That Endless Skyway

I sat in very early morning traffic in Aguascalientes, watching the men that swill gas, only to light it and blow fire from their mouths for money.  At six-thirty AM, I wasn't sure how they managed it.

It had been a long night.  I left La Cruz de Huancaxtle around three PM the previous afternoon.  It was time to go, though I had paid to stay in our rental for several more days.  I needed to head back, or I knew my mind might cave in on itself .  I had a goal of driving about six hours, so that I could make it to Texas the following day and to Atlanta the next.  I launched out, without a map or any kind of real directions, showing my first mistake of complacency and getting too used to Mexico being my own backyard.  I packed up the house, packed up Lola and headed out, rigging the doors shut on the rental and putting the key in a weird slot in the wall.   I almost left clothes in the dryer.

I was making good time, until hitting major traffic while trying to surpass Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, which is saying a lot because Mexico's largest city is one of the biggest cities in the world.  I was bored, frustrated, tapping on the gas while Lola waited patiently in the back seat.  The sun was going down.  I watched a Disney- Cinderella style horse and carriage pass by on the side of the congested road, filled with some sort of green hay instead of a princess or corny couple.  I tapped my phone for directions to by-pass the traffic.  It wouldn't work.  I had a signal, but Google Maps couldn't find a server.  I was worried I had gone over my data amount and finally called my mom.  I didn't want to, she divorced my step-dad in April and I knew this was supposed to be the day he moved out.

"Mom?" I asked.
"How are you?"
"Oh my God, this day has been exhausting....".
"I hate to ask you this but can you call AT&T for me?  I have tried direct dialing them and it won't go through and my data has been cut off and I am stuck in Guadalajara and don't know where to go.....".
As I sat in traffic while my mom texted me, asking my social security number and various other details to get my data back on.
"You have plenty of data!" she told me.  "They said it was a 'glitch' that your phone wasn't working....".

So, my mom fixed it and it worked and I got out of Guadalajara.  I drove smoothly on the highway, relieved to be moving again.  I followed Google maps.  Suddenly, things started looking familiar again.  Why was I back in Tonalá?   Why was I back in Guadalajara?  An hour after exiting, I was thrust into the city center of Guadalajara again.  I studied there one summer more than a decade ago, but was not too keen on reminiscing as I drove past my old university and favorite taco stands in the dark, trying to get the fuck back on the road.  I was stuck in the myriad of streets, completely clueless as to how to get back to the northern highway.  And, there was more traffic.  I was completely reliant on street signs, as Google Maps had dipped out again.  It was getting later, pushing eleven.

As I sat at a traffic light, several men infiltrated the road, spraying dirty water on windshields and "cleaning them off" for money.  People used to do this in Atlanta during the early nineties.  I watched one man eyeball and run straight for the gringo-lady car.  I would gladly give them money just to leave me alone, mainly because Lola goes psycho if anyone goes near the car or touches the windshield.  As soon as I saw him coming, I rolled down the window and started imploring in Spanish that he not touch the car.  Being a misogynistic shit face, he did what ever he wanted.  Lola went insane.  Now, I was screaming in Spanish and in English for him to get the fuck away, before Lola broke a window and ate his face off.  He kept doing what he was doing.  I turned on the windshield wipers.  That stopped him.

He stood by the driver's side of the car, instructing me to to roll the window down.  Obviously, he hadn't understood yet that I don't just take directions from weird men on the street, even though I have a vagina.  He upped his voice as I watched him through the window, yelling in perfect English:
"FUCK YOU.  FUCK YOU.  GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY.  GET OUT."
I smiled at him.  That was actually my goal.

I drove through the night, finally exiting Guadalajara and driving on the same northern highway I had been on hours earlier and toward the dog friendly hotel where I had a reservation.  Alec started calling.
"Yes.  I am still driving."
"Hilary, you are being stupid.  You are going to get kidnapped.  Even those super gringo expatriates don't drive around at night."
"I am doing my best."
He started texting me names of hotels.  Alec doesn't usually text and I thought his concern was sweet.  But I kept driving.
I passed through a toll booth.  I was surprised at the fond look of the young woman working the booth, grinning, asking about Lola.  I was still rattled by the guy in Guadalajara and appreciated someone that seemed to approve of what I was doing - strange gringo woman alone with dog in a Honda on a dangerous highway in the middle of the night, acting pretty natural and innocuous.  Clueless might be the better word.  The second toll booth was similar, this time a male that appreciated Lola as my "guardian".

I knew I would never make it to my destination and pulled into one of the towns Alec recommended.  I stopped at an OXXO and bought water for Lola and me and proceeded inward.  It was a strangely medieval town with a massive church in the middle; it reminded me more of France than of Spain or Mexico.  As I drove through the town looking for the pet friendly hotel that Alec had found on the internet, a noticed a few men on motorcycles following us.  I ignored them, but every time I made a turn they were on our bumper.  Lola didn't like it.  I didn't like it either.  Finally, I exited the town.  As I came up to the last red light, one of the motorcycle men pulled up beside me, and I lowered the window.
"No, I'm good, I don't need to hire your as a guide." I stated, as Lola went feral.
I turned to the right, just to get rid of him and drove back on the highway out of the town.  I saw a small hotel with the lights on and pulled off.  The entire family, complete with elementary age children, was sitting in the lobby.
"Do you have any rooms?"  I asked. "And, do you allow dogs?"
"How big of a dog?"
"A very large dog."
"As long as it doesn't bark all night."
"She won't."
The woman looked to her husband.
"Charge her 250." he stated, asking fifty peso below the rate the was published on a little board with white, stick on letters. 
They helped me carry my bag and all of Lola's stuff upstairs, even though the wife was terrified of Lola.
Lola and I took a quick walk around the area to let her pee, while I looked over my shoulder for the motorcycle men.  I would find out in the morning that I had inadvertently dropped the car keys and my iPhone brick next to the driver's side door.  Lola and I went upstairs.

I set up the fan in front of the bed and Lola and I jumped in.   Lola cemented herself next to my side.  Both girls on the run slept like we were dead for almost five hours.  

The Rowers Kept on Rowing

We woke and drove south, receiving a two hundred dollar ticket in a Texas speed trap before hitting the Mexican border.  As usual, the gates to Mexico were wide open and people were waving us in.  If we had tried to back out, the spikes in the road would have ripped up our tires.

Nuevo Laredo went much smoother than the year before and we passed through, got our paperwork and made our way to Saltillo, again staying in the same hotel as the year before and even getting tacos from the same awesome taco stand at the end of the driving day.  It was reassuring and delicious.   It was Mexico, and we were back.

We took an alternative route the third day through the "Devil's Backbone", a newly constructed series of roads, tunnels and bridges that cut from Saltillo to Mazatlán on a renovated donkey trail that only drug smugglers used to use.  We wanted to visit Durango and ride over the highest suspension bridge around, and well, try a new route.  We arrived at our small room in Mazatlán that night and made it to our house rental in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle the following day.

The time flew quickly.  We went to the beaches and ate at the restaurants in our sleepy town.  We played with Lola in the walled in yard of our luxurious yet flawed rental home.  We made margaritas and read books by our incredible pool.  I re-read "The Goldfinch" and talked Alec and a friend from school into reading it with my simultaneously.  As much as I loved the pool and being in Mexico, some of my happiest times were spent cuddled with Alec and Lola in our bed in the air-conditioned room of the house, watching Chef's Table on Netflix, knowing that we could stay up as late as we wanted and sleep as late as we wanted the next morning.

During the first week of our stay in La Cruz, the Orlando massacre occurred.  I woke the next morning to find a series of texts on my phone; my niece had also been violently attacked the same night by someone that was supposed to care about her.  My niece, Emma.  The child I saw born and who has been at my side ever since, whether she liked it or not.  The one that just graduated from high school.  The one that should have the world at her fingertips, as her oyster.  The beginning of everything.  The excitement of everything.  Something no one or thing should get to damper or shit on. 

He knocked her front teeth out.
It would set the tone for the summer. 

Thorazine on the Bayou

The first Saturday of June, the car was packed, Lola was buckled in, the new tires shined on the car, and we pulled out of the driveway and headed west, Mexican car permit and Lola's International Travel document safely tucked into the pocket on the passenger side door.

There was a sense of deja vu as we pulled onto the same highway on a similar looking day almost a year to the date later, just days after the school year ended, the plastic Virgin of Guadalupe medallion swinging from the rear view mirror on its dental floss string in the same familiar motion.

Things quickly changed.

The first day should be a "manageable" twelve hours, but the previous year we hit horrendous road work and traffic and twelve hours quickly changed to eighteen.  A different problem presented itself this time when as soon as Alabama, rain clouds appeared.  Being adults, we are versed in driving in the rain, but Lola has an almost violent reaction to windshield wipers.  Soon their use was necessary and Lola became so hysterical that she managed to pull loose from her seat belt and breach the barrier her crate created between the front and back seats.  We pulled off onto the side of the highway, cars whipping beside us from the narrow shoulder and a frightened Pit Bull scrambling over both occupants of the front seats.  It was pouring rain. 

I moved to the backseat and managed to get Lola back there with me.  I tried to calm her, but she continued barking for a solid ten minutes.  Violently.  The whites of her eyes were turning red.

"Look, if you can stay back there with her and keep her from getting up front, I say we just drive and she'll bark herself out."
"Okay." I responded, wrapping my arms tightly around Lola in both a hug and a hold.

Alec pulled onto the highway, windshield wipers flapping in the heavy rain.  Lola was barking hysterically and jumping all over me, the long bony legs that support her ninety-five pound body digging and bruising my legs and arms, her toenails tearing holes in my shorts.  It hurt, but I was more upset by how unhappy and afraid she was.  It was not subsiding.  Then I saw the blood.  It coated her teeth and coagulated at the side of her mouth.  It was on the back of the seat.

"Pull over!  She's hurt!!  She's hurting herself!!!"  I screamed.
Alec got us off the highway and into a gas station parking lot.  I pulled out the sedative the vet had given us for the trip.  We had never tried one before, but I knew from experience how Lola is with certain situations and I had asked the vet for something to calm her anxieties, but only when necessary, not some sort of doggie Prozac for the long term.  Slowly she calmed down and began to slump onto my lap and lay her head on my arms. After a half an hour, Alec carefully crept out onto the road again, turning on the windshield wipers.  Lola didn't react, but laid heavily in my arms, eyes blinking.

We rode like that most of the day until somewhere in Louisiana, Lola re-positioned herself, pressing her butt toward me and her head in the opposite direction. Her eyes remained fluttery.  I reluctantly looked up the medicine I had given Lola, knowing I was not going to like what I saw.  I was surprised that I hadn't read up on it before asking for a sedative from the vet, maybe a willful dissonance on my part or that things were busy and I thought the whole thing was pretty standard.

I discovered I had basically given my dog Thorazine, a One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest-type type tranquilizer commonly used and abused on psychotics in the fifties.  I glanced at Lola's half-cast eyes as the late afternoon sun reappeared over the Louisiana bayou.
"Don't freak out, Hilary,"  I reprimanded myself mentally.
"People use this drug all the time, vets prescribe it, you are neurotic and overly protective of your dog."
I glanced back at my phone.
"The drug actually doesn't sedate the dog...."  I read.
"But makes the dog unable to move its body while the mind remains perfectly aware of what is happening.  The dog is simply physically unable to respond to the fear it feels.  Often, the dog will become more fearful after the event because of the experience."
Wonderful.

As darkness arrived in Texas, Lola began to stir, rising up unsteadily on her feet.  We were both glad to see her.  She wore her "Scott Walker Face", or a Forest Gump-like look of dim eyes and a slight tongue protrusion that we assume someone that had experienced shock therapy or some sort of cognitive impairment might exhibit.  We pulled into the hotel, the same one as last year, and carefully exited the car with Lola.

She seemed more cognizant of the notion of a hotel than the year before and jumped up on the big bed, without the questioning look of "Why did we trade in a whole house and a yard for just one room?" and sprawled out.  At least the twelve hour drive was only a sixteen this year instead of an eighteen.

We climbed in the bed on either side of her.  Lola pressed herself toward me and lay glued to my side throughout the night, only shifting to make sure her head was laying squarely in my arms.  

When Doves Cry

I sat at my kitchen table, glasses off, cocktail sword in my hand.  I had emptied the contents of the gel capsule into a ramekin and carefully counted each little micro bead, one by one, moving each to the other side of the ramekin with the sword as I counted.  Three hundred, seventy-seven.  I was going to figure out how to taper off this happy pill.

One of the K-3 kids jumped off of the school bus and skipped toward me.  They change buses at our school, we are sort of like the Grand Central Station of my district, younger kids come and switch buses to ride with some slightly older kids to reduce the mileage and time that the buses have to endure.  She was cute and blond.
"I love your hair!" she exclaimed.
"Oh thank you!"
"Do you know Mark?"
"Mark who?"
"Mark Stewart".
"Yes!  I am his Spanish teacher!"
"I am his sister!" 
She hugged me.
"You are fun!" she continued.
"Here, wait with me, we will wait for Mark to come out..." I said, smiling.  She grabbed my hand and gazed up at me, smiling.
"Mark says you are the worst Spanish teacher ever.....".

"I cannot take it.  The children cannot take it.  It is too much!".
Suddenly, the hands started flying, the voice started rising and the tears began flowing.  He was on his feet, lips sputtering, weird gesturing.  My co-worker was going Jersey again.  I slowly turned toward my computer.  I wasn't going to ride the crazy train today over something so minor. 

After the end of year hall monitor party, I was flattered to find plates full of cookies and brownies with my name on them in our office.  I didn't want to eat them, but was flattered that so many students had wanted to share them with me.  

Mark ran out of the school and saw his little sister standing with me. 
"Come on," he instructed with a quick nod and smile in my direction.
"But I like her!" she screamed.
"I like her!".

I piled the cookies and brownies on a plate far from the edge of the counter so that Lola could not get to them.   I returned to the kitchen a few minutes later to see the empty plate laying on the floor.  CHOCOLATE. Lola had eaten CHOCOLATE. 

"Holly!" I pleaded into the phone.
"Lola ate some brownies with cocoa in them and chocolate chip cookies.  What should I do?  Should I take her to the vet?  She is acting okay....".
"Don't worry," she advised me.
"Lola is big enough to handle a little chocolate."
"Are you sure.....?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"I am thinking of getting off the happy pills, but I can't figure out how to do it, they are gel caps, you can't split them in half."
"Have you looked online?".
"Yeah...." I answered, my voice dropping to a whisper.
"But those people are CRAZY."
"I think I am going to do it halfie halfie, you know, open the capsule and divide the little pills between the two sides, halfie halfie."

Alec and I entered the vet's office with Lola. She needed her annual check up and shots, just because, and to go to Mexico.
"Do you have a stool sample?" the habitually bitchy receptionist asked.
"No wait, she is just here for her annual shots..." I answered, thinking she was confused with some sick dog.
"YES.  Do you have a stool sample?"
"I don't get it, what are you talking about?  I have never been asked to bring one for something like this....".
"It is just less intrusive, is all I am saying.  Take her for a walk, see if you can get one" she responded, as if I didn't give a shit about my dog. 
"Fucking cunt," I sputtered, as Alec and I walked Lola around the block. 
"I am so sick of this shit, sick of her fucking attitude.....my dog has been coming here for four years and I have never brought a piece of shit in with her for her shots....cock sucking bitch....."
We returned.  Without shit.  Crazy receptionist was bitching out Lola's main man with the pick, her favorite vet tech. 
"I can't take anymore!  We already have one emergency back there and a room full of appointments!  I can't do this!  Lifeline always does this.  Tell them no.   Tell them we cannot take the cat!  They always leave them wide open!".
"The man is on his way" the tech responded calmly.
I looked at the other woman in the waiting room, her cat in a crate and hands over her daughter's ears. 
I walked over to Richie. 
"We can reschedule.  I do not want some open cat out in the world."
I noticed the other woman from the waiting room behind me.
"We feel the same way."
"It's okay..." he muttered.
"We got this."
I sat back down.  A man burst through the door with a cat in a carrier.
"I need help." he said to me.
Cunt face spoke up.
"We can't take her!  Take her to St. Francis hospital on the highway, we can't help!"
I was furious.   There is an emergency vet less than fifteen minutes away.  She was sending him forty-five and the cat's spay incisions were open. 
"It's serious!" she called after him.
"Nothing to play with!  You better go now!"
I scratched my palms until I thought blood would come out.  

My niece graduated from high school.  It was strangely touching and a long, stressful, emotional night for a million events and reasons that cannot be written.  A few days after the graduation, the school hosted a funeral for a student that graduated a year ago.   He overdosed a day before Emma's graduation.  A sad waste.  Though I taught at Emma's school, I didn't know that student.  The ripeness of summer had begun and he had expired.  It made me think of how flowers smell near the end of the hot season, overly fragrant and slightly rotten. 

"That's the guy that nearly made me cry" my sister mentioned as we decompressed a day or so after the graduation.
It was the guy who rides his bike and whistles really loud and in perfect tune.  I can hear him from inside my house.
"He was whistling 'When Doves Cry' the day after Prince died."

"I am going to miss you, Miss Wagner." Janie announced randomly in the hallway.
"I mean, you've been my teacher for two years.  I have never had a teacher like you.   You make me want to ask questions, you don't just tell us what to do.  My class complains about everything.  They complain about Social Studies, they complain about Math.  But they never complain about Spanish....you just make it so fun."

I looked into her clear blue eyes and thanked her.  I really needed that.  

Green Bikes

I used to have this green bike. When I was a kid, in Michigan.   I went to one school, McBrite, for kindergarten.  I don't remember a lot about the rest.  I remember walking past the McBrite school and commenting angrily to my sister that "the Board of Education" was taking it away from us.  I also remember walking down that long street next to McBrite and smacking a girl I knew in the face with my big book bag and crying when I did it.  When the crossing guard asked why I was crying I told her that my mother had told me that if Bree hit me one more time, hit her back.  And I did.

I started thinking about his because I thought my early schooling in Michigan was idyllic.

McBrite was shut down and I was sent to Sherwood the next year, I guess.  It had an open-concept, pod thing where all of the classrooms looked out on to each other but there was a central space in the middle where we could all get together.  We ate in the library, which was fine with me, I habitually read some Eleanor Roosevelt biography.  They served us from space-age carts that the lunch ladies pushed around.  Everything was covered in aluminum and the weird, packaged smell permeated the room.  I thought it was cool.

I remember walking home from Sherwood and adventuring through the woods.  It was beautiful, snow covered, and we would take forever coming home as we walked through the mansions of Huntington Woods and played in the snow and eventually made it back to our own backyards.

My mom used to walk us to school, as we were on the mile mark where we didn't qualify for busing. We must have talked her into getting us bikes.  My sister won one in some strange Halloween party at the school, it was a dirt bike.  Somehow I ended up with the green bike that I probably thought was awesome at the time. I rode that bitch to school.  But something happened.  I remember the kids yelling "Whose green bike is that!!???" and I walked home, leaving my bike at school, humiliated, not willing to claim my own bike.

My mom was pissed.
"Why didn't you bring your bike home??!!"
She took me back to the school, everyone was gone, and we took the bike home.
I can't remember what ever happened to that bike.

At Sherwood, I remember other days. I was watching the kids spin around on some sort of playground device.  I liked what I was wearing, I was wearing new clothes, they were pink, it was early in the school year.  The kids were spinning, but I walked inside and asked them to call my mother, because I felt too sad to continue the day.

I remember getting attacked by multiple boys on the playground.  I don't know why.  They wanted to fight me, and I was freaking out and rolling and trying to get away from the wrestling match.  I was horrified.  They were pulling my hair, throwing down, and no one was interfering.  I fought and ran, none of the teachers even noticed.

My "best friend" told me slyly, later, in our neighborhood,
"It looked you were fucking".

Auld Lang Syne

I returned to school to find a chippy note in my box about requesting too many days for bereavement.  I tried to quickly get things together and went to my first class.  The students were very sweet, happy to see me and genuinely compassionate about the loss of my Grandmother.  I looked around the room.

"Where is Jaquey?" I asked his teacher.  "I feel like I haven't seen him in forever."
I saw her eyes dim a little and she looked down.
"He's gone.  They withdrew him....they are sending him back to his mom....they can't deal with him anymore, the stealing.....".
"I hope somewhere he is getting what he needs." I answered, feeling that he had been failed, that he was slipping through the cracks.
"I do too" she answered. 

I finished the week and our two week break began.  It was filled with shopping and Christmas trees and food preparation for the Christmas Eve event that is hosted at my house for my family.  My beautiful former student Dau came to town, only a year away from getting the degree she so fully deserves.  I got crafty and built my sister a little, free ADULT lending library to house porn in her front yard.

We quietly brought in the New Year, while I silently wished for a good 2016.  

The Scottish

The following days became more of a nighttime blur.  In the midst of my and my mother's bar crawl of some of the places my alcoholic father had preferred, I decided to tackle the issue of my brother.  But let me first add that my dad had excellent taste in bars.

We are estranged from my brother.  When I started traveling a lot, my brother's wife decided to attack my mother on my first long trip.  My sister stood up for my mom in the ferocious way that I would have if I had been present for the bullshit this woman was dishing out AT MY MOM.  When I returned nearly a year later, my brother and his wife were being very sweet and delicate with me and there was no contact between them and my sister and mother.  It always made me uncomfortable.  I felt like I was being used as a pawn, that the fact that I would speak with them was some sort of validation of their position against the rest of my family.  Against my mom, who single handed raised the three of us.  I did not agree with what they did, and did not like the perception that "Look, Hilary's okay with us.  The rest of those people are crazy."  My mom and my sister are not crazy.  My brother and his wife, are.  

My sister was voicing increasing anxiety about the prospect of my brother and his wife coming to my Grandmother's funeral.  The drama that would ensue.  The stress.  Sitting in a bar that had walls covered with Scottish kilt fabric, I texted my brother.  I felt like it was time for me to take the bullet, not my sister or my mom.  Me, the good one, the nice one, the pushover.  I was finally going to speak up.  I identified myself in the text because my brother doesn't even know my phone number.  I politely asked him to come alone to my Grandmother's funeral, if he intended to come at all.  I really didn't give a shit if he brought his kid, but didn't know how to say, "Can you at least leave your cunt wife at home?".  I asked him to do it for the sake of my mom, that it was her mother's funeral and it was important to me that she could say goodbye to her in a stress-free environment.  I really did not think his wife would be terribly heartbroken about not attending the funeral of a woman she had met a handful of times.  And, my brother is a big boy.  He can handle the funeral on his own.  The thing that was most important to me was my mom.

Somewhere in the blur of days we stopped by the hospice.  I went inside and delivered a large Poinsettia to the nurses and thanked them for taking such good care of my Grandmother.  Another group of people was standing in the hallway, crying.  Someone else had passed.  I knew I was going to cry again just from walking in that place and I quickly exited.

I wasn't going to attend the funeral.  The had to schedule it for the following Monday, as Catholics don't have funerals on Sundays and Saturday was booked up.  I had already missed a week of work; I knew I couldn't ask for anymore days, though my sick leave bank is so massive I could technically take the rest of the year off.  My niece and sister were on their way up to accompany my mom to the funeral.  I received a dramatic response from my brother about how he "broke the news to his wife and child that they weren't permitted to attend their Grandmother's funeral".  Wife and child.  As if I don't know their names.  Caveman style drama.  He thanked me for "allowing" him to come.  I didn't respond, as the end result of texting him in the first place was successful.  I still have the texts saved to my phone.  I don't know why.

On my last night in Saginaw, we ended up again around the table of my aunt and uncle, drinking wine.  My cousin and her partner stopped by a couple of hours after I probably should have stopped drinking. When I rose Saturday morning to get ready for my flight, my head was pounding.  As my mother drove me to Flint, I threw up out of the door of the car and in the process, down the front of my clothes.  I entered the airport.  There was one person at the security area.  I sheepishly went through and proceeded to the gate and sat in a chair crouched over with my head in my hands. I made a mental reminder not to touch anything except bottled water while at the airport.   I heard the flight attendants call my name and I feared they weren't going to let me fly.  To the contrary, they told me they had moved my seat to the emergency row. Yes, the passenger with vomit all over her clothes will be assisting you if the plane crashes.  I passed out before the wheels left the ground and only woke up when we landed in Chicago.

I made it back to Atlanta in the late afternoon.  That night as I slept, Lola curled up beside me.  She breathed heavily as she slept and for a second, breathed quietly.

I woke up, startled, thinking I was beside my Grandmother's bed in the hospice.  But I wasn't.  I was at home in Atlanta.