At the Heart of the Universe (16 page)

“We can't afford another daughter! Where can we get money for the penalty? They can take our land, destroy our house! It costs
too much
—unless it's a boy!”

“I will die!”

He looked at her, incomprehension in his eyes, and walked away.



Not so his mother. When she heard that Xiao Lu did not want to get pregnant again, she was furious. One day as soon as the men had gone off to weed the winter wheat she cornered Xiao Lu and said the thing that she knew would hurt her the most—thinking that the thing that hurts the most brings the most result.

“You gave away your daughter so that we could have a son, and now you won't have a son? Are you crazy?”

Xiao Lu said nothing.

“If you don't even try for a son it makes your giving away your daughter worse!” In her worn and tightly wrinkled old face, her eyes narrowed, and her mouth settled into a grimace that almost looked like a smile. And then, to Xiao Lu's horror, she did smile, and said, “You gave away your child—your own flesh and blood—for
nothing
?”

Xiao Lu was stunned by the cruelty of this accusation. The tension in the air was solid, like a clod of earth.

Her mother-in-law burst out laughing. When she calmed down, she said, “You say your mother was Buddhist. Go to the temple in Ja, it's not far—take two lengths of red cloth and a bundle of incense. There is a famous Kwan Yin there, the goddess who brings sons. Give her the cloth, light the incense, pray to her. She will give us a son.”

“I will do that.” Trying to make the best of it, Xiao Lu asked, “But if it's still a girl, will you let me keep it?”

“Yes.” She laughed so hard and so long that tears rolled down her cheeks.

Xiao Lu looked into her mother-in-law's eyes, eyes yellowish where white should have been, eyes lying in the face like dead oysters. “Forgive me, Mother, but I don't believe you.”

That winter there came a truce, but an uneasy one, as if Jiwei's mother was giving her a chance to get pregnant. The only hint that she was furious and contemptuous was her laughter. Of course it was usual in the family to laugh at any hint of trouble, or of strong feeling behind it, and as they sat in front of the coal stove mending clothes or playing cards, or games with Xia, from time to time it was clear that Jiwei's mother was laughing at her, at her misfortune. If she did a bad job on a stitch, or distractedly fell behind in shelling fava beans or attending to Xia—even if she, flustered, made a stupid move at cards—his mother would make a digging comment and laugh, and the others would join in. Xiao Lu, embarrassed, would be even more awkward with the next stitches, or shellings, or card, and more laughter would come. At first, Jiwei resisted this, but after a while he too joined in. Much to her horror, so did Xia.



Spring came early. The fields needed to be prepared for the first rice. Every hand was needed. Again she left little Xia with her mother-in-law, and went with the men into the fields. It was so cold that soon she couldn't feel her bare feet as they sank at each step into the mud. The hoe seemed theoretical, bouncing off the hard earth with every other blow. The wind was from the east, and carried a thick stinging mist. She had to squint to see, and had to plant her feet wide apart to steady herself. But the pain helped her to forget, and to go on.

After a few days of this she noticed a change in Xia. Nothing tangible, but it seemed that the little girl was less attached to her, looking less often first for her, and to her. She was now almost four, though, so Xiao Lu figured it must just be a step in her growing up, and a healthy step at that. But then she noticed that the person Xia went to, first, was her mother-in-law.

She realized what was happening. They had used Xia before, as the reason to give away Chun, and that had worked. Now they figured that they would use Xia again. If they could turn Xia against her, if she had the feeling that if she didn't get pregnant again and produce a son she would lose Xia too, they would do it.

“You're turning Xia against me,” she said to Jiwei.

“Talk to my mother.”

“You're turning my daughter against me,” she said to his mother, who, from the stove, stared up at her with a mixture of contempt and cruel curiosity.

“Did you get yourself sterilized without telling us?”

“No! I want a son too!”

“Are you pregnant?”

“No.”

“If you don't get pregnant, you cannot stay.”

“And Xia?”

“Will stay with us.”

“You cannot do that to me, and to her.”

“We can.”

“You would not.”

She smiled, and then, without covering her almost toothless mouth with her hand, she laughed, and her laughter made her laugh even harder, so that her face in the dim light had the icy eyes of a cruel ghost. She seemed oblivious to Xiao Lu staring at her in revulsion. Finally, holding her little belly, she said, “It is up to you. It is your choice. Give us a son.”



Nothing changed, and everything did. Little by little, day by day, as the seasons rolled into one another, despite all of Xiao Lu's efforts, Xia was being pulled away from her, pulled toward Jiwei and his mother and father. In all of the compound and farmland, Xiao Lu had found one spot of comfort, one actual spot, on the ground. Up the path out of sight of the house was an ancient guava tree. It had not borne fruit in anyone's memory, and some of its branches were dead, snapped off at the ends by storms. Yet Xiao Lu had been struck from the first by the tremendous life force in it. In two places where horizontal branches had been snapped off, new branches had grown straight up toward the light. It spoke to her of a living thing that, broken off bluntly in two places, had channeled the blocked flow of
chi out toward the phantom limb to flow up in healthy, straight, flowering new trunks. She had heard how, on the swampy south coast, banyan trees—called “walking trees”—would, when blocked in one direction, send down suckers from the branches and trunk to root in the mud and surround it, protecting it and extending it in another direction.

But the guava tree seemed even more to speak to her own life. When she first had married and come to live at Jiwei's compound, feeling that there was no privacy in the house—they had a tiny room in the loft, with a makeshift door—she and Jiwei had found this place. They could mold their backs to the trunk, and nestle on the big fallen guava leaves, and look out and down to the curl of the river through the paddies in the valley below, and watch the sun set over the far mountains. It was their special place—a place where two young strangers had fallen into liking each other, a like that soon blossomed, through touch, into love. They played there like children, chasing each other around the weathered trunk, ducking under the branches, screeching and laughing. When Xia came, it was the special place for the three of them. The little girl loved playing around the trunk of the tree—hide-and-seek, and running here and there to the edge of the path, and onto the dikes of the nearby paddy. The guava tree seemed, to both Jiwei and her, to respond to their joy and laughter. Blossoms threaded out along limbs that seemed totally dead and, tenacious, persisted, a few bearing fruit. To them, a magical place.

It was to this tree that Xiao Lu retreated during these months and years—the one place of comfort in the world that she had left. Jiwei sometimes would come there with her, but the vision of a son and her reluctance would never leave them alone, and he soon stopped. Xia came less and less.

One day Xia bit into a piece of bread and squealed in pain and reached into her mouth.

“I lost my first tooth! Look!”

In her hand was an upper tooth. “Good for you, Xia!” Xiao Lu said. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes!”

“Here.” Xiao Lu took her on her lap and pressed an edge of her shirt to the gap, to stop the bleeding. Xia quieted. “Now we have to go outside and, since it was an upper tooth, throw it up on the roof for good luck.”

“What happens if it's a lower tooth?”

“We bury it in the ground. You hold it, and I'll just wash my shirt and then I'll throw it for you.” She went to the bucket to wash the blood off, and when her back was turned, Jiwei's mother took Xia outside. Xiao Lu rushed out after them, and got there in time to see her mother-in-law throw the tooth up onto the roof. Xia screeched with delight, clapped her hands, and screeched some more.

“Why did you do that?” Xiao Lu screamed, furious. “I am her mother. I am to do it!”

Xia stared at her, stunned by this side of her mother that she had never, ever, seen before, this fierceness and anger. Her eyes got big.

Jiwei's mother just smiled.

“You witch!” Xiao Lu screamed. “Stay away! Stop it! I won't allow it!”

Xia stared.

Jiwei's mother mimicked her to Xia and laughed, and Xia broke out of her surprise and fear and laughed too. They both stood there laughing, until Xiao Lu snatched up Xia in her arms and, carrying her on her hip, started walking up the path to the guava tree.

“No, no, let me down!” Xia cried, struggling against her.

Xiao Lu held on until they got to the ancient guava tree, and then, still holding her, sat down in her usual place, her back against the rough old trunk.

“Why are you laughing at your mother?” she asked.

“I don't know! I want to go back to Grandma.”

“What is Grandma telling you about me?”

“That you don't want to give me a brother.”

“But I do, I really do.”

“Why don't you then?”

“I can't, not yet.”

Xia seemed to calm down, and with a puzzled look in her eyes, she said, “They say you are sick. Are you sick?”

“Who says?”

“Grandma.”

“Anybody else?”

“I want to go back.”

“Tell me if anybody else?”

“I want to go back.”

She knew then for sure that Jiwei had been converted to his mother's cause. “No, Xia dear,” she said, taking her hand, “I am not sick. Not sick at all.”

“Then why do you act sick?”

“How?”

“I don't know!” She tried to pull her hand away. Xiao Lu held tight. “Let me go!”

Xiao Lu forced her daughter to look at her, and saw, in her eyes, not her anger with her, no, but a distance from her, and a wish not to be there with her right then, right there. She let her go.

Freed, Xia started to run down the path to the house. Xiao Lu thought to call out to her, but held back. As if hearing her hesitation, Xia stopped, and turned around. Her spindly legs were slightly bowed, her arms sticks, her little chest sunken.
Maybe her body is
telling her the truth.

“Momma?”

“Yes, Xia?”

“Will you come back?”

Xiao Lu smiled, thinking,
It is still possible, yes.
She got up, patted the trunk of the tree once for comfort, and walked to her. “Yes.”

The next day she was awakened by distant sounds she'd never heard before,
thunck thunck thunck
. She left Xia asleep, and went outside. The sounds were coming from up the path. She realized it before she saw it. It was the sound of an ax, of axes. The men were chopping down her tree.



Year after year Xiao Lu struggled, made the best of it, and yet year after year she saw ever more clearly the trap that would destroy her: to risk being pregnant again. The ridicule and laughter spread from the family compound to the village down the hill. It wasn't just that she hadn't produced a son—many of the families had only a daughter—but that she would not
decide
what to do. The word was that she had not said no to trying for a son, but that she would not say yes either. People said she was stubborn, or maybe crazy—wasn't there a rumor that her father had gone crazy?—or that she was
emotional
, and not reasonable. But not yet so emotional as to be locked up with the insane ones, in the hospital in Tienja. And the worst that was said about her? “She is putting
herself
first.”

At times she seemed on the verge of making the choice to try once again. For all his dull obedience to his mother, Jiwei tried to respect her. They went through a stretch of time when Xia was about six when she was on the verge of deciding to try again. But it was just around that time that she got word that her dear mother had died, suddenly, of a burst heart.

She traveled alone down the mountain, across the several valleys to the river, and then, by a narrow fisherman's boat, upriver to her parents' house in the village on the shore. The journey took nine hours. She had not been back there since she'd left to marry Jiwei. She had wanted to bring Xia, but they would not allow it, thinking that if she took her child, she might never come back. At the funeral she was stunned to see just how crazy her father was—crazy but not willing to leave the land, insisting he could still farm it, although it hadn't been properly taken care of for years. The village boss felt sorry for him and said he would let him stay.

The only other people at the funeral were Second Sister and her husband, daughter, and son. After First Sister had disappeared, Second Sister had begun fighting terribly with their mother, and had soon left the family and married the policeman's son, and moved all the way to Tienja. Like Xiao Lu, she hadn't seen anyone in the family for many years, and the two sisters hadn't seen each other since Xiao Lu's wedding. Now, to Xiao Lu, she was almost unrecognizable—her face made-up like a movie star, her manner sophisticated—they had nothing in common anymore. Her children were dressed like royalty, little emperor and empress. “I have discovered the pleasures in life,” she said. “No, I have heard nothing about First Sister, not a word.” No one had.