Etched in Sand

by Regina Calcaterra

  “Ms. Harvey, you promised me you all would protect my brother and sister if I signed that report telling everything my mother has done.” I slam down the phone so hard, I see Pete rise from his recliner as I run down the hall to my room. In trying to help the kids, I’ve made it worse for them. Without me there to take Cookie’s abuse, Rosie bears the brunt of my attempts to save them. I’ve failed to protect her the way Cherie and Camille protected me. I want to tell Rosie that the brutality she’s enduring is torturing me, too.

  IT’S THE FALL of tenth grade when the new county phone book arrives at Addie’s. I quickly rip it open and thumb my way to A:

  Accerbi, Paul & Joan

  I sigh with relief: My father’s still close; and if the phone book’s factual, so are all his relatives. I haven’t worked up the courage to contact him, but for now it’s enough to know that I could. On November 9, 1981—my fifteenth birthday—I begin a countdown for the thirty-six months I have to reach out to him before I might actually need to ask him for some help.

  I hope he’ll be proud. I’m getting solid grades in all my classes, but history and English are where I’m earning easy A’s. I make sure I tell Mr. Kelly and Mr. Maguire how hard I’m studying, and they both begin to discuss college with me. “I know you’re a foster kid,” Mr. Kelly says after class one day, “but don’t believe what anyone else tells you. There is a way out of your situation: It’s through continuing your education past high school.” Then they both co-opt my guidance counselor to get in on the cause.

  I feel torn for Camille’s sake. She also wants to go to college, but her senior class guidance counselor told her at the beginning of the year not to bother trying to get into the Fashion Institute of Technology, her dream school. “Concentrate on getting married and having babies,” her counselor told her. Unfortunately, that advice only further confused Camille because Ms. Harvey had recently told her that she was so detrimentally affected by how we grew up that she probably would never have a functional family of her own. Through all of my sophomore year, I watch Camille quietly prepare to move out of the Petermans’. The summer before my junior year, she moves out and lives with friends. She’s begun dating a handsome, gentle-spirited, blue-eyed boy named Frank, whom she met while out dancing, and she tells me that he’s starting to talk about marriage. See? I want to tell the social workers and counselors. All of you were wrong; Camille’s going to be fine. I block out everyone’s input except my teachers’, knowing my only hopes of ever rescuing Rosie lay in my understanding of how the system works and getting respect from the people who work in it. A thousand times a day I repeat this to myself: College degree.

  BY THE TIME I turn sixteen during junior year, I’ve gotten a job at Rickel Home Center a few miles away from Addie and Pete’s. Until Sheryl takes a job at the register next to mine, the work is so boring that to make the time pass I talk to the customers in a British accent. Sometimes I walk all the way there, and other times I catch the bus that takes me a third of the way, then I walk the rest. Sometimes when they can, Addie or Pete will drop me off or my friends Erin and Tracey will give me a lift, now that they both have their permits.

  Of course, friends with cars present the opportunity for more interaction with boys, because now we’re able to go places unsupervised. Addie reminds me to focus on my studies, and I tell her there’s no need to be concerned. I’ve started dating a boy named Eddie . . . but despite the appearances I create for his sake, I have no real interest in bonding with him. First, while he’s worried about soccer practice and trying to get me alone to make a move, I’m more concerned about my studies and plotting out my next conversation with Cookie to see how Rosie’s really doing. Plus, I know what troubles boys can bring—the same troubles Cookie’s always getting herself into. So with Eddie, I let on like I’m invested, while also doing my best to control my tendency to cut and run when he gets too close. There’s a much more important man tugging at my heart: Paul Accerbi, who, as of this autumn, no longer appears in the Suffolk County phone book.

  For months after I notice his listing missing, I contemplate what to do. Finally, I rip out the page where his name used to be and study it on the annual February Disney World quest. While hidden away in the top bunk of the mobile home, I stare obsessively at the place where his name used to be . . . then something new jumps out at me: There’s an Accerbi in Lindenhurst, whose names sound familiar: Frank and Julia. How is this just now coming to me? I recall Cherie and Camille talking about an aunt Julie and an uncle Frank and the willow tree we would sit under with them. But with no phone on the camper, I can’t call my sisters to verify the memory.

  Cherie and Camille used to tell me stories about different places we lived when I was little, and the names they’d given them all. There was the Bubble House and the Happy House and the Glue Factory and the Brady Bunch House. I learned the Bubble House was our first foster home, where we all slept in the same room and our foster parents and their daughter, Susan, would lull us to sleep by turning on a globelike machine that would spin around and show bubbles on the blue walls of our room. The Glue Factory was where we lived the longest as a family in Saint James. But I couldn’t remember living in the Happy House, a place were Cherie and Camille seem to remember that we three girls were loved, cared for, and fed beyond anything else we’ve ever experienced. As we moved from place to place, they would reminisce about the Happy House and the Bubble House—“At the Happy House, the curtains were always open to let the light in,” Cherie would say, or “When I hear this song on the radio, I always turn it up because it reminds me of the Bubble House.” Since we never could figure out where the Happy House was, we all finally agreed that it must have been born from our own folklore. We settled on the fact that we learned how to keep a home at the Bubble House.

  But we’d also agreed that, at one point, there’d been an aunt Julie and an uncle Frank in our lives. There was something that made us believe they weren’t our true aunt and uncle, but people we’d met along the way.

  As soon as Pete pulls the motor home back into our driveway in Centereach, I run out of the camper to the yellow kitchen phone and call Camille.

  “Julia and Frank Accerbi—could they be the same people we called aunt and uncle?”

  “Regina, maybe . . . maybe these people are related to Paul. But I don’t know how we would have known them, and I wouldn’t believe whatever crazy story Cookie would come up with if we asked her. It doesn’t quite fit together.”

  But she didn’t rule it out . . . and I so badly needed to know if Paul had moved away or, God forbid, died, so I convince myself that they would know. For weeks, I rehearse draft after draft of what to write. On Easter, I select a note at random from a stack of the very best I’ve written. I address it to Julia and Frank Accerbi and include only my name and house number on the return address line—not the Petermans’ names, or their phone number. I don’t want any of the Accerbis letting the Petermans know that I’ve reached out to the man I believe is my biological father.

  April 3, 1983

  Dear Mr. & Mrs. Accerbi,

  My name is Regina Marie Calcaterra. I am 16 years old and believe that Paul Accerbi is my father. I also believe that there is a possibility that you are related to him. If you are, please pass this letter on to him.

  Dear Paul,

  My name is Regina Marie Calcaterra. I am 16 years old and was born in November of 1966. I believe that you may be my father. I am now living in a foster home because my mother, Camille Calcaterra, was a bad mother, not because I was a bad kid. I divorced her several years ago so I can work toward taking care of myself. I have a B average in school, am on the gymnastic team, and work at Rickel Home Center at nights and on the weekends. I plan on going to community college when I graduate high school.

  My mother told me that you were my father many times during my upbringing and she never strayed from her belief. Unfortunately my mother is an alcoholic and drug addict, which caused her to be incapable of caring for my sib
lings and me, so we spent most of our youth raising ourselves. When I turned fourteen, I asked the court to emancipate me from her so I could make my own decisions about where I should live and what school I should go to. I have been in this foster home for 2½ years beginning from when I was in the 9th grade. I am now in the 11th grade.

  I have limited contact with my mother, so I am hoping that I can meet you to see if you could possibly be my father, as my mother is convinced you are. Please write me back at the address below.

  Sincerely,

  Regina Marie Calcaterra

  For weeks I try to get the mail before my foster parents do to see whether there’s a letter from any of the Accerbis. On a Sunday night in early May, after I return around ten o’clock from working at Rickel’s, I’m preparing for school the next day. Addie knocks on my door. “Come in!”

  She has a disturbed look on her face. “Regina, Pete got a weird call tonight around seven o’clock. It was very peculiar—there was this man who called, and when Pete answered the phone, he asked if you were home. When Pete said no, he asked where you were, so Pete said you were at work. When Pete asked him to identify himself he refused, but he asked Pete if he was your foster father.”

  “Really?” I say innocently. “That’s odd.” Meanwhile my heart is pounding.

  Addie’s face grows more puzzled and her words come out slower as she continues. “When Pete said yes, this person wanted to know when you would be home again. So Pete asked him again who he was, but he still refused, and Pete told him that you won’t be home until late, so if he wants to speak to you he should call back tomorrow after you’re back from school. Do you know who that could have been, and why they’re calling here?”

  “I think it’s my real father, Paul Accerbi.”

  I wish I could rewind my words . . . but already Addie’s taken them in, trying to calculate the facts. “Well then, how did he get our number, or know Pete’s name?”

  “I don’t know,” I lie. “Well, actually . . . I may know how.” I tell Addie about the letter, how I’d been watching my father’s name in the phone book for years, praying that he’ll be there for me when I turn eighteen.

  But Addie’s already lost in tears. “Why did you contact him?” she says. “Aren’t you happy here with us? Don’t we do enough for you? Do you want to leave us?”

  I stand motionless, watching her pour out emotions that I’ve never seen before—toward me or anyone she knows. “You mean you want me to stay here?” I ask her. And suddenly it’s all too much to bear. I begin shaking. “I didn’t know that I could hurt you,” I tell Addie. “But I need to know who my real father is. I have been curious for years, since I was eleven and he walked into the back of the deli I was working in. He examined me so closely, Addie, and now he actually took the time to find out my phone number and Pete’s name. I know it’s him calling. I just wanted to let him know that I’m okay. That I’m a good kid.”

  The next day I struggle to concentrate in school and skip my last two classes to come home early so I can sit by the phone and wait. But every time the phone rings, it’s never Paul, and I rush the person off the other end to keep the line open.

  When Addie arrives home, she says she spoke to social services. “They said that you’re not allowed to meet him alone, and you may not even speak to him on the phone if Pete or I, or Ms. Harvey, are not around. This is a strange man—it’s possible he isn’t your father at all, it could be someone who likes seeing you at Rickel’s or who remembers you from having dated your mother. So they want to avoid you putting yourself in a bad situation with this person without us here to protect you.” As she finishes expressing her concern for me, the ring of the phone busts through the tension. She looks at me. “Regina, let me answer that.”

  The exchange is curt. “Yes, I am Addie Peterman, the foster mother of Regina Marie. And you are . . . ? And you are . . . ? Mr. Accerbi—”

  My heart leaps.

  “—although you refuse to identify yourself, we know who you are. I’ll have you know: Regina told us that she reached out to you.” Then she shoos me toward the phone in her bedroom so she can listen in on our conversation from the kitchen phone. “Yes, Mr. Accerbi. I’ll get her on the phone now.”

  I rub my sweaty hands on my Jordaches before I answer the phone. “This is Regina.” My heart pounds. My voice wants to shriek in delight.

  “Young lady,” he says. “You should know what a disruption you have created in my life.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “My wife is sick and has been crying on the couch for days over this. I don’t have a strong heart, and your behavior could very well result in a second heart attack. I don’t know who you are or why you believe what you believe, or even why you wrote such a letter to my family members. You have created an embarrassing situation for all of us and I am sure that you have also upset your foster parents as well.”

  Now this is personal—he will not get away with trying to manipulate me this way. “Hey Paul,” I dare ask him, “how did you get our phone number or figure out my foster parents’ names?”

  “It is no concern to you how I found it out,” he says. “I just did.”

  I know I’ve cornered him. This verbal volleyball is like fighting with Cookie. “Who was here? Was it you?”

  He falls silent.

  “So I’ll assume that you drove by the return address that I left you in the letter, saw the Petermans’ names on the mailbox, and looked up their number.” I whisper: “Didn’t you?” It’s in that breath I realize without a doubt that he has to be my father—why else would he be calling me, going to these lengths to find out the names of my foster parents, and our phone number?

  He ignores my question and says he wants to meet me.

  “Good, I want to meet you, too . . . but there are rules. Either my foster parents or my social worker have to be present.”

  “I’m not meeting you with others around.”

  “Look, I don’t have a choice. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl living under the roof of foster parents, and I have to obey or else I could end up back on the street. Those are the terms. That’s the only way.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he says. “And I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  The next day Addie speaks to the social worker who says Paul can meet me at the house in a room separate from the supervision. “Or if he wants to meet outside the home, Pete or I have to be there but we can make it inconspicuous,” Addie says.

  I skip school as Addie and I plan how we can set up the meeting . . . and record it. If they weren’t going to be in the room then they needed to somehow bear witness to the conversation so that if Paul Accerbi changed his story later, it would be my word against his. “Ooh, I’ve got it!” Addie says. “He can come to the house, in the living room, and we’ll put your boom box with a blank cassette tape behind the chair he’ll sit in. Then, when he’s walking up to the front stoop, we press Record!” Addie’s relishing our sleuthing strategy.

  “Pete and I will busy ourselves in the garage or outside in the garden! This way, we won’t impose, see . . . that will allow you and Paul to speak freely.”

  Our plan is in place . . . but he never calls the next night.

  Or the night after that.

  Then, on Thursday night the phone rings. This time, Pete answers and hands the phone to me.

  In my ear, Paul reiterates what an “uproar” I’ve created in his home and how disrespectful it was for me to have done such a thing. Then, after his lecture, he calms down and says, “I’ve decided I’d like to meet you.” When I remind him of the conditions, he raises his voice in anger. “Regina, what I wanted to tell you is that you are probably not my daughter. Your mother was promiscuous; she slept around a lot and was sleeping with many men all the time. She had quite a reputation for being—you know—you know what I mean. You’re old enough to understand what I’m saying, right?”

  “What, that my mother was a slut?” I ask him. “Yes, Paul. I am well a
ware of my mother’s behavior and so are all my siblings. But when it came to who our fathers are, we were able to tell when she lied and when she told the truth. But when she would say the same story over and over again—the way she did about you, whether she was straight or sober—we knew that to be the truth. When her stories would change, that was the lie. She never changed her story about you, Paul. And she still hasn’t.”

  “Your mother and I had a one-night stand and that was it,” Paul said. I note an emphasis in order to satisfy what seems like an audience on his side of the phone.

  “A one-night stand. You are saying that you were a one-night stand of my mother, and that based on that, she thinks you’re my father. Really, Paul? Well, if you were a one-night stand, then how come she told me that you were in the Korean War, wanted to be a paratrooper, own a fence company, grew up in Lindenhurst, have an ex-wife named Carol and a daughter named Barbara? Frankly, Paul, you’re full of shit. If you were just a one-night stand, then you certainly talked a lot for one night!”

  The call goes dead.

  I slam the yellow phone back on Addie’s wall. “That man is my father!” I yell at Pete, who’s curiously watching me pull out my boom box from its hiding place. “I won’t be needing this back here since there will be no Paul Accerbi meeting to record.”

  He never calls back, and I don’t care. He’s no better than my mother—I should have figured that out a long time ago. She picked some winners, and he was just like all the rest.

  By the summer I’ve closed off the whole experience; compartmentalized it and detached from it, the way I’ve learned to do with all the craziness in my life, which always stems back to Cookie. I busy myself working at Rickel’s to save money for college . . . then there’s finally something to celebrate when Addie and Pete come through with a car for me. “You can buy our Pinto for two hundred seventy-five dollars,” Addie says, “if you’re willing to put down a seventy-five-dollar deposit.” There’s more good news when I come to them with the seventy-five bucks: They’ve decided to waive the two hundred and let me keep the car as an early graduation present.