Etched in Sand (14 page)

In February we all go to visit a school in Hauppauge . . . but since we don’t have records for the first half of the year, we’re not able to register. “We’ll climb on the bus every day anyway,” I tell Norman and Rosie, and the plan quickly proves successful.

One day, while I am eating the school’s free breakfast, Mrs. Young crouches next to my cafeteria table. “Would you like to come with me to the office?” she asks, and I oblige her, feeling safe that we have the same thing in mind. Together with the principal, we fill out registration forms for Norman, Rosie, and me so we can get credit and finish out the school year.

The only thing that will get you out of your situation is to stay in school, Regina.

I remember Ms. Van Dover’s words, so I perform well on Mrs. Young’s tests and participate not
like
my life depends on it, but
because
my life depends on it. I keep to myself during free time so that none of my classmates will ever ask to come to my house. When Mrs. Young sees me reading at recess, she gives me work sheets to practice long division and encourages me to take a stab at the challenge questions in our science books. The more work I have, the safer I feel.

Holding it together with a job is stressing Cookie to proportions we’ve never seen before. Making it worse is the fact that summer’s fast approaching, and the taste of independence that Cherie and Camille had living on their own is inspiring them to lash out. “I’ve got five kids, a household to manage, and a paycheck to keep!” Cookie says. “And now you sluts want to give me attitude?” Cookie stays out all night at bars or rolls out of bed just as we’re heading out the door to school. On the rare occasion she’s home when we are, the beatings are guaranteed and more brutal than ever. We all go into full-fledged survival mode and stay out of the house as much as we can when she’s home.

On the school bus, Camille adopts the nickname “Dancing Queen,” swaying and boogying to kids’ boom boxes and starting impromptu dance parties, in an attempt to preserve her fast-fleeting days as a teenager. When I ask her whether she ever flirts with boys when she goes to dances at the community youth center, she looks at me dubiously. “Haven’t you seen how Cookie behaves with men?” she says. “Believe me, I’m not dancing to meet boys. I dance so I can be me. It’s the only time I can really be a teenager.”

One night, I pray Camille will have beat me home when it takes me until almost seven to arrive from school. Instead I open the front door to find chicken cutlets frying on the stove, and Cookie, who turns to me with her eyes blazing. “Where the hell were you?” she says.

I hesitate, until I blurt it out. “I was looking for my coat.” She burns holes through me with her eyes, spurring me to share more. “It disappeared from my locker today.”

“Good goddamn job, you dumb shit. It’s gonna be a cold, wet April. What the fuck, Regina—is your head up your ass?” She pauses a second, but I say nothing. “So where’s the coat now?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I think someone stole it.”

Camille walks in just as Cookie hurls the pan of bubbling grease at me. My sister runs to me just as the hot grease splatters all over my forearms that I raised to protect my face, but Cookie grabs Camille by the neck and drags her to the front door. Then from the second-floor deck, she throws her down a flight of stairs, where Camille now lies hollering in pain. Cookie runs down the stairs and kicks my sister in the back. “That’ll teach you to interfere!” she roars.

“Great job, you sluts,” she says, walking toward the car. “You ruined my dinner.” She puts the car in reverse and leaves.

I throw on a sweatshirt to hide the instant blisters on my arms and run into the deli downstairs, pleading to Cookie’s gray-haired coworker Helen. “Call an ambulance, quick! Camille fell down the stairs!”

“Did she fall, or was she pushed?”

“Helen,” I beg,
“please, just call
.
”

Later that night when Camille is discharged wearing a neck brace, the two of us phone Cherie from the hospital. Kathy picks us up, but when we arrive home, we have to curl up in the stairwell because the door is locked. When the sky begins to light up, Rosie pops her head out. “Norman and I were scared last night,” she says. “We were all alone.”

Camille shoots me a glance. “No you weren’t, sweetie,” Camille says. “We were here the whole time.”

We’re brewing coffee in the kitchen when Cookie’s car pulls up. Hearing her clamor up the stairs, Camille and I stiffen. I take a deep breath and prepare to play it cool. “So, I imagine you told the doctors what a horrible mother I am.” This is her hello as she eyes Camille’s neck brace and the bandages on my hands.

I take a moment to torture her with my silence. Camille seems to be in on the tactic.

“Well?”

“We didn’t say anything,” I tell her. “Just that I dropped a pan of grease and then Camille fell in it.”

“And you expect me to believe they bought that crock of shit?”

Camille and I look at each other and shrug. “Yeah,” Camille says. “They bought it.”

“We’ll see about that. You two clean up the mess you made last night. Camille, you better stay up here and rest today,” she says. “But Regina’s gonna help me at work. We don’t want any nosy teachers asking what happened to you two.”

A
S THE SCHOOL
year winds down, it’s completely clear that Cherie and Camille have no intention of hanging out here this summer. I ask Hank, Cookie’s boss, if I can start helping at the store. He looks at me with hesitation, and then thoughtfulness. “Your mother
has
had some trouble keeping up,” he admits. “How old are you again?”

I fold my arms across my flat chest to hide the prepubescent evidence. “I’m thirteen—and a half.”

He looks at me suspiciously. “Weren’t you eleven last week?”

“I’m a good worker, Hank, ask anybody.”

“All right,” he sighs. “But I’ll have to keep you hidden in the back. You’ve got to be older than fifteen to work in this state.”

“I’ll hide,” I promise. “I’m small, see?”

“And you’ll have to listen to your mother.”

I nod. Being with her in public is safer than being with her at home.

The first week, I come in every day after school and head back to his kitchen—a long galley with steel tables, a sink, and a big, industrial fan mounted on the wall over the oven. I slip on plastic serving gloves and roll up my apron to make it shorter, the way I’ve seen Cookie do with her skirts before she goes to the bars. Until six o’clock I work, shredding cabbage for coleslaw and peeling carrots and potatoes, then I clean up and take out the trash in time for the store to close at eight. After my first Friday on the job, Hank hands me fifteen dollars cash in an envelope. When we get upstairs, Cookie wiggles her fingers at me. “Hand that over,” she says. “Hank’s little pet, huh? You wouldn’t have gotten this gig without me getting you a foot in the door.”

I look at her in disbelief . . . and then I hand over the money. She opens the front door for my siblings to head out to the movies, leaving me at home by myself. “I’m sure you’ll find some way to occupy yourself,” she tells me. “You’re so goddamn resourceful.”

The next morning I put on shorts and a tube top and march back downstairs to the deli. “As long as you don’t mind,” I tell Hank, “I’m going to take deli orders from the cars while they wait in line for the pump.”

He looks at me in amazement.

“What?” I tell him. “I’m trying to earn a little extra cash, I didn’t solve the gas crisis.”

“You just solved
my
gas crisis,” he says, pointing to the traffic lined around the corner. I head out from car to car with a pencil and a tablet of order checks. “Hey folks,” I say through their windows. “Can I get you anything from the deli?” I schlep their cigarettes, chips, and sodas, gratefully accepting tips of a dime or whatever spare change they tell me to keep. Soon I’ve got the system down so well that I start pumping their gas for them, too, popping an average tip of twenty-five cents into my pocket after every fill-up. When Cookie comes downstairs for her shift, she looks at me suspiciously . . . but when she steps out back for a cigarette break, I spend some of my newfound salary to scarf down a sandwich and hide some snacks in the deli kitchen to give Rosie and Norman later.

I find work not only helps provide for my siblings and me—it also keeps my mind distracted from how my family is crumbling. When I’m idle, I’m in so much pain wishing my older sisters wanted me; or that just once, my mother would tell me she loves me. When Cookie’s working and Norm and Rosie are watching TV, I lock myself in my bedroom and cut my arms with scissors. I watch the skin give way, then the blood comes to a swell, and for a second there’s some release to the pain deep inside me. Sometimes when Cookie and I are working together in the kitchen, I try and flaunt the gashes just to see if she cares at all. One day, she finally throws me a bone. “You got a little problem with your arms there?” she asks me.

Behind her in the distance I see Hank working the register. I shrug.

Cookie laughs. “Next time, if you’re going to do it, do it right,” she says. “You cut on your wrists. Not your forearms.”

A few days later, I’m startled from my thoughts of this conversation when a man wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and work boots appears at the deli’s Employees Only kitchen door. I take in the vision of him—dark curls framing a tanned, handsome face and eyes shining pure as onyx—then I get back to peeling potatoes. I pause, waiting to see whether he’ll say anything.

He stares.

“Can I help you?”

He examines me, taking in all my features. Finally, silently, he shakes his head. I look back down to peel the potatoes; when I move my eyes to see if he’s still there . . . he’s gone. Although I don’t recall ever meeting him, something about his eyes is eerily familiar. I can’t shake the certainty that I’ve seen them somewhere before.

“H
IS NAME IS
Paul Accerbi.” The flicking sound of Cookie’s lighter collides with the ding of the dishes I’m setting on the table for dinner. “He comes waltzing in, digging through his wallet, then looks up at me—a deer in friggin’ headlights.”

I stop setting the table to stare at her.

“God, what I wouldn’t give to capture the look on his face when he saw me.
‘Your daughter’s in the back,
’ I tell him. Do you know how long I waited to deliver that line?” She takes a drag of her cigarette. “Well, actually, I’ll tell you how long: eleven
looong
years.” She laughs, a cackle then a hack. “The look on the son of a bitch’s face, I thought he was gonna shit a bagel.”

I’ve just seen this man for the first time five hours ago and already I’m planning how I’d like to decorate my bedroom in his home.
Dad
, I’d ask him,
will you hang a shelf where I can place all my Jesus figurines?
He’d install blinds on my bedroom windows and check their locks every night at dark. Then he’d tuck me in, pushing the edge of my comforter between the mattress and box spring to make sure I’m safe and secure.

“See that?” Cookie says. “He took one look at your sore ass and left you again. Good thing you have me to care about you.”

But nothing she says about my father can bring me down from what I’ve just learned about him:
that he exists
. There’s someone else in the world with me . . . I’m not alone anymore. I’ve always wondered, Who
is
this man? Is he even alive? He’s not just alive, he’s handsome . . . and looks
normal.

My universe has shifted.

Paul Accerbi. I had heard those words, but they have new meaning now. In our first apartment in Saint James, Cookie would tie me to the radiator and invoke his name as she beat me.
“Paul Accerbi!”
she’d scream, yanking my hair to pound my head on the floor or whipping my back with a belt.
“He hurt me the MOST,”
she’d wail
. “So YOU will hurt the most!”
I knew this from the first night that I met her when I was four, and she never let me forget it.

Cookie shared her stories of who each of our separate fathers were. Some we knew to be true; when she talked about Rosie’s dad and mine, her stories never changed about Vito and Paul. But the details always got blurred with the identity of the fathers of my other siblings—she claimed they ranged from famous pop singers from her go-go dancer days to gas station attendants she met on the rebound. What was shocking for me to learn about Paul is that he lived close enough that stopping in the deli for lunch could have been part of his normal routine.

After Cookie’s gone out for a drink, I grab the Suffolk County phone book; my stomach is doing flips as I near the first page of
A
. I scan the listings . . . until I reach the only name that matches his:

Accerbi, Paul & Joan

My father and what appears to be his wife live in Riverhead, which, if I’m reading the phone book’s map correctly, is probably a forty-minute drive east of our house. I flip back to the
A
’s and close the cover, staring at the no-nonsense yellow and the black text. Of everything I’ve ever read, who could have known that the book that would give me all the hope and answers I’ve prayed for would be the White Pages.

I
N
O
CTOBER OF
my seventh-grade year, Cookie is arrested again for driving drunk, with no registration and a suspended license. When they run her name through their records they discover she has outstanding warrants for bouncing checks all over Suffolk County. “How much money do you think Mom has bounced checks for?” Norm asks me.

I shrug. “Maybe a couple hundred,” I tell him, even though it’s more like thousands.

The cops come to our door, reporting Cookie’s trying to get out of jail by sobbing that her kids are alone and in need of their mother. It takes Cherie and Camille some very practiced skill to answer all their questions. “Have you looked after your siblings for days at a time before?”

“Not really,” Cherie says. “But we babysit them a lot.”