2008 BRIDGES ASSOCIATION 47

C
HOCOLATE COVERED
MATZAH5768
L A R A H . D O A N
For Jacob
Preheat oven to degrees
Border patrol pounces. Detained for secondary inspection. Examine the car. Exterior. Inte--
rior. Undercarriage. Glove compartment. Cup holders. Tey move to the trunk. Tree cus--
toms omcers sif through the trunk. Tey pick through the assortment of objects signaling
my geographic position, professional intentionalities, organizational habits: a bag of road salt
48 BRIDGES Volume 13 Number 2
(a requirement for winter driving in Ontario), shovel (ditto) and the body image educational
kit Id been meaning to introduce to students. Tose are the standout contents of the busy
trunk. Teres more; if we were to include the spare tire and booster cables. To that we can
also add the material evidence of my ongoing eforts to keep the inside of the car tidythe
traces of such eforts providing bumpy cushioning for the shovel, salt, and resource kit.
Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
Old road trip cassettes. A family of mismatched mittens and gloves. Dated city street map
books and a larger map of Ontario that Im not especially adept at reading. Probably why the
tri-fold maps home is in the trunk and not in the more readily-accessible-while-driving glove
compartment.
I was crossing the Windsor-Detroit border to purchase chocolate covered matzah for my
brother, Sean. Returning home for Pesah, the intention was to bring a small gif for family
and friends. maybe I should have just made it myself.
Place matzah on foiled covered sheet
Peter Hrastovec, Chair of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, recently
claimed, the future success of our region and the province depends on the free fow of trade
and people across this critical border crossing. Every day, over 42,000 commuters, tourists
and truck drivers carry $323-million worth of goods cross the Windsor-Detroit border.
I
It
hadnt occurred to me that crossing the border to purchase some matzah would entail a de- -
grading assault on my psychic life. Perhaps I should have anticipated it. Should have pre--
dicted a recognitive struggle at the point of crossing. Te risks. Te vulnerabilities. Te
indignities. But border crossing just seemed so commonplace to me. People speak of this
border as being one of the most vital trade crossings in North America. Local area stores do
not carry the product. Just across the border, however, which is less than I8 minutes away,
brings forth a bounty of items Kosher for Pesah.
Melt brown sugar with butter in saucepan.
Some days, like on this day, I wonder why it is that my personhood attracts such unwanted
attention and suspicion. I presented the required documents establishing my citizenship,
place of birth, and place of residence. Teir handling of these papers undermines the sup--
posed omciality of the documents. Government documents cant be trusted. Nor can I. How
is it I become a threat to the security and well-being of others when crossing borders?
Boil until brown sugar and butter mixture coats a spoon.
LARA H. DOAN 49
Yet I know to think in such ways betrays the lure of disavowal blended with a dose of magical
thinking. Its hope gone awry. I hope that maybe its something I could change. My hair. My
clothes. But those wistful moments are brief. Tere is only so long a person can pretend. Race
and border crossing. Crossing borders while black. Mixed race more specifcally. But then
specifcs arent of interest to them
Nor is my humanness. Tey see Black. Tey perceive security threat. Object of surveillance.
Object for surveillance. Two more guards are beckoned to assist in the search. Te vicissi--
tudes of recognitionviolent, temporal and lived.
Brush matzah with brown sugar mixture.
Te enormous sign greeting the stream of vehicles crossing the border and fanked by the
American and Canadian fags, reads: Welcome.
It lies.
Border agents questions and actions imbued with the plagues of racism and xenophobia be--
tray the partiality of the welcome sign. Te conviviality of the situation is almost theatri--
cally scripted: detained en route to purchase chocolate covered matzah for Pesah. I dont
laugh. I cant. Te simplicity of parallel plot lines the stuf of predictable tropes: Crossing
water. Humiliation. Matzah. Oppression. Separation. Repatriation. Unwelcome stranger.
Bake in -degree oven for - minutes until brown sugar and butter coating starts to bubble.
I wonder if the border agent feels good about pulling me over? Over their breaks do the
agents share with one another the details of their quick thinking?
I stopped this woman. Black. Canadian passport. A professor she claimed. Said that she was
going to an organic food store. Immediately I was suspicious. Sent her to secondary inspec--
tion. Tree of us searched her carthoroughly. Seven point inspection.
Whatd you get?
Had some self-esteem kit.
No longer a person. Ive become not unlike the objects in the trunk. Arbitrarily, Ive been
caught up in the technologies of self and of othering. Te recipe for what has detained me far
more complex than the ingredients and method of the making of chocolate covered matzah.
Brown sugar. Butter. Chocolate chips. Matzah. Te circumstances that gave rise to the upcom--
ing Festival of Unleavened Bread far more complex than the thinking that has detained me
30 BRIDGES Volume 13 Number 2
and that provides their rationale for handling my body with suspicious contempt. Teir ra--
cialized gaze underpinning the justifcation for their objectifcation.
Watch matzah closely with its coat of brown sugar and butter it burns easily
3 border control agents and me. Why do I feel so unsafe? So unprotected? Ive been told that I
should be used to it (by now). But how does one get used to being treated as less than human?
Should this be a goal for personal growth? Is it healthy to insist that freedom depends upon
subjugation? Im doubtful this is the sort of daily amrmation Carleen Brice (I997) might in--
clude in Walk Tall: Amrmations for People of Color.
2
Sprinkled heated brown sugar coated matzah with chocolate chips and put back in the oven
until the chips start to melt.
Tis border manufactured by colonialist regimes. Tree white men tower over me. I must
look up to see the polarizing lenses covering their eyes. Attention shifs from the objects of
the trunk to me. One of them orders me to the omce for my own secondary inspection. Like
the hametz soon to be destroyed, yet still freely consumed on this day of border crossing, my
body attracts unabashed worrisome attention. How do I reconcile my yearning to be in my
homeland with the reality that the place I call home is a place where the Original inhabitants
were brutally displaced and where the policies of forced assimilation continue? Still, I want to
go home. Instead, I am laid bare.
3
Gently spread the melted chocolate chips to cover the baked matzah.
Was it worth it? Were the four boxes of store bought chocolate covered matzah I eventually
did purchase, when border patrol gave me and the car their good to go, worth this alienat--
ing experience of violence and loss now woven into my psychic history?
I dont think so.
Freeze until hard.
Dont get me wrong. Te gif was appreciated and consumed with delight. Hametz annulled.
Te Seder observed another year. Yet, I wonder if anyone else noticed a diference? Perhaps
just me. With spirit bruised by abjection, body smarting from objectifcation, questions about
the meaning of freedom pounding from another assault, it is a diferent self who shared the
akomen. A fractured self.
Break into pieces.
I came into the world imbued with the will to nd a meaning in things. My spirit lled with the
LARA H. DOAN 3I
desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of
other objects.
I was indignant; I demanded an explanation. Nothing happened.
I burst apart.
Now the fragments have been put together again by another self.

Tis is my testimony.
NOTES
I. Hrastovec, Peter. Its time to move ahead on a border solution. e Windsor Star, I6 May, 2008, p. A.8.
2. Brice, Carleen. Walk Tall: Armations for People of Color, San Diego: Beacon Press, I997.
3
.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, I967, p. II6
4
.
Ibid, p. I09.
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