I Grew My Boobs in China (48 page)

“Yup,” he agreed

“Why do you toy with us like that?” I demanded.

“What? I wasn’t!” he laughed, knowing he was.

“Yes, you were!”

“It’s no wonder Future went that way, then, if the choice comes down to one ger that’s relatively close by or two practically non-existent ones,” Bree said.

As Future wandered off into the desert horizon, I wondered if we’d ever be rescued. Before long, he would drop down behind the hill and out of our sight.
How will he ever find us again? All that empty land, and we’re stuck here beside one tiny car in all this vastness.

“Do you want to hear the rest of the bad news?” Ammon said aloud, still gazing after Future’s elongated shadow.

“No, not really!” Mom said.

“Oh yes, please! I’d love to,” I said sarcastically.

“Let’s just hear it then,” Bree said, wanting to stop the fussing.

“Okay. I’m really hoping he’ll be able to make it both ways without any water. There had better be someone home.” We all looked worriedly at one another. Future’s incredibly elongated shadow seemed to be one of the few anchors left in the desert.

“Do you think Future will come back?” I whispered to the solitary camel standing beside the van. My words expressed doubt, if only for a moment, wondering if our Mongolian guide had just abandoned us. But no. He was also our friend, and I knew we were all in this together.

“He’ll come back.” I guess Mom had been listening, and she affirmed my gut instinct about Future. “If he can, he will.”

“If he can,” I echoed with a profound sense of foreboding.

Her words reminded me of the seriousness of our situation. This wasn’t just a game. It was real life, and I was all too aware of the perils we faced. Reaching toward the camel, I placed my open palm against the dusty window. Gazing into eyes that resembled golden flakes of sand framed with lavish dark lashes, a strange connection sparked between us. Maybe I was looking for reassurance of some kind or to somehow humbly share his intimate knowledge of the desert. My attention was diverted to my hand at that point and I thought it should have been sweaty or at least a bit moist against the glass, but I was already severely dehydrated. Every nail bed and wrinkle was caked with dirt.
What happened to you, Savannah?
I wondered, crinkling my forehead. This was not the “me” I remembered.
Where on earth did you go?
I asked myself.

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

I pressed my forehead against the window and heard nothing but silence. I began hopelessly hitting my head against the glass. With the exception of the irregular drafts of wind through the open sliding door, the planet seemed frozen in time, and I felt completely isolated.

“Hrmph,” I grunted as I continued to reflect on this different world I found myself in.
Is this the kind of isolation people were talking about when they’d refer to Timbuktu, wherever that is? I knew I was going travelling, but nobody ever mentioned anything like this!
I’d officially shaken hands with “the middle of nowhere” and I wouldn’t call it an amiable meeting. Perhaps off-roading in a housewifely minivan should’ve been seriously reconsidered.

It seemed ironic and somewhat cruel that this should happen to us on our last day in the Gobi Desert. Dirty, tired, and hungry, we were all in need of a power wash and a hearty, Las Vegas-style buffet. My craving for spaghetti cramped my bowels, and I was afflicted by an overwhelming desire to watch
The Simpsons
again. The very idea of a shower brought tears to my eyes. I debated whether I’d be more grateful for the layers of dust washing off or for the cold water I’d be drinking straight out of the tap. My mouth hung slightly open as I subconsciously drooled in anticipation. The water I had in mind was just a little trickle coming from a rusty pipe poking out of a stone wall but as the hallucination deepened, so did the water gushing out. Soon the trickle turned into an explosion cascading all over me, and I could feel my mouth grow wider and wider so as not to allow a single drop to escape.

When I wasn’t daydreaming to pass the time, I was actually very frightened, but I didn’t know who to look to. There was no sense in asking Mom questions. She had no way of knowing how long it might take, or whether anyone would come in time.
Surely, someone would come, right?
The problem was that, even on a busy day when we drove anywhere near a village, we
might
see six cars all day, sunrise to sunset, and that would be considered heavy traffic. Three scattered gers was a far cry from a village.
Most likely, no one will come.
I could deduce that much. Maybe after a few days, we would have a chance, but given how limited our supplies were, it wasn’t looking good. Amongst the four of us, we had only 500 millilitres of water and a Cadbury bar which was only a mug away from being hot chocolate.

I stretched my legs lengthwise on the bench and clouds of dust spewed up from the woven fabric. I was keeping watch for Future – or anyone else, for that matter – to show up, but time was dragging. Noticing how quiet I was, Mom tried to allay the worry that was etched on my face, despite my efforts to hide it.

“Future is a native, Savannah. He’ll know what to do,” Mom said, trying to sound confident.

“Yah, a native
city
boy! How is that going to help us way out here in the boonies?”

“Well, his whole camel idea kinda got shot to hell.” Ammon’s reminder prompted me to glare over at the fat quadruped still foaming and still tied to the pathetic little bush. One good, strong tug would free him, but he just kept circling the shrub aimlessly, nibbling at it once in a while.

“Really, how was that whole camel thing supposed to work anyway? What were we thinking?!” I suddenly found myself laughing, despite our circumstances.

“I think Future was just doing it to humour us,” Ammon laughed. “Really, were we all just gonna jump in once it started rolling and then whip him from the window and roll to safety? As if!”

“Stupid idea.” Bree nodded in agreement.

“If it hadn’t been so sandy, then maybe it might’ve worked?” Mom suggested.

“No, Mom. Don’t even go there,” Ammon interrupted. “Like I said, it was an incredibly retarded idea, but it was fun to try anyway.”

“Well, now that we apparently have a camel friend, what should we call him?” Mom asked.

“Chewy!” I suggested.

“Like Chewbacca from
Star Wars.
Good name!” Bree added. “He sounds just like him.”

“Man, you guys pissed him off royally!” Ammon marvelled, not for the first time.

“And you should have seen him drop-kick Bree! It was hilari---” I was halted mid-sentence by Bree’s glare, and backtracked as quickly as I could. “It was totally not cool and mean. Bad, Chewy, bad! And because all he does is chew and chew. Do you see how he swallows and then brings it up again and chews some more,” I added.

“Disgusting!” Mom said.

“You can even see it going down, like a tennis ball ….” A long discussion that began with regurgitation eventually led to the evolution of dolphins from dogs, which led to the random hypothesis that your forearm is the same length as your foot, which led to more of the same inane kinds of things we often got into. Meanwhile, Bree left for a brief visit with nature. When she hadn’t returned fifteen minutes later, I got to thinking about the little bit of toilet paper she had taken, and debated whether she truly had to go, or if she was perhaps simply avoiding Ammon’s spiel again. It turned out that neither was the case.

“Look what I caught!” she announced excitedly when she finally came back, holding out her hands to show us. The lizard’s head was slightly oversized for his skinny body. It was the same shape as a bearded dragon, but much smaller and had no spikes. Its colouring was striped with green and blue meshing into brownish grey scales. It reminded me of the mating pair of gorgeous geckos I’d given away before this trip. They’d had soft marshmallow-like bellies and enormous round eyes that looked like green marbles with silver threads sinking into another universe.

“How on
earth
did you catch that?” I asked baffled.

“You savage!” Ammon congratulated her. “You were meant to live in the wild!”

“Oh good, that’ll be perfect for dinner,” Mom said. “Go catch some more.” She handed one of our empty water bottles to me and instructed me to go with her.

“Geez! Just what I always wanted, lizard soup,” I smiled.

“Hah! You wish. Not unless you’re planning to use camel blood as stock.”

“That’s sick, Ammon,” Mom protested.

“And that’s coming from someone who wants to eat lizard sandwiches,” he retorted.

“C’mon Norman,” I said, quickly naming the lizard, “let’s go find your friends.” I’d thought there was nothing out there in the desert, but there was actually a lot more life in the harsh terrain than you might expect. The skinny, palm-length lizards darted around our bare feet in the relative coolness of late afternoon. As we leapt around chasing after them, they dashed quickly from tuft to tuft of grass on their hind legs, holding their tails erect in the air. They were astonishingly easy to catch, providing you were willing to dive onto your belly in the fine gravel with your arms outstretched, and we were. We developed an effective lizard-hunting method, going from bush to bush to chase them out into the open where we could pounce on them.

“Okay, okay, I got him. Quick! Bring the bottle!” Bree would shout at me. I’d come over holding the bottle carefully to keep them from being squished, jumping and tiptoeing between low shrubs and then skidding in on my knees beside where she huddled on all fours, her hands cupped securely on the ground.

“Okay, careful now. Careful! Okay, and whoop!” she’d say, dropping another one in to land on the pile of brothers and sisters.

When we returned with a prize-winning collection of beautiful lizards, Ammon was busy writing in his journal. Mom had already finished one of her typical, two-sentence-long journal entries: “We are sitting here stuck. Refer to Savannah or Ammon’s journals for more details.” She was now busy sewing flag patches to the rain jacket of her backpack. Praising our success in providing for the family, she grabbed the bottle to examine the fourteen Normans.

“Aaww, Normy, you’re so cute. You want to meet our other pet, Chewy? Say hi to Chewy!” she said, holding the bottle of lizards up so they could see him amiably chewing and regurgitating the shrub he was tied to. Passing the bottle back, she went on with her project.

“Mom, you’re nuts,” Ammon said.

“Well, sewing on the Mongolian flag patch may be the last thing I ever do in this life,” she joked, as she repetitively pushed and pulled the needle to finish the task at hand.

Chapter 41

Awaiting our Future

We had yet to see a soul eight painful hours later. Even Chewy’s friends had not come back for him. Stranded and lost out in the desert, we were completely vulnerable. My stomach started to growl, despite my efforts to maintain control.
You’re not hungry. You’re not hungry.
I had gone longer than this without food before, but with worry about our situation nagging at me, I started imagining camel steaks
.
I knew we could survive at least a couple of days on Chewy’s meat, but hoped it wouldn’t come to that. For one thing, we would eat the lizards raw first. I wondered how long it would be before we’d have to do that. It seemed a bit of a waste to eat such beautiful lizards. We tried to play cards, but my mind wasn’t in it, and I lost a few rounds in a row. Mom appeared unbothered, Bree was happy to be winning at my expense, and Ammon was in control as always. I was amazed that they could wait so calmly.

The sound of crunching caught my attention first, and I caught sight of a small horse with an oversized rider heading towards us. My heart leapt as I smacked Mom, who was dealing the next hand onto the bench and my knees.

Typically, though, my initial reaction to the approaching rider –
Thank the Lord, we’re saved! –
quickly became –
Yikes! What if it’s the camel’s owner? We have Future’s note, but it probably doesn’t say anything about Chewy. How will we ever explain to him that we weren’t trying to steal it?! Geez, this must look so bad. We just wanted to eat him if we got really hungry. Oh man, he’s going to kill us!
I almost expected the rider to have the kind of shiny spurs at his ankles and a gun strapped into a leather holster that you’d see in an old western.

As the stranger rode up I was just beginning to make out the faint outline of his face when Bree shouted, “FUTURE!!” Imaginary background music played as he rode in triumphantly on his newly acquired horse. I could’ve kissed him! I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my life.

Stepping from the van, Ammon greeted him casually with a smile, “Good to see you, Future, but if you brought us a horse to help Chewy pull the van, I don’t think this one will work.” Future’s steed was no bigger than a donkey and even skinnier than others we’d seen.

“Where on earth did you get a horse?!” Mom then voiced the next obvious question. “And where’d the kid with the bike come from?!” In our excitement, we hadn’t noticed the little boy trailing behind Future on a blue bicycle.

“And how did you get turned around like that?!” Ammon asked, wondering how he’d managed to come in from the opposite direction he’d left from. Future swung his leg over the horse and practically walked off it before he began a very animated re-enactment of his adventure.

“See black mountains? I walk to there! But no one home, so I climbing in roof and taking a rice for you. In my hat, I taking it. From there, I see another ger, so I keep walking. So, so tired. Then, then, when closer, I see smoke in chimney so I running. When I hearing dog, I am crying, I am so happy! I was knowing there was somebody home.” When he arrived, tired and thirsty, they welcomed him, just as we’d been welcomed at so many gers we’d stopped at along the way. Once he was revived, they provided him with the horse and the boy to start a search and rescue party. He’d given his hat full of stolen rice to the family living there. “Then I come. I coming for you!” A delighted smile was stamped on his face. He almost forgot to give us the jug of water he’d brought back; we quickly guzzled it down.