Babi scrambled down off the wall and punched him with her small fist. “You pig!”
“Now what? You’re going to beat me up too? Oh, then you really can’t help yourself…”
“I don’t like this joke,” she said.
Step tried to hug her, but she resisted for a little while.
“I really don’t like you. It seriously bothers me.”
Step hugged her tighter. “All right, I won’t say it again.”
In the end, she let herself sink into his arms, believing his promise for a brief instant.
Chapter 25
When Step took Babi home, her folks hadn’t come back yet. He said good night to her at the front door. “Ciao, have a good night. Good job, I’m really proud of you.”
Babi smiled and disappeared up the staircase. But later, as she was going to bed with a handkerchief full of ice on her right cheekbone and little uprooted hanks of hair caught in the hairbrush in the bathroom, she thought back to those words. Right then and there, she hadn’t really thought about it. He was proud of her. Proud of what? That she’d beat up another young woman? That she’d punched her, hurt her, possibly disfigured her?
Babi slid between the sheets. She was suffering now, and not only because of the pain from having had her hair yanked out. Certainly it had been self-defense. It hadn’t been her fault; she’d been forced into it. But where had all that rage come from? Why so much hatred? Suddenly she didn’t recognize herself, she no longer knew who she was. There was only one thing she knew for sure. She certainly wasn’t proud of that Babi.
* * *
“Alessandri?”
“Present.”
“Bandini?”
“Present.”
Signora Boi was calling the roll.
Babi, sitting at her desk, was worriedly checking her note. Now it seemed not quite as perfect as it had.
Signora Boi skipped a last name. A student who was present and who was determined to be accounted for stood up at her desk and pointed out the oversight. Signora Boi apologized and started calling the roll again from where she’d made her mistake.
Babi felt slightly reassured. With a teacher like her, maybe her forged note would pass muster. When the time came, she brought her notebook up to the teacher’s desk, along with the two other girls who’d been absent the previous day. There she stood, her heart pounding. But everything went fine.
Babi went back to her desk and listened to the rest of the lesson, more relaxed now. She touched her cheekbone. It was swollen and tender. Her mother, who never missed a thing, no matter how groggy she might still be in the morning, had asked her what had happened first thing at breakfast.
“Oh, nothing. I hit my face last night in the dark when I went into my room. Someone had left the door half-open.”
Raffaella had fallen for it. Luckily, she didn’t have any other marks on her. But she’d told another lie. Her umpteenth in recent weeks. She hadn’t been caught yet. But at this rate, sooner or later, it was bound to go wrong. What she didn’t know was that the moment in question was hurtling dangerously toward her.
A note landed on her desk. Pallina smiled from across the way. She’d just tossed it.
Babi unfolded the paper. It was a sketch. A young woman lay unconscious on the ground, and another was standing over her, posing like a boxer. Above them, a title in large letters: Babi III. It was a parody of Rocky. An arrow pointed to the young woman on the ground. Above it was written Maddalena. Next to the other young woman was a different phrase: Babi, her fists were like granite, her muscles like steel. When she arrives, all Piazza Euclide trembles. Babi couldn’t help but laugh.
At that very moment, the bell rang. Signora Boi laboriously assembled her various items and walked out of the classroom. The girls didn’t even have a chance to get up from their desks before Signora Giacci came in. They all silently sat back down again.
The teacher went to her desk. Babi had the impression that when Signora Giacci came in, she’d looked around, as if in search of something. Then, when she’d spotted Babi, she’d seemed relieved, almost. She’d smiled.
While she sat down, Babi told herself that it had just been an impression. She needed to cut this out. She was starting to fixate. After all, Signora Giacci had no evidence against her.
“Gervasi!”
Babi stood up. Signora Giacci looked at her with a smile on her face. “Come up, come up, Gervasi.”
Babi left her desk. It had been much more than an impression. She’d already been tested in history. Signora Giacci really had it in for her.
“Bring your notebook with you.” That phrase was like a knife to her heart. She felt like she was about to faint, and the classroom began to spin around her. She looked at Pallina. She’d turned pale too.
Babi, with her notebook in her hands—suddenly a terribly heavy load, practically unbearable—trudged slowly up to the teacher’s desk. In the meantime, she was struggling in vain to come up with an answer, some last hope for that strange request. Why did she want her notebook? She couldn’t seem to come up with any other reasons. Her guilty conscience seemed to have nothing to suggest, save what she already knew. She set her notebook on the teacher’s desk.
Signora Giacci opened it, staring at her. “You didn’t come to school yesterday, did you?”
“No.”
“And why not?”
“I wasn’t feeling very well.” And right now she was feeling decidedly unwell. Signora Giacci was getting dangerously close to the excused absences page. She found the last note, the falsified one.
“So you’re claiming this is your mother’s signature, right?” The teacher laid the notebook right before her eyes.
Babi looked at that attempt at imitation of hers. All of a sudden, it struck her as insanely fake-looking, incredibly tremulous, avowedly false and counterfeit. A yes emerged from her lips so faintly that it almost couldn’t be heard.
“Strange. I just talked to your mother on the telephone a few minutes ago, and she didn’t know anything about your absence. Much less did she have any idea that she’d signed a note. She’s on her way over now, and she didn’t seem very happy.
“You’re done at this school, Gervasi. You’re going to be suspended. A forged signature, if reported to the proper authorities, as I intend to do, amounts to an automatic suspension. Too bad, Gervasi. You could have earned an excellent grade on your final exam. That’ll have to be for next year. Here you are.”
Babi took back her notebook. Now it seemed incredibly light. Suddenly everything seemed different to her, her movements, her footsteps. It was as if she were floating in midair. As she went back to her desk, she saw the glances of her classmates, heard their strange silence. She felt something like joy, an absurd taste of happiness. Then, when she got to her desk, she slowly sat down.
“This time, Gervasi, it was you who made the mistake!”
She didn’t really understand what happened next. She found herself in a room with wooden benches. Her mother was there, screaming at her. Then Signora Giacci arrived with the principal. They made Babi leave the room. They went on discussing the matter while she waited in the hallway. A nun went by in the distance. They exchanged a glance, without a smile or a hello. Later, her mother emerged. She dragged Babi by the arm. She was very angry.