New Taboos Read Free Page A

thirty feet away from it, in a long line of idling cars flanked by other lines of idling cars on the sun-washed highway. They were all waiting to get through the border into Arizona from southeastern California.
    Most of the cars had their engines going so they could run the air conditioner in the hot July midmorning sun. Light splashed from the solar collection roofs of the cars. Lots of wasted reflected sunlight, Faye thought.
    She sighed. The tedium of the wait was like a stiffened thumb pushing on her forehead. Maybe she shouldn’t have come alone, should’ve brought a photographer at least, someone to talk to. But it had taken months to get permission for her own visit.
    She looked at the line of cars to her left, going through one of three entry lanes. They mostly contained people alone in their vehicles, like her. She saw only one family; chubby mother and father, chubby little girl and boy, in a shiny blue hybrid minivan, all of them watching a movie on a popped-up dashboard screen. The rest of the waiting drivers were mostly young to middle-aged men and women, tapping smart phones or staring at the checkpoint; probably here for an interview, hoping to get a job in the penal system.
    Stretching, Faye thought about eating some of her fig cookies, and told herself,
No, you’re not really hungry, don’t eat till you are.
She distracted herself toying with the car radio. Stations blared and receded, crackled and chattered; Spanish-language and Spanglish voices came through. Then she found the public service channel she was looking for: a woman’s pleasant voice, her tone like arecording cheerfully welcoming you to a theme park. She sounded as if she might burst into laughter at any moment.
    â€œ … a warm Arizona welcome to visitors. Visitors to inmates may enter only in Statewide visitors’ buses. Non-detention visitors to the state fall into four categories. Tourists are category one, and are required to take the overland express to State and National Parks; category one visitors will need a One Pass. Job applicants are category two and will need a Two Pass. Contractors or prospective contractors on business are category three and will need a Three Pass. Category four is miscellaneous media or retail workers …”
    That would be me, Faye thought. Miscellaneous media? Maybe I should introduce myself as Miss Alaneous instead of Ms. Adullah.
    If she did, they wouldn’t laugh. They’d stare. They’d double check her. It was like going through an HSA screening but worse.
    â€œâ€¦ and if you’re category four, you will need a Four Pass, preprinted with correct scan code.”
    She patted the folder on the seat beside her, with her print-out Four Pass in it, and all the contingent paperwork.
    The line inched forward …
    About noon she ate the fig cookies and drank some coffee, looking around for a restroom. There was a cinderblock restroom building to the side of the road, but suppose the line moved while she was in the bathroom?
    She waited. She thought about her father in Tel Aviv, and wondered if he was going to get his own pass, for over there—a Palestinian Parentage Pass. She remembered Dad watching her sister Weilah die in the Second Ebola Wave.Dad’s face mostly hidden by the white protective mask as he wept soundlessly. He’d left the USA for Tel Aviv, after that, to help his brother in his shop, within a month of Weilah’s burial.
    She rarely heard from her father anymore. When they talked onscreen he didn’t look at her much. She looked too much like Mom, maybe, except for her dark skin, big dark eyes—those were from her father.
    Another uncomfortable forty minutes, and she was at the window. “I have a pass, and an appointment,” Faye said, smiling. “Faye Adullah.”
    â€œMay I have your preprinted pass, and your ID?” asked the sturdy black woman in the brown-trimmed yellow uniform. She was looking past