"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.
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