I Grew My Boobs in China (42 page)

“No, smarty. A couple bucks each, per day. That adds up, you know!”

The potential disadvantages of frugally downgrading to a minivan that didn’t have four-wheel drive were waved off by the others. Despite their nonchalance, I could not help but worry that we were apparently the only people attempting to travel the countryside without it. Nonetheless, cheaper was cheaper, and money talks.

Future broke the ice to start us off on a positive note by asking if we’d like to hear him sing. We nodded, feeling both cautious and curious. He promptly inserted a compact disk, carefully adjusted the volume to his satisfaction, rolled down the windows and blew us away with the strength and clarity of his lovely voice. As an avid lover of classical music, I was impressed by his beautiful operatic baritone. We’d almost expected to hear the traditional throat singing commonly practiced in the homes we’d visited with Baagii.

“ ‘UlemjiinChanar’ is name. Is very famous in Mongol. Meaning is about beautiful woman and nature, deep meaning, is very philosophically,” he explained. This friendly man turned out to have a lot more depth to his character than was evident originally. Obviously he could sing, but he was also graduating from medical school and could speak several languages: Mongolian, Russian, English, and Japanese.

His facility with languages reminded me of Dad, who had lived in Japan for two years and could communicate with our Japanese ESL students. Before long, we were showing off the few words we’d learned from him and from the students we hosted when we’d gathered around the dinner table.

Mom seemed lost in thought as she gazed out the window with her earphones on.
I wonder if she misses Dad?
I thought, my mind drifting again to Grady. I found myself dreaming to the music, wondering if Bree was missing Fernando and wondering if I’d ever have a chance with Grady, especially now that I wasn’t even around.
Does Mom feel this same kind of longing? Or is she worrying about Sky?

I studied her face, trying to read her thoughts. She was often quiet, but this time she seemed quiet in a different sort of way. Her face was inscrutable, so I gazed out the window at the vastness of the land, my attention diverted by my fears about having no GPS or experienced guide. I couldn’t imagine how helpful Baagii’s verbal directions could be to a guy who’d never even
been to the 1.3million km² (500,000m²) Gobi desert. This was just one of the troubling details we’d learned after our departure. By the time we’d stopped for the tenth set of instructions on our first day out, I knew that Baagii had undoubtedly advised our apprentice guide to stop at every possible opportunity to ask for directions.
Because if you go even slightly off course, you’ll be driving north instead of south
, I thought cynically.

We’d gotten off to a late start the first morning and soon began to doubt that we’d ever reach our intended destination. As night began to fall, Future stopped a solo man on his undersized but sturdy brown horse.

Following a quick chat, he returned to tell us, “He says it over that way, but it is getting late, and we should coming to his place and leaving in the morning.” We followed the horseman and arrived fifteen minutes later at his few gers sitting beneath the wide-open, pastel sky.

We peeled ourselves out of the van and went inside. Ducking to avoid the drying meat strung up from the poles supporting the wood ceiling had become so routine that I barely even flinched at the sight, but the odour always got to me. Each day, I disliked it more and more. “Sheep” was present in clothing, shelter, and food, overwhelming the rest of my senses. I began to feel jealous of Future’s self-assigned accommodation; the van’s dust would seem less smothering than the overpowering smells destined to invade tonight’s dreams.

After respectful handshakes and bows, we took seats anywhere we found room, whether it was a bed or the floor. There was not much to the simple home. They had the typical painted, wooden beds lined up against the walls, a simple fire stove in the centre, a tiny sink, a table surrounded by four small stools, and a small shrine for worship on one of two dressers. I consciously remembered to honour their custom of not turning my back to the sacred shrine except when exiting the ger.

Despite the fact that we had essentially taken over their home for the night and were both unexpected and unannounced, we couldn’t have been more warmly welcomed. Future struck up an easy conversation with the man as his wife offered us what little they had to eat. Anticipating the family’s dinner-time hospitality, I was mindful of a guest’s guidelines. One of the hardest and sometimes scariest customs was that we could never refuse anything that was presented to us, and we could never be completely sure what might be offered.

Not surprisingly, we were served the standard appetizers: the infamous sour biscuits which were tough as nails; very sour yoghurt homemade in a big, yellowish-white pail; and of course, salty, milky tea. When I saw all of these things laid before me and passed around once again, I longed for
Ulaanbaatar
’s wide selection of foods, and I still dearly missed the ever-present green tea and the amazing yoghurt we’d had in China. Mongolian tea was basically made by adding goat milk and a few teaspoons of salt to boiling water, plus the inevitable goat hairs which never failed to find their way into the soot-smeared kettle. Thank goodness custom didn’t require us to finish each portion, only to taste everything, but I guess it boiled down to a case of “beggars can’t be choosers.” I did my part and nearly broke my tooth on yet another one of those sour biscuits. Sharing a few cups of fermented mare’s milk, the two Mongolian men continued to laugh and talk over our mutton and rice dinner. Future told us that the man was the local ranger, but the ranger of what, exactly, I never did find out.

After the meal, Bree and I went outside, water bottles and toothbrushes in hand, and surreptitiously watched the nomads’ evening routines. The ranger’s sons were busy rounding up the goats for the night. I could hear their soft shouts as I brushed my teeth behind the ger, where the rocky earth was covered in animal droppings. Smelling the “sheepy” essence and feeling the soft, wet ooze of a fresh pile beneath my flip-flops, I tried not to connect this with the fuel for the fire that had heated the ger and cooked our dinner.

Returning to watch the shepherds a while longer, I saw the ranger’s young daughter on her knees in the dirt with her arms wrapped around a younger goat’s neck. He was mostly white with a brown patch over one eye, and his tail wagged like a puppy’s. She sobbed and sobbed as she clung to him. It made me think of Harrison, and my heart hurt for her. I always tried hard to avoid thinking about him; it was just too painful. But with the cool air signalling the night’s beginning and the stars slowly coming out, I had a hard time not feeling the weight of longing for him. I missed the softness and smell of his fur, and the way he’d sneeze when I puffed baby powder in his face. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

Once I’d opened the door to those emotions, they came flooding back to haunt me as I remembered how the story had played out. Kathy took him home with her and returned only empty promises. As our departure date drew nearer, I’d grown increasingly anxious. After many unreturned phone calls, she finally confessed that she’d not been able to keep him because of her landlord’s “one dog” rule. Naturally, she had chosen to keep her ugly Shiatsu over newcomer Harrison. Hoping to make the best of a difficult situation, though conveniently leaving me out of the loop, she’d completely changed our agreement and given him to her boyfriend, Dick. He’d turned out to be a philandering jerk who then gifted Harrison to his wife and their two teenaged sons. I had nothing more than a telephone number to work with after Kathy refused to ever talk to him again. Numerous calls to the aptly named Dick got me no closer to a final visit because he had lied to his wife about Harrison being an unloved, unwanted dog from the pound. He was probably afraid she would learn the truth if he involved me
.
Feeling like a ragdoll being tossed around, I made a final desperate attempt and called Janice, his wife. I explained our plans and assured her that I was not looking to take Harrison back, that I only wanted to say goodbye. After believing for a few days that I would finally get my final farewell, she’d called back to tell me that she thought it best if I never saw him again. Her words still burned like salt on an open wound.

 I abandoned that train of thought to watch the Mongolian girl release her goat to join the herd being led into the corral. She promptly ran off, cradling her face in her hands. I sympathized with her and wished I could understand her language so I could hear her story. Crawling into my bed that night I couldn’t help but curse the fact that not one of the three adults involved, all of whom had children of their own, was willing to do what was necessary to allow a fourteen-year-old girl to see her beloved puppy one last time. I cried myself to sleep that night.

A van arrived in the morning and I watched the same young men bustling about. While Future was still inside with the man of the house, asking directions and thanking the family once more for their impromptu hospitality, we went over to investigate and found the men slaughtering the sheep and goats. They would most likely be taken to town and traded for some needed goods. Seven were already dead and lying belly-up on a long green tarp, waiting to be swung like sacks of dirt into the van. I felt compelled to search for a particular white goat, hoping he wasn’t one of the dead. I found him squished in a pen, running left and right in synch with the others. He was slightly smaller than the rest and was being trampled as their agitated dance increased in intensity.

Unlike the timid sheep that practically rolled over and surrendered their lives, the goats did not go so willingly to their deaths. They had to be knocked out before their main artery was detached from their brave hearts. One by one, they were led from the pen and whacked over the head with a hammer. The job took two men, one to hold the goat between his legs and keep it steady while the other delivered a clean hit between the horns to crush the skull and knock it out.

Each goat was, in turn, hit, flipped, processed, and placed on the tarp until finally it was the turn of the white goat with the brown patch. As the daughter’s predicament became clearer, I was relieved to see that she was not present. I’m sure it was better that way. Her goat’s back hooves dug into the dirt but he couldn’t get a grip and was inevitably dragged forward. He wrenched his head from side to side trying to free himself from the man’s tight grasp on one of his stubby horns, again to no avail. Occasionally, it had taken several hits to do the job, so I was glad that he needed only one solid whack. His knees buckled and he hit the ground in a puff of dust. In that heartbeat, I ached at the realization that she would never, ever see him again.

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

As I looked back and waved goodbye to the nomadic family, I saw an aimless twister spinning in the emptiness of the dusty corral out of the corner of my eye. We weren’t yet in the desert, but by the end of the second day, I could already see the scenery changing gradually from green to brown. We were running low on diesel fuel and had no clue where the nearest gas station was. Future, in authentic Mongolian fashion, maintained his carefree demeanour as if he were entirely unaware of any impending problems. The rest of us constantly watched the fuel gauge as the needle continued to fall. When the alarming red light first appeared, we all subconsciously held our breath, but Future poo-pooed our concern, saying, “My car, it goes way low. No worry!! You want to see canyon? We go to canyon. They saying is very beautiful. It’s just somewhere here.” A half-hour earlier, a few shepherds on a barren ridge had told us about a spectacular canyon we really should see, and Future was intent upon making sure we were satisfied tourists.

I wanted to believe he acted as happy-go-lucky as he did because he knew something we didn’t, but I eventually decided that he was just plain crazy with respect to what was clearly a case of “the-nearly-empty-diesel-engine-in-the-middle-of-the-roadless- desert.” It had evidently escaped him that if the car broke down, we would be something less than completely happy as we waited for someone on camelback to wander by and save us. The more likely rescue form of transportation would be a Russian van like Bimba’s, stuffed to the rooftop with either families or dead sheep. Just such a van had driven up to the guest house where we were staying a few nights before as we were having dinner. A never-ending parade of people poured out; we stopped counting at thirty. The sheer number of people crammed into that van was unbelievable! After a quick stop to eat, they all piled back into the unfortunate vehicle and took off into the night.
Is he just completely oblivious? Or does he just not care what happens? Clearly, his priorities are mixed up.

“No, no, Future. You know what? I think we’re good. We can live without seeing the canyon,” Ammon had finally said to prevent Future from venturing further and further off course and wasting more fuel hunting for it. Even when we were finally heading in a direction that was more likely to lead to a town, my heart fluttered with the same rhythm as the blinking, red fuel light.

At last, a small clump of “civilization” rose up out of the dust, and we spotted a lone gas station with two pumps. We had only a brief stretch left to go, but our relief was short-lived. Responding to the tires’ resistance to a sand trap of sorts, Future stepped on the gas and only managed to dig us in deeper.
I’d have thought knowing how to drive in all kinds of sand would be the first thing taught in Mongolian driving lessons, but what do I know?
The tires sunk deeper into the trap and were eventually swallowed up. Future made a “tck, tck, tck” sound with his tongue, but seemed to have nothing more constructive to offer.

“At least we’re in a town, though,” Mom said as we climbed out to inspect the seriousness of our situation. I did feel better knowing we were that much less likely to starve, dehydrate, and wither away in the desert.