Etched in Sand

by Regina Calcaterra

  “Yes,” Cookie’s dad says.

  I look back at the picture. “Any kids?”

  “Nope.”

  Darn. I was hoping for cousins.

  “Lots of attempts,” he says, “but so far nothing’s stuck. Better off, if you ask me. They got a pack of Doberman pinschers . . . real handfuls.”

  I push myself to pee fast, anxious to exit the bathroom’s unloved, soiled motif. Now I see where Cookie gets her lack of taste in décor: Her parents’ bathroom boasts the color brown from floor to ceiling, plus a sliding glass shower door so covered in film you can’t see into the tub.

  Suddenly I think of my uncle’s photo again and get a shiver. It occurs to me that with his sharp chin, black eyes, and short but ear-to-ear facial hair, it seems almost possible he could actually father a Doberman.

  Cookie’s mom stands nervously inside the front door. “Thanks for the bathroom,” I tell her.

  Baby Elephant Belly watches from the stoop as we surf over our belongings, squeezing into the car again. Cookie stuffs the twenty her mother slipped her inside her pocket, satisfied that our presence helped her seal the deal. She backs out of the driveway and drives just a few blocks before pulling into the back of the Waldbaum’s supermarket parking lot off of Sunrise Highway. She waddles into the store and emerges a few minutes later with a six-pack of cold Budweisers, two packs of Virginia Slims Lights, a loaf of bread, a jar each of peanut butter and jelly, and a roll of toilet paper. “We’ll sleep here for tonight, kids. Don’t worry. I’ll hit up their friends tomorrow . . . turn up the heat a little. They’re not going to get away with ignoring me that easy.”

  Cherie, Camille, Norm, and I move a few garbage bags out of the station wagon to make room for all six of us to sleep. “Leave the important ones in here,” Cookie says from the front seat, “just in case we need to make a quick getaway.” Rosie climbs into a backseat floorwell, and Norm tucks himself in the other. Cookie relaxes against the headrest of the driver’s seat and cracks open a beer, and I huff silently when my sisters decide I should sleep on the passenger-side floor. “I’d rather sleep in the trunk with the bags,” I whisper to Camille, who uses her eyes to suggest I go with the flow. Then she and Cherie stack heads-on-shoulders in the backseat, lounging against each other with their eyes closed.

  We wake to a car stinking of perspiration and cigarettes. Cookie rubs her eyes and announces, “I gotta go pop a squat.” After we’ve hauled all the bags back inside the car, she takes off down the highway and pulls into a McDonald’s.

  “Mom, are we eating here?” Norm asks, his eyes wide as pancakes.

  “What do you think, Norman? Huh?”

  He says nothing.

  “Are we eating here?” she mocks him. “Please. It’s for the bathroom and free napkins. We’ll need them later when we’re out of toilet paper.” She holds the restroom door open for us to file inside. “Try to look nice,” she says. “We’ve got a real important mission today.”

  When she pulls into a post office, we all pile out and into the building. “Is Mike here?” she yells up to the clerk from the line. The clerk looks at Cookie like she’s a madwoman. “Mike Calcaterra?”

  “He’s out on his route,” the clerk replies.

  “Well let him know,” Cookie says in defiance, “that his grandchildren were here today, looking for him.”

  At the butcher, she props her elbows high on the deli counter. “Hey, any of you guys seen Rose Calcaterra?” When the men working the slicing machines turn to her with bewildered eyes, she continues her pursuit. “I’m Cookie, Mike and Rose’s daughter.”

  Her explanation does nothing to aid their understanding of what she’s doing there.

  “I know, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in here. See, I stopped by their house earlier, and they weren’t home. I’m just trying to track them down— Oh!” she says. “And by the way, these are their grandchildren. I wanted to introduce them to their grandparents.”

  Camille whispers to Cherie. “What in the world is she doing?”

  “Just watch her,” Cherie says, and before long we begin to see the point. We troop into every grocery, deli, and liquor store in town, watch Cookie snow the workers with her harebrained story, and retreat to the aisles when they set us loose, telling us with pity to get what we need. Soon we have enough cigarettes, vodka, deli salads, beer, soda, bread, and toilet paper to last us days. At each stop, as the bell jingles to mark our exit, Cookie tells the clerk: “Just put it on Mike and Rose’s tab.”

  ON NOVEMBER 9, I imagine that one day, when I’m an adult, a friend or my husband will ask me, “So, Regina, tell me: How’d you celebrate your eleventh birthday?”

  “Oh, you know, like any kid,” I’ll answer. “Living as a parking lot gypsy and bathing in a gas station sink.”

  We’ve spent the past two months sleeping in Cookie’s car, while she’s been cruising all over Suffolk County to stay under the cops’ radar since she never registered us for school this year.

  But just as the stores and houses we pass are putting up Christmas decorations, Cookie finds a landlord who will rent to us with a welfare housing voucher. The problem is that his property is close to our grandparents’ house, and by now, our food supply in their neighborhood has already been cut off—except for the butcher, who feels sorry for my mother. He tells her to come in either first thing in the morning or at night, when there’s no rush of customers. Then, with clean white paper, he wraps up pigs’ knuckles, liver, and tripe.

  “What’s tripe?” Norman asks.

  “It’s cow intestines,” Cherie says.

  “At least we’re eating healthy,” I joke with my sisters. Norman looks like he’ll vomit. But when we set the food on the table, we’re so hungry that we inhale tripe in its broth, and liver smothered in ketchup and mustard. This helps get it down without gagging.

  The most thrilling feature in the new house is its portable washing machine. Cherie and Camille wheel it up to the kitchen sink and attach a hose to the spigot while Norman and I search the house for every piece of clothing we’ve worn since September. The excitement fades, of course, when we see how many times we have to run each load before our clothes actually look clean; and it takes no time to learn the washer’s other issue: The water inside never gets hot enough to kill the lice we picked up from one of the gas station restrooms.

  Thanks to the lice, none of us pass the health exam that’s required to register for school in West Babylon. We spend our days at home with our heads under the sink, sudsing up with the lice killer we lifted from the pharmacy, then combing the eggs out of each other’s hair. When the neighbors learn the reason we never seem to be at school, we pack up yet again . . . leaving behind our clothes, blankets, towels, socks, and any ounce of self-respect that wasn’t compromised by lice and liver. I wonder how any landlord will ever house us again if word gets out how we left the place.

  As their 1978 New Year’s resolution, Cherie and Camille have decided to make a change. “We want to move out,” Camille informs Cookie.

  “Out where?”

  “Out of the car!”

  Cherie tempers the conversation by adding, “I would like to go back to school.” I would like to go back to school, too, I’m seething to say, but I don’t dare utter a sentence that could leave me without allies.

  By late January they’re both living at Kathy’s and it’s clear I’ll probably miss the sixth grade altogether on account of the fact that we’d need an address to register for school. While Cookie spends her afternoons in bars, Norman, Rosie, and I take short walks in the snow or stay huddled together in the car with garbage bags of belongings piled on top of us and layers of socks covering all our limbs for warmth. Sometimes the bar owners invite us inside to sit in a booth as long as we don’t run around; other times they let us split a hamburger if we wash dishes and mop the floors. One of them tells me, “You’re a good big sister, you know.” At first I’m confused when she slips me a five-dollar bill and puts
her finger to her lips . . . then I get her point: If I don’t protect the money meant for the kids and me, Cookie will spend it on herself. “I like to work,” I tell the owner, delighted by her praise. It’s true—it keeps us warm and occupied, and we get to eat for free.

  There’s also something in it for us when Cookie meets a guy at the bar: Either we get to sleep in his living room (taking savvy advantage of the chance to squeeze toothpaste onto our fingers for a long-awaited brushing) or we get the whole car to ourselves while our mother spends the night in a hotel.

  Around town Cookie hears there’s a deli in Commack with an open cashier position. She agrees to take the job for less money than usual, since her new boss is giving her a perk by allowing us to move into the apartment upstairs, and for me the perk is that Cherie and Camille have agreed to move back in with us now that we live in a normal place again.

  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.”

  AS 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 te
lls 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.