Etched in Sand (17 page)

“With the state watching over your mother’s shoulder, it doesn’t seem very likely she would do Norman and Roseanne any harm.”

“She just
kidnapped
Norm and Rosie,” Camille says. “And you don’t think we should call the police?”

“They would have to have been abducted by a stranger to warrant my calling the police.”

“Our mother is more dangerous to those kids than any stranger,” Camille says. “You’re fools if you don’t track her down.”

“Merry Christmas, Camille,” Ms. Harvey says, ending the call. “Tell Regina, too. Enjoy your time off from school. When I’m back from holiday vacation, I’ll look up your mother’s most recent address in the files. I’ll get back to you when we have something.”

It’s after New Year’s when social services finally finds Cookie living at her boyfriend’s house. “My children told me they were being beaten at their foster home. You think I was going to deliver them back to that hell on earth?” she told the workers. “I am their mother. They’re happy with me. Go piss up a tree. I’ll see you in April.”

Ms. Harvey said that, from everything Norm and Rosie’s social worker reported, the kids were living in a nice house in the same school district and seemed content living as a family with Cookie’s new boyfriend and his teenage daughter. “They’ve decided to let the situation be for now,” Ms. Harvey explained. “But as long as the judge grants Regina’s emancipation at the April hearing, then it’s almost guaranteed the court will determine that Cookie is an unfit caretaker and most likely will remove your brother and sister from her care.”

Camille’s skeptical. “And why would that be?”

“Your case hasn’t gone to court, so your mother gets the benefit of the doubt. But once the judge reads your statement, he’d be crazy to let her keep Norman and Roseanne.”

“Sure, go ahead and wait,” Camille says. “But Cookie knows what’s coming. By April, you watch. She’ll be long gone.”

W
ITH
C
OOKIE’S ABDUCTION
of the kids looming over us, even our February vacation to Disney World in the Petermans’ RV is hard to enjoy. Our teachers sent a list of reading and homework for us to do on the three-day trip down the East Coast, but instead we play Scrabble and the license plate game . . . and even then, my mind drifts to thinking about what Rosie and Norm must be going through. Every time Pete stops at a gas station, I eye the phone booth. I’ve got change to make a long-distance call and Ms. Harvey’s number memorized . . . but considering the results of all the calls up to now, I figure the money will be better spent on Mickey souvenirs for whenever I do see the kids.

In March, Cherie shows up at the Petermans’ house in a tizzy. “Cookie was arrested for stealing from her boyfriend’s house,” she says. “She called me to bail her out.”

“Did you do it?” Camille and I ask in unison.

“Yes, I did it. I couldn’t think of what else to do, I was so worried about what would happen to Rosie and Norman with no one there to protect them if the cops showed up. I can’t ask my mother-in-law to have them stay here. So I said to Cookie, ‘If you want me to get your ass out of jail, you better tell me:
Where are the kids
?’

“ ‘The
kids
,’ she tells me, ‘are in a hotel that I went to after Jeff kicked us out.’

“And I go, ‘Oh,
Jeff
?’ ” Cherie says. “And I’m just supposed to know who Jeff is? So she gets all snotty: ‘Who the fuck do you think he is, Cherie? He’s the guy I’ve been living with the past couple months.’ I thought I would throw the phone at the wall. ‘Norm is there, watching Rosie,’ Cookie says. ‘He’s twelve—practically a young man now!’ ”

“Oh crap,” I say. “Did they see her get arrested?”

“That’s what I asked her,” Cherie says. “Cookie tells me, ‘Nope,’ all dismissive. ‘They busted me in the pub parking lot. See, I went to meet Jeff so we could talk it out, but he set me up. Next thing I know, I’m in cuffs.’ ” Cherie explains that the cops had social services track down the kids, who were staying in a motel.

I march to Addie’s kitchen phone. “I’m calling Ms. Harvey.”

When she answers, she explains: “The cops decided Norman is old enough to watch Roseanne while Cookie is incarcerated for assault and battery.”

“Wait, Ms. Harvey, let me get this straight: Cookie is arrested for trying to beat up her boyfriend—in jail for the weekend—and our little brother is watching Rosie by himself?”

“Regina, I’m just telling you what the police told me.”

“Who’s paying for the room? What if they get kicked out? Then what?”

“Well, in that case they would be homeless and we would place them in another home. But until then, the authorities have decided that they’re both safe and secure. Besides, now that your mother’s bailed out, she’ll probably be back with them in a few hours.”

Camille and I have devised a plan: The only way we can watch out for Rosie and Norm is to convince Cookie that all’s forgiven and we still want her in our lives.

“She’s a lunatic,” Cherie says. “You sure you want to go through with this cockamamy plan?”

With Daisy Duck and Goofy ball caps in a bag as souvenirs, we wait at the motel room’s outside entrance until Cookie answers with a cigarette between her fingers like some Hollywood vixen. “Well well well,” she says, holding the door as though she has to consider letting us in. “Just like always, you two come crawling back.”

Camille occupies Rosie and Norm while I sit down on the bed, across from where Cookie’s seated at the motel room’s desk. Without looking at me, she says, “I see you’re starting to come into your own. Shocker with those little tits, nobody’s knocked you up yet.”

“I didn’t come here to be the butt of any insults,” I answer. “I really want to work this out.”

“Well, don’t try to buy me with any sweet talk. You ratted me out to every official in Suffolk County when all I’ve ever done was work hard to give you kids a good life.”

“Ratted you out?”

In the background Camille turns on the TV for Rosie and Norm.

“You are required by law to attend the emancipation hearing of Regina M. Calcaterra,”
she recites. “What are you, fucking Queen Elizabeth? I got friends, you know. I know what emancipation means.”

Camille slides to sit on the bed next to me. Cookie lights another cigarette. “There’s been a lot of confusion,” my sister says. “But Regina and I are always talking about how we miss being a family.”

“What the fuck do you two want?”

“We want to see you. And Norman and Rosie.”

I pipe in. “And you know, it won’t be long before I’m eighteen.” I remember how Ms. Harvey suggested I try to maintain contact with Cookie in the event I need a place to go when I age out of foster care. I tell Cookie: “I’ll have the choice of who I want to live with. Who knows, maybe we’ll want to be a family again. Maybe things could be normal.”

“Regina, you’ve been running away from me since the day you sprouted legs,” she says. “If you think for half a second that I’ll support you when you’re an adult, then you better quit whatever it is you’re smokin’ now.”

“We just want you in our life . . . Mom.” The word tastes like vinegar in my mouth.

“Well, you little assholes should have thought of that before the county asked me to RSVP to the Regina Calcaterra Independence Day Parade.” She takes a drag off her cigarette. “Is Cherie waiting for you in the car? Get the fuck out of here.”

Camille and I exchange a glance, rise, and approach the kids to hug them good-bye. When Camille takes off outside, I follow, slamming the door to Cookie’s motel room so hard the windows shake.

I
N
A
PRIL
, C
AMILLE
is watching me closely. I’m not eating again, thanks to the nerves the emancipation hearing is kicking up in my stomach. “You don’t even have to go,” Camille says. “Ms. Harvey is your court-appointed guardian, she’ll be doing all the talking.”

With how poorly she’s protected the kids these last few months, unfortunately that information is zero comfort.

The afternoon of the hearing, when Camille and I arrive home from school, Addie’s in the kitchen tapping her finger on a cup of coffee. “What?” I ask her. “The news isn’t good?”

“It’s good for you,” Addie says. “You won by default.”

“Default?”

“Your mother didn’t show up to the hearing. The judge made a default judgment against her.”

“Regina!” Camille says. “You did it!”

“Wait,” I ask Addie, pulling back from Camille’s hug. “Rosie and Norm: They’re free from her, too?”

“Regina, that’s the bittersweet part,” Addie says. “You don’t have any control over what happens to your brother and sister. For now, the court decided to leave them with your mother.”

I stare at her, indignant. I don’t have any control? I look at Camille, whose eyes are welling with tears. We can’t be happy for my freedom while there’s any ounce of possibility that our younger siblings will be forced to suffer with Cookie. I flee from the kitchen and slam my bedroom door. I grab everything I can get my hands on and throw it: the only outlet I’ve ever found effective when I’m in a blind rage.

O
NE MORNING IN
May, Addie and Camille exchange a knowing glance when I come out to the kitchen with stomach pains so bad I think I might throw up. “Maybe you should stay home from school,” Addie says.

Camille knocks on the bathroom door just as I’m discovering a spot of blood on my leg. “Honey,” she calls, “why don’t you let me help?” She inconspicuously edges inside the bathroom and shows me how to adhere a maxi pad. “And here’s where Addie keeps our stashes. Always make sure you have extras in your bag . . . especially if you visit Cookie.”

“Why?”

“Because she doesn’t buy these. She’d rather spend the food stamps on beer and cigarettes. Remember the bloody washcloths she used to leave around the house?”

I grimace. “Oh, Camille!”

“Yeah. I know. It was gross.”

In the kitchen, Addie’s looking through the phone book. “I’m going to make you an appointment at the doctor,” she says.

“The doctor? I’m not sick, I just got my period.”

“Well, there are precautions certain young women should take when their bodies grow capable of bearing children.” Oh, that’s what this is about: Addie’s afraid she’ll be raising a foster grandchild if she doesn’t get me on the pill. “Birth control helps regulate a woman’s cycle,” she says.

I want to tell her to cut the crap. I could teach sex education at my school better than any teacher who actually studied it. At the age of eight, I learned how one gives a blow job thanks to Cookie’s demonstration on one of her boyfriends when she thought we were all asleep. At twelve, I walked into my mother’s bedroom to find a huge pink dildo and a magazine called
High Society
laying open to a letter from a man detailing his one-night stand with a female gymnast so skilled that when she swung from the chandelier, she landed in a split, directly on his erect penis. Thanks to my mother’s graphic language and her casual displays around the house (like how she would grab Karl between his legs in front of us), when you grow up witness to such sexual behavior, nothing about it is very fascinating. In fact, it shuts out any desire whatsoever.

Still, with Addie’s incessant urging, I make a trip to the gynecologist. The county bus system is so infrequent and confusing that I arrive late, alone, and even more stressed out than I’d prepared myself for. When the nurse calls me into the sterile gray room, I follow her instruction to lie on the table. “Slide your feet into the stirrups, please,” she says, and I feel the blood rush from my face when the doctor walks in the door. After barely an introduction I feel the heat of his examining light between my legs, and my body clenches with the touch of his medical instruments. Suddenly I’m back in that foster home seven years ago, on the winter night when my sisters were locked out in the cold and Norm was banging on the door.
“Let my sister go!”
he’d screamed. This doesn’t feel much different. I feel violated, isolated, and quite certain that this makes it official: I never want to allow a boy to touch me again.

It seems like no one besides Camille will give me a straight talk about womanhood, although some adults do seem to care enough to fumble through a few tidbits. On the last day of freshman year, I go home with my friend Sheryl, whose mom takes us to the park at the Wood Road School. I catch her eyeing my orange tank top before she says, “Girls, this is probably a good time to bring this up, and I’m only going to say it once: Never sit on the same swing with a boy.”

Sheryl and I look at each other bewildered. “Mom, why?” she asks.

“Because there are two swings: one for each of you. So you can swing, and he can swing, and you can even swing at the same time . . . but separately, you see. Never together.”

We break into a fit of laughter. “Mom,” Sheryl says. “What about the teeter-totter?”

“Girls, I’m serious: There will be no bumping on the swings.”

“Thank you very much for that informative birds and bees talk, Mrs. Z,” I say, and Sheryl and I run for the swings, wrapping our arms around our shoulders with our imaginary swing-bumping boyfriends.

That summer, Cherie is tied up with the baby. Camille’s still at the Petermans’ but often working twelve hours a day. I spend my days babysitting the kids on Addie’s street or with Sheryl and Tracey, taking the nine
A.M.
bus to Smith Point Beach and hopping the five
P.M
. bus home. We buzz about the thought of entering tenth grade and trying out for gymnastics. Secretly, I’m also excited because it’s the first time I’ll start the school year with a close-knit group of friends and a wardrobe I’m actually not embarrassed to wear.

The first week of school I’m dumbstruck when the gymnastics coach reads my name off the list of girls who made the cut. “Coach,” I say, while the other girls are busy in huddled squeals. “I couldn’t even take a stab at the bars.”

“Your upper body needs some strengthening, but your legs are cut and you’re strong on the beam. I’m going to start you with the junior varsity team.”