At the Heart of the Universe (12 page)

“No—she was a lot older, thirty-something.”

“Oh.” Katie turns away, and starts waving the ten-yuan note again as the next bird sails out toward the audience. But then her hand comes down. She stares at Clio. “
I get it
! You could tell she looked like me when she was my age. Let's go see her!”

Clio feels her heart thumping hard, and her head starts to feel fuzzy, her legs weak, everything misty and drenched in sweat. Before she can speak, Pep does.

“Sorry, honey,” he says, “we can't.”

“Why not?”

“There's no reason to. Just because she looks like you is no—”

“But maybe she's my birth mom trying to find me.”

Pep and Clio say nothing. Katie looks from one to the other.

“Look, Katie,” Pep says. “There are a
billion
people in China, so the chance that on
that
day she'd be in
that
place, the same place as us, is just about zero.”

“
Duh
, Dad—on my
birthday
? When I'm ten? Where
else
would she be, if she's looking for me?”

“Honey,” he goes on, “she didn't even stop to talk with us.”

“She didn't
see
me—I was sleeping in the bus, right?” Katie stares at him, and then at Clio.
They don't get it. Tell them for real.
“Mom, Dad, I
want
to go see her.”

Pep has never heard this tone in her voice before—dead serious, clear—undeniably
mature
. Rhett sits there nodding, a slight smile on his face.

“Why
can't
we?”

“You'll just be disappointed, Kate-zer, and—”

“No, I won't. I know it's her.” She looks down at her feet, and then goes on, again dead serious. “I told you. I said I wish I knew my birth mom. Now I can.”

“It's a risk,” Pep says.

“Why?”

“Well,” Clio says, “suppose it turns out to be somebody else?”

“But then we
tried
, right? We were brave. You guys are always
telling
me to be more brave, right? Right, Dad? Right, Mom?”

Clio nods. Pep too. Clio turns to Rhett. “Who is she, and where is she?”

“Her name is Li Ming Tao. Lives in a city to the west, Tienja. I was there once. All I remember is coal—coal mines, whole town smells of coal. ‘Tienja' means ‘Heaven.'” He rolls his eyes. “Like in a movie. Name and address is all I got.”

“How long a ride in the van?” Pep asks.

“Can't get there by van, the roads are crap. By train it's four, maybe five, hours.”

“Five hours?” Pep says. “Forget it. We don't have the time. We have to be back here tomorrow night, for our flight out on Thursday, at noon.”

“Is there a train tonight?” Clio asks.

“Lemme check.” Rhett dials, talks, waits, talks. “The last train today leaves in two hours. We get in about ten or eleven tonight, stay over, do our thing tomorrow, and catch the last train back tomorrow night. You still leave Thursday noon.”

“Ten hours on a train,” Pep says, “for a few hours there?”

“Unless you cancel the flight, stay longer? A wild weekend in rural Hunan?”

He thinks of the compounded risk of it all, and the insane cost of changing their flights back—and he also has a rising suspicion that Rhett wants them to stay longer just to push his insurance scheme, or something else.

“We
do
have to be back on time,” Clio says. “My family always gets together on the Fourth, at the compound on the ocean in Annisquam. We never miss it. Shouldn't.” She thinks this over. “But if we catch tonight's train, at least we'd have tomorrow.”

“Yeah, if we leave right now,” Rhett says. “But for this, I need
hazardous
duty pay—heavy
homer
.” Pep asks how much. “A coupla C-notes. So?”

Clio glances at Pep, then at Katie. “Well, why not?” she says. “We can't leave China till Thursday anyway, and we have no firm plans. No harm in trying, being brave. It's way out in the country—maybe it's even scenic, right, Rhett?”

Rhett bursts out laughing. “Oh it's
scenic
, oh yes, it's
real
scenic, Clio gurl, oh yeah!” He keeps on chuckling to himself, his hand over his mouth.

“Yes!” Katie cries, raising her fist in triumph.

“Wait!” Pep says, wondering why he's always the one to try to bring some reason into things like this. “Rhett. Is this trip risky?”

“No more risky than staying here.”

“You'll be with us every step of the way?”

“Like white on rice, Mr. Pep, like white on rice!”

“Come on, Dad, be brave! It's an adventure! Mom says yes, right?” Clio nods.

“Why am I always the bad guy? Why am I always the guy who says no?”

“Good question,
Daddy!” He looks at her like he's just swallowed a toad. “Heeee! Hee heeee!”

Pep laughs too. “Okay,” he says, “let's go.”

“Yes!” Katie shouts again. “Onward ho!” She jumps up and bounces down the bleachers toward the stage, disrupting the communication between the humans and the birds.

12

In the twenty minutes since Rhett disappeared up the mouth of Mad Dog Lane, a crowd of Chinese has gathered closer and closer around them and the van. People point to Katie and smile, and laugh, and talk to her as if she understands. They point at Pep and Clio, puzzled at why they are with Katie. Pep indicates, through wide-eyed mimicry, that he can't understand it either, and that her birth to them was some kind of miracle.

Many go up to Katie and try to touch her. She seeks refuge between Pep's knees as he sits on a concrete bench overlooking the grayish-yellow Yu Yu River far below. She pulls down her beaked yellow China Culture Camp cap to the level of her reflecting sunglasses and opens
Harry Potter
. Pep feels good, protecting her. In the hellish wet heat, in the mist of the coal dust that has plagued them since they stepped off the train last night, these people seem like specters from an inferno, dusted a devilish black.

“This is like a scene from Dante,” he says to Clio, “The Second Ring of Hell.”

Her artist's eye tries to find form in this loud, explicit confusion. “All gray and rough—it's great in a way, though, isn't it?”

“It's a matter of taste.” He resents her interrupting his resentment at what he sees as a surreal living hymn to poverty, chaos, dirt, stench, and disease. He feels more and more claustrophobic with the crowd so close, and is fighting an impulse to stand up to his full height and scream, “Get out of my face!” But no, he sits there silently in what clearly is the bad part of Tienja, itself a kind of West Virginia of south China.
He clenches Katie harder between his knees, between what now seem, given the diminutive Chinese, his
immense
bony white knees—and scowls.

Clio paces back and forth a few yards up the cobble-and-dirt lane, toward the sharp turn around which Rhett disappeared, and down to the narrow paved street and low stone wall overlooking the muddy river and forlorn, sooty town. She stares at the black-tile-roofed shacks piled on top of one another, boxes balanced so precariously on the steep hillside that it seems a slight tremor could send them sliding down into the river. She nods and smiles at the crowd, all the while counting her lucky stars that she isn't forced to live in this filthy place, breathe this black air—and feels guilty for it. Her heart is racing in her chest. High, on edge, she is super alert to what they could all find out in the next few moments. If Rhett comes back with nothing, it'll be a huge disappointment for Katie.
And for me? Disappointment and relief, both.

Katie, at least, seems to be tuning things out, and is happily into her
Harry Potter
. Perched on her knapsack between Pep's legs, knees akimbo, she's calmest of them all, into a world of transparently good guys and bad guys.



The train trip, fractured by breakages, took five-plus hours. They were late getting to the Changsha station. Rhett had to squeeze them into a “hard-bench” car, so packed with travelers that they'd had to stand, everyone smelling of sweat, garlic-breathed shouting, and pushing. When Pep pushed back, they laughed. It took Rhett an hour to shove his way through to first class, bribe somebody, get back, and drag them out. Pep's bowels reacted badly and he had several phantasmagorical episodes in the train toilets—a hole in the floor with the rails blasting past underneath. In Tienja, the heat seemed turned up a notch further. An acrid, smoky scent hit them at once, a scent that coalesced to the ground in three-story-high piles of black coal surrounding the station, aglitter in the harsh klieg lights that reminded Pep of World War II films, and Clio of scenes from the more moribund passages of Dickens
.
All three of them started coughing spasmodically.

Once they'd checked into FIRST SNAIL UNDER HEAVEN HOTEL, Pep led them into their tiny, low-ceilinged room and shouted, “Well, here we are, family, in the beautiful nice First Ring of Hell! Enjoy!”

“Yeah,” said Katie, wrinkling up her nose in disgust, sneezing out two plumes that seemed, in the harsh light of a ripped-shade lamp, quite gray. “And no Cerberus.”

Punchy from the horrendous trip, Pep demonstrated how he could not stand upright, thanks to the “nice low ceilings.” He snaked his index finger along the dresser-top and showed them the whorls covered in inky black. “Great for taking fingerprints, in case of a beautiful murder here tonight? No toilet in the room—good—much more sanitary that way. And what's this under the pillow?” He lifted a well-worn thin pillow, peeked under it, then reached. “
Snails
! And look—room service! ‘Snail Pizza, Taco Snails, Peanut Butter and Snail Jelly sandwich'—
ow
!”

Katie was whacking him with a pillow, Clio joining in. Coal dust flew up, the motes glistening in the harsh light like slivers of diamonds. They sneezed crazily and realized that if they disturbed anything in the room they'd aerosolize the anthracite. They moved in the room as if it were mined, afraid of setting off the hellish black.

The beds sagged like hammocks, the sheets felt used and unlaundered, and the thin pillows were the consistency of dough. It was steaming hot, but when they opened the window a stream of mosquitoes came in, and they spent the next hour swatting, sweating. They slept in their clothes that night with the sheets pulled over their heads. Katie went out like a light. Pep and Clio each took a dose of Ambien.

The next morning, groggy and itchy in the hazy daylight, they faced into Tienja Town—now less ominous, more ugly. For the first time during their visit in China, they saw no other Westerners, and as they walked the desolate twisting streets, crowds of dully clothed people stared and pointed. They followed Rhett up a sinuous alley to the address he had been given. The store—MING TAO'S DRESS—was tiny, maybe ten feet across. Two floor-to-ceiling windows displayed dresses and hats and shoes trying to look stylish, and rip-offs of Western skirts and slacks.

As agreed, Rhett went in alone first. Clio had suggested this, to cushion Katie from any shock, and to abort the mission if necessary. Pep was suspicious, thinking that without them present, Rhett might try to pull something funny, but then realized that Clio and he wouldn't know what was going on anyway—they didn't understand the language, and the Chinese body language didn't mean anything familiar. A hearty laugh could mean stark tragedy; a grin, rage.

With a thumbs-up, Rhett went in.

Clio felt the breath go out of her body.
This is it.

In no time he came back out.

“Not here,” he said, “at home. Let's go. And try not to stick out, Pep, okay? Turns out that this place is a ‘restricted zone.' Let's hop!
Hop
!”

“A what?” Pep asked, as he actually hopped. “What the hell's a ‘restricted zone'?”

“No Westerners allowed. Recent change. There's a big prison just outside town. C'mon, let's rock and roll! Try to be cool, 'kay?”

“Oh, sure,” Pep said, “we'll just blend right in.”

Rhett chuckled. They ducked into the van and rode along a yellow-mud river working hard to float coal barges and fishing boats, and past endless railway cars and trucks loading coal. They soon found themselves going uphill on smaller and smaller streets until they came to Mad Dog Lane, too narrow for the van to pass. They got out to walk.

“It's one of those houses, up there. By the base of those two palms.” They all stared up into the distance at the lines of low shacks and the slender, gray-ringed palm trunks, the serrated green leaves at the top hanging down together like two punk-rock sisters on a bad-hair day. “Wait here.” He looked at the group of Chinese already gathering around them, and shook his head. “Blend, big fella, blend.”