Sisterchicks in Sombreros (12 page)

“Who knows, but you better start waving. We’re part of the parade!”

The convertible slowed to a sputtering ten miles per hour, and we were in the wake of his exhaust and noise as the waving character attracted the attention of all the tourists and store owners along the main shopping street in Ensenada. We couldn’t pass the one-car parade because the traffic on the opposite side of the street had slowed to watch the spectacle.

From the street corner, next to a cart that was stacked with woven backpacks and strung-up marionettes, a cluster of women stood waving at the big-headed goofball in front of us. One of the women from our cruise ship recognized Joanne and
me and called out something we couldn’t hear over the blare of music from the convertible.

“Hey, look!” Joanne called to me. “Wave! It’s some of the Sisterchicks from the elevator!”

Joanne honked the horn in time to the obnoxious music as we laughed and waved. Cars facing the opposite direction joined in the honking, and we made our exit from the shopping district with all the commotion of a couple of rock stars trying to get out of town after an amped-up event.

“Turn right, Joanne.”

“Aww, can’t we keep going straight and stay in the parade?”

“If you really want,” I shouted over the voice of the announcer, who was giving his rousing speech once again, complete with exaggerated rolls of his
r’s
. “But the road to San Felipe is to the right.”

“
¡Adios! ¡Adios!
” Joanne called out, laughing and waving with one hand as she made the right turn onto a four-lane road.

We quickly noticed that, even though the thoroughfare was marked as four lanes, that didn’t hinder the Mexican drivers from creating five, and in some places six, lanes of traffic.

“Don’t forget about the stoplights,” I said, as we approached a green light. “If it turns yellow, you better keep going, or you’ll be rear-ended by the locals, who seem to take yellow as an invitation to speed up.”

“Got it.” Joanne clearly was enjoying the thrill of being behind the wheel in the midst of this chaos. “This reminds me
of Calcutta. Except I never drove there. I only rode in cabs and rickshaws. Hold on, I’m changing lanes.”

“Joanne, stay in this lane! We have to make a left at the next intersection.”

It was too late. Joanne was in the far right lane and forced to turn right. We ended up making a big circle that took us back to the front of the car rental place.

“If you want me to navigate, then you have to listen to me,” I scolded.

“I know, I know. Don’t get so riled up, Melanie. I know where we are now. Hey, look at those sombreros. We should buy some for the trip.”

“We can buy souvenirs when we come back to Ensenada in a few days. Get ready to turn up here at the intersection.”

“We need the hats now,” Joanne said. “They’ll be our roof.”

At first I thought she said, “They’ll be our goof,” and I was going to say I felt conspicuous enough in the Jeep. Then I realized she said
roof
, and I agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to have some covering for our heads against whatever elements waited ahead for us.

Making a quick turn into an open space in front of a street vendor, Joanne leaned over and called out, “Two sombreros, please!
Dos
.” She held up two fingers to the surprised cart owner and asked me, “Isn’t that Spanish for two?
Dos sombreros, s’il vous plaît
. Wait, that’s French. How do you say
please
in Spanish?”

The vendor, wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved tan
shirt, approached the Jeep and handed me two of the floppy straw sombreros like the ones we wore in our cruise photo. “Two?” he asked.

“Yes. Sí.” Joanne left the Jeep running and reached for her purse.

“I have some money.” I pulled out my U.S. dollars and held them out to the vendor. “Is American money okay?”

“Yes. Ten dollars.”

“Each?”

“Yes, ten dollars each. You need anything more? A purse? I have nice wallets.”

“No, just the hats. Thanks.”

“Excuse me.” Joanne leaned over in front of me. “Would you consider selling us the hats for nine dollars each?”

I couldn’t believe she was bargaining with him. Drive-up souvenir shopping, and my sister was trying to strike a deal.

He put up his hand and shook his head. “No. Ten dollars for the sombreros. I have some key chains. Three for five dollars.”

“No,” I answered for both of us. “We don’t need any key chains. Thanks.
Gracias
.”

“
De nada
,” the man said with a friendly wave. A smile graced his expression as we drove off with our sombreros on our heads and the cords secured under our chins.

“I wonder if we paid the going rate,” Joanne said. “Or do you think he saw us coming and ripped us off like the car dealer? It’s hard to know what a fair price is for souvenirs.”

“He definitely saw us coming the way you pulled up.” I laughed. “Everyone on this side of town saw us coming in this Jeep, and now they’re all going to see us go with these goofy hats. Or should I say our
roofy
hats?”

Joanne ignored my pun. “Is this where I turn?”

“No, the next intersection.
Ruiz
is the name of the street we’re looking for. You turn right on Ruiz and then left on Benito Juarez.”

“Got it.”

Joanne followed my directions this time around, and with only two near collisions, we managed to reach Highway 3, the route that would lead us straight across the Baja Peninsula to San Felipe.

I know I should have been clutching the seat or clenching my teeth at this point. We were driving away from civilization and heading into terrain that wasn’t exactly hospitable to a couple of Canadian sisters who didn’t know enough Spanish between us to form a complete sentence. I should have been right in the middle of a serious panic attack while concealed under the floppy sombrero. However, I was overcome with a strange and unfamiliar sensation. I wanted to see what would happen next.

S
omewhere on this lovely planet
right now someone is experiencing something new, and they are smiling. That someone happened to be me on that extreme Tuesday last December.

As the tires of our Jeep rolled over the paved road leading away from Ensenada and our overland trek was officially underway, I realized I wasn’t panicked.

“This has been quite a day” I tried to fold the map so it wouldn’t flap around so much in the air.

“And it’s not even noon yet.” Joanne calmly grinned under her sombrero shade.

“Does any of this seem strange to you?”

“Strange? In what way?”

“A week ago I was doing all the normal things I do every day: going to work, making dinner, helping the girls with their homework. But today I started the day dining on a cruise ship
wearing a bathrobe in public, winning a cake-decorating contest, then watching you leap into the ocean to rescue a drowning baby.”

“Toddler,” Joanne corrected me.

“Okay, toddler. Then we rented a Jeep for far too much money, were caught in a parade behind an overgrown Muppet, and now we’re driving across the Baja desert with chocolate cake as our only provision and these ridiculous sombreros as our only shade.” I leaned back and examined Joanne’s serene expression. “Does any of this strike you as out of control?”

Joanne grinned and shook her head. She was at peace.

“That’s what I thought.”

Joanne laughed.

“I keep thinking I need to pinch myself to make sure all this really is happening.”

“I’ll pinch you.” Joanne’s fingers headed my direction, overly eager to do what she had become professional at by the age of five.

“Keep your pinchers to yourself. I still have the bruises you gave me years ago.”

“I never gave you bruises.”

“Uh, what about the time you pinched me when Dad was going to take us to ice cream after piano lessons, but I started to tell him we already had a snack at Mrs. Morton’s house?”

“I didn’t pinch you
that
hard.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, you didn’t have to ruin our chances for ice cream by being so upright and honest.”

I scowled a moment and then confessed, “Ethan tells me I have an ‘enlarged sense of justice.’ ”

“He’s right.” Joanne settled in the driver’s seat. She looked like she drove lemon yellow Jeeps for a living.

“Joanne?” I asked a few moments later when a singular, lingering question wouldn’t leave me. “Do you still think I’m bossy?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t have to answer so fast.”

“Well, you asked.”

“Don’t you think I’ve gotten better?” I decided against filling her in on my recent anxiety attacks.

“You’re better than what?”

“I’m doing better than I thought I would be with this whole trip. That’s improvement, isn’t it?”

Joanne nodded, and her sombrero flopped back and forth. “Relinquishment is a beautiful thing.”

“Relinquishment? I don’t think
relinquishment
is a word.”

“If we were playing Scrabble, I’d let you use it.”

“We’re not playing Scrabble,” I protested.

“Okay, how about
surrender?
Surrender is a beautiful thing. I think the more we surrender of ourselves to God, the more He takes over and leads us the way He wants us to go.”

For a moment I regretted bringing up my victory in the control department. I didn’t want Joanne to overly spiritualize my breakthrough. In my mind I hadn’t relinquished or
surrendered anything. I simply managed to harness the fear.

What had my prayer been the night before? Didn’t I tell God that I’d stop running around like a monster and stop being so anxious? From my perspective, I was calmly accepting the situation because I was doing what I said I’d do. That’s how things happened with me. If I said I was going to do something, I did it.

“Have you ever read the devotional
My Utmost for His Highest?
” Joanne asked.

“No.”

“Oswald Chambers wrote it, and for the month of January, there’s an entry that says, ‘Get into the habit of saying, “Speak, Lord,” and life will become a romance.’ That’s what this past year has been for me, a fresh, adventurous romance.”

“Does this have anything to do with the guy at work whom you now want to get away from?” I asked.

Joanne looked at me with her mouth twisted to the side. “What are you talking about?”

“Last night you said you wanted to move to Vancouver because you didn’t want to be around someone at work.”

“Oh! No, no. I definitely wasn’t having a romance with him! I’m talking about this new romance I’m having with God. He’s putting all the steps of my life in place like never before.”

“So there’s no man in your life who’s contributing to this romance.”

“No. And you know what? For probably the first time in my life, it feels deep-down okay. God has plans for me. Good plans.”

In our quietly conservative Christian family, we didn’t talk openly about God. Joanne was beginning to make me more than a little uncomfortable. I changed the topic. “Do you want me to drive yet?”

“No, not yet. The road is in much better condition than I thought it would be. Do you think we stay on this road all the way?”

I studied the map. “Yes, almost the whole way.”

“Off we go, then.” Joanne picked up speed as we roared through the hilly terrain. The landscape was dry and scruffy-looking, with clumps of sagebrush and lots of trash along the side of the road. As ridiculous as the two of us probably looked in our sombreros, I was glad we had them. As long as the tie was secure under my chin, the hat served as a shelter from the wind and the sun.

I noticed that the sunlight was different from the sunlight we had at home. Being so much farther south made the sun shine down on us instead of at a lower angle. It wasn’t too hot, but the air was definitely warm.

We rode in silence for a while. I shot glances at Joanne every now and then and noticed how calm she seemed. Her profile reminded me of when we both had the chicken pox at the same time. I was nine, so that made her ten. Our mom turned our bedroom into a mini-hospital ward and put us on a strict routine.

Every morning we took turns in the bathtub. While Joanne was soaking in whatever oily concoction Mom added to the
bath, Mom changed the sheets on the vacant bed, fluffed up the pillows, and brought in a pitcher of water with two clean glasses. Joanne would come back to bed in freshly washed pajamas, snuggle under the crisp sheets, and fold them back neatly just under her chin. That’s when she would close her eyes and that same calm expression would appear on her face.

I would take my bath next while Mom changed my sheets and aired out our room. Slipping into clean pajamas, I would fall back into bed and wait for Mom to place her cool hand on my spot-covered forehead.

During those ten days of our confinement, I remember looking over at Joanne every morning and thinking she looked so serene, lying there on her back with her funny nose defining her profile like a distinct range of mountains. Her lips were together, and the corners of her mouth turned down, as if she were in mourning. I thought strange, mysterious thoughts like,
Is that what Joanne would look like if she were dead?