Life From Scratch (8 page)

The man asked my brother why he was outside. “My mom’s mad at me,” he huffed, leading the social worker to believe Mom had sent Michael outside with malicious intent. In a moment that Mom later told the court was tantamount to kidnapping, the man sped off with Michael, called the authorities, and filed another 51A. The operator instructed him to bring Michael back to the house, though, and we went to bed assuming all had blown over.

In the meantime, the Department of Social Services must have pulled up our history. Later that night, we woke to three bangs on the door. Two police officers and two social workers rushed in. One officer hoisted me from bed and grabbed Michael with his other hand. “Emergency removal,” the officer said, “for the children’s safety.”

Michael yelled and Mom hollered at the officer until her voice cracked, but she was fighting in quicksand; her outburst all but guaranteed a longer placement and more thorough inquisition.

Over the next seven months, we would be placed in three different homes because of this one incident. Each foster home was worse than the last. Mom—who by now had traded her flowing tunics for stiff blazers and calf-length pleated skirts—proved this in court, successfully filing 51As on the last two.

When I asked Mom during one of our weekly supervised visitations why it was taking so long for us to come home, she said, “They’ve got it all backward. They make the parents guilty until proven innocent. Plus they’re dragging their feet, setting the court dates two months apart. But I’m going to get you kids home.”

Even after we came home, Mom still had to update the courts. Long days were spent on wooden benches outside massive courtrooms, waiting for the heavy gavel of judgments. The eyes of the state were everywhere, monitoring our every move. We couldn’t even play in the rain without having paperwork filed.

At night I’d fall asleep to the hum of Mom’s sewing machine while she rushed through odd jobs to keep the little money we had flowing. In the middle of the night, I’d wake to the tap of her thrift shop typewriter. I’d see her at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers, crafting arguments for the next morning’s court sessions. She used her courses in childhood psychology to argue our case in 50-page documents. “If they think I’m not working for welfare, they’ve got another thing coming,” she once declared. “I’m earning it!”

One time, Michael and I crept into the last row of the marble-paved courtroom to watch one of the cases unfold. I held my breath, afraid that the echo of our steps might upset the wrong person and destroy our chances of staying with her. But no one noticed us. Amid a lot of mumbling and paper shuffling, Mom talked about my good grades and Michael’s creativity.

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 butter 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