Life From Scratch (9 page)

The New Ord
e
r

I
HAVE NO RECOLLECTION
of saying goodbye to Mom. I don’t know if they had to tear us out of her arms or if we obediently wheeled our canvas suitcases toward our new lives with only a sideways glance over our shoulders. Our first moments with the Dumonts in the spring of 1990 are almost as elusive. We met them in an office building, likely the Department of Social Services, where someone had set out a giant cheese pizza and a plastic clamshell of cupcakes from Stop & Shop. I couldn’t help but wonder what Mom would say about that.

A tall crane of a woman in a white pantsuit took a group photo. She must have been the social worker. Patricia and Pierre flanked the edges with their three daughters, Lauren, Heather, and Antoinette, sandwiched between them. The oldest, Lauren, was already grown and out of the house, working on her doctorate in Boston; Heather, 21, was wrapping up her senior year at Duke University; and Antoinette (or Toni as they called her), was 16 and the only one still living at home.

Michael and I were in the front row, short, skinny, and conspicuously Italian. Our new family towered around us like a grove of trees. Pierre topped out the group with his chestnut, “Leave It to Beaver” locks and dimpled chin, in a wool sweater with elbow patches. Like their father, the girls were unusually tall, with long, rustling masses of strawberry blond and auburn hair. Though Patricia was the shortest, she was still a full head taller than Michael and me—her high-waisted slacks emphasizing the canopy of her hips.

Taking a family photo with strangers was uncomfortable enough, but then the crane suggested Patricia put her hand on my shoulder—my only distinct memory of this day.

“Come together now,” she said.

Patricia considered, her plump hand hovering awkwardly near my shirtsleeve. In that brief pause, Michael threw his arm around me. He seemed so grown-up all of a sudden, so much older than his 12 years. I slumped toward him in relief.

They were so kind to take us in, filled with the best of intentions. And yet, I don’t think anyone could have prepared them for the challenges that come with taking on two half-grown kids that psychologists had once assessed as “overly identified with their mother.” We came with all kinds of “baggage,” and almost none of it fit in our suitcases.

Our new home was a giant white farmhouse on Rhode Island’s coast, several hours away. While we unpacked, Michael discovered that Mom had tucked a folded sheet of butcher’s paper into his suitcase. She’d traced her hands on one side of the paper, doing it twice—once for Michael and once for me. On the other side she encouraged us to trace our hands, as though our palms were touching, so we could “always be close.” But pressing our hands against the outline of her hands somehow made the distance greater.

Though there was room enough for Michael and me to have our own bedrooms, Patricia set up two twin beds in an east-facing bedroom with rose-embossed wallpaper, echoing the arrangement we’d had in the living room at Mom’s. I was glad she did; the thought of sleeping in a different room than Michael secretly terrified me.

Even with our beds so close that we could hold hands if we wanted to, I began to have vivid, reoccurring nightmares of not being able to find Michael or Mom.

Those first few weeks I woke up several times a night in a cold sweat, instinctively looking for Mom’s silhouette at our old kitchen table. I could only fall asleep once I saw Michael’s sleeping form faintly outlined in the moonlight. The steady draw of his breath always soothed me.

The Dumonts’ house was scattered with cardboard boxes—some crammed full, others open and waiting. There were mounds of Bubble Wrap in the halls and rolls of packing tape scattered along every open surface. Patricia and Pierre explained that they were mid-shuffle, preparing for a move to Atlanta, Georgia. As soon as school got out, we’d be leaving again. Moving wasn’t a big deal for my new family; they were regular globe-trotters, having raised their children in other exotic locales like Morocco, Jamaica, and, of course, Venezuela.

Pierre typically changed jobs every two to three years. Companies hired him to consult on the finances of large projects; when the projects ended, so did his contract. He’d worked in nearly every industry on nearly every continent. Moving and exploring was simply a way of life, a conscious effort to absorb the best the world had to offer.

Patricia and her three daughters were accustomed to the nomadic lifestyle that accompanied Pierre’s constant career shifts. Toni said they never settled anywhere long enough to throw out their moving boxes. She also said I should be glad we were just moving to Atlanta, and not halfway around the world.

But it might as well have been.

Living in a household of half-packed boxes made the arrangement feel temporary, more like purgatory than a permanent home. I imagined that if I prayed really hard, Michael and I might be released for good behavior and permitted to fly northward to our
real
home.

Though the Dumonts were nice enough, I missed my curtained castle and Mom’s bear hugs. I missed the steady purr of her sewing machine on the dining table, and wondered how she’d thread her needle without my younger eyes. More than anything, I missed cooking with her. And so I begged the universe to send the Dumonts to Georgia without us when the last box was packed.

Michael said prayers weren’t going to solve anything. He called Mom every day, ignoring her advice to focus on our new lives, and demanded to come home. He’d memorized her number, and dialed her on an old rotary phone after the house was asleep, huddled over it to muffle the noise. I was always too scared to talk, but I’d listen, my ear pressed next to his, hungry for the sound of Mom’s voice. Every time Michael reached out, Mom told him the same thing: “You shouldn’t be calling. You need to focus on your new life.”

Turns out this response was nothing more than the advice of Mom’s lawyer: Years later, I discovered that he’d advised her to cut off communications with us to ease our transition. Though we couldn’t quite see the puppet strings, we could tell her words didn’t ring quite true. She was tender and loving, and always asked how we were. But if we listened carefully, we could hear that something was broken. She always got off the phone a little too quickly.

I stayed out of Michael’s way after those calls.

Ultimately, Michael was right; no amount of prayers kept moving day away. One dewy morning in late May, a fleet of burly men pulled up to the house with two of the longest trucks I’d ever seen. By noon they’d loaded our entire lives into those yawning vessels, one box at a time. Early the next morning, while stars still pierced the darkness, Patricia, Pierre, Antoinette, Michael, and I piled into their Volvo station wagon and began the drive to Atlanta.

As the car bobbed and weaved from state to state, from hotel room to hotel room, I felt Mom slipping farther and farther away. I held my large white teddy bear close, imagining what she was doing. Had she donated my dolls that I couldn’t fit in my suitcase? Was she baking a pie and, if so, who would she give the scraps to?

The miles piled up, sweeping me along until I finally fell asleep. Before I knew it, we’d washed ashore, right up to the foot of our new home.

The two-story brick colonial sat at the top of a steep, ivy-flanked driveway, more castle than house. Michael and I exchanged glances when we saw it. I was certain our entire apartment in Boston could have fit in the garage alone. On the first floor, there were two living rooms: a formal one that would be used to entertain the odd guest and a less formal one, reserved for Christmas morning. Both rooms were laid out with curvy couches and plush chairs, Tunisian coffee tables, and woven Oriental rugs.

Outside I caught a glimpse of the terraced backyard, which contained a basketball hoop and a large wooden swing set. The Dumonts didn’t eat their meals in the kitchen the way Mom did. There was a dining room
and
a breakfast room, decorated with clay pottery from Venezuela, fleur-de-lis tablecloths, and Moroccan paintings depicting colorful, dirt-lined markets.

Two stairways led to the second floor. The back staircase connected two playrooms—one long, the other square, filled with giant baskets of Legos, a coloring station, and oversized couches. Down the hall, Michael and I each had our own bedroom.

My room was a vision of lavender and lace. Under a large, sunny window I had a white table and my very own sewing machine. I held my breath when I first stepped into the room for fear the vision might vanish. I soon discovered another tiny room that Toni called a “walk-in closet.” It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen: a secret world made just for me.

Clothes—thick, gauzy, and soft—lined the walls. I’d never seen so many clothes in my life. The way they draped reminded me of the curtain Mom had sewn around my old bed. Many nights I’d bring my pillow and blanket into the closet and curl up on the floor. If I closed my eyes, I could almost believe I was home again.

That fall I entered sixth grade in a large public school. Haircuts were the first order of business. Michael’s shaggy locks became a new crew cut that made his ears stick out. I went through an overhaul as well. My hair once danced across my lower back; now it barely flitted across my shoulders. We both got braces; month by month, the gap between my front teeth closed.

The calendar soon swelled with after-school activities. I signed up for Girl Scouts and horseback riding; Michael joined Little League and took karate classes. For the first time in my life, I felt like I could do anything,
be
anything. Sure, Mom had told me I could do whatever I wanted in life, but Patricia and Pierre had the means to make it possible.

We spent what free time we had with Toni, who was a junior in high school. Though we both looked up to her, she and Michael quickly grew close.

TV was off-limits at the Dumonts’, so Michael, Toni, and I spent our evenings building Lego worlds and rewriting classic fairy tales. On the pages of our notebooks—complete with doodles—Rapunzel became a flatulent recluse. These antics, which often sent us into hysterics, were just what we kids needed to grow close. Moreover, Pierre and Patricia giggled at them, too. I missed Connor, Tim, and Grace terribly, but goofing off with Toni kept my mind off the aching, hollow feeling in the center of my chest.

At school, the slick, popular kids called me “Sushi” instead of “Sasha.” I didn’t know what the name meant and decided not to look it up. I made friends with a willowy girl from Russia called Alyona, one of the first people I’d met who grew up in another country. Kids mocked her thick accent and tittered when she began wearing a training bra before anyone else. I couldn’t understand why they teased her; I thought she was beautiful and that her halting speech was musical. We drew together during lunch, ignoring our sad trays littered with greasy pizza, corn dogs, or sloppy joes.

Now in seventh grade, Michael had an easier time making friends. Mom used to say Michael’s charisma was the one good thing he got from our father. If I was “by the book,” Michael was the sort to tear the pages out to make paper airplanes. With his dimples and slate-blue eyes, and at 13 going on 20, his boyish body was starting to betray hard lines of lean muscle. Girls didn’t stand a chance. Not long after we settled into the neighborhood, Michael had a girlfriend and a small band of friends he phoned at all hours of the night.