He Still Doesn't Cooperate

"But I didn't drop him," Papa says when everybody stops giggling.

They all laugh again.

I don't think Papa would've dropped me. I trust him.

"So you were there, too, Mr. Romero?" Sedge asks.

"Oh, yeah, I was there," Juan says. "It's good, too. Who can say what would've happened if I hadn't been. After all, Emilio dropped the baby."

People who get immigrants across the southern U.S. border are called coyotes. Juan had kind of been an unofficial one for my parents, helping to lead them across. He had experience crossing the desert and was a lot cheaper and safer than trusting a real one.

"He was mostly ordering us around," Papa says.

"Telling them where to go," Juan says.

"No kidding," Papa says.

"So you didn't get lost. I was trying to hustle my sobrina along, hoping she'd make it to civilization before Alejandro came out."

"But they didn't make it?" Sedgwick asks. "Alejandro was really born in the desert?

"Uh-huh," Juan says.

"Oh, that's so sweet," Sedge says.

Not so sweet though. They always told me it was on the wrong side.

"I carried him across that desert," Papa says, "past the saguaro and prickly pear cactuses, keeping him away from king snakes and cottontail rabbits, all the way in a sling. He was naked against my chest, without a diaper. There was nothing to catch his pee."

"Or poop," Juan says. "I had to keep telling Emilio where to turn, urging him not to stop, and reminding him of creepy crawlers: poisonous scorpions and rattlesnakes, sidewinders and centipedes, Gila monsters and tarantulas."

"I don’t remember," I say.

"It wasn't fun," Mama says. "No doctor or midwife. Only Emilio and Tio Juan. It's lucky you even survived, Aljehandro."

They usually don't tell about being nervous about la migra—the Border Patrol. Not to people like Sedge, anyway.

"At least Alejandro was pequeño when he came out," Juan says. "But he sure didn't stay little."

"He came out early," Mama says, "that's why he was so small."

"He was a niño when you wanted a niña," Juan says. "And right off he didn't cooperate."

My grandparents and parents agree, nodding. Mama had wanted a girl. She still does.

And of course they had wanted an American. A girl and a citizen, that's what they had wished for.

"He still doesn't cooperate," Sedge says. "I wanted him to do my Spanish homework, and he wouldn't."

Everybody laughs still again.

"I just wouldn't help you do something wrong," I say. "Besides, you need practice."

Alejandro the Great

  I play only pickup games with neighborhood kids here at the small park in East Clayton, near my house. I've got a reputation for being rock-hard and fast, two traits most people don't put together in soccer players. Nobody can catch me, and nobody I've played with comes close to being as bulky strong.

Fink comes at me again, fuming. It yet again ends badly for him, and he whines. "You're a freaking wetback, Alejandro, I know you are. Someday they'll come and arrest you and send you back to beanerland. You stupid illegal."

I don't say or do anything. My best friend, Sedgwick Benson, comes over to Fink, and I jog off, continuing to follow the game's action. "Knock it off, Keith," I hear Sedge say. "You know he's a mini version of The Hulk. Pull your panties out of your butt and let's play."

"He's a freakin' fire hydrant," Fink says, "and one dog too many's peed on him. He smells like piss."

Later, heading home, I ask Sedge over for supper. Earlier Mama had said it was okay to invite him; it's not something I've ever done before. My family trusts Sedge and his mother too, like they do Maggie's family, even if they're citizens and Mormons. Mrs. Benson --- her name's Ivy --- and Sedge's sister, Tonia, are going to some church dinner just for mothers and daughters. Sedge's father is dead; he died in Iraq a couple of years ago. He was a soldier.

If I don't invite Sedge, he'll be home alone eating something microwaved instead of Mama's home cooking.

Sedge knows we lay low. I'll ask him what he thinks it means to be an American.

#

"Alejandro was born in the desert," Mama tells Sedge, "in November 1995."

In the Mexican desert, I've always been told. Nobody's told Sedge about it before. I know I haven't, but I think he assumes it. Mama doesn't say now that I came out a few yards south of the U.S. border, but that's what I've always been told. My family wishes I'd been born in the U.S.

"So he was born in a desert and not in a hospital?" Sedge asks. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, it was a desert," I say. "Papa saved me. I would've dropped straight out of Mama's belly onto hot sand and cooked weeds, but Papa caught me. Papa's got good hands."

"That's right," Papa says. "I caught him."

“You dropped him on a cactus,” Juan says. Juan's mama's uncle, Grandma Augustina's brother.

We all laugh. Juan always says this whenever the story comes up, usually around the family or other undocumenteds we trust. It's Sunday, so my family is all here: my parents, Emelio and Mariana; my grandparents, Carlos and Augustina; my uncle Juan, grandma's brother; and me. And of course Sedge.

“It’s how your hijo got that scar on his caboose,” Juan says.

It's a legend ---that scar --- a family one. Part of it, at least, is a myth. I do have a big mark that looks like a scar en mi trasero. Whether it's a scar or birthmark is anybody's guess. It’s where it’s hard to show anybody: on my right cheek, near the crack. The only place anyone could ever see it these days is in the shower, after gym class; I doubt anyone would be looking. It's not as cool as a lightening scar on your forehead.

"Harry Potter's got nothing on me but location," I say. I always do say this when the story comes up. It gets a few laughs.

"Butt location, B U T T," Sedge says.

Everybody laughs again.

The Sonoran Desert --- Still No Daffodils, 2009

  I don't see Keith Fink coming because I'm looking the other way and thinking about a writing assignment for Mrs. Moll: what-it-means-to-be-an-American. So Fink and I collide, to the max. First, I hear the air go out of him, and then I hear an oomph as he hits the ground. I try not to smile, thinking that Keith's teeth must still be jiggling. All right! I pump my fist, but I don't say anything. That's got to hurt him, although it barely fazes me. I'm solid, unlike so many other skinny and out-of-shape ninth-graders. Some kids call me the fire hydrant.
  Anytime I can play pickup soccer and take out a Fink, it's a good day. Only thing better would be if I'd taken out his dad, George Fink, co-founder of Grassroots Boots. But I'd settle right now for a good idea for that writing assignment. And it'd help to be an American.
  I pass the ball off and turn to see if Fink's still lying there. He's all pissed off like the weenie he is, squinting as if he's hurting and it's all my fault he ran into me. The red rises in his white face. Big baby. A little blood trickles out his nose. He swipes it with the back of his wrist.
  "You freakin' beaner," he says as he pushes himself up. "Idiotic spic." He faces me and spit flies from his mouth. "You're a stupid greased pig; that's what you are."
  He comes at me, but I stand my ground. I keep my mouth shut and stay cool. I have to.
  His body runs into me again, but it just bounces off. Another impressive oomph escapes from Fink. He doesn't fall this time; I'll give him that.
  I look toward the backyard of Maggie's house that borders the grassy field. Maggie's my girl, although if you asked me, I'd deny it. I'm not sure if she realizes it yet either. My family knows hers from the Cathedral, and Maggie goes to school with me. Often, she sits on her deck to watch who's playing on the field behind her house, maybe checking out the guys. I see her smiling at me now. She waves. I smile back and signal. Her family is one of a couple outside the ring of undocumented immigrants like us that my parents trust. Yeah, my family, we're what a lot of people call illegals.
  As I play, I make use of my solid body as well as I can, especially with sissy-prissies like Fink. He's used to "team play" in fancy-shmancy uniforms with referees and a coach to protect and baby him. Even in organized games, he's a wuss, shooting off his mouth when he doesn't get his way. I've watched from the sidelines lots of times. For years I've been watching him and the others. I think I know what it means to be an American; I wish I was one. If I was, maybe I'd tell him to stick it where it stinks and there's no sunlight.

On the List

Here in Utah the news when I returned from Wyoming this week was about a list somebody or some group had compiled and spread anonymously throughout the news media and government. The list, it is said, contains the names of some 1300 people, their addresses and telephone numbers, their Social Security numbers, whether or not they were pregnant, if they were women, and the like. Apparently, the list was also sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, too. It argues that all of the named individuals should be deported from the United States because they are, the document argues, illegally here.

So "the list" has been in all the news stories broadcast on television and radio, in the newspaper, both locally and nationally. It coincides with the extremists who want to apply Arizona-like tactics to everyone they think shouldn't be here.

My observation is this. People with this type of vitriol should go after the perpetrators of the problem: the holders of office in the federal government. It is our congressmen and our president, present and past, who have caused this crisis.

And this is a crisis that affects real human beings, ones without much of a voice at all, ones living a bare existence here, always having to "lay low" and watch their backs. The extremists, it seems to me, seem to have little heart or soul in analyzing the nuances of the problem as it pertains to real individuals affected by their sad and callous tactics. Instead of raising their ire against politicians who hold offices and could have done something about the problem over the years, they want to cause heartache and catastrophe for families. I find it particularly ironic, in a state where people laud the supremacy of family, that these individuals are so allied and agitated in this ugly manner against individuals in families.

But I don't blame just the politicians. I blame the citizens, including myself, who haven't held and didn't hold the politicians accountable; I blame the citizens who didn't care enough to do anything substantive relative to the situation to hold politicians accountable for their lack of doing anything, because it didn't matter to we, the citizens, in years past, when life was good and rosy , when jobs were plentiful and paid well. Now, when because of past policies that favor big business and the rich and powerful our  economy has crashed and is still trying to recover slowly, such individuals blame the people who came here hoping for something better than their sad lives someplace else, who we, collectively, tolerated and even, to some degree, esteemed and appreciated, or, at the very least, cared nothing about. They weren't on our radar. They were seen as a threat to us. Now, these extremists seek to put a target on their chests and shoot them, in a figurative sense.

The Republican Party and the so-called Tea Party Movement, the Libertarians, and others unaffiliated but who perpetuate this vitriol are hypocrites. They have contributed to the enduring situation as much as anybody else, and now they are contributing to something even worse: the disruption of family life and security for all these people.

For believing this way, I would probably be and have been labeled by these types of individuals who spew hatred a bleeding heart liberal, a socialist, and/or a Communist.

Go ahead, label me. Say what you will about what I am. Maybe I am a bleeding heart, a liberal, inclined to socialism. At the same time, I am inclined to argue that such detritus as people who would disrupt family lives like these groups belatedly seek to do to people who have been here for years and years trying to seek a better way of life for them and their families are not unlike those who showed disdain and hatred for Jews in Hitler Germany or whowanted to perpetuate slavery in early America and segregation more recently.

An Ugly Wart

I want to write about a wart --- well, I think it's a wart, but my wife thinks it's cancer --- that I have. I also want to write about a senator of mine, Orrin Hatch. I've had them both too long. I want to get rid of each of them. They have gone about irritating me for far too long, and it's time to do something about them. I didn't do anything to deserve either one of them, not that I know of at least. I want them gone.
First, let me describe, even though you might not want to know about it, my wart. It is on my right forearm out of my sight, about to the end of the arm of a short-sleeved shirt. I can see it in the mirror or if I twist my arm with my hand. It is an unusual growth.

It is quite ugly. Other people usually can't see it because of my shirt sleeve, at least I don't think they can, and they don't mention it. It would stick straight up, probably four fifths of an inch or so, if it weren't kind of bent over. It is flesh-colored at the base, but crusty looking and pointed at the top. The tip is the part which is bent over, probably from my lying on my arm at night and, hence, it, when I'm trying to sleep. It has become very awkward and uncomfortable to cope with it. It hurts when it catches on my clothing or when I accidentally bump it.

I am not by nature, a warty person, or haven't been for most of my life, at least not in a literal sense. Those who know me may describe my thinking, personality, or humor as warty, though, I suppose. Many years ago, before this wart appeared, I had another strange wart on my left hand. It was at the base of my thumb. While it never grew as big or as ugly as the one which now resides on my arm, it was still itchy and uncomfortable. Eventually, I showed it to my physician, a family doctor, and he removed it, had it checked for cancer, and found it was benign. It has never come back, unless you think perhaps the wart on my right arm is its reincarnation. I don't think so, and I have my reasons, but they don't pertain to this particular essay.

I have an appointment with a doctor, a dermatologist, who just happens to be the son-in-law of the doctor who removed my other wart, in a few days. Hopefully, he will be able to remove the growth and restore me to normality, and at the same time, benefit his son-in-law through having referred me to him.

I am looking for a similar solution to get Orrin Hatch out of my life as a senator. To me, he is just as irritating as that wart, although I have to admit, he isn't nearly as scary looking as it. Besides that, Orrin does have other redeeming characteristics my wart doesn't seem to have. I have enjoyed that he has been willing in some very limited instances to cross party lines and join with his colleagues in the Democratic Party to get helpful legislation enacted and enforced. Nonetheless, I think I have put up with him and his deceptive antics long enough. Here though, what I want to mention is my latest aggravation with him. It involves immigration reform or, rather, his obstruction of immigration reform.
Let me tell you what I mean.

This past week eight senators sent the President of the United States a letter which demanded that he stop going around the will of Congress on immigration. There is no evidence whatsoever that the President ever did or intended to go around the will of Congress on immigration. Orrin was one of the eight who signed that letter. It alleges a secret illegal agreement exists to grant "deferred action" --- the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in refraining from removing someone from the United States --- to undocumented immigrants. It suggests that the President subscribes to the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no way the President or his administration is interested in granting more than 10 million undocumented people in the United States some kind of immunity from prosecution. What the President is and has been interested in is comprehensive immigration reform. And he is probably also interested in utilizing whatever presidential power he has to afford relief where it is warranted in the most sensitive specific cases. For example, he would use the relief where immigrant children have grown up in the United States, have done extraordinary in their studies, and want to continue their education in our colleges and universities without being deported for a lack of documentation.

The letter of the senators is an ugly wart on the public, like the ugly wart on my forearm. It --- the letter --- is intended to perpetuate ugly rumors grounded in nothing more than bigoted people's imaginations. Those people in this particular case are interested in a political agenda that opposes comprehensive immigration reform. It is quite obvious, although their specific intent is left unclear. Of course, these individuals know something about "deferred action" because the Bush administration used it during Hurricane Katrina, granting rights to individuals victimized by the storm. And that is when it is usually appropriate, when there is some serious crisis that pulls at the heartstrings, when things are fundamentally unfair and inequitable and against our basic ideals for our fellow beings.

Sen. Orrin Hatch and the other senators who wrote the President are being disingenuous. In their letter they suggest that they agree that immigration laws need to be fixed, but then they go on to gripe about the potential of the administration using "deferred action" or some type of parole for large populations of undocumented immigrants, although that is impossible. Sen. Hatch and the others seven senators have never done anything whatsoever to reform immigration laws. Hatch has served in the Senate for years and years. He defeated Frank Moss in 1976 and has been Utah's ranking senator almost ever since. Pray tell, what has he ever done to correct immigration laws? Nothing. Even during the period when his party held the presidency and controlled both houses of Congress, he did nothing. Nothing! He intends to do nothing about immigration reform. That's why he voted against the Senate bill that would have been a first step in giving us comprehensive immigration reform. That bill passed the Senate in 2007. In fact, the senators who wrote the subject letter, moved to close the debate on the bill and to prepare the bill for a vote in order to kill it.

Orrin Hatch is bound to big business, which benefits with the situation relative to immigration as it stands in this country. Senator Hatch is interested only in doing whatever furthers the funding he needs to retain his position and power.

Sen. Orrin Hatch is a useless wart on the forearm of the public, worthy of removal. Hopefully, he is not a cancerous growth, who will lead to more serious problems or our demise. One thing for sure, Senator Hatch's intent is to scare people and frighten them, rather than simply doing what is helpful and compassionate.

Arizona's Law Isn't Racist; the Bulk of Its Citizens Are

This is my response to an editorial by Doug Gibson, in the Ogden Standard Examiner.

The majority of Arizona citizens are racists.


I agree with Doug that Arizona's law is the wrong solution to a neglected problem. And he is right, the law is not racist. However, a savvy opponent to his point of view doesn't claim that the law is racist or Nazi-like. Laws, per se, aren't racists or Nazi-like; laws have no volition. They can't act. They aren't moral agents. People can be and are racists and Nazi-like and do have volition. People, like Doug, are racist in suggesting that such a law won't lead to racism. It will.

My dictionary gives two definitions of racism: First is the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. Second is that racism amounts to discrimination or prejudice based upon race.

We, as citizens of the U.S., through our less-than-wonderful elected representatives who have allowed themselves far too often to be prompted and influenced by big (and, to a lesser extent, small) businesses' lobbying efforts for many years, have caused the problem. We citizens had for decades before our recent financial meltdown tempted the residual humanity of Third World countries to flee harsh and often dangerous conditions and corruption where they lived to come the U.S. because their coming here so was beneficial to us. Truth, be known, it still is beneficial from an economic perspective.

Further, we U.S. citizens, through our elected representatives who are so easily influenced by powerful money-brokers and influential lobbyists, didn't adequately oversee, through regulation and adequate funding, the enforcement of adequate laws and regulations over our financial and business markets so that we collectively got robbed and bilked. If you don't lock the car doors and have the police patrolling, you invite trouble and break-ins. Their incidence increases.

Now, while we're still licking our wounds from the resulting downturn in the markets and the loss of jobs, we citizens, who, having gotten, through our own neglect, all of these alien folks here, the bulk of whom demographically look different from the bulk of us, now want them gone. So we start enacting such inane laws as Arizona's.

In Utah, county records show undocumented immigrants are not big criminals over against citizens and documented immigrants. So, are all undocumented immigrants criminals? Many claim they are. They say “What part of illegal don’t you understand?” inferring that they're criminals. We hear that all the time. For people who actually do some thinking, though, who see murder and rape and those types of crimes in a different league than illegal crossings and document fraud, such easy answers don't prove a thing. Citizens race up and down the roads and highways way faster than the posted speed limits all of the time. They run red lights and litter. But we don't consider ourselves criminals for doing so. Our acts don't hurt people the way criminals' actions do. The illegal-border crossers --- many who have been here most or a good share of their lives, including some 2.5 million children nationwide --- who live in a given area don't cripple a community. Rapists, murderers, and violent gang members do that.

That's not to say people who cross without documents never rape, murder, or get involved with violent gangs. Some do. But in Utah from 2004 to 2008, the number of undocumented immigrants increased 57 percent. During that time, undocumented state prisoners increased 10 percent. So the facts show that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants coming here obey our laws once they're here; they're not a main source of crime, not any more than citizens or documented immigrants are.

So, we citizens of the United States have gotten these desperate folks from other places here to do our dishes, etc., and for the most part these folks work hard, obey our laws, pay taxes, and contribute to our society. But then, when we, who have power and control, have a financial and employment crisis of our own making, a state like Arizona starts taking national immigration matters into its own hands, against the advice of experts galore. In a sense, we as a citizenry have made these folks our new-age, new-style slaves. They have no voice, no power, and, increasingly, no life.

Doug asks can a state take action when the federal government won't. Truthfully, states and federal governments don't ever take action. People do. We deflect our responsibility by talking like this. It's not Arizona who will be enforcing the subject law. It is real people. Flawed people. As such, they will be making judgments that inevitably will, in some instances, lead to discrimination or prejudice based upon race. Racism.

Doug makes a specious argument when he refers to Arizona spending billions in educating children of undocumented immigrants (he, or course, doesn't know if such children might be U.S. citizens or not), because he also fails to mention the taxes and the economic contributions such undocumented families make. Undocumented immigrants pay taxes, directly and indirectly, just like anybody else, only they don't benefit from the graces awarded to citizens in our tax system. Furthermore, they buy goods and services, just like citizens do. Doug also makes another false argument when he talks about a violent gang using Arizona as a conduit for human and drug smuggling, failing to mention our failure as citizens to elect national representatives and a president who will adequately work with other nations to resolve international issues such as the toleration of corruption in their governments. Of course, it's hard, because we citizens have tolerated such corruption in our own elected officials, and now we reap what we have sewn.

The fact that most Americans support anything, as in Doug saying that most Americans support the Arizona law, doesn't mean that what they support is right, moral, or the smart thing to do. In the years before the civil rights movement, there were many times when most Americans supported segregation, too. Same with Nazism. So was it right? Nah. The majority of people in the South supported slavery? Did that make it any less barbarous?

So Doug essentially admits the Arizona law in question is flawed; it wasn't Arizona's place to act; it only did so in frustration, and its law doesn't really do what's needed. Yet, he goes on defending it: it's only there because the U.S. didn't do what it should have [the citizens didn't]; it's more mild than what others on the national level are, in part, proposing; it doesn't require officials to harass [harassing was misspelled in the article] law-abiders (from your viewpoint, a Latino standing on the street, ostensibly doing nothing wrong, could very well be "illegal" (undocumented) and, therefore, not law-abiding).

Why not tell it like it is, Doug? We failed. Now we're desperate. Citizens in Arizona are desperate.

You and me and ever single citizen failed.

We failed in the past to elect representatives who would enact necessary laws relative to immigration to protect us and to protect immigrants, too, and we failed to fund the laws on the books and to enforce them because we were, in an ugly way, benefiting from our omissions. So now, Arizona --- actually, the citizens of Arizona --- gets to take out our failings, our collective immorality in treating these people as our new-age slaves --- who are slaves here willingly because, in contrast to the dire lives they lived, it is still better for them --- on these very people who have no voice and no standing except through us, and often, in comparison to us, live such simple lives, and can only speak out at the risk of an arrest, deportation, and losing everything they've been working on for years, and perhaps even losing their very lives?

I think we can all agree we don't want criminals here, maybe even especially undocumented ones. I agree that compromise is necessary. But I deplore the idea of a spreading plague of Arizona-like immigrant law virus because it causes us to be racists, to prefer our collective demographic over something else, largely on the basis of race and color.

Read Return to Sender

Julia Alvarez in Return to Sender knows how to characterize the blur in the line between right and wrong. She knows how to make it clear that reality and morality are continuums and not dichotomies of this or that, up or down, or yes or no. There are no absolutes. (Now, there's an oxymoron.) We have a long way to go. 

Alvarez begins with a young man, her protagonist, Tyler, the younger eleven-year-old son in a family who has survived and thrived by running a dairy farm in Vermont. The family's farming heritage is at risk. Tyler's older brother is away at college, mostly unavailable to help out on the farm without jeopardizing his education and eventual career, and Tyler's father has been injured and disabled, perhaps permanently, in a farming accident. Tyler's father can't do the work he normally did. It is unclear when and if he ever will be able to do the work again. Extended family also can't adequately help out. So paying the bills and keeping the farm is at risk. The family needs help or to change their dynamics: selling the farm, moving from their land, doing something entirely different than farming.
 

Tyler's parents eventually hire undocumented immigrants --- a couple of men --- to assist with the dairy work. One of the immigrant men is married and has three daughters. The oldest, Mari, slowly becomes Tyler's friend and ally, an unfolding as miraculous as springtime. Mari's mother has disappeared in the murky criminal element that arose to fulfill the void created by ambiguities in United States immigrant policies, underfunded policies that for years tacitly approved of undocumented immigrants coming to the United States to work in jobs that citizens in better times didn't want to do.
 

The analysis of various notions is tenderly at play in Alvarez's book:

• What is a family?
  
• What does it mean to be honest?
  
• What good is it to have a law without compassion, or without implementing it and adequately funding its substantial enforcement?
  
• What does it mean to be a good neighbor and a friend? What sacrifices are appropriate and necessary of good neighbors and friends? And does all of that that apply only to individuals and not to communities and to nations?
  
• What is charity? Is it a weakness or strength?
  
• What about religion and the mystical, and gazing into the heavens? Hope?
  

 

"... life is about change, change, and more change. 'When you're born as a child, you die as a baby. Just like when you're born as a teenager, you die as a child.'... 'But there are good sides even to bad or sad things happening,' my mom reminds me...."
 

This is a coming of age adventure where a boy and a girl have more love and compassion than the men and the women, where a couple of families have greater diplomacy toward each other than the greatest nations on earth do. So it would be good to take their advice and look into the heavens and contemplate the beauty of the night before flying apart.
 

Not just one star but five.

 

I must be a big wuss.

My heart just doesn't have the hardness it should have, according to so many people in the United States.

It seems one janitor of 31 arrested during immigration raids in Rhode Island escaped deportation back to Guatemala and was granted asylum based upon domestic abuse in her home country.

I applaud that decision.

However, respondents to a story reporting the news mostly thought it was just terrible that she received asylum and wasn't being deported. That despite the fact that her husband back in Guatemala had constantly beaten her, had put her in the hospital with a broken foot, with a broken skull, and had knocked out her teeth, etc.

The insane man had also burned her possessions and had kept her penned up inside, threatening to kill her if she ever left him.

She did leave him, leaving behind her mother and three children, and sneaked into the United States, undocumented. So INS apparently wanted to deport her, send her back to her hell.

The complaints of the respondents: her case will open the floodgates of other women, including abused Muslim women; it will drain the state of funds; such judges as this one should be thrown off the bench.

Harden my heart. My mind can't wrap itself around such cruely.