Etched in Sand (4 page)

I wait until the sun comes up before I feel safe enough to fall asleep.

In the morning, Rosie wakes Norm and me by turning on the TV. “Can we have some cereal?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I tell her, just grateful we made it through our first night alone. “It’s in the kitchen.”

She hesitates a moment, then twirls her hair around her finger. “Gi, will you get it for us? Cereal always tastes the best when you make it.”

I smile, and ruffle her hair as I head into the kitchen. After they eat, the three of us sit down to play our favorite card game to pass the time: five hundred rummy.

I pretend to be engaged as the kids laugh and tease each other. There’s dust floating around us in the sunlight, collecting everywhere—on the wood floor; in the corners of the cabinets and shelves. Rosie and Norm look at me with lost eyes when I jump up from the game and yank a towel from inside one of the pillows. I open the front door to let air in and sigh. “I’m tired of being surrounded by filth.”

Cookie always wants the place to be clean when she comes home, and chronic tidying up has become a means of keeping peace. Fortunately, I only have the downstairs to clean, because that’s the only part of the house Cookie will ever bother to see.

My eyes are on the sink when I march into the kitchen. Dishes are perennially piled up and I hate doing them. My habit of putting this chore off until last is one of the causes of our cockroach problem, but I know that after they’ve been sitting for a while in the summer heat, this has to be a priority. I grab my bottle of Heinz white vinegar from under the sink. We always have it to clean with, but because it’s too bulky and heavy to steal, we have to spend food stamps on it. I splash some vinegar over the dishes, hoping a thorough washing will deflect the army of cockroaches.

Upstairs, I gather our dirty clothes from the floors in our rooms, run them downstairs to the bathroom, and run the tub full of cold water. I hold a half-bar of Ivory soap underneath the faucet to create bubbles, then scrub the clothes with the soap and rinse them until they feel clean. Normally, I wash only a shirt or two at a time, but Cookie or the landlord could show up any minute, and if we have to take off, it could be weeks before we see another bathtub. After every piece I scrub, I stretch to relieve the strain in my back that comes from leaning over the tub. I’ll wash everything except the clothes we have on.

After wringing them out, I carry the damp bunch and hang them everywhere in the house: on doorknobs, hooks, and the backs of the couches and chairs. Then I open the back door and un-jam all the windows to let the air circulate.

E
ACH DAY FOR
the next two weeks, the kids and I walk with a packed lunch to the park or the Middle Country Public Library. The kids moan about the sweltering forty-minute trek and are relieved when we’re finally situated at the library, which mercifully blasts with air-conditioning. They don’t know that I spent the two-mile trek watching for Doug’s brown Chevrolet or any possible hint that Camille’s about to return.

At a library table we play Mad Libs and muse through the
Highlights
magazines together. When the kids are quietly wrapped in their storybooks, I find myself living with my favorite characters in the worlds of Judy Blume novels. I don’t care that I’ve already read
Deenie
,
Forever
, and
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Camille frowned upon me reading
Forever
—“It’s not for kids your age,” she said—but then, Camille’s not here . . . and I’m not a kid my age. Anyway, as I’ve told Camille, I’m not concerned with the sex. I love the story because of the romance.

I also go through every biography they have on Amelia Earhart, my heroine.

Amelia was brave and courageous. She didn’t let others limit her dreams and she never took no for an answer. Amelia Earhart made her own rules.

And unlike Cookie, she wasn’t interested in being dependent on a man. In fact, after Amelia broke off her first engagement, she waited until she was thirty-three to marry George Putnam, who actually had to propose to her six times before she finally agreed. Her husband was jokingly referred to as “Mr. Earhart,” and on the morning of their wedding, Amelia had a friend deliver him a note that read:

I want you to understand that I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.

How thrilling! So fearless! When I’m searching for a solution or scared at night, I’ve begun to ask myself:
What would Amelia do?
The answer always makes me feel braver.

B
Y THE END
of July, we’ve settled into a routine I’m confident with, but my worries about getting food never end. With only me present to search for food, my resolution to eat more isn’t so successful. Since we don’t have enough food to go around, I often skip meals. When I start to feel weak and jittery, I take a swig of vinegar. When I hold it to my face, the smell reminds me of pickle juice, with that salty flavor, I love to drink straight from the jar. Thinking about pickles makes the vinegar more bearable, and for some reason, the vinegar always curbs my appetite. When that doesn’t work and I’m still feeling worn down, I know I have backup to keep my energy going: the yellow jackets.

I do my best to ignore the signs of my malnourishment: the bruises that appear in dull purple on my limbs from simple chores around the house, the shallowness of my skin, and the emptiness in my eyes. There’s constant pain in my gums, and I can’t drink cold water because of the tingling ache in my teeth.

Finally, late one afternoon, Camille comes home for a visit, wearing a huge smile when she steps out of Kathy’s mother’s car. Through the rolled-down window, Kathy waves as she pulls away.

In my bare feet I step onto the porch and fold my arms, smiling. “Why you looking so smug?”

“Here’s why.” Camille opens a plastic grocery bag to reveal a whole roasted chicken.

“Where’d you get that?!”

“Today I made ten dollars washing cars with Kathy’s brother,” she says. “I was worried about you guys.”

“No way!” I hug her—quickly, because my mouth is watering with the intensity of a fountain. “What else is in here?” When I take the chicken out of the bag, I find a jar of mustard and a loaf of Italian bread.
Yum!
“Norman! Rosie!” I yell. “Come and eat!”

“Now?” Norm yells from upstairs.

“It’s a surprise.”

The four of us sit on the floor with the plastic tray of chicken between us. “You’re eating so fast!” Camille says, giggling, and poking me in the ribs. “Slow down or you might choke.”

We put mustard on our plates and dip the chicken in it. When the bones are nearly stripped clean, Camille sets it aside and we pass around more mustard and dip our bread in it. Rosie and Norm sit back to let their food settle, then run outside to play. Camille smiles at me, seeing how happy they are. I tuck my hands behind my head and smile back in agreement.

With our bellies stuffed, she and I stretch out on the living room couches. I tell her how we’ve been spending our days and how I lock the house up at night. “Are you going to come back and live with us again?”

“How are the kids doing?”

I understand this is her answer.

Norman and Rosie have always been “the kids,” because they’re “the kids” to our mother. She’ll say, “Who’s taking care of the kids?” and I know she means Norman and Rosie. I have never been a kid.

Norman acts like a child, even though we’re less than two years apart. He’s our mother’s little prince, and he loves that we girls take care of him. I tell Camille that, lately, I can see him growing more loyal to me and more willing to help out. “Norm and I are actually close now,” I tell her.

“That’s good,” she says. “We need one another too much to fight like other brothers and sisters.”

Rosie, of course, is my solace. She’s what keeps me moving ahead when I get exhausted from the library walks, our scant food supply, and living in perpetual, utter fear of Cookie and the cops. Sometimes I grow suddenly overwhelmed to consider what her life would be like without me. What if
I
were to just walk out, leaving Norman in charge? Books are the only escape I have from our struggles. I know one day Rosie will need that escape, too, so I always sign out library books to read to her. My favorites to share are from the Landmark Books series, about our country’s founders. Before bed, Rosie snuggles in as I read to her about Betsy Ross, Dolley Madison, and Pocahontas.

I rise to turn on the TV. Camille says the car wash exhausted her, so she’s going to sleep on the couch. This gives me an opportunity to run something by her. “Hey, Camille,” I say, “I need new pants for school. Will you and Doug be my getaway car at Billy Blake’s tomorrow?”

She sighs with inconvenienced hesitation.

“Please? You’ve left me here alone all summer. I haven’t had the chance to get what I need for school.”

She concedes. “Sure,” she says. “I’ll call Doug in the morning.”

Normally I’d walk, but it’s been so hot and I’ve been feeling so weak that even just thinking about making the trip by foot makes me tired. I’d already been there twice in July. It’s a long walk, several towns away, down Middle Country Road, which is part of Route 25 and always full of traffic, past used-car lots and gas stations and the dramatic complex that’s Smith Haven Mall, past furniture shops and carpet stores and Carvel ice cream—miles and miles of exhaust fumes, honking horns, and things I daydream about possibly owning one day.

Later, after I’ve locked up for the night, even with a house with four bedrooms and lots of beds, Camille and I fall asleep on one of the couches together while the kids sleep opposite us on the other couch.

We spend the next morning watching reruns of
Land of the Lost
,
The Monkees
, and
The Price Is Right
, laughing and guessing the prices of the detergent and furniture that Bob Barker’s assistants showcase. In the afternoon, Camille and I teach Norm and Rosie how to play Mother May I (three words we don’t often use). Then we feed them chicken salad, using the meat we had pulled off the bones, before Doug pulls up in his father’s tan Chevy sedan. After some discussion, Doug and Camille decide to see
The Amityville Horror
, a movie about a haunted house that happens to be a few towns over. As they debate about whether the story is true, I ponder what brand of designer jeans I’m going to choose.

Doug leaves his car at the far end of the parking lot so he and Camille can search for a newspaper that lists the theater show times. I wander into Billy Blake’s and head straight back to the juniors’ department, where I examine a rack of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. I find a bright orange pair that I love, imagining how the kids at school will admire my designer duds. I slip them under a larger pair and clip them both to the hanger. On the way to the fitting room I pick up a few shirts; and when the attendant checks the quantity of items I carried in, she hands me a plastic card with the number 4. I smile and close the fitting-room stall door. I take off my pants, step into the Gloria Vanderbilts, and pull my pants back over them. My oversize T-shirt falls past my waist, successfully hiding the double waistband. I pause to make sure the orange hem isn’t visible above my shoes. Then I wait a little longer to make it seem as though I’m deliberating, deciding what to buy of all the clothes I’d carried in. When I exit the room, I hand an armful of clothes and my plastic number 4 to the attendant. “Bummer,” I say, shrugging at her. “Nothing fit.”

It’s actually no lie: The jeans are too big on me, but that doesn’t matter . . . nor does the fact that they’re the same color as a construction cone. I saunter my way toward the exit but inside I’m dying to break into a run.
My very own Gloria Vanderbilt jeans!
Just as I walk out the door, however, a voice bellows in my direction. I sprint out to the parking lot and, hearing the security guard behind me, do the only thing I can think of: duck behind a car.
(I made it!)

As I try to catch my breath in silence, I feel a growing confidence that I’ve lost him in the darkness. Just then I spot the glow of a flashlight and hear his hard-soled shoes clicking up and down the rows of cars. I slither underneath the belly of the car I ducked behind, praying the driver doesn’t show up. From several rows away, I watch the feet of the man from Billy Blake’s walk farther across the parking lot. After I’m sure he’s gone back inside the store, I crawl out and, crouching low, quickly make my way to Doug’s car across the lot. After I’m safely lying down in the backseat, I swear to myself that I’ll never set foot in Billy Blake’s department store again.

B
Y MID
-A
UGUST, IT’S
been six weeks since we’ve seen Cookie, and one afternoon Rosie and Norm are playing down the road when the landlord comes knocking.
What would Amelia do?

What would Camille do?

Instantly I hide in the kitchen, ready to run out the back if he comes through the front. He knocks loudly once, twice, then three times. I hold my breath in anticipation of the sound of the doorknob turning. When all I hear is the buzz of the refrigerator, I peer around the corner to see if he’s still standing there. He’s not, but his truck is still perched in the driveway. Unfortunately, I straighten just in time to see him walk past the kitchen window, catching his eye as he catches mine.
Shoot!
I freeze.

His face is creased and round, and what’s left of his white hair looks iridescent in the afternoon sun. I steady myself against the wall, bracing for an angry expression, but instead, concern has taken over his face. He motions for me to open the door. I debate it for a second. Then, having no choice, I turn the knob.

“Your mother here?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him. “She’s working.”

“Oh, I see. She must work a lot.”

“Pretty much all the time.”

He frowns. “The rent is two weeks late,” he continues, as though I’d be shocked. “I’ve stopped by here a few times and haven’t seen anybody at home.” Now he’s studying me, but he makes no move to come inside. I’m blocking the door with my hip, leaving it only slightly ajar. I feel half naked in my striped tube top and cutoff jean shorts. Aware that he appears in no hurry to leave, I cross my arms over my chest to make it clear I don’t welcome any physical contact.