"Sometimes the police need to look inside a car," I tell her, "just to make sure everybody is safe." I try to locate a reassuring register for my voice. I don't tell her how fervently I hope that our car will not be one of the ones pulled over to be checked.
Spirit, if I'm meant to do this, please just let us get a green light.
I could still turn back. What I've done is problematic and might get me into trouble, but it's not irredeemable yet. I could make some excuse, talk my way out of it. There's still time.
I'm sweating as my silver Accord idles in a long line of cars waiting to cross the border. The late April afternoon sun is warm but not enough to create the sheets of perspiration sliding down my rib cage, pooling under my too-big boobs, soaking the cropped hair at the nape of my neck.
In my wilder youth, I crossed this border half a dozen times with a lid of pot rolled in paper towel stuffed into my underwear like a menstrual pad and never worried about getting stopped. But it was the seventies then, and we didn't expect to find terrorists around every corner. Since 9/11, the border is tougher. And of course, my contraband today is much more precious.
I try to imagine the perspective of the border guard: My ten-year-old but still well-kept Accord will project an image of middle-class respectability. He'll peruse me, a too-large woman in T-shirt and jeans with short-cropped graying blonde hair and Ray-Bans covering my eyes. Due to my age—forty-five this year—it's just possible he'll see "soccer mom" and not "dyke." As if to underscore this impression, I pull my lip balm from my jeans pocket and swipe it across my lips, bringing the slight sting of menthol to the tip of my tongue.
But then that border guard will look at Angel—Angela Davis Washington, according to her birth certificate—her caramel skin, her kinky, slightly reddish curls, and what will he see? Will his vision allow him to see her as mine?