Memoir| Memories

The Despair of Nowhere

a childhood memory

Sometimes life is hopeless, as hopeless as the day our poultry truck got two flat tires and slipped off a dusty, barren hillside road outside Provost, Utah. It was muggy and hot, Davey and I were hungry, and my back was killing me because I had to sit perched on a narrow, tin gasoline can in the front of the truck bed for five days while my Dad drove the thousands of miles away from his past as a small time gambling bookie at a candy store in the South Bronx to his future as a gambling Dairy Queen milkman in Pasadena.

And we had almost made it, almost made it across the country in a two-hundred-dollar poultry truck that stunk like rotten meat and swarmed with sweaty flies when the tires exploded, and my dad had to stop in the middle of what seemed like nowhere.

“Is this California?” asked Davey.

“Shut up!”

“What’s wrong?” asked my mother.

“Getta out of the car,” my dad snapped.

Davey and my mom got out first. Then I crawled over the seat and joined them on the side of the road. And there it was, not just one flat tire, but two. Two defective tires had gone limp from miles of wear and tear, and it seemed like the back left tire was bleeding a thin line of brownish-red blood from the hub cap. I felt sorry for it and started to cry because I thought it must have really suffered a long time before finally giving in here on the side of the road where no cars had passed us for what seemed like an eternity.

My mom must have seen my anguish because I noticed she, too, was feeling as hopeless as the wearied Firestone that buckled under the weight of our lives.

“Do we have a spare?” asked my mom.

“There might be one in the back. But not two. Maróne mío. Get over here!” he yelled to my brother, who was throwing rocks down the side of the hill.

“Get the tire out of the back,” my dad said.

“There’s all this stuff there,” my mom replied.

“Empty it out. We’re gonna have to throw it all away.”

“All of it?” asked Davy.

“The truck’s too heavy. We don’t have any choice.”

“Our toys?” I asked.

“Everything,” he snapped.

“Mom?” Davy pleaded.

“Do what he says.”

And I had to throw away all my toys. “They were too heavy,” he said. Too heavy to carry into the future. My brother handed them to me one by one, starting with my brand new red Pepsi Cola machine, the one my Aunt Pat gave me before leaving. I held it high over my head and tossed it down the incline, watching it slide and bounce a few times before halting. Then it was my bicycle, which I couldn’t lift over my head.

“Just roll it,” my brother said.

“How?”

“Like this,” he said, taking it and pushing it off down the hill.

Then came the games, Candy Land and Parcheesi and Checkers and Chutes and Ladders and Sorry–one by one flung into the air and out of our lives.

Then Davey’s perfect red fire wagon and basketball, and football and Nok hockey. And then came my dolls, Thumbelina and Howdy Doody. And I didn’t want to throw them away, couldn’t bring myself to do it. So Davey did it for me.

He took Howdy and Thumby and walked a few feet so I couldn’t see, then pitched them into the air. When he was done, and our toys were all strewn out down the hill, he came up and put his arm around me, and we stood there for what seemed like an eternity just staring at our toys, the little red fire wagon on its side and Howdy Doody face down in the dirt.

They all looked so helpless, just laying there with nobody playing with them. My brother squeezed my arm, and I could see his tears trickle down and puddle with the snot under his nose.

There we were, above all our toys, out in the middle of nowhere, just dust and flies, the stench of dead meat on the side of the road to the future.

My friends and family often ask me why I hold onto things past their relevance to my current life. I have a hard time letting go, shaped by a childhood of abuse and trauma.

I know that holding onto these things past their due date isn’t healthy for me, but it’s easier said than done. Every item, trinket, tchotchke holds a memory, a memory that has become part of me. I’m not sure who I’d be without them. At the same time, I’m tired of constantly reliving the pain and hurt that some of these items illicit in me.

I know how easily one bump, one wrong turn down life’s road can change everything. So, I hold on tight to everything — books, games, photos, albums, clothes, shoes — until another turbulent twist and turn on life’s journey rips them out from underneath me.