43 pages • 1-hour read
Etched In Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island
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Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, child abuse, child sexual abuse, graphic violence, cursing, emotional abuse, and death.
Chapter 3 Summary: “And Then There Were Three: Summer to Fall, 1980
Regina and Camille develop tactics and stories to fend off authorities; they have heard horrific things about children in foster care and feel that staying together, even while dealing with Cookie’s neglect and abuse, is better than any alternative. While Regina hates being left alone with Norman and Rosie, she quickly falls into the mother role, spending the first night securing the unlocked windows with sticks and nails, and using old clothes lying around to make pillows for bed time. She stays awake through the night, feeling too unsafe to sleep, but is comforted by the fact that her siblings sleep well. In the morning, Regina makes cereal for Norman and Rosie, but doesn’t eat any herself, fearing they may run out.
For the next few weeks, Regina takes Rosie and Norman to the library each day, where they all escape into their favorite stories. Regina loves reading history as well, and particularly admires Amelia Earhart for her courage and refusal to adhere to social norms. Weeks go by with no sign of Cookie, but Camille stops by one day with chicken and bread, on which Regina gorges. With school approaching, Regina asks Camille and her boyfriend to drive her to a department store to steal some pants. She makes it out the door with them on under her clothes, but then has to outrun and hide from a security guard. In August, the landlord stops by, wondering where Cookie is and why rent isn’t being paid. He leaves, but comes back with a bag of food and refills the oil so the kids have hot water. Immediately, Regina suspects he must have hidden motives, and can’t imagine why anyone would just want to help. Due to exhaustion, lack of nutrition, and occasional consumption of uppers, Regina finds herself growing unhealthily thin and pale and even begins losing her hair.
Shortly before school starts, Cookie returns to drive the kids around to various dumpsters, where they search for “new” clothes. She then leaves again. When she next returns, she announces that she and her boyfriend broke up, and Regina is instantly filled with dread at the thought of her mother being home again. Her instincts turn out to be correct, as Cookie flies into a rage when Rosie accidentally drops a glass and wakes Cookie from sleeping. Cookie grabs and throws Rosie, yelling at her, as Regina jumps on Cookie and defends her sister. When Cookie turns her attention on Regina, she kicks her, hits her, and throws her, calling her names and pushing her face down into the broken glass. Regina runs, covered in blood and bruises, and hides behind a dumpster, but comes home hours later, knowing she can’t leave her siblings behind.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Breaking Pact: November 1980”
A few days before Regina’s 14th birthday, her social studies teacher stops her to ask why she’s failing the class. He appears empathetic, suggesting that he knows something is wrong, but Regina panics and runs. When she gets home, she finds a social worker at the house and her siblings packing their belongings. The social worker sees Regina’s bruises and presses her to tell the truth, so Regina finally breaks down and tells her everything. Suddenly overwhelmed with guilt knowing that her siblings could be separated, she calls Camille, who comes over to help. When Cookie comes home, she pretends she did nothing wrong and says little to the children as they pack. Regina and Camille are put in one car and Norman and Rosie in another, and Regina feels like she has just ruined the family. Cookie comes outside, screaming that she will get the kids back, but Regina knows she just wants her food stamp money, and has a feeling they won’t be returning.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Failure to Thrive: November 1980; 1971 to 1974”
Regina and Camille are taken to a temporary foster home that belongs to an older couple and their teenage children. The mother, Addie, is a prim and well-to-do woman, and her house is immaculate. Regina knows she shouldn’t get used to any of the privileges she is about to enjoy, and she wonders about Norman and Rosie’s whereabouts. The girls are told the rules of the house, which differ for them because they’re foster children, and are told to wait on the porch if they come home and nobody is there. When Regina unpacks, she pulls out two statues of Jesus that she takes with her everywhere. Addie notices and tells Regina about a church nearby, but Regina expresses her doubt in the existence of a God who lets bad things happen. Addie argues that people do bad things, not God, and Regina says nothing more.
The next day, the social worker comes over to help Regina and Camille fill out affidavits for their emancipation from Cookie, and for Rosie and Norman to be permanently removed from her care. It doesn’t take long for the details of the abuse to surface in the children’s memories and make their way to the legal document. For Regina, this begins with a memory from 1971, when she was four years old.
Regina recalls how she and her older sisters were taken from a foster home where they were happy and well cared for, and brought to live with Cookie in an apartment above a glue factory. Regina was young and had mainly been raised by her foster parents, and she only remembered Cookie from a visit last Christmas. She thus referred to her as “Christmas Mama.” Regina immediately sensed something foreboding and intimidating about Cookie and made it clear that she did not want to stay with her, but she had no choice. Regina’s older sisters were visibly sad and knew what was coming.
Cookie greeted the girls with false warmth and a new bicycle for Regina. When Regina asked for her foster father, Cookie grabbed her and locked her in a room for days, only letting her out to use the bathroom or eat. When she was finally let out, it was to take care of Norman, who was a toddler at the time. Regina learned how to dress, feed, and take Norman to the bathroom, while Cookie spent most of her time with Norman’s father. Norman’s father also beat Cookie, and she would then turn and beat the children. At one point, Regina ran away into the nearby woods, and only came out when she heard her foster sister calling. Unfortunately, her foster family brought her right back to Cookie’s apartment. Cookie severely beat Regina and tied her to the radiator in the bedroom.
Regina started kindergarten, and Cookie began dating someone new, which quickly ended after her last child, Rosie, was born. One night, police found Norman wandering outside alone. As a result, social services removed the children from the home and separated them. Regina and her older sisters were sent to live with a family where Regina was sexually abused, and later Regina and her brother were sent to another family, while her other sisters were separated from them. Regina hears that Rosie is refusing to eat and experiencing failure to thrive as a result of being separated from her family, and there’s nothing she can do.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
Regina Calcaterra captures the instability and trauma of her childhood through setting, imagery, and emotional detail. The children live in constantly changing environments, from a comfortable, healthy home to an apartment over a glue factory where abuse is rampant. Regina describes the terror of avoiding social workers and other authorities, carefully creating excuses for their mother’s absence while ensuring that everyone is clean and fed. These scenes capture a tragic irony, as the young Regina, not knowing what to expect from the foster system, actively works to prevent her own rescue. This irony emphasizes the Failures of the Child Welfare System, which Calcaterra argues has never been a reliable source of safety for children facing abuse and neglect.
Character development is central in these chapters, as Calcaterra works to show each sibling’s individual personality. Regina, the middle child, is frequently targeted by her mother, likely due to resentment toward Regina’s father, and often denied outings with the family. She feels as though she was robbed of a childhood by abuse and by the need to parent her younger siblings: “I have never been a kid” (41). After spending months caring for her siblings, Regina is shocked by her thinning appearance caused by neglect and stimulants, but she still assumes a motherly role, fiercely protecting her younger siblings and learning to provide for them, sometimes at the expense of her own meals. All of this demonstrates her strength of character even at a young age, foreshadowing her later role in public service and highlighting the theme of Finding Purpose in Suffering. At just four years old, she cares for her three-year-old brother, Norman, demonstrating responsibility and awareness beyond her years. Cookie’s own bitterness, self-hatred, and abandonment issues manifest as cruelty toward the children, creating a vicious cycle of abuse. As a result, Ending the Cycle of Abuse becomes an important goal in the children’s lives.
The plot is driven by tension and survival as Calcaterra reflects on her early years. These years are also the time when she experienced the most severe abuse by Cookie, and Calcaterra does not shy away from describing these experiences in detail. Cookie represents the opposite of a motherly figure in all respects. Her brief return only reinforces the children’s fear rather than bringing comfort or relief: “Her presence has released a pollution that I can feel settling like grit on my skin” (49). This metaphor conveys how thoroughly Cookie fails to provide what the children need from a parent: Without her, they risk starvation, but her presence makes them feel even less safe. Calcaterra also uses seemingly small moments to demonstrate wider, harsher truths about her reality growing up and the way her mentality shifted under this toxic environment. When the landlord offers help, Regina immediately mistrusts him:
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 (47).
Amidst these horrors, moments of joy at the beach provide relief, where the children build sandcastles, catch clams, and experience fleeting normalcy. Even in this place of refuge, though, the reality of their lives intrudes, for example when Rosie asks if they have to pay for mud. Regina notes, “At seven years old, Rosie has come to understand that we’re poor” (50). Just as Regina has learned to mistrust generosity, even the young Rosie has learned that nothing good comes without a cost. These chapters establish the extremes of Regina’s early life, illustrating both the trauma endured and how Resilience Through Family Bonds becomes her survival.
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