Read Online Etched in Sand by Regina Calcaterra - Free Book Online Page B

basement stairs holding an iron,” I tell her. My toes wiggle inside my shoes, embarrassed to look so awful while she looks so wholesome and pretty.
    She looks at me crossly, then comes at me and lifts up my sweatshirt. I don’t flinch or fight her—it will only make the pain worse. There’s heartbreak in her face when she looks up from my ribs. “C’mon, Regina,” she says. “Make this the last time that you fell down the stairs, or into a stove, or out of a tree. I read your file, honey. You are almost fourteen! You can be in control soon—you know what that means, don’t you?”
    I know. It means I could leave my mother permanently. I’ve heard this many times before from my social workers, truant officers, guidance counselors, and other street kids. When you turn fourteen, you reach the age of reason. That means you can choose whether you want to stay with your biological parents or choose to emancipate yourself and become a ward of the state. If I opted to become a ward of the state, my mother would no longer have any control over my decisions or me.
    All of them—the counselors, the officers, the social workers—seemed well intentioned at first, asking if our mother hit us; if she fed us. They’d give the impression of wanting to help, but then they’d talk to Cookie, who seemed to have a sixth sense about these things and usually returned home when we were in danger of being taken away. It wasn’t hard for her to convince them that we brought the bruises on ourselves: For social services, it’s easier to keep children with their mother than deal with all the logistics, paperwork, and drama of putting kids in foster homes. And then the cycle would start all over again: Cookie would move us into a different house, using a new combination of names to delay the state in tracking us down, and things would be really bad for a while.
    “Regina, she’ll kill you if you stay here. Your siblings aren’t safe, either.” She pauses, watching me, then leans over and puts her arms on the counter. “If you tell me everything, we can get you away. She will do to them what she has done to you. Do you want Rosie to look like you in a few years, to feel like you feel? You owe it to them to tell the truth. Stop lying for their sakes and tell me what has been happening here.”
    “What if I did tell you? What would happen to the kids?”
    “They’ll be taken away from your mother and go to a foster home, too,” she says. “I promise you they will be kept safe.”
    Before I can think twice, I give in. Without Camille here to run interference, and now, faced with the idea that my silence could put my little brother and sister in danger, Ms. Davis’s invitation to finally free us from this hell is too tempting to resist any longer.
    Through calm breaths I tell her that the kids cannot go back with our mother. “You need to promise me that they will be safe, no matter what .” And then, before I can stop myself, I’m talking and talking and I can’t shut up. The stress and exhaustion of the past two years of parenting the kids on my own; the cars, the shelters, and the struggle . . . they break me. It’s dusk by the time I’m finished spilling the truth. I don’t leave anything out.
    The kids arrive just as Ms. Davis is getting ready to leave. Norman eyes her timidly as she places a dime in my hand so I can make a call on the pay phone. “Norm, can you hold down the fort for a minute?”
    He watches Ms. Davis exit, still tentative. “Yeah.”
    I walk to the corner phone booth and dial Kathy’s house. “Cookie was about to beat Rosie and I stepped in,” I tell Camille.
    “Why would she lay a hand on Rosie?”
    “Because she accidentally dropped a glass, right next to where Cookie was sleeping. I couldn’t hide the marks and my teacher must have called social services.”
    “Social services came?”
    “The social worker was standing in the kitchen when I got home!”
    “You didn’t tell, did