Riding in Cars with Noise

            by Jill Anderson

 

            Listening to the methodic rhythm of the air conditioner while watching the vast pattern of green lines go past me at eighty miles per hour, my eyelids became heavy, and leaning against the headrest, I fell deep into daydreaming.  I began to reminisce: How many car rides have I actually been on?   Have I already memorized the entire scenery of Highway 5?   Finally, I saw a different picture.  A different scenery.  Dug up from somewhere in my mind, I began thinking about the adventurous car ride with my church youth group from the hustle and bustle of Mexico City to the supposed secluded casa tucked just twenty minutes outside the magnificent city of Oaxaca.  I smiled as I sat back for the bumpy ride down memory lane.

            Puffy eyed and delirious, Father Andrew (our priest/youth leader), my Mom and Lorie (the brave and fearless chaperones), eight other teens, and I sat awkwardly with our mountains of luggage in the tight hallway of the La Plaza Hotel.   Too early in the morning, two big white vans arrived to drive us and our abundance of American luggage to the car rental shop across town.

            During the routine hour of paperwork, we teenagers took over the lobby.  Lounging around, napping on suitcases, and swapping declarations of boredom, we decided to go on a food hunt for the supposed six hour drive.

            Leaving Father Andrew to the paperwork, the other ten of us took off on our food-finding excursion.  Sauntering up the sidewalk, we finally found what we were looking for: chips, candy, and water.  We were psyched. As we left the store, our arms were stuffed with Doritos Verdes, Bobonettes (chocolate covered marshmallows), coke, two liters of orange soda, and apples for me.  We were set.

            Finally the cars arrived.  A big red box van, just the type a church group might drive on a retreat, and a sparkly blue minivan were parked along the sidewalk, unaware of the torture they were about to endure. 

Father Andrew would take the big red one while my mom would take the blue one. 

Meanwhile, the sugar-blooded teenagers and I had to choose who would sit where.  After about twenty minutes of excuses and pleas it was decided: the adults got to choose!  My brother Carl and I were to be with our mother and Lorie, along with Karol, Annie, Bear and Hayden, while everyone else went with Andrew.

            At last, after the ten minutes it took to decide which seat each person got, we were on the road.  Soon after leaving however, we saw Father Andrew fly across three lanes of traffic and stop on the side of the road.  Startled, my mom cautiously merged across and stopped behind Father Andrew in the non-existent parking lane. Randomly, we saw Andrew running out of the traffic cradling a shattered rectangle of glass.  Alec, looking both amused and concerned, ran over and informed us that the rearview mirror had popped out and an enormous bus just happened to run over it.  My mom, already anxious about driving in the mass of undetermined traffic lanes and speeding cars, sighed, turned on the engine, and kept following Father Andrew.  Alec acted as the side mirror while Father Andrew focused on pressing the dangling shattered piece of glass back into place.

            Stuck in traffic, I could tell Annie was getting antsy.  She was shifting and swearing under her breath.  Sitting in the back seat with her sister Karol and Carl, and whispering so the whole car could hear her, Annie tried to get my attention:

            “Psst, Jill….Jill!”

Turning around, eyebrow raised, I replied, “Mhm?”

“Can I borrow your sweatshirt for a minute?  I just need it for a sec,”

“Sure, what for?  What’s up?”

            “I got my period.”

Not thinking about how we were in the middle of a mass of cars going at the speed of molasses, I responded,

“We’ll pull over in a bit, knowing my mom.”

“I’ll just put on a pad now; all I need is a little privacy.  How hard can it be if I’m wearing a skirt?  Carl, just turn around for a minute, ‘k?”

            I handed her my sweatshirt, wondering how she was going to manage this in the six inch space in the back of the minivan.  Carl immediately turned and glued his eyes to the fruit filled pick-up puttering along next to us.  Every second his face got progressively redder.

            Noticing the look of nausea on Carl’s fire engine red face in the rearview mirror, Lorie asked,

 “What’s wrong Carlos O’Brian?” (Carlos O’Brian is one of the many nicknames Lorie cleverly created.)

Saying nothing, he just continued staring intently out the widow. Scanning the back row, Lori finally locked her eyes on Annie, tangled in the backseat. 

“She’s having womanly troubles,” I chuckled.

             Lorie, finding the situation funny instead of torturous for my brother, burst out in contagious laughter. Suddenly everybody, besides Carl, who was still determined to stare out the window for the rest of the drive, filled the car up to the brim with our symphony of laughter.

            Eventually, it was time for a bathroom stop.  We pulled over at a little store on the side of the road, hoping for a place to finally get rid of the accumulation of water and soda.   However beautiful it may have been, the pouring rain wasn’t helping.  Fruit swung in hammocks from the rafters, and the smell of roasting meat wafted through the air. As one of the designated translators, I asked where the bathroom was.  A lady with long coffee colored braids led us to an outdoor hallway of brightly painted doors.  However, before any of us could use the waiting toilets, the woman shyly asked for two pesos per person.  Anxious and waterlogged, we all ran to the cars dodging puddles and trucks.  After rummaging around for spare change we raced back to the hallway to pay.    Walking into the stall, I looked at the white bucket of water sitting next to the toilet.  What was it for?  Was it a sink?  Were they trying to breed mosquitoes?   Utterly confused, I overheard Emma’s frantic voice,

“You guys, why isn’t the toilet flushing?” 

Annie then responded from the other side, “That’s what the bucket is for Emma.”

“I knew that, I was just kidding,” replied Emma as quickly as she could.

“Of course Emma,” retorted Annie sarcastically.

“Oh, ok,” I whispered thankfully under my breath.

 

 I finally relaxed and thought about how much we take our self-flushing toilets for granted.     Naturally there were still complaints about the bugs and lack of toilet paper.  The whining eventually washed away with the rain, and as I waited in the outdoor hallway all I could think about was the amazing colors of the doors and the sheets of rain covering the rolling mountains behind the bathrooms.

            After hours of Coldplay and Keane, Bear decided it was time to have a dance party.  Carl, passed out in the back, had his feet splayed across Annie’s and Karol’s laps as their heads bobbed along with the car, side by side like rag dolls.  Bear took out a mix CD and passed it Lorie in the front seat.  Chris Martin’s piano solo came to a sudden end, and MC Hammer started to blast out of the speakers.  Pink sunglasses and all, Bear was ready.  Snapping, swaying, and singing, he charged us up again.  By the end of the CD, everyone was awake (except for Carl still snoring lightly in the backseat)  and singing along to “Brown Eyed Girl”, eyes closed and heads swaying.  The offbeat singing gradually changed into bursts of laughter.

Ignoring Hayden telling a riddle, and Karol and Annie discussing Ben Folds Five, I stared out my window at the concrete shells of houses along the side of the freeway.  Donkeys were pulling carts up dirt roads while barefoot children ran past. I felt as though I could see through the sea of gray concrete into the heart of the villages.  Even though I was a passerby, that sea of grey along the highways of Mexico is much more significant in my memories of car rides than the sea of green along the highways of California.   

There were two extremes bouncing around in my head.  I was comfortable in the car, listening to music and laughing, but I also wanted to be roaming the unpaved roads that cut their way through the valleys around me.  Anxiety hit- Were we there yet? When could we explore the cloud forest and wander through the marketplace?  When would I be allowed to escape this cocoon?   When would I be more than just an observer?  My stream of consciousness was abruptly interrupted by a walkie talkie message from the other car.

Alex’s voice filled the car, “Um…Andrew doesn’t know where he’s going…”

Father Andrew grabbed the walkie talkie from Alex, cutting him off in mid sentence, “I know where I’m going, I have an amazing sense of direction. I was just wondering if you had the Tenet’s number because I feel like we’re going the wrong direction.”

   Everybody in our car snorted with laughter at the fact that we had been driving in the car for seven hours and now we were completely thrown off track.  A little while later, Father Andrew comes back on the walkie talkie,

“We were supposed to turn about fifty miles back”

“Seriously?!” rang out from everybody in one long gasp.   We were lost.

            We spent the next half hour searching for the sign in the dusk, finally finding it tucked snugly next to a sole tumbleweed.  “I told you!” Carl, the King of backseat driving, screamed at my mother while Karol whined, “How much longer?  Does Father Andrew even know how to get there?”

 I caught myself imagining grabbing the empty soda bottle and hitting them over the head and decided it wasn’t worth it if I was going to be spending the next two weeks with these people.

            I was relieved when Lorie finally vocalized what I was feeling, with extreme fervor, “Shut up you guys! She’s trying her best! Does anybody else want to try driving?!”

            Silence finally fell upon our car as we exited the freeway.   It felt unnatural.  There had never been such an awkward silence yet.  Laughter and music had kept us sane since Mexico City.  Where had the energy gone?  Where were our huge personalities?

            Luckily, Bear and Hayden saved us with their imaginations. Later in the evening, we began to see men selling little wooden trucks about every 20 miles along the freeway.  Bear and Hayden decided we had to make up a story about these men.  We called them the ‘banditos’.  The ‘banditos’ would eventually jump onto our car, rob us, and then leave a red truck sitting on the passenger’s seat.  We had to work as a team to come up with a plan in case the ‘banditos’ decided to attack.  Putting our heads together, we decided that we would swerve the car behind a mountain and hide out, surviving on our Doritos Verdes and orange soda for a couple of days.  We were definitely prepared for any attack.

            Decades later, we pulled onto a secluded dirt path off the main road. Crawling up the path, we eventually came to three streets heading three different directions.  Father Andrew, only slightly confused, pulled over to a wall where five teenage boys sat to ask for directions. Shortly, we were on the road again and Alex came back on the radio.

 “He didn’t trust their directions. I guess he thought they were lying.  He’s going with his gut, so turn left.”

            A synchronized   “What?” rang out among everyone sitting in the back.

            My mom, trying to stay calm, slowly stated, “We’ll get there eventually, don’t worry.”

  So we turned left up the darkest alleyway.  As we squeezed between houses on one side and a church on the other, a Miniature carousel blocked our way.  With no room to turn around, we backed down the hill, only to find we were back at the wall.

            Adding to our running commentary on Andrew’s confusing route, Bear asked inquisitively,

“Now what’s up road two?”

            When the road abruptly ended, we decided to turn around on a hill next to the road.  The hill, freshly watered by the day’s rain, was perfect for capturing tires.  Squishing through the mud, as everybody either screamed or bit their nails, we found salvation: a wide, brightly lit road.

            Eventually we spotted the graveyard and the school, both indications that we were getting hotter in our hunt according to the directions of the Tenet.

            An excited Father Andrew announced over the walkie talkie,

“We’re here!”

            These words were heaven to our ears.

            We approached huge adobe walls which enclosed our sanctuary.  Once the red van pulled into the enormous driveway, my mom, Very carefully, began pulling into the driveway.  Suddenly the sound of crunching metal rang through the air, followed by a huge thump.  The doors of the van swung open, and all of us filed out to see the final touches of the day.  The right wheel was wedged into the flower bed and the door was pressed tightly against the side of the doorway: the car was stuck.

            All of us got behind the car and started pushing, hoping to release the tire from the mud. When we got the car to budge, we were all relieved. We were almost home.  However, we then all heard a huge “Screeeeeech!” as the side of the van scraped along the door to our sanctuary leaving a silver crater in the metallic blue door.

            Nothing mattered any more.  Tired and done with the eight hours of sitting in a humid car, we chuckled and walked away from our broken and scratched cars to our warm and comfortable beds.  We had made it.