At the Heart of the Universe (33 page)

Clio understands. It's her worst fear, this hand proclaiming,
She is mine. You may have her, have her for a long time, even all of this life, but you know that she is mine. It doesn't matter that I gave her away—now she is back
. Clio has an impulse to push the hand away—but catches herself.
Hey, don't go there. She will have her daughter for a few hours, and then we'll be gone.
She nods to Katie that it's okay to go with her.

Katie feels Xiao Lu's hand guide her to a stool in front of the table. She sits.

Though the table is in front of two windows, they are small, and the light through the rain is dim. Xiao Lu lights a kerosene lamp. The scent is acrid. Katie sneezes.

As Xiao Lu does whenever she approaches her art, she glances at the proverb she painted on the beam above: “For a woman to be without talents is synonymous with virtue.”
This always stirs her outrage, which focuses her attention on her art. Frees it up to flow into her spirit and through her heart and arm and hand and fingers and brush, out onto the blank sheet of rice paper, bringing the character to life. Now she hesitates, not because the outrage is not there, but because she has a different goal. She wants to talk with her daughter.

29

But how? What will interest her?

For a long moment she stares at the white scroll, and nothing comes. And then she sees in her mind's eye another piece of paper, the map they have been following, with the drawings of the monkeys, and remembers, and knows.

Animals. A monkey, but the character doesn't look like a monkey really. Start with a horse—all little girls love horses.

She picks up her brush and, looking at Katie, says in Chinese, “I will draw a picture of a horse, and then I will draw the character for ‘horse.'”

Katie, embarrassed at not being able to understand, watches closely.

She twirls the brush between her thumb and finger to make a nice tip, and straightens it. She fills the inkstone, closes her eyes to settle, and in a few strokes makes a line drawing of a horse:

She shows Katie, mimicking holding reins for a gallop, and says the Chinese word. Katie nods, interested. She repeats the word, prompting Katie to say it. Shyly, quietly, she does so. Xiao Lu smiles and nods her approval, and rolls the tip again against the smooth surface of the inkstone to regain its form. In the time it takes to do this she brings the character to mind and then, as it leaves her mind and without her willing it, out flows the character for “horse”:

Katie stares intently at this, and then all of a sudden sees it, sees in the character the drawing, in the drawing the animal. She looks up past Xiao Lu to Clio and says excitedly, “Mom, this is really neat, do you see it?”

“No, but tell me what you see.”

“Like, in the drawing of the horse, these three strokes are the mane flowing in the wind, like they are right here in the what-do-you-call-it?”

“The Chinese character.”

“Yeah, and here's the tail, and the tail of the character, and under the body these four dots in the character mean the racing hooves, and it's neat because in the character it's like the horse is galloping along so fast that the hooves hardly even touch the ground and the mane is flowing back and the wind even pushes the face flat!” Katie glances up to Xiao Lu and copies her motion of riding a galloping horse.

Xiao Lu, delighted, nods and says, “I can make it even more simple for you.” Now she is into her art, the calligraphy that takes the character and simplifies it but leaves the essence. She draws this:

Katie nods and smiles at Xiao Lu.

It is the first time. She smiles back.

“See, Mom,” Katie says, looking past her to Clio, “the horse is still there!”

“Yes,” Clio says, hardly seeing the horse, because she is troubled by the smile. “I see.”

Xiao Lu is already on to another animal, a deer. First, the line sketch of the animal:

Katie immediately sees what it is, saying, “A deer!”

Xiao Lu nods and then, breathing out, makes the character:

“It doesn't really look much like a deer,” Katie says, shaking her head.

Xiao Lu understands, and draws just the head of the deer, with the antlers:

Katie pokes her fingers up to mimic antlers, and nods.

Xiao Lu draws the character:

Katie nods, and points to the whole deer, and indicates, “But they're different.”

Xiao Lu nods and, by pointing to her own head, and then Katie's, then Pep's and Clio's, shows that this is the character for “head.”

“Hey, that's neat!” Katie says. “The deer head is the character for our heads too!” She smiles at Xiao Lu.

It irks Clio—and then it irks her even more that it does.

“And,” Katie says, pointing to the whole deer character and, trying to gesture with her hands, “do you have deer around here?”

Xiao Lu gestures that she doesn't understand.

“Dad, can you help?”

Pep picks up on Clio's hurt. She's making
way
too much of all this—but then maybe he would too, if it were young William here instead. He thinks he needs to lighten things up a bit. “Right,” he says, thinking,
Charades.
He extends his arm and taps three fingers on it. “Three syllables.” He tugs his ear. “Sounds like?”

Xiao Lu wonders why he is itching his arm and tugging his ear and smiling, and offers him more tea. He shakes his head no. She watches as he clumsily gestures, and then tries again, and finally she gets it—he wants to know if there are deer nearby. She nods her head yes, and makes the gesture of feeding them from her hand.

“Wow! They're just like her sister Tao said, they're tame and she feeds them.” Katie points to her watch, and asks, “When?”

Xiao Lu says, “At dusk and dawn.” Katie doesn't understand. Xiao Lu gestures, and draws a sun: