At the Heart of the Universe (35 page)

“Mom—look! I made this one all by myself. Guess what it is?”

Clio goes over. Katie shows her the character she's just drawn:

“It looks like someone walking, like a person?”

“Almost. Keep guessing!”

Clio stares at it, unable to go farther.

“
Scraggghhhumph
!”

They all turn to Pep, snoring—and burst out laughing. For a moment, three generations of women share a laugh at a universal and problematic quality of men.

“A man?” Clio asks.

“Yes! See, it's like a man walking.”

“That's great, darling.”

Xiao Lu nods proudly.

“Xiao Lu helped me on the others but this I did all by myself, do you see?”

“Yes, darling. Can you do a woman?”

“Nope. I'll ask Xiao Lu.”

Even Katie's use of the name is a little jab in her gut. “Do that, yes.”

Xiao Lu points to herself, Clio, and Katie, and draws the character:

“I see,” says Katie, “it's a woman! It's like... a more solid thingee, a bigger body than a man and maybe even with breasts too? It's
more
than the man figure, y'see?”

“Yes, dear, she has a lot more to her.”

Then Xiao Lu draws another character:

She points to Katie, and then to Pep—indicating a Katie-sized version of him. They get it—the character for “child,” or maybe “boy.” She then puts the two characters together:

“Woman and child?” Katie asks. “Is that what she means?”

“I believe so.”

But Xiao Lu is miming something that makes them think of “happy” or maybe “good.” Maybe, maybe not. She draws another character:

And points to herself.

“What is it?” Katie asks.

“Don't know. Perhaps it's her name. Is that your name? Is that ‘Xiao Lu'?”

“Bu,” Xiao Lu says. They nod. They know that this word means “no.”

“Wait, I know,” Clio says. “It's just her and me. Not you, Katie. Maybe it means grown-up woman?” Clio points to herself, and then to Xiao Lu, indicating that this word means the two of them are similar in some way.

Xiao Lu points to Clio and shakes her head and finger vigorously for “No!” and says sharply, “
Bu
!” Then she points back to herself alone, and says, with even more emphasis, “
Xiao Lu
!
”

They still don't get it.

She points to herself, points to her belly, then to Katie, and makes the motion of Katie coming out of her belly. Smiling proudly, she points to the character, “
Mama
!”

Clio freezes, startled by the blunt force of this woman's stating, in front of her daughter,
I, not you, am her mother.
It echoes with all the times when she first was out with her baby and people said things to her like “Who's her mother?” and “Where's her mother?” and “Where'd you get her?” and “How much did she cost?” And the worst, on vacation in St. Martin, talking with a woman at an outdoor barbecue who asked, “Who's her mother?” and when Clio said, “I am,” shook her head and said, “
You
can't be her mother, no.”

Now the pain of all that comes roaring back. Clio stares at the drawings—stares at the “mother,” who carries within her the seed of her child, and at the “woman,” who is empty, moving frantically to some place of no consequence. Xiao Lu is smiling broadly, as if she has only a child's awareness of what she has just done. Clio looks to Katie.

Katie is looking up at her, a rare puzzlement in her eyes.

“I think, Katie, it's time to go. Pep? Wake up.” He stirs, but doesn't awaken.

Katie senses that something bad has happened between the two women, some crash, like a wave into a cliff. She realizes she'd better obey. “I'll get him up, Mom.”

Katie shakes Pep really hard. He rouses himself, grumbling. Katie talks to him.

Clio hears their conversation dimly. Her mind is spinning—and then stops still, narrowed to a tight focus of rage. She can't even bring herself to
look
at Xiao Lu. Survival kicks in.
Get Pep and Katie out of here—fast!

Xiao Lu is startled. The woman roughly pulls their dry clothes down from the string stretched above the stove. They turn their backs and dress
. So soon? No!

Pep senses Clio's rage and the breakage between the two women. “Okay, Clee, Katie, let's get a move on.” Trying to control the situation, calm it down, he takes out his camera.
Nothing like the distance a camera offers. Objectify this. Souvenir it. Even art it up. But control it, yes.
“I'll just get a few shots to capture this—”

“We're leaving
now
.” Clio says.

“It'll just take a sec.” He's already taking quick shots around the hut. He focuses on Xiao Lu, who tries to hide her face, but the flash catches her.

She points at Katie, then at the camera. “Please take a picture for me of Chwin?”

“Chwin” hangs in the air, the only recognizable word in the sentence. Katie and Pep look at Clio.

“Her name is
Katie
,” she says firmly, and settles her safari hat on her head.

“Yeah, Mom, but my whole name is Katie Chun—maybe she doesn't understand. “I'll tell her.” Katie points to herself and says slowly, “Katie Chwin.”

“Katie Chwin,” Xiao Lu says, smiling, thinking,
It is the same as in Chinese—her last name is Katie and her first name is Chun.
Through gesture, she tells them that she wants them to stay here tonight, and tomorrow when the weather is better they can go on their trip to find the monkeys. She tries to make clear that there is room for them all—she will give up her bed and sleep in the cave, next to the house.

Katie understands that they can sleep in the bed here while Xiao Lu stays somewhere outside, and explains it to them.

“I think not, darling,” Clio says tightly, hoping to forestall another fight. She takes a deep breath in, holds it, lets it out slowly. “
So
!” she announces cheerily, in control again. “Everybody ready?”

Clio leads. They walk out. The fresh air feels like a godsend.

30

The hard rain is spent, fizzled to drizzle. They stand for a moment under the overhanging roof beams, staring at the mossy courtyard and the flat stones curling from the door to the beginning of the path. Xiao Lu comes out carrying her black snake-killer umbrella in one hand, the unlit pine torch in the other. There is the sound of a stream nearby, and a bird. After the rain, the fragrances seem to hang in the air like fruit—earth and pine and jasmine and something else familiar to them all—a whole grove of ming aurelia growing near the edge of the cliff.

Clio has a single ming in a large Chinese pot in the living room, a gift from one of the Columbian New Yorkers. The tree is of the bamboo family, but with cloud-like leaves that individually look like the fluffy trees in Chinese mountain paintings—the ones where the towering mountains dwarf the tiny people. The scent of damp ming is unlike any other: fresh, tangy, almost musky, somewhat like eucalyptus, somewhat like spruce. Now, out in the open, the fragrance brings to Clio's mind the
manageable
China, the one in a pot in their living room, or in Chinese Restaurant in Columbia.

Gaining control again, Clio feels her rage unclench. It leaves her shaky and ashamed.
How could I have done that? At that crucial moment?
Shame washes over her, and clings. Scared, humiliated, she seeks her usual refuge—distance. As Pep takes photos, she senses herself withdrawing into that familiar family paralysis of no feeling, of surface perception and response—what she and her sister Thalia, as teenagers, labeled with scorn—but without awareness, then, of its truth and liability—“The WASP Freeze.” And now the signature word they'd been taught to use to nail that Freeze in place comes to mind: “
Quite
.” The word brings a glimpse of order, of control, of one step following another surely on a raked gravel path of denial.

We have done it now, here with her. It's over. We have found her. Visited her. Like the obligatory Christmastime visit to one of our infuriating Hale aunts. No, not like that. For better or worse, this has been authentic. A world on fire.