Twenty hours stretch between Tucson and Mazatlán, Mexico on a highway that never ends.
Hour one, 6 AM: inside the 1969 baby blue VW van, metal heats and expands as the dawn breaks pink over the Catalina Mountains. Saguaros cast long shadows across Interstate 19. My mother spends hours preparing the back for our journey—layering serapes, arranging pillows. She tucks the blankets around the edges with careful hands, smoothing their bright stripes. The rough wool scratches against my legs as the engine growls awake.
My mother’s friend Sapphire claims the front passenger seat, while her four sons—pre-teens and several years older than me—writhe across my mother’s careful arrangement. We’ve never been trapped together like this.
By 8 AM, the sun climbs higher over Nogales, border-crossing voices filtering through the van’s walls. The boys tumble and twist, their bodies already too close, too knowing. The serapes and pillows dissolve into chaos as we clear customs.
Up front, my mother and Sapphire lose themselves in conversation, their adult world sealed off from what happens behind them. It’s 1978—mothers trust the highway, the destination; trust that kids work things out.
Hour three, 9 AM: Desert spreads endless outside our windows, barrel cactus and ocotillo flashing past. At seven years old, I still clutch what matters most: ten Barbies in their blue leather case, each one perfect, untouchable, clean. Their plastic skin gleams in the sunlight. I dress them in carefully coordinated clothes, click their miniature shoes into place, smooth their synthetic hair until it shines. The Barbies have everything life won’t—careers that can’t be taken away, security, happiness sealed in joints that bend only where they should. They can’t be broken unless someone decides to break them.
11 AM: The van shrinks as we pass through Hermosillo, city sounds giving way to the highway drone. Heat ripples rise from the asphalt. The boys’ bodies claim more space, multiplying, expanding, pressing against the windows that steam with breath and sweat.
I hate them.
As an only child, their endless wrestling and jumping fills every inch. The boys try everything to pull me in—fingers in my hair yanking until tears spring up, pillows hitting to leave marks, knuckles grinding against my scalp, spit sticking in my hair and on my clothes. My mother navigates the unfamiliar highway, squinting against the desert glare, the engine’s roar drowning out sounds from the back.
1 PM: Near Guaymas, the desert begins to soften. My world contracts to the dimensions of a blue leather case. Two Barbies skip along in their pretty dresses; their plastic feet lifted above the stains now spreading across the serapes beneath them.
“They’re going to a ball like Cinderella,” I whisper into the hot air.
But whispers draw attention. When the boys can’t drag me into their world, the boys breach mine instead.
3 PM: The sun blazes overhead as we climb into the foothills of the Sierra Madre. The case tears from my hands. My dolls pass between the boys like a rehearsal for what comes later. The van’s engine strains against the elevation.
“Barbies are stupid!” The verdict bounces off metal walls.
“And you’re stupid because you play with them,” they say.
I reach for my friends again and again, but the Barbies stay just beyond my fingers. The boys strip them naked; movements deliberate as a lesson being taught. Plastic bodies become targets against the backdrop of jagged mountains.
4 PM: “Boobies!” the boys scream, touching places that shouldn’t be touched. One boy pulls up a Barbie’s dress, fingers probing between her legs. My mother glances in the rearview mirror, smiling at what looks like kids playing. The afternoon light slants golden.
5 PM: As shadows lengthen, “No!” The word tears loose. “Give me back my Barbies! They’re mine!”
Protest only makes the boys’ hands more determined, their fingers more insistent on plastic bodies that can’t say no. The air grows thinner as we climb.
7 PM: The sun sets. “Stop being such a baby!” Sapphire’s voice cuts through—one of the few times she addresses me directly.
The boys still wet the bed—piss soaks through the wool serapes my mother laid out, rising with the heat. The smell fills the van, marking territory. I press myself into the last clean corner, a space so small it barely contains me, but the boys’ hands know how to find small spaces. The first stars appear.
9 PM: Descending toward the coast, the air not yet thick with tropical moisture. “Mommy, I can’t breathe,” I plead as darkness settles over the palms.
“Not much longer, honey. We’ll be in Mazatlán soon.”
Her eyes stay fixed on some point ahead where none of this is happening, where daughters stay whole.
11 PM: The coastal highway curves. “Mommy, the boys are hurting my Barbies,” I cry out.
“Stop the van!” Sapphire’s command cracks through the night air.
We spill out onto a stretch of highway. The moon hangs bright and merciless, turning the van’s baby blue to silver. Sapphire places my case behind the wheels with precise care. Keys snatch from my mother’s fingers. The driver’s seat accepts Sapphire. Metal groans. Wheels turn. Plastic shatters. The sound changes everything I understand about what bodies can survive.
11:30 PM: My mother’s face drains of color as she realizes what Sapphire has done but what’s broken can’t be unbroken. Air heavy with salt and diesel, Sapphire returns my crushed case with a promise—speak of the stupid Barbies again, and she’ll repeat this. Through tears, I nod understanding.
The final two hours stretch in darkness. The case stays closed. The boys’ hands move beneath my dress, claiming flesh like they claim plastic. Outside, night insects chirp through the darkness.
2 AM-ish: My mother drives into Mazatlán. The ocean appears, vast and dark, swallowing the sounds of what breaks in back seats, in blue leather cases, in daughters who learn too young how to disappear.
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