I Grew My Boobs in China (7 page)

“Bree, get down here!” I heard Mom shout from the bottom of the stairs for what seemed to be the umpteenth time.

“You can’t have all these buckets,” Mom explained when Bree reluctantly appeared. “Look how many the rest of us have,” she said, stepping aside so Bree could count the tubs stacked against the stairwell. “Ammon’s got three, Savannah has five. You have
eighteen
! We’re only saving the most important things.”

“But it’s ALL important,” Bree insisted. Reaching into one of the dozen boxes Mom grabbed a half-eaten stuffed animal that must’ve been lost in storage and smelled like it had been used as a rat’s toilet.

Pinching only a tiny corner to hold it up, Mom grimaced almost sympathetically. “This?” “How did you ever get THIS past our last move?” I smiled and had to work hard to hold back a snorting laugh. The tone in her voice clearly said,
You poor thing. You are so confused.

“But Mom, I made that in my grade eight sewing class!!”

“That was four years ago,” I informed her righteously.

“Bree, this is disgusting. I’m sure it was lovely at the time, but what are you going to do with it? It stinks!” Mom insisted, crinkling her nose to demonstrate her distaste. “Most of this stuff is garbage! It isn’t even good enough to donate to the Salvation Army. Heaven forbid, I would ever let you try and sell this stuff at the garage sale.” Searching another box she continued, “And these!! Where have you been hiding THESE all those years?” Mom was astounded.

“I love my binkies!” she whined, snatching them from Mom’s hands and pressing the baby pacifiers to her chest. Bree was consumed with savouring these childhood treasures in her muscular hands before she put them, one by one, on each of her fingers. She had to have had at least nine of them.

“Bree! Are you listening to me?” Mom demanded. 

“Yes,” she said, furrowing her brows and turning a shoulder to Mom to protect the precious goods she clung to.

“You simply can’t keep all of this. They can’t be that important. I bet you can’t even remember where half of it came from.”

“Of course I can!” she defended, and that was probably true. Bree, like Ammon, has the most incredible memory when she chooses to use it. The problem is that she often has selective, biased hearing; she remembers every single time she’s been deceived, like the time she didn’t get the ice cream she was promised at the park when she was three years old – that kind of stuff. Basically, you don’t ever want to get on her bad side because she will never forget it.

Piece by piece, shred by shred, Mom held her hand as she chucked odd socks, already filled in colouring books, cap guns, and crumpled up notes passed in class from years before.

“You have got to stop being a pack rat. This is ridiculous,” Mom said, waving a Popsicle stick in her face.

“But it’s about the memories,” Bree insisted, her now stormy green eyes set on the next sacrificial item.

A derisive laugh escaped me just as the phone rang, and Mom grumbled a frustrated response. Having grown up with five brothers and raised four children, she had, over the course of her life, unknowingly perfected Marge Simpson’s famous groan of disapproval.

“Just give me a sec,” Mom said as she put down another one of Bree’s hoarded treasures. “When I get back, you better have at least half a bucket emptied.” She used the calm, consoling tone all mothers develop as a last resort. “You can do this, Bree. Just take this stuff, go through it once more really well, and only keep what you
need.
” And she left to answer the phone in her bedroom.

Momentarily escaping Mom’s oversight, Bree only managed to collect the things she wanted to keep, rather than what she could throw away, which was everything she had got her hands on. Sitting on the floor to better pick things out and collect a bigger pile in her lap, she sifted through her first box, all the while inventing reasons to justify each worthless item.

“Oh, ok, have to keep this. Can’t chuck this. Definitely, this has to stay. Mmmhrmmpphh, yep, yep, mmmm, yep! Uh huh! Oh no, no, no. This one’s a keeper for sure.”

“It was Gordon,” Mom announced as she came down the hall. “He’s giving us six months,” she laughed. Geez, I hoped he was right. Of my nine uncles, he had given us the best odds. They had formed a betting pool, and the odds were that it would take three months, maximum, before Bree and I would crumble in the third world, forcing the family’s return. My “Aunt Plastic” had avidly expressed her opinion that she would rather have her arms and legs slowly severed than go on a trip like ours while flipping her expensive, bottled-blonde hairdo in our faces. Being nothing less than gorgeous to begin with, she spent her energy and time perfecting the art of femininity, and boy, did it show! Batting the luxurious lashes that framed her stunning blue eyes, her extra-white teeth blinded me as she bid us an early farewell.
So I guess I’m not the only person who thinks this plan is crazy. Not everyone wants to take my place!
Although I was finally not alone in my opinion, the knowledge that I was in good company somehow just didn’t settle my stomach the way I’d hoped. In fact, it only confirmed my fears and made it worse.

Bree’s begging brought me back from my contemplation. Every other item Mom pulled out – be it one of a dozen decks of playing cards, a bouncy ball of any shade or size, or old candy – was getting tossed. Bree was hysterical. Her junk is her life.

“And half of these clothes will be too small for you by the time you get home. The same goes for you, Savannah.” Mom was sitting cross-legged on the floor as she unpacked. “When was the last time you used this?” Mom kept impatiently repeating the typical questions you would pose to a compulsive hoarder, finishing on a resigned note. “I can’t believe I didn’t check what you were storing sooner!”

Ammon arrived home and stepped right into the middle of the bucket battle spread across the front entryway. He raised an eyebrow, but knew better than to ask. A gust of wind played with the ends of his long trench coat as he stepped through the doorway like some sort of dark lord of the manor, his black boots depositing splotches of mud everywhere he stepped.

“Choke, choke. Cough, cough,” he began preparing us for his speech, “Hey, okay, so guys …” getting our attention as he manoeuvred his way through the maze of buckets. I ignored the sight of Bree stealing back a deck of cards to slip it down the side of a bucket.
Well, if it’s that important to her …

“I found our tickets. We’re flying out of SeaTac International Airport,” he said, pausing afterwards to extract the full effect. “It saves us at least a hundred bucks each on the fare. And that way it works for Aunt Pam, since she wanted to arrange a farewell party. We stopover in Seoul, and arrive in Hong Kong May 5
^th
. That’s the cheapest day, and get this – it’s 05/05/05!”

“Oh that’s so cool, I love the number five,” Mom said joyfully. You could just see fives dancing in her eyes.

“Let’s just hope that’s good luck,” Ammon said.

“Of course it is!” she insisted. In numerology, the number five represents freedom. It fit so appropriately with her freshly kindled sense of adventure that nothing could hold her back now. She had the freedom she’d never experienced before and the newly discovered courage to act on it.

“That’s a week after I finish my Bachelor of Science degree,” Ammon finished, but there was a slight mix of joy and sadness in his voice. He’d hoped that the scholarships he’d always earned would allow him to continue studying for the rest of his life, having no greater love than the pure pursuit of knowledge, but Fate was preparing to close that door. As each of us faced closing doors, an even bigger one was opening up, and we would all step through it together. I, more reluctant than the rest, was frantically clinging to the nearest symbolic doorframe and the familiar comforts it represented. There I hung in suspense until a family team member came back to collect and shove me forward into the unknown.

Chapter 8

Arrival

Throughout the nearly forty-hour transit to Hong Kong, I had expected to hear myself screaming hysterically at any moment –
Get me out of here. Get me off this plane now!
But there was never any peak of panic or specific moment when I knew I’d crossed over to the “other” side. I was still just me. It’s possible I was still waiting for my numb senses to thaw.

After my first overseas flight, I drooped like the branches of a dying plant. All that strange airplane food did nothing for either my stomach or my breath, and I knew that my hair was frazzled beyond belief just by looking at the state of the hair on my fellow travellers.

When we finally got through security, baggage pick-up, and customs, the last set of glass doors slid open and I saw the wave of people waiting on the other side. Family, friends, and lovers greeted one another warmly, but I knew nobody would be there to greet me. My head hung low as I entered this new world, wanting nothing more than to have my old one back.
Just a normal door, with normal people, with normal shops. This is okay so far,
I told myself.
Just take it one step at a time.

“Well, we might as well get comfy,” I heard Ammon advise. “We’ll pack up and leave in the morning.” As he dug through his big backpack and started unraveling his sleeping bag, my jaw nearly dropped right off.

“What!? You’re telling me we’re sleeping HERE!? Where and how do you suppose we do that?” I asked, looking around at the airport’s shiny hallways lined with trash bins, benches, and the now closed shops.

“Find a good bench and claim it quick,” he said, as if the answer were obvious to all.
When they said we’d be sleeping in the airport, I assumed they meant a hotel close by, not literally IN the airport!
I didn’t yet know that this was but the first of many sleepless nights I would spend tossing and turning in less than ideal conditions.

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

I woke to a loud, automated, “Ding. Ding. Ding. Thai Airways flight TG 603 to Bangkok is now boarding at gate 44.” Peeking out of one eye, I noticed all sorts of shuffling movements around me. Shiny, black dress shoes were nearly stepping on my nose where I lay. The airport was much busier in the early morning hours. The floor was no harder than the benches, and it had offered more room to stretch out after that long, cramped flight.
What time is it?
I thought, searching for a clock as I tried to casually sit up.

My morning ritual began in a public bathroom, where I brushed my teeth and hair.
Man, I look like something that’s been washed up by the sea
, I thought when I leaned over the sink for a closer look. Feeling out of place, I wished someone would come along and throw me right back in.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Mom said, with a quick tilt of her head.

Facing her in the mirror next to me, I demanded, “Do what?”

“And don’t do that, either!”

“What?” I growled, brushing my excessively foamy mouth and creating ever more bubbles. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just a bum anyway!”

“You are not. Lots of people travel like this. That’s why you’re allowed to sleep on the floor. And I was talking about that face.”

“What face?” I said, snarling at myself in the mirror again.

“It isn’t the end of the world. You haven’t even given it a chance. Maybe you’re really going to like it here. At least save your complaining until we get out of the airport, for heaven’s sake.”

“I don’t have to wait until I’m out there. What do you call sleeping on a public floor!? Fun?”

“It’s a beautiful airport,” she said, “and it’s my first time, too. I see it as an adventure.”
Can she honestly think that? Is that enthusiasm I hear in her voice?

“Especially with that thunderstorm last night!” Bree added, her own toothbrush dangling from one corner of her mouth. She may have enjoyed the gushing waterfall on the big glass windows. I, on the other hand, had mistaken the thundering of the tropical storm for the panicked reaction of my surging heart.

“Fun. Right,” I began sarcastically. “I came all the way here to sleep on a
floor
to see a rainstorm that I could just as easily have seen at home.”

“Well, it was a very clean floor,” Mom said, pointing out the obvious.

Heaven forbid it had been anything but!
“Clean! How is that supposed to make me feel? Enthusiastic? You can’t be serious,” I said, affirming my misgivings. “Pft! And Ammon says this is a good place.”

“Oh, that’s just Ammon. You don’t have to listen to everything he says. He just wants to break us in quickly,” she said, casually dismissing him.
Now at least she’s talking some common sense,
I thought, but I still struggled to follow her advice.

Meeting back at the benches near our so-called beds, we used the free Internet on available computers and wrote a quick note on the blog to let our family know we’d arrived safely.

** We have finally arrived (though we have yet to get out of the airport). Wicked thunderstorm here to welcome us to Hong Kong last night. Very muggy and overcast. Well, let's go see what we can find …

Ammon

Well guys,

Yesterday was officially the first day of the “New Beginning” – The start of our long and prosperous “journey.” The day all hell breaks loose and we become open targets for adventure. Only time will reveal the secrets that lay ahead …

Savannah

That was the longest freakin flight I've ever had to deal with.

Breanna

We all look the way you would imagine after 37 hours in airports and planes. And yes, we did sleep/rest in the airport last night as planned.

Maggie **