by T W Neal
The next day, we find out that Pop, who’s assured Mom we’ll have rental to go to until the house is fully purchased, has actually been living in the van he’s currently driving. He’s running out of money for the motel, so we’re going to have to “camp” in the van.
More lies and another setback, but Mom smiles bravely and tells us, “It’s only for a couple of weeks until we get the house, and it’s not the rainy season yet. We’ve done this before and it’ll be fun, right, kids?”
We’re at the county park in the van, a wind-whipped beach in Kapa`a next to the library, when Pop comes back from the pay phone after a call with the real estate agent. “Gigi and Grandpa Jim have decided not to buy the house. They’ve pulled out of the escrow.” Mom’s sitting in the passenger seat, and he tells her this through the rolled-down window in a flat voice, his eyes averted.
Holy crap! “Buying a house” was a ploy to get my parents back together—and it worked!
Mom bursts into tears of rage, jumping out of the van to stalk up and down the parking lot, yelling. “Sick, malicious fucks! Those assholes, goddamn it! How could they do this to me, to their grandchildren!”
Why isn’t she mad at Pop for lying to us? Doesn’t she see they were probably all in on it together? But that can’t be right. Pop knows he couldn’t take care of us by himself, without their house and their help . . .
I scoop Anita up and press her against my chest, a hand over her ear to keep her from hearing Mom’s screaming bad words as Pop tries to hug her. She throws him off, sobbing, and stomps away with him in pursuit.
“Come on, Bonny. Let’s go to the library.” I get out of the van, holding crying Anita. My toddler sister is a soft, sweet bundle of vulnerable, and she’s too young to understand all this craziness. She shouldn’t have to be frightened by what’s going on. Bonny has to skip to keep up with me as I head toward the library, a sanctuary in good times and bad.
As usual, the small concrete block building is almost empty. I carry Anita to the children’s section, and we sit on the carpet in front of the rows of picture books. Bonny lies down on her back next to me, inserts her finger into her mouth, and twines her hair around her finger with sniffling Anita cuddled against her side as I read both sisters a story.
I read four Bill Peet books in a row, showing their funny illustrations and using my special character voices and everything. Eventually Anita is calm enough to stay with Bonny and her own book, and I can go get something from the Adult section.
“Haven’t seen you in a while.” Mrs. Rapozo smiles over her half-glasses. “Missed my best customer. Welcome back.”
It’s the first time I feel like somebody notices or cares that I’m here, and it matters more than it should—because now we’re broke and trapped on Kauai, a place where rentals are scarce and jobs are scarcer—and the winter rains are coming.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Van Camping in Winter
Van living on Kauai again
Age: 14, Moloa`a, Kauai, 1979
“At least we’re sober,” Mom says as we set up a tent for Bon and me to sleep in remote, barely habited Moloa`a, a turn in the road outside of Kilauea. The family that bought Keiki is letting us squat in their empty field.
“Yay, awesome.” I try to fit one long aluminum tube into another for the rigging of the big old canvas tent we’ve had since Haena, moldy from being stored in a friend’s garage. The Moloa`a campsite’s rugged, with no usable running water or toilet, a ton of mosquitoes, and right next to a muddy stream. Mom, Pop, and Anita sleep in the van on the bed in back, and Bonny and I are in the canvas tent we set up.
Bonny and I are used to California comforts by now, and I’m painfully conscious of everything about our situation and terrified the kids at my new school will find out how we’re living; we’re homeless, though Mom and Pop continue to call it “camping,” as if we’ve opted to live this way as a fun vacation.
Gigi and Grandpa Jim, apparently feeling bad about pulling out of the home purchase, and worried about how Bonny and I will do in “those native schools,” pay for tuition at a little alternative private school just outside Kapa`a called Island School.
Each morning, Mom and Pop drive Bonny and me to school in the van, and drop us off in front of the dilapidated building. I hop out of the van nonchalantly, as if I wasn’t just brushing my teeth in a parking lot and rinsing out of a canteen, hoping I won’t need a shower for a day or so when we can go to the public park and use the cold outdoor facilities. I don’t let Mom fill up the family water jugs at the hose on the school’s grounds, worried that someone will figure out why they’re doing that.
And at school, I pretend all is well—and for those hours, it is.
Oddball, smart haole kids are the norm at Island School, and for the first time at a school on Kauai, I feel like I really belong.
I love Morning Circle, where we all lie on our backs and do a guided visualization, then start the day with yoga exercises. With ten kids per grade, it’s a tight-knit group, and I make some new friends—Megan, Mike, Karen, Jonathan, Kate, Emma, Brian, Greg, Adam, and Bryan. We call our teachers by their first names: Peggy, Tom, Nancy, and Lindsay. We do group learning projects, like a whole class, multi-week game of being settlers taking Velcro-backed “wagons” across the West to Oregon, calculating our journey using math and navigation. For science, we sample pond water in a nearby ditch, uncovering a whole world of tiny wriggling things, and count ghost crab populations on the nearby beach.
School is where I feel good, and I continue to do well. I find mentors in my teachers, and sometimes I even go home and have meals with them and their families—but I don’t tell them we’re camping, and I like to think no one knows.
We go to a lot of twelve step meetings, too, during which Bon and I read in the van and babysit Anita. Pop’s hours at the dive shop are not enough to live on, even with food stamps, so Mom starts cleaning houses and mowing lawns with Anita in tow.
The change of season progresses with the usual big surf and heavy rains. One day shortly after my fourteenth birthday in January, Mom swings by in the van to pick us up after school. She’s frowning, worried, her brown hair coiling into curls from the damp of the rain pouring outside. “We have to keep an eye on the stream next to the tent. The ground’s kind of low there. We might have to move if it gets any higher.”
The rain increases to a roar during the night. Bonny and I lie awake, trying to keep anything from touching the canvas sides of the tent where it will immediately get soaked. It’s too loud and scary to sleep, and suddenly Pop unzips the flap and sticks his sopping head inside. He hands us a couple of big black trash bags. “Put your swimsuits on and cover up with these. The stream’s flooding, and we have to get out of here!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
A Flood and a Big Surprise
Age: 14, Wainiha, Kauai, 1979
The danger of flash flooding carrying all of us away in the middle of the night is very real. We’ve seen it before in Wainiha, and hear of it annually elsewhere. Bonny and I throw on our suits and push our heads and arms through the garbage bags as makeshift raingear. We begin to tear down the tent and throw all our soaked worldly belongings into the van as the stream, brown and menacing, overflows its banks mere feet away.
Mom turns on the van’s engine and aims the headlights at the tent. Three-year-old Anita sits in the open sliding doorway and holds a flashlight on us as well, as the four of us frantically pack up and tear down. Rolling up my sleeping bag inside the wet tent even as it begins to collapse around me, the situation strikes me as funny.
“The Wacky Wilson family, winning at life again!” I giggle, shivering in my swimsuit and garbage bag raincoat.
“Wild Weird Wilsons whining,” Bonny giggles in helpless hysteria, and soon Mom and Pop are laughing as we call out variations on our last name. “Wet Wilsons. Wino Wilsons. Wily Wilsons. Wonderful Waffle-loving Wilsons!”
Somehow the combination of mirth and adrenaline carry
us until we’ve piled the soaked, muddy tent, bedding, clothes, and our battered suitcases back into the van. Dripping, panting, the five of us get into the van where it’s parked on a higher elevation beside the road.
Laughter dies down to snorting as we wrap up to get warm in our designated towels. The van smells like mud and body odor, and it’s steamy with our closeness. The headlights shine through the pouring rain and black, dripping jungle to illuminate the stream, a brown flood spreading to cover our former campsite. The sight makes me shiver and I tighten my towel.
“What next?” Mom says. “It’s two in the morning, and we need showers and somewhere to sleep.”
“Let’s go to Serenity House,” Pop says.
This dormitory-like building above Kapa`a is where Pop went to get sober when he eventually decided to—it’s a “halfway house” that provides lodging to people in recovery. I’ve already attended numerous meetings there with Mom and Pop. They’ve firmly grasped onto “the program” as a place to get support rather than their drinking and using friends.
Pop drives us to the Serenity House parking lot. The program’s building is shut up tight, so we dry off, change out of our bathing suits into semi-dry clothes, and with involved maneuvering, figure out how a family of five can lie down together in a van to sleep.
Laughter bonded us, and no one is grumpy even though we’re uncomfortable.
I fall asleep like tumbling down a lava tube, and wake up when dawn is gray in the windows, fogged over with condensation from our wet clothing and shared breath. I sneak out of the van, looking for a bathroom.
From the parking lot of the halfway house, there’s a view over the bluff to the ocean. As often happens on Kauai, the sun breaks over the ocean and through the clouds like a lighthouse blasting apart fog, reflecting the sky off the ocean in a glorious panorama that gives life to the conditions of the night before. I wander down the damp grass and stare at the sunrise, breathing in the morning, peeing behind a bush, and wishing for a shower.
We squat in the van in the parking lot outside of Serenity House for a couple of weeks, sneaking in for showers after the residents are all in their meetings, and filling our water jugs at the hose on the side of the building. Getting to school is an escape that ends too quickly; in the evenings, we all attend meetings.
I sit near the window of the cigarette-smoke-filled room, trying to be invisible, as I listen to “Hi, I’m an alcoholic” stories of domestic abuse, crime and the lengths alcoholics will go to to get a drink. These awful tales of “experience, strength, and hope” actually make me feel better about our situation. At least we’re together, and Mom and Pop really are trying.
One Sunday, Mom and Pop drive us in to church. We’ve dropped out of “organized religion” and the program is the new religion—but this particular day, we go to Catholic church in Kapa`a.
“Why are we here?” I whisper to Mom as we sidle into a wooden pew, sitting down in front of a mildewy hymnal and unfamiliar padded kneeler.
“Pop wants us to go,” Mom whispers back. “Try to hear from God.” She has a funny tightness around her eyes. Gigi is Catholic, so maybe Pop’s wanting a taste of that spirituality from his past—but I can tell something’s up. I may not be doing pupil checks anymore, but I’ve made it a practice to monitor all of Mom and Pop’s moves in order to be prepared.
We muddle through the service: standing, reciting, kneeling, praying. I’m curious about this religion, looking around at the stained-glass windows telling unfamiliar stories. Wind-whipped coconut palms outside cast shadows on them in a strange juxtaposition. The bloodied, agonized sculpture of Jesus on the cross, his eyes rolled heavenward, isn’t appealing—but I enjoy the calm, rehearsed feeling of the service. The recitations, the singing, the whole process printed out in a booklet—all of it gives me a timeless feeling of peaceful predictability. The stories told in the stained-glass window scenes seem like they’ve been there forever, and they will last forever. I like things that don’t change or disappear. Maybe I’ll be Catholic when I grow up.
We get back into the van outside the church; Pop and Mom get in the front seats, as usual, me on the storage bench, and Anita and Bonny are on the bed in back.
“We need to have a family confab,” Pop says.
I brace myself. Supposedly we all get to express ourselves in “family confabs” but really, this is just how Mom and Pop roll out bad news.
“We have something exciting to tell you.” Pop’s eyes are suspiciously shiny, like he’s going to cry. “Your mom’s pregnant!”
Collective shock. Bonny and I turn to each other, our mouths falling open. Mom looks down, pleating the fabric of her muumuu with her fingers.
The wrongness of the situation roars up through me and bursts out of my mouth. “Are you fucking kidding me? You guys can’t even take care of the kids you have!”
“That isn’t for you to pass judgment on,” Pop says. “We’re the parents.” He glances around the emptying church parking lot, decides we better get on the road, and turns on the van. So much for the family confab.
“If you were acting like parents, you guys would have jobs and we’d have a house. On welfare, five of us living in a car, and you’re pregnant? How did you even do that? Gross!” I address my comments to Mom. She’s the one who betrayed me by getting back together with Pop.
She still won’t meet my eyes. She wraps her arms protectively over her waist, like whoever’s in there can hear me. We’re driving down the hill from the church toward the main highway.
“Did you mean to get pregnant?” I continue, firing my words like bullets. “Seriously, you thought this was a good time to have a baby? Or did you think about anybody but yourselves?”
“Shut up!” Mom finally yells at me. “You’re fourteen years old, you don’t know anything about it.”
“I know that you can keep from having a baby using something called birth control, and you can get rid of a pregnancy with something called abortion. So why don’t you do all of us a favor and get one?” My cheeks feel hot but icy. I’m going to vomit. I can’t believe I just said what I did. I think abortion’s wrong, but another baby right now? This is crazy.
“You crossed the line, you little bitch!” Pop yanks the wheel to the side and slams on the brakes, pulling the vehicle off the road. His face is red and veiny, and if he could reach me he’d be hitting me. “Get out of the fucking car!”
Mom puts her hands over her face, and the younger girls put the bed’s pillows over their heads. Everyone hates me for calling bullshit on this, but I can’t believe they think the situation is remotely okay. I already feel sorry for what I said, but also believe the truth of it: Mom and Pop can’t take care of the kids they have, let alone a new baby!
I yank down on the handle of the side door and jump out. “You guys are crazy! I hate you!”
Pop guns the engine. The rusty van spits gravel as it pulls away, the door still ajar.
“Oh my God! I can’t believe this!” I watch them pull away.
I burst into tears and stumble off the side of the road into shoulder-deep buffalo grass. I thrash straight into it, heedless, desperate to hide. I fall abruptly into an empty, dry old sugarcane irrigation ditch hidden by the vegetation. I burrow down into the trench, crying hard and hating myself for being so mean and angry, hating what my life is like, hating Mom and Pop.
All of my efforts to make something better for myself seem doomed. I’m going to have to take care of this baby like I had to take care of Anita, and my responsibilities will cripple my ability to escape to college. I’ll end up a homeless dropout, cleaning condos and living with some druggie surfer like so many other kids from Kauai . . . “I’ll never marry a surfer,” I say aloud. “I’m getting off of this island.”
Snuffling into my shirt, I try to think logically about the situation.
I’m fourteen and in ninth grade.
I only have three more years with the family. Nothing is going to stop me leaving and making a
better life for myself if I stay focused on my goals. Even though I already feel guilty about leaving my sisters behind, I can’t help anyone—especially this latest one—if I haven’t made my own life work.
Furthermore, Francis is never far from my memories. Something might happen with Mom’s pregnancy and she could lose this baby, too. And if things progress, we still have eight months or so for Mom and Pop to get their shit together. Maybe with the crisis of a new infant on the horizon, they will figure out that all five of us living in a van going into winter on Kauai isn’t sustainable.
I just have to put my head down, button my lip, and bide my time no matter what insanity comes my way. Fighting my parents only gets me punished—and what if they pull me out of Island School, deciding it’s a bad influence? No, I have to resign myself to the situation and make the best of it, as I’ve always done.
Sleep, a blessed oblivion, claims me.
A tiny tickly feeling wakes me up. It’s a four-inch cane spider crawling on my arm, its long hairy brown legs cartoonish. I give a little shriek and shake it off, sitting up. They don’t usually bite, but there’s always a first time.
Long, fuzzy stalks of six-foot-high grass surround me. All I can see above is a circle of bright blue sky. Fluffy white clouds mock my misery. Fucking Kauai, always so ridiculously beautiful. My eyes feel swollen and gummy, and I’ve got the mother of all emotional hangovers.
I sneeze convulsively. That gets me moving, belatedly remembering I’m allergic to buffalo grass. I stumble out of the ditch and dust myself off as best I can, my skin prickling and itchy, hives rising on my arms and legs as I continue sneezing.