At the Heart of the Universe (6 page)

Dazed by her sudden anguish, she feels Pep's arm around her shoulders, and she takes the tissue he offers. She focuses on her breath. Gradually calms down. The chief stares at her, a stare she sees as containing all the detached slyness of a skilled interrogator who now knows his victim's vulnerability. But then all at once she thinks she sees in his eyes his sense of her despair, even a flicker of kindness. At least a lack of cruelty. Which is something. She feels herself soften, and to her surprise she smiles at him. When she goes on her voice is calm.

“Who are the mothers?”

The chief seems surprised. “They are either from the country and married, or from the city and single.”

“Do the mothers ever leave the babies right here at the police station?”

The chief seems indignant at this, and with a hint of passion says something that Rhett translates as “They can't. It's
illegal
.”

“But does it happen?”

“Don't push him,” Rhett warns.

“Clio—”

“Please ask.”

Rhett asks. The chief stares at Clio, then at Pep, and says nothing.

“Have you ever had a mother come here looking for her baby?”

The chief, hearing this, seems amazed, and laughs. He speaks with inordinate slowness, looking at Clio and then at Pep, rather than at Rhett. “No. It's illegal. It's
all
illegal. You don't understand. These women have a problem. They want to solve their problem. They solve their problem and it is over with, and they go on with their lives. It is a relief. To find them is what
you
want, not what
they
want. They don't want to be found. They don't think about it, they don't care about it. It's over.”

“They don't care what happens to their babies?”

“They don't care.”

“But... on their birthdays... these are their little girls—”

“Look,” the chief says, getting up. “They are in a terrible time in their lives. They are in pain. Some of them kill themselves. They have a problem. We solve their problem. Don't be
selfish
.” He smiles, and says, “Thank you for coming to talk.”

They thank the chief for taking the time and walk out of the tiny rooms onto the veranda, blinded by the sun and heat and dust.

5

Clio steps out of the shade of the veranda into the searing heat and walks quickly through what seems like solid yellow dust toward the minibus, searching for Katie. “Where's Katie? I don't see her!” Her heart sinks, her ankles go all watery.

On tip-toe she looks in. Katie is lying down, curled up on the seat, asleep.

Clio looks up at the damp dusty sky and sends up a prayer of thanks to God, or to the gods. As she brings her eyes back down she sees a puzzling sight. There in a far corner of the courtyard is what looks like a pile of dirty rags, but it's moving. She walks over, Rhett and Pep following.

As she gets closer she sees that the rags are human beings. One is a small old Chinese woman with a deeply lined and weather-beaten face, dressed in tattered clothes. She squats on her heels in the dust, staring straight ahead as if she's blind, one hand out, palm up, begging. The palm is the same color as the rest of her skin, a dirty dark tan. It moves back and forth like a broken-down metronome, pleading. Before her, and tied to her other wrist by a bit of worn twine, is a skinny child, a toddler, still a little wobbly on his feet. The boy walks unsteadily back and forth to the limit of the twine. His face and hands and bare feet are filthy, the same yellow-tan dirt color as the old woman's. He totters toward Clio and holds out a hand to her—even the palm is filthy. The fingers are thin as pencils, the arm hardly as thick as a broomstick. The old woman, alerted by the sharp tug on the twine, smiles—her teeth are stained almost black by a lifetime of betel chew—and starts talking to them.

Wanting to remove himself from this scene, Pep looks away.

As he stares at the entrance to the courtyard, he sees a woman walk in from around the corner and come toward them. She is tall and slender—“willowy” is the word that comes to mind—and young, maybe in her thirties. Unlike many of the women they've seen in Changsha, she wears a white silk dress slit up the side and covered with pink lotus blossoms, the silk flowing down to just above her ankles, revealing tan feet in blood-red sandals. A matching red parasol protects her from the heat. As she gets closer, his breath catches in his chest—she is beautiful. Beautiful and sensual. A long oval face with high cheekbones and large, dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair—which, in the bright sun, glints with an almost imaginary touch of red—like Katie's. Thin and graceful like Katie, too. And unlike most of the Chinese women he's seen, she looks straight into his eyes and holds his gaze. Her smile seems to him, somehow, not casual, but deep, even
elegant
—also unusual, here in rural China. He smiles back. She turns and walks across the yard and goes up onto the veranda and into an office of the police station. He can still see her standing in line, waiting her turn.

“Pep,” Clio whispers to him, clutching his arm, “did you see that woman?”

“Beautiful—incredibly beautiful.”

“No, no—I mean she looks just like Katie.”

“Yeah, I thought that too—”

“
Just
like! Of all the thousands of Chinese faces we've seen, she's the only one who looks just like Katie.”

“Yes, she does, but—”

“The same face, eyes, hair—the same build?”

They stare at her, standing in line in the doorway.

“What's up, doc?” says Rhett, badly mimicking a Bugs Bunny accent. He too is staring at the woman in the doorway. Clearly he has overheard their conversation.

Clio feels a tug on her sleeve, and reflexively pulls away.

The beggar woman is standing up, pulling at her insistently, roughly. Rhett speaks harshly to her, but she doesn't let go. He tries to pry her fingers off Clio's sleeve. It takes him a while to do so, and meanwhile the twine has come loose from her wrist and the little boy is wandering across the courtyard, straight into the traffic of bicycles and motorbikes and cars.

“Rhett! Pep!” Clio cries out, afraid for the child. “Hold her—I'll get him.”

She rushes off toward the boy, who is disappearing down into another doorway in the rabbit warren of the police station.

Rhett takes hold of the woman, but she struggles free. Pep, repelled by the smell and dirt, helps Rhett walk the woman back to the wall. Wailing, gesturing toward them for money and then to where the boy has disappeared, she squats down again. Pep looks over to Clio, who has the boy by the hand. The child is resisting her grip, but feebly.

Pep turns away again, and sees the woman in the white silk dress and red sandals come back out of the doorway. She glances at him once more and smiles, then puts up her red parasol against the sun and turns and walks away, disappearing again around the concrete gateway into the alley.

He thinks to tell Clio, but she is in the far corner of the courtyard, trying to get the boy to move. About fifteen Chinese men and women have gathered around them and are talking loudly. Rhett and Pep leave the old woman and help Clio bring the boy back. Rhett shoos away the Chinese, and ties the twine around the old woman's wrist.

“Pep, let's give her something.”

“Fine,” he says, taking out a five-yuan
bill—nothing for them, a lot for the beggar. Clio puts it in the boy's hand. The boy immediately gives it to the old woman, who smiles her black smile and bows her head up and down in thanks, and reaches out to try to grasp Clio's hand. Clio smiles and nods at her, but backs away.

They walk to the bus. Clio looks in. Katie is still asleep on the seat. “Thank God Katie didn't see that!”

“No fooling,” Pep says, taking out his packet of sterile Handi Wipes. “But you did good. Want one?”

She wipes her hands, looking toward the alcove where they saw the woman with Katie's face.

“She left,” Pep says.

“What?”

“I saw her walk out.”

“And you didn't
tell
me? I wanted to, you know, well, talk to her.”

“Why?”

“Because she...” She stops herself. “Hurry, come on, get in the bus.” She pushes Pep and Rhett inside. “Rhett, tell the driver to try to find her. Go back down that road. Shit! Hurry up!”

Rhett blinks, and stares at her for a long moment, as if calculating something mysterious or, Pep thinks, profitable. “Sure. No problem. Let's go. Saddle up!”

With what seems to Clio like excruciating slowness, the driver backs up, out, and into the narrow alley they came in on. The woman is gone.

“Go to the end,” Clio says, “try the other roads. Pep, you look out that side, I'll do this—Rhett, please—faster?”

“Okay, okay.” He leans over the driver's shoulder and whips him on with a few harsh exhortations. The bus jumps, reaches the end of the alley, turns onto a larger road. Nothing. They drive up and down, staring into every doorway and alley. Nothing.

The bus bangs through the fractious traffic. They drive here and there, up and down the nearby streets where she might have walked. No luck.

“Who are you looking for?” Katie asks, sleepily.

Back at the hotel there is a new banner in the lobby:

WELCOME TO SEE YOU AGAIN

They hire Rhett for some sightseeing the next afternoon.

Up in their room, Katie grabs her bathing suit and bolts for the pool. They try to keep up, calling out to her to wait in the lobby. Her long legs seem to glide down the grand marble staircase. She has always been athletic, like Clio. When they go for runs together Katie seems to float, as if she's imitating one of her beloved animals, a fawn, or a foal.

Soon they are sitting beside the pool, watching her play in the water.

“Clio, listen,” Pep says. He feels the chilly fizz of his first Tsingtao since lunch flow down into his body. “It's impossible.”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, of course. Impossible.”

6

That evening they decide on nostalgia—a birthday bash for Katie at the Jiangjiang Hotel, where they stayed when they came to Changsha to adopt her. Rhett has gone for the day, but the Grand Sun concierge arranges for a taxi to take them, wait, and bring them back—writing the instructions in Chinese on a hotel card. As they drive across Changsha in a taxi, they recognize almost nothing of the city. In a decade it has grown from three million to six. It used to be a quaint jumble of small streets and two-lane roads lined with one-story shacks where people sold their wares; now the roads have been widened, the small buildings destroyed. Blunt new skyscrapers are everywhere.

Chinese Culture Camp has taken them through one dirty, noisy, polluted city of five million after another, seeking out tourist sites among the ratcheted construction and rising nondescript buildings. Changsha—like many of the other cities—could almost be Anywhere, USA, say, Atlanta. The China that they fell in love with ten years before has mostly vanished. Changsha traffic is fierce; driving, perilous. Before, there were few cars and a million bikes; now it seems the reverse. The roads are jammed. There used to be only a few traffic lights, now there are many—mostly ignored. Instead of Mao hanging from the taxi's rearview mirror for good luck, it's Michael Jordan. Their taxi driver acts like a kid with a new toy. The ride is heart-stopping. Pep and Clio white-knuckle their seats. After a few close calls, even Katie curls down in the backseat covering her eyes. Whenever Clio sees a young woman in a long white dress she scans her face, looking for
her
.

The Jiangjiang Hotel has survived. Pep gets out of the cab and reenacts with Katie what he said to her the first time, bringing her back from the orphanage:

“Katie Chun, this is your
hotel
!”

Ten years ago, it was the best hotel in Changsha. Now it is shabby. In the lobby are several elegantly dressed “ladies of the night”—Clio can't help but scan
their
faces too. In one of the private function rooms, there is karaoke—a man in a cheap suit up in front of his fellow workers, mike in hand, singing along with a woman in a bikini on TV. But the shabbiness makes it seem quaint, campy, even funky. Pep has difficulty explaining to the manager that they need his help in finding the room on the ninth floor where they lived during their first week with their baby. Like most Chinese who know English, he speaks a stiff, formal, textbook style. Even in five-star hotels, the translations of signs are literal, and often comical. Yesterday when they checked into the Grand Sun they laughed out loud at the sign over the courtesy phone in the lobby: “TOURISTS COMPLAINING PHONE.” Two days ago, south of Chengdu, at the colossal Grand Buddha of Leshan, the brochure started out okay—“At 71 meters he is the biggest ancient stone carved figure of Buddha in the world”—but then floated out into a religious/historical morass—“He was originated and built for reducing flood and serving for mass by monk Hai Tong rabbi in Tang dynasty.”

Finally the manager understands, and accompanies them to floor nine. The wide, red-carpeted, dim hallway still has the same smell—pungent, earthy, mushroomy—with a hint of antiseptic. Four girls in scarlet uniforms are still there to attend to the wishes of the ninth-floor guests, though the rack of Communist propaganda is gone. Pep and Clio remember that the room is on the right side near the end of the hallway, facing the street where, every morning, a street cleaner truck playing a calliope tune awoke them, but they aren't sure which room it is. They choose 921.