Etched in Sand

by Regina Calcaterra

  “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.”

  WHEN 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.

  Regina Marie Calcaterra, I write.

  Regina + Donny Osmond

  Mrs. Regina Osmond

  All the letter O’s are formed in the shape of hearts.

  We swim to the bottom of the pool in search of treasures sitting on the floor, waiting like shipwrecks for someone to discover them.

  NORM AND I arrive home one afternoon in June to find a padlock and tape barricading the front door. All of our stuff is piled on the lawn. “Oh no,” I tell Norm. “Mom and Karl must’ve had a fight!” When we run around back to try to get in, Cherie’s fishing our inner tubes out of the pool. She sees us and rests the net on the ground . . . signaling she’s about to share bad news.

  “What’s going on?” I ask her.

  “She forgot to pay the bank,” she says.

  I slump down and sit at the edge of the pool, somehow having known this was coming. For almost a year I’d managed to convince myself that this life was really ours. But just like that, it all went up in smoke. I should’ve known better than ever to count on Cookie Calcaterra.

  Mom finds a house a few blocks away on Terry Road so we can stay in the same school, but Karl never shows up. “Don’t look so fucking miserable, you little whores,” she tells us, swigging from a can of Budweiser as we struggle through the front door of our new house, heaving Hefty bags. “It was good while it lasted.”

  It’s not long before she’s fired from Century 21, and she starts spending her days at the bars again. If she comes home to Rosie crying or to a cold dinner on the table, or a front yard that hasn’t been properly cut with our dull scissors, then the drinking turns into beatings. The new house gets broken in by my body as it makes dents and holes through the paneling and Sheetrock walls. I avoid her because I never know when she’ll feel like grabbing me by the back of the head and slamming my face into the table, causing relentless nosebleeds. I begin to run away again, hiding in the woods near my school or up in trees where no one can find me. Sometimes I disappear overnight, and at lunchtime the next day I tell my teacher I’m walking home for lunch. Then I head straight for the woods to search out safer hiding spaces. When I find them, I stash books wrapped in plastic bags there for me to read when I arrive later.

  When I’ve finished a book faster than I’d anticipated, I pass the time spelling antidisestablishmentarianism, the longest word in the dictionary. My goal is to get all the letters in under seven seconds. Then I shorten it to six seconds, then five, and when I conquer that, my mind begins to ponder how else I can keep it busy.

  Every few weeks Mom brings my siblings and me with her to her mandated psychiatrist visit. When we were in foster care, she spent time in what she called the loony bin—Pilgrim State Hospital. They only discharged her on account that she was good about taking what she calls her “happy pills,” and because she agreed to fulfill regular visits with a psychiatrist that would include a few visits with us kids. Before we walked into his office for the first time, Mom bent down and wrapped her hand around my arm so tight her fingernails dug tiny pink half-moons into my skin. “So help me Christ, if you blow it, Regina . . . He reads body language for a living. Lie good.”

  “About what?”

  “You know about what—about the little tiffs you and I have sometimes.” She leans in so I’m breathing the cigarettes from her breath. “Or else, you know, Regina. You know what will happen next.”

  I knew: The state would take us away again. I sit quietly in the psychiatrist’s office, looking at my hand against the blue canvas couch and insisting with my nods and smiles that life with Cookie Calcaterra is a day at the beach. The psychiatrist seems to watch me closer than he does my siblings, and I know he knows I’m lying.

  People look but don’t see, why?

  People hear but don’t listen, why?

  People touch, but don’t feel, why?

  After I write a poem titled “Why?” my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Muse, suddenly seems to take a special liking to me. She asks me to read it to the class and then invites the other teachers from our corridor to hear me recite it a second, third, and fourth time. She begins to ask me, when the other kids are busy, “How are things at home, Regina?” The day I tell her I’m moving, I’m stunned when her eyes suddenly fill with tears. “Promise me you’ll never forget that you’re special, Regina.”

  Special? I usually get dirty, ugly, poor, bastard, gross, nasty, slut, rag doll, and whore . . . but never special. Ms. Muse continues, telling me I need to always make sure I have a library card, that reading will help me wherever I end up. “Stay smart, stay sharp, and never, ever stop reading,” she whispers in my ear. She hugs me so tight I think I might cry, too.

  “THE MORE EAST you go in the cold months,” Mom tells us, “the cheaper rents are.” As we drive near the shore, I notice construction workers securing the bulkheads to protect the beaches from another harsh winter. I try to imagine the bungalows we pass in Sound Beach bursting in summer with families, block parties, and barbecues . . . but when Mom finally moves us into a place in Rocky Point, it reminds me of a camp’s dark bunkhouse. The kitchen is a tiny galley with a two-burner stove and the furniture is broken and cushionless. I can see through the worn wooden fl
oor planks to the dirt and weeds below.

  Mom leaves for a few weeks, telling us she’s “going to get warmed up by the Red Devil.” We know the Red Devil because he’s spent the night here before—he’s a pale, freckled, lanky guy with a long red goatee that comes to a sharp point.

  “Good, go,” Cherie says quietly when the front door slams behind Cookie. “We like our freedom without you anyway.”

  “Yeah,” I join in. “And don’t bring that crusty scruff back with you, either.” Cherie and Camille burst out laughing.

  In the house, the only source of heat comes from the semiwarm air that’s pushing through one floor grate in the hall that adjoins the bathroom to the one bedroom. From the house’s front windows we watch icy snow fill the road, wondering how we’ll get a ride to school—our only source of meals and warmth—when our bus driver inevitably gives up on attempting our narrow hill.

  In between alternating as caretakers for Rosie, now age four, we go digging in enclosed steel bins outside the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul charities for items to stuff between the floor planks, insulating us from the wind and door drafts, and any semblance of towels or blankets to pile on top of us when we sleep.

  “Snorkels!” Camille hollers from inside one of the bins.

  Cherie snorts. “Get real, it’s winter. What the heck will we do with snorkels?”

  “No, no, look,” she says, climbing out with her arms full. “They’re puffy coats with hoods that cover everything but your eyes.” Camille is our aspiring fashion designer, so we take her word that such ridiculous-looking coats could be named after underwater face snorkels.

  We wear the snorkels home with newfound mismatched gloves, hats, and scarves, while we stuff our pockets and pillowcases with undershirts, towels, sheets, washcloths, and socks.

  When the snowdrifts eventually grow taller than us, we tunnel a hole through the snow to the street, then walk twenty minutes in the drifts to get to Route 25 where our bus driver said she’d pick us up for school. Some days, though, the weather is so bad that we don’t even bother. At home, we wear our snorkels all day with our other findings piled on top of us for warmth. At nightfall I unlatch the exhaust hose on the back of the washroom’s clothes dryer, then position the dryer so that the back of it points toward the center of the room. After I make sure the dryer door is closed so Rosie can’t crawl inside, I press the on button. Warm air blasts into the washroom, and we generate more heat between us by cuddling up with our arms around each other in our snorkels piled with stuff. When we finally get sick of sipping the sugar water we boil on the electric stove to fill our stomachs, Cherie, Camille, and I wake up around four in the morning to wrap whatever we’re sleeping in around Norm and Rosie. Then we venture out in search of food.

  Our snorkels make it easy to hide stolen candy and snack cakes, and we realize how much more we can smuggle by cutting a hole in one pocket then ripping through the coat’s lining to the other pocket. We know the bakery’s delivery guy arrives at the town market just after five in the morning. The minute his van has disappeared around the corner, we fill the lining of our coats with warm rolls, donuts, crumb cakes, and soft bagels. Then we head to the deli that’s past the road to our house, to see if the milkman has made his delivery so we can feed Rosie. We’re able to eat for several days after one outing. On the walk home, we snack as we savor our successful hunt, and sing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”—taking turns being Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell—since it symbolizes the lengths we’ll go for one another.

  Each of the girls have to miss at least one day of school a week since someone always needs to be at home to take care of Rosie, who doesn’t start kindergarten until next year. She’ll be the smartest in her class since her schooling on pictures, colors, and numbers is inspired by our boredom—when she counts to twenty, it’s a victory for us all.

  When it’s my turn to watch her, I fill her day with songs about optimism by teaching her the lyrics to Annie’s “Tomorrow” and my very favorite, “Ooh Child.”

  Oo-ooh child things are gonna get easier. . . .

  Oo-ooh child, things’ll get brighter. . . .

  We fantasize about the song’s promise of walking in the rays of a beautiful sun, in a better brighter world.

  I don’t care much for my new fourth grade teacher, who’s nothing like Ms. Muse. Instead of listening to her, I daydream, and on the days I’m actually present, my classmates and teacher act like I’m not. Rosie’s not the only factor that keeps us from going to school: We’ve also been dealing with heads full of lice, ultimately followed by a family decision that it’d be better to stay home and build snowmen, make snow angels, and go sledding down the road on pieces of cardboard. If the library were closer we’d be there finding books of games, reading to Rosie, and teaching her more colors, bigger words, or how to stay inside the lines with crayons. At home, of course, all this is tougher to do since our fingers, numb inside our mittens, have a hard time turning the page or holding worn-down crayons.

  Inside, we spend our days watching The Six Million Dollar Man, The Waltons, and Happy Days on our eleven-inch, black-and-white television. Maneuvering with our mittens makes games like five hundred rummy last longer. We save our new favorite, The Game of Life, for last and play until keeping ourselves warm all day has exhausted us enough to sleep again.

  One morning Cherie tells Camille and me to go looking for food without her. “It hurts when I breathe,” she says, worrying us by adding, “I feel like no matter how much I sleep, I can’t stay awake.” Her coughs are deep and long, and she feels hot with fever as her perspiration soaks the clothes and sheets we wrap her in. Somehow, though, she can’t stop shivering.

  When we get outside in our food-hunting gear, I ask Camille, “Do you think it’s the flu?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “You don’t cough like that with the flu.”

  Over the next few days and then weeks, Cherie’s cough grows stronger while her body grows weaker. “Be the man of the house, Norm,” we tell him as we snorkel up—but this time not in search of food. Our younger brother has to care for Rosie and an eldest sister who can barely lift her head off the couch. When we leave, he’s positioned himself by her side to monitor her breathing.

  Camille and I follow the road into town, relieved all the taverns have their signs lit up now that night falls so early. We find one called The Cornerstone that we’ve heard Mom talk about before. “Hey, mister,” I ask the bartender, “have you seen Cookie Calcaterra or the Red Devil?” The bartender turns to us, clueless. We walk in and out of every pub we find, telling the managers and bartenders that the Red Devil says he knows everybody in all the bars in Rocky Point. Finally, one of them lets us behind the bar and stands over the phone book with us, pointing out numbers to all the other pubs and dialing the phone for us. “Our sister is sick,” I tell each one. “Can you please see if Cookie Calcaterra is there?” After a few hours of searching, we finally give up, but on our way home, snow starts to fall . . . and something about this makes Camille wonder out loud if Cherie is going to survive. “You think she’s dying?” I ask her. The look on her face tells me enough.

  We turn back and head for one of the bars where we remember seeing a pay phone hanging on the wall. I fight the butterflies in my stomach when Camille dials 911 and tells the operator in a shockingly steady voice, “Our sister is very, very sick. She’s weak and she can’t breathe.” I purse my lips in worry as she answers the dispatcher’s prompts. “Yes, we need an ambulance. Our mother is working.”

  We run home in time for Camille to climb in the ambulance with Cherie . . . and just as the police are pulling in. They question me about our mom’s whereabouts. “Where did you say your mother works again?” one asks.

  “Some real estate agency,” I say with a shrug. “I don’t remember the name.”

  The paramedics rush Cherie to the hospital, where she’s admitted for severe pneumonia. When Camille returns late that night, getting a ride fr
om a social worker, she tells me she had to keep herself from fainting when the doctor told her we waited so long that Cherie could have died. “Her lungs are damaged worse than any pneumonia case I’ve seen,” he told Camille. “If she ever gets her lung strength back, it will take months.”

  We know what’s coming when two social workers pull up to the house in two separate vehicles. Camille and I are driven to one foster home; Norm and Rosie are placed in another. We’re separated again . . . but this time without our oldest sister, who usually knows what to do when we don’t. Worse, she’s by herself, with no one there to hold her hand while she fights for her life. “Can thirteen-year-olds get Failure to Thrive?” I ask Camille. Her face is expressionless when she shrugs. “I hope not,” she says. “I’ll be thirteen next year.” Then she turns and wipes the frost from her window.

  Camille and I are obsessed with what will happen to Cherie when she’s finally released from the hospital. “She’s a sick woman,” my older sisters say about our mother, and I’m coming to understand that’s the only explanation for her choices in her manner of raising us. Beyond her heavy drinking are her violent mood swings and unpredictable outbursts, which we’ve been trying for years to accept as part of who she is. Sooner or later she always found ways to repent by taking my siblings to the movies or bringing us to a bar and giving us all the money we wanted for the jukebox and Shirley Temples. But the ruthless abandonment of us in midwinter in a desolate neighborhood—with no heat, no food, and limited contact with the outside world—has changed Camille.

  The first outward sign of her contempt of our mother is when we’re placed in our new foster home in Brentwood. “I don’t want to be called Camille anymore,” she tells me.

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t want to share a name with Mom.” After a few days, Camille announces that she wants me, and everyone, to call her by her middle name: Deanna.

  My task of having to call my sister by a new name after a decade knowing her as Camille is only further confused by the fact that our foster parents, Nancy and Frank, named their son and daughter Nancy and Frank. Nancy and Frank, Nancy and Frank, Deanna . . . and Regina.