I Grew My Boobs in China (46 page)

“Yep. We’re stuck,” Ammon confirmed.

Only an hour earlier, we’d been standing at the top of a ridge looking out as Ammon told us the incredible history of the land we stood on.

“That used to be lush vegetation out there,” Mom said as she surveyed the huge red valley.

“Yup! And seaside property, too, complete with dinosaurs,” Ammon added. “This was the first place they ever discovered fossilized dinosaur eggs. Can you imagine what that would be like!? Now they’ve found, I think, fifteen different types of dinosaurs here.” It was crazy to imagine that if we went back in time only a few hundred million years, I would be standing in the presence of dinosaurs! I was awestruck by the very idea of it.

“You were always crazy about dinosaurs as a kid. You used to know the proper, scientific name of every single kind. Did you ever think you’d come here, Ammon?”

“Who knows? Why not? Life is full of mysteries and surprises. I’d believe I’d come here before I’d believe I’d be travelling around the world with you bunch.”

“That’s true enough,” I agreed.

Now we were stuck right in the heart of that sea/desert, surrounded by the burning cliffs. We all crawled out of the minivan and took our usual places. Mom jumped into the driver’s seat and moved the seat forward so she could reach the pedals, while the rest of us positioned ourselves at the rear of the van with our hands flat on the burning hot, hatchback trunk. With all hands pressed hard against the car, we shouted, “Ready? Three, two, one – HEAVE!” The tires spun rapidly and spit hot sand up in our faces until the van suddenly went sliding over to the side.

“What the heck, Mom?!” Ammon snapped as he walked around the front, eying the mess she’d made.

“What? What did I do?” she exclaimed, leaning out the open window to look.

“You just made it worse! You were supposed to turn the wheel the
other
way!”

“Sorry, it’s confusing ’cause the steering wheel is on the wrong side,” she protested helplessly.

“But now we’re really screwed!” Ammon barked, throwing up his hands.

“No, we’re not. It’s okay, I’ll fix it. It’ll be fine,” she said, anxious to relieve everyone’s frustration. Ammon clenched his teeth and growled deeply, but quietly. Clearly, he was just as sick of the sand and the heat and the frequent problems as I was.

“Don’t act so stupid!” Bree remained completely unfazed by his temper. His displays of anger always made me timid as a mouse, but she was never frightened. In situations where I felt I needed to tiptoe carefully and wouldn’t dare start fussing, she tromped right in like a bull in a china shop.

“Is okay, Mama,” Future said, possibly feeling guilty himself.

“What do we do now?” Bree asked Mom.

“We need to ground the wheels so they have something to grip. It would be good if we had some trees or rocks or wood or anything to---”

“But we don’t,” Ammon said accusingly. “Unless you wanna go dig up some dinosaur bones and use them. That’s about all you’ll find out here.”

What if we can’t get out? There’s nothing and no one to help us. Nobody will even know we’ve gone missing.
I was uncomfortably aware of the heat and the fiery red earth that had swallowed up the dinosaurs millions of years ago. At a blazing 45°C (113°F), even the wind hurt.
A car and a few humans is nothing but a teensy snack for this land.
I pictured our bones in the sand, just like those of the horses – unnoticed and left to rot. Even worse thoughts occurred to me then.
We wouldn’t even rot! We’d just shrivel up like mummies and our intestines would spill out and shrink up like baked worms. But there aren’t even any worms out here to eat us. Not even those ugly vultures would find us.

“We’ll just have to dig a little to at least free the wheels,” Mom suggested.

“Okay, then. I’m pumped; let’s just do it!” Bree got down on her knees and started digging with her hands. “Ooh! Ow! Ow, ow, ow!! Dang! That’s bloody hot,” she yelped as she shook them out after each scoop.

“Here, dork. Use something else. Try a flip-flop,” Ammon chucked one at her from the van. Future got right in there with Bree, and soon they were using flip-flops for shovels and digging like dogs with their butts in the air, shooting sand out between their legs.

“Okay, that should do it. Let’s try again,” Ammon advised after ten minutes of serious digging. It took a few rounds of pushing and digging and pushing and digging before the car finally came loose and jolted forward. Everyone stopped pushing abruptly, everyone but me, that is. I fell forward and crashed onto my bare knees as the black smoke from the muffler spewed exhaust in my face. When I hit the ground full force like that, my almost healed scabs were scraped off, and coarse sand filled the wet, open sores. I’d hurt my knees exactly the same way just a couple of days before, but at least we were safely out of another sand trap. I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I was sure glad to be putting some distance between me and those flaming hills. I was hopeful, too, that eventually, I’d learn to time my pushing better and avoid any further injuries.

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

We were truly living moment to moment every day, never knowing where we would eat or find fuel. Accommodation was always a surprise, too. We didn’t know where we’d be sleeping until we got there, wherever “there” was. More often than not, it was in a ger with a local family, usually on the floor or on a tiny cot with wool blankets. We once stumbled upon a campsite filled with small gers, and we rented a room in a small town that had cement block buildings another time.

This night we rolled in late to a town close to Bayanzag. We searched for accommodations, but many of the places were booked or cost at least thirty dollars each. Poor Future was running in and out and driving all around to find availability for a price we could afford. As a last resort, he drove us back to the town where we’d visited a little dinosaur museum earlier in the day. They offered to let us sleep on the floor in the back room.
Bingo!
We spent a few bucks and saved a lot more, so it benefited everyone. Future and a couple of guys from the museum dragged in some rugs and laid them out to cover the hardwood floor. It was intriguing to know that I was sleeping amongst long-lost dinosaur eggs and wild, fossilized beasts.

Dinner by candlelight on the floor with a roof over our heads was exactly the comfort we needed after a long, stressful day. Future joined us as we all ate straight from the pot. With a final goodnight, he opened the door and headed for the van where he usually slept. An unexpected gust of wind whipped the door out of his hand and slammed it shut. The draft killed the light from our small, flickering candle.

“I guess that’s our cue,” I heard Ammon say from somewhere to my left.

“But I still need to brush my teeth,” I said, a yawn catching me off guard in mid-sentence.

The scent of candle smoke tickled my nose and I seemed to float away with it. Sitting there in the pitch dark, exhaustion suddenly caught up with me. I considered searching for a match, finding the candlestick, fumbling through my daypack to find my toothbrush, and taking a water bottle outside where the cool air was already beginning to settle in for the night, but it all just seemed like way too much work. Instead, I groped around to find my irregularly shaped daypack/pillow and laid my head down.

Chapter 39

Tow Truck

The sun felt hot and somehow soothing on my bare knees as they hung from the van’s open sliding door. They were just starting to heal. Slowly stepping out, I lifted my elbow to test the wind.
I really hate this place,
I thought as I squinted desperately at the emptiness around me. Scanning the baked, bare earth, I felt as minuscule as an ant reaching towards the sky to shout at nonexistent birds above.
Nobody would hear our desperate cries.
I heard Future’s soft “tck, tck, tck,” and I knew it wasn’t good. It never was.

His legs protruded from beneath the car, where he was scuffling about in the dirt. I crouched down beside our broken vehicle, which had been falling apart piece by piece over the course of our jaunt. We could’ve found our way back just by following the trail of parts and leaks we’d left in our wake, but this time was worse; the van had completely given out.

After everything the past week had thrown at us, I didn’t dare ask, “What now?” It appeared we would be given no more chances. When he noticed my shadow and sandaled feet, he raised himself onto his bent elbow to deliver the verdict – “No. No oil. Is leak everywhere.”

After a freakish seven days together, I had a much clearer understanding of this man stretched beneath the van. You couldn’t say he’d been thoroughly vetted before we’d leapt into his car and allowed him to “guide” us around parts of his country that he knew barely any better than we did, but in uncontrollable situations, every attribute of a person’s character is inevitably revealed, whether they like it or not, and relationships tend to develop more quickly and deeply. To be fair, our group’s occasionally quixotic behaviour and general lack of preparation probably contributed to many of the incidents we had dealt with along the way, yet I didn’t regret any of it, even now, when things looked so bad for us. Judging from what I had seen of his character, tested on almost every level by now, I knew Future was sincere. Despite his many faults, I loved his positive attitude and energy.

Recent circumstances had generated another life lesson, and he’d played an important part in that process. As we took each step towards a new destination, we were forced to live nowhere but in the present and with the people who surrounded us. We weren’t playing by any set of rules or competing to impress peers; we’d had to just get on with life. I never once felt judged for my wild hair, dirty clothes, or the mere fact that I had no makeup on and looked my worst (or my most natural, depending on your perspective). I felt loved and accepted by Future, no matter what.

“I don’t suppose there is any spare oil in the back, eh?” I was grasping at straws now. He shook his hand from underneath to signal no, as I suspected, but I couldn’t let it go. “Nothing? No small containers? Like, for emergencies?” I emphasized, reminding him that most people stash some somewhere.

“No, did not bring,” Future confessed, apparently not having put any prior thought into his namesake in this instance. Considering he had never previously dealt with foreigners, it’s quite possible that his interactions with us offered the first opportunity to actually
use
the English version of his name. We had asked him the first night we met where the name Future had come from.

“That is me,” he answered, obviously not understanding the question.

“Yah, but what is your real name? In Mongolian,” Bree asked.

“Ireedui Pureve.”

“So, it’s nearly as unpronounceable as the rest of your language,” I laughed, but I now understood why he preferred to go by the name Future.

He threw his head back and laughed, “Oh, Little Savannah!” He smiled at me gently for a moment before adding, “Ireedui is future. Means future. That is me. I have good future.”

As the wind loosened my tangled, two-day-old braid and blew it in my face, I remembered that conversation and hoped he was right about that. My skin felt as tired and dry as the land around me, but I couldn’t be bothered by that now. Future’s bodiless, lower limbs were twisting and shuffling so his rear-end could clear the van. Sand streaked his naturally black hair, which was now plastered to his head from the sweat of his exertions and from lying in the gravel. His round face was smudged with grease, and his mocha-coloured skin revealed what a week’s exposure to the sun could do, but that might have been just the thick layer of dirt that had built up. I wiped the dirty strands of hair from my eyes and climbed back in to seek whatever shade our vehicle afforded and to tell the others his news.

“The oil is leaking, and he doesn’t have any more,” I told them. What I didn’t have to say was that we would not be going anywhere tonight.

“What? Like none?” Bree asked incredulously.

“None,” I assured her.

“Like, nix?” she pressed on.

“Zip.Zilch. Nada.” I said to remove any hope that an easy fix was available to us.

“Oh, dear. Well that’s not good,” Mom said simply, now that we were all on the same page.

“So what does that mean?” Bree asked.

“You can’t drive without toasting the car completely!” Ammon said matter-of-factly.
Oh, geez! Now what!?
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised!” Ammon said sarcastically, acting even a little more superior, if that was possible, before he jumped outside.

“Jesus!!” Future shouted out, surprised by the suddenness of his arrival, “Look what you are did. Why?! Why you do this to me?”

“Because you have enraged me,” Ammon joked back.

“Oh no!I know, it was wrong. I am sorry for joke about you. It is because I make joke that van broke!” I heard Future making light of the situation, but now that the van was toast, he and Ammon decided their first move was to scout the area for any sign of civilization and help.

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

As much as I hated the sand constantly trying to swallow our car, I didn’t like sitting around thinking about our current situation any better. The desert had hardened and turned into a barren wasteland, broken only by some gravelly patches and scraggly patches of grey-green. The van was our only source of shade.

About 200m (656ft) away, a dozen or so camels roamed freely. Wild herds were a common sight, but these were the only living creatures we’d seen all day. These camels all sported the typical forked, wooden nose pegs commonly used in Mongolia, a sure sign they belonged to someone, but there was no way to know when the owners might return. We weren’t nurturing any false hopes at this stage; getting us out of this mess was completely up to us!

“Savannah, what are you doing?” Mom asked as I stepped out of the van and started walking towards them.