As a general rule, I try not to think about my family. Or my upbringing on the farm. Or anything prior to leaving for college, really. But sometimes Dad’s voice harpoons through my consciousness, a rock-ribbed echo that used to terrify a young boy and still discomfits me now, across all these years and miles. Usually I remember his prediction that I’ll never amount to anything, said as casually as killing a broken-legged calf. I hate the memory of those words. Maybe it’s the greatest gift he could’ve bestowed on me, this wounded motivation to prove him so fucking wrong, but I still hate that memory.

This time the words that stiffen my spine are “Never go anywhere with only a quarter tank of gas!” It was Dad’s wintertime principle for prolonging life if you’re caught in a sudden blizzard. Frigid white-out conditions are always a risk in rural Iowa, where it can take days to dig out of snowdrifts. But his rule is just as practical in snowless Mexico, where Pemex — literally Petroleos Mexicanos, the national oil company — sites its gas stations by government edict rather than anything more practical, like convenience or market forces. For lack of a Pemex station I’ve run out of gas in some of the strangest places you can imagine. Like Mexico City. 25 million people and zero gas stations, I swear to god.

That’s why I’m stopping for gas in the middle of this particular Tijuana nowhere, even though my gas gauge is still hovering halfway between E and F. An unkempt attendant reclines in the red-and-green aluminum shade while his kids work the pumps for tips. It’s just a way of bringing in more household income. Nobody in Mexico is going to tip a Pemex attendant for doing his job, but a gap-toothed 8-year-old girl with a shy smile?

I also fall victim to her sales pitch for a car wash, which consists of pulling the Explorer into an empty mechanic’s bay where more kids attack it with wet rags. I watch with the jaded eye of somebody who’s lost everything from hubcaps to license plates in Mexican hand carwashes, but they’re exuberant and hard-working and keep the truck in one piece.

My gaze is drawn to an hourglass shadow who stands apart from the rest of the kids. She can’t be more than 14 or 15, probably the oldest daughter of the gas station attendant. She wears a Metallica t-shirt that’s faded from too many washings and jeans with holes at the knees, the kind that aren’t there to be stylish. Her despairing eyes are locked on the road, where an endless stream of cars and trucks roar past in the direction of America.

I know what’s coming when her eyes lock on me instead. The desperation of a girl who’ll do anything for a ride out of here, but hasn’t discovered that about herself yet. Instead she hovers pointlessly, trying to be cute and flirty with me and accomplishing neither. All I can think is she’s already got more curves than Nooshin ever will.

When a pickup aimed toward the border and a better life pulls in, she shifts her gaze again. I watch from behind my sunglasses as she scrutinizes the balding middle-aged Mexican in the driver’s seat, sizing him up. He notices her frank appraisal and grins, shifting a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. She shuffles off to act cute and flirty with him.

Someday her Pemex station attendant father will wake up from a nap and she’ll be gone. Someday soon, if I was a betting man. I wonder if he’ll miss her, or even notice much. Probably not, if he’s anything like my father.