Etched in Sand (10 page)

W
E ARE READY
for the cops when they come up the stairs. We realize they caught Norman wandering outside in the dark, at night, in the cold, and that they’ll be the ones to bring him back to us. We know they are watching and waiting to catch us doing something wrong, and Norman innocently gave them a tip. The two cops come in and grab all five of us, still in our pajamas. They put Norm in the front between them and all us girls in the back, with Rosie on Cherie’s lap. They ask us to stay silent, but we are five kids in a police car without our mother, and we don’t know where we are being taken. We aren’t silent. We are children.

It’s mid-December and they’ve decided to put the four of us older kids in a home together so we’re not separated for the holidays—but Rosie, just a year old now, is going to another house.

The foster family sets up four sleeping bags for us on the living room floor. The parents and their two teenage boys force us to lie in the sleeping bags all night and day, never moving or complaining. If we do, they close the bag around us by zipping it up over our heads, and they beat us while we’re inside of it. If we cry too loudly, the punishment turns even worse. One day the foster mom grabs me by the head and cuts off my long curls with a giant pair of scissors. When the social worker checks on us and asks what happened, she answers that I got gum all stuck in my hair so she had to cut it out. I haven’t chewed gum since the last time my sisters and I went to the Saint James General Store.

One day a package of Yodels cakes goes missing. The boys force me to open my mouth so they can smell my breath, and they agree that I’m the Yodels thief. I’m beaten again, this time by them and their mom, while Cherie, Camille, and Norman are forced to watch and stay silent. If we try to defend one another, the kid getting the beating will only get it worse.

One night, while I’m sleeping, I’m suddenly cold—somehow I’ve gotten out of my sleeping bag. I wake to the realization that my pajama bottoms have been removed and the two boys are looking at my private parts. I begin screaming, but by then Cherie and Camille are nowhere in sight, and Norman—despite the boys’ threats—starts kicking them and screaming for them to leave me alone. As they drag me into their room, they yell to Norman to shut up, telling him they’ll lock him outside in the freezing cold all night like they just did to my sisters. I’m alone with no one to help me. I watch the slice of light from the hallway disappear as they close their bedroom door, trapping me alone with them inside. I begin counting.

B
Y NOW
I understand what foster care means. Susan, Mama, and Papa weren’t my real family—they were people who wanted to give us a nice home after the cops found out Mom hadn’t been taking decent care of us. Now, after the bad home, the five of us are separated into three different foster families. To me, being a foster kid is a little bit like being a dog: You have no control over the kind of family who will take you. Even if you’re treated badly, it’s possible no one will ever find out the truth and come rescue you.

Rosie stays where she was originally placed, and Camille and Cherie are placed with a family named the O’Malleys. Norm and I move to the Tenleys’ in a town called Dix Hills, with little houses on tiny lawns, that’s thirty minutes from where we used to live. The Tenleys’ house is all wood paneling, and Mr. Tenley’s hair matches the gray button-down shirt he wears to work every day. Right away Mrs. Tenley gets into an argument with the social worker—“Someone needs to buy these kids some clothes!” she says, but she insists she’ll save the receipts and would like the county to reimburse her for the purchases.

When the social worker introduces me, she informs the Tenleys that I’m the troublemaker and Norm is an angel, and that they’ll have to keep an extra eye on me. The Tenleys relay this information to my new teacher, who introduces me to my second-grade class on my first day of school, right after Christmas break. “Class, this is our new student. Her name is Regina, and she may not be here for very long—she’s a foster child.” I look at her, shaking my head. She’s just ruined any chance I might have had of getting invited to my classmates’ birthday parties. “We’ll welcome her for the time she’s here, and she’ll start in the lowest reading and math groups.”

That’s where I cut her off. “But I don’t belong in the low groups,” I insist. “At my old school I was in the highest group.”

After a week, she sees I was right and I’m placed in the advanced class. The kids at school don’t know what to say to a foster kid, so I spend most of my free time in the bedroom reading my favorite Judy Blume book,
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
That, and every library book with Amelia Earheart I can get my hands on.

I finish second grade while at the Tenleys’ and only see my sisters one day every other month when social services coordinates a visit between both pairs of foster parents. By the time I see them in late August, Rosie’s moved in with them. She’d been losing weight and getting extremely ill because she refused to eat. She’d also been hospitalized with dehydration. I overhear her foster mom tell Mrs. Tenley that the doctors said Rosie was suffering from Failure to Thrive, a condition that makes it difficult for her to absorb nutrition because, emotionally, she’s too upset about being separated from her family. The social workers hope Cherie and Camille can comfort her and nurse her back to health. They said they hope that with the love of her older sisters, she’ll gain weight fast.

Mr. Tenley’s always talking about Walter Conkrite, his favorite newsman, whom he refers to as the “most trusted man in America.” He never lets Norm or me watch anything except the evening news, and I sit on the edge of the couch shifting my weight, staring blankly at the TV set.

One night, after I’ve started the third grade, Mr. Tenley calls me into the living room. “Nah,” I tell him. “That’s okay, I’m busy with homework.” That’s when he comes into my room, picks me up, and carries me down the hall, planting me in front of their wood-encased television set. “This is an historic moment,” he says. “President Ford is pardoning Richard Nixon. Pay attention. You will always remember this.”

There sits the president, looking friendly but serious, wearing a black suit behind a desk with a grand window behind him:

I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens . . . I have promised to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best that I can for America.

I feel that Richard Nixon and his loved ones have suffered enough . . . Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford . . . have granted . . . a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all.

This Thanksgiving is the first time I see Mom since last December when the cops found Norman roaming the streets. Mr. Tenley drives us to Saint James, and I make him pinky-promise he’ll pick us up after dinner.

Mom tells me she won a visit with Norm and me at her fair hearing. She talks all about a new guy named Karl and how she’s planning to buy a house in Smithtown so we can all live together again. I imagine having earplugs in my ears, until I’m helping her prepare dinner and she starts asking me about Master Bate.

“Master Bate?” Maybe she means Mr. Bate? But none of my foster fathers were named Mr. Bate. None of my teachers are named Mr. Bate. I don’t know any Mr. Bate! Mom asks me why I’ve been touching Mr. Bate and my privates at night, and when I stare at her in confusion, she tells me to stop with Mr. Bating.

“Mrs. Tenley told the social worker, Regina. And the social worker told me. You’re only nine—that’s too young to touch yourself down there. It’s a dirty thing for a little girl to do.”

I nod my head, but I’m still lost. The only time I touch myself down there is when I hold my privates to protect them from ever being hurt again like in my last foster home.

6

Houses of Sand

March 1974 to 1977

I
T SEEMS LIKE
every few months we get a new social worker, so it’s not surprising when a new lady shows up to get Norm and me. While I’m helping her load our bags into her trunk, Mrs. Tenley stands at the front door. She calls behind me, “Regina, it’s not spring quite yet! Come put on your coat.” But Mrs. Tenley told me that all my sisters and I are about to be reunited in a new home, and the anticipation of this has made me fearless against the cold . . . and pretty much everything.

As I whiz past Mrs. Tenley with the last of our things, she says, “Regina, the way you move, you seem like you can’t wait to leave here.”

I look up at her. “It’s not that,” I say. “I just can’t wait to see my sisters.”

In the backseat I hold my newest plastic Jesus figurine while Norman plays silently with a G.I. Joe. We stay quiet even as the social worker pulls into the smooth paved driveway with fresh-cut grass of a stunning colonial-style house with a double door entrance, large brass knockers, and two story-high columns flanking the front door.

“What are we doing here?” I ask the social worker from the backseat.

“This is the address your mother gave me.”

Norm and I look quizzically at each other. “You might wanna check that again.”

“Can you help me get your bags out of the trunk, please?”

I sit still in the backseat for another second. Then my fear of embarrassment to present my garbage bags of luggage in front of this magnificent home propels my plea: “The address—please check it again. They’re going to tell us we have the wrong place.” Right then, the door opens.

Standing in the entrance is my mother.

I take in her face, then her outfit. She’s wearing a floral shirt and gauchos—with
pleats
. Her hair’s been let down from its messy ponytail and colored a single shade of pure red, curled into a careful lilt at her chin. It would have taken an actual hairbrush to create such poofy, neat waves. I remember her telling me when we lived above the glue factory that the only good thing I got from my father is my hair, but for the first time ever, hers actually looks pretty, too. And she’s thinner than I remember. Could this really be the same monster who lived with us in Saint James?

Anxiety from my confusion begins to rise in me until an unassuming, tall man appears in the doorway. From the first moment, I can sense that he’s gentle. His hair starts at one temple and is combed neatly across the front of his forehead and pasted down to the other side. Thin arms fall from a short-sleeved button-down shirt, and polyester pants are fastened around his belly button with a brown leather belt. Black-rimmed glasses frame his face. Given our mother’s romantic history, I’m cautious to get my hopes up about him. I slump back in my seat and mumble to Norm: “Guess that’s the new guy.”

As they exchange a few seemingly polite words with the social worker, Norm and I file quietly out of the car. When our mother’s eyes scan to us, she fixes a smile on her face, like the mom in a Hamburger Helper commercial:
Oh, you silly, adorable kids.
The man extends his hand to me when we reach the porch. “I’m Karl,” he says. “Pleased to meet you.”

“You too,” I tell him. “Nice house.”

“Well, after I passed the real estate exam,” Mom interrupts, “I worked fast to close this deal. You should’ve seen the pack of Stepford wives lined up the block, licking their chops when I pulled the Century 21 sign out of the ground.
Inside deal
, see. That’s what happens when you have the right connections.”

Mom acts as though we’ve all enjoyed a cheerfully prepared breakfast of French toast, eggs, and bacon together every day for the past year and a half as she shows Norm and me through the house.
What do you think of the boyfriend?
I’m dying to whisper to my brother. Instead, I ask the more urgent question: “Where are Cherie and Camille?”

“The bus should be dropping them off from the middle school any minute. And don’t even ask—you’re already registered in third grade at Branch Brook Elementary. I took care of everything.” Her voice echoes through the expansive foyer when she says, “By the way, you two can thank Camille for your bedrooms. She helped pay for the house.”

“Camille?” I ask her. “How?”

“With her broken legs. Don’t you remember the story? She got run over when she was two. The driver put money in a trust fund for her to use when she grew up.”

We start up the grand wooden stairs, following behind her. “So where is the trust fund money now?”

“You’re standing in it, darling.”

Darling?
Getting sober turned her into a different person!

“I talked the trust’s lawyer into handing over the cash because I told him—get this—that the whole point of buying this house is to raise Camille and her siblings in a safe environment. Smart Cookie, right?” Aha . . . the old Cookie Calcaterra peeks through the Beaver Cleaver facade. “Come on outside, I’ll show you the swimming pool.”

Norm and I follow her in silence, ogling at the inground pool with an awkward fusion of excitement and hesitation. I can’t predict how likely it is that we’ll even live in this house through the summer to enjoy swimming in it.

“You want to know the best part?”

We look up at her.

“I own the house with the bank. I don’t have to pay
rent
anymore.”

The part of me that loves this house cooperates easily with my mother’s happy-family charade. While she’s at work in the afternoons, Cherie, Camille, and I make dinner and then help Norm with his homework. At dinnertime Karl sits at the head of our rectangular kitchen table, coaching us to say
please
and
thank you
and indulging our requests for stories about his work as an engineer at Grumman Aerospace. “Don’t ask Karl too many questions,” Mom chides. “His work is top secret.”

“It’s not that secret, Cookie,” he says. “It’s good for them to learn this stuff.” Then he turns to us and says, “Right now we’re building a military aircraft that America needs to keep us safe from the Communists in Russia. We’re in a Cold War, see. They can attack us with their nukes any time so we need to be prepared.”

Karl thinks the reason I listen in awe is because his stories are so interesting, but really I just can’t get enough of having his attention. Sometimes I think of asking Mom and Karl, “Say, how’d you two meet anyway?” but it’s a more pleasant fantasy for all of us to make like they’ve been together all along. Mom is much calmer these days—she says it’s because Karl’s such a good father to her kids, but Cherie and Camille say her maternal demeanor is thanks to the fact she’s not drinking anymore and that her doctor has her on the right medication. “Doctor?” I ask. “Is Mom sick?”

Cherie and Camille exchange a sarcastic glance. “She’s sick all right,” Camille says. “Sick in the head.”

The possibility that Cookie’s been faking us out makes me uneasy, like the day she showed me the swimming pool out back. “You know what they say,” Camille says. “If it seems too good to be true . . . then it probably is.”

At night, Mom and Karl watch TV in the family room or Mom makes real estate phone calls in the kitchen while Karl reads the paper in the recliner. Meanwhile, Cherie, Camille, and I all help one another put Rosie, who’s already two, to bed in her crib that’s positioned against the wall in my bedroom. Then I settle in for long talks in Cherie and Camille’s bedroom and help them tape
Teen Beat
photos of David Cassidy and Leif Garrett on their walls. Sometimes we invite Norman to come in, under the condition he’ll agree to put on purple socks so he can be my Donny Osmond as I play Marie. Cherie and Camille join in singing and dancing, and the four of us carry on just like the old days at Cordwood Beach . . . together.

I notice that not having been able to rely on Cherie and Camille at the Tenleys’ house brought out a grown-up side to me, and sometimes I find myself still acting like a mom to Norm . . . and even though my brother’s the only person in the whole house who doesn’t have to share a bedroom, he still appears mindful that it’s his sisters who taught him survival. In an effort to make up for the year we lost, the five of us do everything together. After school we take walks to Branch Brook Elementary’s playground and spend hours swaying gently on the swings and talking, or squealing as we balance the weight of all five of us between both sides of the seesaw. On cold or rainy days we take advantage of the fact that Mom has yet to find enough abandoned furniture to fill our house. We set up our radio inside what Mom calls “the great room”—our step-down giant living room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors—and dance like maniacs as the songs on Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown echo off the hardwood floor. When Frankie Valli’s “Swearin’ to God” comes on, we crowd around the radio to listen carefully to all the words and scribble them down. Mom always wants to be the first person she knows to memorize all the lyrics to the new Four Seasons songs. She says she has a special connection to them from her time as a go-go dancer when they were just an up-and-coming band from New Jersey playing the Long Island club circuit.

One day she arrives home from work and nonchalantly invites us out to the front lawn to help her unload the car, where we find three bikes, and a new Big Wheel for Norm, in the front yard. ”Mom, wow!” we exclaim, instantly taking off for the park on our new rides. We whiz past Karl, who’s standing there, quietly beaming with his hands in his pockets. I shout over my shoulder, “Karl, thanks!”

He shouts back: “You got it, kiddo!”

This is when Mom suddenly gets wrapped up planning a new project: having a portrait taken of her with her five kids. As a hobby, she’s started sewing dresses for all of us, having purchased cotton fabric with raised crushed velvet in yellow, pink, and blue. She sits in concentration at her sewing machine, creating tea-length dresses with scooped necks and dome sleeves. She grows so possessed by the endeavor that when she hears us walking past where her sewing machine’s set up in the dining room, hints of the old Cookie begin to reveal themselves. “Stay the hell outta there!” she shouts. This is my cue to begin spending my afternoons in the school library. That old familiar undercurrent of uncertainty is back.

Mom insists that Cherie’s and Camille’s hair remain straight and long like Marcia and Jan Brady, while my natural waves are styled in a trendy shag—short at the ears, long in the back. Mom cuts Norman’s hair to highlight his intense almond-shaped eyes and chiseled cheekbones. Rosie’s wispy blond locks are always in little pigtails. We keep taking bets on when she’ll grow out of her blond hair, but so far she hasn’t. “She’ll always be a blonde,” Mom says, lowering her voice in a way that makes it hard to decipher between melancholy and bitterness: “Just like her daddy.”

Karl’s still at work when the photographer shows up. “Do we need to wait for your husband?” the woman asks.

Mom’s only answer is this: “He’s not my husband.”

This simple phrase is the pin in my balloon, a careless reminder: We’re not a normal family at all. Suddenly I’m nauseated as Mom commands us into position on a bench by the great room’s shiny wooden stairs: “Look happy, kids!”

When the photographer leaves, Mom turns as dramatic as a soap opera star, gushing about her excitement to have a family photo to add to the last one—the one taken three years ago when we were all wearing our Lake Havasu T-shirts. I know this is another excuse for her to mention Vito.

“Where is Vito anyway?” I ask her.

“He’s locked up,” Mom says. “His enemies figured him out.” She tells us Vito’s garbage business was so good that he didn’t have to share his routes with anyone else, which pissed off other garbage men, who told the FBI on him. Then he went to jail. Mom brags that Rosie’s daddy is famous because he was the boss of the garbage men. “Before they put him away,” she says, “he was in all the newspapers.” There’s a faraway twinkle in her eye when she says, “He always reminded me of a husky Robert Redford.” When we ask her if the cops tried to put her in jail with Vito, she rolls her eyes and laughs. “God no. Everybody knows girlfriends and kids are always left alone—we’re protected by the Mothers and Fathers Italian Association.”

Later that night, Camille asks me, “You know what the Mothers and Fathers Italian Association stands for?”

I shake my head.

“Think about what the first letters spell out: M-A-F-I-A.”

“Ohhhhh
. . .”

The next day I ask Mom out of curiosity: “How long will Vito be in jail?”

“Jesus, Regina, I don’t know. Stop asking questions,” she says. Then she takes a long drag off her Virginia Slim. “Maybe another two years—what will Rosie be, five? But it doesn’t matter anyway,” she says, using her bare ring finger to scratch her cheek. “Karl is Rosie’s daddy now.”

W
HEN OUR FAMILY
portrait arrives in the mail, Mom flings it on the kitchen table. “Look at this,” she says. “All that work I did—for a bunch of fucking clowns.” When she adds “What a goddamn disgrace,” it’s impossible to tell whether she’s referring to the photo or her life.

In it we’re lined up in two rows, Cherie, Camille, and Rosie in the front and Norm and me kneeling on a bench behind them. The only one smiling is Norm. Cherie’s arms are straight out, holding a hysterical Rosie like she has a dirty diaper, and Camille is looking over at the two of them as if she just sensed it. “And look at Regina,” Mom says. “Could you
pretend
to listen to me for once?” I didn’t bother to smile in the picture; I never do. My haircut is boyish and my gapped front teeth look like mini Tic Tacs screwed into my gums. My expression shows an intolerance to participating in a picture meant to capture this facade. I know that, just as fast as the photographer’s flash, soon this will all be gone.

While Mom and Karl are working overtime trying to keep our home, we get to spend more time alone, in this big house, entertaining ourselves. So we bake. We bake muffins, bread, rolls, cakes, and cupcakes. And when we can’t bake because the pilot light is out, Cherie leans her head into the oven with a lit match, while Camille turns the gas on. Luckily it’s almost summer when Cherie’s eyebrows, lashes, and hair are singed, so we stop baking and move on to more outdoorsy hobbies. We dive into the green pool water and scrawl our names on the algae-covered walls.