Authors: Regina Calcaterra
“Everything in the house work okay?” he asks, peering behind me.
“Yeah.” I peek over my shoulder and nod at him. “No sweat.” Something tells me this man won’t be easy to fool.
Great.
I’ll have to be on the lookout for social services from now on.
“Okay then,” he says, starting down the back steps. “Good. Well, tell your mother I stopped by.”
I don’t say anything, so he turns and walks toward the side of the house. Just before he’s out of sight, I call after him. “She works late.”
He turns to face me again. “I noticed the oil tank is empty. Anybody been around lately to fill it?”
“I’m not sure, but we don’t need it. It’s summer. It’s not a big deal.” After he rounds the corner, I close the door. Then I sit down with my back against it, sighing in relief as his truck pulls away.
The next afternoon, when we return from the library, Norman heads out with his new neighborhood friends to play with someone’s skateboard. “Hey, Gi?” he yells. “There’s something on the back porch.”
“What is it?” I holler, but I know he’s already running down the street. I step out on the porch to find a large, brown paper bag. It’s filled with carrots with the roots still attached, a pile of potatoes, some tomatoes, and at the very bottom, a huge watermelon. Like the carrots’ roots, the tomatoes still have vines attached as if they were just pulled from someone’s garden.
This kind of anonymous charity is unusual. What’s more, I don’t know a single person who keeps a garden: Cherie doesn’t, and anyway, she wouldn’t drop off something like this without sticking around for a few minutes to see us.
None of our friends from school could have done this
, I think.
They don’t even know where we’re staying
.
Could it be from a neighbor?
I crack open the watermelon with my trusty iron—it’s become my favorite multipurpose tool—and scoop out some of the center, letting the juice drip down my arms as I inhale the sweet flesh. The sugar gives a wild rush to my empty stomach, and, in moments, I’m so full I could be sick. I load the uneaten part into the refrigerator and turn on the faucet to rinse off my hands and arms. I lift the handle all the way to the left out of habit, hoping it will grow warm enough to melt my stickiness away. Instead the water is instantly scalding hot.
“Oh crap!” I yell.
“Ouchouchouch!”
I slam off the faucet and shake the sting from my fingers, staring at my hot-pink hands . . . then, it all comes together: the landlord! He must have filled the oil tank while we were gone. What kind of landlord helps people who don’t pay their rent? It doesn’t make any sense. And he has to have been the one who left the vegetables, too.
Damn him
, I think, skeptical about his motives.
He needs to mind his own business
.
Why didn’t he just call social services and get it over with? Why’s he trying to keep us here and buy us food and oil? What does he want?
When you’re a kid with no one to protect you, everything comes with a price.
On the other hand, it takes no time to grow accustomed to having a hot shower every day. The best part about having hot water is staying in there long enough to really take in the warmth and rinse the day’s dirt off. One afternoon in late August, I step out of the shower and quickly slip on my bottoms and tube top. As I scoot out of the bathroom, holding up my underwear by their unraveling elastic, I steal a glance in the full-length mirror. What I see looking back at me makes me stop and gasp.
I stand there. I try to register what or who it is I’m looking at. I’m shrinking away. The combination of the yellow jackets and the vinegar has taken its toll. Standing completely still, I examine the concave curve of my stomach and the bones sticking out against the skin of my hips. My legs are straight lines interrupted by the bump of my knees; nothing about them is shapely. I’m totally flat-chested, and my rib cage is clearly outlined underneath the blue stripes of my tube top. I have to look harder to see what I’ve always seen—I can no longer find the pretty girl that used to greet me as I walked by. In fact, there are shocks of gray in my hair in front and in back, and when I reach up and touch the spot where my skull meets the nape of my neck, I find the raw, soft patches of baldness that I’ve been hiding with what’s left of my hair. I stare at myself and, as usual, keep my mouth closed so the huge gap in my front teeth isn’t visible in the reflection.
I don’t even recognize this girl! She is not me. I’ll have to start ninth grade like this . . .
high
school. Even if I could go back to Billy Blake’s, there aren’t enough designer clothes in their entire girls’ department to make me fit in. For the first time, I’m seeing what Cookie says she sees when she looks at me: a rag doll.
Cookie returns before Labor Day weekend. Norman, Rosie, and I are sitting in the living room watching television when she walks through the front door as if she’s only been gone an hour. She’s carrying a box of Cap’n Crunch, powdered milk, and a six-pack of beer. She’s still wearing the pair of jeans she walked out in and her hair is still in a ponytail, with half of it red and the newer parts dyed black. Before, Norman would have run to her, given her hugs, and shouted
“Mom! Mom!”
but today he glances at me with raised eyebrows and then turns his attention back to
The Electric Company
. Silently, I chalk up a point in my favor: These last two months have put him officially on my side. Norman’s trust in me is the best thing about my relationship with him . . . and the worst thing for my relationship with Cookie.
“Here’s your dinner,” she says. Even with such nonchalance, her presence alters the feeling in the room, establishing a weight I can feel in my chest. She waltzes past the stairwell and into the kitchen, where I hear her set the cereal and beer down, rip a can from its plastic ring, and pop it open. “You look like shit,” she calls from the kitchen. Then she goes into her room and shuts the door. I’m in awe that, just seconds ago, this house felt clean and safe. Her presence has released a pollution that I can feel settling like grit on my skin.
“C
OME ON KIDS
, let’s go!”
The next morning we wake to the sound of Cookie hollering. I hurry Rosie and Norman to dress and shoo them both to the car as Cookie stands with her hands on her hips. “What time of year is it?” she says. “You know the drill.” We realize we’re on our way to get registered for school.
I have no problem finding clothes big enough to camouflage how skinny I am from the administrators—by now, all my clothes are baggy. I pull my hair back into a ponytail that gathers at the bald spot, tucking the gray pieces under the black hair to hide them from the school attendants’ view. Cookie starts the car and sets off toward the back roads.
It only takes five minutes to register me for my first year of high school in Centereach. After the secretary informs us that we arrived late to register and they’ve already given physicals, they tell me to report to the nurse’s office on the first day of school. This I make note to “forget,” or I’ll be faced with questions about my bag-of-bones build. When Cookie and I walk back outside, I put my head down to avoid being seen with her and her car, even though there are no schoolmates around. I have yet to say a word to her since she’s returned to us.
While Cookie walks Norman next door to register him at the middle school, Rosie and I sit in the car. “We won’t be on the same bus anymore, will we?” she says.
“No, but you’re going to love third grade. You’ll learn multiplication and division and how to write
Rosie
in pretty script letters. Isn’t it exciting?” When her separation anxiety is still visible, I promise her I’ll help her with all of her science projects. “Maybe we’ll even build a volcano out of mud!” I tell her.
“Yeah . . .” she muses, then stops and looks up at me. “You don’t have to pay for mud, do you?”
“No, sweetie. You don’t.” She nods and stares out the window watching for Cookie and Norman. My eyes well with tears. At seven years old, Rosie has come to understand that we’re poor.
We head home and wait a few hours before going school clothes shopping. Once dusk falls, Cookie flags us back into the car and we head out in search of Salvation Army bins. We know it will take a few dives in these Dumpsters to find enough clothes for all three of us, and we’re familiar with Cookie’s shopping spree strategy: First she pulls the passenger side of the car next to the Dumpster opening. Then, with the window open, I climb on the seat and stick my head through the hole to look down into the Dumpster. Once my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, if I see more clothes than garbage and useless debris, I step on the window ledge and squeeze myself through the sloped metal opening in the bin to get inside. I begin throwing clothes out through the hole and into the car.
Using the car’s dome light to see, the kids and Cookie root through the clothes to pick out the ones we could possibly use. I locate a pair of jeans and a plaid skirt for Rosie.
“Gi!” she cries. “Look, this pink shirt still has the tags on it!”
“It’s brand-new for you to wear on the first day!”
For Norman, I fold a nice pair of corduroys and a couple turtlenecks into a pile, and for myself I dig out a pair of khaki pants that I can make a size smaller by taking them in with a few stitches. Then, once our options are exhausted, I pile all the excess clothes on the floor and climb out, giving myself a leg up as I shimmy out of the bin, back into Cookie’s car.
Throughout the weekend, Cookie shares the details of the life she created at her new boyfriend’s place as though she’s telling us a great fairy tale of which we have no part. “Oh, the meals I cook,” she says. “And you oughtta see how well-behaved his daughter is—you three could take a lesson. She’s only thirteen, lost her mother to cancer last year . . . treats me like I walk on water. Talk about appreciation. Instead, what do I get from you? I get bullshit.” Although I wish someone was taking care of us the way her boyfriend’s thirteen-year-old daughter is being mothered now, I can tell Cookie’s happy because she’s been sober for the entire day. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m actually not afraid of her.
After the weekend together, she announces that she’s going back to her boyfriend’s house. In peace, I begin to rifle through our new wardrobe, sorting the colors to wash in the tub before we start school on Wednesday. As I start my hems and alterations, I flip on the TV, where Ronald Reagan is giving a speech in New Jersey as part of his campaign for the U.S. Presidency:
And most of us have begun to realize that, so long as Carter policies are in effect, the next four years will be as dark as the last four . . . I pledge to you I’ll bring a new message of hope to all of America.
A new message of hope to all of America.
That includes
my
family. It includes me! I need a new message of hope as much as I need a new wardrobe to start the ninth grade. If my next four years are as dark as my last four years, I’ll never make it to seventeen. I hope Reagan, or Carter, or someone, could get me out of this, but I’m not holding my breath.
On the first day of school, it’s clear I’ve made a horrible mistake with my outfit choice. As I walk down the halls, calls from the other students are all that drown out the sound of my baggy denim seams rubbing together: “It’s the Orange Ethiopian!” they yell. I know I have more meat on me than the skeletal starving Ethiopians I see on TV, but did I have to go and highlight myself with a pair of fluorescent orange pants? Nothing like blending in at my new school.
Aside from the orange-denim disaster, the first day in this new school is the same as everywhere I’ve ever been. I don’t really mind walking from classroom to classroom by myself—in a way, it’s a relief not to have any friends because there’s no one who I have to tell about my family. There are assignments to keep me busy and teachers to listen to. I don’t say much in class because I don’t want any attention directed at me, but I make sure to follow the huddles of students in front of me to each classroom so that I arrive right on time and act alert when class starts. I’ve learned to give straight answers when the teachers call on me, but that doesn’t typically start to happen until the third week of school when the social breakdown between the kids is clear: Teachers take one look at me and go gentle. Leaving the classroom is always the giveaway: If the teacher stands by the door as the class files into the hallway, my trademark is a modest, closed-mouth smile—a well-adjusted, friendly kid.
It’s the free times during the day that make my status as the new girl painfully obvious: lunch and recess, and also gym class, where I use Cherie and Camille’s fake cramps trick, even though I have yet to get my period.
Most kids might complain about their teachers, but mine give me a sense of assurance—wrapping myself in my work and obeying their instructions is the easiest, best way to stay safe. School has always been my escape and solace, a place where an independent kid like me finds stability. Because I keep a low profile, my teachers never really know about my life at home. I’m sure some have detected that things aren’t exactly as they should be, but most of them have used any vulnerabilities they sensed as a reason to encourage me.
O
N
S
EPTEMBER
17, 1980, just a week after school starts, Cherie gives birth to her first child: a baby boy. I’m down the street, greeting Norman and Rosie from the bus, when I hear Cookie’s tires screeching into the driveway and her hoarse voice blaring down the block. “Regina!” she yells. “Your sister had a baby—I’m a grandma!” My first nephew.
“Can I come, Mom? I want to see the baby!” Rosie says. I lace my arm through hers and pull her onto my lap on the porch step.
“I’m not coming back here after,” Cookie says. “You can meet him after Cherie takes the baby home to her in-laws’.”
Cookie stumbles through the front door one afternoon in early November, holding a box of macaroni and cheese and a half-gallon of milk. “What’s going on?” I ask her, meaning,
What are you doing here?