Authors: Regina Calcaterra
“I’ll bring money every week, I promise,” she says, wrapping me again in her arms.
We stand there awhile, just hugging, and I hope that any second she’ll whisper,
Hey. Do you want to come with me?
But her silence cements it: Kathy can’t take all of us. When we finally pull away, I look around at the kitchen that’s now all mine to manage.
Finally I pull away from her and stand over the stove, trying to concentrate on the macaroni and cheese, blending the powdered cheese with a little milk and coating each of the noodles in the mix. Camille helps me spoon dinner onto three plates—she has plans to eat with Doug, so there will be more for leftovers tomorrow. She pours two glasses of milk and carries them into the living room, while I cover the leftovers and hurry to place the bowl in the refrigerator.
The kids sit up when they see us carrying food, and I notice how loud they have the TV cranked up. It’s clear they heard us yelling in the kitchen and turned up the volume to tune us out.
Camille heads upstairs, where I know she will gather her things. My appetite is gone, but if the landlord or police were to discover three children staying here alone tonight, who knows when my next meal could be? I’ll eat now. On the bright side, at least we’ll have one more bed to sleep in tonight. Camille’s room was the nicest, and I’ll be able to sleep knowing that the kids are right next to my room.
Norm and Rosie pile their dishes in the sink after dinner, and I wash them right away. Camille chases them upstairs to brush their teeth with the bottle of peroxide Cookie uses to dye her hair. Since we steal food to survive, toothpaste never makes our list. The peroxide is fizzy in my mouth and makes me gag if I swallow even a little. It dries out the corners of my mouth, making my lips crack and scab up in the corners. “But it sure does make your breath smell fresh!” Camille loves to tease me.
Back in the kitchen, Camille rests the bag of her belongings on the floor and gently kisses the side of my head. “I’m going to the corner to call Doug. You gonna be okay?”
I nod in her general direction. “Just go.”
“Love you, Gi.”
At this, I turn and watch her make her way to the front door of the house that, just hours ago, I’d been so thrilled for us to share as a family. “Love you, too,” I say, trying to force the words through the swelling cry in my throat.
Then she’s gone, too.
Summer to Fall, 1980
I
WAS ELEVEN
the first time Camille left and I had to care for the kids by myself. I’m not unfamiliar with the feeling of isolation that comes with this unwilling brand of single motherhood, but every time she leaves, the worst part of loneliness returns: No matter how many times I experience it, it never gets easier.
Gently, throughout my upbringing, Camille coached me for this role. It requires a subtle balance between safeguarding the kids while always giving people around us the impression that it’s actually our mother who’s caring for us. “Never act hungry, never look dirty,” she says, because if the kids are fed, clean, neat, and well behaved, we generally can slide under the radar. The goal is always to stay together and out of foster care.
We admit nothing, and Rosie and Norman know what’s at stake. We have to keep quiet and not bring attention to ourselves, no matter how bad it gets. It’s our code of silence, and there’s a powerful trust among us never to violate it. The system seems content to be complicit in our charade because the social workers of Suffolk County are too busy to keep track of kids in our type of situation. This area that until recently was rural and blue-collar is rapidly increasing in population. People from the city are moving out here, turning Fire Island and the local beaches along the Atlantic Ocean into suburbanized bedroom communities of Manhattan and a playground for the rich and famous. Meanwhile, we’ve overheard our social workers murmur that almost five thousand kids are monitored by protective services in our county alone. Some of these kids end up in the children’s shelter, where we’ve learned that beatings and rapes are rampant. The stories spread so far and wide that even the people in the city read about it—in fact, I heard about an article in one of the city papers where the reporter referred to the shelter as “the children’s jail.” So we know to stick to our story. If someone asks us where our mother is during the afternoons, we say she’s waitressing. At nighttime she’s working as a barmaid. If any authority figure says he didn’t see her car in the early morning hours, then it’s because she works for a bakery and has to deliver fresh bread to restaurants beginning at three thirty in the morning. Sometimes when we’re asked “Well then, where is she during the late morning hours?” we say she works at a deli peeling potatoes for potato salad. Our mother “works” a lot, you see—we have every hour covered.
As long as we keep each other in the loop on the latest story, we can remain in sync and untouchable. And since, at one time or another, Cookie
did
work these jobs and took us along with her to help, we know enough about them to talk intelligently about the details of her work to deter any suspicion.
There have been times, few and far between, when Cookie actually did try to get herself on the right track with a job. She’d fumble around getting herself ready and she’d announce, “I’m going to work,” as though it were a normal, everyday outing. We knew not to get excited. Her periods of employment were always short-lived, and often I accompanied her to help. I’ve spent entire days peeling potatoes behind a deli counter, shredding cabbage for cole slaw, and chopping carrots and radishes for salads. For my work and Cookie’s, the deli owner would pay us each fifteen dollars. But instead of giving me an allowance or buying us groceries or new shoes, Cookie would use the money to take Cherie, Camille, and Norman to Adventureland or the movies. “You can thank your father that you’re stuck at home watching Rosie,” she’d say. I’d stare at the door as it closed behind her. I didn’t know what she meant because I never knew my father.
I’ve always preferred accompanying her when she works at a bar, where at least there’s usually music, and peanuts to snack on. When Cookie worked as a barmaid, it was her job to clean up after a long night, and I learned fast that weekends were the hardest! I’d be able to pay our rent if only I had a dollar for every Sunday morning I spent mopping a sticky floor and wiping down tables while the radio system played Elton John’s “Levon” and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” At seven, I had no idea what it meant to make love to a tonic and gin, but I sure understood the song’s carnival of lonely souls. My salary for those gigs was as many Maraschino cherries and Shirley Temples as my belly could take. It sure beat the starchy smell of potatoes on my hands.
Once, I asked Camille and Cherie why Cookie turned out so mean, and just as Camille started saying “See, her parents—” Cherie clapped her hand over Camille’s mouth. Immediately it was clear there was something they were trying to protect me from. “Trust me,” Cherie said. “You don’t want to know.”
So, as Cookie’s primary aim is to put in as little effort as possible to get what she can from whom she can, including the system, my primary aim is to keep Rosie, Norm, and me out of the system entirely. But without Camille to guide me through the summer, to help me think through the day-to-day problems and to keep food on the table, that job is about to get a lot more difficult.
A
S
N
ORM AND
Rosie get acquainted with their room, I take a quiet stroll through the house. Even though we have no idea how long we’ll be here, there’s a lot to do to organize the place. The day’s events, the move, my mother leaving, our food-shopping trip, and then Camille’s departure have worn me out. I step onto the front porch to look at the stars. That’s when I realize how my body aches for a bed, and my mind aches for peace, too. I want one night of the kind of sleep you can’t get while you’re sleeping in trunks, backseats, and, for the short-straw drawer, the back floor of the car, over the hump. Rosie used to fit into the floorwell fine when she was three or four . . . but now she’s seven and tall for her age. Her lanky legs and torso don’t fold up the way they used to.
I rest my forehead in my hands a few seconds and take a minute on the porch to daydream . . . not about a boy or even a home for good. I daydream about a
pillow
. They take up too much room in the trunk for us to travel with, so Cookie doesn’t let us keep them. I rise reluctantly to head inside. It’s time to make my own pillow.
I enter my mother’s room with its full-size mattress and box spring. The box spring is ripped on one side and also at the foot of the bed, like someone took a razor blade along the fabric to continue ripping it. I make a mental note to check inside it later for loose change or other surprises. Camille put away all of our mother’s clothes before she left, so nothing of Cookie’s is left out to rummage through or to smell up the place with stale cigarette smoke.
I walk to the closet to see if there are any old sheets or towels on the floor. A large linen of some kind would be perfect for a pillowcase. Nothing’s inside except a few of Cookie’s shirts on bent hangers. I crouch down and peak under the bed and dresser for anything I can use. Instead I find ant-, roach-, and mousetraps, and dust-ball tumbleweeds. At least there are traps set, I decide, but they look really old!
I peek in Cookie’s dresser to see what I can find in there. The small top drawer contains her huge bras with stretched elastic and broken eye hooks. Her underwear is large enough to serve as a lampshade, if the house had come with any lamps! Although her “privates,” as she refers to her undergarments, could definitely serve as the stuffing I was looking for, I cringe at the thought of sleeping with them so close to my face. I continue riffling through the drawer for socks . . . then I happen across something plastic. I pull out two bags: one with “yellow jackets”—uppers that Cookie takes when she’s feeling especially low—and the other with two food stamps. I’m shocked that she left home without these, and it quickly occurs to me that she may be home to retrieve them very soon. I put them back for now, exactly as I found them, but I might be back for one or both if I really get desperate for food. Cookie usually keeps an entire traveling pharmacy, including Percocet, tranquilizers, uppers, and downers. Her underwear drawer is a dream come true for any melodramatic, extreme-mood-swinging woman.
She must have forgotten about these few.
I close that drawer and open the one below it, where I discover an old worn and grayed Hanes T-shirt. I pull it out, and, with some hesitation, I bring it up to my nose. It doesn’t smell of smoke, so it’s probably not even hers . . . but just in case it is, I estimate I could put a few long stitches in the band of the neck and arms that won’t be detected if I have to remove the thread later. The bottom is wide, so I’ll have to tie it closed, but it should stay throughout the night. One pillowcase resolved—two to go. I rummage a bit more and, not finding adequate stuffing, I close the drawers, change course, and head out of Cookie’s bedroom to the second floor.
First I go to my room, having seen an old, torn towel thrown in the corner. As I go to pick it up, though, I notice the window, which I opened earlier for fresh air. Now, in the evening light, I see it’s well positioned for a break-in. Being responsible for two little kids makes you see everything differently—especially windows and doors. It’s right on top of a pitched roof that hangs over the back door and the broken concrete patio. From my earlier time in the kitchen, I remember there is enough discarded equipment right near the roof—a rusty dryer, some beat-up-looking motor thing—to act as a lift for anyone who might want to climb on the roof and slither his way into the house by way of that window.
As a reflex, I close the window, then realize there’s no lock on it.
This is very, very bad.
I feel my heart pick up its pace: This house is so old that maybe none of the windows have locks. I go to the kids’ room and see a window with no locks, and then to Camille’s room—same thing. I run into the hallway and see that this window doesn’t have a lock, either. I race downstairs, where I find more lockless windows.
I have to switch priorities before I go to bed.
I head outside to collect thick branches that are strewn on the grassless backyard. The pile of junk back there is full of treasure, including discarded broomsticks and a broken rake handle, which I grab. As I shift the pile around, I also spot an old rusty saw. I return inside through the back kitchen door, which—of course—has a push-button lock that even Rosie could pick. I place my makeshift locking devices on the floor and go from drawer to drawer in the pantry in search of an old hammer or anything that resembles one. Finally, I dig out a few old tacks and a screwdriver. Then I race around the house, inspecting the walls for any nails or old tacks I can pull out.
As I walk to the basement door that leads downstairs, I’m still short a hammer and nails. The door sits in a vestibule between the kitchen and the bathroom, where there’s a full-length mirror. As I spot my reflection, I lose my concentration. There before me stands a stranger. She’s pretty, but so skinny she startles me.
I have to try to eat more.
I stop and examine my features: my skin that’s tanned dark brown from watching Rosie and Norm outside in the sun; my hair, wavy and somewhat wild, lightened from black to auburn by the sun. My eyes are a bold shade that’s more black than brown . . . darker than the translucent brown eyes all my siblings and my mother have. I cringe at the space between my two front teeth and the length of my nose, which is too big for my face.
I open the basement door and ever so carefully take the first three steps down. Fortunately, there’s a string attached to an upside-down lightbulb that serves as a light, but when I pull on the string, the bulb is burned out. I take a few more slow steps and notice that a window leading into the basement is broken. That means I’ll have to figure out how to secure the inside basement door that leads back into the kitchen. There’s no water heater in sight; the basement is dank and empty, except for an old washing machine with its plumbing yanked out in the back and a few boxes containing nothing but old, smelly mildewed clothes and a lampshade. At least, I figure, the clothes can serve as curtains or pillow stuffing. Then I spot gray metal shelves and feel around for nails . . .
yes!
My fingers locate about eight screws and nails to add to my collection. As I put my hardware inside the box of clothes and make my way back toward the stairs, I spot a filthy old iron and I grab that, too.
I lock the back door and lean a chair under the handle so if someone tries to come in, the chair’s fall will warn us loudly. Then I move into the vestibule that leads to the basement, where I use the scissors to cut the cord off the iron. Using the iron as my hammer, I bang a nail into the door frame and wrap the snipped cord between the doorknob and the nail, creating a tight figure eight that would slow down an intruder trying to come into the first level of the house through the basement door.
I place all the broom and rake handles and tree limbs on the kitchen table, using the saw to cut them so they’ll fit diagonally in the windows and serve as window jambs. After securing all the downstairs windows plus the one in my bedroom, I rummage through the box of clothes I found in the basement. From window to window on the first floor, I pound nails on both sides of the windowpanes. I drape button-down shirts, sweatshirts, and T-shirts across each window for curtains. Closing the windows will cut off any air circulation through the house . . . but it’s better to be sweaty than sorry. During this process I realize we’ll be sleeping downstairs every night because it’s cooler than upstairs, and because we could run out either the front or back door if someone were to break in. With the two living room couches and Cookie’s bed, we’ll each have our own place to sleep.
Whew:
good work!
Now the pillow dilemma. I stuff the gray Hanes T-shirt and another shirt with the stuffing and close the openings in the shirts. The kids will have pillows for tonight. Mine will wait until tomorrow.
The kids agree to move downstairs. When I check on Rosie in Cookie’s room and hear Norm’s steady breathing on the sofa, I take the empty couch across from him. The kids sleep long and quietly—they look comfortable for the first time in weeks.