Backpacks and Bra Straps (27 page)

Compromises
33

B
efore we left Vancouver, I was forced to find new homes for all of my pets. Out of the kindness of her heart, Terri had agreed to care for my tortoise, Buttercup, and my peach-faced lovebird, Autumn. I’d mentioned Buttercup and Autumn during a Skype conversation, and then began to worry when I didn’t hear from Terri for a few days. Whenever her green MSN icon appeared online, I’d type a quick ‘HI’, but she’d disappear almost instantly, which left me feeling hurt and rejected. Eventually, I figured out that there must be a problem with the pets. If so, I didn’t want her to treat me like that; I just wanted to know what was going on. Mom sent her an email to let her know that if something had happened to them, she should not avoid us or feel guilty, that we appreciated her taking care of them for us, and that we loved her no matter what.

As it turned out, Autumn had died, and I was heartbroken when I heard. Autumn was an incredibly attentive, smart bird. Lovebirds aren’t usually talkers, but she was very social and could say several words. She’d always follow me around the house and land on my shoulder, chirping in my ear. She was my next favourite pet after Harrison, the five-year-old Maltese dog I hadn’t had a chance to say a proper goodbye to, and I still hadn’t even gotten over that. I left the Internet café feeling empty and somewhat betrayed.

Passing beneath bats hanging in trees and treading carefully between baskets full of cobras on the walk home, I got stuck in a crowd of backpackers who were attentively ogling a snake charmer who displayed a huge boa constrictor. All the foreign girls were delighted, shrieking with excitement as they watched him adeptly handle the giant serpent. The snake charmer – with his dramatic black moustache and bright orange turban – dared me with his dark eyes as he stepped in front of me. We’d always had snakes around the house, and we’d had a pet boa constrictor when I was still small enough to have been a tasty snack.

I accepted the challenge, easily taking command of the snake and draping him around my neck and over my shoulders like a shawl. The turbaned man stepped back, a bit disappointed by my fearlessness but also pleased by the surprised reactions I got from the growing crowd. I’d always been enchanted by the powerful, majestic way snakes move; they feel like they are floating over your skin. Sensing the scales moving so smoothly over my arms and neck brought back memories of my gorgeous black and yellow king snake, Eve, and the thought of her instantly made my eyes tear up.

I was just about done in from all these emotions when Mom urged, “C’mon Savannah, put it down. He just wants money. Let’s go.” I gave the snake a kiss goodbye and handed him back to his owner, who promptly stuck his hand out for money.

Stomping up the dark staircase to my room a few minutes later, I took my hurt out on Mom. “You don’t even care that Autumn died, or that I had to give away my pets. But I do. It’s your fault that I’ve lost Harry, my geckos, and now Autumn. Who’s next? And in the end, I’ll most likely lose Terri, too. It’s so not fair. I can’t take it anymore!”

Bree was just putting her daypack on when I stormed into the room with Mom close on my heels.

“I can’t take it either. Of course I care. I feel terrible. Do you honestly think I’m a monster with no feelings? You’re being completely unreasonable, and I won’t listen to this. I don’t even want to be around you. You’re not coming with us today.” Mom then glared over at Bree. “And neither are you!” The door caught the wind and slammed behind her when she left to meet Ammon, who was waiting downstairs.

Bree and I just stared at each other in the abrupt silence for a while before Bree broke the spell. “I’m not sure what just happened there. I wasn’t even the grumpy one this time.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, either.” We were both so baffled and caught off guard by Mom’s behaviour that we actually broke out into therapeutic laughter.

“What the heck did you do to her? She was so mad at you that she left me behind, too!” Bree laughed. “I can’t believe she just did that. And I’m hungry.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing. We’re stuck now and we don’t have any food or money. Wanna play cards?”

“Sure. How do you like my drawing?” Bree grinned as she held up her latest artwork.

“Eeew, that is so disturbing,” I said, nudging Bree and pointing at a pigeon sexually assaulting a dead one, its lifeless neck twisted to the side and its wings stretched flat on the brick square. I knew it would take some time for that image to fade from my memory, but before I could think much more about it, I heard Ammon yelp.

“Oh freak, not again. That’s unbelievable. That’s the second time today a bird shat on me.”

“Ammon, I told you the first time. It’s good luck to get pooped on,” Mom said.

“How lucky can I be? I’m still stuck with you three.”

“Oh, now, Ammon,” Mom said, not so easily falling for his exaggerated attempts to gain sympathy. “I have to warn you though, if you’re going to be this lucky all the time, we’re probably never going to leave you.”

“Whatever… I’m looking forward to being up in the clean, quiet mountains for a while.” He frowned at the leftover splat on his left shoulder. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he blurted out, “Age. They tell the age by the teeth.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Mom asked.

“They check the teeth before buying a goat head. That’s how they decide which one to buy. It’s so obvious. They wouldn’t want to put an old, Alzheimer’s-ridden goat brain into their soup. How did I miss that?”

“See, what did I tell you? Bird crap is good luck.” Mom smiled at the smear on his bright yellow Brazil jersey.

“So where does the whole bird-poop-brings-good-luck superstition come from?” I asked, trying to comprehend why anyone might wish poop upon themselves.

“I think it’s because the odds of it happening are supposed to be so slim, it’d be like winning the lottery,” Ammon said. “Although I can’t imagine that the chances are all that slim here. We may as well just call getting pooped on by a cow lucky too, then.”

“How on earth could you get pooped on by a cow? Who would be stupid enough to sit under one?” Mom said.

“Easily, Mom,” I said. “Just imagine that you’re sitting in a car, stuck in traffic, when one of these gazillion cows decides to back up to your open window. Just like that, you’re a lucky son of a gun.”

“C’mon, Savannah. How often would that happen?” Mom said.

“I bet it happens more often than we think, with all these cows around everywhere,” I said stubbornly. In Kathmandu it wasn’t uncommon to see peculiar sights such as cows grazing on garbage on major highways or monkeys stealing food from vendors and then getting away by leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Goats climbing around on the tops of cars or being pulled with ropes like dogs in the streets were also frequent sights, but luckily, there wouldn’t be any more goat-head soup for us.

Instead we often treated ourselves to pasta in a restaurant on the second floor of a building that was tucked away in the middle of the city’s chaos. It appeared to have been decorated by gypsies; huge wagon-wheel candleholders and black lights from the 1970s hung above us, making the fairy paintings on the walls glow, and beaded curtains glittered around cushioned floor seating.

From the open-air, wall-sized window, I loved to look down on the knitted ball of electrical wires strung up like a drunken spider’s web hanging over the bustling traffic. Pedestrians balancing giant loads on their heads, bicycles, taxis, motorcycles, and small three-wheeled vehicles called
tuk-tuks
added to the thick haze polluting the narrow, congested alleys. The piles of garbage being eaten by what looked like entire families of pigs presented a major contrast to the clean, well-maintained streets of China.

As we walked the hectic streets, an odd mix of Buddhist chanting, Celine Dion songs, and the Eagles’ infamous hit, “Hotel California,” assaulted our ears. English signs offering Internet cafés, guesthouses, food bazaars, money exchangers, massages, Italian cuisine, laundry services, and travel agencies flooded the crowded boulevards. The wild atmosphere was a sensory overload, but I instantly fell in love with much of what the capital had to offer.

We loved exploring some of the many tiny, second-hand bookstores, where most of the books were more brown than white, and many were missing pages. We traded in half-a-dozen books that we’d read and shared among ourselves and got a whole stack of new classics.

Sifting through the dusty shelves, I discovered a real gem amidst the rubble. I nearly ripped the cover off when I grabbed it off the shelf. I couldn’t believe I’d found
Scarlett,
the sequel to
Gone with the Wind.
The pages were loose but, as far as I could tell, they were all intact.
Oh Rhett, how I’ve missed you…

There was nothing I wanted more than to lock myself in our dank, musty hotel room and reunite with my fictitious lover, but Ammon interrupted my reverie. Having spent more time than us exploring the city, he filled us in. “The people here are super friendly, so don’t be surprised when the next thing you know, you’re sipping tea with someone in their shop. The locals are complaining that tourism is down, but it seems pretty busy here to me.” The relative lack of tourists provided extra incentive for shopkeepers to apply the heat and persuade everyone and anyone to purchase their goods and go trekking.

We had to keep politely refusing vendors shouting out phrases like, ‘Money is no problem for you’, ‘Come looking my shop’, ‘Special price’, and ‘Ten dollars. This is nothing for you’. Apparently their listening abilities were even more selective than Bree’s, and they didn’t seem to understand the meaning of ‘No’, ‘I don’t want’, or ‘I don’t need’. We always had to keep our weight and space limits in mind, so any new purchase was very carefully considered.

“Come, you look!” a merchant cried, stepping out from the doorway of his cashmere shop to stand directly between Mom and Ammon. “Sir, this is nice for pretty lady. You buying for wife, sir. Very nice wife.”

“What? Hold on just a second there, buddy.” Ammon’s whole expression completely changed. His usually calm façade rapidly gave way to cringing as he explained, “Wife?! That’s my mom, man.”

“No, this is not possible. She? Too young for your mother,” the shopkeeper laughed as he waved his pointer finger. “Oh I know! You funny man, making jokes to me.” He dismissed Ammon’s comment and stepped to the side to invite us in. “Come. You get good price. I give you good price for pretty daughters. Very nice things you finding.”

“Those are my sisters. What are you trying to do here? Destroy my ego?”

“Is not possible. You are much too old.”

Ammon slapped his forehead. “Why do I even bother trying?” I grabbed him by the arm to tug him along. Ammon was tall with prominent, manly features and quite a receding hairline; He’d always looked older than his years.

“Well, it’s not that farfetched an idea,” Mom said. “Don’t let it bother you. You know how young they start having kids here.”

“Yeah, that’s all fine and dandy for you to say. The girls here get married at, like, thirteen, but the men are at least forty by the time they settle down. So that would make me more than twenty years older than you,” Ammon said, concern edging his voice. “Wow. Do I really look like I’m sixty-five already?”

“No, you don’t look that old. But older men are better looking anyway, so it’s all good,” Mom reassured him.

“Yeah, think of Rhett Butler. Oh, my heart,” I said, clenching the new book to my chest. I could not wait to be with him again.

“So why is there so much more English here?” Mom was trying to get his mind off this recent attack on his self-esteem.

Ammon grumbled but couldn’t resist answering, “That’s thanks to the British presence and all the tourists. What else do you see that’s influenced by the Brits?”

“Oh, of course. They drive on the left side of the road here,” Mom said.

“It’s no thanks to them that I keep running into people not knowing which side to pass on,” I said, leaping away from a wild, oncoming
tuk-tuk
driven by what might as well have been an oversized monkey.