At the Heart of the Universe (20 page)

“Another farm?” Clio asks. “Did he remarry?”

“If they know, they ain't tellin'. That's all I got.” He lights another cigarette, puffs. “There's an old Chinese saying, ‘The bird sings, but the snake is silent.' They don't want to get involved. Now. If you want to make your train, we've got to go.”

18

As her bicycle spins noisily back along the river, Clio replays it over and over: the grandmother's face, the father, who has taken the daughter and moved away, the fact that no one wants to talk about any of them. Then the immediate past lets go, and something more urgent hooks her: We are on the path
she
took, the baby in her arms, this same ride from the farmhouse down through the village and along this river, and then from Chindu by bus to Tienja, and then the long train ride to Changsha.
This journey brought her baby from there—that grandmother, that farm, that poverty of dirt—to me.

Clio has always thought that the birth mom's misfortune was her own good fortune. But from time to time she's wondered whether or not it truly was good fortune for Katie. Now it's clear—health-wise and opportunity-wise, yes, no question. But love-wise? Sometimes lately Clio's doubted that she's good enough. Katie's birth mother gave her up unwillingly—maybe
she
could have loved her better? A fertile woman, and young. Strong enough to live alone on a mountain, make a new life for herself. But what kind of “new life” is it when you abandon your child, both children? The shapes of path and river float by. She feels a clear moment of peace.
Yes. Xiao Lu's misfortune is Katie's good fortune too.



In the van, Katie sits looking out a window, Clio and Pep beside her. They could almost
see
the collision between her expectation and the reality—their experience as well. But soon a second shockwave seems to go through Katie, and she crumples down into Clio's lap. Her desolation shakes them. Clio strokes her hair.

Finally she sighs deeply, turns pensive, and sits up again.

“Do you want to try to talk about it, honey?” Clio asks.

“No, I want to think about other things, better things, that's all.”

Ming Tao and Rhett are sitting together, smoking, drinking cold beer straight from sweaty bottles. Both are smiling. They seem to be talking more intimately. Clio senses a mutual attraction; Pep sees a mutual endeavor.

“Rhett?” Pep calls out. Rhett comes over and sits down across the aisle, Ming Tao sitting in the seat behind him. “We've decided that we
do
want to leave a note with Ming Tao,” Pep says, “for Xiao Lu. And we will negotiate a fee, for all her trouble. For the fee you will promise to deliver the note, and give us her address, okay?” Ming Tao smiles and says yes.

“But I have one more question?” Clio says. Tao nods. “She tried, herself, to find us in Changsha, and then asked you to try. Why does she want to meet us?”

“I asked her that,” Ming Tao says, smiling in a way Clio reads as self-congratulatory. “‘Why open this up again, it is over. Why?' And she said...” She stops, closes her eyes. When she opens her eyes again, for the first time since they met her she is unsmiling. Clio senses that her lips are set against the danger of being flamboyant. “She said, ‘When I gave up my baby I thought it would be over, but giving her up made sure it would never be over. I did not solve a problem, I created more problem. But I learned one thing.'” Tao pauses. “And then she tells me a saying she heard somewhere, tells it in a serious voice: ‘The opposite of mindful is forgetting.'”

Clio is surprised at this, at the wisdom in this “mindful”—mindfulness is part of the Eightfold Path—surprised at the wisdom of the whole phrase. She catches herself.
Why shouldn't she be wise?

“What does that mean?” Pep asks.

“I don't know,” says Tao. “And then Xiao Lu said to me, ‘If they ever come back, the most important thing in my life is that they know I want to see my baby and meet them.'”

Clio glances at Katie, concerned about where this is going, and yet needing to go on with it. Katie is turned away, seeming to be preoccupied. In a whisper so that Katie can't hear, Clio asks, “Do you think that she wants her back?”

Ming Tao thinks for a long time, and whispers, “I don't know.”

“But what do you
think
?” Pep asks.

“Maybe she does. Her heart is broken. She is broken-down. But I don't know.”

Clio is digging in her fanny pack for a Kleenex before she knows she's weeping.

Katie is looking at her. “You okay, Mom?”

Clio nods through her tears and takes Katie's hand, unable to reassure her. Pep has his arm around her, and she glances at Ming Tao. She is staring at her, with a softening in her eyes—
finally she has gotten what this is all about.
The harder Clio cries, the less noise she makes. Pep hugs her firmly, his bulk reassuring. He hands her another Kleenex. “I'm sorry... so...” She wipes her nose and eyes, and sits quite still, the wet tissue in the palm of her hand like a crumpled lotus offered, and rejected.

“Okay,” Ming Tao says, opening her red plastic pocketbook and taking out an envelope, handing it to Rhett. “I give this to you now.”

Clio stares at the characters, written by the same woman who wrote the note in the swaddling clothes ten years before. Rhett writes out the English translation.

“‘Bai Li Shan'—Hundred Mile Mountain—also called Emei Shan.
One of China's four sacred mountains, the highest—you see it for a hundred miles.” He goes on reading, “Then she says, ‘Go to Elephant Temple—ask for me.'”

Clio feels her stomach churn, the air go out of her. A temple? A sacred mountain? Is
that
why she left? Or did something happen, back there, to force her out? She gave up everything to do that? She, the
other
, is one strong woman. One strong
young
woman.
Daring, as I was, once.

“And then,” Rhett is reading, “go to...” He hesitates, looking for the English words, “Dusk-Enjoying Pavilion, where the path forks, and go to the left.” Rhett smiles. “Everyone's heard of Emei Shan. It's a famous tourist zone now, right, Ming Tao?” They talk together for a few minutes. “Yes, she says it is a big tourist zone. She heard they have a brand-new cable car that takes you up the mountain to the temples. Many Western tourists go there. They have English translators and she thinks even one Pizza Hut, and they take Visa. They want to make it like Disneyland, Enchanted Kingdom and rides and games and fun. And skiing.”

“And that's where my birth mom lives?” Katie asks.

“That's right,” she says. “Third Sister.” She reaches out and strokes Katie's hair, trailing a long finger down her cheek. The red nail polish gleams against Katie's skin. Clio is amazed—for the first time she seems really
interested
in Katie. Ming Tao says something with clear affection and enticement.

Rhett translates. “She told me there are many animals there, where she lives. It is famous for two kinds of animals: tame mountain deer—the mountain deer have no fear of humans, and they come up to you and you can feed them—and, on that mountain, the biggest Joking-Monkey Zone in all of China!”

“What's a ‘joking-monkey zone'?” Katie asks.

“The monkeys play with tourists—come down and let you feed them, and sometimes they take your hat, or throw fruits down for you—it's great fun!”

“Monkeys in their natural habitat! Mom, can we go there?”

“It's far away, sweetheart, three whole days, there and back. We have to catch our flight tomorrow, we can't. Maybe next time—”

“But we have to, since we're already here.”

“We can't,” Pep says, “we can't stay here just for some monkeys.”

“It's not for them—it's to find my birth mom. Please?”

“Yeah, it'd be great to do that, Kate-zer, but our plane leaves tomorrow—we've got Mommy's family reunion in Annisquam, and then summer camp, and—”

“I hate that reunion, it's cheesy!” Katie says, with unusual anger. “Everyone asks me the stupidest questions—‘How's school?' Good. ‘You got so tall!' Duhh. Yap yappety yap. I can't even swim there—the water freezes your noogies! And stupid Aunt Thalia won't call me ‘Katie'—she always calls me ‘
Kate
'! And you two hate it too, right? I mean that's what you always say when the time comes to visit them.”

“Katie, they're family,” Clio says.

“My birth mom's family too! And it's our only chance to find her.”

“We'll write a note to her,” Clio says, “you, me, and Daddy will write a note to your birth mom telling her we'll schedule a trip back after Christmas, and—”

“But it's so far to here, we'll never come back!”

“We'll write her a nice beautiful letter, Kate-zer, get everybody ready to meet—”

“Cheater! You said you'd
never
say ‘beautiful' again,
ever
!”

“Goddamnit Katie—”

“A swear! You used a swear on
me
?”

“We have a schedule, darling, and—”

“Mahh-ahhm—I want to go there, say yes, okay?”

Clio looks to Pep, who shakes his head no, but says nothing. “Sorry, dear—”

“Yeah, but what's more important?” She stares at them, desperate and angry, and then folds her arms over her chest and turns and marches back to the last seat of the van, pulling the beak of her cap over her face. Clio glances at Pep, and then goes to Katie. He follows.

“You're upset about what happened at the farm, aren't you?”

“Yeah, I am, and not seeing my sister either.”

“And after all that, you'd still want to see your birth mom?”

“Yeah. Don't you?”

“Yes, but—”

“I don't want to talk now.” She turns away, slouching against the back of the seat. Clio, shut out, feels terrible. She sees in Pep's eyes her own question:
Is it possible to stay?
He says, “Let's talk. C'mon.” Going handhold to handhold on the seatbacks of the lurching van they move to seats halfway between Katie and Rhett and Ming Tao.

“Listen,” he whispers, “there's one other factor here. I'm getting suspicious of these people. All these years in the insurance industry have made me a pretty good judge of when people are lying, right?” She nods. “Bottom line, I'm not sure I believe any of this.
Any
of it—that she's her aunt, or that those were her nasty grandparents or that the lost sister and birth dad live nearby, the Elephant Temple and funny monkeys—it's smells like a setup. A con. Whether it is or not, there's no way of knowing the truth. Everything we know comes through Rhett. ‘On spec,' okay? We have no idea what he's translating to us.”

Clio is startled. It's like entering a whole new universe, alien to her, of deception. “Sure it's possible,” she says. “But
why
? Why would they do that?”

“They're desperate to get out. They'll do
anything
. You saw Ming Tao's shop, her house—the jazzy new China is passing her by. Passing both of 'em by. You heard Rhett—he wants a visa, out.”

“You don't think she's Katie's aunt?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she's just some woman who happened by the police station just then. We saw Katie in her and wanted to believe it. Rhett overheard us. Don't forget—Rhett had a half hour with her in her house before he came back to get us. She's staring at the bare wires feeding that electric box on the wall, thinking about the lights in the big city. She wants a way out of her life; he shows up with a big smile and says, ‘Have
I
got something for
you
!'” He shakes his head in wonderment.

“True, we can't be sure,” Clio says. “And, I don't know—I feel bad saying it, but after seeing the viciousness in those grandparents, and hearing about the crazy father and how Xiao Lu is so fragile, so broken-down—I just don't know if we should risk it. Even if we were sure they were telling the truth.”

“
Especially
if we were.”

She considers this. “Yes. I mean, if she's been obsessed all these years with finding her baby, well... maybe it's all about... well, trying to get her back?”

“Could be,” he says, nodding soberly. “If so, big risk.”

She sighs. “Okay. We'll write a letter to her. If she writes back when we're home, we'll assess things, and maybe implement them, maybe not. But for now, we're done.” She looks back at Katie. “Poor little girl. I feel so
bad
for her! Having to see that old crone screaming at her, as if she were a... I don't know, something she threw into the trash that somehow came back?”