Personal Narrative: The Bus Ride

The Bus Ride
Little did I know at the time, but this was going to be the longest bus ride of my life. A bus ride that was going to take me halfway across the state of California, it was going to feel like I was traveling through the last four years of my troubled teen life.
It was May 1, 1989, and I was finally getting released from O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility. I got up in the morning feeling excited because this day was going to be incommensurable from any other day in the last eighteen months. On this day, I would be free. I jumped out of bed and got “suited and booted.” I thought I looked good in my brand new, ironed down, and creased up, state issue trade shirt. I was the proudest of my spit shined state issue boots. The tips were so polished that you could see your face in them. Nobody in the dorm had things “hooked up” like I did. When I hear “McKinney report the the main office” booming out of the intercom system, I know it’s time to go. Maze, my close friend, hollers out “You will be

missed homeboy”! I did not miss a beat, “You to home boy, keep your head up brother and keep’em in check!” I knew I would miss this guy. He was like a brother to me, and I’d never see him again. Being a stone cold killer, who may never be released, Maze still had several more years until a parole hearing.
As the transport van, my ride to the bus station, pulled out of the double row, razor wire topped, fifteen-foot chain link fence, I felt like I was on top of the world: however, there is a small feeling growing in my heart that I could not understand. The last time I passed through those gates was when I was being transported into this facility. Were those memories the cause of the unexplained unease in my heart? When I step out of the van, at the bus station, I’m overwhelmed with emotion. This is it, I’m paroled, and I’m finally going home. It’s crazy, I know, but the air feels different outside those gates. It feels lighter, cleaner, and it seems to me like the sun is even brighter out here. Out here in the free world, everything is exceptional. Not even the fact that the guard escorted me through the bus station, bought my ticket, and waited with me until I boarded the bus, could ruin my day. Nor the fact that the state issue clothes that I thought were “cool as can be” looked like cheap rundown clothes next to everybody else in their street clothes. None of these things would bring me down; nevertheless, that unrest in my heart had grown a little. It now felt like someone was poking me in the chest, from the inside.
I had never been on a Greyhound bus in my life and at the age of fifteen, it was exhilarating. From Stockton to Modesto the time seemed to fly by. I was riding along gazing out the window dreaming about all the cool stuff I was going to do when I got back to Bakersfield. I was going to look up some of my old friends. Maybe we could get together, drink some beer, smoke some weed, and find some hot chicks to party. Shoot, maybe I could even call up Regina. I had been thinking about her for most of my time down. She had sent me a few letters and even some pictures. Good ones too, if you know what I mean. (They were PG Mrs. Hubble!)
The hum of the big bus tires on the blacktop are soothing and the scenery was a bit dull on the 99 freeway in that part of California. I rested my head against the window watching the endless seen of orchards, fields, and small towns passing me by. The happy feelings of being released from the Youth Authority were slowly fading away. I started to contemplate my life; if you want to call it that, it was more like the ghosts of my past haunting my mind.
I was really getting tired of getting in trouble. My dad had shot himself when I was only eight years old. Since that young age, it was an endless list of heartache, and trouble for me. I felt lost and was filled with rage. By the age of twelve, I was already incarcerated in a county juvenile facility and at fourteen had moved up to juvenile “big time”, California Youth Authority. C.Y.A. was not a good place to send kids. Violence was bred there out of the simple necessity to survive. I was fighting, on average, once every two weeks or so. Furthermore, I could not stand alone, it’s not something that I’m proud of now, but I even joined a gang and was involved in a riot. Reminiscing about this stuff filled me with regret and remorse for the people I had hurt. My heart grew heavier and the strain greater.
I was in such deep concentration that the next stop in Merced came and left without me so much as realizing. Before I knew it, I was in Fresno. I had time to get off the bus to grab something to eat for lunch. It was nice to walk around totally free. No transport officer breathing down my neck. Sitting there eating my food I knew I had to keep an eye on that bus. It would be just my luck to get two hours away from Bakersfield and then the bus takes off without me. When the driver came back from his break I followed him onto the bus like I was his shadow. That bus was not leaving without me!
“This is it,” I thought as we pulled out of the Fresno bus stop, “Next stop, home sweet home!” That is when reality sneaks up and slaps me in the back of my head.

I had no place to call home. My mom had not come to visit me one time, and I had only received a hand full of letters from her. She told me in those letters that she was sick, and I couldn’t live with her (She died of cancer a little over a year after my release). My twenty-three-year-old brother was a drug addict, so I didn’t want to live with him. With no place to live, I would end up in a state halfway house or some other type of group home. For someone who was about to turn sixteen, this was a lot to deal with. The last two hours of my bus ride, which were supposed to be the happiest part of the trip, turned into the worst. The tension in my heart was almost unbearable now. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and was clinching my heart in an angry fist. My eyes teared up from the

pain.
I understood now. I knew what that feeling in my heart was coming from. It was fear. I was scared of so many things: the outside world, that everybody else would see the stains on my soul, the stains a place like this will leave on a kid’s heart and mind, getting arrested again because I did not want to live in a world where violence was the answer to everything, that no one would give me a chance, of being totally alone; most of all I was terrified of the person I had become. Crying, I ran to the bathroom at the back of the bus. Nobody could see me cry. I was too tough for that, but I wasn’t tough at all. I was just a frightened, mad at the world, little kid hiding in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus crying. Looking up in the mirror over the tiny sink in the back of the bus I said out loud “Who are you?” This was not the kid my mom raised. I did not like the angry face staring back at me. I knew things had to change. I did not know how yet, but I knew I’d figure it out. Maybe I didn’t have a place to call home or someone to turn to when times were hard, but I was smart, and I was strong.
After cleaning up, I walked back out to my seat on the bus. My heart was a little lighter. The fear was still there, but it was nestled next to resolve and determination. Having this time alone to soul search and take a self-inventory had helped. Some of the anger of my childhood had dissipated and had matured some during this bus ride.
When the bus pulled into the Bakersfield station I was happy again. It’s a new day, of a new life, and it’s mine. It’s my life; I’m liberated from my past and looking forward to an extraordinary future.