When I Was Small...

This post is for Aziner, who asked me to expand on something noted in a comment.

I love and loathe the smell of diesel gasoline. When I was small, 9 actually, we were living in a rundown, dilapidated home in Camden, NJ. Honestly, I do not remember the sun ever shining, but found a continual gray layer of soot, or something hanging about. Maybe it is just in my mind, but even the day we waged war with our "super-soaker 35s," I cannot recall the sunlight. We were a large family, 6 of us including my mother, and we shared the home with another family, they being the primary owners.

The things I remember from that house are like a multitude of shadows against the nape of my neck: rats in the kitchen, what seemed like thousands of black, plastic trash bags full of dirty, mildew-ridden clothes, a pot-bellied stove to keep us warm at night as we four children huddled onto the pull-out couch and slept abreast of one another, a very leaky roof and the creak of an old floor beneath my little feet. My father lived an hour away in a beach house with his girlfriend at the time; when we saw him on the weekends, it was like sanctuary.

Imagaine our surprise when my mother told us we were moving to California. The first time she said it, we were astonished and overcome with joy. We got pulled out of school, packed our bags and.... nothing happened. We stayed at home. We waited and watched and fell silent in letdown. It happened this way three times. Each time we went back to school, I fought to gain the respect I once had, before the California Dream had taken my petty life and wrung from it the hope of a boy.

Then, in the Spring of 1991, my mother said it the fourth time. "We're moving to California." My older sister laughed. I smirked. We giggled and thought to ourselves, "yeah right." The next day, we came home to my mother waving Greyhound tickets in her hand. They went from Camden, NJ to Anaheim, CA with 15 stops in between. The trek was going to take 3 1/2 days and we were leaving late that night. For the remainder of the day, we packed up our meager belongings, throwing things away and giving up toys we had spent the entirety of our young lives accumulating. I gave away all of my baseball cards, with the exception of some of my favorites, tucked between the pages of a book I read quite often: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

That night, we stood bundled up and shivering in the darkness. The man we lived with, whose name I cannot even now recall, pulled us up to the bus-stop and drove away in silence. There were no long good-byes. Only hope. And fear. And this crazy idea in the head of my not-so-sober mother. We never told my dad we were leaving.

The next three days were filled with bumps in the road, very little sleep and vacant eyes looking out of dirty windows. I can recall the smell of diesel gasoline at every single stop, the motor running and headlights on. The horribly cramped bathrooms. Changing my little brother, who was only 14 months at the time, on the seats of the bus. The silver, metal TVs nailed to the chairs in the lobbies. We pretending to watch them, when, in reality we could not afford it. Noticing how the telephone company changed now and again at the pay phones along the road. Gazing at the box that said "Maile Freil. Anaheim, CA" We didn't even have an address. I can recount to you the men my mom rode along-side of, their crisp and gnarled faces, their slurred words in the darkness, the fear of my sisters next to me.

Even then, when I was so young, I was given this.... responsibility. My kid brother Keoki is only 11 months younger than myself and I can remember encouraging him to move forward, to board the bus, to eat his food, to drink water. My mother relied on me and Pua to keep everyone in order, to prepare the make-shift meals, to be on time. I was this Lord Protector. It was more than a side-kick role with my sister. We were partners. Parents.

When we rolled into CA, my uncle was there to meet us. We were dirty, scared and tired. He kissed us, all of us, right on the head and got us into his home, a hot shower and clean clothes. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

Since then, I rode a Greyhound once -- back to NJ, without a parent, when I was 11. I had my younger siblings and we visited my father. Again, I would not trade those memories for another, as it was an education in what not to do with the children I may someday be blessed with.

So every time my nose picks up that diesel smell in the fog, I think of a Greyhound bus, a cold morning somewhere in the Midwest, a lost family running toward a vague and inconspicuous future. It is haunting, but not unwelcome.