Life is a Winding Road

On a backcountry road, the hills make my stomach go up and down, and realize that's how my life’s been for the past seventeen years. My life has always been a colorful catastrophe. I can hear my parent’s voices in my head, always trying to tell me what to do with my life. My mom’s voice--Turn your life around. Make something of yourself! You know what you are? You’re my biggest regret. I sit at a stop light, and in that flash second of the light turning from red to green, I realize I have the biggest decision to make. I can turn around right now and go home without anyone noticing I am gone, or I can go straight, down the path I choose for myself.

I am trying to decide, when I hear someone honk and say, “Come on lady! Move your car!”

I yell back, “Give me a minute! I haven't decided!”

“I don't care, just drive,” he says. Do I drive or let him go around me? Is this a sign that I should just go? I step on the gas.

It’s been three hours. I wonder if my parents will notice that I am gone, or even care. The voice in my head replays the argument my mother and I had before I left.

“Are you ever going to become an adult?”

“Are you ever going to become an adult role model I can look up to?”

What would it be like if there were auditions for adulthood? You could either have a call back or not make the cut, which would mean you would have to wait for another production of “life.” I probably won’t make the cut, because my mom didn’t rehearse the lines with me. If I tried to explain my relationship with my mom, it would sound like a cliché lifetime movie. My mother and I have a love/hate relationship: she tries to love me more and I try to hate her less.

Sure, my mom and I have had three or four mother-daughter moments.There was one time we went on a really fast roller coaster to the point where I thought we were going to be sick. In the end, we did get sick, but it was worth it. Another time on a family vacation, we went swimming in the ocean, and came out with seaweed all of over us. But all of that was before she found out that I was going to be the biggest disappointment in her life.

My dad and I don’t really talk. I think I make him uncomfortable. I don’t think he knows what to say to me or how to deal with me when I get myself into what they like to call an "anxiety headache situation." Whereas I like to call it "enjoying my youth," they interpret my every move as proof I don't give a damn about what I do with my life. But they don’t know the real me. I am very organized and responsible when it comes to school--all my binders are on point. When it comes to my boyfriend, Jess, I make sure I make time for him, but not so much that I get behind and stray from my academic studies. I make sure all my college apps are in on time, and I still manage to make time to relax without stressing too much about my grades. But they don’t think I am responsible in my studies, because I am not bringing home the grades they want to see, and I don’t compare to their expectations. So she makes subtle comments that make me feel like shit.

My mom has always told me she would be proud of me in anything I do ... as long as I come home on the honors list and get into an Ivy League school. They always wanted me to be the perfect child who they could brag about to all their friends. Some people might think my parents just want more for me than they had in their own lives, but they had everything. They graduated from Cornell and became well-known lawyers. The day I come home with an acceptance letter from Dartmouth, they will be proud to call me their daughter, but until then, it’s like they’ve disowned me.

When I was growing up, I would see my friend's parents tell them they loved them or hug them goodbye on their first day of school. I’ve never heard my mother or father say "I love you," not to each other or to me. On my first day of school, they wouldn’t even walk me inside. They told me they had to get to work and I would have to go in alone and, "have a good day, see you at 2:30." I was like, "Okay great, I'm only in kindergarten, but I guess I will try to figure out when 2:30 is."

I get so jealous of my friends and their families, talking about stuff they did in school and actually being interested in each other's lives. When my friends come over for dinner, my parents interrogate them about their futures and then make disappointed comments..

Once my friend Julie was over, and my dad says, “Julie, have you started thinking about where you want to go to college, or what you want to do when you graduate?”

Julie says, “I haven’t given it much thought...maybe doing some courses online and then traveling the world a little bit.”

My mom chimes in, “That’s what you want to do with your life?”

Julie’s face turns bright red and she says, “Well, yeah. My parents think it’s okay.”

Under my breath I say, “Wish I knew what that felt like.”

My parents roll their eyes and say, “Stop being so dramatic.”

I stop and grab some gas before I keep driving. I turn around to grab my wallet and see my small carry-on bag on the back seat, with not many clothes in it and not many toiletries. I had to pack lightly, because I needed to leave quickly this morning. Even though I ran away and don’t know what I am going to do, all I know is that there is no way in hell I am ever returning to that place I used to call my home. The day I packed my things, grabbed the car keys, and drove was the best day in my entire life.


Written by: Jen Meltzer
Photograph by: Fabrice Poussin

Backseat Feminist

It’s a scary word and always has been, but I don’t know why. Most men fear it because one day they got together and decided it means something else entirely. It scares them, perhaps because they feel threatened, and for a moment I am glad. I am glad they feel the threat I feel every night walking to my car alone, or on afternoons when a letter carrier knocks on my door unexpectedly and my heart lurches, because for that moment, I am in danger. For that moment, I am reminded I am a woman. And the moment when I say the word, they get to feel like me.

The creaking Volvo rumbles and roars as I try to pick up bits and pieces of the conversation happening between the men seated in front of me. One of them belongs to me and the other does not.

“Honey, could you speak up please? I can’t make out what you’re saying up there,” I say with invitation as I dry my sweating palms on my skirt pleats.

“We’re just talking about Grandma, babe,” my husband says over his shoulder without letting his eyes leave the road or his hands leave the wheel.

“About that comment she made about the pill,” his brother laughs. “She’s hysterical.” He slaps his knee and faces forward in his seat.

I lean forward to become part of the conversation. “Did you know it wasn’t even invented until the 1960s?” I speak loudly so I am heard over the motor’s gravelly voice, but I can’t help but feel that I’m yelling when I shouldn’t be.

“Birth control?” my husband asks.

“Yeah. It was really the beginning of the feminist revolution. Sexual awakening and all that.”

“Well that makes sense,” my brother-in-law chimes in. “Before that, women were too afraid of getting pregnant. They used to be driven by morality I guess.”

I clench and unclench my jaw. “We still are. And it takes two people to get pregnant by the way.”

“I never said it didn’t. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

I sit back in my seat and decide to leave this battle for another day. A road trip to my in-laws’ house for Thanksgiving is neither the time nor the place to get in a family argument.

“Wait, James is right,” my husband says. “Back in the good old days, women weren’t as promiscuous because they had the consequence of pregnancy, but once the pill pretty much gave them free reign, it turned into free love and that whole movement in the 60s. Isn’t that what lead to AIDS?”

“Oh my god,” I grumble.

“What?” James challenges. “No, say what you have to say.”

“I don’t want to have this argument.”

“Roy and I are just trying to have a discussion with you. It’s not an argument.”

“Fine,” I consent. “You can’t really think the creation of the pill lead to the outbreak of a worldwide epidemic.”

“Whoa, now I never said that,” Roy says, taking both hands off the wheel and back-pedaling like his life depends on it. “I never said they were causally related, just that the correlation cannot be ignored as it all began in the same decade and in the same population.” His experience in academia is apparent; it’s as if he is making a presentation before his peers and has just realized his mistake. The vernacular shifts and the verbosity shows through his best intentions.

“The pill let women claim their sexuality for the first time,” I say. I feel myself climbing on the soapbox, but I can’t help it and I don’t want to. “In the centuries prior, women weren’t seen as having sexual desires but as wives whose primary role was to produce children. People found the idea of a woman enjoying herself ghastly. Even sinful. Suddenly, women were almost granted permission to enter into sex for no other reason than to have a good time, just like men had been doing for a thousand years. No strings attached.”

I step down from the box feeling good about myself, but it isn’t over.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Roy says. “The pill caused women to be more promiscuous.”

“Promiscuity existed long before the pill did.”

“Yeah Roy, what about prostitutes?” James says to this brother, thinking he’s agreeing with my point. “They’re as promiscuous as it gets.”


“You both keep forgetting there are two halves to this.”

“Who, men?” James balks.

“You never alluded that men became more promiscuous when the invention of the condom came about, which was around the sixteenth century by the way.” I slump back against the vinyl bench seat with a thump, resisting the urge to cross my arms and let my bottom lip protrude. I want to ask why they aren’t listening to me, but what I ask instead is, “Why does this have to be ‘us versus them?’ Aren’t we on the same side here?”

“With bra burners?” James laughs.

I sigh. It’s clear I am getting nowhere, and I notice Roy has fallen strangely silent. “Why are we even talking about this?” I ask.

“You brought it up, Anna.” James jabs the air with an index finger.

Only I didn’t. But instead I say, “You’re right. I don’t know why I did. See, this is why I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“We can talk about this stuff while keeping a level head. You’re the one who turned it into a fight about your rights.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

I’m left in the backseat of an old Volvo driven and directed by two stubborn men. A woman who, in an argument about feminism, is the one apologizing.

The irony doesn't escape me. Instead, it brings prickling tears to my eyes, hot and stinging, and again I try to hide what I am. I let one tear after another fall down my face and pray they don’t turn around in their seats. They never do. If they see me, I will appear weak; if they know they will laugh. I am being too emotional, I am overreacting.

I make excuses for myself, but most painful are the excuses I make for them. 

Written by: HG Reed

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Genie

The tire pressure light came on as Jake cleared a speed bump. For a moment, he thought the damn thing just knocked some air out of the tires, but the thought was quickly dashed by the familiar dubdubdub of a flat tire.

“Shit.” He pulled onto the shoulder and killed the engine. Turning on the cautions, he climbed out and stepped around to the right front tire. Ripped to shreds.

He checked his watch. Seven thirty. Too early to call the office, but AAA might get him going again. He pulled out his phone and thumbed the power button.

Nothing. He held it down, but the screen stubbornly remained blank.

“Of course.” He tossed it in the passenger window. “Shit.”

The road was desolate, save for a rundown gas station and the remnants of a trailer park, its wretched speed bumps the one intact relic. The only sign of life was a blue pickup sitting in the station’s lot surrounded by potholes. It had a few dings, but it looked otherwise well maintained.
Jake approached the pickup slowly, craning his neck to see inside. A pile of old coats covered the passenger seat, but it looked unoccupied. He spotted a full-size tire mounted just behind the passenger door.

He glanced around. The lot was abandoned. The street was more or less unused, save for the odd commuter trying to shave a few minutes off his drive. He was alone.

Satisfied, he peered into the bed in search of a jack and tire iron, but it was empty. Another furtive glance, then he tried the passenger door. It swung open, and the pile of coats billowed out, forcing Jake back. He tripped and landed hard as it emerged and raised to its full height.

A hand appeared from beneath what was actually a single coat and reached towards Jake. It belonged to a large man in a larger coat. A huge smile beamed out from under a fedora.

“Didn’t mean to scare ya, Friend.” The deep, honeyed voice rattled in Jake’s chest. “I thought you were another of those damn kids out to boost Blue.”

Jake hesitated, then took the Coat’s hand, which was more like a bear’s paw. The Coat hoisted Jake to his feet. “No. Definitely not. I actually thought this vehicle was abandoned and was going to take the tire for my Benz.”

The Coat followed Jake’s gaze across the street. When he turned back, his grin was even wider. “So it’s a tire you’d be needing, is it?”

“Yeah, that speed bump ripped one of mine to shreds.” He motioned to the tire. “I’m not even sure it’s the right size, but--”

“Oh, it’ll fit. Don’t worry ‘bout that.”

“That would be fantastic.” He reached for his wallet. “How much do you want for it?”

The Coat laughed a full-throated laugh. “Friend, your money’s no good to me. If the tire’s what’s needed, it’s yours.”

Jake slowly returned his wallet. “There must be something you want.”

The Coat turned and leaned into the truck. “Oh, I do. But it won’t cost you nothin’ but time.” He produced a jack and a tire iron, then kicked the door shut with a large foot.

Glancing at the tire iron, Jake fought the urge to step back. “If it won’t cost me anything, what do you want?”

“Well, some time down the road, you’re probably gonna need something again.” He shrugged as though he were delivering an unfortunate but obvious truth. “Happens to all of us. But next time it happens to you, I want you to call me.” He started to remove the tire from its mount.

“Why?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “So I can come help, a’course.”

Jake’s brow furrowed. His gut was telling him to just go find a pay phone and call AAA, but something kept him where he was.

“We got a deal, friend?” The Coat was holding the tire like it weighed not a thing.

“So you’re lending me this--”

“Giving, Friend.”

“Giving me this tire, and all you want is to do another favor some time in the future?”

The Coat nodded.

Jake checked his watch. Seven forty-three. “Deal. Can you put the tire on for me?”

The Coat’s grin grew wider. “Look, another favor already!”

“Looks like it.”

“All I ask in return is--”

“Another favor?”

The Coat winked. “But this one, you’re gonna do for me.”

Jake hesitated. “And that would be?”

Dropping the tire, the Coat spread his arms. “All you gotta do is set me free.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just tell me I’m free, and I’ll be on my way.”

“If you put that tire on in less than five minutes, I’ll tell you anything.”

He picked up the tire and started across the road. “Deal. Two for you ‘n one for me.”

Jake’s gut was screaming now, but he followed him over. When the Coat was finished, Jake checked his watch. Seven forty-seven.

“All finished, Friend.”

“Great. That was fast.” He checked out the tire, then looked back to the Coat whose grin engulfed his whole face. “Oh. Uh, now?”

The Coat raised his paws, suddenly ambivalent. “Only if ya want to, friend. Gotta be your choice.”

Jake shook his head and pulled out his keys. “Whatever. You’re free then.”

The man grinned, then removed his coat and hat. He helped Jake into the coat and placed the hat on his head. Humoring him, Jake appraised his reflection in the tinted window. Something didn’t seem right, but his mind was cloudy. He tried to pick out a clear thought, but they escaped him. The strange man clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. The clothes fit surprisingly well.

Taking the keys, the man walked around to the driver’s side. Jake followed him, his brow furrowed. “What’s happening?”

He winked again, then got into the car and started the engine. “Just remember, no one will set you free after one wish, so get ‘em to agree to two ‘fore you do the first.”

The door shut, and the Benz pulled away.

                                                                                                          ***

The moonlight bathed the gas station in silver. The road was empty, but an engine purred somewhere in the dark. Inside a dusty, beat-up blue pickup, a man in a dusty coat stirred. He climbed out and leaned against the hood.

Headlights soon appeared around the corner, and a car went too fast over a speed bump. It pulled over with that familiar dubdubdub sound. The driver got out and swore.

A voice called across the street. “Looks like you need a favor, Mister.”

The man looked towards the pickup. He could just make out in the moonlight where the voice had come from and started towards it.

Jake was grinning.



Written by: Michael Goldstein
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Alone

I never want to die alone, but it seems that’s my fate.

My gramma was found next to her dried up minestrone soup, rotting for three days. Choked on a piece of bread. I guess it was sad and all, but then who’d want to grow old like that anyway and be so withered?

One spring day, Ma overdosed outside a crack house downtown, age 29. It was shortly after Dad blew town, and I went to juvie. I never could resist a shiny red car. Ma was younger, I suppose, and definitely not forgotten, at least by me. But she had her urgent need to sneak out, leaving her with only an empty needle beside her when she kicked it.

Dying alone scares me more than taking my final driving test.

Every spring night, I’m called out to scour the streets freshly lined with fast-food bags from a healthy gale off the Flatirons. Something about that night air and my restless fingers are what tug at me. I become more alert once the heat from the Colorado sun seeps out of the tar roads and the crimson tail lights brighten my night. But I don’t want to be alone.

Tonight, I "borrow" my foster parents’ SUV. Big deal, right? It’s not like they’ll miss the car much, and they definitely won’t notice I’m gone. They’re those “look how generous we are” types who take in “special needs” kids, like me. They feel so bad for the way I was raised that they always forgive me. They’ll definitely forgive me tonight.

Against a beer-soaked bar’s edge, I make two new friends, a couple. Turns out these two lovebirds are college kids. Samantha smells like the spring tulips along the Pearl Street Mall. I didn’t catch the guy’s name. Started with a ‘ch’ sound. The music in the bar is thrumming too loud to hear the rest. When they introduce themselves and their majors, I pretend like I’m someone too, someone they want to know, someone with money and a car. And then, just like nothing’s wrong, we’re friends. They’re so cute together. I want to steal their love and keep it with me always.

They ride around town with me. I put on a great act of not being the teenager I am. We stop at a friend of Chance or Chase or Chad, or whatever. A fraternity party is in full swing, mostly on the perfectly manicured lawn and partially on the roof. Samantha and the C-word guy leave to grab drinks. I hang back like I fit in. My real self reminds me who I am as soon as they leave me alone with a pretty beefy-looking dude who asks my major. I don’t belong here. I’d never belong here. I panic until my friends return with a glowing drink in a martini cup and a shot glass. Once I have that little high from the smaller cup, I sway through the party and pretend I’m someone again. I keep the high going a little by grabbing drinks from the guy dressed in just boxers and a tie who’s cruising around with a serving tray.

I suppose I shouldn’t have had that last shooter. My stomach flips after I pass some guy, who hasn't moved from the juniper bush since barfing. But I can’t let my friends see that I can’t handle the liquor. It might give me away, and I need them.

Samantha asks me for the car keys. She hasn’t drank a drop, she claims. If she has been drinking, she’s a great actress. I can’t think straight, but the hum of the busiest roads aren’t far from Delta Chi and they call to me.

“Nope,” I say, dangling the diamanté-studded key ring just inches from her nose, yanking them back.

The night air cools, and my skin craves rain drops. A spring mountain storm makes every drive a little more fun, a little more dangerous and thrilling. But there are only stars above.

The guy, whose name I now desperately wish I could remember, says I need to walk a line to prove myself. Like I’d prove to him how buzzed I was. There was only one thing I could focus on at the moment, and that was the cherry paint of the foster’s Range Rover.

"Dude, my car. Don’t you trust me?“

“Yeah, come on!” Samantha giggles and hops in back.

After giving me a once-over, he bumps my shoulder and I catch the light, musky smell he applied earlier tonight, now covered over with eau-de-beer. Then, instead of a further fight, he climbs in the back next to Samantha.

He says, "Then let's get this over with. All right?”

I nod. We definitely will be all right. What’s that saying about groups of three? They’re a charm?

The engine grinds a little as I over turn the stupid key. Samantha flirts with the C-word guy in the back. Neither notices anything might be wrong. The tail lights of the car in front of me reflect a feverish glow as I turn on the headlights. I’m so giddy.

All is perfect with the world I realize as I screech out past the neon bar lights where we’d met. We’re out among the cars on Broadway. The smell of newness breezes through the window I’ve opened a crack. These two people, here in this car, are the best friends I’ve ever had, I think. They so trust me.

I cruise faster toward the crossroads of Broadway and Baseline. The green light switches to a warning yellow. I slalom around the cars that slow down and accelerate toward the intersection, light now a glaring red. I’ve finally found two people who can stand me enough to spend more than a few minutes with me, and I definitely don’t want to die alone.

Written by: Leni Checkas

Photograph by: Skyler Smith

The Violent Acts of Poets, Part II

Continued from The Violent Acts of Poets, Part I.

Lily Miller’s daddy was a trashman who blew up his trailer. He was inside when it went kaboom, and there were bits of him scattered around his trailer’s acre lot. The little pieces looked like confetti. Lee Miller was his name, and he ended up nothing more than bits of candy from a busted pinata. RIP, Lee Miller.

To supplement his trash income, he cooked. Chicken cutlets. Microwave dinners from the blue box. Spaghetti O’s. Eventually, meth. He wore a goalie mask when he did it, white with holes like Jason Voorhees, and wrapped a wet towel around his nose and mouth. I told him he was missing the point, and he cackled and drank his High Life. He fancied himself a king when he opened a High Life, and there was no getting him to listen to nothing.

Lily hadn’t been round him much growing up, her mother knew better than that. But my pops, Eli, and him grew up together in Kingfisher. I remember them sitting on upturned painter’s buckets, smoking menthols, and passing a bottle of Jim Beam some nights. This was before my father died. He was an alright man, Lee Miller. Some folks are only what they are, and he was one of those. Nothing wrong with being what you are, my father used to say.

It was after Lee Miller’s trailer exploded that our troubles began in earnest. Dead men pay no debts, unfortunately, and it’s up to the living to keep on surviving.

                                                                                                ***

I let Lily sleep in the back seat when the morning came, even though it was cold. I just covered her a bit more under the blanket and kissed her forehead. Her bruises were dark getting darker. Like the night had bumped into her and rubbed off some of its neverending black, and now she was branded.

By the time I got to the convict Mcalester Freeman it was clear that I had killed him the night before. I didn’t know his name until later of course, but even nameless he couldn’t get much in the way of sympathy from me. His face was grey and blue like a Lacy dog’s coat. The whites of his stuck eyes saturated yellow.

I broke some mesquite branches, and with bloody hands covered him up best I could. There was a chill, and it stuck to the back of my neck while I plowed the earth with my fingers. It struck me that I had gone nearly twenty years of life without killing a soul. And now, two of em’ in the less than forty-eight hours. Goddamn.

When I’d done all I could do with the body, I began to pray over it. But I couldn’t concentrate right, gave it up halfway through, and went to wake Lily who was sleeping soft and kind.

                                                                                                ***

We went as far as we could until the gas hand ticked like a broken clock against empty. Lily and I goaded the fumes and pushed ourselves forward in the cab hoping for a few more rolls of the wheels. We succeeded and stalled out in gas station ruins. There was a broken car half-eaten up with rust and a sign on the store window advertising antiques.

I told Lily to get the revolver from the glove compartment, and she did, and she weighed it in her palm. She held it careful as an egg, said it was cold and heavy. Then she said, we ain’t got nothing. We got bruises, I told her. Bruises, health, and our gun. There’s money in antiques, she said before opening the door and unfolding herself, stepping outside holding the gun under the blanket wrapped around her.

I asked her what she was doing and she came around the car to me and stuck the revolver in the back of her jeans. She took off the blanket and draped it around me before kissing me and telling me that she loved me no matter what. No matter if the cops found us and burned us both. I told her that nobody would be burning nobody, but she didn’t say nothing and just looked back at the antiques store. Before she opened the door and I heard that bell ring, the one that sometimes comes with opening doors, she reached behind her and grabbed the gun.

When she came out she wasn’t hurrying, only carrying a brown paper grocery sack like she was bringing her lunch. I asked her what happened and she said that she had a big sack of money, that’s what happened. I asked her for the gun and she handed it over. It was still cold and heavy.

She pulled keys from her pocket and dangled them. The proprietor has an old truck out back, she said, so we went around and I saw the crimson truck the color of rust with white-walled wheels. The white-walls belonged to an earlier time. Maybe one where meth trailers didn’t blow up, where thugs didn’t threaten young girls for the sins of their fathers, where boys didn’t have to turn to men so soon, and where the laws of God and man rode side by side like brothers, instead of fighting like wild cats, twisting and bumping and snarling at one another.

We drove dead north keeping off the interstate as much as we could. I knew the cops wouldn’t figure it was us until they found Lily’s car with the license plates. I asked her if the cashier was gonna be calling the cops and she shook her head. She was driving and didn’t look over at me. Why not? I asked. It ain’t a problem, baby, she said. She was chewing bubble gum, wearing cutoff jean shorts. The frays, the little cotton tendrils, pressed up against her thigh, reminded me of jellyfish all washed up on shore with something dead about them. I don’t know why, but she made me think of the ocean sometimes, and I imagined us walking barefoot like everyone else along the rim of the sea.

It got dark somewhere in Nebraska and I took over driving. Lily fell asleep snoring with her legs across my lap, and the bracelet on her wrist tapped against the window like drunken code. A town blinked away in the distance, each light a firefly caught in the whirling purple clouds of the central shelf. A storm’s coming, I said to no one. Soon we dipped into a valley and the lights disappeared.

Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Border Road

The end of the world is near.

We are driving southbound on I-80 toward Bisbee, Arizona. My husband Matt drives while my parents and I stare silently out the windows. Matt and I moved to Tucson nine months ago from Portland, Oregon, and my Seattle-ite parents are our first visitors from the homeland. They watch the miles of desert flit past with wonder, asking me the same questions I used to ask them about the mountains and trees as a child. What kind of cactus is that? Why do they only grow on hillsides? How much rain falls? Are we close to Mexico yet?

“In Bisbee, we’ll be twenty minutes from the border,” Matt tells us. He points to the hills in the distance, hunched lower than the Pacific Northwest crags that wallpaper my memories of all life before now. These are rounder, sparser, taking the hottest and coldest temperatures the earth is capable of churning in stride. “I know I’ve gotten calls from the truck out here before.”

This is the reason we’re here. Matt’s company creates mobile surveillance units for the government, used to watch the drug-runners skittering through the nothingness. The invisible line in the Sonoran sand separating America from Mexico, comes into focus when you are close enough to touch it. The hills, the dust, the agave, the sunsets flamboyant enough to put neon to shame, they don’t end where we drew the line.

We pass the gaping Lavender Pit mine across from old Bisbee, which folds like steps to the bottom of the earth. The day before our Bisbee trip we walked through the Tucson Desert Museum’s Ancient Arizona exhibit, with a wall of alien minerals glowing in the almost-dark. Blocky chunks of malachite, like coral from an otherworldly sea; wulfenite, an amber cluster that looked like butterscotch shards; and alcoves of azurite that were like gazing into an alien cave. I imagine each piece carried up the steps, wonders one by one stripped from their home, leaving nothing but dusty ledges and a pit no one felt inclined to fill. A blue road sign tags the crater’s mouth as a “Roadside Viewpoint.”

Around the corner, the GPS throws up her hands. “Due to insufficient data, navigation has been lost,” she tells us.

Fortunately the town is miniature, and our destination appears through the road’s next bend. A smattering of tent canopies in a block-sized park making up the local farmer’s market. Unlike the superstar farmer’s markets I left behind in Portland, the ones crammed with Food Network featurette food trucks and famous chef demonstrations and corporate “artisan” bread overlords, most of these booths didn’t even have signs. The fancier professionals broke out some poster board and Sharpies to announce their Gluten Free-ness to the passers-by, but most let their tabletop wares seduce alone. Olives cured in local oil, sourdough breads studded with jalapenos and goat cheese, tortillas so warm and puffy they seem to hover. While I am mesmerized by steaming bundles of fresh tamales, my dad wanders over to a man and a woman I assume to be his elderly mother. They sit next to a grill crammed with golden bundles.

“Chile rellenos,” Dad says, and I know he has won the Find of the Day game. He offers me a bite, and the kerchiefed woman’s eyes light up as mine roll back in my head.

“This is the best thing I can remember eating,” I tell her, and she grins twenty years off her face. I want to follow her away, to learn how to make just, exactly, this. I’m dying to discover whatever magic exists to make the batter so light and yet crunchy, the chile pepper snap, the cheese to ooze without gushing. But the world for me ends twenty minutes away.

“I could get a passport,” I’ve told Matt a half-dozen times. With each mention he gives me a look I can read with eight-years-together couple telepathy. We’re not going to Mexico; it’s not South America Disneyland. He thinks I expect to be serenaded by mariachi down curls of brick street unfurling into piazzas full of piñatas and flamenco dancers. I want to refute the image, to tell him that I know that Mexico isn’t a cartoon playland with chile peppers. But in his mind, my desire to visit is proof enough that I don’t understand what’s at the end of the Arizona highway at all. This is the view of a man who watches criminals smuggling into hills, who has heard every horror story the border patrol agents are at liberty to share. It is the Mexico of news snippets and grainy indie films, of machete executions and white slavery.

And then there are my co-workers and new neighbors, the ones who talk about having to head down to Chihuahua or Sonora on the weekend for a niece’s quinceañera or a grandmother’s 94th birthday party, the concept of driving south as breezy as heading a couple hours north to Phoenix. They are not kidnapped and beheaded upon arrival. They aren’t thrown in jail as bribes are wired back home.

“That’s because they’re Mexican,” Matt reminds me. “And you’re not.”

Then suddenly, my insurmountable boundary makes sense. After all, the U.S. doesn’t open its gates for curiosity. People aren’t welcomed over here to sample local cuisine, take selfies next to road signs, poke around at the art. I have a place; I need to know what it is. I need to stay on my side. The road isn’t pavement. It is contradiction and friction and complication and politic and personal, and I am incapable of understanding.

I drop the subject, but then when I’m alone with my no-judgment laptop, I set Google Earth on our house in Tucson. I grab the screen with the little cursor hand, and drag the map down, down, through whole blank screens of desert, until I reach the United States-Mexico thick gray line. I reach down, where the streets turn into calles. There is a grocery store. A fire station. Tons of dentist offices. Gourmet coffee café. Cities, people, lives further down the stretch, across the line in the sand.

Written by: Tabitha Blankenbiller
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe