I Grew My Boobs in China (17 page)

“WHOA WIE!” Mom exclaimed, pointing above her head where she stood. “Everybody watch these fans. They don’t have screens. If you didn’t see them, you’d get your head chopped right off.” Eyeing the saucer-sized fans attached to the wall on either side of the window, I was a good deal less intimidated. G
et your hair tangled, maybe, but head chopped off? I doubt it!

“It’s sooo hot,” I complained wishing there were more than just the two small fans. “Oh I’m dying! I wish we had air conditioning. Next time we have to go first class!” The temperature had been running at nearly 30°C (86°F) all week, and I was still suffering from the humidity.

“Well we can’t, Savannah. It’ll blow our budget if we do everything first class, and then we’ll never be able to afford a year of travel,” Mom said.

“My point exactly. Let’s make it shorter and enjoy ourselves instead,” I eagerly suggested.

“Savannah,” she said simply, donning her best unimpressed facial expression.

“Not even second class?” I pouted. I dragged my cheeks down as if to pull my own skin off, my tongue flopping like a dog’s and my eyes rolling up in their sockets to emphasize how strongly I objected to this sort of discomfort.

“We want to get the most out of this trip,” she continued, slipping her smaller pack off her front and placing it beside her as she took a seat.

“Besides, you’ll get used to it,” Ammon said, sitting.

There was that same old line again: get used to it. “You’re crazy. There’s no way!” I told him.

“You’d be surprised. Soon you won’t even notice the heat anymore,” he insisted.

“Not notice?! Not notice this?” I said, lifting my shirt to expose my dripping midsection. I could feel the beads of sweat rolling down into my belly button. “I’m sweating in places I didn’t even KNOW I could sweat!” With that, I snuggly pulled the shirt down to my waistline.

“You don’t see any of the locals suffering, do you?” Ammon stated more than asked.

“Ummm. How about this guy right over there? He looks like he’s going to need a new handkerchief pretty darn quick!” I whispered. The guy across the aisle was constantly dabbing his forehead and stroking his flabby neck with his already drenched cloth.

“Okay, well, it probably doesn’t help that he’s so fat,” Bree said out loud.

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. I was so shocked by her words that I froze and tucked in my shoulders, hoping to disappear. I didn’t dare look up from the floor.

“Hah, Savannah. You’re so funny. He can’t understand anything we’re saying. Nobody does!”

“Please just shush. Shush!” I spluttered.

“You can say anything you want,” she continued to prove her point. Her next attempt, “I just farted!” sent her off into peals of laughter.
This is not normal!
I couldn’t believe how easy it was for her. But I realized that she was right when I snuck a look over at the sweaty man still nonchalantly chewing his boiled egg, moist flakes falling indiscriminately from his mouth. Still, it just seemed so wrong.

“But Savannah, back to what you were saying,” Mom started. I’d almost forgotten about it after Bree’s outburst. “Air conditioning would cost more than twice the price, and there’s no reason we need to do it that way. Imagine how much hotter it would feel coming out of that coolness and then having to walk a couple of kilometres to the guest house. And the places we’re staying in won’t have it, either.”

“Yah, but I’d be
so
cold, it would feel great when I went outside.”

“Either way you’d be complaining, so just give it up,” Ammon said. “The weather’s not changing so
you’re
going to have to. Get used to it.”

“Try to take a nap, and you won’t notice it anymore,” Mom suggested. I climbed to the middle bunk on the right side and lay down with my face towards the window. There were no blankets and no sheets, just the vinyl-covered bench sticking to my damp skin. It was really strange having a bed on wheels, but this trip was better than the buses had been. There was no swerving or bumping, just a consistent, side-to-side rocking. Instead of rubber tires on asphalt, it was metal on metal with squealing halts thrown in.

I tossed and turned in my own sweat, constantly checking my waterproof watch. Five minutes passed – ten–twenty-one in the morning. Another minute – ten-twenty-two. The blades of the pale green/almost grey fan above my head went round and round, humming in uneven circles. “Uughhh,” I groaned and rolled back over. Time stood still.
Is this thing broken?
I thought, shaking my wrist in complete and utter frustration. Oh, ten-twenty-three. Whoopee! Lying on my stomach I stared at the wall and then rolled over to lie face-up instead, gazing blankly ahead. I laid like that as long as I could handle it. Eleven-twenty-five. A whole hour.
Twenty-one more to go?!

“Well, that didn’t work,” I announced to no one in particular. How could I ignore the throbbing in my swelling feet and palms or the incurable itches you couldn’t even begin to know where to scratch, all piled on top of the overwhelming heat?

“I can’t sleep,” I said louder, directing my comment over the edge of my bunk towards Mom, who was reading in her bunk below.

“Read your book then,” was her next suggestion. Unable to sit upright in such cramped quarters, I swung my legs over and rolled and wiggled down on my belly to sit next to her.

“I am NOT reading,” I told her firmly.
How could she expect me to suddenly start doing something I’d never done before in my whole life?
I’d never had any interest in reading. I was beginning to suspect that this was some form of punishment.
Isn’t it enough that I came with her in the first place? Like I had a choice! Why do I have to read, too?

“Savannah, it’s not for me. It doesn’t benefit me one bit. Reading is great!” she argued.

“I hate reading!! It’s so stupid,” Bree broke in.

“I still can’t believe you haven’t tried it yet. I’m already half-way through my book,” Mom continued, “Once you get into it, you’ll really love it. Trust me. You won’t be able to put it down.”

“There is no way. How can you get any emotion out of a bunch of words on a page?! I need to see what’s happening. Why would anyone read when you could watch movies instead?” Bree said, getting ready to start listing more than our fill of classics.

“Not everyone has a TV,” Ammon said.

“And it’s way better than a movie,” Mom said, sincerely.

Bree, being the person who wouldn’t share the remote control with anyone in the house, sometimes even hoarding it in a secret stash of many other “missing” things, almost fell off her seat at the mere idea.

Instead, she said confidently, “That’s just crazy.” Suddenly uttering a loud, discouraged “Ugh,” Bree rolled her eyes and unexpectedly fell back into the corner to dig in her daypack for a book, surrendering to the inevitable.

I couldn’t honestly recall ever reading an entire book cover to cover, but here was Mom, reaching under the bench to open my backpack. Unpacking my load of books, she said, “You should read this one. It’s a classic. It’s the first book I ever read, and it got me hooked. You’ll really love it, I promise!”

She chose the biggest, fattest book out of the whole stack. “What kind of big-arse, intimidating--- Why does Bree get to read that tiny book?!” I exclaimed as she took hers out. She pulled it protectively to her chest at the accusation and graced me with one of her infamous scowls.

“That’s a romance. They’re adult books. I’m not sure you should be reading those yet. They’re pretty risqué,” Mom confessed, pressing her more appropriate choice into my hands.

“Hrmph!” I protested, feeling the annoying weight of it and then promptly tossing it onto the small table beneath the open window.
The only way she would manage to trick Bree is with a risqué romance novel!

“But yours is a romance, too,” Mom urged, less than impressed by my childish behaviour. Cornered by her logic, I was not amused at all. I wasn’t going to read, especially a huge, monster book that would probably take a lifetime to finish. I was sure that doing nothing would pass the time better, but about two hours later, Bree hadn’t moved. She hadn’t put the book down once, and I began to wonder where in the world she was. I’d expected her to fall asleep, but she was definitely still reading.

Legs stretched out on the bottom bunk on the opposite side of our compartment, Ammon sat with his back against the window as he read. I giggled at the idea of him trying to sleep that night with his big feet hanging over the end a few inches, completely vulnerable to dozy insomniacs passing in the night.
Get used to it,
I thought cynically with a smirk on my face. Somehow Bree had positioned herself at the opposite end of the bed under his feet. He kicked her book every now and then when he switched his crossed legs. She never seemed to mind or even notice.
She must think it adds a few special effects to whatever the heck is going on in that book of hers.

“Hey, who wants to play a round of cards?” I tried to coax one of my siblings, knowing what Mom’s nagging response would be. I got only an unenthusiastic wave from Ammon, and Bree just raised her book higher to cover her face.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be, is it?”

“Just get your book and stop being stupid,” Ammon said, looking up for a split second.

“The sooner you read it, the sooner you can get rid of it,” Mom reasoned beside me.

“No thanks. I’ll be fine.” I scooted closer to the open window and crossed my arms over my belly. Shuffling my unpopular deck of cards, I glared up at the tin roof and leather straps supporting the beds. At least the landscape was pretty. I could stare at those vibrant green fields, men working, and impressive buffaloes for hours, but I’d already been gazing at the scenery for hours. Taking my eyes from the window, I saw that the dreaded book was still on the small table where I had tossed it. Its pages seemed to grow as I watched them flutter tauntingly in the breeze from the window. I felt I was somehow being lured into it, like a fish to a hook.
This is exactly what they want.
I just wanted to reach out and feel it.
I must not let it get to me!
I inched closer, eyeing it carefully. Taking a deep breath I dashed over, grabbed hold of the window’s handle, and started pulling down on it frantically. Nothing happened. I pushed and pulled like one of those exaggerated cartoon characters whose feet are braced up against a wall, knees knocking from the strain of his exertion before a sudden release sends him flying. But for me, there was no burst of strength or lucky tug. The window remained most undeniably lodged in place. Falling back in defeat, I almost forgot why I so dearly wanted to close that window. No one else seemed to mind, or even notice. They were all absorbed in their books. I glanced back at the book.
There it is again! Those pages flapping relentlessly. No, no, they’re dancing
. Surrendering the fight, I reluctantly snatched the book up and in an instant I, too, was
Gone with the Wind
.

Chapter 18

Birthday Bargaining

One yuan each, about fifteen cents in Canadian money, got us on the next bus. The bad news was, it was packed beyond belief, and my backpack was stuck to my completely soaked t-shirt in the muggy 35°C (95°F) weather. If I had known it would take an hour to get there, I’d have taken my bag off, though I probably couldn’t have managed to wiggle out of it in the space I had, let alone find a place to put it down.
I’m nothing but a bloody pack horse!
I’d had no peace and quiet, no time to myself, and hardly any sleep since I’d stepped off the plane in Hong Kong. And now my straps were weighing on my sunburned shoulders, rubbing them raw. The sun was shining and I’m sure there was beautiful scenery out there somewhere, had I only been able to see past all the people crowding me, whose heads were dripping with sweat. A pleasant sight, indeed, and my mood matched my distinctly uncomfortable surroundings.

Imprisoned by human walls, I clung onto the one handle I could reach. We had blitzed through the ancient stone forest in Kunming and crashed for the night after our twenty-two hour train ride. We’d barely had time to sleep before we spent another seven hours on a train that took us to the local bus station. I felt like this final hour might just be the end of me. I couldn’t ignore the nagging weight at my neck and shoulders or the salty beads dripping down my butt crack (I’d like to say between my breasts, but of course, I was still waiting for them to show up!) Plus, I looked my absolute worst. Weak and tattered, I was unwillingly exposed to hundreds of people. I don’t think I’d even brushed my teeth that morning, never mind the fact that my hair hadn’t seen a brush for days! Everyone was staring; they might even have been sneering, but I tried to reassure myself that I was probably imagining their reactions again.

Obviously the heat was getting to me, because I heard Sky’s voice warning me that you are more likely to faint if your knees are locked after standing for long periods of time. I consciously loosened mine, thankful that his military experience had served some purpose other than exempting him from keeping me company on this blasted trip.

At every stop there was an automated “Ching Chang Chow” that rendered me completely dumbstruck each time, but Bree would laugh and interrupt my self-pitying reverie.

“Listen! I can speak Chinese. ‘Ching Chang Chow! Please step off the bus,’  ” she improvised.

“Bree, stop it!!” I urged with wide, serious eyes. “They can understand THAT,” I told her, effectively admitting that she was actually speaking a bit of Chinese.

Every minute, I thought,
okay, next stop for sure,
but it never seemed to come
. Just get me outta here and get me to wherever the heck we’re going.
I counted down the seconds of every minute as we went on and on and on. My bags were getting heavier and heavier, and I could hardly move. With every Ching Chang Chow, people would shove and squeeze past each other, throwing me off balance and interrupting my deliberately comatose state. With each stop I drifted further into the sea of people who got between me and the family. The unfamiliar faces blurred and became one in my exhausted vision.