Así es la vida de Hilary

To Kill a Mockingbird

2012-02-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

I sat in front of my computer, trying to finish my work. I could hear Norteño music playing next door. It was getting dark. The brown men had been tearing down Boo Radley's shitbox house by hand. For three days. The scary house. The one that rats ran out of as I run past on my way to school. These men had been busy depriving Americans of a job they had been clamoring for. Tearing down walls, beams, asbestos dust everywhere. No machines. Hands. What a-holes. So many Americans would have done that in a second! In three times the time, for three times the money and half the house would still be standing. I had a beer. I considered going over there and offering them one. Then I thought of walking up to a relative construction sight with beer in my hand and thought better of it. I liked listening to the Norteño music, drifting in the warm winter dusk, accompanied by the sing song lilt of Mexico City Spanish.

I had a party for my milestone, get a walker birthday. It was fun. Really fun. So many people I loved crammed into one kitchen I could barely get around fast enough to speak to all of them. Cristian's family came. He tried to cross again. And he got caught. Six thousand dollars, down the drain. They played catch and release on his dad, who returned to central Mexico. They kept Cristian. He is in a federal prison, for six to twelve months. Even though he has never done anything. All I can think of is when is he out, when he will try to cross again to see his family and his new child.

And open the Christmas presents that have been waiting for him since 2011.

Malasuerte en Georgia

2012-01-28T18:07:00.000-08:00

"¿Cómo estás?" I asked kinder Wendy. "Bien, because I skipped bath last night".
"¿Cómo estás?" I asked kinder Kendrick. "Mal, because my dad wouldn't let me wear my same pants again today".

"He plans to come back in two weeks" Cristian's family informed me. We took them out to dinner, trying to regroup, console them, somehow let them know that we were in this with them, as much as we can be. My brother in-law picked them up; their luck is so bad that we don't want to ask them to drive anywhere. Only the women are left of this family, except for the youngest child, the U.S. citizen. The men are in Mexico, one voluntarily, the other, not. The women are paying and working. His mother. His sister in a wheel chair, the girlfriend, pregnant with his child. The little sister. Working to pay coyotes, polleros, whatever you want to call the pendejos who charge a fortune to run them across the Río Grande and put them in an eighteen wheeler to a large city in the southwest and drop them, left to their own devices in navigating the many checkpoints between there and home. And home is here.

It was early. Really early for a Saturday. I was sitting in a a super seventies style roller skating rink, watching my lovely niece suit up for her roller derby practice. I made her tell me the directions from her phone, mainly because I rarely drive and because I have no earthly idea where the fuck Lilburn is in regard to the outer reaches of the suburbs outside of the city. We made it. There were some parents there. Some like me, who parked it in an orange, Formica booth and pulled out a book and their phone and others, that socialized. Near me, unfortunately.

"She is falling even worse than last week. I tell you, I'm done. All she does is complain".
"It takes her twenty minutes to suit up! I tell her, 'you're pissing your practice time away' but she still takes forever".
A child came up. "Go away," her dad told her, "I'm socializing with my friends. You socialize with yours".
"My elbow pads are too loose. Will you help me?"
"There is a lady that will help you with that. Her, over there. You're too skinny. You need to put some meat on your bones". The child rolled away.
"My shoes hurt. My feet hurt. They're not tough, all they do is whine!" another mom exclaimed.

They tried to talk to me a couple of times during the two and half hours that I was there. They didn't get it that I wasn't insecure or worried about not knowing anyone there. I didn't want to know anyone there. I watched Emma giggle and laugh with her friends. And skate on one foot like a swan. And then I stared at my phone. Or my book.

I laid in the claw foot tub in my new house, staring up at the American Horror Story-style ceiling lighting. I can lay down all the way in that tub and the water rises up almost to my chin. I pretend I am somewhere else, in some other time. I do that in my princess house. Our house.

"We are saving his Christmas presents," his sister told me. "we aren't having Christmas until he comes home". The mood was actually jovial. I was relieved. I watched my brother in-law load four illegal immigrants and a little U.S. citizen into his car. He was laughing and joking, somehow communicating though he doesn't speak a word of Spanish. The illegal immigrant wagon pulled away with folks sitting on each others' laps. I had a renewed admiration and appreciation for the strangely nonplussed and helpful person that my brother in-law is.

The moon was hanging really low. It was lit from below, a crescent, yet the top almost looked like an eclipse. I hoped for them. I hoped really hard.

Which Day?

2012-01-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

"Cristian is going to be deported on Thursday" the text message read. I started emailing. I had been reluctant to start petitions, feeling jaded by the whole activist array of weapons: Marches. Phone calls to politicians. Online petitions. The only thing that ever seemed to work was legal action and we had tried that. I got the petition started and spoke to his family on the phone. I found myself feeling excited. Would it work?

I kept checking the online petition between every class. In less that twenty-four hours, he had over two hundred signatures, many with comments. "Unbelievably cruel" one read. "We need more people like Cristian in the United States" another wrote.

As I finished helping get the kids out of the school, I saw a father waiting for me with a little boy that had gotten in trouble in my class the other day. I like this kid. He's new to our school. He gets squirrely now and then and needs a little tune up from his parents, but I still like him. I had sent a note home once before, but this was the first time I had met either of them in person. His father listened carefully as I explained what happened and how I knew that Andy could do better. I spoke directly to the child and told him I could help him do better, he just needed to let me know how. Different seat? Different table partners? The father spoke very little, but had an stressed, almost hyper look in his eyes. I could tell he was concerned.

"Who was Rosa Parks?" our guest speaker asked the kids. She had been at the March on Washington and was somehow teaching a class of around four hundred kids and about one hundred adults without batting an eye. Or having to tell them to be quiet.
"She stood up" the first kid answered.
"That's right.." she said.
'So that we could sit down' I thought.
"I wouldn't want to be on that bus," a kindergartner added, "I would want to be with Randy" he continued, referring to the only African-American student in his class.

I returned to my classroom, anxious to check on Cristian's petition again. As I walked down the hall, I saw the father I had just spoken to, inches from his son's face. His voice was raised, you could hear it above the roar of kids leaving the school. I saw his hand rising up to the side of Andy's head. 'NO MORE CALLS TO PARENTS' flashed through my mind, as I averted my eyes.

I walked home. I heard the chime of a new text message and checked my phone. "No need for a press conference," it read, "Cristian just called his mother from Mexico. He was deported this afternoon"

"How did it go when you got home?" I asked Andy, "Your dad looked mad".
"Yeah, he pulled my hair all the way home. That was the punishment".
"How long is the drive?"
"About twenty minutes. I live at 8750 Concord Drive. If you go to Google Earth, you can see a picture of our house. My mom's blue car is outside".

"We shall over come....we shall over come, ONE day...." the kids sang in our morning meeting, lead by the fabulous Ms. Warner. I was hung over and I bet it showed. I could feel the lump in my throat rising the more the kids sang. I pictured the little face of Cristian's sister, nearly pressed to the windshield, as they followed me in their beat up compact car to the lawyer a month ago. Five hundred signatures, forty-eight hours later. They didn't know what had happened, that it was over. I thought of Andy's overly obedient behavior in class after his talking to by his father.

"Deep in my heart, I do believe......we shall overcome, one day".

Girls at Parties

2012-01-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

I heard James Earl Jones, walking and talking in my house. I was in bed on a Saturday morning, in a no work, too much beer slumber. He was telling Alec how to make the phone work. It turned out to be a guy from the phone company. A really helpful guy, who was talking to Al like he was his son and determined to educate him on the ins and outs of landlines.

Elizabeth pulled the corner of her shirt off of her shoulder. So did Erin. "I'm a girl at a party" Elizabeth stated, while waiting in line for their teachers to pick them up from Spanish class. "So am I" a little first grade boy added, pulling his shirt over to bare his shoulder. A different effect, but apparently they were all fancy party people.

The lights were flashing in front of my eyes again. I knew that soon I would not be able to see. I closed the blinds in my classroom, turning away from the light. I took an aspirin and sat down, trying to take deep breathes, make it not happen. The blood drinking class came in. The assholes. In minutes, I couldn't see at all. I taught anyway, with one eye open. This had happened while we were together before. Actually, it has been happening a lot lately. I plead on their mercy a couple of times, asking if anyone knew what an optical migraine was. Some knew. But they have little mercy, this group.

I passed one of their teachers in the hall.
"God, I was seeing stars this morning while I was teaching your kids" I told her, "I keep getting migraines when they come in".

"I have a rash that starts on my neck and extends down my back" she responded.
"It goes away on the weekends and returns on Monday mornings. Melissa has been losing hair." she continued, referring to her co-teacher.

We have a three day weekend. All rashes, migraines and hair loss should be on hold.

Miles To Go

2012-01-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

The boxes surrounded me. We were leaving the long, skinny house. It made me sad. I have always moved a lot, but this was ridiculous.

They pulled up outside of my house. I wanted to give them a ride, I was willing, because the minute they get pulled over they get deported. A family friend brought them over. One with papers. I wanted to see the lawyer; he helped Alejandro get free. I was determined that Cristian needed representation, that things needed to be explored. I was thrilled when his mom and sister pulled up. I thought I might have to go alone. I'm glad that they said fuck that, we want answers and were willing to sit down with this guy.

I was getting excited about the new house. The papers were scanned. Things were in boxes. It was over, right? Just let us go over there.

I watched them in my rear view mirror. I could see his sister's face, small and short, in the passenger's seat, as if she was pressed up against the windshield. She is in a wheel chair. Spina bifida. It's how she rides.

"Hey, tell me if he has a deportation order in his file?" the lawyer asked the ICE agent. He hung up the phone.

"Cristian accepted involuntary deportation the last time. He will be transferred to downtown ICE tomorrow. It's a holding tank, then he will be sent to Stewart. There is zero percent chance he will get out of this".

"Exactly, how much chance?" José, the family friend, asked in accented English.

"Zero" the lawyer responded. "I am going to beg for him tomorrow, tell them he has been in the United States since he was a little kid and does not know Mexico. That he graduated from an American high school. That he has never done anything wrong, that his record is clean.   I am going to plead for mercy, but ICE isn't known for mercy....".

Giselle looked at him from her wheelchair, face piercings and all. "Tengo una pregunta..." she began.

"How can I get myself legal?"

"You don't have papers either?" the lawyer asked. She and her mother both shook their heads.

"Someone would have to marry me, right?" she asked.

"Yes" he responded, "it's complicated".

We walked out. They were stone faced. We pushed the button on the elevator. And then they crumpled and cried.

I drove home. And Alec and I signed our lives away on the papers. "Does it feel funny?" one of the realtors or lawyers asked us. "No. It just hasn't sunk in. It's like another lease".

My princess house. It is like a little castle, so pretty, so perfect. So removed from every sense of reality.

And Cristian, sitting in jail, waiting to get deported again. "He shouldn't come back" the lawyer told us, "es grandote. The could put him in the federal pen for five years if he gets caught again".

I drove through town. Outside of the pizza place, a white guy held a scary looking ladder. A brown man stood on top, fixing some facet of the roof.

I went to work. The holidays were over. We had a workday and I was determined to get things done, all the things that had been neglected during the house-buy situation. I heard some noises outside and finally opened the shades on my classroom windows. A white man stood outside, wearing a helmet, a huge winter coat and work gloves. It had gotten pretty chilly. Actually, downright fucking freezing. Two Mexican guys stood out there, wearing pull over sweatshirts, hoods up, and no gloves. One had a chainsaw. The other had a rope. They hacked and pulled the base of the old oak tree down, while everyone in good gear stood with arms crossed, watching.

And I screamed and raged and swore out the window and nothing changed at all.

Nothing.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2011-12-26T15:58:00.000-08:00

"I......want Charles in charge of me. Ieeeeeeeeeee, want Charles in charge of me....." the young, Kroger employee sang over and over while I checked myself out. I laughed. Was that the song from that awful, Scott Baio TV show, post Happy Days? Way post Happy Days, when Chachi had to acknowledge that it was the '80s? I thought it was some weird joke at first, until I could still hear him singing it as I walked out of the front door.

"Ieeeeeeeeeeeeeee, want Charles in charge of me............".

I was driving south, way south, toward the Stewart Detention Center. The dead grass looked kind of golden. I woke up. I knew why I was dreaming about this for the second night in a row. Alejandro has been free almost ten months, but Cristian is not. And he's headed to Stewart on Monday. Sundays at Stewart. Again. Do the people still cry when the let the guys come out and sit on the other side of the glass and pick up the phone? Cry like I did, to see an innocent person locked in jail for not being able to produce a driver's license? Do the kids still smear the glass with their hands when they see their fathers? Do people still sit out in the car for hours, afraid to come inside, unable to come inside because they don't have the documents to visit, but still willing to make the drive, still willing to at least be as close as they can, even if that means sitting in the parking lot, without laying an eye on the person they came to see?

I remembered the Christmas that Walter Garcia and I spent, driving my shitbox of a car around, holiday songs on the radio, with a dead dog in the back, looking for the Humane Society. The Cremation Society. Our roommate was going to kill us. But it wasn't our fault.

"Do you know we haven't gotten paid yet?" Miranda asked, as she dropped her class off for Spanish on the last day before the break. Huh? Our checks always go through, at like five in the morning. It was afternoon. Hijole, what the fuck?

"I don't care when the money clears my account. Can you just give me the pay stub, even though I haven't gotten the money?" I asked the accountant impatiently. We are supposed to close on our, well, HOUSE in a little more than a week. The lender wanted that check stub to finalize our loan. Our mortgage. On our first house. Why was my job fucking this up?

I remember the hissing of cats in our kitchen, followed by the distinct sounds of cats fighting. Alec and I sprang out of bed. It was Christmas, ten years ago. We didn't own cats, but were pretty partial to the Orange Cat, a big stray that roamed the apartment building we lived in. He would jog with me like a dog and run to me when I called him from all the way across the parking lot. The one that we didn't use, but had cars in it that Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer would drive. We had a cat door that we kept open for him. He would come and go as he pleased, eat, get in bed with us, relax a bit. He was our perfect pet. No commitment. Independent. And now he was knee deep in a snarling fight with a big, mysterious black asshole cat in our kitchen. It had followed him in. Alec has never been a cat owner and is not versed in how to respond to their fights. He grabbed the Orange Cat, afraid that he would get hurt in the fight. Orange transformed himself into a viper and sunk his teeth directly into Alec's forearm, and then ran out the cat door. He returned a few minutes later, as if nothing had happened and laid down on our bed. A few days later, Alec was on an IV in the emergency room. We didn't know cat bites were so nasty.

"Why were you in Mexico?" the lender's email asked for the millionth time. I don't know, running from the law. Selling drugs. All kinds of shit. "I was on a Fulbright grant" I explained, again. "My employment was not interrupted. Nothing scandalous. Congressionaly funded, educational exchange".

No one was helping me with the check stub. The tension was mounting in my head. And, the second graders were making Puerto Rican musical instruments in class. A recipe for disaster. Me, ready to explode, them, with homemade maracas. I didn't want to be a dickhead. I planned the lesson, because I knew that they would love it. I finally got the class lined up to "assault", or surprise carol, the secretary at our school. I heard a loud bang as something hit the wall of the classroom. Norman started yelling furiously at no one in particular and running around like a nut. He had beamed his "guiro" across the room, trying to hit another student. Everyone stopped, stunned. "What the HELL was that?" I asked loudly, in front of twenty-two second graders. "She said 'hell'" someone whispered.

Great.

I remember when Cristian was deported the first time. It was over the holidays. It went on for months, his parents paying bond after bond only to see him transferred to another jail in another state. They were distraught. Holly and I started volunteering in the desert that summer, after he'd been sent "home", to the country he didn't even remember, alone. He was trying to get back and we knew it. Every young man we met made us think of him. Especially the sick one and his friend. The sick one that flew up into the sky while his friend was shackled and frisked and fire lined the mountains and smoke filled the air.

And it's happening again.

A Holly Jolly

2011-12-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

The exacto knife dove into my finger. Instinctively I grabbed it and squeezed. The kids gasped, still holding their hand made, sandwich bag piñatas. The knife was supposed to be punching holes in the piñatas, not shoved into my finger.

"Does it hurt?!" someone asked.
"No, no, I'm just afraid to look."

I let go of my finger. Blood smeared my hands. They all gasped again. The kids in that class can be real assholes. I'm surprised they don't drink blood. One grabbed the first aid kit and put a band aid on my finger. Another kid, an especially violent one, bolted out of the classroom. I had no idea why. Looking for a pitchfork to finish the job? He ran back in, holding a small, wet paper towel to clean the blood off of my hand. I was surprised. It was actually one of the nicest moments I've had with that group in a year and a half of teaching them. I always knew that they needed to see blood.

Dau looked beautiful. And excited. More than excited, as if she couldn't stop smiling, her perfect white teeth shining against her dark skin. I have always loved her. She was in my class during my second semester of teaching. I taught her again the following year. She insisted on having my cell phone number on the last day of class. I was reluctant, but gave it to her, though she was a student. I was so glad I did. I followed her through graduation and the frightening period when I lost her. I always remember standing in the nearest "town" in the Arizona desert that had a cell phone signal and calling my old principal, the one I hated, to tell her that Dau was in trouble, she needed help, her financial aid for college had fallen through and she didn't know what to do. The principal that claimed to mentor her because it would look good to have a Sudanese mentee. I couldn't do anything and my principal didn't do anything and I couldn't find Dau when I came back to Atlanta.

I clicked play on the parranda You Tube video for the kids learning about Puerto Rican Christmas. "Will METH make you do this?" it asked, showing a guy with no shirt on sitting on a cruddy bed. "How much will I get for this?" he asked the man unzipping his pants. Oh shit. I put my hand over the light shining from the projector and tried to get the volume down. "There's a guy with no shirt on in the video!" some kid exclaimed. Great.

"It looks like the seller is going to accept your offer, he just has to return it in writing!" our realtor announced. I went out to my car. It made a horrible noise and became difficult to steer. I pushed on to the beer store, because I am dedicated like that. "I've heard that new power steering is really expensive" my sister stated, plunking down on my decrepit porch furniture and opening a beer. Great. The idea of having to buy a car terrifies me. I have never even had a car payment. What the fuck was I doing buying a house?

I looked at Dau as she rode in the backseat of my sister's car as we drove her to the airport to catch a flight to Australia. She hadn't seen her sister since they left Sudan and got scattered across the world. She hadn't been abroad in more than a decade, when she took a boat up the Red Sea from Sudan to Egypt, got trapped there in September 11th, Arabic as a primary language limbo and finally arrived in the U.S. via Germany where she was placed in the public school system without knowing a word of English or even the Roman alphabet. As she walked through the airport, her white teeth shining and her dark skin accented by the red leather jacket she wore, the names of her nieces and nephews that she would soon meet air brushed on her long nails, total strangers were smiling at her.

They couldn't avoid the light.

Golden Isles

2011-12-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

I woke up in the bed I had spent part of the summer in, looking out at the southern Georgia foliage and thinking about the splintery path that goes to the grey Atlantic shore. It looked even more beautiful in the fall. I had to bake some pies for Thanksgiving. But that wouldn't be for a couple of days....

"Please verify your panel and when you are holding interviews" the Fulbright email said. I was excited about assembling my own panel to help select who would go on exchange next year. But THAT would happen after my week-long, late November break.

"So, how much of an offer do you want to put in?" the realtor asked us. I felt my stomach churning. I wasn't exactly sure if I was actually going to shit my pants or if it just felt like it. That house was cute. I've seen lots of cute houses in my nearly twenty years of renting. Unfortunately, I really liked this one. But the cage was coming down on me, the one that makes you get grown up and act like an old person, the one that kills your ambition, the one that guarantees that you never do anything interesting again. "Low ball or legitimate?" she asked. "Legitimate".

I watched Charlie in class, this super smart kid that always seems so reserved. He was smiling and interacting with his friends. I'm glad he likes being in there. I remember the first few times I saw his mom. So familiar she looked. Great kids, who was she? Then I remembered that she was a shrink doctoral student that I went to when I was losing my mind as an undergrad. I watched Charlie. I'm glad he feels comfortable. I'm glad that I have something to offer him.

We accepted the seller's offer, finally. I hadn't been sleeping well, was behind at work and blood had been coming out of strange parts of me. Nose, and other non-mentionables, accompanied by insane stomach cramps. I got zits. And a migraine.

The kids were practicing for their annual, winter recital. At the end, they all held hands and raised them. "That's the part that will make the parents cry" I whispered to a co-worker "but not my dry-eyed, childless heart". She laughed.

Emma and I were walking over the splintery path to the beach. She had been rollerskating and I had been watching. We wanted to look at the sea. "You almost hit me, bitch" an unknown voice called to a lady riding her baby on the back of a bike. Emma and I looked at each other. A dad emerged, with two teenage sons and a pre-teen daughter. We looked down. As we passed, the pre-teen called out: "Like your hair," in response to Emma's hot pink do. "Thank you" Emma responded courteously, without a hint of sarcasm. We kept walking. "And your bodies". Emma and I looked back, a little stunned. "And your pink flowers..." the girl continued. We were baffled. I was baffled. Were we being, um, harassed by a thirteen year old redneck with her dad standing by? As an adult, should I do something or avoid confrontation? We walked to the sea. And started laughing.

I watched the kids sing during their recital, remembering last year. So exhausted after driving half the night to the detention center and back. Half drunk and running through the King Center with a parking ticket in my hand. Things were so different this year. The kids finished their song and lifted their little candles while holding hands. I saw Emily, waving her candle and playing with the other kids. And I started crying.

"Do you think the Randolphs will get matched?" Terry asked me, after we completed our fifth interview of the day. "I hope so," I responded, "they would be perfect".

"My name is Frank and I have autism" the tall seventeen year old said to our kids during our morning meeting. I still felt blurry eyed and frankly, rosy and filled with love after the beautiful display the kids had put on during their recital the night before. He pulled out a piece of paper and slowly tried to adjust himself and started reading. Tears flooded my eyes. Not normal, misty tears but full on crying. "How many of you know someone who is autistic?". Hands went up. "Yeahhh..," he said quietly, "there's a lot of us". "In Kindergarten, I couldn't speak. I wanted to, but no one could understand me. I wanted to play and talk to the other kids, but I couldn't". EMILY. EMILY. EMILY. Is it what I had hoped for? That she is in there, just waiting to come out? "In third grade, I couldn't read. Ms. Zalero helped me. Good job, Ms. Zalero" he said, motioning to our principal. She burst into tears. He continued and I tried harder and harder to not make a scene. Would Emily be able to get up one day and speak like he was? "I may be a big guy, but I feel like a kid inside" Frank ended.

And I ran to my room. And cried and hiccuped and panted. Every time I tried to calm myself, thinking of the twenty-odd kids that would be busting through the door at any minute, I just started crying again.

Zoobilee

2011-11-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

I stared across the child sized, too short table at Bobby. He didn't smell like pee. It was my only break of the day, a whole one hour for both lunch, planning, communicating with parents and whatever other fucked up thing popped up. Ridiculous. "Alright, Bobby. You had a bad day in Spanish. Now, you are going to have to do the work you should have been doing while you were...well, flipping out". Yeah, flipping out. Yelling, screaming, refusing to leave the room, shoving my hands away when I tried to hand you a paper. Again. A couple of days ago you threw a chair. You've attacked most of your classmates, many in my presence. Randomly. You've freaked them out. You've been dragged out of here before. A lot of the sympathy I had felt for the pee clothes had dried up. He needed to get his shit together.

"You're taking my recess!" he howled. Yeah, he didn't buy my creative language at all. I was totally taking his recess. If I had had it my way, he would have been sitting on a bench watching the other kids play outside.   And I would be eating lunch in peace, without my least favorite student sitting across from me, taking an extra half an hour of my time. We decided that we needed to present it to him as not taking recess, but making up for lost time. And that, coincidentally, comes out of my time, though I had already taught his class once that day.

"I'll tear it up!" he screamed, referring to the "work" in my hand. His face was red, he was howling. I watched the scene play out for a minute. "You're faking" I finally stated. He stopped on a dime. And started laughing. "Alright, here's your work. I am going to eat my lunch. I can sit at my desk, or sit at the table with you. Which do you want?". "The table" he answered. "With you?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes".

I spread out my Bento and started eating, seated in a Kindergartner's size chair.
"I have a fake spacer in my teeth" Bobby said, randomly.
"Open your mouth. I saw something going on in there while you were screaming". He opened it. "That's a crown, what's up with that thing on the other side?"
"I put that in myself".
"What? Okay Bobby, you do your own dental work?" I responded, gazing in to the silver shit bracing his teeth.
"Yes".

"Do you think tomatoes are gross?" I asked. "Well, I'm eating the whole thing" I continued, not waiting for answer, while laying it on the crisp bread. The Wasa kind. The kind I like. He actually didn't need help with the assignment.
"You read well" I mentioned.
"You know why? I go to the Sylvan learning center"
"Really, how often?"
"Once a week. And then we go to the shi-shi place afterward"
"The shi--shi place, what, some fancy place?"
"Yeah, the sushi place" he responded.

I thought of Emma, my beautiful, fourteen year old niece. She has liked sushi from the time she was little, and would stuff little calamaris, legs and all, into her mouth on trips to Mexico, in little places with plastic tables while the admiring staff would smile at the cute rubia that would eat anything.   "You have sophisticated taste, Bobby. Most six year olds won't eat sushi" I finally responded.
"My mom is teaching me to cook". I was surprised by how articulate he was.
"Do you like that?"
"Yes. She is teaching me to make sushi rolls".

Your family sounds nice, I thought. It sounds almost normal.
"Do you have friends in your class?" I asked him.
"No"
"Bobby, you have hit a lot of them". He nodded in agreement.    "And when you scream and mess up our whole class, it scares them. They are sick of it." I responded.

He had finished his work. I pulled out the reflection sheet, the thing he had crumpled and destroyed both times before. He grimaced. "No, this isn't for you, I'm drawing what happened". I drew stick figures, one for him, one for me. Him screaming.   Me, looking like Judy Jetson. I showed him step one. "Take a reminder, Bobby," I advised, "it doesn't have to go to this" I continued, pointing to the drawing of him screaming, kicking, raging. Attacking random kids. Peeing on himself.   "What happens when it goes to step two at home?". People say they beat the shit out of you. Say it. Say it. "They don't let me go to sushi. Or I don't get to cook with my mom". Really? Why has Family Services been called out a few times? Why are you so fucked up?

"You kept asking to go to the bathroom. You said it over and over. You poked me, which I don't like. I don't think you had to go to the bathroom. I think you knew you were in trouble, and you wanted to get out of here". He drew steam flowing out of my Judy Jetson's head. "Yeah, it made me mad. Is that why you did it, to see me get mad?". "No," he answered "I didn't have to go to the bathroom. It was what you said. I wanted to get out of here".

I took him back to his classroom. My next class was lining up outside. "Can you wait with them?" I asked their teacher, as I galloped down the stairs with Bobby. He grabbed my hand. I was surprised. I held it. I felt him pulling away when we reached the bottom of the stairwell. "No," I told him, "I feel you trying to let go. You're not getting away from me. You are going to hold my hand and like it". He did.

He will be the same demon he has been for a year and a half. He is tricky. He lies and he fakes. I can't trust him. But I want to.

He waved at me after school. That was a first.

Will it change? I doubt it.

Lupita

2011-11-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

Music was playing over the intercom. Kids from all grade levels began singing with it, singing some song I have never heard before but that they all seemed to know and like. Sherman jumped up in his fuzzy, one-piece, footed pajamas and began doing a Pete Townsend-windmill with his arm. "Dyno-mite!" Hands vs. Feet sang, along with the other kids. We just kept calling the numbers.

I wheeled my stacked cart through the Buford Highway Farmer's Market. I never use carts. I don't like them. I generally just break my own arm off with an overstuffed basket before pushing one of those pinche things around. I made an exception. It looked like rolling Mexico, stocked with Day of the Dead bread, sémaforo candy, Mexican Coke and fresh tortillas and cream. It was gorgeous.

I drove toward the city, stuffing a carne asada taco in my mouth. It was my second. "Excuse me..," an Asian man with accented English asked me from a neighboring car. "where is Farmer's Market?". I pointed with my thumb in the opposing direction and continued stuffing taco in my mouth.

As I walked around the park, a large, dark SUV rolled past, its back window quickly lowering. I saw Curley's eyes looking out through the open space. Even though I couldn't see the lower part of her face, I could tell she was smiling.

I laid on my back, looking up at a sunny blue sky. It almost hurt my eyes it was so bright. I saw a full color image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, transposed over the blue, up in the sky. It looked like the Virgen on the back of my Nuevo Laredo shirt. I smelled roses. And then I saw roses, circling and blooming around her in the sky.

They were red. Red roses.

An Owl in a Dead Tree

2011-11-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

"Try to guess why I got in trouble at school today" I instructed Alec. "Yelling at a kid? Being mean?" he asked. "No" I answered. "Being drunk in public?". "Not that". "Your clothes?", "Nope", "Giving the kids cigar boxes?". "No, none of the above, " I answered, "rewards. Rewarding them for academics".

I walked down the dark sidewalk to school, tired, the morning after Halloween. I could hear the lions roaring from the zoo. I was wearing my pajamas. And a robe. I entered the school. It looked like a hospital; teachers wandering around in robes and slippers, carrying coffee. Kids in furry pajamas. Me, in my Mexico jersey, pajama pants and dragon robe I bought in Vietnam. I wore shoes. I didn't want to mess up my slippers on the sidewalk.

"Maestra Hilary DOES what she wants" one of the second graders commented in line. "Now THAT'S what I'm talking about, Raymond" I said, nodding in agreement. "And WE are ready to sing it" he answered.

"How did it go today?" the cute teacher asked me. "Well, Bobby menaced another kid today, but we were able to talk through it, and he didn't actually hit anyone," I answered, "or bite". "Great!" she answered. "But he smells bad, like piss or something, shit," I whispered in her ear, "but he says he doesn't have to use the bathroom". "He's wearing yesterday's pee clothes" she whispered back. "What?". "He pissed his pants yesterday and we put him in a change of clothes," she whispered, "his parents never cleaned out his backpack, and the pee clothes were still in there today. He had another accident, and we had to put him in something". "That's disgusting" I replied, unsure if she realized that I didn't mean her actions were disgusting, but that any parent would allow their kid to walk around in piss stained clothes from the day before in addition to not even checking their six year old's backpack. I looked at Bobby. He pisses me off. He acts like a dick. He attacks everyone physically in class. It's been going on a long time. I stared at him. No one should walk around in pee clothes.

There is something so wrong there I don't even know where to start.

Otoño

2011-10-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

"So, you going to say 'hi' to your wife on your way out?" I asked the blond booty shaking, now first grader. "Miss Connor? She's not my wife anymore" he answered, referring to probably the hottest member of our teaching staff. "That's not what you said when you brought in that drawing of your name in hearts for her last year" I responded. "Nooo!" he contested, "It's over between us, but she keeps chasing me. I have a fourteen year old girl friend now".

"My family escaped from Vietnam on a boat. They were boat people. It was after the war, things were bad. They sailed to the Philippines and lived in a refugee camp until the U.S. let them in" the thin, pretty woman told me, while she painted my fingernails. "That sounds dangerous" I responded. "It is," she answered, "people get lost and the boats sink. The U.S. stopped letting people in not long after my parents got here. They had to. It had to end sometime. But people still get here". "How?" I asked. "They get fake papers and bribe people along the way until they get to the U.S. My roommate did it, she's not who her papers say she is," she responded "why are you missing a toenail?".

"The hot water heater went out?" Alec told me. Were we in Tijuana? "What do you mean, did you re-light it?" I asked. "Yeah, like a million times, it just goes back out. I'll try again". It didn't work. Coldest night in recent months and no hot water, and I smelled like wet dog after my slow jog around the park.

I stood in our morning meeting at work, feeling very bright eyed and bushy tailed after my freezing cold, splashing water army shower. A woman walked by in furry, leopard printed pajamas. A one piece. Must be pajama day somewhere in the school.

I was wearing the necklace, the long, silver necklace with a silver apple at the end, that has a real, working clock inside. My sister gave it to me when I started teaching. High school kids loved it and now elementary kids love it. It caught Emily's eye the minute she sat on her place on the rug. The place she always sits. Without change. Everyday. Barely thinking, I pulled it off and handed it to her. She tried to twist the knob that sets the time. I had to pull it out so that the hands would move. Would she break it? It was a gift. What if she slammed it into the brick wall? I love that necklace. For some reason, I felt like it was worth it to let her play with it. As I continued the lesson, every time I would glance at Emily's marble-like eyes, filled with fascination as she made the hands move and dangled the apple in front of her face as if hypnotizing herself, I felt oddly calm and content.

It was time to get off of the rug. Would it be a struggle to get the apple back from Emily? I couldn't let her have it. It was too important. As soon as I explained the assignment, the kids jumped up, including Emily, to go to the tables.

She quickly handed me the necklace and headed to her place at the table, to the place where she always sits. Everyday. She wanted to draw what the seasons of the year looked like.

I almost wanted her back, back watching the apple, back watching the silver swing in front of her glass eyes.

Noah's Dino-Ark

2011-10-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

"Did you enjoy the King center?" the kindergartner asked. "Huh?", "The King center, when you went?", "Sure" I answered. The little African-American girl was resuming a conversation that we had begun a month ago, completely without preface. "Martin Luther King was killed. Someone shot him." she continued. The little African-American boy that had just turned five piped up. "A white person!" he howled. "Noooo," Nia corrected, "a black person!". "White!" Joel yelled. "Black!" Nia responded. "White!", "Black!", "White!", "Black!" the kids continued, until their teacher came to take them away.

"Carbon dating is wrong! It doesn't tell you how old bones are!" the radio commentator squealed through the car speakers. "Man and dinosaurs existed at the same time. There are cave paintings of dinosaurs...,". Which apparently are more credible than carbon dating. "Dinosaurs were walking the earth even three hundred years ago!". Okay, you got me there. Ben Franklin and the brontosaurus. All the shit they wrote down with quill pens and no one mentioned flying beasts or man-eating monsters. The commentator started taking calls. "How did Noah fit the dinosaurs on the ark?" caller after caller asked. THAT is the only problem you have with this guy's story? "He took babies," he answered, "baby dinosaurs".

Someone called Nia a "black bitch" on the playground the other day. He was black too. And, in kindergarten.

"Thanks for returning my note" I said to the parent quickly. I already know her and her kid has been fucking around in class, hence the note. I was surprised when she started crying. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry" she stammered. "What? Why? It's not your fault, I just need your help," I answered, "it's really not a big deal". "We've had a lot of chaos lately and it's showing and I just feel so bad, you are so nice and I worry that you get stepped on". So nice? I turned around, and spun back to her.

"Are you talking to me?".

Sing and Never Tire

2011-10-07T13:18:00.000-07:00

I walked into my trusted hairdresser's shop. "I am filling in!" a man announced, "I am learning to cut hair!". It was a parent of one of my students. A troubled student. A violent student. I felt awkward about saying 'no' and sat in the chair. He shaved my hair off, all around the front and the back, leaving a small, yarmulke-shaped ring of hair on my head, surrounded by a quarter inch shave. I couldn't believe it. "Why did you do this?" I screamed/asked.

"I was doing my best" he answered, sarcastically.

I woke up, feeling weird, and went to work.

The kids were actually working steadily on the thing I gave them. "¿Quieren música?" I asked them. They wanted it. I put on Daddy Yankee and not Norteño, my música of choice. "Is this rap?" Lashandi asked loudly. "Sí," I answered "de Puerto Rico". She looked to another African-American girl in her class. "We do it better" she said. I was disappointed. He is a "we". Are we really going down this road again, so early? Who is black and who is not. That you can't be black and Hispanic at the same time. Stupidity.

I laid down, just for a minute, after school. I heard my bird, Momo. She makes a typewriter noise, over and over again, on the side of her feeder. She does it when her partners die. Suddenly, I opened my eyes. More than two hours had passed. It was seven o'clock. Typewriters were in my head.

"You received a big shipment" Alec told me. "What?" I asked. "Like, a million boxes. They are in the front". Oh, those boxes. The one hundred and forty boxes for the kids to make mini-altars for Day of the Dead? I really needed small boxes, and the cheapest ones I could find were empty cigar boxes. My front room smells nice, cedary, and is filled with beautiful wooden boxes from Honduras and the Dominican Republic. They are golden, lovely, filled with embellishments and clasps. I spread them out on the floor, and open and close them.

"¿Como estás?" I asked Emily, just like I always do. I generally discard the answer. She says strange things - things I don't understand. She started talking, and for some reason, I watched her carefully. Little coos and sounds that no one would ever consider language flowed from her mouth. Her eyes and head moved back and forth, just like any other person's would while talking, except that her eyes looked like glass. I listened intently, for the first time. She was thinking and communicating whatever was in her head, just in a way that no one could understand. But she wanted to tell us something. I watched her until she was finished, and thanked her. For the first time, the corners of her mouth moved upwards and her normally expressionless face assumed a look of satisfaction.

A few minutes later, she said her first Spanish word of the year. Azul. Azul was her first word.

It has been a big week. First grade is making a project to send to a school in Mexico. I have begun full immersion teaching in grades K-3, and they are getting it. Fourth and fifth grades are researching historical figures and making cigar box altars that represent the person's life. Emily spoke her first words of Spanish. I was at school until nearly eight o'clock the other night, explaining my curriculum to happy parents, one of whom started crying and hugged me. "I need to talk to you" one of my bosses said, entering my room near the end of the day. "I received an email from a parent that said you are giving the kids candy everyday, which she says goes against our discipline policy and our sustainability plan for the school. And, it does".

Of all the things going on in my classroom, I was really surprised to only hear about the random piece of Mexican candy I give whichever kid wins our monthly Bingo game.

Stand

2011-09-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

Two more minutes left until the kids had to go to aftercare if no one picked them up. "Well Frank," I said to the first grader sitting on the floor with me, "looks like you're sleeping in the library tonight. You could probably hunt around in Ms. Henry's stuff for snacks if you get hungry. I guess you'll have to take a sink bath before school starts tomorrow morning". Alice started giggling. "We are too big for the sink! Well....actually, I get up in my sink sometimes. When my mom isn't looking...". "So do I," Frank added, "and I pee in it".

That stopped the conversation.

"Can I go to the bathroom?" Alex asked. I gave him my stock answer: "Can you wait until the end of class?". Ninety-five percent of kids can and usually don't really have to go to the bathroom anyway. He looked me square in the eye. "I have to poo...",

"Go" I said, without letting him finish the word.

One minute until aftercare. Alice's number came up. "That's you!" I said as she sprang up, catching her foot in her dress and falling hard on her face. She screamed. Blood sprayed out of her nose. She ran and fell in my lap, clutching her face. Blood came out from between her fingers and dotted her dress. It was picture day. A large drop landed on my pants, bright red and suspiciously close to my crotch. She was scared. I was kind of scared too.

Sometimes, in moments of adversity, I imagine myself singing in fancy outfit in front of a funk band. Other times, I do a ballerina dance where no one can see me. Lately, I haven't really been doing anything. I just white knuckle it out.

I held on to her until it stopped bleeding. Then, I stood, pulled my shirt down as far as it would go, and headed to the Diversity Team meeting that I was late for.

Diversity is walking around with blood on the front of your pants, and not for the reason that everyone thinks it's there.

City in the Sky

2011-09-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

"Emily, no one is going to take your place on the rug, right class?" I asked/told the kindergartners. They agreed, several vocally. "Let's walk to the rug". Emily walked with the rest of the class for the first time, instead of running. And, when she arrived at the rug, Riannon was seated in her place. Emily started screaming, crying. I was almost screaming. "Get out of her place! Out of her place!" the three teachers in the room, including myself, started saying desperately to the child in Emily's place on the rug. "Whaa...," the little girl responded, "I was just, just...", "She doesn't understand, Riannon, Emily doesn't understand..!". I couldn't believe it. She would never trust us again. What was Riannon thinking? Why did she do that? Riannon started to cry. "I was saving her seat for her..." she said quietly, tears rolling down her face. Two minutes into class and the kids were terrified, and at least two were crying. "We are going to be okay," I told them quietly, "we are going to be fine". I kept repeating it until the kids stopped crying.

I sat at my desk, which is really a little table, writing the names of colors on colored paper. I started cutting them out quickly, trying to make a wall display. I cut spikes and clouds around the words. Brown looked like a turd. I threw it away.

The kids were mesmerized by the absolutely stupid puppet video I bought them. I was shocked. And pleased. I was afraid they would hate it, and obviously have no idea what a five year old thinks is funny. I heard a fart. It seemed impossible that it came out of the pretty porcelain girl with such dark eyelashes and pretty eyes. But it did.

Emily's hands and face were covered with marker. I walked with her to the sink and turned the water on, instructing her to put her hands underneath. She did it. She shifted with agitation while I dried her hands off. She started to dart away. "Emily, come back. Can I wipe your face off?". She stared back at me. I carefully lifted the little pastel framed glasses to the top of her head. She stared at me, immobile, the glass doll eyes directed straight ahead. "I am going to wipe your face now" I told her, moving the wet paper towel down her face. She cooed. "Does it hurt?" I asked, alarmed, "Do you want me to stop?". She stared straight ahead. I continued to clean the marker off of her face. She continued to coo, but stood rigidly still.

Her face was clean.

As Emily walked out of the room, she raised her hand, and high-fived me.

Buffalo Girl

2011-09-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

I was running, tearing around the fountain, in hot pursuit of the little blond boy that was giggling hysterically. A chair was in my path. I plowed into it, did a somersault on the cement, and kept on chasing him. "Do it again! Do it again!" he shrieked. I loved that hysteric giggle.

I was running, slowly, jogging, up the sidewalk that circles the park. I had had a productive day. Went to work, worked after work, ran some errands, cleaned the bathroom. Which, was nasty. And now, a jog. I stumbled and found myself smacking down on the sidewalk, hands bleeding and chest hurting like a motherfucker. What just happened? I got up and started running again. I stopped after a few minutes. My body really hurt.

Tuesday morning, the air conditioning continued its upward cycle. It was nearly eighty degrees in the room. I was exhausted. Every twitch of my body hurt my ribs, my shoulder. I am not sure how I can crash into a chair and do a somersault on cement and be fine, but take a little fall on the sidewalk and half kill myself. I picked up my phone during a break, ready to call my doctor. I paused, and went to the school nurse instead. "You probably bruised your ribs," she told me, "maybe even cracked them. You are standing up and talking, so it must not have punctured your lungs. There's not much anyone can do". I knew she was right. But everything hurt.

I realized my voice was stammering. "I need to know how to get a sub. I know that you want us to find coverage if we are in a one teacher classroom, but you do not have a list of people to call in order to find someone to come in." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation. My school relies on parent volunteers instead of paid substitute teachers. I don't know who to call if I am ill, or if my rib cage is caving in on my lungs. The general response has been, "Wow, we really don't have anyone for Spanish". "I also will not be at the faculty meeting. I am going to the doctor, it hurts me to breathe".

I was surprised when an hour later, the recipient of my nervous conversation walked into my classroom, a young woman in tow. It was late in the afternoon, and the kindergartners were struggling to even sit the fuck down. "Someone from another school!" she said brightly, while I winced and struggled to lift my left arm to do the hand motions of our opening song. They left. Another group of kindergartners arrived. They were struggling. I was struggling. It was late. Suddenly, the little observer from another school reappeared. The kids were having one of their worst days yet. The mysterious observer wandered around, without identifying herself. I was having trouble breathing. "We are going to listen quietly while I read the book out loud that you are going to illustrate" I told the class. The kids got quiet. The lovely observer started crouching next to kids, asking them questions. It was confusing to them. I had told them to be quiet, this lady was talking to them. My chest was collapsing. This little bitch needed to shut the fuck up, ask me in advance if she wanted to observe my class and quit disrupting the lesson. And now all the kids were talking again.

"Your rib cage and collar bone are bruised," my doctor told me. "but I want to X-ray your arm, it worries me. It could be dislocated or fractured".

I stood in the dark room, staring at the ghostly X-ray on the screen. "I don't know what I am looking at." I told the technician. "It's okay," he answered "I just wanted you to look". "Bones are elegant, aren't they?" I asked him.

"Yes," he responded breathlessly. "Yes they are".

Walking and Talking, Part Two

2011-09-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

Warren walked in carefully, back erect and head held high, eyes cautiously shifting from side to side, with subdued, yet nervous delight. He was wearing a full, real, soccer uniform from the Ivory Coast. Jersey, shorts and the knee socks, which were mysteriously pulled up over his knee to mid-thigh.

He looked magnificent.

"I'm hot. Are you hot, Carl?" I asked the fourth grader to my left. "No, I'm kind of cold" he answered. "I must have a fever," I responded, "I'm sweating". I have an odd cold that has never exactly reached full expectancy, yet began as a sore throat, moved to a clogged nose and is currently hovering in coughing up nasty stuff territory. It leaves me feeling permanently tired, yet has not actually completely knocked me out yet. It has been going for over a week.

The whole class was dancing to the Ketchup song. I am a terrible dancer and can even show my lack of rhythm during easy, Spanish favorites, like the Macarena and the Ketchup dance. I do it anyway. I actually really shake it. The song was reaching the strenuous part when everyone starts to get tired. "Keep going!" I yelled, "You guys are getting beaten by a forty year old woman with a fever!". "Your only thirty-nine!" some of the kids yelled back. Thanks for that, lovelies. And I mean it.

As first grade George excitedly told me about the best water slide in the world, I slyly slipped my fingers around his ankle. We both started screaming. The notion of swimming along in the pool and feeling a hand closing around your ankle horrifies both of us. Jokes like that are probably not appropriate for six year olds, but we like it.

The kinders are taking shape and developing personalities. I have my eye on one devilish little girl with curly hair and mischievous eyes. She holds hands with Ignacio's little brother in class, which only makes me like her more. I sat on one of the tiny chairs in my classroom, reading La Oruga Muy Hambrienta to the class. I could feel the kids fiddling with the weird floral object that sticks up at the end of my shoe. I don't mind when they touch it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Curly coming in a little closer to my shoe, a curious look in her mischievous eye. "El lunes, la oruga comió...." I continued.

The tip of her tongue shot out, touched the flower thing on my shoe and quickly retracted, only to be replaced by a satisfied smile.

Here there and everywhere

2011-09-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

I looked into the doll-like glass eyes, caged in by pastel frames of the little girl. "Don't let her play you," one of her teachers told me the other day, "she is disabled, but she can follow directions". "WALK to the rug" I told her. She ran. And pushed other kids. "Emily. Stand up" I commanded directly. She refused. In front of everyone. "Emily, stand up" I asked again, quietly, extending my hand. She refused again. Her teacher came in, unexpectedly. I got the kids singing and walked over to her. I was frustrated. "Emily is refusing to do what I asked, in front of everyone" I lamented. "Yeah well, she does that, she's disabled....". "Well, she can't shove the other kids, she just can't" I said with frustration. She walked over and said loudly, "Emily, get up!" and then picked her up, kicking and wiggling to the far corner of the room. Emily was screaming, crying, her face red, like a trapped animal. The doll eyes darted behind the pastel frames. I wanted to shoot myself. I am so sorry, Emily.

I remember carefully placing my glasses on a gravestone in the old cemetery by my house, and then somersaulting down the hill that faces the old textile mill. I was drunk. Big green hills in the middle of the city had to be good for something. I went to my sister's house and tried to race my niece on foot, while she was on roller skates. I watched her skate up and down the street in the twilight, looking like an elegant swan.

I sat in the border wait line in Otay, eating a cup of corn. So good, so very good. Alec and I had flown to Los Angeles for the long weekend. I had carefully booked us a cheap hotel by the airport due to our late arrival, which just happened to be convenient to South Central and Watts. We hung around the city the next morning and went out to the pier, then beat it south.

So good to pull into Mexico. Mi querido Mexico. We ate like pigs, and did a nostalgia tour of our old neighborhood. While heading back to the border, I nailed a huge pothole, like I have a million times in Tijuana. I figured it was no big deal, until a light on the dash came on with exclamation points, on the rental car that wasn't supposed to be in Mexico. I pulled off. "Está pinchado" the gas station guy told me; I could hear the air coming out while he was putting it in. "¿Hay una llanteria cerca?" I asked. Why of course. Tijuana is full of tire repair places.

"The rim is bent" the guy answered me in perfect English, after my sketchy Spanish description of what happened. Great. Another man walked over with a sledge hammer. Instead of feeling nervous, I felt suddenly at ease that a Mexican with a sledge hammer could get that wheel on the road again in the simplest and most economical way. They ripped it off, pounded out the rim, patched the tire and rotated it to the back, in less than ten minutes. For gringos. With a rental car with Arizona plates. "It's six dollars," the main guy told me "and whatever you want to give him for the work on the rim".

And now, back to work tomorrow.

Let the games begin

2011-08-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

I tried so hard to be positive. I really did.

"Our class was feeling very negative about Spanish class, so I thought I would say a few words to them in Spanish this morning to make them feel more positive. How do you say this?" the teacher implored, pushing a half translated piece of paper in front of me. So, the kids don't like Spanish. But they will like Spanish if you do it with them, right? I guess I am the problem here. It wasn't even eight o'clock in the morning. "I told them this would be a different year. Your schedule was really bad last year and it was your first year...". I appreciate that, I really do. Do say that to the kids. I have more than two additional instructional hours on my schedule than I had last year. I would prefer last year's schedule. "I told them that you have to be impatient with them. There isn't a lot of time!". Exactly. The class looks like a most wanted list of who is a behavioral problem, but you know, it's my fault. Parents have pulled their kids from the school to avoid that class. Teachers have been fired for not being able to tame them. But wow, I guess it was me all along.

The late night teeth grinding has already begun.

I have been forced to lead a song in Spanish during our morning meetings all week. I was horrified by the prospect. I can be a real ham when I am alone with the kids in my room, but not in front of more than four hundred people. Singing. It has been going remarkably well. I have too many student volunteers to sing it for me, and the kids high five me when I leave the stage. I may do it again.

I left Atlanta's most wanted elementary class, angry. Four or five kids managed to really fuck it up, and I had only a ten minute break before I had to teach for another two hours and fifteen minutes straight. I had already taught an hour and a half. I went to buy a Coke. "Hey..." a teacher called to me in the hall, insinuating that the lovely little boy to her left had a question. "Doesn't the end of the song say 'turn to the other side' in Spanish?". "Yes" I answered. "The kids aren't doing it when you lead them in the meeting. You need to teach them that!". Thanks for that. Anything else? I have a few suggestions for you too.

"How can we show respect for each other in Spanish class?" I asked the second graders, late on Friday afternoon. "Don't say 'I don't like Spanish'" Julio announced. "Wow, thanks Julio. We don't say hurtful words in here, do we? Those words hurt me" I responded. "And ME too!" he answered. I was surprised. "Why Julio?" I asked. "Because I am Mexican and THAT is my language".

The problems of the week slowly slid away...

Week Two

2011-08-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

I could feel my scalp sweating as I sat in a circle on the floor with the third graders. They sang lazily. As I scanned the room, a dark little exposed belly caught my eye. Lashandi sat singing, her tired looking eyes drooping, her shirt carefully folded up to air her stomach in the hot room. She looked like a little old man. Possibly a little old non-American man. I've noticed they will unapologetically sit in public or walk through town with their shirts raised to air their bellies, jiggly old flesh staring out at the world. I wonder if it works, if airing your stomach really cools you down. A million old men and Lashandi certainly cannot be wrong.

The temperature crested at eighty-six degrees in my classroom. A number of folks pushed all the useless buttons on the thermostat just as I had when I walked in that morning and achieved the same result: It was fucking broken, just like I had said. Penny reached toward me to hug me as she left the classroom, something she rarely does. "I'm sorry, honey. I stink." I told her as she continued to advance. I could smell the curry I had eaten the night before escaping through my pores. She smiled knowingly while wagging her head no and hugged me anyway.

It started out innocently enough. I really felt raggedy one morning. And it was only the second week of school. And the air was working again. I don't know what my problem is. My first class came in. "¿Cómo están?" I asked them. "I haven't been sleeping at night" one responded. Others nodded. "My stomach hurts everyday" another added. "I threw up last night" yet another quipped. "Why are you all so anxious?" I asked. They didn't know. Instead of fighting the mood of the class, I decided to just go with it. I heard about ear infections, blood, sleeping on the couch because the bed was too uncomfortable. Oddly, one of the blond devils that has always been difficult for me voluntarily sat next to me, and even let me pat him on the back a couple of times. David rose his hand. "In the summer, my dad came in one day and turned off the T.V. He said he had something serious to tell me". I was nervous. I could tell by his face that this might be a big one. "My step dad died. He was in the army and had to take medicine to get his head right again after he came home. One night, everyone was out to dinner and he accidentally took too much of his medicine for his head and he died, because no one was home to help him". "Is he still dead?" another kid asked. "Yes," David answered solemnly, "he still is. It is permanent".

"Oh my God!" their teacher laughed when I told her how we spent Spanish class. "Yesterday we had a really long discussion about the various ways that they have been spanked! It's not as awful as it sounds!". "So....what about Jimmy, never been spanked?" I inquired. "No," she answered, eyes widening "belt". "What about Sarah?", "Measuring stick", "And Zach?" I continued, strangely curious about the various means of corporal punishment.

"No," she said with a relieved look, "never been spanked".

You, Me and Everyone We Know

2011-08-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

The one eyed machete wielding men of Nicaragua seem very far away now.

I walked through the blistering heat into the mini mart at the gas station, the first week of school under my belt. It's odd. There is a really shiny, fancy gas station across the street that has really shitty beer. I go to the completely sketchy looking place on the other side that actually has good beer. It was hot. Really hot. There was a vibe in the parking lot. I saw this Asian guy, wearing tight, dark jeans and multicolored Adidas, dark wristbands and spiky hair. He didn't have a shirt on. His upper body was completely covered in tattoos. I don't really have any issue with that, but something about him sort of screamed mafia, and don't fuck with me. He spoke in rapid fire, some kind of Chinese to another, I assume, Chinese guy. Stereotypes preclude that Asians aren't supposed to be intimidating, yet these guys clearly smashed that to bits. I steered clear of them. There was a line clear across the store. I grabbed my beer and got in it. "Hey! Where your partner?!" a completely homeless dude yelled across the store, "This is ridiculous!" he added, and stormed out. I stared forward. I heard a shouting, barking noise in the parking lot. "What is that.....?" the young, African American guy behind me in low slung jeans and an A hat whispered. "It sounds like shouting..." I responded quietly. The homeless guy re-entered. "Where your partner?!" he yelled. I bought my beer and left, exiting quickly and eyeballing the Appalachian homeless that sit by the dumpster, making sure they weren't coming up at me. A van blocked my car in. That is, a prison transport van, complete with prisoners shackled inside. I got in my car, locked the doors and turned the air on.

I could wait.

So, just mentioning Nicaragua made it come back to me...like a dream. Nicaragua is a big bike country. Not for fitness or fun, but primarily because of poverty. People routinely give each other rides on their bikes. Yet most bikes lack pegs on the back wheel that will allow a second rider to stand behind the principal one. The most common pairs of riders seemed to be young men. Not kids, but guys that were like, twenty-three. I was a little stunned to see the principal rider on the seat, peddling, while the second rider straddled the bar, yup, sitting right on it, while steering. Dads that were riding little boys often peddled and steered, yet the little boys still straddled the bar in front of the principal rider. I have to wonder if there is any sort of legacy of infertility among men in Nicaragua. The only people I saw riding side saddle on the bar, permitting the principal rider to both peddle and steer, were women. To put it bluntly, we aren't fools. We have a lot less junk down below, but we still aren't riding a bar.

I stared back at the new sea of kindergartners. They lacked identity and personality. I guess I don't have to wonder this time if they will worm their way into my heart. Everyone I teach does. This is my sixth year in the public schools. Blobs will become people and people, personalities. They will come and they will go.

Now, they just have to make themselves known to me.

We wish you well

2011-07-31T15:23:00.000-07:00

I'm really fat right now. It's something I don't like to discuss. Giant. My hair is really big too. That part, I love. My hair has always been straight as a rail. Now, it is fluff king. My hairdresser flat irons it, to be fashionable. I hate it. I run straight to the shower, and let it fluff up it's to its full madness again. It has curls, waves. Cascading red craziness. It feels nice. I touch it and twist it and push it up and it only gets grander. Day two is the best. Day two after washing. Lionesca.

I went back to work. I am sorry, let me rephrase myself. I WENT BACK TO PINCHE WORK. We began three days before traditional pre-planning begins, which meant we started in the end of July. Let me rephrase myself. HIJO DE LA GRAN PUTA, JULY. JULY. I know it is only a three day difference, but starting before August fucks with my head. It does. We had to go to a retreat. At a 4-H camp in eastern Georgia. Let me rephrase. A 4-H CAMP. EASTERN GEORGIA. This wasn't some fancy thing that made you at least grateful that you got to go to a nice hotel. We are talking bunk beds, cinder block buildings. I struggled.

Two days after returning from Nicaragua, I actually managed to get up on time and head to my car, Google map in hand. I am not so hot at directions outside of the city. I drove. And I drove. I missed a little "highway" and had to turn around and catch it. Finally, I was on the road where I was to make my last right hand turn. I drove. I kept driving. What the fuck?! I started saying out loud. What THE FUCK?! The map was wrong. I was late. It was snowballing. Not five minutes late, not ten minutes late. Pushing thirty. I tried to call the camp, and the last bar on my phone died as the lady told me directions that were completely contrary to my map. I followed them anyway and was stunned when I saw the place. I drove way too fast through the little roads and got to the meeting building and entered. I was forty-five minutes late. Everyone was seated and in full discourse. Way starting the year on a positive note, I thought.

After the initial discomfort, I settled in. I was shocked at how much fun it was to speak to my co-workers and even more, to get drunk with them in the evening. Really drunk. Rampaging, hiking river trails without flashlights, bonding drunk. Screaming drunk.

The retreat was fun. I just hope that the school year will be fun. I will be returning to my Spanish island and oh so much can go wrong. So very much. People that are fantastic at a party are not always fantastic at school. I am crossing my fingers. I want it to go well.

I wish myself well.

The One I Love

2011-07-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

I drove east on the same highway that I had driven with both birds. I passed the exit where the vet was and continued to the exit of the "petuary". I glanced at the brochure. They even had a little pet hearse. I found it kind of disgusting and wanted to get my poor bird out of that ridiculous place. Even if he was dead. I was a little stunned when my Google map lead me to a real funeral home. With human size hearses. No mention of pets. I cautiously went inside. Viewing rooms were open and people sat in chairs, talking. I was under dressed in my Fuerza Azteca t-shirt. People were looking at me. I went back outside. It was as if I had crashed a funeral.

"Hey, I think I'm at your place" I said with exasperation into my phone from the parking lot. Some gross man sat staring and smiling at me with his feet up on a bench beside the building. Idiot. "Where do I come inside? There is like a funeral going on in there." I continued. "Ah yes, there is a visitation," the woman responded calmly, "just walk straight through and to the back".

So I did. I drove back to my house with a little box of ashes instead of the big chirping cage I had driven east with.

Va pues

2011-07-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

¡Nicaragua! ¡Mi querida Nicaragua! ¡Nicaragua linda!

The summer is flashing before my eyes, riding in a pick up truck with a multi-tiered gun rack to a bar in Opileka during a tornado, trees bending and skies graying and talk of hanging out in a walk in cooler. Border walls, the Gulf from the Texas side and the biggest tamale I have ever eaten. Feral. A customs form that asked if you had recently experienced nausea, vomiting or "decay", and another border that was wide open...friends, dear friends and lovely students saved in a time capsule that can never be reopened, eggs frying on the sidewalk in Phoenix, running down the splintery path to the Atlantic coast, bike rides, bike rides in southern Georgia to dark little bars with friendly people, a no brakes or gears bike ride through farms and jungles to a mineral water swimming hole on a little island comprised of two volcanoes in the middle of the biggest lake in Central America. Singing at Holly. A river that separated two countries. Revolutionaries. Sonoran hot dogs. Tarantulas. Soccer games. Descending a thousand feet in less that five minutes on a burned up active volcano, flying, running, arms outstretched, feeling like no one could ever reel me in again. Dropping off two pet birds at the vet and only returning with one. Bayous. Friendship bracelets that finally broke off. Crocodiles. Microbrews. Toña beer. A beautiful, wrap around screened in porch with wicker furniture. Staring down the smoking hole of an active volcano. Handing over a huge bag of toiletries to a priest. Plantains. Sunburns. Bug bites. Coconuts. Scabs. Cars. Bikes. Air planes. Boats. Kayaks. Hiking boots.

I had a dream on July 1st that it was July 27th, my day of return to work. I remember thinking in the dream, "this summer has gone really fast".

This summer has gone really fast.

Onward

2011-07-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

Things became blurry after that. We shopped, ate, hung out and raged a bit. Tijuana seemed different, calmer. I did not see one ski mask wearing soldier or cop in the entire city, let alone military checkpoints or patrolling trucks of men with automatic weapons. It actually felt pretty casual going out drinking, walking around. One memory stands out of the additional three days we passed in Tijuana: Standing on the beach in Rosarito at sunset with Hector and my sister, eating coconuts. It was beautiful.

After five days in Tijuana, we finally headed out. It was difficult to leave. We headed east, through Tecate, the Rumorosa, Mexicali, through the small border towns and down to Puerto Peñasco, spending the night in the same hotel where Alec and I spent a weekend over a year ago. We left the next morning, the stifling Sonoran heat shocking us after the breezy, Tijuana temperatures. We headed southeast, toward some small Sonoran towns that interested us, intending to loop back up to Nogales to re-enter the United States. Until we ran into a customs checkpoint. In the middle of Sonora. Miles from the border. It was odd.

“Do you have the car’s registration?” the agent asked in Spanish, without ever asking for ID, anything to declare, where we were headed or even if we understood him. “No,” I answered, “our tag is current. We have ID and insurance cards….”. “Pull over to Secondary Inspection” he ordered. I have never been asked for the my car’s registration in Mexico, not by Mexican or American Secondary Inspection agents, or the Mexican military in checkpoints in Baja California and Sonora, or in customs on the Sonora / Baja California line. We sat and waited. Finally, he came. “You have to have the car’s registration. Whose car is this?”. “Her husband’s” I answered, referring to my sister. “Does she have her marriage license?” he asked. “Of course not” I answered. “Does she have his ID?”. “No” I answered. He randomly started opening our bags, without even advising us. “How much money do each of you have on you?” he asked. Great. “I have one dollar” I answered, opening my wallet for him to see. “You don’t travel with money!?” he responded. “I need to got to the bank”. I didn’t even mention that an ATM in Tijuana had eaten my bankcard and that money was a little problematic for me at the moment. “You have to go back to Sonoyta and cross back to the American side,” he said brusquely, “if you continue to Caborca, your car will be impounded”.

So, that ended our Mexico experience for summer. Ejected. Kicked out. Of Mexico. Mi querido México. A-hole. After such a nice visit. We back tracked to Sonoyta and ate our last meal and passed our sand covered car, stacked high with shit that we’ve acquired, through the border without even a wait and only a flash of our passports. No Secondary Inspection. It was a miracle.

On the bright side, I thought, I have always wanted to visit Organ Pipe. I love cactus, especially the huge, barrel-like Saguaro cactus that they have in Arizona. It seemed that we were the only car on the road, except for a few million south bound Border Patrol trucks. I pulled off the road to take a couple of pictures. Another migra wagon pulled by, skidded, and made an abrupt U-turn. I pulled out into street as I watched him race back up to us in my rear-view mirror. He was directly on my bumper, but wasn’t indicating in anyway that I was supposed to pull over. What the fuck? Seriously. I kept driving, mainly because I didn’t know what else to do. I started slowing for an upcoming Border Patrol checkpoint. The young agent was pretty conversational. I really didn’t feel like chatting, but did what you are supposed to do to avoid confrontation with men in authority with uniforms and guns. “Did you pull off of the road back there?” he finally asked. “Yeah,” I answered, “it’s a national monument. I wanted to take some pictures”. “An agent called it in” he answered. “No kidding,” I responded “he nearly ran me off the road”, “There’s a lot of smuggling in this area” he retorted. “Well, I hope they do a better job than I did” I responded. He let us go. I was irritated. How many confrontations can you have with The Man in one day?

And we raged toward Phoenix. It was only 118 degrees.

Day Two

2011-06-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

"Okay, it looks like the first thing on the room service menu is lube" Holly commented. I looked at the Spanish menu. "Yeah, they list condoms too. And they really seem to highlight which channels are 'adult' as opposed to say, CNN, like a normal hotel" I answered. We swung open our garage door and walked up to OXXO for coffee. As we came back in, we noticed a pretty hot woman with a very small dress on, really high heels and a lot of makeup for ten o'clock in the morning. The ladies with the headsets that ran the place were shepherding her through a nondescript door. We went about our business.

"You are in a total hooker hotel!" my former exchange partner cried as we walked to a bar to watch the Mexico - U.S. game. "It's so cheap because people only stay four hours! Are there a lot of adult channels and a pretty good sound system?", "Well, yeah now that you mention it....", "They didn't give you a key because nobody needs a key! They do what they're going to do and then they leave! If a hotel is called a 'motel' in Mexico, that's what it's for. You should get out of there" he informed us. You learn something new everyday.

We raced over to the east side of town to my old neighborhood to climb the hill to Hector's house for dinner. I was running late and tore across town and up the potholed dirt hill, until the car slowed down, sputtered and stopped. Hmmm, gas really helps these things run. I was horrified. Late, and now out of gas. Rude asshole American. Hector and his friend jumped out of the car and inserted a tube in Hector's gas tank. His friend took a "bien bonito trago" of gas in his mouth and spit it out in an attempt to siphon gas into a jug for my car. The tube wasn't long enough. They stood in the dark on a dusty hill above Tijuana, rosaries gleaming on their necks while I backed my car down the hill and to the side of the potted dirt road and jumped in their car to go back to town for gas. Hector's friend played loud, American gangster rap as we bumped along the road. People burned garbage in the street in front of the mix of shanties and modest homes that make up Hector's make-shift neighborhood. Finally, we had the gas and climbed the hill again, using a modified plastic bottle as a spout to insert the gas in Holly's car. It wouldn't start. "La bomba," Hector's friend commented, "está vacia". He directed me to roll the car backwards down the hill until I was on flatter ground. It took a while. The car finally started. We roared up the hill and arrived at the dinner party, now two hours late, while Roberto and his wife and Josefina and my sister, who does not speak Spanish, patiently waited. Rude asshole American. I was mortified.

We talked until late in the night. I was tired, and my Spanish powers of comprehension started to fail me the later it got, as wild barrages of words flew out of my friends' mouths. It had been a long day. A trip to Playas, game watching in Zona Río, a race back to east Tijuana and a long dinner party. We headed back to our hooker hotel. The place was hopping. Cars pulled in and out and the headset ladies scurried from room to room, many pushing cleaning carts in order to ready the rooms for the next four hours. We pulled in. "We're in 110" I told the woman with the headset. "Your room has been turned over," she informed us, with a smile, "you have to pay". "No," I answered "we paid this morning". "On the weekends the rate is only for five hours," she informed me "do you want to take your room for five more?". "No," I answered, "just tell me how we can get our stuff". We quickly cleared out and drove toward the centro. It was late, pushing two in the morning. We wheeled into a high end hotel, one with a front desk, keys and wifi in the rooms. No lube, no adult channels.

We paid the insanely exorbitant rate and slept as if in a tomb.

Felicidades

2011-06-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

It was late. It felt oddly surreal and strangely good to be driving the streets of Tijuana again. Familiar. As if this past year didn't wipe the whole experience away, snatch it from my grasping fingertips. I was back.

I'm not so good at planning. I've frankly gotten really bad about it when it comes to traveling and just figure everything will be fine as long as I have my passport and multiple means of accessing money. We drove past the university where the graduation would be held, hoping to find a place to stay nearby. It was the same dusty university I had visited long ago as a guest with the other English teachers from my TJ school. There is nowhere to stay out there.

I drove through my old neighborhood, avoiding the few hooker-ish hotels that exist over there. Alec's words came into my mind...."There's this place, the blue and white used to pass by there, you know, after it goes down that huge hill toward Otay. It's like a fortress, it has walls around it, Holly's car would be safe there. I think it's for some kind of Japanese CEOs that come to visit the maquiladoras". Well I was hard up, and I followed his directions to the walled place that actually looked freakishly nice, for only 300 pesos? I pulled in. A guard rail stopped incoming cars. Wow, security, nice! Oddly, a woman sat in a glass box and rolled out a drawer, like in gas stations in bad parts of town. It seemed out of place in the beautifully manicured hotel. "Do you have room for two people.....," I asked in Spanish "is this a hotel?" I continued, while eyeballing the garages under each room. Maybe they were condos? "You can speak in English" the woman responded curtly. "We have room. Three hundred pesos". I put the money in the drawer. She stared back at me. "Do we get a key?" I asked. "It's open" she responded.

We drove past the dark condo-room things, were we the only people staying there? One garage door was open and we drove in, closing it behind us. We went upstairs. The room was huge and decorated in a modern, yet kind of Stanley Kubrick style. The bathroom looked expensive and crazy modern, something you would see in some expensive hotel in the centro. A little door in the wall opened so that food and expensive bottles of liquor, wine and champagne could be inserted through the wall in your room without having to let a room service person in. It had a flat screen TV, air conditioning, cable and a giant king sized bed. In short, it was awesome. But in Otay? Why in Otay? In the middle of the factories? This place really didn't look like a business hotel and the one thing it lacked was a decent wifi connection. Something odd and kind of hooker-ish was afoot, but oh well.

We left early the next morning after paying for another night and closing our garage door behind us, racing to the ceremony that began at 7:30AM. I was tired. I slightly questioned the wisdom of voluntarily attending what could be five hours of graduation ceremonies. As I drove through the parking lot, I saw my old students walking with their caps and gowns. A sense of deja vu washed over me. Thankfully, they were late too. I immediately saw Hector and felt completely at ease. We rushed into the auditorium and stood in the back, as familiar and surprised faces of my former fellow teachers passed and greeted me with hugs and kisses.

Suddenly, the vice principal was at my side, grabbing my arm and ushering me to the front. Oh, no, oh no. My sister was abandoned to Hector's care and I did not know what was in store for me. Please don't make me speak to the crowd, please don't make me speak to the crowd. As I moved to the front, I again felt a sense of deja vu, remembering the many times I was ushered to the front of assemblies and events, a trophy for my school. I was being swept up again, as if I had never left. It felt so familiar, and embarrassing all over again. I was seated in the front row and the superintendent and my former principal began assailing me and the crowd with praise, praise for my year in Tijuana, gratefulness for my return and declarations of mutual love between me and my former students. When my kids spontaneously rose and cheered emphatically, smiling and waving at me, I suddenly realized I was going to cry. It has been a long year, and I forgot how good it felt to be appreciated, for whatever reason.

I stayed for all of the ceremonies. My face hurt from smiling so hard. I had lipstick smeared on my face from hugging and kissing so many people...Hector, Roberto, my exchange partner, Josefina...all the familiar faces from that year that went so fast. The second ceremony of the day was for the formerly dreaded Electronics students, my bobcats, the kids that gave me a run for my money when I arrived in TJ and grew to be some of my favorite students. I was horrified when I was ushered up on the stage next to the principal, superintendent, valedictorian....the police chief. This was not supposed to be my day, it was a day to recognize the kids. As the students filed up to receive their diplomas, shaking each hand at the table, I was eternally grateful for my placement. It was just so good to see their faces, to be able to congratulate them individually, to grasp their hands, one by one, to not skip a single person.

As the third ceremony began, I watched a dad walk slowly into the room, carrying a congratulatory plaque that many parents were giving their children. He wore Dickies pants and a baseball hat, his skin dark from the sun. He glanced furtively around the room and went outside, only to return with a balloon to accompany his plaque. He sat down for a minute, looking at the flowers the woman beside him carried. He went back outside, returning with a bouquet of red roses. I was again introduced to the crowd an met with surprised cheers from my kids who again jumped to their feet. After the ceremony, I chatted and snapped pictures with the kids. I realized this was the true end to my Tijuana teaching experience. It was the last time the students would all be in one place at one time. I would not be at another graduation ceremony, I wouldn't even know the students. Mine were leaving, finishing and embarking on the next stage in their lives. What I thought was the end last year really wasn't, this was.

The man in the Dickies pants wandered around, flowers, plaque and balloon in hand. Finally, his daughter spotted him. She burst into tears. He smiled and quickly whisked away a tear of his own.

Go West

2011-06-25T02:31:00.000-07:00

I woke up bright and early and loaded my stuff into the car. My trusty ’97 Mazda was maintenanced and ready for its triumphant return to Tijuana. I picked up my sister and drove toward the highway.

Two hours later, we were sitting in a transmission shop in Alabama. “Anywhere from $500 to $1900?” I heard myself reiterating to the mechanic. “The parts won’t be in until Monday…..?” It was Friday afternoon. I got drunk while waiting for someone to pick us up and stared dismally out of the window as we road back to Atlanta.

Saturday morning, I was awake again, put the same clothes on that I had worn the day before and pretended like it was Friday. I got in my sister’s car and we headed west.

A day and a half later, we started seeing Border Patrol check points as we headed west, then south, south south. We entered Brownsville. Agents had a man surrounded on the side of the road, his trunk open. Strange, shanty like houses lined the border. “Does someone live in there……?” I asked and stopped, as I saw a man walking out of a pieced together home. The border wall cut through their backyards. A dusty expanse on the other side was Mexico, mi querido México.

We drove west. The border wall stayed on our left as we passed through vacant, blighted towns. Shanties were mixed indiscriminately with larger homes, some that looked older, oddly historic and strangely reminiscent of homes I had seen in Chihuahua, Chihuahua city, on the other side….something that continued but had been interrupted by a large rusty wall.

We stopped in Eagle Pass for the night. We passed through the empty downtown that would be charming if someone, anyone, actually opened something up in the empty storefronts. We drove by the river, or what we could see of it through the border wall. Suddenly, there was a space, a huge space; a large gate that was part of the border wall was wide open. We stared through. Across the narrow expanse of Río Grande, Mexico sat. Kids swam in the river with a couple of adults. It was tranquil and strangely homey and lovely in the late afternoon sun. And then the Border Patrol pulled up, tearing down the dirt road and stopping, staring at the Mexican side. The kids got out of the water. We left too.

As we careened through El Paso a day and multiple border patrol check points later, I saw the signs pointing to Mexico, to Juárez, and suddenly realized I was in the line TO Juárez and no one was letting me out and I shoved my way into traffic and out of the line, determined, bound and determined, not to go there.

We drove by the wall separating El Paso from Juárez. Was it caging Mexico out, or caging it in? Tidy houses mixed with shanties lined the dusty Mexican side. Some roads were paved, some were not. Water ran through the street. White people played golf on the American side. A massive crowd of people waited in line over a long bridge that went over the highway, a line that extended from the gate to the United States and into Mexico for as far as the eye could see.

We drove west, through the desert of New Mexico flanked by Border Patrol trucks and on to Arizona. We stood, gazing through the border wall on a dusty road west of Douglas in a desert so familiar to both of us, when a racing truck with a plum of dust behind it tore up. I snapped a picture of it, then continued doing what I was already doing, basically looking around. For once, I actually wasn’t doing anything wrong. “Hey… ,“ the Border Patrol agent said tentatively through his open window, “…um, just uh, taking some pictures? We have cameras. Someone called us in on you.”

We headed toward Nogales. Wildfires got in our way and clouded the air above the desert, reminding me of a summer long ago when a helicopter picked a sick man up and flew him into the sky while the fire glowed like lava from the hills. Nogales looked different in the daytime, much different than the nervous couple of evenings I spent there one time, one strange time while fireworks exploded in the sky and things scurried in the night. The border wall cut straight through the town, dusty houses butted up against it on the American side and brightly painted houses squeezed against the Mexican side.

As we passed through the Imperial dunes, my Arizona memories were replaced by California ones. I remembered the moonlit night I had spent a year ago, driving through the glowing dunes after finishing my last day of school in Tijuana, crying and singing in a strange delirium of emotions and separation. We came to Holtville and stood in the odd part of the cemetery, way in the back, where only “John Doe” bricks mark the graves. Signs warned of stepping on the ground, that it would cave in. By the graves. People say the bodies, the migrants, are not buried in caskets in their pauper graves. Flies swarmed and one bit me hard on the face, leaving it itching for days. A migrant-friendly group had put crosses up, wooden crosses, each painted carefully with “No olvidado” across the front. They were inserted by the bricks.

We looped around the familiar country roads heading south. Finally, we came over a hill and Mexico exposed itself before us, a sea of twinkling lights in all directions. After days of avoiding the lanes that point straight toward Mexico, I drove straight in.

Oh, Mexico. How I’ve missed you.

A Holiday by the Seashore

2011-06-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

"There is a point when redneck turns to savage" the silver haired gentleman stated in a genteel, southern drawl, referring to the party that had just left. The bar was dark, though the late afternoon sun blared outdoors. I liked the seediness of it, the sunny beach sitting right outside of the salty, dark little bar. It was filled with old people. Locals. A bike ride gone bad.

"So why doesn't the Obamas visit the Greece? He goes to Polonia! In Greece, we broke!" the older, well, Greek lady ranted as she handed us our food in the cinder block hut next to the highway, which strangely, has really awesome Greek food. In Atlanta, which is not exactly known for Mediterranean delights. I stared at the ripped out, calendar photos of Greece that lined the walls of the waiting area. Mykonos and the rest of the isles seemed completely out of context in the rather dingy, warehouse area where the low rise building sat and had been sitting for as long as I can remember. I stared at her wide eyed, afraid to speak. Not because she scared me, but because I was scaring myself. A new medication I had just starting taking was leaving me in a scared fog, a fog so freaky that I had called my sister and asked her to babysit me, to come get me, come get me now. The second day wasn't so bad, but I was still nervous, so she let me stay by her side again, all day. And eat take out Greek food.

We have been going to the Georgia coast since I was a kid. I loved it at first and then went through a stage where I didn't find it so awesome. I wanted the big, sandy, vegetation free beaches that I had seen pictures of, flanked by neon blue water. Or at least dark blue, Pacific style water. Pretty water that you could see your feet in. Not the strange dunes filled with long brown and green grass, separated by sand from the gray waters of the Atlantic. I've come full circle and love it again. The drive through the marshes to the beach, the vegetation on the dunes, the gray water, the odd, unpopularity of the beach, mainly because it is not Florida, St. Simons or Hilton Head. I find it beautiful and sleepy in a fully southern way. I wasn't sure if I would ever really need to leave the house after viewing our rented, 1920's beach house, but managed to run down the splintery, wooden path to the sea at least once a day. It made me think of the really early days on Great Lakes in Michigan, at the old beach cottages we went to in the days before the big move to the South. I loved the lakes but have never returned. I spent the week riding my bike and jogging, while looking at the pretty old cottages that gave some kind of folks from Atlanta or Savannah a seaside getaway one hundred years ago.

So, it's on. A few days until the adventurous ride to T.J., adventures in Mexico and San Diego and Arizona. You can't see me, but I am crossing myself, Catholic style. I didn't learn it as a kid when I sat in a room with a priest rattling off the sins of a nine year old, or the day I walked down the aisle of a big church wearing a white dress and carrying a tremendous carafe of red wine. I learned it in Mexico, before my many rides wheeled out on the Tijuana roads to take me home from work, crossing their shoulders and heart and kissing their fingers, then putting the car in drive.

It really doesn't seem to hurt.

Summer Days

2011-05-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

Last day of school. Early dismissal at 11:30. What in God's name could I do to contain the crunk 3rd grade on such a day? "Bring 'em to P.E.," Coach Fantastic Lady That Always Saves My Ass instructed, "we'll play the classes against each other in dodge ball". Was I dreaming? I lined them up and brought them in and as soon as the Bee Gees started playing loudly throughout the auditorium, ball started flying everywhere. And kept flying everywhere. For over an hour. This is the life, I thought. Both classes of the day knocked down and I barely had to lift a finger. The kids zipped by, eyes narrowing, dodging and whipping balls at each other. I saw some talents I had never seen in Spanish class. It was awesome.

And then they were gone. I sat through two pitiful days of post-planning, waiting for those a-holes to cut my feral ass loose. And I didn't go feral. I am just waiting, waiting, waiting for the minute I get in the car, get in the car and drive to Arizona, drive to California, drive to Tijuana, go south, drive that car all over the place. Fly to Nicaragua. Run wild, not just sit in this hot city. I should have left at 11:32 on Thursday. I don't need any down time. Time to clean the house, time to do the laundry? I don't need it.

I just need to go.

Between a green moon and a dark sun

2011-05-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

"Henry, I think Gilbert just said that she loves you..." I mentioned cautiously. "I know," the first grader responded, "she hits me all the time". Well, at least she hasn't cut you into little pieces.

"So muchachos, today is our last Spanish class for the school year" I announced to the fourth graders. A few started clapping and cheering. It hurt my feelings. I admit it. Fuck you, I thought. I'll remember that next year while making worksheet copies instead of spending a fortune on sugar skull kits and all the other fun shit I do for you. Fuck you. After the applause occurred with several fourth and fifth grade classes, I decided to be open with them. "If you told someone that you weren't going to see them for two months and they started cheering and clapping, how would you feel?" I asked them. They seemed a little stunned, but at least they stopped clapping.

"So muchachos, today is our last Spanish class for the school year" I announced to the second graders. "NO!" the argued, "We have more! WE HAVE MORE!" I showed them the schedule, we don't have anymore and they started booing. Christopher stopped me as I wandered around the class monitoring their work. "Can I put a GPS on you?" he asked. "Why?" I responded. "So that I can always find you..." The situation repeated itself with first grade and kindergarten. That's when I realized I shouldn't take any of it personally, their reactions were developmental. The upper grades cheered about the end of classes, the lower grades cried. Maybe that's why I like the lower grades so much. Niceness doesn't get enough credit.

"Andy, I'll miss you over the summer. But I'll look for you in the woods if you escape forever so that you won't have to come back to school". The blond boy smiled with delight. It was a private joke between us. He was one of the few dislikers of school among the kinders. "Yeah," he said "I'll live wild, in the woods...." Other kids started listening...."Wild, like Tarzan!" one responded, dark eyes gleaming...eyes were lighting up around the room, "wild" I heard, "WILD". "Okay, raise your hand if you were born in the wild" I asked the class, giggling. Hands shot up and eyes gleamed. Heavy giggling. "Raise your hand if you were raised by wolves!" More hands, out right laughter, calls of "yeah!". Everyone wants to live in the wild. Half these kids are still practically feral. That's what makes them so fun.

I've been getting a pretty tough beat down from some of the adults in my life. For once, it is not happening at work, but it is indeed happening. I feel pretty misunderstood, powerless and maligned. But with the kids, I realized, I feel good. There might be something kind of fucked up about that. But I feel like they see the real me, the me that is definitely eluding others.

"I like your new haircut, does it feel good?" I asked the first grader with a new crew cut. "Yeah, it feels great!" he responded, "Know why I got it? LICE!". I quickly removed my hand from his head.

"Do you want to paint faces at Field Day?" the P.E. teacher asked me. "Are you crafty?". Want to? I'd love to. Here I was thinking I'd have to monitor some insane obstacle course all day. "Can I make you like, a little cheetah?" I asked Ricky. "YEAH!" he screamed. "Me too! Me too!" the others yelled. "What about, like, a lion?" I asked another. "YEAH YEAH YEAH!" they called. I have never done this before. But the kids said I could totally practice on all of them.

Wild animals. Everyone is going to be one on Monday.

The List

2011-05-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

"Put 'em on the list" kinder Jay said solemnly. "The list, Jay? Do I really need to go talk to George's parents about getting him up too early on Saturdays?" I asked. "Yes," he responded, "on the list". Okay. George's parents were on the list, along with the asshole parents that made their kids go to church, go to bed early and eat vegetables. George snickered with delight. "I'm gonna go over there, George" I promised. "I know where you live".

I happily skidded through downtown Atlanta on my sister's bike, mine got a flat. It was May Day, rallies, and Georgia has a lot to worry about. We chanted and roamed a bit at the Capitol, then got hungry and well, thirsty. In most cities, downtown is where it's at. In Atlanta, downtown is where yucky people in suits work from 9-5, Monday through Friday and then drive their SUVs to the suburbs, leaving it a ghost town until Monday. The rest of us live a mile or two away from downtown, where normal life continues: restaurants, bars and movies. But the downtown, well, it's dead.

We wandered around. And finally, went to the Underground, an odd tourist attraction that has higher odds of getting mugged and shot than actually enjoying your bad tourist self. We went to a sports bar and ordered some food. It was sunny and nice and seedy, with signs advertising a multitude of things that you couldn't carry into the bar or do in the bathroom. "We got four dollar pitchers of margaritas" our earnest waitress offered us. I was surprised when my sister took her up on it. Good days. Good days in the Underground. Happy May Day.

I sure am going to miss that Osama bin Laden. I was as horrified as the rest of you that day in early autumn, ten years ago. I was shocked when I looked through the window of my La Guardia bound flight when it flew over the smokey pit that used to be the World Trade Center, six weeks after the attack. I bawled my head off at the funeral I was attending for everyone and everything that had happened. I am surprised by how I feel about his death. Believe me, I know this guy was was THE hijo de la gran puta. It is just not everyday that a person, raised in privilege, decides to dedicate his life to a conviction that does not include silk sheets. To start a movement. To put his money where his mouth is. I am impressed by his ability to organize. Would you know how to do it? No, me neither. Obviously, I don't agree with what he agreed with, but I have to respect his conviction and ability to organize multiple countries into a massive movement. He's the Che Guevara of the Arab world. A few slight changes and I would have been cheering for his wild-ass, guerilla army. But he killed us. And wanted to keep killing us. And I am one of us. But I haven't done shit with my life and that guy gave it all up to actively and wholeheartedly pursue what he believed in. It is a lesson to me.

Well, except for the killing of civilians part and freaky religion stuff.

I quickly perused my email, hair still wet and late for work. Alejandro had sent me a message, another Dreamer in trouble, sign the petition. It made me sad. It never ends, does it? It just goes and goes and goes.

And then Governor Nathan Deal signed the law, putting us second only to Arizona for hate laws against immigrants. We're number two!

Cheers.

De colores

2011-05-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

"I went to a pig roast this weekend" the second grader responded when asked how he was doing. "I ate PIG".

Well, I eat shit, I thought, as his teacher waved her hand in my face in an act of dismissal and stomped out of my classroom. I forget sometimes how important these elementary school teachers are. That my job is to be their lady in waiting, their babysitter, their maid, whenever they feel like dropping their classes off because they need a break. Silly little me thinking I was a real teacher. And for having a little self respect when I marched my ass down to her classroom and let her know that I wasn't her maid. She told what she really thinks, which was even worse than I would have ever imagined. When she apologized, I told her that I wanted to drop it. She thought I was being gracious, but I wasn't. I know what she thinks and an apology won't fix that, or the fact that half the people I work with share the same impression; that "specials' teachers are not a real teachers, that we work less than they do, that our classes don't matter, that we are only there to make their lives easier. It's a little hard to take. But I don't want to argue about it. I've defended my job enough lately.

"Just trust us" the board representative told the teachers after we refused to sign our contracts. "Well I feel better now!" one of my fellow teachers exclaimed and they signed. Simultaneously, the board announced that they wanted to significantly increase the size of our student population and house the new kids in my classroom. SUCKERS!! Not only would I have more instructional hours added to my packed schedule, I would have to roll around on a cart and visit the various classrooms in order to teach. I began applying for jobs immediately.

"We have to think about direct action against Nathan Deal while HB87 sits on his desk. Who can find the governor's schedule for the upcoming week?". The meetings against Georgia's hate bill were up to twice a week and included homework. Spreadsheets, phone calls, emails. "I need information from you as soon as possible how increasing the size of the school will effect student achievement in Spanish" my co-worker requested "I need data. We have to stop this thing". More homework, after two or three faculty meetings in the same week. "So, how can we help you with the school wide assembly?" the group of parents asked me at yet another after school meeting. "The props are done. Everything is done. The assembly is less than a week away" I answered. Where the fuck were you while I was busting my ass to make this obligatory thing happen? Alone. Managing the costumed skits, rehearsals, setting up risers, videos, songs and dances of 370 elementary age children, alone. Meetings everyday, immigration, faculty, some days with double headers after school. Little help from the K-5 teachers, no help from parents. Only the other "specials" helped. "What bitches," they said "we'll help you. You can't corral 370 kids by yourself during an assembly".

"De colores...." the fourth grader sang "...y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí..." I was surprised that I was chocking up. She volunteered to do it, wanted to do it, to promote the assembly. Stood up there with her dad and sang the entire lovely song in Spanish. I felt proud. Their skinny little arms hugged me, circled my neck, my waist, my leg. It's their way of saying "hi" and they do it instinctively. I am proud of them.

I was standing in a parking lot, drunk. The assembly was a bit of a disaster, technical problems, communication errors, but the kids had a blast and the damn thing was over. Parents popped up at the last minute and helped corral the kids during the assembly and one dad even put a suit on and mc-ed the thing for me. And... the Board decided not to add the extra group of kids. No cart for me....I could keep my classroom.

Decisions, decisions.

This is what democracy looks like

2011-04-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

"I'm NOT your average man! When I got a jammy in my hand!" I howled with L.L. Cool J, cruising my smokin' hot, just can't kill it '97 Mazda back to my house. Who's gonna knock you out? Well, I'm gonna knock you out. Pues, Momma said knock you out. Who's gonna do it? I'm gonna do it.

"Man, estoy bien" my little Bruce Springsteen kinder kid announced in his steel worker's voice "I got night vision goggles for my birthday, it was awesome".

I tossed and turned. It started during the last days of my vacation while sleeping in the warm mornings of the forbidden tropical wonderland. Work, money, disrespect, what do I care, why do I care. Work, money, disrespect. Images of fifth grade kids with with wintergreen mints sparking in the night in their mouths, something they told me about, something from their overnight field trip, you decorate the butterfly wing, Alec, you decorate butterfly wing, delirium, work, disrespect, MONEY. MONEY. MONEY. Disrespect.

"Buenas tardes. Buscamos firmas en contra de lay ley, saben, la ley como la que tienen en Arizona, la ley en contra de imigrantes..." I worked the crowd at Feria Latina. Folks feared me at first. Gringo lady, talking about immigration laws, asking for signatures. When the words started spilling from my mouth, they got the message. I had my best luck with young, cholo, tattooed men. No one else approached them. I knew they would get me. And they did. You just got to be nice.

"The Underground Railroad ran a registry, at this house in Maryland, you know, they took names, so people could call and find them....their relatives... they could ask if they passed through..." the fifth graders continued with their presentation, and my mind drifted, drifted to Casa del Migrante, the people that called, the registry we kept, so their relatives, you know, their relatives, would know if they passed through..."Sanctuary" the kids said, "they sought Sanctuary". Sanctuary. Such an important word. Sanctuary. I thought of the bad ass Presbyterians, yeah, never thought I'd say that, the bad ass Presbyterians that offered SANCTUARY, yes SANCTUARY, in their churches to Central Americans during the 1980s civil wars. In the United States. Driving, harboring, SANCTUARY. Felonies, jail time, SANCTUARY. You can't leave the state. Felony. SANCTUARY. It is morally correct. God or no God, morally correct. I am so lucky to know them. To know them. To look bad ass Presbyterian in the bad ass eye. It has been my pleasure. And my benefit.

So, they say the older kids don't like to sing, they like chants. What the fuck? I don't want to sing those stupid educational songs either, I just did it because it's elementary school. Fine. I tried to figure out a chant. For days. Finally, it hit me. "Show me what democracy looks like! - This is what democracy looks like!", "Arpaio, escucha, estamos en la lucha!" The rally chants filled my head and soon I was filling in the blanks with target grammar structures. They liked it. Actually, they loved it. Little activists at work. They just don't know it yet.

I hope so. And I'm leaving. But I wish them well. I do. I wish them well.

Hasta la victoria, siempre

2011-04-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

I climbed through the boxes and piles of discarded teaching supplies that lined the hallway that leads to my classroom. They were the remnants of my former neighbor and friend's teaching career; the results of her "resignation". It looked like an eviction. The students that sometimes work at the table in the hallway cleared a space and worked in the middle of it all. Every student that entered my classroom had to walk through her discarded possessions in order to go to my class. I had to get out of there.

"The Senate can pass HB87, Georgia's copycat, Arizona-style bill Thursday or Friday, or after they return from vacation, anywhere from Monday the 11th through Thursday the 14th - day 40- the big day, the day when bills must pass or die" explained the lobbyist at my Tuesday night, stop Georgia from hating on immigrants meeting. "Who can be at the Capitol?" he asked, as hands rose in the air.

"Man, we heard EVERYTHING in Health class today" my thirteen year old niece commented, clicking past us in her new high heels and picking up her electric guitar. Open suitcases laid on the floor, bathing suits and sunblock, as the sound of the dryer echoing through the house.

"Either party may, without cause, terminate this Employment Agreement upon 30 days written notice" read our new contracts. "I'm not really comfortable with this" a teacher responded in our impromptu faculty meeting, the third of the week. People were getting agitated. It was the Friday before Spring Break. I had never seen so many teachers in a voluntary faculty meeting on such a day. I was agitated a year ago when I signed the same contract. If you can call it a contract. As a teacher, I'm just used to a little more protection, especially when administrators have been known to be partial, vindictive and petty. "Let's hold our contracts, tell them we won't sign until we get some written concessions" a teacher announced. "Yeah" many seconded. The hair on my arms started standing up. Was I seeing collective bargaining? Here, in the South, without any sort of official labor recognition? Grassroots collective bargaining? Hella better being seeing what I hoped to be seeing. "Okay, it's settled," an emerging leader announced, "we're holding our contracts, all of us".

And so I left. Off I went to the beautiful place that cannot be spoken of. Fly, fly, fly to let my feral self have a long-ass break.

Monday morning, I sat on the floor in a circle of kids, bleary eyed after a Sunday night return flight. "Okay, I have two questions: ¿Cómo estás? and one thing you might like to add about your Spring Break" I instructed the group of eight year olds. "Man, estoy bien. I played mini golf, rode a roller coaster and went to a place that smelled like a public bathroom" one commented. "Yeah, I went to an Albertson's that smelled like that once" another kid seconded as many others voiced their experiences. "I'm mal because I had to go to church and I did not want to" one of my favorite kinders voiced solemnly, later in the day, as I recycled the same question. I knew I liked that kid. "You cut your hair!" another exclaimed "You look like that lady on the Electric Company!". You know what? That is the nicest thing I've heard all day.

Day 40. I stood outside the Capitol, doing my best to chant though I am not a big chanter. A few hundred people had formed. I loved the idea, I had spoken up for it at the Tuesday night meeting. Last hours of the legislature, we will wait until you decide, this is important to us, it affects us. The warm spring air surrounded us in the dimming light. "Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" the crowd answered. "Deal, escucha, estamos en la lucha!" the crowd continued. I ended up sitting down next to a solemn, totally indigenous looking Mexican boy and his abuela. And we waited. People started lighting their candles. It really was a beautiful night. A DJ had come, letting us use his sound system to speak to the crowd. But people wanted to hear music, so he relented, "one song". People started moving immediately with the opening beats of the song and soon, a full blown dance party was occurring on the Capitol steps. "Otra, otra!" the crowd called at the end of the first song. It was lovely and wonderful and made me smile and again appreciate the Latino capacity for joy, even in the worst situations, even when we were dancing on our own graves as the Georgia legislature debated OUR future. It was a beautiful night.

And, at 10pm, HB 87 passed. Georgia became a state of hate.

Wild Things

2011-03-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

I sat in the rally planning meeting feeling like a fly on the wall as the preparations continued. "No one can sell anything" one of the organizers explained. "Tell that to the palatero man!" someone called out. People started to giggle, reminiscing about the palatero man who mysteriously popped up at a rally to sell his little Mexican popsicles, weaving his jingling cart through the chanting crowd. My mind wandered to Phoenix. I had gone to Arizona from Tijuana for a rally and was stunned by the shear quantity of Mexican food that appeared during the march: elote, paletas - all right there in a pueblo vs. Arpaio rally in Phoenix. It did seem funny. So quick thinking. Entrepreneurial.

I watched Alec try to feed Momo her bird-food birthday cake. She ignored it. His ipod started a new song. "This will bring them alive," Alec commented "they like the MC5". I didn't know our birds liked the MC5.

I watched the strange image on the ultrasound machine, as if I would be able to see with my untrained eye the thing they were looking for. I guess most people see babies in a situation like this, but they, well, we were monitoring an ominous, threatening thing that was definitely not a fetus. They had dragged me back in to see if it "had changed". I mentally started counting up the sick days I have acquired in the short time I've been at my new school, all while staring at the image on the screen. Maybe eight? What if this thing had transformed itself into what everyone feared in the last six months? Eight paid days off wouldn't be enough. I started getting pissed at my job again, pissed that they rejected the thirty odd days I had stock piled in my first four years of teaching, pissed at them for opting out of a law that everyone else has to follow. What if I need the days, what if....."The doctor says you're good. No more six month check ups. We'll send you a notice". I grabbed my clothes and got out of there.

My eyes wandered to the cats. The rest of the dinner party guests continued talking, but my eyes were locked on the eyes of one of the many feral cats my friend has taken in. You can tell how tame each is by their eyes. This one was not too tame. I liked looking into its wild eyes.

The advent of spring and a cycle of antibiotics to kill the devil flu has brought me back to the land of the living. My light is beginning to shine. I run out of school minutes after the kids and have been working the kind of short work week that critics of teachers claim believe we always work. I like it.

The wild bird continues to nest on the porch, spring has sprung, the world keeps rotating and many things just can't be tamed.

Fly, fly, fly

2011-03-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

"You know, I always wanted to be a cop. Not like a normal cop, like the FBI or DEA or something. Just want to cause a ruckus in the street" Alejandro told me over lunch at a diner in an almost rural area outside of Atlanta. I laughed. And felt uncomfortable for doing so. If that was some white kid's ambition, or even a black one's, I'd tell him to go for it. But Alejandro, well, it's out of the question. Fuck your dreams, fuck your ambition and fuck your contributions to our country. You can do nasty work that we need and that no one wants to do and run from the law while you do it. And there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

I looked at the now filled bird's nest that has been sitting on my front porch since last August. A huge full moon hung in the sky. I didn't think about much, not about the people walking or the activity of full moon nights. The bird went crazy, it flew out of its nest and circled the ceiling, pounding its wings in panic. I felt terrible.

I went to the Confederacy again on a little driving day trip through the Andersonville concentration camp, Americus and beautiful Plains, GA - home of J.C. It doesn't take long to hit the Confederacy, just drive south of Atlanta about twenty minutes and you will start to see it. The old state flag, you know, the one that's indistinguishable from the Confederate rebel flag, statues of black folks with huge teeth and lips eating watermelon, all the markings and fixings of the Confederate States of America. It's all right there. We stopped in to a small restaurant and got some barbecue in Andersonville. The woman tending the shop was freakishly nice and friendly. As I ate my sandwich, my eyes scanned the walls of rebel flags and racist symbols, all the while exchanging pleasantries with this more than pleasant woman. A black couple perused the items for sale. Were they doing the same thing we were doing, trying to act like everything was okay in this bizarre state of utter bigotry, out of fear, fear of what, not accepting them for what they are or fear of outright confrontation? Is that what they were doing too?

I remember moving to the South. I was ten. It was the first time I heard the words "War of Northern Aggression" instead of the commonly used term: The Civil War. Even at ten I was confused, were they pissed about something? Were they actually still worrying about this? As I walked around the acreage at Andersonville and read about the filth and scum that killed nearly 13,000 people in seven months, the voice of my tenth grade history teacher filled my ears. "Sherman was a war criminal! He burned from Atlanta to the sea!" No sir, Andersonville was a war crime and I'm glad someone burned this bitch to the sea.

"Ching ching!" went the staple gun as my sister and I ran around the neighborhood quickly posting flyers against Georgia's looming, Arizona copycat immigration bills. "Hi!" I said and waved at one of my students and his mother, then slyly turned and stapled another flyer to a pole. The trip around the neighborhood businesses was pretty telling. "No," one shopkeeper answered as we asked him if he would post one of our rally flyers in his window "nothing political." I had seen his jaw tighten when I said the words "anti-immigration bills" No, I just want folks' money. No convictions, I'd sell to anyone. Dude, it's money. And I felt an equal amount of joy when I told a neighborhood restaurant owner about E-verify provisions in the bill, while eying his Hispanic cooks in the back. "Put it in the front window, I'll get you some tape" he instructed, then talked my ear off for fifteen minutes about how wrong this bill is. Tell me, mister, tell me. I love to hear it.

Though the full moon didn't strike me like it normally does, I did feel the feral side of me start to rise. Eight more weeks of school. That's it. Eight weeks. And then Arizona, Tijuana....I felt the feral side rise in Egypt and I can feel it rising up again, shining and glowing and rising.

This little light of mine

2011-03-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

I watched the man with the dark mark on his forehead yell into the camera on television. I remember those guys from Egypt. They get that mark from praying, praying hard.

They want him back in court. At the detention center. I'm worried. "I'm worried too" Alejandro said in his email. I can't go. I have to work, I just called in sick last week and contracts are about to come out. I'm worried. He shouldn't go down there alone, but even if he comes with an army they won't be able to stop the state from taking him back if they want him.

I still wear the friendship bracelets my students in Tijuana made me before I left. They are starting to fray, disintegrate. Everything is.

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!" the music teacher sang with the kids during our morning meeting. I was surprised when tears sprung into my eyes. I want my light to shine. "All around the world, I'm gonna let it shine!" they continued. My light feels sick and weak and tired. I want to let it shine, but it's dim and struggling.

"So, have you been involved in advocacy?" the church lady asked me at the pro-immigration meeting. "Yeah, sure, I've been pretty involved in some things for the last few years, mainly in Arizona and Tijuana" I answered. "You should join our group!" she went on. "Yeah, okay, because I'm pretty worried about the legislation that is happening in Georgia" I answered. "Just send us an email telling us why you want to join and we will read it to the members and decide if you can." she answered. "Are you kidding? Why are you so exclusive? Don't you realize that immigrants could really use some friends right now?" I responded. "We don't want the enemy to find us" she answered, wide eyed. Give me a fucking break. While you hide from the "enemy" no one else can find you either and a bunch of fat rednecks continue making Juan Crow laws against brown folks. Just so you know. Keep watching out.

I wrote the little sentences and questioned why I bothered. I like what I do during the summers in Arizona and my solo activities on behalf of immigrants here in Atlanta. I do not like the "advocate" community in Atlanta. There's a lot of hierarchy and competition and sitting around talking and a huge amount of inaction, served with a giant side of self promotion. It's different than what I have experienced in Arizona and California and even Tijuana. It doesn't feel like the immigration situation is being changed much, but folks certainly are aggrandizing themselves. It's embarrassing to watch.

"Whadya gonna do next year?" one of my teacher friends from the school asked me over beers. "I don't know. Thinkin' of really going feral," I answered, knowing she was one of the few people that would get that.

"I'm gonna let it shine"

The Fever

2011-02-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

"So my dad was in Wal-Mart and he heard these guys talking real loud" the five year old extrapolated. "'Whadya want to eat?' the one guy asked the other one," he continued "'Chicken in the box!' The guy said 'chicken in the box'!" and the kid erupted in laughter, then roared "CHICKEN IN THE BOX!!" over and over. For some reason I couldn't stop laughing either.

I ran into one of my old art school professors a couple of months ago. It was strange to see him, like visiting a moment from your forgotten past. He was awesome, just like he always was and still working and creating great stuff, just like he always was. "What are you up to?" he asked me. "I am an elementary school Spanish teacher" I answered. His eyes widened in surprise. He encouraged me, just like he always did and I left him feeling sad and wondering who I really am and which of the many identities I have encompassed in my life is the real one.

And then I was struck down. I started the week with a swollen, painful injury to my foot that completely derailed my advancing jogs around the park. I visited my doctor, who told me that I have a bone problem that I really do not want to discuss but am in no way pleased by. I limped through the week. A dry, itchy cough entered my repertoire last Thursday. It continued on Friday, interrupting my lessons with hacking coughing fits. By the time school let out, I was having trouble standing up and colliding with walls and doors when I did. I went home and collapsed. I felt confused and wasn't sure if I was awake or asleep as my brain obsessed and cycled over and over again through my many problems at work. At one point I made myself wake when my head hurt; I realized I was shoving it into the arm of a chair. I was praying for the night to end and for the daylight to return. Alec got me up and took my temperature. "101.5, Hilary, that's kind of high" he told me.

I remember, after three weeks of hiking high in the mountains of Nepal, climbing downhill on our return to Kathmandu. It was the easy part. Suddenly, I realized I really couldn't do it anymore and told Alec that we needed to check in to a hostel, though it was the middle of the day, and I collapsed on the bed without even taking my hiking boots off. This was the beginning of multiple feverish days of 104 degree temperatures and confused hallucinations, before I was finally able to rise and finish the remaining four day walk to the capital.

On Saturday, I got out of bed for ten minute stretches, only to be exhausted and lie back down. My temperature continued to rise to 102. "Take this" Alec told me, giving me aspirin to reduce the fever. I fell firmly asleep and woke up that evening lying in a pool of sweat. I was able to get up. I am horrified that elementary age children can give me a flu so retching that it can only be compared to the dysentery I picked up in a third world country.

The fever had broken and though I didn't feel good, I was not hallucinating. It was a huge relief. I went to bed that night, and the visions started again. I got up Sunday morning and again was drenched in sweat. I took a lot of over the counter medicines and prepared for work on Monday. I went to bed early, my stomach sore from coughing and chest feeling like it was full of cement. And then the visions began again, the tossing and turning, the work obsessions, I couldn't tell if I was sleeping or waking. I woke up, exhausted. And called my boss and told her I wasn't coming to work. "Okay" she snapped "they'll have to cancel Spanish today!".

I laid back on my bed and broke out in a heavy, freakish sweat. And then I slept.

San Valentín

2011-02-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

As I walked down the stairwell and toward the exit, I heard a whisper behind me. "You're going to walk around that park, aren't you?" I turned to see kinder George alone in the hallway. "I see you going there from my house" he said, smiling coyly. He looks like my brother did when he was little, when we were little. "You're right, I am going to the park" I admitted, glancing out of the window at the lowering sun. "Do you think I'll make it before it gets dark?". "It's going to rain" he responded . "The spider is back in the bathroom. Not the first one, a new, brown one".

The city of Atlanta inexplicably decided to throw gravel all over the ice covered roads during our January snow storm, instead of putting something down that might dissolve and vanish when the ice went away, as other states do. Over a month later, cars continue skidding on the gravel covered roads throughout the neighborhood. Funny that rocks don't just go away when the ice vanishes. Parts of the roads began disintegrating as soon as the ice started to melt, just like Tijuana after the rains.

I watched the two second news report of the attack on the female journalist. I'm not sure why in a moment of extreme jubilation and unprecedented liberation it would enter anyone's head to celebrate by beating the living shit out of a random person and forcibly shoving their dick in her while she more than likely screamed, cried, bled, kicked and fought. I really don't celebrate that way. It actually doesn't even enter my mind.

"Okay so make the valentine for whoever you want, your mom, your dad...." I instructed. "I don't have a dad!" Greg exclaimed, "I have two moms!". The other twenty children did not react in any way, just looked at me blankly and awaited my response. I looked into his concerned face and for the first time in a long while my heart opened up with love and admiration for the tortuous place I work in. "Make it for your moms, Greg. They'll love it" I answered.

I think about the hand print stained windows in the visitor's area at the detention center a lot now that we don't have to go there anymore. Do people still claw at the glass, desperately trying to touch a loved one? Does the little boy still sit alone in the chair on Sundays saying "Papí, te quiero, te quiero" through the telephone while his mom looks on and cries?

Greg smiled happily and started cutting out two small red hearts.

Walking and Talking

2011-02-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

"I woke up this morning with my mind, set on freeeedom" the kids sang during our morning meeting. "Woke up this morning with my mind, set, set on freeeedom...".

It was such a great class. I really couldn't believe it. I walked home, physically patting myself on the back, mentioning to myself: "Man, you are such a good teacher...". I couldn't believe it when I saw the observation document my boss gave me after viewing the same class. It hurt. I was shocked. Were we in the same room? It was obvious that she hates me and was willing to hunt for a negative. She free styled the form and had to go into the "comments" section to tear me down, as the criteria didn't exist on the check list. I guess I need to think about why someone would want to do that to me. And then I cried. And called a lawyer.

"Okay, you guys have to do two rows, there isn't enough room" I told my class during the tornado drill. "Oh God, we're going to have to put our faces in people's....". "I know. I'm sorry". I really was. I don't want to put my face in someone's ass either. I looked at the kid I had ACCIDENTALLY elbowed in the forehead a few minutes earlier. A cherry red goose egg was forming. "Here, throw that ice pack on the ground and kind of, you know, rest on it" I instructed him. "Oh God, someone farted!" one of the kids muttered. It really did smell like shit. "Hey guys, come up for air real quick, I know it smells bad down there. Okay, go back down, fast, they're looking" I responded.

I didn't realize my new home and situation would be so temporary. It makes me kind of sad. The pretty green Southern neighborhood. My long skinny house. The barely getting used to something that is going away again. Something new! Again.

"And what is the theme of this basket?" the parent volunteer asked the second grader as the kids promoted their items for the next fund raiser. "New Year's revolutions" the child said proudly.

"I'm walking and talking with my mind, set, set on freeeedom..." I found myself singing as I walked through the school. "Walking and talking with my mind SET, SET on freeeeedom...".

After five straight hours, I finally finished all 370 report cards. It was grueling, especially because I took a TJ approach and decided not to pass everyone and honestly assess the situation. I walked to the front of my house and checked the newspaper on my computer. "MUBARAK STEPS DOWN" the headline read.

New Year's revolutions. I couldn't agree more.

Ciao ciao

2011-02-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

"Maestra, someone shot my dog" little Kinder Jay told me solemnly. He was out of his chair. "Shot your dog? Who told you that?". "My dad. My dog ran away. Then someone shot him". "I'm so sorry, Jay. I'm so sorry". "My mom got her arm cut off". "What? Got her arm cut off, what happened?" I asked. "She doesn't want to have any more babies. So she got her arm cut off". "Come here, honey, let's help Billy" I said, shifting toward my cognitively wrecked student that had been staring at us with his knees drawn to his chest. I put Jay between Billy's table and myself and wrapped my arms around him while we did Billy's search and find puzzle for him.

"Who's got a February birthday?!" the parent called out into our morning meeting. Several kids rose. I noticed they were some of the stranger kids. Gilbert, who deliberately cut the legs of her paper man. Adam, who stares at me with a spacey look in his eyes and then starts jumping up and down rapidly. My birthday is in February too. They are my peers.

So he's out. Released. Alejandro has been released. It happened on my birthday, though I didn't really find out explicitly for a couple of days. It would have been a nice gift. I had a good day anyway, even though I found out that my boss is really trying to fire me and destroy my ability to work as a teacher in the future the evening before. I shook it off. He's free, probably on a glitch in the system. I am watching him fade away, like Leo and Rogelio and Pedro and Julio and all of the men like him that I have intensely come to know in a short period of time and through extreme circumstances that leave you to wonder the whole rest of your life what ever happened to them. I'll remember him. I remember all of them.

"The spider is not in the boy's bathroom anymore" Kinder George mentioned randomly in the hallway. "Really?" I asked, as if I had been abreast of the situation for some time. "Nope. It's gone. Coach Halloran killed it. Smashed it dead". Good to know. GOOD TO KNOW.

"I'm moving to Shanghai," Anna announced "my last day is Friday". What? No, really. What? She was the first kid that liked me at my new school. During dismissal, she asked me to walk her outside, EVERY DAY, even though she knew the way. She would hold my hand. There's always a first one. I remember the child named Sir. Standing in the hallway on the Friday of my first week as a teacher, I watched the 2000 student strong sea of humanity file out of the school, a frazzled smile pasted to my face. I felt a pat on my shoulder, a genuine, encouraging shoulder hug. Sir smiled at me happily and walked out the door. He was the first one to like me there and Anna, here.

I don't want her to leave. But I will remember her.

Yes

2011-01-23T17:00:00.001-08:00

"It was the man who got me," the immigration court guard commented, "the way he was crying..." The other guard looked at her, shaking her head. "His little daughter just stared straight ahead..."

I watched the young man with blood running down his face speaking breathlessly to the reporters on my '82 Zenith. "They are beating us!" he gasped in stammering English. The wonderland of an exposed wire city that I loved so much a few short weeks ago was in flames. "They are trying to kill us!" he said, eyes wild and nearly interrupted by blood. "Will you continue protesting?" the reporter asked. "YES" he answered, without a pause.

"They can't send that kid back to Mexico" the lawyer in the cheap looking suit complained to the guards. "He'd be killed on sight".

"I am not comfortable with our conversation a couple of weeks ago" I finally said to one of my fellow teachers. "What conversation?" she asked. "You know, the one where you called me inconsistent in front of thirty-two students. I felt like you were calling me out. I respect your opinion, but I would prefer you didn't criticize me in front of the kids" I answered. "I would do it again," she responded "you're being hypersensitive".

Every time I walk through the gate of the Stewart Detention Center I am reminded of a concentration camp I visited in the Czech Republic. I am not trying to make a Nazi analogy. I am speaking pure aesthetics. I look up at the arch over my head and look for the "Work will set you free" sign that is somehow missing.

"Mexico" and "Honduras" were carved into the benches. All over the benches. Alejandro looked small, yet stout and strong. After watching the judge berate the previous defendant, it was now Alejandro's turn. My heart was beating out of my chest. I glanced at Michelle, her eyes were squeezed shut and she had her hand up to her mouth. I knew she was praying. I wondered if she could hear what was going on and if her thoughts were strong enough to make it all stop and set this kid free.

Sometimes, in moments of adversity, I dance in these weird soft shoes I wear to work. They fit my feet really tight and they make me feel like I am barefoot. I normally just do my dances in my classroom, but sometimes, I jump down the stairs and out of the exit in the back of the building. I really don't feel so optimistic about anything, but I still just jump into the air like a ballerina and fly.

Alejandro's lawyer's hold music filled the room through the speaker phone on the judge's desk. It was embarrassing at first and then weirdly calming and other worldly. We were all just waiting for something to happen.

"I am granting you voluntary departure and will not consider asylum" the judge stated defiantly. "And bond?" the lawyer asked through the speaker. "Bond denied" the judge answered. Alejandro's head snapped backwards and his eyes toward the sky. "And ladies" she added, staring me right in the eyes. I forced myself not to cry and stared back at the black robed cunt in front of me. "Thank you for taking your time to come here. But I am not putting him back on the streets".

Dos son tres

2011-01-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

"Papí, I wanna cut through that glass. Cut through that glass and kiss you and hug you. Mamí, why don't you just kick through that glass, kick it in, Mamí, kick it in..." the child continued to prattle, as she spoke to her father on a telephone while looking at him through glass.

"You're not being consistent!" the teacher suddenly exclaimed, in front of thirty-two five year-olds. "Change that sad face to a smiley face on his chart!". "Okay" I answered, staring at the sixteen kids that were waiting for their class to start and had already lost five minutes. "Change it! I don't want to tell you what to do, I know I shouldn't tell you what to do in your class!". I stared back at her in silent agreement. "Trust me! It's how their minds work!" she shrilled, back to her original diatribe. "You're life will be a lot easier!" she added, making it sound almost like a threat. I handed her bullshit chart back to her and herded the next group in that had just watched me get publicly humiliated.

"You think I'll run, not walk to you" I sang in my car, "why would I want to talk to you?". I had been crying again. "I want you crawling back to me, down on your knees, yeah..."

"What is going on? I can tell you're done. I could tell by your face yesterday that you were done" the most regal member of our teaching staff asked me yesterday. "I have never felt like I was doing such a good job and getting so much disrespect all at the same time in my entire teaching career" I answered. And started to cry. "I feel like people are rubbing their hands together and hoping that I will fail. And I don't know why".

I thought of the upcoming contract season, the part where you sign your life away for next year. "You think you can leave the past behind. You must be out of your mind...." I continued singing as I drove down the highway to meet up with the beautiful Keen, my former student that still needs a little assistance now and then. I remember the day years ago when we ran out of the high school where I taught and she attended, minutes after the buses left, in search of housing for her. The same morning, my principal had asked me if I even "liked kids". No, not really. I'll just bend over fucking backwards for them. Keen always makes me feel good. She reminds me that I am doing the right thing, even if no one else knows it.

"This is Hilary, our Spanish teacher!" the parent leader stated to her guest. "We should have more that one Spanish teacher in a school our size, but Hilary does it all. We have had to make decisions about how to spend our budget and we decided to spend it elsewhere". I agree, it was honest. "But I'm sure real soon they'll just go ahead and cancel foreign language in all elementary schools" she added with a smile. Huh? "I don't agree with you" I said, thinking about the "ghetto" district my school had separated from and the one they compete with, which both have Spanish everyday for elementary students. "I think people are starting to understand the value of language learning". She glanced at her guest. "My husband and I both took Spanish for four years in high school. Can't remember a word of it. Come on, I'll show you the rest of the school!". I was curious if maybe she would moon me on the way out.

Alejandro tapped on the glass, pointing, motioning. What? Oh, my T-shirt? What is the T-shirt under my sweatshirt? MEXICO. That's right, Mexico. World Cup. When my life was starting to make sense. I watched him walk away and wondered how he could still be holding up in that deportation jail after all of these months. He's stronger than I am.

I sat at the car wash, finally paying someone to clean all the desert sand and dust from my post-Tijuana/Arizona vehicle. Yeah, I know it's been six months. Don't remind me. "Two torched selves, one lives in Egypt" the rolling commentary on CNN howled. Yeah, no big deal. Folks "torching" themselves. Folks burning themselves alive because they believe in something. No big fucking deal.

"Había una vez, y dos son tres en Puerto Rico" I read aloud to the transfixed first graders, feeling my eyes well up again. Dos son tres everywhere. The numbers don't add up and nothing makes any kind of sense at all.

*Lyrics, The Magentic Fields, You Must Be Out of Your Mind

Stuck in the Middle with You

2011-01-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

"It's gonna be an hour or two" the guard called as we filled out the request form to see Alejandro.

An hour or two. We had deliberately left early in an attempt to make the two hour drive to the detention center, visit Alejandro and make it back before the predicted snow storm hit Atlanta.

An hour or two.

There weren't any more chairs left and people were sitting on the floor. "I've been here since eleven" some girl informed me as the clock hit two o'clock. "They've let one group of visitors go back in the last three hours".

The first hour passed and then the second. There is nothing to do in the waiting room. We watched as a guard looked for unlocked visitors' cars so that he could search them. The guards chose not to use all of the visitation rooms available to them, extending the wait. People started making chit chat. "¿De dónde son?" an abuela type asked. "Atlanta" I answered, assuming our drive was the longest. "¿Y Ustedes?", "Hilton Head". In the end, we found out that we had the shortest drive, as the sun set on hotel-less, restaurant-less Lumpkin, Georgia and the winter storm rushed in.

I knew we should have left. They told us all week that a storm was coming. An hour or two wait was obviously not panning out. But we drove over two hours to get there and had already waited hours. Surely we would be in the next visitation group. We had to guess, as we weren't getting any information from the guards.

We entered the visitation area nearly four hours after we arrived and waited in front of the glass for nearly fifteen additional minutes before they brought the detainees in. Finally they arrived, filing through the door in a line. A young man next to Alejandro took one look at his visitor and his face crumbled as he burst into tears. "What happened in Arizona?" Alejandro asked us, "All I heard was Republicans, massacre and Arizona".

The beginning of the drive home was okay. I drove fast, hoping to beat the storm though it was supposed to be hitting Atlanta within a half an hour and Lumpkin even before that. It was already dark.

And then the snow began.

The road was slick and we were in the middle of nowhere. The snow and ice were accumulating. I was driving twenty miles an hour. I slowly made my way north, wondering how many hours it would take us at that rate. Cars were spinning out. Suddenly my car started sliding and I panicked. I got it to stop moving, but sat in the middle of the cars trying to figure out what to do. Every time I took my foot of the brake my car started to slide. I sat there for a few minutes, then slowly started driving again. My windshield wipers clogged with chunks of ice and both my rear and front windows became completely obscured. I was afraid to get out of the car. Cars were sliding past us and my own car had been out of control. The side of the highway was piled high with snowdrifts that were stopping people from hitting the cement dividing wall when they spun out. I drove slowly with my window open, grabbing my windshield wipers as they passed and ripping the ice from them. And then all traffic stopped.

We skipped through the AM stations trying to figure out what had completely blocked one of Atlanta's major highways. Had they closed the road and just left us out there? Hundreds of cars spread in front and behind us. A few emergency vehicles passed. We were forty miles south of Atlanta. We sat and waited.

"Jared Loughner was a liberal!" the conservative commentator chanted on the radio. "He was crazy! Sarah Palin's rhetoric had nothing to do with it! We have never encouraged violence! Barak HUSSEIN Obama uses violent rhetoric! America's prisons are full of LIBERALS that voted for Barak HUSSEIN Obama!" The commentator continued explaining the peaceful and cooperative right wing for nearly fifteen minutes. "Let's take a caller!" he finally announced. A southern woman's voice filled the line. "He shoulda got Pelosi! He got the wrong one!" she howled, before being cut off. The commentator spent the next half an hour reiterating that neither the Tea Party or any conservative had ever espoused violence and did not take any more call-ins.

The snow was piling up and the ice was getting thicker and we weren't moving. A series of gunshots went off beside the highway. No one was coming to our aid and no one was mentioning what the hell was going on. We sat in a weird wintery twilight, surrounded by hundreds of people as the snow rose around us. A plane thundered through snow and sleet onto one of the runways at the airport. Emergency lights flashed to tell it where to go. "This isn't going to end," I told Michelle "we are going to see the sun come up here".

Five hours later, we saw the two jackknifed tractor trailers and a series of cabs blocking the highway as it snaked over an overpass. We also saw an emergency vehicle. "Hey bro!" he called over a loud speaker at one of the cabs "I'm gonna bump you!". The oblivious African driver got in the car and stared forward as the HERO truck pushed him out of the way. People were getting out of their cars. "They're putting sand down" a passing walker told me. We were getting closer. "Keep driving, don't stop!" a man yelled at me as I slid over the snow and sand between the two trucks and over the icy overpass.

And then we were alone. We looked back over the sea of red lights and entered the snow capped city. We were the only car on the road as we slid past the stadium and down toward the park. It was a beautiful, deserted, ice covered ghost town.

We abandoned the car down the hill from my house and wandered through the snow at two o'clock in the morning, having survived the great Southern snowstorm.

The Hassle

2011-01-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

My mouth fell open in surprise and I started giggling, all while covering my face with my hands. "You can rrride the sphinkus!" the rogue antiquities cop said with glee, after spiriting us behind some three thousand year old ruins in an ancient temple in Luxor. We did some things we really probably shouldn't have and baksheeshed the antiquities cops for their behind the scenes tour. As I walked away, I saw a fist fight breaking out over the money.

There really is a whole market for folks that are underpaid and guarding precious sites. For five bucks, you can sit on Hemingway's couch in his place outside of Havana. You don't have to say anything, they'll come to you. Screw those ropes and things, you can look through his books, check out the liquor cabinet, even go in the bathroom. You could probably even haggle a little on that five bucks, but that would make you kind of an asshole.

"Are you for Bush or Obama?" we were asked for the millionth time. "Obama. Obama all the way. Bush is a bad man", "Do you believe the bad things that he said about us?", "No, of course not. He's a bad man. A very bad man". "Hello!" the little girl called in English as we climbed up out of the Nile ferry and on to the eastern bank. "Obama" another whispered to me, eyes glowing.

"Man dress, coming up fast, to your right, brace" we whispered to each other as we roamed around Luxor after sleeping on the train from Cairo. "The man dresses are off the chain by the ferry dock" my sister muttered, after hunting down an ATM. They call this "the hassle". They mean the hawking, the pestering. On a scale of one to ten, India being ten and the U.S. being zero, I would give Egypt a seven. And the man dresses were the champs.

Men lined the streets on Friday and prayer rugs covered the sidewalks. I've visited a few Muslim countries, but haven't seen folks quite so devout. And then the church blew up and the cops filled the streets and I though of Tijuana and still didn't want to go home.

There was some sort of sphinx-like, or excuse me, sphinkus-like ruin facing the sun. But the days were moving quickly and I could visibly see the sun rising and setting over and over again across the sphinx face, as if in fast motion. Dark, light, brighter, setting, dark, over and over again. A science teacher from one of the schools I left was walking around. I woke up, startled and disturbed.

The Western couple came straight to the front of the line, with multiple porters carrying approximately seven bags. They were loud, whining. The man pulled out a stack of bills and spread them out like playing cards and began handing individual bills to his porters. The porter in front of me, who wasn't carrying a single one of their bags, saw the money and jumped over to get in line. I would normally hate something like this. Pretending you did something and asking for money. It was the eyes that got me. When the money appeared his eyes widened and pounced and his body followed, like an animal seeking prey. That's poverty. Not pretty or romantic, just desperate. As I passed through security, I saw the shoving and fighting starting over the money.

I was only five minutes late. Shit, it was Monday morning, I had flown in late Sunday and was still jetlagged. I don't know how they managed to be totally in a meeting on a planning day at that hour. My mind was still full of love and excitement for Egypt and I really didn't even care, just set my stuff down and sat in the back.

By Tuesday morning, I was already angry and my stomach churned the minute I opened my eyes to go to work.

The Holiest of Holiest

2011-01-03T19:08:00.000-08:00

The snow was falling on Christmas, a rarity in Atlanta. We raced toward the airport and boarded a plane to Cairo.

"We've stopped boarding. There's a security issue" the flight attendant in New York announced, shortly before all two hundred of us were commanded by the pilot to take our stuff and get off and go through security again because a suspicious item had been found on the plane. What, an extra half once of hand sanitizer, or box cutters? We got off the ground at 12:30 AM, just hours before the airport was closed because of another snow storm.

The sun rose about an hour and a half into the flight and we remained in broad daylight for about nine hours. At 11:00 AM Eastern, the sun set again. All the while, the flight progress indicator kept displaying which direction to Mecca. We were headed right for it.

As I stepped out onto the rolling staircase that someone had pushed up to the plane in Cairo, the first thing I heard was a call to prayer. I looked to my right and saw a very blingy minarette, decked out in blue Christmas lights.

"Taxi! You need taxi?" we were asked by probably our third shady young Egyptian guy while we raped the airport's ATM. "No. That's our guy" my sister indicated, pointing to the man throwing down on his prayer rug in the middle of the airport floor.

I lay awake in the night. I had woken up, feeling rested and relaxed, then realized that I had slept a whole two hours and that it was 2:30 AM in Egypt. I stared out of the window at the bright, blingy purple lighted mosque across the late night haze and twinkling lights of Cairo. It was beautiful. It started to sing. Low at first and then other mosques started singing back at it. By five AM, they reached a shrill crescendo, joined together in the night as they howled across an expansive sleeping city. I stared out of the window, feeling like I was the only person watching the singing buildings as they put on the show of a lifetime in the middle of the night.

I remember my first Muslim street party. I was in India in the middle of the spring and had no idea what was going on when the junky black speakers attached to the telephone pole outside of my hostel window began screeching in the middle of the night and continued for hours. I found it jarring and nerve wracking. These Egypt mosques were suaver, less crackly.

Cairo is a city among cities. Boasting 20 million strong, it sprawls in all directions. A haze hangs over the city, a mix of desert sand dust and wildly unregulated auto emissions that stain both the crumbling colonial buildings and the abundant laundry hanging from them black. Open, strangely rigged wires hang over the streets and out of walls and garbage lays in places it really ought not. Shanties line the rooftops and your snot turns black in matter of hours.

It was beautiful in every way.

No hacen falta

2010-12-23T19:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, Mexico. I've missed you. Thanks for letting me come over today.

I was invited to a Christmas carne asada party at a place I can't tell you about and with people that supposedly don't exist. After a feast of various grilled meats and homemade tortillas and salsas, I was surprised when the tequila presented itself in the middle of the afternoon. I wanted to hang out. I really did. But I couldn't. Christmas is in two days, as is my trip to Egypt and I don't even know the exchange rate for the dollar.

"He's very depressed" I told my friend at the party, explaining Alejandro's situation. "Así es..." he sighed.

"NO HACEN FALTA MONEDAS, BRILLANTES!" I screamed with the radio as I sped down the highway. I started giving my money away to the men that stood beside the highway where traffic backs up under the overpass. I kept giving it away until there were no more men.

"I'm not nice anymore, which was never exactly my skill set anyway" the girl next to me a Target bellowed into her phone. A man with a face twisted into a grimace and a Christmas tree tag stuck to his shoulder stared into space, a twenty-four pack of toilet paper in his arms. I didn't know what to buy. That tequila buzz was strong.

"Is that a Fendi bag?" the young man asked me while I waited in line at the shady beer store. "No, um, it's Marc Jacobs" I answered, staring at his silver grill. "I am so with that. It's beautiful. You know, Macy's has some real nice bags right now. Look at her..." he said, pointing at the white woman in front of us, "that's a nice Coach bag..."

"Have a good night" I wished him, slinking out to the parking lot with my six-pack and my nice bag and away into the night.

From the bottom of my heart

2010-12-19T17:27:00.000-08:00

"You're hair looks like the people in the movies" the Zebra Girl told me, her bangs mysteriously pulled off to the side in an imitation of my hairstyle. What movie? Creature from the Black Lagoon? My eyes were popping out. I knew I was going to have a seizure. No lunch, non-stop classes, a not so carefully planned day of craft lessons with kids that can barely use scissors, secret feasts when no one was looking on homemade chocolate snack student Christmas gifts and a few short hours until the break officially began.

I watched a nine year old boy slowly lower himself to the floor in a full split, while wearing jeans.

"We are ready to SING IT" little Rafael informed me, plunking himself beside me on the rug. "Let's do it" I answered, cranking up the CD player for a some educational booty shaking.

The kids were wearing their pajamas to school again.

"You're gonna be seeing this outfit again tomorrow" my track suit wearing, teacher neighbor informed me on the day that should have been a snow day. "I'm not even gonna take a shower". That would be two of us.

I could hardly carry all of my loot home. Candies, tea, hot chocolate, mugs, cookies, bath salts, cards, fudge, mysterious chocolate balls, a t-shirt, even a loaf of bread. My eyes were bulging from a non-stop diet of coffee, Coke and chocolate. I was walking way too fast.

He was crying. "What will you say to your papí?" the woman next to me asked the little boy. "Te quiero! Te quiero!" he answered. "I don't want to be in here" Alejandro said into the telephone, wiping his eyes. Inadvertently I grabbed Michelle's knee and started squeezing it, then grabbed her around the shoulders. There is nothing so powerless as watching a person cry through glass. "You'll see them again" I stammered, "I hope" Alejandro answered. "No. You WILL see your family again".

"Hay muchos hombres aca?" the little boy continued, speaking through the glass and into the telephone. "Muchos o poquitos? Ahhh, muchos...."

A few of my favorite things

2010-12-15T15:35:00.000-08:00

Two beers down and a parking ticket already in hand, I was running through the Martin Luther King National Historical Site, cross-infested gospel choir robe thrown over my shoulder, toward Ebenezer Baptist Church. Later that evening, I would be on the stage in the historic church, with said robe on my body, in front of nearly two thousand parents and friends of my students.

It had been a long day. After a few short hours of sleep due to an unexpected six hour trek to the detention center the night before, I woke with the devil hisses of Chantix in my ears. I thought about that bus we had seen pull up to the center in the middle of the night as we sped away. The dark bus to nowhere.

I worked like a beast teaching those children all day and found myself running past MLK's tomb in the dark to get to their winter recital on time later that evening. With my robe.

We sing a lot. I try to pick out jazzy numbers for the kids, nothing too high pitched, too obnoxious. Strangely, they play instruments while they sing their little edu-Spanish songs. Fake snare drums. Pianos. Or they they just shake it. They look like the Muppets.

Half way home from the detention center, Michelle gasped and pointed to her jacket. She had walked out wearing the prison visitor badge. I guess I'm glad she noticed it before we went out in public. I carry it in my pocket now. The kids are getting wild, wilder by the day, the closer Christmas comes. I have the urge to bitch at them. When I touch the badge in my pocket, things go into perspective and I don't feel like bitching anymore.

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...." the second grade chimed to the crowd. They were wearing their pajamas. Lashandi sang intently, mouth wide and head bobbing. I loved Lashandi the minute I saw her ride. He pulled up between all the nice cars in the pick up line on a bicycle. Lashandi ran out, jumped on the pegs that stuck out from the back wheel and rode away, standing up, holding firmly onto her dad's shoulders, her fake fur coat flapping in the wind. "I simply remember my favorite things...", Ignacio caught my eye, looking regal in his bathrobe. "And then I don't feeeel sooo baaaaddd" he sang solemnly. I knew I was going to cry again. Shit I was tired.

I woke to the sound of someone punching the pillow or the mattress. I sat up and looked around. Alec was completely asleep. Good morning, Chantix. I'm tired. Really tired. I showed the kids a video about Christmas in Mexico. They really liked the parties with piñatas. "True works of art, made to be destroyed" the boring narrator droned on.

"Made to be destroyed...." several echoed, eyes glowing in the darkness.

A lark who is learning to pray

2010-12-09T13:50:00.000-08:00

"Do you have a rubber band?" Michelle asked me after clearing the metal detectors and before passing through the door made of metal bars that opened upon direction of one of the guards. "Umm, a silly band" I answered, handing her a red one shaped like maracas. It seemed pretty festive and completely out of place in that shithole.

The metal bars slid open. We passed through, along with a little pack of Hispanic people carrying small children, and waited as the doors slid shut behind us. The second set of bars slid open.

Small, urinal like stalls faced a series of windows. On the other side of the windows, a series of young, Hispanic men sat in prison clothes, smiling eagerly with phones in hand. Alejandro, a young man who attended the high school where I began my teaching career, smiled excitedly at his former teacher through the glass. I sat back on the small plastic chairs while she spoke to him, staring at the ground until the embarrassing tears cleared my eyes.

Immigration Status: "U.S. Citizen" I wrote on the form that allowed me to visit detainees. No wonder no one in his family had come to visit. "I need state I.D." the guard barked at us. Number two reason no one in his family had been able to visit him. "Hey, what can you bring them in here?" I asked a woman sitting behind us in the waiting area. "Clothes" she answered "only clothes. Not even a belt". "Phone cards?" I asked "Food? Money?" "Clothes" she answered "not even a phone number. Like they gonna try to kill someone with a piece of paper" she mumbled. Just Tío Sam making sure that when they're dropped at the border in some town they've never seen before that they have exactly zero resources. Not even a phone number. Just making sure they're fucked.

Alejandro has a face that looks like it's always smiling. I really thought he was smiling until I spoke to him over the phone and through the glass and realized no one would be smiling while they talked about the things he was talking about. People pressed babies up to the windows. Desperate hand prints smudged the visitors' side of the window from top to bottom.

Alejandro stood up abruptly. "I have to go" he told Michelle. I looked furtively at the other guys. They were all standing up. And then they were gone. An older, Hispanic visitor with a definite abuela vibe comforted Michelle as we waited for the bars to re-open. "It will be okay" she said in English. I am glad that she thinks so and hope that it will be true for her, and her detainee.

We exited through rows of fencing topped with razor wire and enclosed with barred gates. It was hard to believe that this deportation holding tank was built so um, sturdily simply to house non-violent offenders, people whose only "crime" was illegal entry to the United States, as opposed to murdering a few folks, as the level of security seemed to suggest. I found myself wondering if Charles Manson might have less security that your average person awaiting deportation. We made the two and half hour drive back to Atlanta.

I stood in our morning meeting on Monday feeling a little dazed. The music teacher announced that the kids would practice "The Sound of Music" for their upcoming performance. I have always hated that song. The music slowly started and the kids began to sing. As they sang they made their hands into flying birds and touched their hearts. They sounded like angels. I watched as one of the most cognitively damaged kids I have ever experienced made his hands into the shape of a bird, gazed upward and sang.

And then I was crying again and quickly exited, eyes on the floor.

What We Do is Secret

2010-12-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

"¿Cómo estás?" I asked Joe, a kind of tough looking Kindergartner, just like I do everyday. Something about this kid reminds me of some steel worker in a Bruce Springsteen song, but in the best possible way. He's not a crier, he just takes things as they come. He fights girls, but he is like, five, so I guess it's okay. "Man, I'm bien," he answered "I got to go to a sleepover at Todd's and his dad put a projector in the backyard and we watched Trail of the Dead. I'm not supposed to tell you that, but we watched TRAIL OF THE DEAD". It's cool. All seventeen of us are good at keeping secrets.

"¿Cómo estás?" I continued. "Bien," the Zebra girl answered "we ate pie and turkey and Christopher is getting stitches in his private parts". Alrighty, I guess I now know why he started to tell me about some strange surgery before the break, stopped himself, and decided he didn't want to tell me anymore.

I have to tell you I was shocked when one of these little assholes walked past an empty table and straight up to the most regal member of our teaching staff during our insane dismissal procedure and told her to move, move because he wanted her chair. Not any of the empty chairs. Her chair. It was hard to see the steely look she gave him through the tears of hysterical laughter in my eyes, but I could see a five year old streak of movement going pretty quick in the other direction.

I went into the closet. The dreaded storage closet located in my room. It is piled high with random crap from other teachers and is unlit. I heard there was some Spanish stuff in there, way in the back. Someone had finally moved a few boxes, maybe I could see what was back there. Well, I found it. Piles of posters, craft supplies, nice hardcover books about themes I had already taught, jumbled, mixed together, getting torn up, wasted and re-bought by me because there was no rhyme or reason to what the hell was stuffed in that closet. I realized I was getting pissed off. And weirdly, that I wanted to cry. I have dragged around a class set of scissors, little piles of construction paper, a container of glue sticks and a small box full of DVDs, workbooks and laminated, free artifacts from my Hispanic world travels between two metro-Atlanta high schools, a school in Mexico and over to my new environment. I bought all of that shit out of my own pocket and have literally coveted and guarded it so that my students could use it. I have practically carved my initials in every part of my treasured tool box to keep it from going home with some kid or even more likely, a fellow teacher.

That closet upset me. Is this how rich schools roll?
I know I shouldn't be talking about this.
I should have probably stopped a long time ago, while I was ahead.
That closet pissed me off.

Quest for Fire

2010-11-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

It sounded like a beast, some monstrous supernatural thing, and it was breathing heavily in the bathroom. I laid in my bed at 6AM, eyes wide open, my mind scrambling. What the fuck is that? I asked myself repeatedly. And then it faded away.

I was bitching at the kindergartners again for being too wild and extrapolating on the many ways to avoid "chaos". "Chaos..." I saw one of my best students whisper, his eyes eyes widening with delight. "Chaos..." multiple students echoed in whisper voices, eyes glowing.

I was waking up. The second before my eyes actually peeled themselves open, I heard an animal-like shriek, an otherworldly hiss. Hmmm, Chantix...I thought to myself and got out of bed.

I stood bleary eyed in a room of nearly four hundred children at ten minutes to eight, awaiting the start of our daily morning meeting. Through the sea of kids I noticed a fellow teacher presiding over her group, clad in a fluffy purple bathrobe.

I went to my classroom and stayed there.

The Modern South

2010-11-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

As I looped around the west end of the park on my slow, late afternoon jog, something strange popped into my vision. A man, jogging even slower than me, with a long white beard and glasses...waving a giant, Confederate flag.

I thought I had to go outside of the city to see stuff like that. Stuff like stickers that say: Don't blame me, I voted for Jefferson Davis. Figurines carefully placed on shelves of black people eating watermelon. That racist flag.

Oh, that's right. I am forgetting my Southern history indoctrination. The Civil War was not about racism or slavery, but about states' rights. States' rights to do what? Oh yeah. States' rights to own slaves.

I suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable with the African American couple that had been jogging behind me. What do I do? Apologize for idiot Caucasians? Better yet, rally them to help me physically attack this man?

"That flag!" I heard the man behind me gasp to his partner.

Doing nothing seems weak. It's allowing this white fool to creep in from the Confederacy outside of the city lines to deliberately offend people. Confronting him makes you look like a freak.

I did nothing.

All Saints

2010-11-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not new anymore. My closet doesn't seem endless and my new home doesn't seem as fancy, it just really needs cleaning.

I remember my first day of high school teaching. I was paralyzed and the hair stood up on my arms when dozens of school buses pulled up and hundreds of students started pouring out. I got used to it. I have gotten more accustomed to my new school as well. I sit in the too small chairs at the too small tables and cram my hands into blunt nosed kids' scissors and it doesn't even seem weird anymore. I tell people to turn their voices off.

I've had a hard time keeping my Mexico with me. I was determined to not let work rule my life when I returned and have let both the responsibilities and my ample problems with my new job dominate my existence.

There's panda watch at the zoo. In adult terms, that means that they think one of them might be pregnant. When I lie in bed at night I imagine all of the animals going to sleep just up the street.

I have a lot of complaints, JUSTIFIED ONES, about my new job, but the students are actually not one of them. Not Harry at least. If fire could be personified, it lives on the face of this first grader. He's bad. He's walking ADHD. He screams. I have no idea why I like him so much. And the weird group of kindergartners that always answer "enojado" when I ask them how they're doing. And Leo, the little old man in a six year old's body that gives me Star Wars tattoos. When he tells me that other kids wronged him, I don't even try to "problem solve" with the offenders anymore. I crack my knuckles, look at Leo and tell him I'll take care of them. He likes that.

The kids looked pretty cute. From what I imagine was an effort to not offend anti-Halloweeners and to pretend there was something academic going on, the students dressed up as characters from different books and paraded through the school. Pigs and butterflies and Grecian goddesses went by, their faces wearing the wild pride of being a person in a parade.

It was an odd time to start crying. Inexplicably, Tijuana flashed through my mind. The pot bust, the creepy revenge message about bringing a little Juarez to the town, the slayings, the headless corpses again hanging from the overpasses. I went back to my classroom and got my shit together, then returned to the joy parading through the brightly colored hallways.

"¿Cómo estás?" I asked various, bleary eyed kids with stained fake blood skin and remnants of dark zombie makeup around their eyes. "¿Qué onda, wey?" I prodded one of my few Latino students.

"I'm bien because I love you" Laurie answered.

Many happy returns

2010-10-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

After a completely pleasant conversation, way back in August during the second week of school, a smiling teacher looked at me and said: "A lot of really experienced teachers applied for your job and didn't get hired. I don't know what's going on. I think it's something political".

I remember being stunned, a little broadsided. Yeah, I guess it's completely mysterious why anyone would hire me over someone else.

"I applied for your job," the teacher at a neighboring school informed me today, after inviting me to her classroom so that we could coordinate our Spanish programs. "I wasn't hired. I'm too expensive, I have an advanced degree".

Well me, I come cheap. I'm a bargain. K-Mart prices. Maybe I'll get on over to college someday.
"After I saw your schedule I was relieved that I didn't get the job" she added.

"Ms. Maestra we missed you!!!!!!!!" the kindergartners shrieked. "We're glad you're back from Chicago!!!!!!" one yelled. Lola squinted and gave me an enigmatic smile as she sang the buenos días song. Dragon hissed happily. Gilbert slyly kicked the other kids at the table, raised her hand and said the children were kicking her.

I missed them too.

The Way Life Should Be

2010-10-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

So I bolted from the school and went straight to the airport. We were off Monday and Tuesday for day of the first tourist to the Americas, I worked Wednesday and spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Fulbright conference in Boston.

I personally prefer this type of work week.

It's a pretty frightening look at the American education system when experienced teachers from around the world spend a couple of months teaching in the U.S. and recoil in horror. "I cannot plan quality lessons in the time allotted for planning" one remarked. "I have no life," many others stated, "I am working twelve hour days and weekends to keep up with planning, grading and paperwork for my classes". The bottom line was that the demands on teachers in the United States are ridiculous. It does make one wonder if teaching in the U.S. is the smartest plan and if the grass is possibly greener in various other parts of the world, including developing countries. Go USA. We're number one.

And the behavior of the students...well that is another story. "I am not used to thanking my students for coming to school" one international teacher commented with painful sincerity. I am deliberately leaving out other descriptions of the student behavior they have encountered. It's too dark and awful and indicative of our failings as a country.

I am not sure what came over me when I had to address the entire crowd as an alumni resource. After describing my position in Tijuana and how to make the most of your exchange, I found myself wandering...."My host school also did not provide me with a lot of guidance or indication of norms and expectations. So I just did whatever I wanted....do whatever you want! Do what you do!" Even as the words spilled from my mouth I knew I was in trouble, especially when an American school administrator stood up to challenge me.

I'm not so fond of public speaking.

I love the Fulbright program. I really mean that when I say it. When I see their view of what public education should be, I am freakishly in agreement. Leaving them makes me sad. I departed the conference conflicted, yet oddly motivated to re-enter the classroom and um, do whatever I want.

Día de la Raza

2010-10-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Take this leaf for good luck. When you go somewhere, think about what you want and touch it" Lola told me gravely, her small hand sliding through the chain link fence and slipping a green leaf into mine. "I'm moving out of my house," she continued, "I want to live alone. I'm going to the tree house. I watch you from there, but you don't know it. I see you walk to school".

"Jamal, we are going to design the butterfly wing. As a group, you will brainstorm your design and color the wing. We are going to design the butterfly wing...", "Do you know who I am?", "Yes, Jamal", "Do you know who I am?", "Of course, we are going to design the butterfly wing" Suddenly, a bright light shined in my eyes and Alec's face was in front of mine. I was in my bed, sitting up. It was the middle of the night.

"Joe, quit manhandling Laurie" I called to two kids about to throw down in the leaving line. "Manhandle! I love to manhandle!" the booty wiggling blond boy called out "I manhandle my sister. I manhandle my dad!"

And off I go to Boston tomorrow.

The Kids Are Alright

2010-10-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Some kids really can't sing. Most do alright with the little Spanish songs we sing in class, but there is usually one extremely nonrhythmic kid in almost every group. "BUENOS DIAS, BUENOS DIAS!" they thunder, completely off of the CD and louder than any other member of the class.

I give them extra points for that.

Let's just say things are not really going well on the job. I've decided to go Israel on them in the remaining eight months that I will work there. I can't win no matter what I do, so I'll just do whatever the hell I want. It worked in TJ.

I miss seeing signs that point to Los Angeles when I drive on the highway.

I don't know why the fire drill alarm startled me so much. I've done a million of those things. The Kindergarten teacher I was speaking to about my apparent ineptitude looked really stunned when I screamed in her face.

I was invited to Boston by Fulbright to help out with this year's teachers from Mexico. They always seem to come through right at the right time, when I feel the most maligned. "Well you may not approve of me, gross public school administrator, but the FULBRIGHT folks do!". I'm flattered and looking forward to it. I never thought I'd see them again.

"Maestra," the only serious Kindergartner of the sixty-whatever I teach stated "a bird pooped in our classroom today". He stared at me gravely when I burst out laughing and glanced out of the door, only to see my seventies-style bang wearing Dragon student walking by. He stopped, waived nicely, then hissed loudly and ran outside.

I guess it's all in a pinche day's work.

Al claro de luna reposa...

2010-09-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

As I hung over the trashcan in my classroom vomiting, I heard the door swing open. "Hi Maestra!" a chipper parent called out "We bought you this book!"

"Today is day deux" one of my bosses announced to the kids. "Dos!" some of the kids howled back. "No, I took French" she retorted "I don't speak a word of Spanish. Well, except taco".

"My parents walked through the desert to get here!" I heard Ignacio state defiantly to another student. "¿Es verdad, Ignacio?", "Sí" he responded, "No sabía, Ignacio, no sabía yo. ¿Cómo llegaste tú, en carro?" "No," he responded "en avión. Nací en México".

I thought it was hard to have undocumented high school students in my classes. To watch them try to get through school, knowing it really wasn't worth anything. They could stack up as much education as they wanted, but not having at least a green card would always lead to working a variety of undesirable jobs reserved for illegal immigrants, in the country where they had spent the majority of their lives. I found it even more difficult to look into the hopeful eyes of the smiling, moon faced eight year old.

I put on my jogging clothes and waved at the old man the kids throw rocks at for being poor and black and headed to the park.

"DON'T SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME!" Fleetwood Mac howled in my ears as I ran. My mind's eye pictured the beige hills and scrubby vegetation of Arivaca that I saw while I drove the last section of paved road last summer, the part before everything turns to gravel and dirt. I pictured little moon faced boys. My stomach felt angry. I remembered Carla crying in my Spanish III class. "I remember those flat trees" she told me "the way that place looks. My back has scars from the barbed wire..."

"The kids have been a little, um, crazy" I told one of the lead teachers as she came to pick up her class. "Oh God, I know, I know. It's a full moon..."

Lord of the Flies

2010-09-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

I knew August was going to be hard. Driving from Tijuana to Atlanta, finding a house, starting work immediately and quickly trying to figure out how to teach kids that can't even read...I didn't count on September being the same way.

"You got screwed," one of my co-workers told me. "we've never had a Spanish teacher teaching as many hours a week as you are".

I have started playing Norteño and Banda nearly everyday in the classroom. It puts me in a good mood. At the sound of the horns and accordions, the kids eyes widened and they started clapping and bouncing. Some of the ADHD kids literally started screaming. I'm glad they like it. I like it too.

I am not good at being a sucker. It burns in my stomach and sharpens my tongue. I wanted this to work, I really did. Even if I ever receive an equitable situation at this school, I don't think the bad taste in my mouth will go away.

It's okay though. I can work a brutal teaching schedule. The lessons will just become sub-standard and I will start getting not so friendly during four hours of non-stop teaching without even a bathroom break or two seconds of transition time. And during the hours that follow the way too short break. I know your kid is special to you, but I may not remember his name, because nearly one hundred and fifty kids have filtered through the classroom in under four hours and another eighty kids followed them a short period later. I hope it's cool. I'm cool with it. I'm a team player. I believe in this school and I really want to make things work.

The kids are freakishly physical. The don't ask, they grab. If someone's in their way, they shove them out of the way. If they want your chair, the sit in it and push you out of it. If they're angry, the hit. And slap. And scream. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Laurie and Jonathon, two five year olds, with their shoulders back, chest to chest, chins jutting out. And then fists started flying.

They throw rocks at old people from the playground and call black men "hobos". They bully kids for being poor. They threaten the few Latino students and even have insults specifically for Mexicans. They use racial slurs.

It freaks me out.

Ignacio is a sweet, moon faced boy whose smiling shy face greets me three times a week in Spanish class. I don't want to know who threatened him. I think it's better that way. I know xenophobic kids learn from their parents, but it doesn't stop the dark feelings I have towards them.

You're lucky to have a job! I'm highly educated and wildly qualified. I am not lucky to have a job. I am supposed to have one. The supermarket doesn't take beads and sticks in exchange for food. Employers love this job market. It's giving them the "take it or leave it" attitude. Long days. No breaks. Low pay. You're lucky to have a job!

Actually, I'm not.

One Month

2010-09-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

I live in a beautiful, green, very Southern neighborhood. Bungalows and Victorians from the turn of the century, err, not the recent one, the one before that, line the streets. I am constantly struck by how pretty and green and humid the neighborhood is, though I lived here for years and only took a one year hiatus.

My house is pretty swank too. For the first time in my adult life, I have central air conditioning. My school is even gorgeous. Parts of town I haven't been to in a while have suddenly developed in to enclaves of slick hipness. When did everything get so nice around here?

My wallet is not full of San Diego trolley passes anymore. Credit cards that I never carried in Tijuana have taken their place, along with miscellaneous video store cards and my driver's license.

"When I got out of prison, everything just felt surreal..." Mike Tyson commented in the documentary that bore his name. Strangely, I related to that.

My overloaded teaching schedule is quickly killing me. I don't think the one meal, two hundred student a day plan works for me. I walk home with my stomach burning and churning and sit behind my house and stare into space for at least fifteen minutes before I am ready to speak to anyone.

"I'm having some discipline issues with Rob and Warner," I mentioned to their lead teacher "any background information that might help?". "Well. I am very firm with my class. Very firm. They are not allowed to misbehave". Um, thanks. I personally just let my class go ass wild.

I came home from a year in Madrid five years ago. The gas stations didn't have gas and desperate people on rooftops flooded the television. "I don't have any ID!" the exasperated man yelled at the DMV agent when I went to replace my driver's license. "I'm from New Orleans!". When I started teaching a year later, strange area codes kept popping up when I tried to call students' parents because they were chronically absent, failing or had discipline issues. I finally looked up the area code: New Orleans. I wonder where those kids from four years ago are now and if they ever found a real home.

When I walk into the teacher's workroom, people don't even look up from their lunches. Not even a nod, let alone a "good afternoon". I find it rude. In Mexico, this would be heresy and would definitely haunt you with future dealings with teachers and administrators. Am I being too sensitive?

Another full moon passed a couple of nights ago. Two months ago, I was heading to the desert in Arizona. A month ago, I was beginning my drive home.

The borderlands have never felt so far away.

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

2010-08-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

All four alarms were set. Oh, TJ, where did you go? I live three minutes from my job, but I need a little time, a little time to take a nice shower, have my coffee...it doesn't help that I have to get up now when it's dark outside. It was never dark in TJ. Full sun city, with a few hours of darkness while everyone slept.

"Can I smell your breath?". "Qué??". "Can I smell your breath?" the little girl answered. I breathed into her face. "Smells good!" she responded. Must have been those two Nicorette mints I hot boxed.

"Your glasses look like butterflies". I hate wearing my glasses, but my eyes are slowly burning out and I was forced to wear them. Maybe my glasses aren't so bad. They look like butterflies.

"¿Cómo estás?". "Mal," the kid answered "someone cracked the window of my neighbor's house. They didn't take anything, but they tried to get in". "Umm, where exactly do you live? Are you out of district?" I answered. Mental note to self: Rental insurance.

"Just take a picture of your fuse box so that we know the electrical has been updated and we'll be all set!" my insurance agent informed me. Consider it done.

"Mommm!!" Pablo called. "Mom!". "Are you talking to me?" I finally answered. "Mommm!" he answered, staring me straight in the face.

"Here you go, Gilbert. Brand new little man. Don't cut him to pieces" I said, handing the white haired and faced child a new cut out. I strolled by a little while later. The legs were gone.

The boxes are still there. I unpacked enough to get by everyday and suddenly don't want to open those other boxes. I am sure there are precious things in there. I just don't know what they are.

"Does anyone have a hair tie?" Joe asked, his eyes trained on the black one around my wrist. "Um, like this one?" I asked, handing it to him. "Yeah..." he answered, tying his little fro back. Four hours later, he strolled into the classroom while I was with another group, hair tie in hand. "Thanks!" he said and left.

"Um, is it normal for teachers to have eleven, thirty minute classes back to back in one day?" I asked, after getting my first bathroom break in ten hours. "Oh. Sorry about that. We were really worried about the other teachers getting common planning time..." And so you used Spanish as a dumping ground. Forty kids lined up in the doorway, Kindergarten, fifth grade, a couple second grades, fourth grade..."We just all need to come up with ideas", "I have some....", "No, I don't like those. Can we meet in two weeks to figure something out?". Sure, anytime you're ready. "How do I transfer my sick days to your system?" I asked. "Oh. We don't do that. You're starting from zero again". "What happens if I, um, suffer a terrible accident?" "Don't worry, the sick days will add up!". Hope that happens, um, before the accident. "My check seems awfully small, how did my $8000 annual raise end up being $168 a month?" "We pay both TRS and Social Security!". "Um, is that optional?" "No. It's a rule. Don't worry, you'll get it back!" Yeah, when I'm sixty-five. Or eight. Or seventy. Or when I quit and cash that TRS bitch out again. "We also pay a lot more for health insurance!" Yeah, I noticed. "Can I start my insurance after my old insurance runs out?" "No, we can't do that. Don't worry, you have double!". Yeah, and double bills. And a kidney infection because I can't get out of the classroom to take a piss.

"Let's roller skate over here, you can hear the elephants" my niece whispered as we rolled around the parking lot by the zoo. You can hear the elephants over there. She knows everything. Maybe not everything, but the good things.

Vengo de rodillas

2010-08-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

"Hola" one of the kids greeted me. "By the way, it hace frío in here".

"Gilbert," I said to the icy blond first grader with white hair, white skin, blue eyes, a big bow and a boy's name, "where's your little man we cut out? Did you hand him in?".

"No. I cut him into little pieces" she responded, staring at me until I looked away.

"Mucho gusto" I said, shaking another little hand and looking away. Until I felt the tongue on my thumb.

"Hi Spanish teacher!" little Jay from Kindergarten greeted, after washing his paper man in the sink.

I smiled back and waved at the little boy with the small, alien mouth. The corners of his mouth turned upward in a little toothless smile.

"Cómo estás?" I asked the dark, adult looking Bangladeshi first grader. "Biennnnnn.." he answered, unsmiling, in a deep monster voice. And then he rolled across the rug.

Herbert does everything right. He's a stoic little dude. Someone prepared him for Kindergarten. He watches me gravely with eyes wide open and jumps to do everything I say. He was crying uncontrollably on the third day of school. "What happened? What happened?" I asked him and then the other kids. "He cut the head off his man...." they answered.

I made the mistake of laughing at the booty shaking, knee wiggling blond boy. Suddenly, five booty shaking, knee wiggling kids rose out of nowhere. "No! No! Siéntate!" I cried, attempting to regain control. And then they grabbed me, swarmed me and I too was on the ground...."Keep our bodies to ourselves, our bodies to ourselves...."

"Do you know why you're in Time Out?" I asked the seventies looking kid with blunt cut bangs. He hissed in response. "You can come out of Time Out when we are ready to use big boy voices. We're not in pre-K anymore". He hissed and growled louder. I continued my "class". The hisses and growls grew louder. And then the scratching on the bulletin board...the tearing. "Please stand by the door" I instructed. I heard my Tijuana map being ripped from the wall and animal-like hisses.

"His psychiatrist says he becomes a dragon when he feels nervous. He says he is fluent in English and Dragon and can't speak Spanish as well and it makes him nervous" another teacher informed me after the child was removed from my room. "He didn't stop hissing at us for an hour!". "I understand," I answered,"but I personally am traumatized".

"You can hold this" Ali told me, thrusting his book bag at me. "You can help me keep track of my number". Every time a new dismissal number would be called, Ali would wag is finger. No, not his number. During the first week of Kindergarten, he had memorized it.

I will break their spirits. Unfortunately, I just know it.

Bienvenidos a la clase de español

2010-08-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to gooooo!!!!" a hysterical child cried from the hallway. Parents and children were milling everywhere. It was the first day of school. I felt for him. I didn't want to go either. I hate the first day of school. Screw it, maybe we could leave together. Get a coffee, hang out in the park a little bit.

"This is what SST monitoring should look like" the special ed coordinator instructed us, while distributing a handout that charted an entire day down to the minute. The codes at the bottom indicated symbols for Screaming, Inflicting Harm to Self and Inflicting Harm to Others. 8:01-Screaming. 8:03-Harm to Self. 8:04-Screaming. 8:07-Harm to Others. And so on, and so on, and so on. Nothing was marked for about twenty minutes around noon. Peace? No, she was at lunch. "You won't have kids like this here, I was at another school when I monitored this child". I have never stood in line to work with tough kids. I don't need the bad ass badge of honor or the mental stress. But, I know they still exist and if they're not at my school, where were they...

"This went on for about three months" the coordinator informed us. Three months? Three months of that hellish chaos? Three months of hurting herself, screaming and attacking other kids? "Her parents changed her medication and didn't tell us. They got her on some bad stuff. She suffered a psychotic break". I wanted to leave. I just wanted to leave. I can't think about an elementary school kid having a psychotic break. I can't think of those months of hell and imagine what was happening inside the cage of that seven year old's brain.

"So where did you live in Mexico?" the friendly parent asked me. "Tijuana", I answered cheerfully. "TIJUANA?" she said and turned to her child. "Tijuana is VERY violent and dangerous city in Mexico. VERY DANGEROUS".

"Karen Handel supports tax payer funded insurance for gay couples and a program that promotes homosexuality for kids under thirteen!!" the attack ad screamed from my television. Wow, maybe I'll vote for her, I thought. Until I saw her ad, which featured a smiling endorsement from Sarah Palin. Where in God's name am I?

"Si te vienen a contar cositas malas de meeeeee!!!!" I screamed with my radio as I wheeled past the mega marts and into a small Mexican grocery for smokes. "Venden tobacco?" I asked. "Solamente Newports". Eh, no. "Tenemos tacos de asada...." You are shitting me! I walked out with two, a Mexican Coke and a paleta de arroz. Oh, Mexico. I am so glad you are in my neighborhood.

"Hola" the kids repeated back to me on the second day of Spanish for kindergarten. "Me llamo Maestra Hilary" I said, reviewing the exact same thing we had done twenty-four hours earlier. "Hey...I know you..." a little boy said with a smile as he rolled on the rug.

As I went to shake hands, he grasped on to mine and held it, without letting go.

You're wondering now

2010-08-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

"Wow. Your eyes are really red" the five year old with the old man's face stated, staring at me quizically. "I know honey. Siéntate." I answered, as I noticed a devilish little blond haired boy rising up, wiggling his knees and shaking his booty.

Re-entry is almost more difficult than leaving your home. Instead of arriving to a new, exciting place, your returning to the place you came from...sometimes to the same old thing. There is a flurry of activity and dinners and people that are happy to see you and then things settle back to normal. But you aren't quite normal yet.

After returning from Asia with my mind blown, I remember being surprised when people would ask "How was your trip?" and only expected a one sentence answer.

Your closet seems endless as you are no longer living out of a suitcase. I reminded myself to drink tap water and not throw toilet paper in the trashcan. Everything is just so comfortable. Slowly, the strange shampoo and toothpaste that you bought in some other place runs out, to be replaced by an American product. Then you realize your trip is really over.

We ate our last meal in Mexico in Tecate on July 27th. As I sat at Los Amigos watching Mexico go by, I knew I was going to miss it. I was jealous of the people that live in border areas and can dip in and out of Mexico at will. After making one last visit to the Secondary Inspection Area to have my car thoroughly thumped and checked for drugs, we crossed into California. I mentally begged the pinche Border Patrol agent to use the drug dogs instead of opening the doors of my car, so that all of my possessions wouldn't spill out into the parking lot.

I crossed through the police state the day after. I wanted to stay, really wanted to stay. I felt that it was my civic duty to be present the day that SB1070 went into law. But I had an appointment on Friday in Atlanta. My new job, at an ELEMENTARY school, wanted me to sign insurance papers. So I raced toward Atlanta. The wheels fell off of my luggage in Sinaloa and the wheels of my car began to fall off in Arizona. I lost another in the black hole of Texas and found myself hunting through Abilene for a tire that would fit my car the day before my big appointment in Atlanta. Late in the day, I entered Mississippi, Green, humid, hot South. It was practically ripe. I knew I wasn't in the borderlands anymore.

After a fifteen hour drive, I made it to Atlanta the evening of the 29th. I woke up Friday at my mother's house, confused about where I was. And I checked my email. "It's okay if you just come by on Monday for pre-planning" my new principal informed me. I was willing to try elementary school, though I firmly consider myself a high school teacher, mainly because this school seemed different, experimental. As I scanned the email, I found myself thinking that they are all the same and cursed myself for taking the whole thing so seriously.

I drove through town. People were honking and screaming at each other in traffic. "Take it easy," I thought "it's not like you pendejos don't have everything the world has to offer".

I found an apartment by Sunday that is a three minute walk from the school. Maybe everything isn't exactly the same. New school, new neighborhood, weird new reality. And then I reported for pre-planning the following Monday. I don't like getting up early.

"This room looks like a loft!" Alec exclaimed when he visited, staring at the twenty-foot ceilings, wall of windows and exposed brick walls. I had spent the day digging through the mountain of educational materials in the classroom. I added my carefully saved construction paper to a foot high stack and put my one sombrero on the class set that already existed. Did I think about the TJ kids? Did I notice that the supplies in that room were enough to fuel an entire Mexican school? Did I miss my gray, cell-block classroom without overhead lights?

"Where can I find your curriculum?" I asked my new bosses. "Well..." the answered and started giving me activity ideas. "No, no.." I said as gently as possible. "I know how to teach. I just wanted to know, um, what you wanted me to teach...". It's a little tricky to write a K-5 curriculum a few days before school starts. But I did it. Still not sure what curriculum boards do. I had a skirmish about being paid for my years of experience and held up the signing of my contract until it was accurate. I like starting out on the right foot.

"If we report a student to DFCS, do we find out the action they are taking if the child is still in our classroom?" a teacher asked during our child abuse in-service. No, I thought, thinking of April. They don't tell you anything. You pass the semester, looking for chunks of missing hair and scabs on her scalp, like the last time. And the semesters afterward, you see each other in the hall and awkwardly nod and look away. "I'll tell you if I hear anything...." our facilitator answered.

I wrote curriculum, made some lesson plans and tried to organize the classroom. I trashed a disturbing eraser with "enojado" written on it. And I dragged boxes in the evening and found myself shaking from the ample air conditioning in all of these crazy new buildings.

And then I woke up, at 6AM, 3AM Tijuana time, climbed over some boxes and got ready for the first day of school, two weeks after driving out of TJ.

Ando bien pedo

2010-07-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Coming out of the desert is usually thrilling. Air conditioning makes you feel halfway clean. A shower is an amazing luxury. Realizing that you have to pee and do not have to look for a bush is a delight. Your bed feels wonderful. I realized I wasn't feeling how I normally felt when returning to civilization. I liked my shower and the variety of food available, but struggled to shake the numbness that seemed to be broken only by crying fits. I had hoped that going to the desert would shake off the sadness I felt about leaving Tijuana, and left on vacation hoping to shake off the numbness that followed me back from the desert.

I wish I could tell you more about the desert, I really do. I want to. But we'd have to be somewhere private and you'd have to buy me a couple of beers.

So I flew to Chihuahua. Before leaving Mexico, I wanted to blow it out, have some pinche awesome trip and go to some places I haven't been before. I hunted around on line trying to find a cheap ticket, which painfully, does not exist. I found a ticket with just a short layover and bought it . Where the hell was that plane going? After the purchase, I hunted down the mysterious initials of the layover. Oh. Ciudad Juárez. No wonder they were so sneaky about it. Chihuahua suits my aesthetic in every way. Pretty, colonial buildings line a functioning, non-museum like city and there are rows and rows of cowboy boots and hats in every store window. Liked it, definitely would say I liked it.

I got to ride the Chepe. We hung around Chihuahua for a couple of days and then boarded Mexico's last passenger railway to Arepo. We hiked around the canyon and later even rode horses to see a different view. I have ridden both an elephant and a camel, but never a horse. I haven't been to Paris or Rome either, but I have been to Hanoi. A kid named Alfredo guided us. I liked him. He looked about sixteen, and wore a cowboy hat and boots and mirrored sunglasses. He seemed happy, but I couldn't help but wonder what his educational opportunities might be in a rural area like that. Telesecundaria? We rode our horses with a French / Spanish couple. As I watched the Spaniard actually control the horse as opposed to my freestyle, you can do whatever you want attitude with Macho, my horse, I wondered if it was in their blood to gallop around Mexico on horses.

Their faces were starting to disappear. When I would try to conjure the faces of Leo, Rogelio, even Alfredo after leaving Arepo, I would see Jesus, Roberto and Oscar, kids I taught in Tijuana. I couldn't see the real faces, only the faces I had come to know over the year. Everything was disappearing and becoming dream-like. The weird desert mountains that surround the school, the strange normalcy of walking in there everyday, not dream-like as in fantasy, dream-like as in not real.

Poor Sinaloa, such a strange place. We stopped in El Fuerte, a heavily touristed, colonial town. It's pretty, but hotter than hell. We got a really nice looking room that unfortunately had a sewage issue and reeked of cooking human shit, especially early in the morning after being contained in a closed off bathroom all night. We trotted around the hot, pretty town and were surprised to see outright suspicion and unsmiling stares on the faces of the locals. Odd. Even odder was to enter the OXXO and see not one, but two machine gun armed guards in a store the size of my bathroom. Yeah, I knew it was Sinaloa, but, um, is everything cool here? I still liked it. It's pretty. I saw rattlesnake skeletons sitting between watermelons and oranges in the market; the only local that would talk to me told me that the meat of the snakes tastes good. We got some burned Norteño CDs for the road and I saw a six inch plastic Malverde sitting next to a Jesus statue in the same market, all in a city that looked like a Spanish pueblo.

So we got to the shore and boarded a boat to La Paz. After letting the Mexican military off, they allowed folks to board their cars on the ferry. All I could see was a sea of white cowboy hats surrounding pick up trucks. Ah, Mexico. How I love you. Alec and I entered the nightclub to have some Modelos and watch a waitress engage the crowd with a karaoke machine. Three campo type guys caught my eye. They wore cowboy hats and had carried gallons of water into the bar and put them on the table while eyeing the waitress a little longer than they should have. I don't think they bought anything. I couldn't stop looking at the gallons, my eyes kept going over there, over to the gallons of water sitting on the table. "¡¡¡Ando, bien pedo!!!!" she screamed with the karaoke, I noticed multiple people sleeping on the floor of the bar, a kid walked through carrying a pillow in a Spiderman case. "Yo si, te necesitooooo!!!"

Have I mentioned that I love La Paz? I do. And on we went to Cabo Pulmo and Los Cabos and back to La Paz again. I carried a gallon of water out to a deserted beach by La Paz and realized I can't carry a gallon of anything anywhere without thinking about hauling it through the desert. We saw this kid, this crazy kid, standing on an island off of La Paz, next to three fisherman's shanties, throwing rocks into the ocean. "Does he go to school?" someone asked. "No! He learns to fish!" came the answer. He looked bored. Who wouldn't be. I thought of Alfredo and of that kid in the old mariachi costume that practiced his song in the school by a highway in the middle of nowhere and felt my head exploding and clouding over.

And back, back, back again to TJ and back at Lourdes' table, just like we were a year ago, having just arrived in Tijuana, but now we are leaving.

A huge, full moon hung in the sky tonight, just like it did a month ago when I drove to Arizona. It has been a fast month. Too fast.

Movement, furtive activity, all barely beneath the surface, I can feel it on those full moon nights.

Heliotropic ángeles

2010-07-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

"¡Chicharitoooooo!!!!!!" the commentator screamed from the radio. While the rest of the volunteers received a tour of the desert aid camp, I retreated to the only location available to listen to the Mexico-Argentina game: my car, which sat in full sun on a 104 degree day in southern Arizona.

I began my third summer volunteering with a group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the Sonoran desert in Arizona. It is the deadliest migration corridor in the United States.

I liked the group of people we were working with. Every summer is different and this appeared to be an especially friendly and cooperative group. The first week, we faced extreme heat both in the camp and while hiking migrant trails and were literally not encountering any migrants. Speculation swirled. Were folks waiting for World Cup to end? Had the U.S. economy slowed immigration? Were they out there in that heat, wilting, withering, dying...and we weren't finding them? To the contrary of the seriousness of our mission in the desert, things were getting slap happy in camp. I like it that way. It is difficult to be around morose people that speak of nothing but the plight of migrants and the disaster of U.S. border policy. I prefer working with people that know when to play and know when to work.

"Waaaaake UPPPPPPPPP!!!!!" a shrill voice howled in an eighties, hair band falsetto while rapidly playing a Neil Young song on an acoustic guitar. I laid in my sleeping bag in the open air under the 5AM sun shuttering with giggles as I watched a sandy haired young man lean over a sleeping volunteer, screaming his song until she sat up. Coyotes began howling in the distance.

Melissa saddled herself into a fanny pack in order to hold up her sagging jeans as we began our morning hike. "Dude, I hope there's no cuties in the wash. I have no game with this fanny pack on". I had never heard this preoccupation at the prospect of encountering migrants before and it absolutely killed me. "Man, this tastes as good as he looks" she continued, taking a sip of water laced with an electrolyte powder gifted from a male admirer as we trudged out on to the trail.

"God, it even smells like shit" I commented, eyeing a road side Border Patrol station. "Um, sorry, that was me" my co-pilot stated as we promptly rolled down all of the windows.

A story was circulating about a group of migrants someone had encountered the previous week. Members of the migrant group had asked the volunteers a series of questions: #1 "Do you have water?", #2 "Do you have food?", #3 "Who won the Mexico-France game?".

We kept finding these insane black water bottles in the trails. I have encountered gallon bottles painted black during previous desert visits; apparently clear gallons reflect the light of the moon and attract Border Patrol to night walkers. It appears someone got smart in Altar and started marketing black ones. Some of us began referring to them as "Model 2010".

The mood shifted when we found Leonardo the Saturday after the one week volunteers had returned to Tucson. He was young. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten and estimated that he had been walking nine days. He had been left by his group and had been walking alone for two days without water. I stared at his lonely, scared, crestfallen face. My eyes attached to his Jack Skellington bracelet, a popular symbol with my students in Tijuana. I knew he was a prepa kid. He couldn't walk anymore. I couldn't watch him touch his toes for Border Patrol, put his hands behind his back, the frisking and shoving and eventual boarding into the back of their dog catcher trucks. I would not be able to watch one of my students being loaded into a BP truck. I couldn't watch Leo.

I remember Julio from Chiapas who returned to Mexico to bury his son. I remember Pedro from D.F. that would whisper water requests. I remember Juan from Sinaloa that had been robbed and left to die by his group. Hector and Eduardo from Sonora, the feral and gaunt looking men who approached us, yelled "México!", asked for water and said they were going back, the men of Puebla, of Vera Cruz, the men who made the sign of the cross when given water, reminding me of my students that made the sign of the cross when I gave them their final exam, I remember the men that exchanged few words and the others that told me everything. And I remember Rogelio.

He was heavy set and limping. He wanted to return to his parents, wife and children in the United States. After nearly ten years in the U.S., he seemed to identify more with the American city in which he lived than the Mexican city he came from. More than anything, I remember the fear and desperation in his eyes when I left him.

I felt numb, but guarded. Someone got us a treat one day, ice cream that was still frozen for lunch. I put my spoon into the dish I had been handed, thought of Rogelio and wanted to cry. I got control of myself, but triggers would puncture my numbness at unexpected times. Like finding Rogelio's discarded water bottle from Altar, something he didn't think he needed anymore wherever he was going.

There are people in the desert called angels, but there really aren't any angels out there. Well, there's one, but you will have to ask my friend Lupe about that. I'm no angel and most of the migrants aren't sprouting wings either. Contrary to popular belief, poverty does not bring out the best in people, it often brings out the basest forms of barbarism. There are some devils out there, some acts of courage and selflessness and a lot of contradictions.

After two weeks in the desert, I returned to TJ, flocked by passing border patrol trucks throughout Arizona and California. I cried when I left the desert, like I always do, somewhat relieved to leave but with a profound sense of sadness. Hours later, as I drove down a deserted southern California road, I suddenly saw a sea of twinkling lights.

I have never felt so relieved to see Tijuana.

Adelante, pues

2010-07-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

"Teachercita ¿ahora vamos a tener pura party en su casa? ¿Smoke weed, traigo un kilo de crack?" one of my favorite, truly buck wild students asked me during the last week of school. "Sure, studentcito, let's smoke some crack" I answered, knowing it would probably be our last interaction and finding it oddly fitting.

"Profe, did I pass?" Clara asked me, her arm in a sling and finger splinted and bandaged from a injury she suffered while riding the electric bull at the Day of the Student party at our school. "Yeah, you made it, what exactly ended up happening with your finger?" I asked. "Part of it is gone now. From here to here.." she indicated, showing me the last digit of her ring finger. "They couldn't put it back on".

"Some of my students tried to bribe me today" Profe Hector informed me, as Profe Julio sailed through the room stating "Bailo hermoso, Hilary, HERMOSO" while sauntering to the banda music playing on his laptop. "Really? What did they say?" I asked Profe Hector. "They said that they could just pay me to pass instead of paying the school for the remediation class. I told them I liked my job and I wouldn't do it." he stated. "What did they say?" I said, laughing. "Somos muchos, Profe. Muchos".

I hid in the teacher's workroom for the majority of the last day of school. I hate goodbyes. My students gave me cards, gifts, balloons. There was an assembly in my honor. At the end of it, my students mobbed me and picked me up off of the ground in a group hug that I thought was going to kill me. The school threw me a little dinner party near the end of the day. I cut out a little early and nearly burst into tears while thanking my principal and hugging everyone goodbye. I went to my house, threw my clothes and camping gear in the back of my car and drove to the Otay border crossing.

It was an eerie scene on the border, late on a Friday night. Children cut through the multiple lanes of waiting cars, begging for change. Men with amputated legs rolled by, seated on skateboards. World Cup jerseys and Mexican flags rolled by on carts. "¿Tienes basura?" a man wearing a sign that read "Your tips are my salary" in both Spanish and English asked me through my open window while opening a large black garbage bag. "Ah, you're American!" he said in English upon seeing me face. "I live there for a while, I don't have papers no more..." he said in the lovely, accented English that I adore. "Maybe I try to get some again..." he said after I gave him a tip but no garbage.

I rode through the California desert in the middle of the night, alternating between singing wildly with my radio and crying fits. I was fighting an incredible feeling of sadness that stemmed from driving away from Tijuana. A full moon hung in the sky, bathing the sloping dunes of the Imperial Desert in white light. I almost felt like I could have turned off my headlights and continued driving. I wondered about the people that were surely scurrying through the night, jumping walls and searching for pre-arranged rides. On the deserted highway, I sensed a buzzing activity just below my level of perception.

The cool air in my car was replaced with a hot stillness that made me wonder if I had accidentally turned the heat on. As I drove past the sign painted with yellow and red sunbeams that marks the Arizona state line, I felt a heavy and dark weight settle over my pre-dawn drive.

I had entered the police state.

El mundial

2010-06-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

I have the fever. When I open my eyes in the morning, my first extinct is to get my coffee and get in front of the TV. I flip through the channels until I hear the familiar buzz of the vuvuzelas. Just the sound fills me with happiness.

Alec and I went to Profe Hector's house for a carne asada party. "I can come pick you up" Hector offered. "No!" I insisted, "I have a car now. You don't have to do that". I had forgotten how rough the ride is to his house. I remembered a big dusty unpaved hill, but forgot about the sounds of the wheels falling of the car. Pick up trucks were having trouble with the off road conditions; dry packed dirt riddled with huge holes and in some areas, loose beach like sand, all located on a steep hill. I was curious if my Mazda could make it and dove in, passing the shanty houses and dodging children and dogs, high above Tijuana.

"¡Del diablo!" Profe Sergio howled, "¡Esa muchacha tiene la boca del diablo!" I adore this man. I found him difficult to talk to when I first arrived in TJ, his gruff demeanor intimidated me. He teaches the electronics students how to wire things, radios, TVs, whatever. I didn't think we had much in common, but we teach all of the same groups now. "¡Son del diablo!" he stated again, eyes wide, when I brought up my favorite electronics group. "I am afraid to let them wire anything if I am not standing over them, they'll blow the classroom up!" Poor bobcats.

As I stood upstairs brushing my teeth, I felt the ground bouncing beneath my feet. "Alec!" I called down the stairs "The house is moving!" In another minute, we were both outside, me barefoot and without my glasses and Alec pretty regularly dressed. "Está temblando!!!!" a little girl yelled from the street, while my neighbors emerged wrapped in blankets.

"Hilary! Hilary!" children's voices called from the rattling front gate. "Can you take care of a dog?" the neighbor kids asked, "it's Diego's, you know, the tall boy that speaks English? Our cats are going crazy...it's a french poodle!" "When will he be back?" I asked. "Um, no sabemos. We can give you his number...". "Okay" I agreed. The dog rampaged for a little while, ate a corn tortilla and passed out.

"Goooooooollllllll!!!!!" the announcer screamed from the TV. I was screaming too. "Michoacan, Sinaloa, Oaxaca...!!" the announcer howled, calling off various states in Mexico. "Mexico Nuevo, California, Tejas!" he added for good measure. The door across the street sprang open and my neighbor came out, trailed by her three year old, soccer jersey wearing son. "Mexico!" she shouted and threw a flag over her front gate and went back in the house. People ran through the streets with full sized flags and pick up truck loads of jersey wearing, flag waving fans drove through the neighborhood, honking and cheering. It was like the whole country just exploded with joy for a day.

"Do the kids get to school on time when there's a seven o'clock game?" I asked my principal during the drive to Ensenada. "They are at the gate at six-thirty" he informed me. "We told them that we would have TVs set up for them to watch the game, but each group dragged it's own TV into their classrooms. Some had really big ones. And when we scored...ahhh, the kids were just running laps around the school with flags...." he said, a satisfied smile on his face.

They took me to see a state wide art competition. I really didn't want to go, I have very little time left with my students and I am not big on student art work. I didn't realize it would be four hours of singing and dancing. They were truly incredible. The Norteño dancers looked like professional dance troupes. Another group did this insane, blindfolded dance while they waved machetes over and under their legs. My face hurt from smiling so much. "Ti-juan-a! Ti-juan-a!" the kids chanted, drowning out the groups from Mexicali. A vuvuzela honked wildly. A timid looking boy got up in front of the crowd, wearing a worn mariachi suit. He began performing a trotting little dance to the opening cords of his song with a vague, expressionless look on his face, while the announcer stated that he came basically from a school on a highway in the middle of nowhere. He charmed the crowd and even dio a little vuelta when instructed by the girls. "Give him a hand!" one of my bosses shrieked "Está solito!!!!!" Another group of students performed an indigenous dance. Students dressed as evil spirits darted through the dancers, attempting to distract the participants from their mission. I suddenly realized I was about to cry. The dancers continued stomping and rotating to the rhythm of the music, dressed in hats and scarfs that covered all but their eyes, their will triumphing over the evil that attempted to lure them.

I stared at my lap, willing myself not to cry.

While the world slept...

2010-06-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

The bobcats told me they were getting up at 5am. "Doesn't the game start at seven?" I asked, "Yeah but the inauguration is at five, Shakira's going to sing" they informed me.

I slept in my Tri shirt and got up a little after seven. I had to pee. Suddenly, I heard screaming coming from the house next door. "Alec!" I yelled, ripping open the bathroom door, "What happened!?" I busted down the stairs to see Alec sitting in his Tri shirt in the early morning light. "Mexico scored, they're not counting it" he answered.

I remember walking through the sun-baked streets of Madrid in summer, 2002. They were empty. Not a person in sight. As I wandered around, all I could hear were television sets playing soccer games from inside houses. "If you go outside during a game in Mexico, you are not going to see one person" Roberto informed me during our break. I told him about what happened to me during my first World Cup experience in Spain. "I think they may be even more fanatic than us," he informed me "are Americans fanatics for American football?". "I don't think it compares. I don't know, I had a roommate that didn't go out for a whole weekend once because the Packers lost..." I told him. "Was he Mexican?" Roberto asked. Actually, weirdly, my old roommate's mother was Mexican. "Así es" Rafa responded, smiling.

Alec darted up the stairs about a half an hour before the game should end to start getting ready for work. "Alec, no one is going to get a head start on getting to work here, they're going to watch the end of the game" I said, in a voice I'm sure he associates with a scolding mother. Around the end of the game, we started hearing the first signs of motion outside. I went to the dirt track for a run. I was met by a sea of green. Even a passing dog was wearing a Mexican jersey. "Goooooollllll!" the flip flop wearing kids on my street screamed, kicking soccer balls between trash cans.

Oh, my poor students. It was like trying to teach people that were hung over. Tijuana is experiencing something called "June gloom". The ordinarily full sun city opens each day with a cloudy haze that lasts until about ten. It is actually a little chilly. Friday, the gloom stayed all day. It seemed to match the tired mood of my students and co-workers. The only thing that would get them going was game talk. "Dulce, what time did you get up?". "Five am" she answered, putting her head on her desk. "My dad started blaring the TV at 5:30!" another announced. "What do you guys think about that noise they make in the stadium?" I asked. "La vuvuzela!" they announced with delight. "I read that they don't think the Mexican team will be as affected by the noise, because Azteca is already so noisy" I told them. They looked at me blankly. Noise? Who in the world could be bothered by noise?

We got to go home early. First, they sent all of the female students to a bicentennial celebration. When the teachers were left with half empty classrooms, they decided to go ahead and send the boys. It was only later that I found out that they students were given the day off from school in exchange for an obligatory presence at a political rally for a mayoral contender and not to participate in a patriotic display of Mexican history. Attractive young girls and later, a few lurking boys, championing the prospective mayor of Tijuana with sleepy, World Cup eyes, all at the behest of their school.

"That's what's wrong with Mexico" Roberto told me quietly.

Fire

2010-06-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

"What's that smell?" I abruptly asked my second class of the day. I walked outside of the classroom to see smoke billowing over the roof from behind the school and into the central area between the classrooms. Kind of a lot of smoke. I returned to the classroom and climbed on a chair, through the window I could see large plums of smoke coming from the dry grass directly behind the school. My school is located at the top of a steep hill and we were on the third floor of the building. We stood on the chairs, watching the smoke. "Looks like Carlito is on it" I murmured aloud, as I watched my favorite custodian run directly into the smoke and turn around a run directly out of the smoke with burning grass chasing a few steps behind him. "Maybe we should get out of here" I instructed the class. A few of the students stepped outside, only to return saying there was less smoke inside the building than outside. The other groups didn't seem to be evacuating.

I have experienced wildfires before. I thought of two young men, probably the same age as my students, walking very slowly through a hot summer afternoon. I remember the weak man thanking me, thanking me for helping him, thanking us for driving him to meet the paramedics on a small road in southern Arizona, struggling to speak to us through an oxygen mask. I remember the panic in the eyes of the girl who was driving...this is how people go to jail...they can charge you with trafficking...I remember the rescue helicopter lifting him into the sky and heading toward Tucson. I remember his friend, arms raised, being loaded into a Border Patrol truck, his friend that said he wouldn't leave him, even if it meant getting deported. And I remember the fires, glowing red lava-like embers lacing the hills in the twilight.

"Hey teacher, people are going down" a student from another group instructed me from the doorway. "Let's go" I said and waited in the room for the kids to clear out. Below, the custodians and the guy in charge of printing the students' report cards ran toward the fire with fire extinguishers. I found that to be a hell of a job description. A large black floating thing burned my arm. "Move your cars!" the teachers were instructed, as the fire spread toward the parking lot. Our fire crew made a second round with rakes and shovels. The fire alarm started to chime quietly. Nice timing. Luckily, teachers are not required to do fire duty. After the bomberos finished the fire-fight by dousing it with water, we finished the day in classrooms that smelled like a wet ashtray.

It appears I have a job. I have been duly informed that I should be glad to have one during Great Depression II. It's a teaching job, in a school that I have always admired. Why does it feel like the prison door just slammed shut on me? When I was unemployed, I felt a little nervous. When I would get a few bites from prospective employers, an even greater anxiety would fill me. Part of me wants to return to Atlanta. I miss my friends and family and I miss a more "normal" way of life. Jogging in green parks, social events and no fear of kidnapping or El Teo. A bigger part of me says that I am missing a opportunity to do something awesome if I stay in Tijuana. Something more in tune with what I have wanted to do for the last ten years. This may be my opportunity and I am giving it up. I did the responsible thing, which grates on me. But, that bitch Sallie Mae isn't going anywhere and I will be a lot freer in a year to perform my bleeding heart antics.

It scares me how quickly one year turns to ten.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

2010-06-03T21:13:00.000-07:00

Day three: The chola lady with the long shorts wasn't there. Neither was the prison workout guy, the one that does push-ups after propping his feet about three feet off of the ground on a cement bench, all while wearing jeans, work boots and a baseball hat. I started jogging around the small dirt track that circles the park by my house. Not the one with the taco stand onlookers and mad dogs, the other one. On the first day, I felt like one of those boxers from the movies that trains in the inner city. You see him stoically running past graffiti stained walls, burning trashcans and other evidence of urban desolation, fueled only by superior inner strength. By the second day I started enjoying the view of the desert mountains that encircle the city and the weird morning haze and pastel houses of Tijuana.

I wear regular jogging shorts, my pasty white legs jiggling in the breeze as I circle the track. Yes friends, have a good long look at 'merica, as George W. Bush would say, and all your corn tortillas didn't help matters much either. I watched a soccer team practice some painful looking drills in the middle of the park. "TEACHER!" a couple of the guys yelled as I gasped my way around the track; I looked over my shoulder to see two of my students waving like maniacs as other players jumped over their legs. "How are you?! How are you?!" the rest of their teammates howled in English, just to show me their skills. They cheered me every time passed. I was horrified when their coach instructed the team to start running laps. I really don't think I am any match for a group of teenage soccer players. I managed to stay ahead of them, hearing their coach periodically chastise them with "She's already here! She's already here!" and point at me like I was a rabbit in a greyhound race. Tijuana didn't seem like a big raging city that morning. It felt like a friendly small town where everyone knows everyone else.

As I walked into school, I could already hear the Norteño band that was playing in the area between all of the classrooms. Day of the Student is a pretty big event here. We all got an extra day off and when we returned, the school decided to throw in a party instead of having classes. Students manned food stalls that offered elote, tamarind flavored popsicles and tostilocos. Others dressed like cowboys skillfully whipped their partners around in front of the band. An electric bull spun wildly, throwing kids left and right and then swung around to smack them once again before they could get up. The bobcats are really accustomed to group work in class. They wouldn't even ride the bull alone, often piling two boys on the thing's back and holding on for dear life. The teachers beckoned me to sit with them in the shade. I gave myself a head freeze from a mango and chili popsicle and jumped up to roam around and play with the students. I really didn't want to sit down. It was fun out there. I felt genuinely happy, a rarity for me, and didn't want it to end.

I have finally decided the filth covering my car is something of an embarrassment, and apparently just spraying it with the hose is not going to get the job done. I whipped out the Pine Sol type product and finally washed it off. It looks pretty shiny now, but Pine Sol type product does not seem to be the best thing for a thirteen year old paint job. I probably should have used the dish soap. Shampoo is too expensive.

One of the factory work groups was kind of rowdy and getting difficult to teach. As I darted through the rows that separated the nearly forty students, a kid asked me a good question and I made a mad dash to the board to write something on it. And stumbled....and slipped....and staggered...and completely wiped out in front of the whole class. I think the whole display lasted at least ten minutes, as my fall was very elaborate and intricate, involving many twists and turns and somersaults. I jumped up and spun around. The room was completely silent, the students' eyes were wide and mouths open with horror. I covered my face and began laughing hysterically. The room erupted in screaming laughter. Class was pretty much over at that point. Every time I made eye contact with a student and attempted to teach something, I would begin giggling all over again and the whole place would go crazy. As I signed out for the day, I ran into one of my buck wild electronics students. "Guess what I did, Hernandez?" I asked as I signed the papers. "I just busted my culo in front of 4CF". His face widened with horror. "Did they laugh?" he asked, moon eyed. "Yeah, after I did". Then he laughed, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Profe, I fell down over there one day," he said, pointing, "during the recess. And one time over there too..."

Ching, ching, ching ching ching....I looked out to see someone tapping on the front gate. "I'm with the census," the señora informed me "can you answer a few questions?" Okay, why not. "Does your house have a dirt floor, a cement floor or a tile floor?" she asked me. "Um, tile" I answered. "Do you have electricity?", "Yes", "Do you have a bathroom and tap water?", "Yes" I answered. "A refrigerator?" Check. "Did you attend high school?" Yes, that too. As the questions continued about my living conditions, my 'yes' answers continued. Yes, I have everything. Everything a person could want.

I know that I am lucky.

Love you on a Tuesday

2010-05-25T10:36:00.000-07:00

"Please buckle your seat belts for take off" the flight attendant instructed. That's what I like to hear. I stared at my Tijuana - Culiacán boarding pass. If you had asked me thirteen months ago if I ever expected to be holding a boarding pass with those two names on it, I would have definitely said: I believe those two names are restricted to newspaper articles about narcotrafficking. Apparently not for the families and ordinary looking people that filled the plane. One of those two names probably meant home.

I was surprised when my school approved my request for a Monday off on late Friday afternoon. "Is it enough notice?" I asked. "Oh, no problem. Culiacán es preciosa, I'm from there!" one of my bosses told me, beaming. At my U.S. school, we had to request days off, even days for professional development, at least a month in advance. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Mexico? The principal appeared and commented again on my absence from the work Day of the Teacher party. "We would like to invite you to a breakfast, Saturday morning at nine, downtown" he stated, "I noted your absence at the party!" He handed me an invitation for a breakfast in honor of Mother's Day. Hmmm, Mother's Day was weeks ago and I do not have children. Exactly why was my presence requested? The fog of confusion entered my brain. 9AM broke through the fog like a cryptic, smoldering black menace. I nodded vaguely, knowing I wasn't going to go and dreaded the retribution that is surely coming.

I had found a cheap ticket with an airline with "bus" in its name. I am always kind of against using that word to describe planes. I am not sure why anyone would like to identify themselves as the Greyhound of the sky. There is another airline that uses the word "calafía" in their name. In Tijuana, the cheapest and most rickety buses in town are called calafías. They zig zag through traffic, cutting others off and stopping wherever they please. Whenever I think of this calafía airline, I think of a rusty plane blowing black smoke through the sky, tearing in front of 747s and landing in a dust covered field while the passengers jump from an open door of the plane to the ground because there are no stairs.

I bought my plane ticket and decided to hose off my car. I haven't washed it once since it arrived and it uh, shows. It is so dusty here I really didn't see the point, but the students are becoming increasingly fascinated by the level of filth present on my automobile. It looks like a rolling beach. I see their heads snap and stare when the sandy hooptie of the American profe rolls by. A quick spray down made it look like it was just kind of dirty.

I stepped out onto the stairs to exit the plane in Culiacán and was hit by hot, damp air at nearly ten o'clock at night. I pulled my hood up, crouched low and crawled on my elbows and knees military style to the airport entrance. Just kidding. The city looked nice from the taxi windows. I met up with another exchange teacher to attend a teaching conference that was arranged by a third exchange teacher that is based in Culiacán.

Monday morning, the conference room was filled with teachers from Sinaloa. I was surprised by the turn out and was left with the impression that the Sinaloa education ministry is pretty hot shit. Of all of the impressive teachers in the room, one strange one approached my friend and me. "I want to be an English teacher" the shifty guy with a long scar on his forehead told us. "I went to the U.S. as wetback ten years ago and learned English in Las Vegas". I asked myself if I should question him about his choice of terminology and decided not to.

Less than twenty-four hours later, I was back in the airport. I watched Argentina whup Canada in a friendly match and headed towards security. "Please wait" the security guard told me solemnly. I waited a few minutes and was sent to the X-ray machine. As I turned the corner, I saw a cluster of guards surrounding an empty pizza box that was sitting on the conveyor belt. They all started giggling. "It was her birthday!" they called between giggles, pointing at one uniformed woman.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Mexico?

*Title, Tuesday Moon, Neutral Milk Hotel

Walk on the Wild Side

2010-05-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

"HILARY! Why didn't you come to the party?" Roberto asked me. "I don't know, Profe. I planned on it. I got home, I was tired and in a bad mood and just didn't make it" I answered. "Even Profe Julio came," Roberto responded "he has been out sick for two weeks and still showed up at the party and danced all night!". I don't know, if I had been out sick for weeks and showed up for a work sponsored party and danced all night, I wouldn't be lauded, I'd be fired. "I know Profe, I screwed up" I said and hid from the teachers for the rest of the day.

"Profe, ¿va a ir al baile?" the students asked me. It has been one party after another for various holidays that aren't celebrated in the U.S. Day of the Teacher. Day of the Student. Day of the Child. Day of the Woman. "I don't know if I'll go to the dance..." I answered. "Come on Profe, dance with us!" That's the thing, chamacos, I'm a white American. We look gross when we dance. One of my African American students in Atlanta told me specifically, during some goofy class activity, that I was proof that white people can't dance. It's okay. I accept it. Sometimes I do secret shower dances, or this crazy Norteño dance I invented, but that's all I have to say about that.

"¡Voy a bailar en la mesa!" one bobcat announced, with a head jerk and hip twist. "Dance sexy, erotic!" he emphasized, in some crazy English.

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A....I decided to use a song to help me teach the past tense. I wanted something narrative, something that told a story. I've heard "Walk on the Wild Side" so many times in my life that it seemed like a good choice. I was surprised that the students had never heard the song. I saw them holding back giggles when Lou starts his do do do, do do do do..... When I realized they were trying not to laugh, I laughed, then everyone laughed. I'd forgotten how unbelievably lacking in rhythm it is. It's Lou. He's my man.

I entered one group on Wednesday to find the classroom empty. "They're at the cevecería" others told me. The brewery? Why didn't I get to go? I ran into them later and asked them how it was. "It was good," the told me. "we got to try the beer, a cup apiece". You learn something new everyday. The drinking age is only eighteen in Mexico and most of these kids aren't eighteen. "But you know.." one student explained "things aren't so strict here". Have I mentioned lately how much I love Mexico?

I entered another group and found only a third of the students that should have been there. I got talking to some of them. They had questions about my job in the U.S. Do I always teach? What age group? What subject? "Spanish" I answered. "I took Spanish when I went to school in the U.S." one told me. I laughed. "Yeah, I've had a lot of Mexican kids in my beginning Spanish classes at home," I told him "they take it because it's easy, or because their parents want them to learn more about their language". For some reason, I felt sad. I have taught a lot of these kids in Atlanta. It seemed strange to be talking to a student that had been through the same experience and was back on the other side, voluntarily or involuntarily. Everything is strange. The world really is one big back yard, with signals crossing and people moving. It's beautiful and sad all at the same time. And me, well, I'm just floating through.

Sometimes I wish I could put the beauty and tragedy all in one box, wrap it up, and pet it for a little while.

Arizona

2010-05-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Arizona sure has helped the nation. We've woken up and smelled the coffee! Iowan Pat Bertroche, a Republican running for a congressional seat, would like to put microchips in undocumented folks before deporting them. "I can microchip my dog so I can find it" he is quoted as saying, "Why can't I microchip an illegal?". Well cochino, an "illegal" is a human being, not a canine. GOP gubernatorial candidate Tim James would like to offer his state's driver's license exam in English only. "This is Alabama; we speak English" his commercial states. Some of us from other states might differ that the language spoken in Alabama is actually English. The Maverick John McCain has further displayed that he misplaced his backbone and supported SB 1070 in an attempt to beat a Tea Partier out of his Senate seat. Representative Duncan Hunter, you guessed it, a Republican from California, would like to deport U.S. born children along with their parents, though they are American citizens and not citizens of any other country. The Department of Education in Arizona is blocking people with "heavy accents" from teaching English as a Second Language. I have a feeling they are not talking about people from Alabama, Brooklyn, or the Scottish. On April 18th, an Ecuadorian man bled to death on a platform in Queens while multiple people passed, without calling an ambulance. Some took pictures with their cell phones. The passage of SB 1070 in Arizona has accomplished exactly what I feared it would accomplish: it has opened the floodgates of hate.

I had a warning. Things seemed to go relatively smooth when Obama was first elected. Things got nasty when he actually tried to govern. After the health care vote, black Representatives were met with racial slurs and spit on while they attempted to enter the Capital. The opponents weren't screaming "I hate your health care bill". They were screaming racial slurs. My representative in Atlanta is John Lewis. You may have seen him in old sixties videos, strolling beside Martin Luther King in places like Alabama. They called him a nigger. I can only imagine what he must have been thinking. Did he ever imagine that the election of the first black president of the United States would lead to being spit on as he entered the Capital in 2010? It was brewing, the racism, stewing and building and waiting for Obama to act, for Obama to do something they didn't agree with. And then the bile spilled forward.

After watching a series of videos recorded during earthquakes, our principal told us what to do if there is another earthquake, before gliding into another slide on his Power Point that dealt with myths about earthquakes. Number three: "Don't panic, the United States will help us". As soon as the slide came up, multiple people in the room said "Arizona". "That's right: Arizona." our principal said. "The U.S. doesn't want us and we can't rely on them for help". I felt awkward and people were looking at me. It wasn't the first time Arizona has come up since the passage of SB 1070. I understand that it is not a bad thing if Mexico doesn't rely on the U.S. should a natural disaster occur; they need to be prepared. But I don't like it that the legislative moves of one racist state has made visa carrying, Mexican citizens feel unwelcome in our country. They are one of our closest neighbors. We share a border and a history. We are sitting on their land. They welcomed me to their country. And aside from all of that, they cross the border daily, on legitimate visas that they pay for, to go shopping in American stores, eat in American restaurants and visit American theme parks. I couldn't even get across the border during Christmas because the line at San Ysidro was hours long, they had shopping to do. And now, they do not feel welcome. Actually, they are afraid they will be completely harassed. So they'll shop here, not in Chula Vista, not in Nogales and not in El Paso. Congratulations, Arizona.

Alec and I spent the weekend in Puerto Peñasco, in Sonora. The beach is pretty and is a popular destination for southern Arizonians. Mexico is not forgetting about SB 1070. Various articles and editorials about the law are still a daily feature in local newspapers. As we got closer to the beach, we began seeing a lot of cars with Arizona tags. Current tags, not the expired tags of Mexicans that bought cars in Arizona. I really couldn't believe it. They own homes and condos and continue visiting the hotels and idiot gringo bars that take up little pockets of the town. My mind wandered....seventy percent of Arizonians supported the law. Maybe the percentage of supporters was lower among people who actually visit Mexico regularly? Or maybe not. That takes balls. I'll harass you if you come to my country, but I will wander around yours like I own the place. Actually, I do own parts of it! When interacting with locals, I found myself thinking, "Please don't let them think we are from Arizona". For once, I was glad to have Georgia tags in Mexico.

It wasn't the first time I have felt uncomfortable with my nationality while traveling. Indonesia, late in the year 2000, was a little awkward. Turkey, March 2002 was an experience. Vietnam brought obvious difficulties. But I am American. It is who I am.

There is something wrong with our country. The country of immigrants. The melting pot. Sometimes, I think we should just give up on the experiment. Send everyone back to where they came from and leave the place uninhabited, except a few Native American reservations. Seal it shut with an impermeable, Simpson's dome. It can't be saved.

Puente

2010-05-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

All the leaves are brown..."ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWNNNNNN!!!" I howled with the radio. And the sky is gray..."AND THE SKY IS GRAY!!!" I continued, alternating between backup vocals and occasionally, singing lead and letting the Mamas back me up. Sometimes, I managed to do both. A border patrol check point popped up out of nowhere. "Are you an American citizen?", "Yes", "Do you have anything illegal in the car?" "No", I answered. I went for a walk..."AND THE PINCHE STOPPED MEEEEE!!"

Five days off. I probably would have signed my contract if I had ever been spontaneously given three days off, starting on a Monday, at my U.S. school. Here, I was actually a little irritated when they told us we didn't have to go back to work until Thursday. I like to plan for long weekends, go somewhere. The other exchange teachers knew they had the break and tried to make travel plans near Mexico City. I unequivocally told everyone I DID NOT have the break. Friday afternoon, my school decided they would give us the days off. I think it's disrespectful. People have lives. Let them know if they have to work or not.

What could I do at the last minute? Alec didn't have the break, I was on my own and had no plane tickets. I attended a pro-immigration rally in San Diego on Saturday. I'm not big on protests. I know they are important but am uncomfortable with the format. Numbers matter, so I went, even if I didn't carry a sign.

"Where are you headed in the U.S.?" the border patrol agent asked me as I attempted to pass through Tecate Monday afternoon. "Joshua Tree National Park" I answered. "Pull into the Secondary Inspection Area" she responded. Second time in less than a week.

After a thorough car thumping, I again felt relieved as a drove through Southern California. I glanced into my rear view mirror and saw a Border Patrol truck behind me. For some reason, that made me nervous all over again. Why? Why?! I asked myself. The border wall looked weird from the American side, different. Iggy Pop came out of nowhere on my radio.

Margaret was on my mind. My old best friend. This was the kind of trip she used to do, after she moved out west. She would take her old Honda to Mount St. Helens, Monument Valley, Glacier National Park, where ever and often alone. I always think of her when I go out west. Not in Mexico, that's my thing, but the American West. That was her thing.

God definitely controls the radio in the borderlands. Occasionally, NPR would break in, only to be interrupted by Mexican radio, and then a little more Christ. I found myself singing to occasional sweaty, sixties hits that would break through the fuzz that took over most stations. I share a distinct American cultural trait that loves having a car and being able to take off in it without really knowing where you are going. In the late, golden part of the afternoon, I entered the Joshua Tree park. As I tore up the deserted road that climbed a rock covered mountain, the opening cords of "American Woman" sailed out of my radio, crystal clear, and I really felt completely right with the world.

The kids had gotten pretty rowdy when they learned they were about to have five days off. Actually, things got kind of rowdy before they found out about the break. I was doing a question and answer activity with my really boisterous electronics group earlier in the week. I strangely have come to look forward to teaching them. We have a good time. "Who do you want to question?" I asked each student before they read their question out loud. I started leaving off "to question" for expediency. Unfortunately, "who do you want" also translates to "who do you love" in Spanish. This particular group is made up of about thirty-odd boys and five girls. "Wooooooo!" the boys shrieked, after boys would select boys to question. It became a pattern, "Who do you want?", wooooo!, and then a question in English. Some boys winked and blew kisses when selected.

Other groups engaged in more sinister activities. There was a group that I taught last semester that was removed from my schedule for the current semester, in order to cut back my hours. I miss them. They gave me so much hell when I arrived and then I was disappointed when they were gone. When we pass each other throughout the school, they scream "We miss you profe!!!" and put their hands over their hearts. I, in turn, put my hand over my heart. They wave at me from their third floor balcony when I enter the school. Five of them were caught robbing other students' back packs while we were in an assembly. The school threatened to call the police if they didn't hand over the stuff; they produced a multitude of cell phones and MP3 players. I was honestly shocked. "Kick them out" multiple teachers said when we heard what happened. I agreed, until I found out who did it. All of a sudden, I felt differently. What the hell got in their heads?

As I drove out of the gate for my return to school, a caravan of federales drove past. Three trucks with men dressed in black, complete with combat boots, bullet proof vests and ski masks that show only their eyes. They rode through town with their machine guns raised and poised for action. A small army, around twenty-five men. I don't know why they are so much more intimidating than the military. Is it because they were black ski masks, instead of the viewer friendly beige? Their reputation?

A Tijuana fire truck sat at the entrance to the school. The firemen wore "San Diego County" fire jackets. As I didn't see smoke, I dragged my mongo box of dictionaries into the school and started my day. "We're going to use them?" the students asked, marveling at their newness.

I heard the message ding ding of my phone..."Can you see the fires?" Alec's message asked cryptically.

"Yes, yes you are..." I answered as they smelled the new books.

California Dreaming

2010-05-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

I really needed to get across that border and to the UPS store. I used some of my Fulbright money to buy a class set of Spanish-English dictionaries and the boxes had been waiting for me for two days in California.

Getting up before 8AM seems like waking up in the middle of the night for me now. I made it up around seven and sat bleary eyed, drinking my coffee and plotting how I could get those boxes. Half an hour drive to the border. About a half an hour to get through the checkpoint. Fifteen more minutes on the trolley. How big were these boxes going to be? Haul boxes back to trolley. Ride it fifteen more minutes back. Drag large boxes over big footbridge to Mexico and drive back home. "Screw it," I thought "I'm gonna drive".

I decided to go through Otay, the lines are supposed to be shorter than San Ysidro's. I felt weirdly independent as I drove through town. Kind of like when you put a dog in the car and it gets all excited and looks like it's smiling. I passed a taxi with "El Cholo" proudly displayed across its windshield. I got lost trying to find the border crossing. Finally I saw big lines of cars and pulled down one of the lanes. It was mysteriously short. I knew I was doing something wrong and couldn't figure out how to reverse the situation. "Oh well," I thought "they'll just tell me to turn around or something". I approached the gate.

The agent looked at me with a little apprehension. "Hi," I said. "I have no idea what I am doing, I haven't crossed in a car before and this line seems way too short". "Yeahh..." he said "You're in the Sentri line, the line for trusted travelers that have undergone criminal background checks". He was surprisingly cool, not yelling, it was actually like a normal conversation. "It's confusing around here. I am going to let you through with a warning" he said, placing an orange card and my passport under my windshield wiper. "Just pull up there and stop" he said, pointing toward a garage-ish area. "That, um, parking lot?" I clarified, pretending that I didn't know what it was. "Yeah" he said. I thanked him. I knew I really didn't want to go in that area. I've seen it before from the bridge at San Ysidro and on Weeds. But, I figured I deserved it. I cut in the line, I could at least sit a while in the Secondary Inspection Area.

Border Patrol agents drank coffee and milled around. Several cars waited in various lanes to be checked. Dismantled cars sat pulled off to the side. The agents were strangely pleasant and normal, it actually seemed like any office, except for the weird gigantic tools laying around, drug sniffing dogs and guns. They didn't exactly seem to be going in order of arrival, some folks were getting checked that had come in after me. Again, I figured I deserved it. Maybe they were going to let me sit there the amount of time I should have sat in line. Agents thumped on the panels of the cars and climbed under them with mirrors. They opened hoods and trunks. A couple of agents approached me at various times and did a few little things. I felt very wide eyed and cautious about my movements. Agents have opened fire two times in San Ysidro since I arrived in Tijuana, I really didn't want to do anything stupid to startle them. A red sports car with chrome tail pipes and a California tag pulled up next to me. The agents thumped on the interior panels of his car and went to work thumping on the exterior panels. One agent called another agent over. She listened carefully as the other agent thumped around near the gas tank. She started to nod her head slowly. Two agents removed the man from the car and handcuffed him. A sly, knowing smile spread across his face as he was lead away.

They were asking other drivers for proof of car registration and insurance cards. My car is insured and registered in the United States, but being the sharp one that I am, I carry little proof of either. It was dawning on me that I might not be able to explain my way out of this, that I might actually be in trouble. My track record with the migra hasn't been so hot. The SUV next to me was finally cleared and when the driver went to start his car, the battery had died. He looked thrilled. He had been watching me for a while, possibly because I appeared to be the only non-Latino in the Secondary Inspection Area. The agents approached my car, asked me to give them my car keys and started thumping it. After repeated attempts to get the hood open, they finally let me get out and open it myself. The ran my sketchy paperwork through their system. I imagined red flashing lights going off in their computer: Got in argument with Pig Faced Man at San Ysidro. Photo: There she is walking through the Sonoran desert with four gallons of water. Police report: She did something really dumb when she was twenty-three. Document check: Has that crusty old Mazda been properly imported and exported from Mexico? I watched as the agents siphoned the gas from the red sports car. "Please be careful next time." one of the agents instructed me. "The fine for what you did is between $500.00 and $5000.00". FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS? Dude, I'm a teacher! I thanked them and actually meant it and drove through the last checkpoint. An agent circled my car again. "Georgia!" he howled, "You lost?!" "Yes, I am" I said, laughing with a big sense of relief. He directed me toward the mini malls in Chula Vista and I sped off into California with banda music on my radio.

I missed my dentist appointment, but only by like twenty minutes. Maybe I did it on purpose. Maybe I subconsciously preferred the Secondary Inspection Area to the dentist's office. I got to work, feeling like I had already had a full day. Profe Julio unpacked a syringe and some sort of vial he had bought at the pharmacy and handed them to the nurse Profe. They walked to the other side of the teacher's workroom and she put a shot in his butt. The academic coordinator and another teacher stood up on chairs, pointed, laughed and took photos with their cell phones. The bell rang, Profe Julio pulled up his pants and we all left to teach our classes.

I am wondering if that MacGyver Profe can fix my cracked molar.

Fifteen days

2010-04-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

It rained one day last week and the temperature immediately dropped, transforming a late April day into a pinche mid-January one. There was a bit of ambiguity about whether or not classes were being canceled and few students remained at the school. For some reason, the entire software group of students was out in force. I stood around with some other teachers, not teaching because I didn't have students, and watched a group of the software boys as they ran through the rain and jumped in puddles in order to splash each other. They were shrieking and laughing. They are all around seventeen years old. I was surprised that adult tendencies hadn't set in on them yet. I was bored and my only attempt to entertain myself was to lean against a wall and listen to other people talk. At parties, I usually sit around and drink and talk. It never occurs to me to run through the rain and jump in puddles or to climb a hill and throw pebbles at the people below. I saw the prefecto pass by the students and say something to them. One of the kids ran up to me. "The prefecto told us we were acting infantile!" he gasped, still short breathed and wild faced from his puddle activities. "Whatever" I said, smiling, watching a boy kick up some more water on another student. For some reason my mind wandered to a memory from a pizza place I used to work at. "Only children and women wear shorts" my Moroccan boss told me, eyeballing all of the American guys walking around in shorts while the Moroccan men sweated out the day in black jeans.

I got some Ramen noodle soup from the snack shop. They have different flavors of it here in Mexico. The school serves a chili and lime flavored one. After adding the hot water, the snack shop guy dumps an additional blob of hot sauce in it and gives me a real lime, to enhance the "natural" flavors of Ramen. It's weirdly delicious. "Do you know how long Ramen soup stays in your system?" one of the teachers asked me as I ate it. "How long?" I responded. "Fifteen days". I don't know why eating plastic can be so appealing at times, especially when served with lime and hot sauce.

In accordance with my ecology themed unit, I made my students bring in scraps of things the found in the street to celebrate Earth Day. Aluminum, wood, paper and plastic - some of the vocabulary words they learned. As I walked the aisles of the classroom asking each student to rattle off the items they found in English, six students pulled out six empty Tecate cans and set them next to their notebooks. I have an image of them saying "Let's do our English homework" and walking into OXXO to buy a six pack. I also wondered about the people passing by our doorway and seeing kids with beer cans on their desks while they worked.

Ecology Week ended up forcing a lot of class suspensions. Three of my classes were suspended so that the students could present projects that they made for the Ecology competition. About halfway through the second class, it became apparent that all forty kids from each group really didn't need to sit around with one project, waiting to present it. "Tell the other kids to go back to class" a teacher instructed us. I looked at Profe Hector. "How are we going to get them back in the classroom?" I asked him. "It's impossible. Don't worry, this is Tijuana, we can do whatever we want" he answered, and we leaned against a wall a talked for about forty more minutes.

Alec has become addicted to Saturday night fights on TV. We watch brutal boxing matches between various Mexican competitors and occasionally, big name fights. Our favorite part is when "Brought to you by HBO pay per view" appears on our cable-less, public TV station. We are hoping for the Mayweather fight, after already watching Pacquiao wallop someone and Holyfield lumber around with some out of shape guy. I imagine weird wires crossing the border and connecting with some house in California that bought pay per view, bringing prize fights for free to Mexico.

I love the blue and white bus. It's Alec's principle ride to work and he often comes home with stories that begin with "You won't believe what the blue and white did today..". I watched the blue and white cut through the McDonald's drive through, going the wrong way, and sail back into traffic just the other day. When traffic gets backed up, the blue and white simply drives into the oncoming lane, swoops into the maquiladora parking lot when oncoming cars come, and swoops back out into oncoming traffic after exiting the parking lot. Or it just drives through the dirt on the side of the road. You got somewhere to be? Take the blue and white.

So I made a dentist appointment. I found this guy's name on some surfing website. This is when my dormant xenophobia really kicks in. While eating a couple of weeks ago, I managed to chomp down on a rock, yes a rock, that was in my food and crack one of my molars. It doesn't hurt, but I am a little nervous about waiting for it to hurt. I am not to keen on going to any dentist and my fear of dentistry is compounded by going to a dentist in another country. I did it once in Madrid. It was okay, except that when the cleaning started to hurt, the dentist addressed the situation by holding my head down with his forearm until the sweat on my forehead made it start sliding off.

I think everything will be fine.

Supermen

2010-04-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

*Art by Lalo Alcaraz

"¿Cómo estás?" I asked Profe Julio as I entered the teacher's workroom on Monday afternoon. "Bien guapo" he answered, sailing by me with a sly smile on his face.

Last Saturday, Alec and I decided to join a California group that normally advocates for immigrants' rights while they distributed aid near the epicenter of the earthquake, south of Mexicali. We drove east through the Rumorosa and promptly got lost upon entering Mexicali. Finally, we saw the caravan of vehicles with handmade white flags hanging from their cars in the Mega parking lot. We inserted my Mazda in the line of overstuffed trucks and headed south.

It started looking pretty rural as we drove the dusty dirt roads south of Mexicali. As we arrived at our first stop, we saw people gathered in a small plaza and clusters of Mexican army vehicles. It was a little awkward, we had a lot of stuff but Mexico clearly had the situation in control. Large military tents with roll down screens and cots formed a square that included a food commissary and medical post. It was clean and orderly. Soldiers quickly unloaded eighteen wheelers full of food aid. "There are about eighty families living here," our leader told us, after speaking with the soldiers, "but they say there are more people about three blocks away that don't want to stay here because they need to stay by their damaged houses and protect them from looters".

We moved the trucks three blocks away. People began gathering immediately. I wondered what would happen, how would we distribute the stuff, would it get out of control? The waiting people asked us what we wanted them to do, form a line? Yeah, yeah, sounds good. We started unloading the trucks and were promptly assisted by members of the damaged community. They formed a chain and started off loading the trucks so efficiently that I felt like I was getting in the way and moved. I have volunteered with various groups that work with Mexicans in need and have noticed a common thread. The people that I have assisted are not hapless and don't like being treated like babies. In the desert, the first instinct for many of us when encountering ill people is to try to wait on them hand and foot. They don't like it. They are in the middle of a bad situation, yes, but they are not children. They want to cook their own food, load water in trucks, basically, help. At the migrant house in Tijuana, we are constantly visited in the kitchen by recently deported migrants that want to help cook, clean up, do something. Again, they are not children and we are not saviors.

We moved on to the next site. As we drove, I had the weird sensation that I have experienced many times in the desert. Weird stuff happens in the afternoon when you think your job is done. I remembered the helicopter evacuation, the three men that hadn't eaten in five days, the two men laying by the road with their ID cards spread out in front of them...It was obvious which roads had always been bad and which were simply ripped apart by the earthquake. People saw our trucks and began motioning and calling "Over there, over there". We came upon another plaza. A collapsed elementary school sat across from it. Distribution areas were marked, "Hot food" and "Potable water", but there did not appear to be much of either. People started gathering. A leader from the ejido approached and introduced herself. "Put the stuff here and organize it: food, toiletries, water and clothes. Save the camping stuff, I have a list of who really needs it. I'm going to tell them to line up, old people first". I was relieved to see her. A group of ten year-old kids showed up, all wearing identical Superman T-shirts. They helped unload the trucks and sort the stuff. I was in charge of toilet paper and soap and whatever else I could get my hands on. And then they started coming, quickly, and every time I looked the line looked longer than before. I had people on all sides of me; it felt like the restaurant rush. But instead of feeling bitchy, I actually felt completely in my element. Things were moving quickly and the Supermen helped us. "What can I give you, what do you need?" I asked one Señora. "Anything you are willing..." she answered quietly. Don't worry, I loaded her down with stuff. The endless thank you's were awkward. I know it is a social convention and that the recipients of our aid wanted to be polite, but I never know how to respond, in the desert or in Mexicali. "You're welcome"? For what, giving a thirsty person water? Awfully big of you. I settled on "Suerte": Good luck. Good luck with your collapsed town. Not the best, but all I could come up with.

I had to cross to San Ysidro again the other day. As I returned, an American agent approached a Hispanic woman in front of the turnstile to Mexico. "Can I see in your purse?" he asked, more as a statement than a question. She looked baffled. "I'm going to Mexico" she responded, confused. "Are you saying I can't look in your purse?" the agent barked. One little phrase would be very useful to these agents and they may want to learn it in Spanish, as they seem to only stop Hispanics at the turnstile. "This is a routine check. We are assisting the Mexican government to stop the flow of fire arms from the U.S. to Mexico. Can I look in your purse?". I passed through the turnstile, unmolested. Again, in the no man's land between the two fences, I saw a Border Patrol truck. Two agents stood talking and laughing, while a man crouched on the ground between them, his hands secured behind his back.

I think I am a little agitated the last couple of days. I know someone of questionable legal status that is returning to Mexico to see a possibly dying relative. Okay, it's their mother. I have offered what little assistance I can offer that is within the law, as I have no desire to spend time in some tent jail in Arizona. It is not needed. He knows what he is doing and is going to do it. I'm agitated by this new law in Arizona. A police officer will be able to stop anyone that they suspect is in the country illegally and ask them to prove their legal status in the U.S. Supporters of the bill claim it is not going to lead to racial profiling, yet cannot explain how one arrives at this suspicion of illegality. Special clothes? Weird shoes? Or let me guess...having brown skin? If a cop approached me and asked me to prove that I am legally in the U.S., I wouldn't necessarily be able to do it. I thought "Show me your papers" only happened in World War II movies. But you know what? No one is going to stop me. I'm white. An unmistakable euro-mutt. I am not sure how many of you have spent time in the American Southwest, but the ethnic makeup is decidedly Latino. Hell, it was Mexican land. It sounds like if you're brown, be sure to carry identification and be prepared to show it regularly or spend who knows how long in jail because some cop doesn't like the look of you, whether you are a citizen or not. "But this is the USA!" you say. No, not in Arizona.

Our military is also largely Latino now. I'm intrigued to see the outcome when the first cop asks some recently returned Latino vet to prove his or her legal status. Oh, but I lose myself sometimes. It's okay to send Latinos into U.S. wars, or U.S. construction sites, or U.S. kitchens. But the rest of the time they are supposed to remember that they don't have rights.

I guess you could say that I am agitated.

Bueno Barato y Bonito

2010-04-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Coming back to work was hard. I'm not sure why.

"There is something in my beer" Alec stated. "Something I did not put there". I ran over, expecting to see a severed finger or bug in his Bohemia bottle. A perfectly petrified lime floated in the half empty beer. An old one. One that he did not put there. Before you all stop drinking Bohemia, I would personally like to vouch for it's quality. I have drunk about ten million since I arrived in Tijuana and this was the first that did not meet quality control standards.

A fart rattled through the other side of the teacher's workroom. "¡No seas puerco!" one of the teachers howled. "You're not showing the value of the month: Loyalty" Profe Julio remarked, wandering through the workroom with his shoes in his hand. "It's going to stink in here!" they yelled at him. "So how was your vacation, Hilary? Listen to me, I sound like those American movies when the Latino speaks English" Profe Julio continued, plunking himself in the chair beside me. "Good, good" I responded as Julio wrapped his scarf around his neck and over his nose.

"Hilary! Please tell your American friends to visit Baja California. They see Tijuana and turn around and go right back home. Tell them it's beautiful in the south!" Profe Berenice instructed me. "I think they already know, Profe," I responded, "there were a lot of them down there". "You should tell the exchange people to send you to Cancún next year!" she responded. Sometimes I have no idea what is going through this woman's head.

The teachers debated the ethics of something they were planning. "¡Lo no está prohibido está permitido!" they chanted in unison. I love this about Mexico. You do something you probably shouldn't do in the U.S., whether it's posted in writing or not, cops swarm you and throw you on the ground. "I was going to put the cigarette out, I swear!" you find yourself gasping, swatting the foot on your throat away. Here, things are kind of flexible. Go the wrong way and end up on the toll road to Ensenada? "I really don't want to do this," I told the toll booth agent "can I turn around?". "Sure, sure" he responded, moving cones and instructing the cars behind me to back up. I'm quite fond of the three Bs as well. "Bueno, barato y bonito, that's what we look for in a car" the teachers instructed me and were surprised when I told them that I would settle for bueno y barato.

"Where were you during the earthquake?" I asked one of my classes. This has become a popular question at school. One of Alec's students apparently was in the shower, felt the house rattling, and continued showering. All of my students pointed at one "kid", a student who says he is eighteen but everyone swears is thirty. "He was in el baño!" they shrieked. "Showering, right? Please say you were showering" I responded. "I was having intimacies, teachercita" one of my truly buck-wild bobcats said slyly. I am not sure what I did to give my students the green light to say things to me that they would never say to another teacher. I guess I haven't done a lot to discourage it either. I am curious about them, their real personalities, their slang. "Yeah, in your dreams," I responded "alone".

"Teacher!" one of my students called. "What's up?" I asked her, trudging through my first day back at work. "We made this for you" she stated, handing me a long necklace on a woven string. A plastic leaf hung in the middle, with my students names and group number on the back. It feels like a lucky, magic charm, a guard against anything bad that could come to me. I have been wearing it nonstop and have considered sleeping in it. I swear, these kids just break my heart sometimes.

Whatcha

2010-04-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

"They are going to suspend classes on Friday, the day before Semana Santa. All you have to do is stop by on Friday and sign that you taught your classes" the union rep advised me. I went up to the school around three to sign for the classes that I didn't teach and the school was deserted. For once, I was the late one. The few people that remained were literally running for the parking lot to cars that were packed with wives and kids, ready for the long journey back to the precious pueblos they had left behind years before to head for the job filled metropolis of Tijuana.

En Mexicali ya había tenido oportunidad de echarle un ojo a esa gente. Gente sin vida, es lo que digo. Como cuerpos sin alma, quiero decir.

I was glad they were going home.

I asked Profe Josefina where she was going for vacation before everyone left. "We're staying here. My husband's family is coming up from San Luis Potosi. We didn't have enough room for all of them in the house, so my husband built an extra room off of the side".

Alec and I drove south, fighting over who had control over the stereo. We spent our first night in Ensenada. I love cable TV. For some reason I have ended up watching one boxing movie or another on more than one of my stays in Ensenada. This time, Raging Bull. "You didn't knock me down...you didn't knock me down..." Robert DeNiro hisses at Sugar Ray Robinson, his nose plastered across his face and eyes swelled nearly shut. It's really a sick scene, but I'm not big on being knocked down either.

On we went, toward the fantastic, Dr. Seuss desert that surrounds the small cluster of buildings that make up the town of Cataviña. Oddly shaped cacti and neon yellow desert flowers dotted the mountains. Men sold gas from jugs on the side of the road. My car thought it was a good time to start acting weird and glow some of its danger dashboard lights at me around dusk. It reminded me of the time my sister's car broke down on us in the Petrified Forest in Arizona. I decided to just turn it off and we stayed at a hot pink little hotel with a slouchy mattress and a curtain for a bathroom door. Isn't it funny how places that advertise themselves as "linda" never are?

Though I loved the desert scenery, I felt sorry for Baja California. Even dusty roadside taco stands had menus in Spanish and English, anticipating tourists that used to come and clearly weren't arriving this year. Gun toting soldiers stopped us in the military checkpoints that line the transpeninsular highway and politely waived us through.

The car felt better in the morning and stopped shining those lights at me. For a '97 Mazda, it really seemed to take to those dirt roads. We drove through massive salt fields that made Baja California look like the arctic to arrive at the Laguna Ojo de Liebre. I really wanted to see more whales. From our little boat, gray whales and their whale babies humped their way through the water, blowing a weird orangey smoke out of their, um, blowholes. I really wanted one of them to turn our boat over. I am not really sure why, I didn't want anyone to get hurt and I didn't want to get eaten by a whale, I just wanted to know what it would be like.

We were supposed to turn back there, head north, but we went crazy instead and kept heading south. Actually, southeast, through San Ignacio and on to Santa Rosalia - a French anomaly mining town that looks like the Marigny or Dominica, but in Mexico. And further south, to Mulegé. And then to the crystal clear beaches south of Mulegé with big white faced birds that looked like Dick Cheney.....Some gringolandia developments started popping up. And we saw some of their inhabitants in Mulegé. But they were the other kind. The mysterious kind. Older, with four wheel drive vehicles with plastic gas cans strapped on the back and skin like brown leather. People that knew the whole history of Mexico and referred to their homes in San Felipe. They reminded me of Australians. A little rougher than ordinary Americans, wilder, but people that share our humor and redneck qualities more than our English brethren. I can't say that I entirely approve of the Baja expatriates, whether they live in McMansions in San Felipe or rusted RV settlements in southern Baja, but will say they are a different sort of tourist and generally extraordinarily friendly and helpful.

I realized that Tijuana is perceived as the eyesore of Baja California. When hotel proprietors would ask us where we are from, we would tell them that we are from Atlanta but have been living in Tijuana. "Oh no..." they'd say "you'll like it much better here". Poor TJ. It just can't help itself.

We had to get heading north. We went crazy again and took a detour to Bahía de Los Angeles. I expected another pretty, crystal bay or feared San Felipe, but instead found a more savage place with deep blue water and wild waves. Alec and I started plotting how to get back there and headed north the next day.

Military checkpoint after military checkpoint. The car was searched every time. Thumping on side panels, flashlights in air vents, please open your trunk can I see inside your luggage? All cars going south get the waive through. All cars going north get searched. "Write down your name and the make of your car" the soldier instructed me. I am almost afraid to say it, knock on wood, but the soldiers are actually really polite. I watch them when they search my stuff but have never had anything but honestly, a pleasant experience with them.

We got back to TJ late Thursday night. After washing my clothes, Alec and I went to a park near our house on Friday. It has a little zoo. Tigers, pumas, lynxes. Some really big bears that can stand on their back legs beside a wall that is way too low where we stood and observed them. One time, Alec saw a tiger ride by, being towed from a truck in a little cage, in the middle of traffic in Tijuana. I saw a llama in an intersection in Ensenada, riding through a four way behind bars. "I saw this tiger in a cage" the husband of another exchange teacher told me. "It was right in the middle of traffic. The thing was, the bars just seemed too far apart, like the thing could just swipe at you if you came too close. You know, a kid or something!".

I love Mexico. The park is basically in the middle of a series of giant roads, pollution, madness all around. A lot of the people I work with don't seem content in Tijuana. They want to be home, where they came from. There is violence here, bad violence, drug wars, soldiers, men in ski masks patrolling the streets. The Mexicans chased their kids through the park, bought snacks and laughed. Their capacity for happiness amazes me. It's as if the pollution, noise and grime just vanishes away. I love how they can't eat a bag of chips unless someone pours a quart of hot sauce directly in the bag before serving it to them. That my male students carefully cut out pictures of soccer stars from magazines and glue them to the front of their notebooks. That five gallon jars of hair gel take up a whole aisle in the supermarket.

As I rode the trolley north to San Diego to catch my flight back into Mexico to get to Mazatlan to begin my second week of vacation, I was filled with love for my students. Their faces filled my mind as I sat by a big cholo guy that no one else would sit next to, listening to Tijuana's greatest hits on my ipod. The job thing is a little on my mind. I have options. In that moment, the thing that felt most comfortable, the most natural, was to stay in Tijuana.

I did a plane tour through the southwest United States, changing in Phoenix and on to Sinaloa. I knew we were in Mexican airspace when I started seeing messages to God written on the sides of mountains. "Whatcha!" my cab driver said to another man, before continuing his sentence. You Spanish speakers may be accustomed to "Mira" as a way of saying "Look". Here, and in Sinaloa, "whatcha" does just fine. My super asombrosa family met me in Mazatlan for the rest of my vacation, while Alec returned to work in TJ and the rest of the world avoided Mazatlan because of the state it is in.

More cable! I turned on the TV late in the afternoon and caught CNN español. Sismo? 7.2 in Baja California...epicenter Mexicali...phone in my hand, "Alec, was there a, um, earthquake?". "Yeahhhh," he answered cautiously. "I didn't want to worry you. The floor started shaking and I thought 'shit this is an earthquake' and I got in the doorway. Then I realized in ten more seconds I could be out of the house and I ran outside. The whole street was out there and the road was moving, people laughing hysterically and dogs barking like crazy."

We took the boat to La Paz traveled and west toward Los Cabos. Okay, the Americans did not get the memo down there. BAJA CALIFORNIA IS DANGEROUS. STAY HOME. There may be beautiful beaches there, but BAJA CALIFORNIA IS DANGEROUS AND ALL GRINGOLANDIA EXCEPT ME MUST STAY HOME. Oh well.

I flew back to TJ Friday night. I offered Alec 175 pesos to drive my car to the airport and pick me up and was super surprised when he did it and had to cover my eyes from the passenger's seat while he drove through Tijuana to get us back home. "Keep the bottom lock on the door unlocked" he instructed me. "When the house starts shaking you're gonna want to get out of here".

*Malasuerte en Tijuana, Hilario Peña, READ IT

I speak for the trees

2010-03-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Three more days, two more days...the week before Spring Break is so long. I remember when Alec and I arrived in Tijuana, we were struck by how environmentally unfriendly it is. You can see the smog hanging in the air and feel it in your lungs. "They need to plant some trees, build some parks!" we commented to each other, over and over again. Shopkeepers here will seriously put a toothpick in a plastic bag, as if you couldn't handle it without one. I was surprised to see that Mexico seems to be aware of the situation. My students are taking an ecology class where they learn better environmental practices. I was also assigned an environmental theme for my second unit this semester. As Spring Break got closer, I decided to show my students "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss. I always loved that video when I was a kid, the screaming mustached Lorax and his crazy town with the day-glow Truffula trees. We ate candy and watched it, the students liked the seventies style songs and the goofy animation.

Under the trees...in our Bar-ba-Loot suits!

I, on the other hand, was getting uncomfortable. The depicted town looked a lot like Tijuana. The Lorax screams about the destruction of trees while the Once-ler buildings factory after factory that belch black smoke into the clear skies of the former Truffula forest. People flock to the new town to get jobs in the factories and their houses eliminate all of the green spaces. I was squirming in my chair. The scene looked like the maquiladoras of Otay. A garbage truck dumps trash directly into a river. Oh no, like that river in the center of town that rarely actually has water and when it does, it is black and polluted. As the Bar-ba-Loots walk in a line out of the town, carrying some of their members because the forest is no longer sustainable, images of the lines of migrants I have seen in the desert in Arizona flashed through my mind. Hopefully I was reading too much into it. It was supposed to be a fun day, not a direct criticism of their town.

So I quit my job. No! Not my job here, my U.S. job. I declined my contract for next year. Yeah, it is a little nerve racking to quit a paying job during millennium style Great Depression II, but I did it anyway. What will you do? Stay in Mexico? Teach in some other school in Atlanta? People want to know! As would I....but I think I will just drive around Baja California for the next couple of weeks in my pre-millennium Mazda while I figure that out.

*The Lorax, Dr. Seuss

Bien nice

2010-03-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have a car. My car. In Mexico. My parents, being the doll faces that they are, decided to take a drive, in my car, from Atlanta to San Diego. Before you say it, yes, I know that I am spoiled.

As I dropped my parents at the airport and drove down the streets of San Diego, I actually felt like I was at home for the first time. Down the highway I sped south, Spanish oldies on the radio via 102.9. I was a little nervous about crossing in San Ysidro. I don't have a copy of my car's registration and I didn't get stamped out of Mexico again on my work visa, mainly because there does not appear to be an office that does it on the Tijuana side. And, I had a bad experience with the American migra Saturday morning.

Long, slow moving line. I always pick the slowest one and I knew I was going to be late meeting my parents. I watched American morons stepping up to the agents with driver's licenses and birth certificates, which always slows things up. Is it really that hard to get a passport if you are going to cross regularly? They were searching bags at the passport check, instead of at the X-ray machine. Finally, it was my turn. I presented my passport. "What are you bringing back from Mexico?", "I live in Mexico, I'm bringing..." and was interrupted. "Why do you live in Mexico?" the agent demanded. "I am on a Fulbright grant...", "A full what?" he asked, incredulous. "It's a State Department administered grant" I answered. It's weird. I never mention the exchange when the agents question me about my presence in TJ. I feel like I am holding something back and finally decided to just tell them, only to clarify things, to let them know that I am legit. Not to brag, just to clarify. "Where do you live in Mexico?" he continued. The line was at a standstill. "Tijuana. Aren't the two questions up?" I asked and added a little laugh to soften my remark. "Whoever told you we could only ask two questions was wrong. We will ask as many questions as necessary!" he boomed. "I was just kidding" I said, attempting to diffuse the situation. I had no idea that I was Public Enemy Number One. "What do you do in Tijuana?". "I'm a teacher" I answered. "Why are you so nervous?" he demanded. Because, dude, you are kind of freaking me out. "I'm sick of being in the line" I responded. "Have you ever been arrested?", "Yes" I answered. "For what?". Yeah, I did something stupid in my early twenties. Something victimless and non-violent. And obviously, I have never been arrested again. After I explained, he sat and typed on his computer for at least three minutes. "That's not all you were arrested for!" he stated, mentioning another charge I received for the same incident. "That charge was dismissed. I wasn't convicted. Search my stuff. I am not doing anything wrong" I answered. "The State Department sent you to Mexico?" he asked, as if I were a bank robber. Actually, sir, that would be a presidentialy appointed board that sent me to Mexico. "Yup. And they paid me" I responded. He finally let me go. I feel as though our country is being protected from all possible threats, including smart ass, passport carrying teachers on Fulbright grants. We are the ones you really have to watch out for. We're tearing the place apart.

I was waived into Mexico without even tapping on the brakes.

I decided to drive to school, give it a whirl. As I zig zagged over the road dodging potholes, I heard a walking student exclaim "La profe!". I seem so hapless most of the time that they probably think I don't know how to drive. I kind of like it. It's like off roading.

I am scrambling to get everything ready before our two weeks of Spring Break. As I sat in the teacher's workroom making lessons, I saw a teacher speaking to another teacher whom everyone says is a nurse. I believe she teaches one of the factory classes. I kept working, then noticed that the nurse teacher had inserted an IV in the other teachers arm, hanging the little bag on one of our lockers. The ill teacher sat for about fifteen minutes, while the contents of the bag emptied into her arm. People walked in and out, "Are you sick?" a few asked. When the bag was empty, I asked her if she was feeling better. "Bien nice," she answered "mejor".