At the Heart of the Universe (41 page)

“Look, Mom,” Katie says. “Almost every one starts with a ‘Chun'!”

“Yes. She really loves that character, doesn't she?”
Obsessed. For ten years it has been her lifeline to you.

“That ‘Chun' up there,” Katie is saying, “looks like a plant coming out of the earth, y'see?” Clio nods. “I'll try to copy it.” She leads Xiao Lu back to the table, and takes up the brush. Twirling the tip and then inking it, she points to the calligraphy with the plant-coming-out-of-the-earth “Chun,” and copies it, pretty well:

Xiao Lu nods, appreciating how well Chun has copied the character she herself copied from the photos her teacher showed her of the “Spring” character carved into ancient tortoiseshells and ox shoulder bones.

Katie says to Clio, “But she doesn't have the one from the ‘New Beginnings' card you got when you were waiting for me, the ‘amazing.' I'll see if I can draw it for her.”

Clio feels a shiver go down her spine.
To share
that
? Our story?
But Katie can't actually tell her the story.
Relax, damnit. Let it go.

“Here it is!” Katie is saying, proudly, tilting the paper up so Xiao Lu and Clio can see. She points to the character, and then to herself. “
My
Chun.”

Xiao Lu is stunned by this, and studies it carefully. She has done many “Chuns,” but she has never before seen a character like this. It is an elegant, vibrant, alive creature that forms a bridge from the ancient “Chun” to the modern—the missing link in the chain of “Chuns.” It is new to her. She is thrilled, and feels a warm rush fill her body. She smiles her pleasure, and reaches out to touch her daughter's face with her fingertips, caress it.

Katie smiles, happy at the big smile from Xiao Lu, thinking,
Wow, she really likes this one. Let me do it again better.
She bends her face down close to the paper and concentrates on making this one perfect. When it smudges, she gets impatient and tries another. Finally, on the fourth try, she is satisfied and says to Xiao Lu: “Momma, this is my best one, see?”

She looks up at Xiao Lu, who is smiling broadly—and then Katie realizes what she has done.

She turns to look at Clio, hoping she hasn't heard. But she has.

35

Katie has been looking forward to feeding the deer again at sundown. As the light begins to fade, she stands between Xiao Lu and Clio, facing the woods, her open palms filled with Goldfish. Pep, leaning on the monk's staff, watches. The deer appear, and the little buck comes forward to nibble at Xiao Lu's palm. The doe and fawn and a few others hold back for a moment, then bounce toward them.

Boom! Boom! Boom!
A pause.
Boom! Boom! Boom!

The deer vanish. The monk is walking around the clearing to the beat of a small drum clenched under his arm and struck with vicious abandon by the same mallet he used for vibrating the acupuncture needles in Pep's toes.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pause.
Boom! Boom!
Boom!
Xiao Lu screams at him to stop, but he does not. She tries to grab his arm, but in his floppy robe he is like a wave that no human hand can grasp—he keeps chanting and circling.
Boom! Boom!
Boom!
It is as if he has been doing the same thing for so long, at dawn and at dusk, that it is wired into him.

Finally he stops, spreads his bamboo mat, lights a joss stick, assumes the full lotus, and begins bowing and chanting again.

Katie gestures to Xiao Lu and asks, “You think they'll come back?”

Xiao Lu shakes her head—“No, not tonight”—and gestures to come help make dinner.

After the monk finishes, and as he is rolling up his mat, Xiao Lu says to him, “Go home! Go back to the monastery! You are ruining my time with my daughter!”

“I don't leave till I fix the man.”

“He's no better.”

“He's no worse. I will study my textbooks. Tomorrow I work on him some more. He is a great challenge. His heart is beating bad. Great danger. But I will cure him.”

“You cause trouble for me. If you don't go tonight, you don't get the quilt.”

“If you don't give me the quilt, you lose your job. Where do I sleep?”

“Leave!”

“Stupid woman! Where do I sleep?”

His eyes are two rocks. “Okay. I give you one more day. You sleep in the cave.”

“What cave?”

She leads him around the back of the house. The Macys follow. At the mouth of the cave, True Emptiness balks, curses, and says that not even in his days as an itinerant young monk with a begging bowl, not even during the Mao era when he hid out in the foothills of Tibet disguised as a butcher's apprentice, did he stay in a such a cave, and he isn't about to start now.

“You either sleep in the cave or you sleep outside,” she says. “There's no room in the hut. I'm going to have to sleep in the cave too.”

“It stinks.”

“It is a sacred cave.”

“Bullshit.”

“There are markings on the wall. There is an altar. There are legends. A holy man lived here for many years and when he died his body stayed here untouched by animals until his bones became a pile of white dust.” She points. “That pile of white dust you see in the corner there.”

“What's for dinner?” She doesn't answer. He goes outside.

Katie and Clio and Pep are amazed at the sight of the cave. The dusk light eases in through a wide crack in the rock, and water drips steadily through the crack and down twenty feet into what looks like a foot-deep, carved-out basin, then through a narrow channel cut into the rock and out through the entrance. On the smooth walls Clio can make out pictographs of animals and humans, and long columns of Chinese characters. It reminds her of the caves of the Dordogne that she visited with her mother and sisters so long ago, although these drawings are stick legged and simplistic, almost like the Chinese characters they became, not the full-bodied, fluid mammoths and deer, in red and black, of Font-de-Gaume.

“Awesome!” Katie shouts up into the dome.

“Awesome! Awesomeawesome...” the dome echoes back.

“Lotta headroom,” Pep says, staring up into the expanse, “more than any other place we've seen in all of China. Nice.”

Xiao Lu brings in a load of firewood and lights a large iron stove whose scarred, rusted flue pipe zigzags unsteadily up through the crevice in the roof. Then she goes out and returns with an armload of small, sweet-scented cedar boughs. Katie asks in gesture what she's doing, and she indicates two rough-hewn beds, one large, one small, and two quilts. She starts stuffing the cedar boughs into one of the quilts, asking Katie if she'd like to help.

“Look—she's making mattresses! Are they for us?” Katie asks Xiao Lu in gesture. No, they're for her and the monk tonight. “Hey, guys, maybe we can switch? It would be so fun, like sleeping in a pine tree—it smells all tree-ey and fresh. Please?”

Pep has gotten out his blue-laser flashlight and is sweeping the recesses and the roof of the cave. Suddenly there's a fluttering high up in a far corner, and something glides easily down around them like a paper airplane. It seems to be about to hit a wall when it banks away smoothly and sails on an imaginary gray wind in spirals, graceful floating loops, and quick flips, and floats off on another tack.

“A bat!” Katie cries. “Wow!”

“Careful!” Clio cries, taking Katie's hand. “Let's get out of here!”

“Wait, Mom! They're just doing big swoops—they'll never bump into you! They're blind and fly by echoes!”

“Bats carry diseases,” Clio says. “Like rabies. Let's go.”

“Not really. I
studied
bats in Lucille Stotts' class! I love bats! Bats don't hurt anybody.”

“Sick ones do,” Clio says.

“Sure, ones cooped up by humans in zoos, but not wild ones, free ones.”

Xiao Lu sees Chun's fascination and the woman's fear. She holds up her hand. A bat comes straight for it, then banks away, and comes back and banks around it again, and sails off on another unseen breeze.

“Cool!” Katie says.
Xiao Lu's really good with animals. Wild animals are like her pets. A pet bat is awesome. She loves animals and they love her. She's in symbiosis!
“That's not a sick bat, Mom, no way! And they eat mosquitoes. So they protect us from malaria, right? They're like good for us, right?”

Clio says nothing.

“Right, Dad? Low-risk, right? It would be
so
cool to sleep in here! Can we?”

Pep feels caught between Clio and Katie. Lately when Katie gets a “No” from one of them, she tries to play them off each other. She's right, he thinks, it's not much of a risk, no. Pep glances at Clio, and sees in her eyes her fear and her resoluteness—she does not want them to stay here. He knows that she feels safer in smaller, enclosed spaces, with doors that you can close and lock, like the hut. Big, high spaces—which he prefers—make her nervous. In her glance is a firm “No.” But he feels he has to moderate it—Katie and she are getting into a fight about everything and anything to do with Xiao Lu, and all it does is push Katie away, toward her.

“Mom 'n I will talk about it and let you know. Besides, Xiao Lu hasn't said she'd switch and let us stay here.”

“I'll ask her.” Katie gestures. Xiao Lu smiles and nods. “It's okay with her.” Katie glances at Clio, who looks even less open to the idea, and then focuses her hope on Pep. “Please, Daddy?”

Pep realizes he has to be firm. “Sorry, honey, we can't do it, not tonight.”

Immediately Katie turns to Clio. “Mom, say yes.”

“No, not tonight.”

“You never let me do anything
fun
! And for your information, this would
definitely
be fun. Low-risk and fun! Like she's fun and you're not!” Katie flumphs out of the cave. Xiao Lu follows.

“Katie, come here!”

“No!” She turns and stares at her. “I'm not hanging out with you anymore, I'm hanging with
her
.” She stomps away, Xiao Lu walking quickly after her.

Clio goes to the cave entrance and stares. Xiao Lu walks into the house, and comes out carrying a large wooden cutting board heaped with vegetables—spring onions, bok choy, yams, garlic cloves, ginger root. A small knife and a curved chopper lie beside them on the board. She squats on the ground beside Katie, balancing perfectly on her heels. Katie looks down at her, they exchange words, and then Katie squats down alongside her in the same way, balancing easily.

Clio has never seen Katie squat like this before, perfectly balanced, just like her. With no effort, as if her body was designed for this.

Xiao Lu and she seem, just then, like sisters sitting in the courtyard outside their family house—First Sister, Second Sister—two sisters squatting together in the dirt facing the woods, sharing an old wooden cutting board, starting to chop up the garlic and ginger and vegetables for the family's evening meal, going over the day's events as sisters do, happy just being together. Safe, at day's end, with family, protected from the world.
Located.