Backpacks and Bra Straps (22 page)

“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 the 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.

“Don’t blame this on Savannah!” Ammon barked.

“Why do you always have to defend her?” Bree stood on the bed and adopted a challenging stance in front of Ammon. I knew this was the starting point and already felt nervous. I hated when I was the cause of a fight because someone else took my side. I knew how irrational Bree could be, and that neither she nor Ammon would back down. I also knew how fast an argument could fire up over nothing. When she got in this kind of a mood, I dared not test her. On many occasions, I had been able to manipulate an argument and back her into a corner verbally – but it always resulted in me getting beaten up. She once chased me up the stairs of our old house and, like a troglodyte, clobbered me over the head so hard that my knees buckled and I fell to the ground. I was spared further harm by her weird sense of humour; she started laughing her butt off at the sight of me twitching on the floor like a fly that had been swatted. At that point, I could do no more than slowly start crawling away on my hands and knees.

Before violence commenced, she often threw out an unrelated insult that was only meant to hurt the other person, instead of addressing whatever the actual issue was. This lack of verbal skill annoyed Ammon immensely.

Her first attack was, “And you’re balding, too.”

“How is that even relevant!?” Ammon was taken aback.

“Because,” she began, but then followed it up with a very typical Bree statement, “Just uughhh!” She was feeling a bit edgier than usual, as well, given her monthly hormonal overflow, which did not help this particularly fraught situation. She was frenetic, irritable, and fiery. The tone of their voices quickly became harsher and louder. A few uncalled for remarks started flying and, before we knew it, we were hopelessly engaged in the middle of a family feud.

And just like that, our nice day of cards and laundry turned on its head, just like Bree’s Gemini mood swings.
I
can’t believe I’m locked up with these loonies. Surely this can’t be good for a maturing teenager. I’m going to come out of this as crazy as they are.

“Bring it on!” Bree lured us in. “I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not going to back down.” She was up on the bed at this point, with her fists raised in a fighting stance.

“I’m going to kill her,” Ammon replied through tightly clenched teeth. They’d had a few small fights, but this was a major blow-out. I’d had just about enough of both of them, but I had to do what I could lest it get even worse. I actually found myself ineffectively shouting over and over, as though I were yelling at two concrete gargoyles with purely decorative, painted-on ears, “Ammon, don’t you dare hurt my sister!” I had hoped that it would have more effect than it did.

“Ammon you’re not going to hurt your sister, so just stop this,” Mom said.

“No, but as soon as she hits me, it becomes self-defence. You act like you’re ten years old, Bree, and it drives me crazy! And you act as if you’re completely uninterested in where we are or what we’re doing.”

“You can try and hit me, but I’m so mad at you, I swear I’ll beat you up,” Bree said, always egging him on.

“I’m going to kill her. I seriously am.” He directed his threat at Mom, almost in an ‘asking permission’ way.

“You will not! Don’t kill my sister!” I was still hollering away, but no one seemed to hear me, or if they did, they sure didn’t seem to care.

“Why do you say that to him?” Bree said, stabbing me with her dagger-sharp eyes. “Why don’t you beg me not to kill your stupid brother?”

“Oh geez. Because you’re half his size!”

“Yeah, but I’m tough…” she said. “And crazy.”

This wasn’t going to make Ammon any calmer, and I was beginning to wonder why I even bothered trying. But the rabid look in his eye was getting worse; he was losing control. Bree was already a leaping, crazed monkey, daring him to let loose.
If she on a suicide mission? Does she really think she can beat him in a physical fight?

Perhaps my feeble attempts to stop them helped because they did eventually give it up. My sister lives, mostly because Ammon eventually decided it just wasn’t worth it and went out walking to calm down. Deeply shaken by the emotional turmoil we’d just experienced, we all collapsed onto our beds when it was finally over and fell into an uneasy sleep.

I think the whole thing boiled down to poor Ammon being stuck in the middle of a high-altitude, three-way monthly period.

When I awoke, I heard gentle, chirping newborns. Just outside the window, crammed in the corner between the roof and the wall, was a little grey nest with two squeaky pigeon chicks. The sound of new life in its first hours on this earth and the innocent purity of their cries restored my hope. Like the calm waters after an ocean storm, it reaffirmed that life goes on.

Privacy
27

I
t wasn’t long before the next emotional wave hit. The negative energy was flowing, and we were breaking down bit by bit. I woke up with sore eyes and an intense headache.

“Mom? I seriously want to cut my hair. This is so retarded,” I whined, tugging at the metre of knotted hair attached to my throbbing head.

“You can’t. Your hair is beautiful. Why would you want to chop it off?”

“It’s a mess, and it’s so annoying to brush, and it’s too hot. I can’t stand it.”

“It’d be the same with shorter hair.”

“But it’s too long. It’s so long I can freaking wipe my ass with it in the shower.”

“Hey! Watch the language.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. That was really too much. “Are you serious? You, who used the black market to smuggle your entire family into Tibet? You, who made me do something illegal–”

“I didn’t make you do anything.”

“And then you talk about language?”

“Savannah, stop being so rude. And you’re not cutting your hair. Besides, I’m the one who brushes and braids it for you every day.” Mom and I battled constantly over my hair.

“Just get it over with and let her cut it,” Ammon said, rubbing his temples, his headache also worsening after two days of arguing. “Who cares, anyway? Why don’t you just let her do what she wants?”

“ ’Cause my mom always marched me into the barbershop with my five brothers and gave me the same awful cut they got,” she told me, for what must’ve been the hundredth time. “Everyone else had long, beautiful hair, and I really wanted mine long, but it was always short and ugly, ‘cause it was ‘practical’.” Mom was finally allowed to let her hair grow out as a teenager, but once she was nineteen and pregnant with Ammon, it never grew much past shoulder length. I knew she was afraid that if I cut mine, it would never grow back, either, so her answer was always, “No way.”

“Okay, whatever. But I
am
getting my nose pierced in India,” I said.

“You know what? I’m sick of you constantly bitching. Do whatever you want,” she said, and her language surprised me so much that I physically took a step back. After the blow-out with Bree, Mom was not feeling particularly disposed to tolerate any more grumpiness or teenage-style mood swings. She grabbed the camera, the room key, and her money pouch and threw them all in her daypack – hard. “Forget it. You’re not coming with us today. I’m not going to take you if you’re going to act like this. I need a break.”

“She’s not coming? Why not?” Ammon asked as he stood in the doorway waiting for us to go sightseeing for the day.

Before turning to leave, she said, “And if you’re not careful, Savannah, I’m going to send you home to stay with your dad.”

“Well, that’s just great,” I shouted after them as they walked out the door. “Now what am I supposed to do?” I couldn’t believe how unfair she was being. She knew I wanted to go home, but she also knew that I had nothing left there to go back to. I was trapped in a lose/lose situation.

I slowly became aware of my oddly silent surroundings, and a few scary thoughts crossed my mind, as usual. Thoughts like,
“What if they don’t come back? How would I call the police? How would I know where to go?”
My last concern, as silly as it will sound, was,
“What on earth would I do with all their junk?”

But as my disappointment and shock cooled off, I realized that there was an upside. This was the first time I’d spent without the family in, how long? I ran to my journal lying open on my bed – one hundred and thirty-three days. I was about to enjoy my first moments without them. As unfair as I thought Mom had been, I thought I’d better take advantage of this rare opportunity. I scanned the area suspiciously, checking for peepholes to make sure I was truly alone. The almost complete lack of privacy had been gripping my loins, especially lately. It had crossed my mind a thousand times, even before we’d embarked on this familial odyssey.
There’s more than one way to turn lemons into lemonade,
I thought, as I unzipped my pants and reached my hand down to that soft spot I’d so dearly missed.

“You know, it’s a real shame you missed out today,” Mom said when they returned hours later, in that motherly, rub-it-in way she sometimes adopted.

“You’re the one who left me here. I didn’t say I didn’t want to go,” I said, but I didn’t push it.

“Yeah, she’s the one who really cares about what we’re seeing around here,” Ammon defended me.

“We even got to see the monks during one of their debates. They were all gathered around in groups of two or three. We didn’t know what they were saying, of course, but they were waving their arms and slapping their hands in front of the other guys’ faces,” Bree said.

“Drepung is the biggest monastery around Lhasa; some say it’s the biggest in the whole world, and it’s built right on the side of a mountain. It used to house ten thousand monks in its prime, but not anymore. Only about seven hundred monks live there now after the Communists killed most of them,” Ammon said. “It’s by far the coolest thing we’ve seen in Tibet, possibly even in all of China.”

“Thanks a whole lot, Mom. I sure am glad I missed that.” I glared at her as self-righteously as I dared.

“So, what did you do with yourself all day, Savannah?” Bree asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“Oh, not much really. Wrote in my journal, read a bit, reorganized my bags. You know, just fiddled around a bit.” I didn’t dare let them know how much I’d enjoyed myself, and what a much-needed break it had been. I smiled to myself as I realized how reenergized I felt.