I Grew My Boobs in China (24 page)

“Xie, xie,” I said, thanking the mules before I rushed ahead, knowing Mom would have a drink waiting for us. We were headed to a restaurant of sorts where Mom and Bree were already seated. A donkey tied to a wooden pole in a clearing was hee-hawing. The sound was cloudy and dull like the colours around me, and the place smelled of dusty hay. We were led through a bushy passage and under a flimsy doorway to a table where we were greeted immediately with an odd question.

“Do you want to join the staring contest?” Mom and Bree inquired.

“What?” I replied, totally confused and sure I’d missed something.

“Look at them,” Mom said unable to repress her giggles.

“Them? Who is ...” I hadn’t yet noticed a long table against the opposite fence where a dozen men stared awkwardly at us, and I do mean stared: jaw-hanging, eyeball-bulging stares!

“They haven’t moved since we came in,” Bree told us as we slowly crept in and took our seats.

“True!” Mom insisted, finding their behaviour quite odd.

“Not once,” Bree emphasized. They looked as comatose as they come, and they had odd, frozen expressions on their faces except for when they drooled.

“I bet these guys have lived up on this plateau their whole lives,” Mom said.

“Are you sure they don’t speak English?” I double checked.

“Nah. Definitely not,” Bree said confidently.

As confirmation, Mom added, “They hardly understood when we asked for Coke.”
They had probably responded with “Oh, you want Joke,”
I thought, reminded of the way the locals had pronounced Janada.

“I feel like I’m in the movie
The Hills Have Eyes
,” Mom said. She was really getting a kick out of it.

“Oh, oh! Look. He moved,” I said, referring to the one with his finger up his nose. “At least we know they’re alive.”

“Wait a sec. Wait just one second,” Ammon said, noticing the Coke in front of her, “I thought you were going to quit drinking that crap.”

“No, I stopped drinking Dr. Pepper,” she said, gripping it in her hand with all the strength she could muster.

“Oh, Mom. Stop lying to yourself! You were quitting pop and you know it,” I said.

“NO! I stopped drinking Dr. Pepper.”

“That’s because they don’t HAVE it here,” I insisted, reaching out for it.

“Well, it’s hot and I really needed a treat after that nightmare of a hike,” she confessed as she reluctantly handed it to me.

“What I want is water,” Ammon said.

“Good luck explaining that to this bunch.”

“These guys are a bunch of scary scaries, let’s just keep walking,” Bree suggested. We reluctantly agreed, even though it was getting late in the day and we were already supposed to be on a bus heading back to Granny’s, and most importantly, to my Rhett! But this day simply refused to end. We walked and walked and walked some more through thick layers of flies hovering in the air. The sight of a giant pig head skewered on a stick in the back of a wagon seriously turned my stomach.

“Well, it’s getting late,” Ammon was always good at stating the obvious, but he explained the ramifications of his statement once he’d lifted his head from his guide book. “We’re not going to make it back tonight, but I think there’s a little village that’ll have a guest house somewhere not too far up this road.”

“Somewhere, shmumwhere! I wish I had a virgin strawberry margarita. Oh yah, and
Chippendales
, too! They can just pick me up in their air-conditioned limo any time now,” I stipulated.

“Yah, that would be nice,” Mom agreed with a smile.

“With their big muscles,” Bree added, drooling a bit.

“Oh my gosh,” Ammon groaned.

“Oh, and they’ll bring chocolate dipped strawberries---”

“With whipped cream!”

“And their smooooth, sooooffttt, seexy, muuuuscles---” Bree teased.

“Oh please, please! Somebody get me out of here,” he pleaded, sounding as desperate as us for a change.

“That’s my line!” I retorted, enjoying his pain.

“C’mon Ammon, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t want a big slab of rare steak right now!” Bree said, naming another of our most desired and missed foods.

“Not the kind
you’re
talking about!” he shivered, despite the heat. “Nope. Can’t say that I do.”

“You’re such a liar! You just act all tough,” I said. “Oh, or sushi! That would be amazing!” Our list of wants continued to grow and become more tangible as we slipped deeper into our fantasies. An hour went by and we were still babbling on about our
Chippendales
adventure when a woman caught up to us on the road.

“Where are you going?” she asked, riding alongside on her bicycle, her basket full of fresh vegetables.

“Star Hotel,” Ammon responded as he kept pace with her.

“Oh? That’s my hotel. It’s just up there. I’ll show you.”

Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!You’re an angel from heaven.
I thought, delirious at the prospect that it was almost over. I could have kissed her, hairy wart and all, when she later came out of the house with a tray of cold drinks.

"Look how fast your priorities are changing already!!" was Ammon’s instructive response to how quickly my anxious hand went for the Sprite. I would never have thought that a slushy sprite could taste so good, 13km (8mi) hike or no. The snowy slush slipped down my throat as if I’d never before tasted the sweet syrup. Even the million-and-a-half fat black flies stealing a sip or two from the tin can’s rusty lip couldn’t diminish my appreciation. There was something completely magical about it. Water would have been the smarter choice, but nothing else seemed to matter.

We all had our journals out on the table, which was almost more fly than table, while we waited for our meal. It was impossible not to salivate as we smelled the aroma of wine sauce and other homemade dishes coming from the kitchen. I was continuously shocked by the delicious flavours placed before me, but then I had such a huge appetite those days that I never seemed to get enough. I woke up craving breakfast. After breakfast I started wondering what was for lunch and dinner, and then after dinner, I fell asleep dreaming about breakfast.

My stomach was growling and I just couldn’t bear the thought of writing in my journal. Already I was falling behind, avoiding it and missing days at a time. Looking for an excuse not to write myself, I leaned over to see what Ammon was writing and couldn’t believe my eyes. “Despite what you may read in later posts from the girls, we were not lost, only temporarily delayed as a result of a map malfunction---”

“Is that for the blog?? You are such a cheat!” I objected.

“What?!Pft! Map malfunction? Ya, right!” Mom laughed.

“It was!” Ammon said defensively, smacking his hand down on the table and scattering dozens of flies.

Chapter 23

Flashback

The room was dark and dank. “Man, I can hardly see in here. Bring that flashlight over here, will you?” I called to Bree who was shuffling around, looking for the toilet paper.

“Give me a sec. Okay, what do you need?” She pointed the light in my direction.

“I just need to find something in my bag.” She shone the light down and when I grabbed for the strings on my pack, an eight-legged demon skittered across my hand. I screamed and flung my arms up in the air, nearly knocking the flashlight out of her hand.

“What?!” she shrieked.

“A HUGE spider!” I choked with disgust. Leaping into the safety of the centre of the room, we yelled for Mom as we huddled together, pointing the light in every direction to avoid a sneak attack.

“What
are
you two doing?” Luckily, Mom came armed with her own flashlight.

“A spider!” we yelped, pointing at my bag.

“Oh, good grief. It could be anywhere by now. What do you expect me to do about it?” Mom asked, looking under the bed and around my bag in an effort to be helpful.

“Kill it!” we begged her. A faint shadow scuttled across the floor and we shrieked again, jumping up and down with our arms around each other. Mom didn’t even flinch.

“Oh please. Not MY bed!” Bree whimpered as it made its way over the uneven floor boards.

“You mean
that
tiny thing?!” Mom said with her hands on her hips.

“Just, just get it!” we pleaded.

Ammon hated spiders as much as we did, but he was in the other room. Nonetheless I knew that he’d be checking under his pillow and sleeping with one eye open, too.

“There it is! There, there!”

“Savannah, that’s a gecko,” Mom said, unimpressed.

“Then don’t kill it!! He can stay,” I said immediately. “But where did the spider go?!”

“There he is. He’s on the move!” Bree shrieked and pointed. He was so big his eyes glowed when we shone the light on him, and I just knew his legs would be hairy and bristly. The very sight of him sent shivers up my back.

The sudden sound of Mom’s phone ringing startled us into silence. The phone was only there for emergencies, mainly concerning Skylar. Mom, as if she’d been drilling regularly for this moment, abandoned her spider-killing duties to find her cell phone. She trembled as she held it to her ear. I’d never seen Mom so pale, despite her tan, but we soon heard a sigh of relief.
It must be Sky. Thank the Lord it was not an officer of some sort calling to tell us he was gone or missing in action.

The rest of us sat close by. Even Ammon had mysteriously appeared at my elbow. Sky was safe and unharmed, stunned by recent events, but still alive. He just needed to hear a familiar voice. Mom’s initial fright faded, and she spoke calmly and soothingly. A lot had been happening in his part of the world, too much of it traumatic. He didn’t want to talk or think about what he saw and the friends he’d lost; he only wanted to listen to our voices. He even expressed concern about
our
safety.

“Don’t you worry about us,” Mom said firmly. “We are fine! Just take care of yourself, and don’t get distracted.”

Distracted – Hhmmm. When I looked back, the spider was gone. I glanced back at Mom lying in bed on the phone, one hand crossed over her belly while she subconsciously picked at her eyebrow with the pinkie finger of the other hand as she had always done, and the memory prompted a startling reminder of the past. I began to tremble.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“My heart is pounding,” I’d whispered to Bree three years earlier, peeking through the strips of light between the closet doors.

“Mine too,” she said, pressing my hand to her chest. “Here, just come in closer. Get behind the clothes.” We huddled together, safely out of sight in the shadows.

“I just---”

“I know,” she cut me off. “It makes no sense. We should tell Mom.”

“It just makes no sense!” I repeated, reliving what I’d heard. Dad had been on the phone. He told me he’d been talking to a friend, but he couldn’t seem to give me straight answers to the most basic questions. After I’d made a few more aimless visits to his room, he had kicked me out and locked the door. His actions set off unfamiliar alarms. I had gone to Bree, who was sitting on her bed drawing at the time, and told her I felt weird about something and just wanted her to come check it out. I didn’t know exactly why I followed through on my suspicions. I didn’t even really know what I suspected.

Of course, because the door was locked, she couldn’t fully understand what I was talking about, but she was always up for a mission and she absolutely loves anything remotely related to spying. The closed door in front of her presented a challenge, one she didn’t intend to pass up. We rested our heads near the seam of the door against the pin-sized keyhole, but we could hear nothing but the low hum of his voice. I ran to the bathroom and picked a single toilet paper roll out of the garbage and jammed it under the door. Lying flat on my stomach on the carpeted floor, I was surprised by how well it transferred the sound. I could now hear him clearly.

“You like the way the massage chair jiggles you around?” His words ripped through me like a knife.

“Wait, wait. Can you just---? I think I heard someone,” he began.

I grabbed my “tool” and ran in the nick of time. Bree dashed past me in a flash and we both jumped into Ammon’s closet at the far end of the house, where Bree and I tried to make sense of it all.

“But what if it’s nothing?” I said, trying to convince myself as much as anyone.

“What if it
isn’t
nothing?!” Her words filled me with doubt.
But still, it’s not enough proof.

“We have to find out more,” we agreed.

We crept back, sneaking around every corner to get to the kitchen which was just down the hall from where Dad lay on the king-sized bed, talking passionately to some unknown person on the phone. Bree took the lead, crawling on hands and knees over the marble flooring. I poked my head over the ledge of the counter to make sure the coast was clear and signalled the “all-clear” to Bree.

She stealthily lifted the receiver and slowly let go of the button. In what seemed like no more than ten seconds, we heard a door opening down the hall, but we already had all the proof we needed. We shared a look that said Go! Go! Go! and took off.

“Well? What did you hear?!” I demanded the moment we were safely back in the closet.

“Shhh!” she scowled at me, returning to her post. She sat on her knees near the door, listening and watching. A good five minutes later, she scooted backwards to lean against the hard inner wall for support.

“Bree! What did you hear?” I asked her again, this time more forcefully.

“A woman’s voice,” she confessed.

“A woman? Like, what kind of woman?” I asked carefully.

“It was, like,” she didn’t want to say it, but the words slipped like melted ice from her lips, “a sexy voice.” Her head hung low and she buried her face in her hands. We struggled to breathe normally again, our hearts racing.
Are we dreaming? This is a bad dream, right?

“Could Dad really be?” I choked, scared to say the words out loud in case voicing the fear would make it real. “Cheating?” The next words came even more awkwardly off my tongue. “On Mom?” I never imagined I would be saying such a thing in relation to my own family.
EVER!
We huddled together in that closet for over an hour as we tried to figure out what to do next.