by Sasha Martin
The judge looked over the materials, took off her glasses, shook her head, and finally said, “Someone’s doing a good job with these kids.”
Mom scoffed, looked around, and raised her hands, as if to say “I’m a single mom—who else do you think there is?”
The rougher things got, the tighter I gripped onto Michael. He and my giant white teddy bear were my only constants as our notion of home was subsumed in the chaos.
Eventually Michael grew quiet. By age 10 or 11, he’d stopped kicking, and stopped fighting back. Occasionally he’d get in fistfights or steal something, like candy. Though he’d been assessed as above average in standardized testing, he struggled with his emotions and eventually, his grades. In one psychological test, the examiner noted:
“Michael was cooperative and friendly throughout the testing session. He also seemed downcast at times, and at one point began to cry for no reason that seemed attributable to the testing material. He cried for a time, then regained his composure and continued. He said he did not know why he had started to cry. This underlying sense of loss causes periodic bouts of sadness. He put forth good effort on all various tasks, and his rapport with the examiner was good. In sum, Michael is a bright, sensitive boy who at times feels quite sad, and as a result has difficulty mobilizing his considerable cognitive and emotional resources.”
True to the psychologist’s assessment, Michael fell behind in school, leaving us just one grade apart in school. By the age of nine, I felt like a plant, constantly being repotted without enough time for my roots to recover, ever weakening. With each placement, I retreated deeper into my shell. I made myself small and did as I was told, whether the directive came from my mother or the courts.
After four years of this, our family therapist said that a stable home would be less disruptive to our emotional well-being than the constant court battles. When I was 10 and Michael was 12, Mom relented. She pulled out the typewriter one last time to draft a letter, begging family and friends to take us in—for good.
Mom’s court-assigned lawyer took her words and made them official, sending the letter to everyone she could think of. My 80-year-old great aunt was too elderly to take us in. My grandfather was in the same boat. In their 20s, Connor, Tim, and Grace were barely adults themselves, and would never have been approved by the courts. Mom’s ex-husband James had his own commitments, as did her sister and cousins. Mom even had the lawyer send a letter to the Lombardi vineyards in California on the off chance that the owners would consider us family and take us in. They respectfully declined.
Finally, Mom’s old friends Patricia and Pierre Dumont agreed to become our legal guardians. Though the women had been each other’s bridesmaids in the sixties, they hadn’t seen each other since Mom had visited Venezuela a decade or so before—shortly before her life became complicated by Oliver and later by the day-to-day grind of making ends meet.
Time hadn’t thawed the Dumonts’ warmth or devotion to their friend. Patricia and Pierre had been considering adopting children, and with three mostly grown daughters, they wanted a boy. Two more children would give them a full house again. Bringing us to their Rhode Island home would be the perfect arrangement.
Mom says that once the Dumonts made their decision, there was no turning back. Patricia and Pierre marched into the courtroom to inform the judge of their intentions. They were a sight for sore eyes, decked out in bright colors, rippling scarves, clicking shoes, and beaming smiles. They floated through the sea of scruffy souls in line for traffic violations, DUIs, and nonpayment of child support. Any and all concerns the judge brought up were quickly dismissed by the Dumonts: They had the means, the love, and the time to take us in.
The day Mom broke the news, she pulled a Sara Lee pound cake from the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw. This was a special treat, something not in our food stamp budget. Because it was store-bought, it somehow seemed even more glorious, coveted the same way I coveted Wonder Bread over Mom’s homemade version or bottled Italian dressing over her simple splashes of olive oil and vinegar.
Mom let me lick the cake that stuck to the cardboard lid, but when I asked her for a slice, she told me to get Michael, who was playing across the street. As I exited the kitchen, I heard a whisk against metal. There’ll be whipped cream, too, I thought, grinning, and ran the whole way to the playground. Michael let out a gleeful whoop at the mention of the treat.
While we sat at the table, Mom sliced a pint of fresh strawberries and spooned them over thick slices of cake. She dipped a giant metal spoon into the stainless-steel bowl and topped each plate with a cloud of whipped cream.
The strawberries were Michael’s favorite, the pound cake was mine, but we loved the whipped cream in equal measure. While we spooned the cake in big, heaping bites, Mom told us for the first time that we would be moving in with another family, the Dumonts. She said they were old friends, but we’d never heard their names before.
Suddenly the cake tasted like foam and clung to the corners of my mouth. I swallowed hard. Even the cool glass of milk couldn’t wash the tightness away. I put down my fork and asked Mom when we could come home again, thinking that this was just another foster home drop-off. A few days? A week? A month?
Mom said we couldn’t come home again: This time it was forever. Though Michael and I wouldn’t be adopted, per se, we also wouldn’t be foster kids. The Dumonts were to become our legal guardians. I looked over at Michael, sitting there blankly. I wanted him to say something, make Mom change her mind. But he didn’t move.
“What about saying goodbye to Connor, Tim, and Grace?” I asked. Mom reminded me that they were all the way in New Jersey. Michael and I would be leaving in a few days for Rhode Island, where the Dumonts had a large house.
When I searched Mom’s quiet face, I saw that she spoke the truth: Michael and I were leaving for good. I can still remember the haunted look in her eyes, how her spirit slumped, even while she held her chin straight for the benefit of our questioning eyes. This wasn’t abandonment. This was defeat.
But instead of taking us down with her, she thrust us bravely into the arms of two dear friends, hoping and praying our lives could be better.
Winter Pound Cake
I went two decades without so much as a slice of pound cake. Too many memories were attached to those rich crumbs. But one chilly day in my 30s—months after the last worthwhile strawberry had been plucked—I decided to dust off an old recipe from Cook’s Illustrated and try to make the cake my own. Instead of fresh sliced strawberries on top—which even in summer often need tossing with sugar to coax out their natural sweetness—I folded featherlight, freeze-dried morsels into the batter. Frozen with summertime still clinging to their bloodred, dimpled skin, these berries pack in bold flavor without making the crumb sodden.
With the added glow of lemon or orange zest and a couple splashes of cream, this cake is a comfort beside any frosty window. It’s true: A slice of pound cake does wonders to thaw the coldest of days.
NOTE: Best baked in a shiny aluminum pan. If using a glass baking pan, drop oven temperature by 25 degrees, or the cake will not cook properly.
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for loaf pan
Zest of a lemon or orange
1¼ cups granulated sugar
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs, plus 1 yolk, at room temperature
3 tablespoons heavy cream
¼ teaspoon salt
1¾ cups all-purpose flour, lightly whisked to remove lumps
1 ounce freeze-dried strawberries, broken into ¼- to ½-inch morsels (a scant 1½ cups)
Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease a 5 × 9-inch loaf pan.
In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream the butter with the lemon or orange zest, then stream in the sugar, beating on medium speed until fluffy and white—a good 5 minutes.
In a medium bowl with spout, whisk together the vanilla, eggs, yolk, cream, and salt. Dribble very slowly into the bu
tter mixture so as to not curdle the mix, beating until just combined. If it does curdle, a tablespoon of flour will restore the emulsion. Scrape as needed.
Add the flour, a bit at a time, mixing on low to incorporate. Fold in the dried strawberries with a spatula. Spoon the batter into a prepared loaf pan, and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake on the center rack for about 70 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out with just a few crumbs on it. Cover with a foil tent if it seems to be browning too quickly. Let rest about 30 minutes, then run a butter knife around the edge and turn it onto a rack to continue cooling.
Serve at room temperature with whipped cream and hot tea. To store: Wrap in plastic, then foil. Keeps a handful of days—though I imagine it’ll be long gone before then.
Enough for 8 to 10
CHAPTER 6
The New Order
I HAVE NO RECOLLECTION of saying goodbye to Mom. I don’t know if they had to tear us out of her arms or if we obediently wheeled our canvas suitcases toward our new lives with only a sideways glance over our shoulders. Our first moments with the Dumonts in the spring of 1990 are almost as elusive. We met them in an office building, likely the Department of Social Services, where someone had set out a giant cheese pizza and a plastic clamshell of cupcakes from Stop & Shop. I couldn’t help but wonder what Mom would say about that.
A tall crane of a woman in a white pantsuit took a group photo. She must have been the social worker. Patricia and Pierre flanked the edges with their three daughters, Lauren, Heather, and Antoinette, sandwiched between them. The oldest, Lauren, was already grown and out of the house, working on her doctorate in Boston; Heather, 21, was wrapping up her senior year at Duke University; and Antoinette (or Toni as they called her), was 16 and the only one still living at home.
Michael and I were in the front row, short, skinny, and conspicuously Italian. Our new family towered around us like a grove of trees. Pierre topped out the group with his chestnut, “Leave It to Beaver” locks and dimpled chin, in a wool sweater with elbow patches. Like their father, the girls were unusually tall, with long, rustling masses of strawberry blond and auburn hair. Though Patricia was the shortest, she was still a full head taller than Michael and me—her high-waisted slacks emphasizing the canopy of her hips.
Taking a family photo with strangers was uncomfortable enough, but then the crane suggested Patricia put her hand on my shoulder—my only distinct memory of this day.
“Come together now,” she said.
Patricia considered, her plump hand hovering awkwardly near my shirtsleeve. In that brief pause, Michael threw his arm around me. He seemed so grown-up all of a sudden, so much older than his 12 years. I slumped toward him in relief.
They were so kind to take us in, filled with the best of intentions. And yet, I don’t think anyone could have prepared them for the challenges that come with taking on two half-grown kids that psychologists had once assessed as “overly identified with their mother.” We came with all kinds of “baggage,” and almost none of it fit in our suitcases.
Our new home was a giant white farmhouse on Rhode Island’s coast, several hours away. While we unpacked, Michael discovered that Mom had tucked a folded sheet of butcher’s paper into his suitcase. She’d traced her hands on one side of the paper, doing it twice—once for Michael and once for me. On the other side she encouraged us to trace our hands, as though our palms were touching, so we could “always be close.” But pressing our hands against the outline of her hands somehow made the distance greater.
Though there was room enough for Michael and me to have our own bedrooms, Patricia set up two twin beds in an east-facing bedroom with rose-embossed wallpaper, echoing the arrangement we’d had in the living room at Mom’s. I was glad she did; the thought of sleeping in a different room than Michael secretly terrified me.
Even with our beds so close that we could hold hands if we wanted to, I began to have vivid, reoccurring nightmares of not being able to find Michael or Mom.
Those first few weeks I woke up several times a night in a cold sweat, instinctively looking for Mom’s silhouette at our old kitchen table. I could only fall asleep once I saw Michael’s sleeping form faintly outlined in the moonlight. The steady draw of his breath always soothed me.
The Dumonts’ house was scattered with cardboard boxes—some crammed full, others open and waiting. There were mounds of Bubble Wrap in the halls and rolls of packing tape scattered along every open surface. Patricia and Pierre explained that they were mid-shuffle, preparing for a move to Atlanta, Georgia. As soon as school got out, we’d be leaving again. Moving wasn’t a big deal for my new family; they were regular globe-trotters, having raised their children in other exotic locales like Morocco, Jamaica, and, of course, Venezuela.
Pierre typically changed jobs every two to three years. Companies hired him to consult on the finances of large projects; when the projects ended, so did his contract. He’d worked in nearly every industry on nearly every continent. Moving and exploring was simply a way of life, a conscious effort to absorb the best the world had to offer.
Patricia and her three daughters were accustomed to the nomadic lifestyle that accompanied Pierre’s constant career shifts. Toni said they never settled anywhere long enough to throw out their moving boxes. She also said I should be glad we were just moving to Atlanta, and not halfway around the world.
But it might as well have been.
Living in a household of half-packed boxes made the arrangement feel temporary, more like purgatory than a permanent home. I imagined that if I prayed really hard, Michael and I might be released for good behavior and permitted to fly northward to our real home.
Though the Dumonts were nice enough, I missed my curtained castle and Mom’s bear hugs. I missed the steady purr of her sewing machine on the dining table, and wondered how she’d thread her needle without my younger eyes. More than anything, I missed cooking with her. And so I begged the universe to send the Dumonts to Georgia without us when the last box was packed.
Michael said prayers weren’t going to solve anything. He called Mom every day, ignoring her advice to focus on our new lives, and demanded to come home. He’d memorized her number, and dialed her on an old rotary phone after the house was asleep, huddled over it to muffle the noise. I was always too scared to talk, but I’d listen, my ear pressed next to his, hungry for the sound of Mom’s voice. Every time Michael reached out, Mom told him the same thing: “You shouldn’t be calling. You need to focus on your new life.”
Turns out this response was nothing more than the advice of Mom’s lawyer: Years later, I discovered that he’d advised her to cut off communications with us to ease our transition. Though we couldn’t quite see the puppet strings, we could tell her words didn’t ring quite true. She was tender and loving, and always asked how we were. But if we listened carefully, we could hear that something was broken. She always got off the phone a little too quickly.
I stayed out of Michael’s way after those calls.
Ultimately, Michael was right; no amount of prayers kept moving day away. One dewy morning in late May, a fleet of burly men pulled up to the house with two of the longest trucks I’d ever seen. By noon they’d loaded our entire lives into those yawning vessels, one box at a time. Early the next morning, while stars still pierced the darkness, Patricia, Pierre, Antoinette, Michael, and I piled into their Volvo station wagon and began the drive to Atlanta.
As the car bobbed and weaved from state to state, from hotel room to hotel room, I felt Mom slipping farther and farther away. I held my large white teddy bear close, imagining what she was doing. Had she donated my dolls that I couldn’t fit in my suitcase? Was she baking a pie and, if so, who would she give the scraps to?
The miles piled up, sweeping me along until I finally fell asleep. Before I knew it, we’d washed ashore, right up to the foot of our new home.
The two-story brick colonial sat at the top of a steep, ivy-flanked driveway, more castle t
han house. Michael and I exchanged glances when we saw it. I was certain our entire apartment in Boston could have fit in the garage alone. On the first floor, there were two living rooms: a formal one that would be used to entertain the odd guest and a less formal one, reserved for Christmas morning. Both rooms were laid out with curvy couches and plush chairs, Tunisian coffee tables, and woven Oriental rugs.
Outside I caught a glimpse of the terraced backyard, which contained a basketball hoop and a large wooden swing set. The Dumonts didn’t eat their meals in the kitchen the way Mom did. There was a dining room and a breakfast room, decorated with clay pottery from Venezuela, fleur-de-lis tablecloths, and Moroccan paintings depicting colorful, dirt-lined markets.
Two stairways led to the second floor. The back staircase connected two playrooms—one long, the other square, filled with giant baskets of Legos, a coloring station, and oversized couches. Down the hall, Michael and I each had our own bedroom.
My room was a vision of lavender and lace. Under a large, sunny window I had a white table and my very own sewing machine. I held my breath when I first stepped into the room for fear the vision might vanish. I soon discovered another tiny room that Toni called a “walk-in closet.” It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen: a secret world made just for me.
Clothes—thick, gauzy, and soft—lined the walls. I’d never seen so many clothes in my life. The way they draped reminded me of the curtain Mom had sewn around my old bed. Many nights I’d bring my pillow and blanket into the closet and curl up on the floor. If I closed my eyes, I could almost believe I was home again.
That fall I entered sixth grade in a large public school. Haircuts were the first order of business. Michael’s shaggy locks became a new crew cut that made his ears stick out. I went through an overhaul as well. My hair once danced across my lower back; now it barely flitted across my shoulders. We both got braces; month by month, the gap between my front teeth closed.