Sihpromatum - Backpacks and Bra Straps

by Savannah Grace

  “Not to mention we were below sea level less than a week ago in Turpan. That’s a huge contrast. I feel wrecked, too,” he admitted, claiming one of the six beds.

  “I feel great!” Bree said, slapping her chest like a gorilla. I wasn’t sure how gorillas and oxygen were related, but she certainly appeared to be in good health.

  I sensed a new learning session coming. Ammon usually delivered them either on our way to a new place or once we’d arrived. Since he hadn’t been in our car for the ride here, we’d missed hearing any background info before we came, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t wasted any effort telling Bree anything along the way. I always liked to have his lessons beforehand so I could get excited about our next place, but between reading, writing, and researching our next place, Ammon hadn’t had much chance to pre-teach this time.

  “Tibet is a plateau; most of it sits between four and five thousand metres (13,000–17,000 ft), so you can imagine how high these mountains are. That’s what’s kind of cool about it. Obviously, oxygen becomes an issue. Some people can actually die from altitude sickness, but mostly it just causes nausea and headaches.”

  Mom responded by reaching for the thermometer on her red day-pack. “Well, if the altitude doesn’t kill me, the cold surely will. It is sunny out, but it’s only, let’s see now… Is it really twenty degrees Celsius (68°F)? That’s hard to believe.” Mom was practically allergic to cold. She hardly ever went swimming because the water was never warm enough for her, but this time, I had to agree; it really felt quite nippy.

  “No way. How can that be? It sure doesn’t feel like twenty degrees.” I was already bundled up in nearly my entire wardrobe. “Isn’t that supposed to be warm?”

  “Yeah,” Mom laughed, “that would be considered a really nice, warm day at home.”

  “We can’t really be cold then, can we?”

  “My feeties are freezing,” she told me, wiggling her toes as proof. Batting her brown eyes was enough to convince anyone. “See? They’re icy cold.”

  “Let me feel,” Bree said, grabbing Mom’s bare foot in her strong hand, then dropping it back on the bed. “I don’t understand this.”

  “I’m going to wear two pairs of socks with my boots today.” Mom hobbled over to dig for more socks in her backpack, which was leaning against the wall.

  “It’s all relative to what you’re used to,” Ammon said. “Since we started this trip, we’ve basically been dealing with temperatures of thirty degrees Celsius and higher (86°F). We’ve just gotten so used to it that this feels cool. Just think how cold you’re going to feel hiking up to Everest Base Camp.”

  “Yeah, but I think we’ll be fine as long as we’re moving, and we’ll be warm from the hiking. And at least I brought my Hot Chillys,” Mom said happily, pulling out her long thermal underwear. Why is Hot Chillys such a Mom word? I thought, grinning at her as she pulled big woollen socks onto her tiny feet.

  “We have a few days here to acclimatize and sightsee. We’re probably going to end up staying for about a week in Lhasa, ‘cause we have to pick up our Nepal visas here.” Ammon unstrapped his money belt where he kept our cash and credit cards and his passport. “From what Savannah and I saw during our walk this morning, I think it’s going to be really cool.”

  We decided to take the precaution of relaxing for the first few days while our bodies adjusted to the change in altitude. Our lungs struggled for air, and we were constantly out of breath whenever we’d go out looking for authentic street food or to eat in cheap local restaurants, so we spent the time doing laundry, reading books, playing cards, and just generally vegging out. Surprisingly, it was Ammon who suffered the most from what was, thankfully, a relatively mild case of altitude sickness.

  “Poor baby. We were the sick ones in Kashgar, so now we can call it even,” I said as I tucked him up under his chin before going back into the other room to join the girls on the bed.

  “Serves him right for calling us wimps,” Bree said, glaring back over her shoulder. “We always knew women were the stronger ones.”

  “But we’re taking good care of him. Hopefully he’ll be better by his birthday so we can go to the Potala Palace,” Mom said.

  “What are you dorks whispering about over there!” Ammon grunted from the next room, as if we were undermining his leadership and planning a coup. Sometimes, particularly on those rare occasions when he didn’t feel well, he talked as if he didn’t trust anyone or anything.

  “We were just wondering how you were feeling in there?” Mom said, standing up to look at him with her hands on her hips.

  “I’m not dying, and it’s not like I’m seriously hallucinating. Minor altitude sickness is still really weird though. It’s a bit like just coming out of surgery. I’m constantly yawning, and my heart is beating really fast,” he said. “My resting heart rate is up to ninety beats a minute from my usual sixty. I’ve got a headache in the front of my head, and there’s this sort of evil light-headedness at the base of my skull. And I can’t really move around because I’m too darned tired. I’m just sitting here wondering if I’m still sane and how long it’ll be before I pass out. I don’t know if it’ll get better or worse.” Regretting having let loose with his long string of complaints almost immediately, he redeemed himself by saying, “I’m fine though, really. It’s just not something I’d like to deal with all the time. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one with altitude sickness.” He popped his head around the corner, hobbled in, and sat at the end of Bree’s bed. Whenever the four of us were sitting together anywhere, one of us would just automatically start dealing the cards so we could play as we talked.

  “You know, just because I say a bunch of random things all the time doesn’t mean I have altitude sickness like Ammon says,” Bree defended herself, but I thought she would be smart to run with that one; it was as good an excuse as any, and better than most. “Actually, I feel like I have altitude sickness in a happy way,” she relented.

  The look Ammon gave her said he was not convinced, but he let it pass and then eyed me up and down. “And Savannah, you failed, for the first time ever, to out-eat the rest of us. Your bottomless appetite has mysteriously disappeared.”

  “And you’ve been dragging behind for the first time since Russia, but not for the same reason. Or is it, Ammon?” I said.

  “We’ve already established that I have altitude sickness,” Ammon said, avoiding my question.

  “So what about Mom, then?” Bree asked.

  “The only thing I’ve noticed about Mom is that she can’t deal the cards without somehow throwing them across the room,” I said as I stood to pick them up. “Then again, she’s always had that problem.”

  “Well, I’ve noticed a few things about Mom,” he said, getting our attention. “But in light of my new-found adherence to the Buddhist principle of respecting my elders, I’ll keep this one a secret till I die.”

  “What? C’mon. Don’t do that. That’s so not fair,” both Bree and I protested.

  After ten minutes of us hounding him and him laughing, Mom said, “Oh you guys, leave him alone. He’s obviously just teasing you. Can’t you tell?”

  “Or Mom really does have something she’s hiding, and only I know about it,” Ammon said, making us both turn our heads to check her reaction.

  Cornered, a wry smile crept over her face and she rolled her eyes. “I’m not even going to play your silly games.”

  “I have so many zits, I could shoot myself,” Bree growled from the bathroom.

  “Oh great, I see you found the mirror,” Ammon said.

  “Yeah, and I wish I hadn’t.” She stormed out and dropped flat onto her bed.

  “It’s okay. Pimples aren’t a big deal. Don’t worry about it,” Mom said. “Lots of kids go through it, especially at eighteen. It’s just a phase.”

  “Well, at least I’m out here where no one I know can see me. Just make sure nobody takes a picture of me today.”

  Ammon raised an eyebrow. “That s
hould be easy enough for us, but can you resist the urge to jump in front of the camera all the time?”

  She lifted her head to glare at him, then jumped up in a frustrated fit of pacing. She must have known he had a point, because she didn’t argue. Her face was all red and speckled from where she’d been squeezing the zits, making the situation even worse.

  “And I stained the sheets, too,” she announced.

  “With your zits?” Ammon asked.

  “No silly. With blood. My period, you know?” Storming back into the room and bending over to show the red stain on her beige pants, she said, “Just look at that!”

  “You’re such a beast sometimes. Seriously, how can you let that happen?” He turned his head away in disgust.

  “Bree, that’s gross. Ammon doesn’t need to see that.” Mom was busy walking around hanging t-shirts and underwear any place she could. “Plus, it’s completely normal. Everyone has had that happen to them at least once in their life.”

  “I certainly have not!” he said.

  “You know what I mean. And Bree, it’ll be fine. We’re doing laundry today anyway, so now’s a good time to wash your stuff. I’m nearly done with my bucket, so you can use it after if you want. There. That’s perfect.” Mom hung the last of her laundry from the ceiling fan. “We are very good at doing our laundry in cold water with smiles on our faces because,” she continued, admiring her household chores, done for another week, “we don’t have to vacuum, do dishes, cook, wash the cars, mow the lawn, clean the pool, or make our beds anymore.”

  “C’mon Bree, we’re playing another round of cards,” Ammon said once Bree finished her laundry.

  “I don’t want to play anymore. Can’t you just do it without me?”

  “You know we can’t. It’s an ongoing game. How can we play without you?” he said.

  “I’m busy,” she replied, her head tilted over the latest drawing she planned to send to her steady, year-long boyfriend, Fernando.

  “Well, it’s three against one, so you have to.”

  “Why are you even doing that?” I asked Bree, leaning over to see her filling in each colour with precision. “You’re just leading him on with all those love letters.”

  “ ’Cause he’s my boyfriend!” she snapped. “And I can’t be with him because Ammon kept saying, ‘Oh, you won’t even remember his name in a year.’ Jerk! You’re all to blame, ‘cause you kept telling me to let him go.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I said. “And the thing about Fernando was obviously a joke. Do you really think you could literally forget his name in a year? Unless you get hit by a car and suffer brain damage, of course. What are you afraid of? Let it go.”

  “Bree, you take things way too seriously.” Mom was trying to understand why she tended to be so explosive, even though we’d gone over this topic for what felt like a hundred times already. Next, Bree would blame Mom for forcing her to break up with Fernando. It was always the same argument.

  “Well, I can’t handle it. I don’t know how to take your jokes. They’re not funny to me, and they make me mad.” Bree was emphatic. “And I know you hate him, Mom.”

  “I do not. I never said I didn’t like him. I only think he’s not the best match for you. And it’s unfair to him because he really wants to have kids and I know you don’t. You can’t deny someone their right to have a family of their own,” she added, getting more than a little emotional because Bree was just selfish enough to expect that of someone.

  “But why does he have to? He already said he doesn’t need kids if he has me.”

  “Yeah. And I believe him. For now. But down the road, he’ll most probably resent you for it. He wants a family. You don’t. You won’t be able to make him happy in the long run, and he deserves to be happy.”

  “But I love Fernando so much. You’re just mad that I’m not playing your stupid card game. But then you’re all, like, ‘Oh don’t worry, you won’t be with him in the end,’ when what I could use is a supportive family. I want to be with him, and if I’m not going to be with him, at least let me find that out for myself.”

  “If you really loved him like you say you do, then why do you keep fooling around with other guys?” I asked, thinking that she wasn’t setting the best example, in this respect, at least.

  “See? Now I’m getting all these mixed signals ‘cause everybody’s so against my whole relationship, which makes me think I should be with other guys. If I do flirt or hang out with guys, I get in trouble, and if I write love letters to Fern, I get yelled at anyway. I can’t win either way, ‘cause I’m still getting screwed over. I miss him so much, and I just want to write to him. Why do you guys have to be all nosey and make such a big deal about it and ruin my life?”

  “All we said is you shouldn’t lead him on,” I said. “You’re only hurting him more.”

  “He was so nice to you and Terri, doing everything for you, taking you out and driving you guys everywhere,” she said, trying to lay a guilt trip on me.

  “Exactly. Are you even listening? He’s great. So why are you hurting him?” In the year we’d known Fernando, we’d really grown to like him. Terri and I hung out a lot with Bree and Fern, which made it heart-wrenching for all of us to say goodbye. Bree thought the family was being unfair, but it hurt me to see her be unfaithful to him.

  “You guys are always reading over my shoulder when I write, and it drives me crazy. I hate it,” she screamed. In her turmoil, her ability to listen was shutting down.

  “Yeah, me too. There’s no privacy at all.” I could certainly agree with that statement. We lived in such close quarters that we could practically hear each other’s thoughts. We read over each other’s shoulders during our rare Internet time, and Ammon and Mom, in particular, couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of privacy at all. Under these circumstances, it would be hard to keep a secret from our tight-knit group, and thus, nearly impossible not to get involved in each other’s love lives. Unfortunately for Bree, she was the only one of us involved in any kind of romance – openly, at least. This example of the kind of drama romance could open up within a group made me ever more determined to keep the pages of my journal closed and my lips tightly sealed about my massive crush on Grady.

  “You’re the one who’s freaking out, Bree. Either let Fernando go, or stop flirting with every guy we run into,” Ammon said.

  “You’re the one who said ‘I’ve got a girl in every port’,” Bree fired back.

  “We’re not talking about him right now, and you know he was just kidding anyway,” Mom said. “Why do you have to make everything a competition?”

  “And even if I did,” Ammon defended himself, “I don’t have a girlfriend to be faithful to, so there’d be no harm done.”

  “Well, neither do I,” Bree said.

  “Oh my gosh, Bree.” Ammon’s jaw was clenched hard. “Are you really that dense? Do we have to spell out everything for you? You do have a boyfriend.”

  “I told him I can do what I want while we’re apart.”

  “You can’t have both,” Mom said. “Unless he is allowed to date other people, too, it’s just not fair.”

  “But why? He said he doesn’t need anyone else. It was you who told me to tell him that I might see other people while we’re apart.” By this time, her face was swollen from crying and blowing her nose. The idea of him replacing her made her furious, and this discussion was getting to be too much for her. I could see her malfunctioning emotionally, and I knew from long experience that when that happened, it generally meant war. When her brain shut down from this kind of emotional overload, she became even more impossible to reason with, which meant that Ammon would find her unbearable.

  “I didn’t tell you to say that,” Mom said. “Plus it’s not like you’re going to find a boyfriend while we’re travelling.”

  “That’s not what this trip is about,” Ammon agreed.

  “What was Sorcha about, then, huh?” She curled up on the bed with her back against th
e wall, a blubbering mess.

  “And now we’re back to my love life again, or the lack of it. Whatever… You’re really starting to piss me off!” Ammon said.

  “And I hate you. What do you want me to be? A nun? Well, bogus--crap--retarded to that,” she nearly screamed as she threw her wet tissue down. “And why did you have to write that crap on the blog about Baagii?” Bree had grown quite fond of our guide and translator while on our two-week trip in the countryside in Mongolia. He was a really nice guy who’d introduced us to our crazy driver and friend Future, and we still kept in touch with both of them. “It’s not your job to go tell the world about it. Now Fernando is asking me, ‘What the heck is this about you having a new boyfriend?’ ”

  “You didn’t have to call him her ‘new boyfriend’, Ammon. That wasn’t really called for,” Mom agreed.

  “Why not? I didn’t tell her to slobber all over Baagii when she has Fernando,” Ammon snapped.

  Bree was properly outraged about his latest attack on her privacy.

  “Ammon, you can be a bit rude, you know,” Mom said. “You’re always walking ten blocks ahead of us, for instance…”

  “Well, no one ever even asked me if I wanted to take a bunch of whiners around the world.”

  “Now you stop that, Ammon,” she said, whipping out the mother card. “You don’t mean it, and we’ve been keeping up with you just fine.”

  “Still, why did you have to go and say that on our blog, Ammon? You’re such an asshole.” Bree was just about ready to pull out her hair. “I can’t do anything I want. I feel so suffocated by you guys. You drive me crazy. And now look what you made me do! It’s all your fault for making me so grumpy that I ruined my drawing. And I have a massive headache now, too.”

  “How is that my fault?” I asked.

  Ammon glared. “And we didn’t make you grumpy, your zitty face did.”

  “Because if you” she said, pointing at me “hadn’t irritated me and distracted me so much. Ugh… Now I really am grumpy,” she announced, stating the obvious.