I Grew My Boobs in China (26 page)

On a few occasions, the locals fought over our recyclables. The beggars often asked for bottles so subtly that Mom made a big mistake early in our travels. A little old man was waiting patiently and unobtrusively for our bottle to empty. Because he was so considerate, Mom didn’t even realize he wanted it and just handed it to the first kid who came by. The old man chased after him, shouting at the kid to claim his rightful prize, and Mom felt terrible. The kids, though, were not always so considerate, and one would occasionally try to snatch a bottle before we had even taken our last sip.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE
: If you are the type who does not care for the crude nature of toilet scenes, please skip ahead to the next author’s note.

But truthfully, the garbage in the aisle of the bus was pretty minor compared to the bathroom stops. Every day was truly a toilet nightmare, one that somehow kept getting progressively worse. I was so proud of myself when I’d finally conquered the squatty, and then I surprised myself again when I’d learned to use a toilet that had no doors, but the facilities’ standards just kept being lowered as quickly as I met them. The three-sided, cement barrier in the stalls got lower and lower until there were no walls at all, and the public toilets became just one big room with ten holes lined up in a row – that’s all there was. That was IT!

“What am I supposed to do with this!?” I’d asked horrified after running out of the chamber.
They can’t be this cruel! Show me the real bathroom, please!
I couldn’t simply stand there watching the half-dozen bare bums hanging out. The split second I had already seen was enough to turn my stomach, not to mention the foul smell of the room that clung to the shrivelling hairs in my nostrils. Cringing, I stood with my back against the outer wall as if something might miraculously change. I had hoped to wait out the rest of the people inside and try to get the room to myself, but a load of women from the next bus came in and nixed that option. I banged my head against the concrete wall.
It is what it is, and I have to face it, alone. I simply MUST go.
There was no kind of support or help to deal with this problem except my own willpower. I know it sounds like a petty thing, but it took all the strength I had to walk myself back into that bomb shelter of a toilet in front of all those people and do what I had to do.

I would like to say I closed my eyes, at least, but the risk of falling right into one of the holes ruled that out! I chose my hole and went as fast as my poor body could empty my bladder. I wanted out. I wanted to block from my consciousness the sight of a girl changing her bloody pad, the sounds of the grunting girl poohing next to me, and all the attendant smells, but the best I could do was to take one quick, desperate wipe and pull my pants up as I ran out.

We stopped again a few hours later. I looked around, not sure what we were waiting for. I didn’t hear a tire pop or any engine problems. We had simply pulled over to the side of the big highway, but there were no buildings or shops to be seen. We were basically in the middle of nowhere.

“What are we stopping for?” Bree asked Ammon, who was seated with Mom just behind us.

“I don’t know, but I gotta pee,” Ammon said, excusing himself. I saw the gooey muck ooze under his heavy boots as he walked down the filthy aisle, and that was the best reason I’d seen yet to wear mine instead of carrying them. After about fifty people had done a few turns up and down the walkway between the seats, the initial “crunch, crunch” under their feet turned into more of a “slosh, slosh.” It was like walking through a partially disintegrated compost box.

I was well and truly horrified when I opened the window and heard Ammon say, “Hey, if you want to go, you better go now. This is your potty break.”

“What!?!? No!”

I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it. I knew my only options were to muster up some courage quickly or face an exploded bladder, so I took my sorry little white bum out there to the field.

Mom had given the previous bathroom break a positive spin, pointing out that at least it was only girls using the washrooms. Now, I regretted my cavalier, dismissive, “So what’s that worth, big deal” response to her statement. I truly didn’t believe it could get any worse, but it did. It always did! The best we could manage out in the field was girls to the left, boys to the right, but I think it actually turned out to be more like squatters left, standers right, because there were some men very near me.

“You better just do it now before you’re the only one out there and everyone on the bus is waiting and staring at
you
!” Mom said, wisely.

Ohohoh!
“I need toilet paper,” I asked Bree, the official toilet paper stasher.

“I don’t have any more.”

“Stop kidding me. Just hand me some. Anything,” I said, desperately reaching my hand out to her.

“Use a bush,” she said as she squatted. I knew she was serious when I saw the clump of grass in her hand. I also knew that I couldn’t waste any more time on this discussion. We were never sure how long the bus driver would wait or whether they might drive off without us.

I don’t think I had ever used the public bathroom at any of my schools because of my paranoia about peeing in front of other people, and here I was, standing in an open field with piles of strange men and women squatting and doing their business. The other women didn’t seem to mind at all. They pulled their pants right down and went with no hesitation, despite the men.
They’ve been doing this since they were babies. They just go anywhere: in the streets, on train station platforms, anywhere and everywhere!
I thought, trying to force the earlier images of such things from my mind. For me, it was like having to overcome one of the biggest obstacles of my life.
If I can do this, I believe that I will truly be able to do anything. I will be invincible.
I paced, circling like dogs do to find the right spot. I felt totally awkward and found myself once again not knowing where to start. I felt completely exposed and did the fastest squat in history to date. I dipped down in a patch where the ground was slightly lower and the grass perhaps an inch or two higher and “hid” awkwardly.

That kind of “girls left, boys right – go!” stop was a regular feature of many of our long distance bus rides. Privacy is a luxury I had always taken for granted. It was on the buses that I learned its significance and what it meant to me. Overcoming that part of the trip was one of the hardest adjustments I had to make, but I stretched more personal limits than I’d ever have thought possible in the process.

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“Shouldn’t we get some more food or something?” Mom had asked, ready to go hunting around before boarding the train.

“Nah, we’ll be fine! They always have people running back and forth selling snacks. You’ll stop regularly and there’re always little shops on the platforms,” Ammon explained.

Once on the train, we watched the passengers go by with cup after cup of steaming tea or hot soups. Bree traced a trail of drips from someone’s mug back to a hot water tank at the end of the carriage, and instant noodles became one of our main travel essentials from then on. Of course, we could not read the labels on the packages, so we had to go by the simple pictures. We usually had a choice of a big green chicken, big blue cow, big red pig, or yellow vegetables.

I preferred train travel for a number of reasons, but mainly because of the freedom it offered. On trains, you could use the toilet as the need arose, and getting up to stretch your legs was a big bonus. There was a lot more flexibility in what and when you could eat, and last but not least, they usually had small tables against the windows where we could pass the time playing cards. That said, much like the buses, the trains were quickly covered in trash amidst clouds of smoke, and the bathrooms left just as much to be desired. Our first trip to the train’s bathroom was a real eye opener.

“How? How is it? How?” I stuttered.

“Even physically possible---” Bree helped me.

“To get---”

“So---”

“Is it really everywhere?” I finally stammered out the rest of the sentence as I clenched my teeth and shut my eyes in defense.

“I’d rather use nature than that!” Mom had decided. I saw her point, but amazingly, I was willing to put up with the disgusting odours and so on in return for some privacy. There was a door with hinges and a lock (not that they always worked), and the fact that it smelled like dirty diapers and had diarrhea splattered everywhere faded in comparison. There was even filth in places that made me think,
Gee! Like, that is really quite a feat! Honestly, how could you even get it up there?
Whenever I entered, I had to dodge pieces of toilet paper dangling from the roof. I can’t even begin to describe the filth, and every toilet was like that, in every carriage on every train.

I finally had to accept the fact that this was the best I was going to get. To put it into perspective, I’d had to use a public toilet on very rare occasions back home. I once found myself so discomfited at finding a floaty in my chosen stall in Wal-Mart that I had to quickly find another open cubicle. That event actually stood out vividly in my mind up until we began travelling in China! Now, traumas like that were quickly being replaced by much more disturbing scenes, and even the option of flushing was something that was offered less and less often.

Going on a train always seemed a rush. I could hear the roar of the train as I looked straight through the hole in the floor to the blur of gravel and railroad ties below. For a beginner like me, squatty toilets on wheels always posed a problem. The train rocked back and forth as I tried to balance on my tippy toes, threatening to toss me off balance at the most inopportune times. I would pray I didn’t have to reflexively grab hold of the handles that were literally covered with brown smears. At the same time, I had to try not to get thrown face first into a wall, which commonly had the same smears and other unspeakable things stuck to it. I had to be cautious, too, not to fall backwards onto the wet floor. That’s where Bree came in handy. I rarely went without bringing her to help hold me upright or guard the broken door.

But enough about potties. You get the picture, and it was not a pretty one, to say the least.

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

AUTHOR’S NOTE
: This is where squeamish readers can re-join the story.

I did manage to look up from my book every so often. The glistening rice fields and the unnaturally bright green grass created such stunning scenery that I almost couldn’t believe it wasn’t photo shopped, but with my head buried in the pages of my book, I often completely lost track of time. My irregular cries, gasps, and exclamations of “OH! My heart!” or “Oh Rhett!!” became more and more frequent.

“She’s enjoying it now,” Ammon said, picking up on my complete absorption with the classic.

“Sssshhhhh,” I scowled at him without looking up from the words on the page, “I’m at a good part.”

“It must be good if you’re blushing like that,” he teased. I just shrugged him off. I thrived on the stories and adventures I was reading about. I really could escape my troubles just by opening up those pages and jumping in next to Scarlet in her buggy or onto the back of Rhett’s stallion. I could feel the quality of the 1860s mahogany desk beneath my hands and the laces and fabrics between my fingers.

I was so in love with Rhett! I could almost taste the whisky on his breath and smell the swirls of thick smoke clouding his parlour as he puffed on a strong cigar. Oh, wait! It wasn’t Rhett smoking. It was the man next to me, and the man next to him, and the man next to him!!The entire cabin was grey with smoke. Every single man on that train was either lighting, smoking, or throwing away a cigarette, and at least eighty percent of the passengers were men (I also couldn’t help but notice that we were the only Caucasians on the train again).

My cough prompted Bree to lodge one of the few complaints we’d heard from her since the trip started. “I know!! I’ve probably lost five years of my life already from all this smoke!” Bree was very protective of her health, given her athletic focus. She never drank alcohol or smoked, and she definitely never used drugs of any sort. She didn’t even drink coffee, and it had been almost impossible to convince her that it was safe to drink green tea.

But she was right about the smoking, and I felt the same. The smog and pollution in the bigger cities combined with the nearly constant public smoking really irritated our lungs. When I’d asked Ammon why none of the women smoked, he explained that female smokers would indulge only in the privacy of their own homes.
I hope the excessive smoking calms down a bit in Mongolia.

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I pulled myself up onto an elbow to check the other passengers. Everyone was still sound asleep. It amazed me how tiring travel days could be. Ammon and Mom, both in a fetal position, looked as though they hadn’t moved all night. Bree was flat on her back on the bunk opposite me with her earphones still on and her shirt crumpled up to expose a bare belly. Her outstretched arm and leg hung over the rail while the other arm was bent above her head. I couldn’t believe she was already eighteen. It seemed like just yesterday we were giggling little girls, taking baths together, putting socks in our shirts to pretend we had boobs, and dreaming of one day reaching the “mature” age of thirteen.

“Happy birthday,” I whispered as I pulled her sleeping bag over her feet.

Chapter 25

A Sacred Mountain

and

the Stairway of Hell

As there was no other option at four in the morning when we got off the train in Emei, we had taken a taxi and broken Travel Rule #2. The exhaust was beginning to cloud up and stick to the virtually dripping moisture in the damp air. Our last bag was pulled from the trunk and, without a word from the taxi driver, we heard the airtight seal of his door close. The tires squealed off down the wet brick road, trailing a puff of smoke.