Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

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

"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

"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

"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

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

"¡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

"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.