Dura," she said. "I always knew you weren't as bad as Cera said you were. But what could I do about it?"

It helped me that the tension I'd been living under dissipated somewhat, but not much besides that changed for me. I had found I liked my own company, and I went on keeping to myself.

What didn't get easier was room sharing. In part this was because of turnover. The prison population had doubled in the months since I'd been at Capanne. They couldn't add rooms, so they added beds. Mona arrived soon after a fifth bed had been jammed atop one of the beds as a bunk in our four-person cell. She was a heavyset, butch woman from Naples with scars from cuts on her arms and several missing teeth. Mona was in her thirties and totally unpredictable-as happy and well behaved as a child on Christmas Eve or as blindly furious as a rampaging bull. Always heavily medicated, she slept a lot and was disoriented when awake.

The four of us were unhappy about taking on a fifth roommate, and the fifth was furious that she'd been transferred. Before settling in, she hurled a stool across the room, screaming for the agente.

During socialita she hooked up with a more feminine-looking prisoner named Gaetana, but their affair was short-lived. Gaetana dumped Mona for another masculine woman from Southern Italy, and the new couple often sat together on a bench outside, hands pressed on each other's knees.

One day, during pa.s.seggio, I walked in front of Gaetana's bench. Mona charged at the couple. In the way, I jumped to the side seconds before Mona fell on Gaetana and her girlfriend, punching both in the face. The attack escalated into a full-scale brawl before the other prisoners managed to pull Mona off. I sat cringing in a corner of the courtyard, too shaken to stand up. I still hadn't gotten used to the fact that violence could erupt anywhere, anytime.

Once, after I'd straightened up our cell, Mona stormed up to me. "Amanda, where's my tobacco?"

Her anger made me skittish. "I didn't see it while I was cleaning," I said.

"I had it by my bed, and now it's gone. Don't play games with me," she hissed, balling her fists.

"I swear I didn't see it," I said.

"I found it!" Fanta called from the bathroom. She walked into the main room carrying a wadded sc.r.a.p of paper. Mona grabbed it, opening it to reveal loose tobacco. "Amanda must have accidentally thrown it away thinking it was trash," Fanta said.

Mona spun around, facing me. "Are you trying to make a fool out of me?" she thundered. "You lied to me!"

"I didn't realize! I'm sorry!" I cried, inching backward.

"Mona! Mona! It's okay. It was a mistake!" Fanta said, stepping between us.

I don't know what would have happened if Fanta hadn't been there.

The next cellmate was Ossa; she moved in when Mona moved out. A wiry, young Roma a year older than me, she was strictly religious and as sulky as a teenager.

We started out on good terms. When Ossa first arrived, my other cellmates didn't like her because she slept almost all day. I argued that she had the right to sleep if she wanted-she wasn't in anyone's way. She talked to me about G.o.d, speaking in tongues, how she was like Robin Hood-stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

One day Ossa told us she'd asked an inmate she'd become friends with-a woman who'd been caught stealing from other prisoners-to take a newly empty bed in our cell. Two of the four of us would have to sign off on the official request form for the ispettore to grant the move.

We all said no.

Ossa took out her resentment on me. She scoffed at me for reading and writing, and for turning the TV volume down. She was disdainful of the groceries I ordered-and bought-for everyone in the cell. She sarcastically called me "queen of the cell." Whenever my case came on the news, she'd agree with the prosecution. "Everyone knows you're guilty, Amanda-and fake," she said once. Fuming, I buried my face in my book, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, not wanting her to know she was getting to me.

My indifference so infuriated her she threatened to flush my head in the toilet.

One night, when I was sitting on the floor by the cell door trying to catch the light from the hallway in order to read, she leapt out of bed and lunged at me, screaming, "I hate you!" Her hands were raised to slap me when another cellmate, Tanya, jumped up and grabbed Ossa from behind, pinning her arms back. Immobilized by fear, I felt like a roach about to be squashed. While on trial, I couldn't afford a mark on my record, especially not for fighting. Shaking, I stood with my arms up in surrender. "Even if you hit me," I said softly, "I'm not going to hit you back."

The next day, Ossa watched while I wrote in my diary and then stepped up to my bed. "You're writing horrible things about me in there!" she shouted, grabbing the notebook off my lap. Before I could react, she'd ripped out a huge chunk, tearing the pages to shreds.

I felt completely helpless. If I try to grab it back, she'll tear out my hair. This felt almost as invasive as when the police confiscated my journal soon after my arrest. The effect was the same: I had no choice but to stand by, paralyzed, as I lost something that was worthless to anyone but me, and was the possession I most cared about: my thoughts.

A few days later, to my great relief, Ossa was freed. Gone from my life just like Cera.

The weeks pa.s.sed, and as the prosecution called a long line of witnesses, my optimism over a speedy acquittal was shrinking. Helpless sadness took over.

I expected the prosecution to call police officers who'd been at the villa and those who were in the interrogation room, but initially I didn't recognize Officer Monica Napoleoni. I'd never seen her dressed to suit her t.i.tle-head of the Division for Homicide Investigation. Usually she wore skin-tight jeans, form-fitting s.h.i.+rts, and flashy sungla.s.ses. Wearing a dark blue jacket adorned with medals the size of silver dollars, she now looked so unlike herself that it seemed she was playing dress-up to convince people of her authority. Everything she did and said-her choice of words, the content, and the emphasis-was to impress the judges and jury with her professionalism. She defended the shoddy work of her investigators. She was repellent. She was in control of herself, sitting in a court of law and lying without a second's hesitation.