Cecilia Ballí

Bridge Game

Crossing the border used to be a ritual we tackled with strategy, patience, and ice-cold paletas. These days it requires different tactics altogether.

January 2008

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“Ma, Celia’s kicking me!” she’d finally say.

“Celia, párale—stop.”

“She’s blocking my air!”

“There’s no air. The air conditioner’s off.”

“Well, she’s blocking my air from outside! I’m hot!”

“Leave her alone!”

I’d mumble, “I told you we should’ve gone in the other line . . .”

When my mother burst into tears, that’s when we knew we’d pushed too far. We’d ride the rest of the line in silence.

At some point, usually after too much physical and emotional damage had been inflicted, we’d spot the tollbooths and the row of federal inspection stations that were spread out several hundred yards beyond them. After we paid our $1.25, the two lanes we were in would split into three, four, or even five, depending on the number of inspectors who were on duty at that time. Again, the stress level rose as my mother tried to pick the right line for a second time. Much depended on the person standing inside the inspection booth. The four of us would eye the agents and make quick, intuitive guesses. Female agents were always meaner than male agents, and middle-aged men were tougher than either the old guys or the newbies. We were looking for Santa Claus in a blue inspector’s uniform.

As we approached, all four of us sat up a little straighter. In the front seat, my mother and sister would have already fished into purses for green cards. My mom was legalized in 1971 when she married my dad, whose father was an American citizen. But although she’d started studying for the U.S. citizenship exam at various times, she’d become overwhelmed with all the presidents’ names and quit. Cristina, meanwhile, arrived into the world while my parents lived in Matamoros, so she was a Mexican citizen. A fifteen-year-old with long, glossy hair who was trying to survive her teenage identity crisis, she was forced each time to pull out a peeling ID with a picture of a discouraged-looking child in sloppy pigtails.

Celia and I were U.S. born and bred. So we sat smugly in the backseat without lifting a finger. After the agent had taken my mother’s and sister’s ID cards and squinted at them, he’d return them and move to us. There were two things we could say, depending on his approach. If he just looked at us with his face like a question mark, we’d say, “American citizen,” in our accent-free English. If he asked us directly whether we were citizens, we’d respond, “Yes, sir!”

Every now and then, some agent would doubt our sincerity, thinking we were illegal children who’d been carefully coached, so he’d pitch a follow-up question meant to throw us off. But we always knew the answer, and proving it somehow made us feel even better.

“What school do you go to?”

“Perez Elementary.”

“What street do you live on?”

“Clover Drive.”

Crossing the bridge isn’t the same anymore. International borders no longer stand as everyday rituals to be managed with as much patience and humor as possible. They’ve become more like high school exit exams, and there is no room left to challenge the inspector or be coy and slip in a little white lie as a way to amuse oneself. The spirit of crossing the bridge has become something else entirely. The color, and the sense of familiarity and memory, is gone. When I do cross now, it’s always in a car whose engine is new enough to remain cool while I blast the air-conditioning as high as I please. There are three bridges to choose from instead of two. I usually cross alone, and instead of eyeing the car next to me, I read a book to kill time or try practicing “mindfulness.” It doesn’t even anger me anymore when a car suddenly juts in front of me, prompting the rest of the line to berate me with their horns (which don’t bother me either). As I approach the inspection station, I automatically pull out my wallet and ready my driver’s license. In these days of permanent terrorist alerts, everyone—citizen or not—has to show identification, and as of this month, we’ll all have to display passports. I don’t dare joke with the agents or take risks. I might lie about a tequila bottle that I stashed under the passenger seat to avoid paying the state’s liquor tax, but I don’t lie about my address or about what I was “doing in Mexico” to amuse myself like I used to just a few years ago. If I cross in one city after having recently crossed another part of the border, I’m summoned to secondary inspection and my car gets turned inside out, in case I should be a wanted contrabandist.

But back then, when I was growing up—ah, back then there was still a small payoff to the crossing. After everyone had been cleared and the federal agent had waved us on, the mood lightened immediately, and my mother would promptly announce how long the whole ordeal had been, for she had been tracking the time all along: “Thirty-four minutes.” It always sounded so much shorter than it had felt! The four of us would ride in silence then as the car picked up speed and the wind blew through the windows, cooling our faces. We blinked at the air. And for a few minutes, we felt free. Not because we were back in the United States or because we were “home” but because we were done explaining ourselves for a while.

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