Etched in Sand (24 page)

She’s smiling, satisfied with my anger. “Oh no,” she says. “None of that, Regina. He was a lover—a very kind lover. I was in love with him, and I thought he was in love with me. I thought he’d be with me after he found out about you . . . but instead, he left.” She pauses a moment, then lights up another cigarette. “And I got stuck with you.”

11

The Happy House

Summer 1988 to January 1998

W
ITHIN DAYS AFTER
Cookie flies back to Idaho, my grandfather begins to notice that things around his house have gone missing. There are pots, pans, dishes, silverware, blankets, towels, photo albums, my grandmother’s jewelry, and even her nail polishes and makeup that he can’t seem to find. I presume he’s suffering some kind of grief-induced memory loss.

“Regina, Cookie made multiple early morning trips to the post office to send packages to Rosie because she was home alone,” he said.

“Gramps, Rosie moved in with one of her teachers more than a year ago. Cookie doesn’t even have guardianship of her anymore.” That’s when he and I put it together: Cookie pilfered his things while he was grieving.

After Rosie’s teacher took over her guardianship, my baby sister was able to begin her healing . . . but Camille and I took quiet note as Rosie made choices to leave her past behind—and that included shutting us out. Rosie never said it, but we sensed she blamed us. No matter how we fought for her well-being, nothing we did could ever be enough when Cookie was the opponent. As much as it destroyed us to see Rosie cut off communication with us, we understood. We’d failed her. We’d grown up always one bad decision away from homelessness and poverty. We’d tried to raise each other when we were just kids ourselves, sharing everything we had . . . which was never very much. Rosie needed us to save her, and we tried, but we couldn’t, because when you live on the fringes of society with no resources, you have no voice and your complaints are easily ignored.  So for now our relationship is wrought with an undercurrent of resentment and frustration. For Cherie, Camille, and me, adjusting to the world meant growing farther away from the pain we experienced as kids. For Rosie to do the same, she had to grow far away from us and closer to the people in her community who were finally able to protect her.

O
NE BY ONE
, my friends begin to transition into work: Some take jobs at banks on Wall Street or at Manhattan advertising agencies or in federal law enforcement. Jeanine and her boyfriend, George, as well as Sheryl and her beau, Thomas, are hinting at their pending engagements. I take a job at Bruno’s, an Italian restaurant, working all shifts. Every day during my breaks, I scan the classifieds for a job I feel passionately about.

Unfortunately, the only openings at places even remotely dealing with public policy are for typists. Of all the courses I took in high school and college, not one was for typing. No matter how I calculate it, there’s no possible way I can learn how to type eighty words per minute—with a stopwatch and no mistakes—all by myself. Still, I take the train to the interviews in Manhattan, a place that’s romancing me more with every ninety-minute ride on the Long Island Rail Road.

After a few failed interviews, I figure out a way to pass the typing test: Because I’m allowed to practice on the same script and the same typewriter I’ll be using for the test, I take my time to type the script with no mistakes . . . then I place it under my typewriter. Then I roll in a blank sheet of paper, and after the timekeeper starts her watch and leaves the room, I switch out the practice paper with the perfect script. Finally, I get a second interview for a typist position at the New York Junior League, a prestigious organization for young women that works on nonprofit causes. It’s
perfect
.

I show up for the interview in a dark suit and white blouse with dark, low shoes—conservative and easy to foot around Manhattan. I enter the fine-carpeted cherry lobby, ready to dazzle my future boss with information on the statewide policy issues I worked on during my internship at the Senate and my solid letters of recommendation. But when they ask me to take a typing test under the watch of a timekeeper, I know how this will end.

I type a total of thirty-two words in one minute, with twelve mistakes. Then I thank them, grab my bag, and bow my head to quickly leave.

In August I’m called to interview for a position as an advocate for the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. They are located in Jackson Heights, Queens, in the shining new offices that have been converted from the old Bulova watch factory. I take the Long Island Rail Road to the Woodside station, where a shuttle equipped for wheelchairs picks me up and drops me off in front of the EPVA’s office.

Smelling the fresh construction, the prospect of entering this bright building morning after morning adds excitement to my steps heading toward the EPVA’s lobby. There I’m greeted by my potential bosses—all quadriplegic or paraplegic men in wheelchairs who were disabled during their service in the Vietnam and Korean wars. During the interview they tell me they need to fill an entry-level position with someone who can advocate on their behalf on the local and state levels. “We need someone who won’t have a problem making trips to Albany and traveling across Long Island on our behalf,” one explains. “You’ll need to go to the capital at least once a month.” They then go on to tell me that most of their funding comes from a greeting card manufacturing plant they partially own in New Hampshire and that, as a nonprofit, they don’t have the opportunity to pay decent salaries.

I nod. I knew I could continue waitressing in the evenings and on weekends to supplement my income. “This is perfect,” I tell them. “I have contacts up there, and I’m familiar with the time and perseverance it takes to get something passed. Plus, I have my own car.”

The gentlemen glance at each other with raised eyebrows and promise to review my résumé, my letters of recommendation, and my references. The next day, they call me, offering me the title of an associate advocate for seventeen thousand dollars a year, with benefits. I have no concept for what seventeen thousand will get me, and I don’t really care. The only important thing is, I’ve got a job.

I’m fully aware that this is another step toward main-streaming—doing what my peers are doing, regardless of how different my background has been from theirs. After a few months of commuting ninety minutes each way from the Petermans’ to my office, I move into the dark, barred-window basement apartment of a Tudor home in Forest Hills, Queens, with my college friend Reyne. “This place is a firetrap. You couldn’t get a room upstairs?” Cherie says when she comes to visit. I know it’s not fancy, but it’s all I can afford, and the location is convenient for the travel my job demands.

The disabled veterans group sends me to Washington and all around New York State. I advocate publicly and passionately for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights act whose purpose is to remove barriers, societal and structural, for people with disabilities. What inspires me most about this act is that, in its true spirit, it provides opportunities for those who have been held back from mainstreaming and living independently. Every time the phrase
self-sufficiency
is bantered about in lectures or legislative sessions, my commitment grows stronger with the realization that my fight for others to maintain their dignity is exactly the same fight I’ve known all my life.

While lobbying for the veterans in Albany, I meet Alan Hevesi, the Assembly chair of the committee for People with Disabilities, who, as I learn through friendly banter, happens to also live in Queens. Alan is a professor at Queens College and appears genuinely concerned about the development of young public servants. In 1989, when he decides to run for the position of comptroller, the chief fiscal officer of the city, I volunteer for his campaign. Every night for weeks, I stick stamps on envelopes and hand out literature at subway stations during rush hours.

Alan loses the race, but to prepare for his next run, a small group of us band together to organize the RFK Democratic Club, a new political clubhouse, to attract volunteers. I’m designated the founding chairperson . . . and when Bobby Kennedy Jr. joins us at the club’s dedication to his father, I begin to see the payoff of being part of a campaign that is categorized as a long shot.

In April 1991, after two and a half years working for the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, New Jersey Transit recruits me to assist in developing their statewide plan to make their public rail and bus systems accessible to people with disabilities. I spend my time on buses and trains from Queens to Newark, studying how to write a plan to the federal government on behalf of a state agency . . . and it grows clear that, as my career flourishes, I’m going to need a significant understanding of the law.

Every morning, on the walk from Newark’s Penn Station to my office a few blocks away, I glance over at the construction site for Seton Hall University’s new law school building. Day by day, for months, I see the shadow of a building rising slowly behind the train station. When it grows possible to observe its form—all white, steel and glass—I stop by their admissions office and pick up a brochure explaining their unique program called Legal Education Opportunity (LEO). The LEO program is affectionately known as an “affirmative action boot camp,” the admissions officer tells me, and it runs all summer to prepare its students for the
possibility
that they’ll be accepted into Seton Hall’s law school. The brochure explains that, unlike other institutions that require both a competitive LSAT and GPA, Seton Hall’s LEO program considers students with either one or the other. The catch is that applicants need a strong personal story explaining why they couldn’t excel in both requirements.

It’s only for half a second that I waffle, wondering if being twenty-five makes me too old to begin four years of evening law school when most law students my age are already applying for first-year associate jobs. Still . . . the thought of holding a law degree feels like it could be in reach, if I just had an opportunity to prove myself. After writing a personal essay explaining my less-than-stellar GPA, I kiss the envelope for luck and submit my application.

In spring of 1992 I’m accepted. Affirmative action boot camp begins in June.

At the LEO orientation, the law school dean explains to all seventy-six of us that, while it’s unlikely any other law school would have accepted us, Seton Hall sees something in our stories that shows promise. “But this program is going to take an extraordinary commitment from you,” he says. “I need to make it clear that for us to accept you is a risk—law school rankings are based upon many things, including how many students pass the bar examination the first time, and by definition, you’re here because you failed in one of the two indicators that result in high first-time bar passage rates.” He explains that only students who achieve at least a B in the affirmative action boot camp will be admitted into law school . . . and in August of 1992, I learn I made the cut.

I stay full-time at New Jersey Transit and pace myself for a twelve-credit load every semester, grabbing a coffee and a sandwich for dinner from the law school deli before my six o’clock class four nights a week. When class gets out at nine thirty I take the train from Newark to Manhattan’s Penn Station, then the subway and the bus back to Queens. By midnight I’m in bed, knowing the next day will look the same. Some nights, as I’m drifting to sleep, I’m jolted awake by the thought of Rosie. Nothing else has ever compared to the depth of emptiness my heart holds for her. Sure, I’ve mainstreamed professionally and socially . . . but emotionally I’ve never healed. I’ve stifled the reality of the emotional scars that I’ve spent all of my young adulthood ignoring.

The more I learn about policy and the law, the more excited I become to immerse myself in the world of politics. After the half-decade I’ve dedicated to advocating for the rights of the physically challenged, I’m ready for a change. In 1993, the same year Rudy Giuliani runs for New York City mayor, Alan runs for city comptroller . . . and this time, with the support of the field operation that we cultivated over the past few years, he wins.

Alan places me on his transition and inauguration teams. The first few months into his new administration in downtown Manhattan, I work with fierce intensity while juggling law school in Newark. “You’re one of the only people I know who never takes no for an answer,” Alan tells me as he designates me as his director of Intergovernmental Relations, charged with passing his state and city legislative agenda. As far as title and responsibility go, they’re as thrilling as they are daunting for me—a twenty-eight-year-old law student managing a staff and charged with implementing a New York City–wide elected official’s legislative agenda. We successfully secure the passage of ten state laws.

M
Y PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS
gives me the courage to reach out once again to Paul Accerbi . . . something I haven’t tried since I was sixteen, twelve years ago. If I can overcome strong and powerful opposition in state politics, maybe I can convince Paul that I’m a decent young woman who just wants to know who her father is. But this time, rather than writing from my foster home, I take a business card and attach a note extolling my academic and work credentials. I mail it to Julia and Frank Accerbi.
Please kindly pass this along to Paul, wherever he may live
, I write.

One week later, Paul calls me at the office. “If you have lived without a father for twenty-eight years, I see no reason why you would need one now,” he says.

“I feel my age is irrelevant, Paul,” I tell him. “I am someone’s child, and believe I am
your
child. I want to respect your space, and I’m just hoping that you could take a DNA test so I know for sure if you’re my dad. I want nothing from you, really—just to know.” I take a breath. “After the test, I promise: I will leave you alone.” I give him no clue that I’m holding back tears, fearing to tell him the truth: I really do want to get to know him . . . but if I share that, his reaction would only be worse.

“Oh, first you’re pressuring me for answers and now you’re demanding my DNA? I am not taking a DNA test!” His voice crashes through the receiver like thunder. “My life and my decisions are none of your business. Every time you come around you create problems for me! Do you hear me? Never,
ever
contact Julia or me again.” He hangs up.