At the Heart of the Universe (23 page)

“Hey! Nee how nee how! Neeeeee HOWWWW!”

The horse's ears turn but the man keeps on going like he doesn't hear her. She runs, gets closer and closer, and goes around in front, stopping the horse so the man can't miss her.

“Nee how!” she says as loud as she can. It echoes off the stone walls of the street.

The man is looking. He nods, says, “Nee how.” His voice is wobbly and loud.

“I'm lost!”

He nods and says something in Chinese.

“Help me!”

Another nod, and a smile. He's pushing his big straw nipple hat up on the back of his head and the line above where it was is all white, where the sun never shines. She wonders why his face and hands are all black and then realizes that it's because the cart is piled high with huge lumps of coal. The coal lumps glisten wet in the slant of dawn. That's why the man and horse and cart and everything are totally black—the coal dust coats everything. He sells coal. Maybe if she goes with him he can take her to where there are other people. What else can she say to him?

“Pizza Hut?” He seems hard of hearing. “
Pizza Hut
!” He smiles, and says nothing. He doesn't know Pizza Hut but why would he, he's just a coal guy. “
Burger King
!?” Nothing. Doesn't like burgers. “
Dripping Water Cave Hotel
!?” Another smile, but this time maybe he seems to understand. “Meg-oh-ran!”
Point to yourself.
“
Meg-oh-ran
!”

He definitely nods and smiles and motions for her to come up and sit beside him. She hesitates. Never take a ride from a stranger never
ever
take a ride from a stranger.

But she's totally lost and there's nobody else and maybe he can at least take her to the main street where people who speak English are. She tries one more time.

“MEG-OH-RAN?” He blinks his eyes—the lids are white!—and nods, and gets down from the pile of coal he's sitting on, and gestures for her to get up and in. As if he'll help her. Does that mean he knows she's American? “MEG-OH-RAN!”

“Ming-wan,” he says. She hesitates to go with him. But there's nobody else. She goes to the horse and pats it. It is thin and tired looking and the harness is old and worn and a big heavy yoke and just old leather and rope tied here and there. Not a happy horse, no. What's he doing now?

The coal man is walking over to the side of the street—and he's limping.

Like in our
Delores's Book of Greek Myths
it said, “He walked like a flickering flame.” Who was it oh yeah Hephaestus the god of fires and blacksmiths when Zeus threw him off Mount Olympus he fell for a whole day that's how high it was and crashed and forever after “he walked like a flickering flame.”

Now he's sorting through a trash pile and he's picking up something, looking carefully at it. He's coming back and holding out one of the things to her—rotten vegetables. He feeds them to his horse. Again, more insistently, he gestures for her to get up on the wagon.

She looks into his eyes and sees two little nuggets of coal gleaming back at her. Terrified, she backs away. He limps toward her. She starts to run. She runs to the next twist of the narrow street, and looks back. He is standing, watching her. She runs on and on until she's out of breath, stops and looks back again. No sign of him. Her chest feels like it's on fire. She starts coughing and sneezing and, when she tries to get her breath, making a wheezing sound. She takes out a tissue and blows her nose—on the white tissue there are two circles of black soot! Gradually she calms down, breathes more easily.

She looks around, and finds that she is standing at the entrance to what seems like a park. The sun is now bright, melting the killer mist of this scary night. She sighs with relief.

A man carrying a bird in a cage, a red macaw, passes her and goes into the park. She takes a few steps after, and is amazed at the expanse opening up before her, and the numbers of Chinese people already in the park at dawn, doing exercises and martial arts with swords and ballroom dancing and meditations and playing soccer and badminton and basketball. Someone there must know English. She follows the man with the bird into the park.

He goes to the Men-With-Birds-In-Cages section. In a little grove are about twenty men and all different kinds of birds, their cages swinging from low branches of trees. The men smoke and talk, and they look happy. Anyone who loves birds can't be all bad. Maybe one of them will speak enough English.

“Nee how, nee how,” she says to the bird guys, and they say the same back and start talking to her in Chinese. She makes gestures with her hands that she doesn't understand, and points to herself and says, “Meg-oh-ran, megoran, do you speak English?”

“Megoran!” they say, and laugh, and start to show her their birds.

21

Pep sits alone in the hotel room. The Chinese police have come and gone, taking Rhett with them. Clio is out walking the streets with the sign Rhett made, while he waits in the room for any news. The police questioned Rhett harshly. They spoke no English and didn't allow Rhett to say anything to Pep and Clio. They examined the room, the bed, the bathroom, the door lock—but seemed to find nothing. Then they sat Rhett down and grilled him. It was obvious they were not happy that Rhett had brought three Americans to this restricted zone. Suddenly they got up, and without a word hauled Rhett away. Before the police arrived, Rhett warned Pep and Clio that if they took him away, he would not be able to come back. He would need some money to bribe them to let him go—to just warn him and put him on a train back to Changsha. Pep gave him as much cash as he could.

He can't stand it. He has to do something. For some strange reason, he finds himself staring into the bathroom mirror, shaving. He soaps his cheeks, his chin, his neck, and when the first scent of the almond oil lather hits him he stops, stunned as if he's been hit by a plank, remembering how Katie loves to snuggle with him when he wakes her up in the morning and the scent of almond oil is fresh, how she says, “It's my favorite scent in the world and not just because it's almond but because it's
you
, my daddy!” He watches his face crumple and distort into tears and he drops the brush in the sink and holds on for dear life.
For dear life, yes.



Clio has wandered the streets around the hotel for hours. She carries the sign written in Chinese. It shows a photo of Katie, and her name and “THE DRIPPING WATER CAVE HOTEL” and the phone number and their names and “Big Reward $100.” The Chinese sometimes stop and stare and smile and go on. She searches their faces as if for clues or complicity and finds nothing.

Over and over like a dirge comes the thought,
China has taken her back
.

“Oww!” she cries out as a man jostles her hard, almost knocking her down. Reflexively she lashes out, slamming her arm awkwardly into his neck as he passes. He stops cold—it's a hard hit, even for China—and stares at her with puzzlement, a thin, rough man dressed in a cheap short-sleeved shirt and smoking a cigarette. She stares back, hoping he'll do something else. He laughs and laughs. Soon a crowd stops and stares, pointing at this crazy Westerner. She pushes her way through the crowd and hurries down an alley off the main street.

Just walk.

She learned walking meditation from reading Thich Nhat Hanh. With each step, count your breaths: three breaths in, four breaths out. Breathing in, think,
Calm
,
breathing out,
Smile
. Place each foot with the awareness that the whole earth is underneath. Walking on lotus pads, greeting the earth rising up to meet you.

Breathing in, calm. Breathing out, smile. Can't.

She holds the sign in front of her so everyone can see it, and after a while she finds herself walking not to a Buddhist mantra but to the Episcopal
The Lord be with you. And also with you. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give our thanks and praise. It is truly right, and good and joyful, to give you thanks, all-holy God, source of life and fountain of mercy. Give her back to me, and I'll do anything...

The crowd flows past. Most glance at her photo with its message; many of them smile. Trucks and buses and bicycles and motorbikes shred the air, stir the hellish heat, the dust, the dirt, the coal-throated evil. She is lost.
China has taken her back.



She has no idea how long she has been walking. She turns a corner and sees “DRIPPING WATER CAVE HOTEL.” There is a finality to the sign, an accusation of incredible negligence, of the most profound failure of any mother, the failure to take care of your child. As if the sign will mark the place where she lost her daughter. She stands for a long time that is no time, tears in her eyes. She watches dully as one of the frantic, crippled buses puts on its brakes and shrieks to a stop at the end of the block. Oily black fumes blast out from a tailpipe. Out of the bus stream the Chinese, and one of them, a tall, thin young man in a white shirt and tie, stops after he gets out and turns around and reaches back into the bus for something and that something is—

“Katie!”

Clio starts to run, elbowing people out of her way and, when that doesn't work, jumping off the curb into the street and screaming at the top of her voice her daughter's name over and over, but Katie doesn't hear her and isn't looking and there's not only the man in the tie but a young woman in a flamingo-pink dress and Clio keeps running and shouting, “KatieKatieKatieKatie!” and finally Katie hears and sees and she's shouting too and running in a frantic yet graceful way toward her she's alive she's alive in her arms heart-searing joy.



Hugging her with all her might, feeling that little thin body rock-solid against her own, Clio sobs and sobs and tries to stop and cannot, and can't even speak for the longest time. Katie is crying her heart out and burrowing into Clio's breast. Finally, when the rough, fierce tears of joy have softened to a glow of relief, Clio looks her up and down and asks, in a shaky voice, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You're filthy—are you sure you're okay?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I got lost. I went out of the hotel and I was just waiting and I followed a dog—big mistake!—and I got
so
lost? But these kids”—she points to the two young Chinese—“they found me. They speak English and are really nice. I told them ‘Dripping Cave Hotel' and they said, ‘You mean Dripping
Water
Cave Hotel?' And I said yeah, and they took me back here on the bus—on two buses actually.”

Clio turns to the boy and girl. “Introduce me, dear.”

“Mom, this is Leston, and this is Happy.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Macy,” Leston says, taking her hand.

“Good morning, Leston.” His handshake is watery.

“Good morning, Mrs. Macy,” says Happy, also taking Clio's hand.

“Good morning. Thank you so much for finding our daughter and bringing her back to us. We were so worried, you can't imagine!”

“It was very scared, yes?” Happy asks. “He is lost?”

Clio nods. “You just left the hotel on your own?”

“Yeah.”

“But why?”

Katie hesitates. “I... I'll tell you and Dad together, okay? Where is he?”

“In the hotel, waiting—come on, let's go.” She turns to Leston and Happy, thinking they deserve a reward but not having any money to give them. “Please, will you come into the hotel and meet my husband?”

“Thank you. We have to go back to learning for school. It is a far a way. Two buses under a far distance. We are welcome to thank you.”

“Come meet Pep. Come into the hotel—you're late already, come.”

They smile, and follow. Clio stops to look again, deeply, at Katie, and then, her arm around her, walks on. Leston and Happy go on ahead.

They enter the Dripping Water Cave Hotel. The desk clerk sees them and smiles. The elevator takes a long time.

They knock on the door. Pep opens it at once. “Katie!” She buries herself into his chest, and he starts to cry. His sobs come out in weird coughs. The three of them are in a tight hug together, crying.

Finally Katie pulls away and looks up at his face. “Dad, you sound like Cinnamon throwing up.”

They laugh through their tears. “But he's a cute pup, isn't he?” Pep says.

“You
always
say that, Dad!”

Pep feels like he has been brought back from the dead. He breathes out a long, trembling sigh, the tension riding on it out, away, gone.
Thank God.

Katie again nestles into him, into the fresh scents of almond oil soap and beer, the familiar scents of her dad. When Katie pulls away there's an imprint of her two cheeks in black soot on Pep's white shirt.

“I want to give Leston and Happy a reward,” Clio says.