The Privileges of Empire

It only took like two conversations with other women in the line for my mom to figure out she could borrow someone's address in the U.S. to enroll my brother and I in the public school.The number of things you hear about in the line: whoa.If people knew, they wouldn't call us border-crossers, they would call us border-chismosas.In fact, we can thank the excellent quality of the border chisme for keeping the peace at the line; otherwise, revolt we would.This is especially true in the desert.Imagine "doing line" for two hours in direct sunlight because neither government has got it together to install some fucking sad shade for the thousands of travelers who transit this space.Travelers who carry the economy, culture, and politics of both cities, of the sister cities, on their back.To be that fully ignored by the two countries you feed, to be this unseen...they'll never know us the way we know them.Anyway, my mom is a scarily determined person.She was the first in her family to attend university in Mexico and that's like a big deal.She grew up poor, and you know poor in TJ (Tijuana) is like reeeaallly poor, not chingaderas.Don't ask her how her poor little TJ ass got U.S. citizenship, but she did.Naturally, maneuvering enrollment, even when we did not live in the U.S., seemed quite doable to her.I still wonder if she knew what she was doing to us.She saw the glimmer, smelled the U.S. dollars, maybe even considered that the empire was a safe place for her children.That her children might kill other children in other countries, but no kid from another country would venture into the empire to kill hers.