OH MY GOD! I UPDATED! SORRY BUT NO MORE UPDATES FOR ANY OTHER STORY! I'LL BE PRETTY RANDOM WITH MY STORIES! THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT! XOXOX HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU SOON! LOTS OF LOVE T.T - MOOD APATHETIC
01/01/09 – Birthday with 'the nonni'
My name is Isabella Swan, but everyone calls me Bella. I don't know why really. It sorta just got picked up along the family and friends who listen carefully to our conversations.
You see, usually, the main female in everything is pretty just…self conscious. Pretty is a very generous term in my case. My hair is long and brown with pink streaks throughout. I'm average height, 5"5. I'm pale with chocolate eyes. My body is slender and petite but I am very athletic. I'm eighteen…today! Later on in the month I'm starting year twelve.
"Bella, time for cake." Mum called from the kitchen. I scurried up from my bed and ran out the door. I know that I sound excited through my actions but I hate birthdays, especially mine. My birthdays are the most important, why? Because I am the only grandchild, my parents are only children like me and so were their parents. So being the only child, I have the whole life planned for me.
"Bella, what are you gonna do about uni?" my nonna asked in Italian.
"Uh nonna, I'm taking courses in writing and…" I responded in fluent Italian. But I was cut off by nonno.
"Isabella, no, no, no. You're a girl, writing for men." My grandparents were very sexist you see. Anything they used to do back when dinosaurs roamed the earth my grandparents thought was right.
"But nonno, I want to. This is a very different world and different is good." And then I received "the lecture". It's like almost as bad as "the talk" normal kids get, the one about sex and everything else. No, I wasn't allowed that talk until my wedding day. This talk was about how 'the nonni' were always right, never talk back to 'the nonni', never do this, never do that. I always respond with, "Si, nonna. Si, nonno. I understand." Very sincerely or else I end up with puttana spat into my face. Not that I had ever had sex with a boy. Or even kissed one in front of the nonni, or even visited with one to the nonni, or even had a boyfriend! Strict, very strict, were 'the nonni'. When the talk was over, we ate the cake, we said goodbye to the nonni, plus everyone else in the room and left the house I see three times a year, at the least.
'The nonni' were my dad's parents. They didn't tell me any other name, not Giuseppe or Rosa, which I found out from my mum. Mum's parents were kind but hated by 'the nonni'. My mum grew up like every normal kid, no rules, no boundaries, no scolding, no yelling, no violence, no bruises, and no sin spitters. Everything 'the nonni' was, my mum's parents weren't.
When we arrived at their house, hours later, we crashed onto the couch and flipped on the one hundred inch TV. We muttered a very exhausted hey to the grandparents and watched Neighbours.
"Aren't you three exhausted? Did ya'll have a bad run in with 'the nonni'?" my grandmother asked us with her very thick, South American accent.
"Yeah, I got "the talk" again…" I groaned.
"Oh, poor gal, you're always in trouble. What was it for this time? You're skirt too high? You're V-neck too low?"
"Uni," I said simply. I then noticed Grandpa Louie wasn't there, "Where's Grandpa Louie?" I stood up and walked up the ever creaking stairs. I knocked on their bedroom and peeped inside.
"Out you snooping little girl, I'm finishing your present." I shut the door and laughed. Grandpa Louie was the funniest.
My family was part Italian, part American and part Aussie, my mum was American-Italian, my dad's full Italian born in the very centre, Rome, and I'm full Aussie, minus the generations before me.
I was born in the lush green town of Wangaratta, Victoria. Even though throughout the country there are water restrictions in place, this is the only town I've heard of without them. We had to follow 'the nonni' where ever they went making, no forcing would be a better word, us to move in my final year therefore forcing mum's 'rents to move with us. There was no way we were leaving them in the city.
It's nice up here, a large setting for your normal country town. It was quite hot in summer these days, reaching as high as fifty degrees! Good thing was that UV was quite low compared to the rest of the country. I loved it here.
The rest of the day was uneventful and apparently my present had to wait until tomorrow so Mum, Dad and I crashed in the ever ready guest rooms for tonight. I looked up at the decorated ceiling and sighed while whispering, "There's no place like home." And I hit my heels together like Dorothy before finally settling to sleep.
I was running, my legs were pumping, and my arms were thrashing through the air. I had almost made it, almost. Then two strong hands grabbed my ankles, they pulled me back from the bright, white light, they pulled me away from reality, they pulled me away from knowledge. It hurt, this darkness, I wanted to see, to be able to learn what lies behind the half truths I had been told by my parents, my grandparents, family friends, friends etc. I pushed harder to escape, to live for once, to know like other girls my age, to experience things I've been forbidden.
I woke up then; I sat up and looked around. The tree outside made a shadow on the wall as a warning of the outside world.
I opened up my copy of 'love you two' to my forever bookmarked page. It was where Pina was writing to her mum; who she had ran from because of the secret she had found out, that her mum loved two men. Her father, who was still living with them, still loved her mother even though she had given half her heart to another man, a family friend who had seemed as harmless as fly, Nathan.
I read the sentence out loud, "'I see a lot now, Mum, and it hurts to see. I think it always will. But it sort of hurts good. Blindness seems comfortable and easy but now I know it hurts you bad.'" I cried, why you may ask. It hurt to know that my own parents, my grandparents could be hiding a lot from me, for my "protection", to save me from "the big bad world". I scoffed, "What protection, nonna? To save me from figuring out you haven't got such a bella faccia after all? That you had an affair back when you were growing up? That nonno hates you with such passion that you say "Che croce!"?" I laughed without humour, almost regretting? I sighed and lay back down only to continue my dream from where I stopped.