AGOSTO, belladonna lorraine

[BELLADONNA LORRAINE AGOSTO]

NAME: belladonna lorraine agosto.
NICKNAME: bella.
GENDER: female.
AGE: eighteen.
ETHNICITY: italian.
RELIGION: raised catholic. practicing agnostic.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: straight.
STATUS: single.
OCCUPATION/GRADE: university freshman.
HAIR: sun bleached.
EYES: brown.
HEIGHT: five feet.
WEIGHT: ninety six pounds.
DISTINGUISHED FEATURES: her waist length hair tends to grab attention.
PLAY BY: frieda rose.

LIKES:

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DISLIKES: less than she likes.
FEARS: losing her family.
SECRETS: she's rather open. ask and she'll tell.
HOBBIES: writing, reading, observing.
PERSONALITY:

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FATHER: angelo agosto, business man.
MOTHER: cara agosto, the agosto house apprentice.
SIBLINGS:
angelo agosto II, deceased.
leonardo agosto, twenty two, university senior.
nico agosto, sixteen, high school junior.
othello augusto, five, kindergarten student.
bambalina agosto, three, youngest sibling.
PETS: none.
HOMETOWN: corleone, italy.
HISTORY:

[/i] in italy sort of family up until 1999, when belladonna's particular branch of agosto's suffered a terrible loss and held their country responsible. alright, so maybe i should go back a little further and give you belladonna's history in chapters.

PROLOGUE
angelo agosto was the epitome of an italian man. dark skin, dark hair, dark scowl, warm heart. he wore a mask and a set of armor - figuratively, of course - when it came to business. no, this isn't some mafia story gone wrong, though they may or may not have been involved at some point in angelo's life. no, angelo inherited his father's vineyard and ran it on his own for almost twenty years. he was a wine maker and a sales man. italy loves wine so italy loved angelo. he had a warm heart when it came to women and children. it was quite confusing why the man in his thirties hadn't married and made children of his own, but the confusion was forgotten when angelo met cara.

she was only nineteen when he was thirty two, but she was the best of the two things he adored most: a woman, a child. her father blew and burned the glass bottles that held the wine angelo sold to the masses. that was how they met, that's what she was known for - the glass blower's daughter - until angelo made her his bride. those words make it sound rather forceful, but you'd be mistaken to think so. cara loved him fully and heartily and selfishly. she called him her angel, made him three meals a day, and bore him his first son. angelo agosto II was a handful for the fresh twenty year old woman, but she loved him almost as much as she loved his father.

three years passed and just as angelo agosto II - junior, was what they called him - another baby joined them. a second son. leonardo agosto was a little more mellow than junior had been, but twice as aggressive. he was the baby that tugged out cara's earrings and tugged on her curls and her pant leg and threw toys from his crib and utensils from his high chair. as the two boys grew older, leonardo would start many a fight between the two, shoving and punching and pinching and kicking were involved. the boys would be enemies if they didn't love one another and their mother so much. four years after leonardo entered the world, the third agosto child followed. the first daughter, whom angelo named belladonna, meaning beautiful woman. he expected her to be a beautiful woman and he had been right.

her brothers tended to fight over her attention, but when it came down to it, her existence mended whatever had been their problem in the first place. they focused most of their attention on helping their mother to raise her, to teach her right from wrong, to teach her how to be bright.

CHILDHOOD
even one of the smallest, worse reputation towns of italy was beautiful. all of italy was beautiful according to belladonna. to her the world was beautiful, but italy definitely had to be the most beautiful places in the world. beautiful was one of belladonna's favorite words, descriptions. she liked to see beauty, she liked to speak of it, she loved being called it. even as a child, she enjoyed the beauty of flowers and summer grass and clear blue creeks. she enjoyed to write about them, to draw them, to paint them, to snap photos of moments that could pass as quickly as they came. her brothers called her vulnerable, naive, optimistic, silly - not that she was a problem with any of those things. her mother thought something along the same lines, but she still framed poems and pictures and photographs belladonna had made. her father, when he wasn't busy with work, like to tell her she was dreamy. that he had known she'd be appreciative of beauty, which was half the reason her name meant beautiful. he called her passionate and let her be whoever she pleased.

nothing was better to belladonna than her family. her older brother, junior, was her best friend. he and she could tease one another and fight, but he was still who she'd speak to when she felt lonesome at school or when the boys in her class spent more time staring at her hair than at the black board. junior was a dreamer, too. he dreamed of new york city and paris and rome. he dreamed of traveling and fame and the hundreds of women he'd bed once he was out there in the world. she thought him silly, thinking of such goals at the mere age of sixteen. by then, she was only nine and didn't quite understand the things he said, but she listened and he talked. he was her defender and her favorite family member - by then they had been joined by another son, nico, who was almost three years younger than belladonna - the one who taught her most, encouraged her often. he had taught her the english he knew and told her he'd only live in houses with spare rooms, so she would always have a place to stay with him.

boys in town didn't like dreamers that were male. while they teased belladonna and ignored her silly dreams, they were brutal toward junior. things only got worse when women began to take notice in junior. they didn't tease him, not in any sense. when he became a small casanova to the small town of corleone, things got troublesome. belladonna saw less of her brother and more of her sketches or her poetry. when she did see junior, he was usually covered from head to toe in purple flesh. some love bites, but mostly bruises. he'd lay with a woman whenever, wherever, however he liked, no questions asked. while belladonna worried about sexually transmitted diseases harming her brother, boyfriends and lovers and brothers and husbands all over town were the ones causing him harm. until, finally, he couldn't be harmed any further. he was found, beaten to death in the creek she loved to visit daily. it's a hard thing to do, find your elder brother, your best friend, dead in your favorite place.

the agosto clan moved their business and left corleone, sad and hateful and heartbroken. the family moved to america. california, to be exact, where they could grow a vineyard. it was hard being an italian family in a state that supplied mostly spanish. by the time she was in high school, belladonna had already learned english and spanish, plus her italian. she had also lost most of what she had been.

THE IN-BETWEEN
california was beautiful in spots. the beach was belladonna's favorite place to be. she liked to swim and lay out in the sun and bury nico in the sand - which he let her do once a week. the agosto family had always been close, but in the absence of junior, they grew closer. sort of as if they'd huddled together to hide the bald spot. leonardo did his best to take junior's place in belladonna's life, but not in her heart. he invited her out and into his world, taught her things like how to introduce yourself and look confident, not cocky. he introduced her to his friends and took her to underground concerts and hookah bars and bars in general. she rarely smoked or drank anything other than wine, but she didn't snitch on him or nag him about how red his eyes got when stoned, or how stupid he seemed the day after a party. she was just thankful to have one older brother still, thankful that he tried, thankful he encouraged her and taught her things.

she was most thankful for his introductions. most of the people they met were male, yes, but she liked most that they were artists or appreciated art. her favorite introduction was to gabriel lopez. he tried to convince his friends that he was related to george lopez, not jennifer. if he were related to jennifer lopez, well he'd go incestuous just to touch that ass. his words, not mine, not bella's. he was honest with her, though. after they were introduced, they were inseparable. whether they spoke through phone calls or text message or e-mail or face to face, they were always talking. unless that were sleeping, but even then, belladonna had dreams about him. he was cuban and she called him the racial slur spic like a pet name, and he called her dago. they liked to think they were clever, that they avoided the names babe or honey with names that represented the theory that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt us. belladonna never believed that, though. people gave words meaning. words meant whatever you wanted them to.

she was a star pupil and he was the class clown. she was beautiful and he was average. she made him study and he made her laugh. he was friends with leonardo and he was good to her younger siblings - by then there were two new; othello and bambalina - and he had friendly debates with her father and he flirted with her mother. he was charming and she was loving him more and more everyday. he was a virgin, he admitted one night when they got stoned and drank two bottles of her fathers wine on the beach. he was a virgin and all he'd ever aimed to be was a non-virgin, until he met her. then he didn't care. what did it matter if he'd never had sex, he had something better, he had her. it wasn't his only confession of the night, but it was the one that made her pull her shirt over her head and offer herself up.

she constantly changed her mind about sex. some nights she lay there under him, comparing herself to a turkey that american family's stuffed and cooked at thanksgiving. some nights, her eyes caught his and she knew she was living the definition of making love. some nights she'd send him home and some nights she'd let him stay and right a poem while he slept. soon enough, she began to change her mind about love as often as she changed her mind about sex. she remembered writing more than a poem one night, more of a short story, a dear john letter. love is a toy, a token, a teddy bear, familiar, one eye missing, she wrote. love is a toy, a token, a scented handkerchief. "tell me you love me," gabriel had said. "i love you," i said. "i love you, i love you." she wrote all night long until twelve pages were filled with her words, her doubts. her honors english teacher assigned them a paper as their final. they could write about anything, as long as they put themselves into the mix. she turned her twelve pages in, too busy working on other finals to write something new. it was awarded and published. gabriel didn't quite like reading about how much she doubted their love, how often she felt like nothing more than the door to his battering ram. he forgot about her quickly, finding a new turkey to stuff. she moved on to be valedictorian and turning down ivy league. she already had plans. junior's plans.

ADULTHOOD
from the day after her graduation - her valedictorian speech consisting of statistics and facts, but happy thoughts and a dedication to her departed, beloved older brother - she packed her bags and hugged and kissed her family goodbye and climbed onto a bus to new york city. she took a bus, no matter that the ride would last a week and she'd be exchanging buses every few towns, because she wanted to see the country she hadn't been raised in, but was now a citizen of. she took photographs and picked flowers in every town she stopped at. until new york city, where she stayed in a motel for a week, met a few people, and made love to a stranger for the first time. she was doing what junior had wanted for himself, though she was sure he'd disappoint her laying down with men. she wanted to be like junior, though, for awhile at least. from new york, she took a flight to europe, where she back packed and stayed in hostels and motels and spare couches. she used her family name and her family money during these three months. she spent a few evenings in a few locations, laying down with beautiful men who called her beautiful. finally, though, her last trip was corleone, italy. they had cremated junior and had released his ashes into the creek that belladonna had loved so much.

that was where she put her photographs and flowers, she let them float down the water. she spent the night beside the creek, the spot where she'd found him. she spoke to him, though she didn't really believe in angels, didn't believe he could hear her. she spent the next day traveling corleone, visiting her old family home and her old family vineyard and visiting cousins and uncles and aunts long since forgotten. she glared at the men of corleone who had once teased her, who now called out at her, followed her. one of them or all of them were responsible for her loss. they didn't deserve her. that night she ordered a bottle of her fathers wine - still available in one pub of corleone. she spoke to the woman behind the bar, who recognized her, laughed and told her that she had been one of the women junior had been with. the woman, mia, was in her late twenties, thick in the thigh area, but she was beautiful. mia laughed with her mouth open, her smile wide. she told belladonna that junior spoke of her often, that she was jealous and she knew she shouldn't be jealous of his sister. lei era la sola donna che ha amata con tutto il cuore, she'd said. belladonna had been the only woman junior had loved with his whole heart. that night belladonna laid down with mia instead of a man. then next afternoon, mia waved her off as she left for the airport.

she had kept in touch with her family through calls, text messages, and letters. leonardo was going to a community college in south hampton two years ago - one of the only colleges to accept his stoner's testing scores. he finally admitted that he was scared to be alone and without his family. he admired her bravery and his missed her. she went home for a week, before taking a flight from los angeles to south hampton.

EPILOGUE
well, that's still being written.

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NAME: kara.
GENDER: female.
AGE: eighteen.
OTHER CHARACTERS: macon andrew longston.
EXPERIENCE: four years.

ROLEPLAY EXAMPLE:

[/i] had lucked out. he had a few bruises, a couple of scratches, and a small burn up the back of his leg. she had received a few cuts along her arms and one rather large cut on her soft cheek. she still looked beautiful, even shaking and wet and bleeding.

he had even laughed and made a joke about nothing having gone wrong. about how someone upstairs obviously wanted them to be alright. just as he was about to open his mouth to say that someone upstairs must have wanted to scare them into something - he would have asked her to marry him then - his eyes found the blood staining the thighs of her legs, though. her eyes found the blood, too. he stared for a moment and then looked around for someone with a very serious injury. he was sure she must have gotten someone else's blood on her. nothing could be wrong with her. nothing could be wrong with their baby. their baby was two months, it couldn't have died.

it did, though. he had thrown up while she washed to blood away and they cried in each others arms for a bit. then, they walked their separate ways on the beach. he sometimes told her that he let her be alone for three days and three nights so she could be alone, but he always amanged to leave out the part of that explanation: he blamed himself. he thought she blamed him, too. he still does some days. he had paid for that stupid boat ride. he had gotten her pregnant. he couldn't help but blame himself. he slept on the soft, yet sharp, sand of the beach every night. alone. he watched several people find one another and find a savior in one another. he wanted to find suri. he wanted to take everything back. he wanted to ask her to marry him. most importantly, he wanted to have a phone right about now. not for rescue and not for pizza or anything practical like that.

he wanted to call the decorator his mother had suggested and tell them to remove the crib and the curtains and the rocking chair. he never got to make that call and the nursery at the end of the hall of the house they'd chosen at the edge of the water remained, haunting him some nights. he had a relapse the previous year, giving in to the calls of a bottle of clear vodka and had taken an hour to rip the shelves from the walls and the curtains from the windows. he spent the next hour trying to clean up. now, the nursery remains a green room with white wood and ripped wall paper. he supposed he'd have to clean it soon, get it ready for suri. he didn't want suri to see it like that; a reminded of what they lost. he'd clean it and paint it white for her, so she could paint it yellow.

when he arrived home, he stood in the door way for a long minute. he couldn't decide whether he should head straight to the nursery or straight to suri. suri meant more to him than anything, so his choice was obvious. she was on the beach, at the water's edge. she didn't go in the water as much or at all now, he noticed the previous year. he didn't blame her. he didn't ask or force her in. if she was afraid, it was his fault, he didn't have the right to take that fear.

he approached her, taking a seat behind her, a leg and an arm on either side of her. he placed his chin on her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her. i love you, suri. you have no idea how much i love you.[/justify] [/ul]
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