At the Heart of the Universe (39 page)

“Wonderful, dear,” Clio says, smiling. Katie starts to walk back toward her.

Xiao Lu follows her with her eyes. Again the word “Mom” hits her like a branch whipping back in her face. She was totally in the moment with her daughter just now, her mind emptied of all else—this new moment is filled with the torment that often comes when she tries to be with other people, especially now with this woman. Again she feels a crush of despair, the despair that made her think of killing herself by drinking fertilizer when she still lived with her husband and his family. Even after she fled to this mountain, this despair that made her wander aimlessly, all the way to the top of Sacrifice Rock. The only thing that stopped her from throwing herself off the edge was the dream of finding her baby again.
But if I'd known it would come to this?
She stares at Chun walking excitedly away from her toward the other woman—and meets the other woman's eyes.
This angry woman
cannot
be Chun's mother. Will not be.

Clio sees, in Xiao Lu's eyes, something she has never seen before—not just her hunger but also her desperation. She realizes that Xiao Lu sees her seeing it. For a second it scares her. But then, trying not to blink, she stiffens her jaw and clenches her teeth, sending her a message:
Don't.

“Did you see 'em, Mom, they're really, really tame, and they come in the morning and at night, and there was this fawn!”

“I did.” She smiles at Xiao Lu. “Did you thank Xiao Lu for showing them to you?”

“Nope, I forgot.”

“Go back to her and tell her. Try out a few shay shays.”

As Katie turns toward her, Xiao Lu glances again at Clio and nods, as if she understands what Clio is doing. They walk around the clearing, looking for more wildlife, bending and gesturing. Xiao Lu tells her the Chinese word for each thing they see and, when Katie repeats it, tries to correct her intonation. It's a game of sounds, she saying it, Katie trying to mimic it, until she gets it right and Xiao Lu laughs and claps her hands and Katie teaches her how to do a high five.

After a while they come back and stand together before Clio, like two kids without a game to play.

“What are we gonna do
now
, Mom? What happens today anyway?”

To Clio it is a familiar question. In Columbia, like many other well-off kids living in their private, protected houses, Katie is used to having her time scheduled. She often seems not so much into the current activity as checking it off from a list before the next one, and not into the next because of the looming next, until at bedtime, she'll ask about the next day's schedule. And despite the frantic scheduling, any lull is met with a petulant “I'm
bored
!” Clio has worried about her daughter living too much in the future, but she and Pep and their friends live there too. Now, with Katie looking to her for ideas, Clio looks around at the cliff and woods and hut and moon gate leading out to the high west prospect, and realizes that here, stranded on a mountain halfway to the Himalayas in primitive China, the day looms endlessly ahead. No schedule, none.

“First thing,” she says, “we help to get Daddy better.”

“Okay, but that's the monk's job, right? What else?”

Xiao Lu has picked up the water bucket and motions to Katie to follow.

“There's the answer. We'll just follow along to help Xiao Lu. Let's go.”



When the women return with firewood and fresh spring water, True Emptiness has Pep on his stomach in bed. Clio starts to talk to Pep, but the monk silences her. Soon Pep feels a warmth on his back, between his shoulder blades.

He sighs and starts to turn over, but hands like steel bands and a sharp command stop him. Exotic fumes fill the tiny room with a complex scent suggestive of something that died painfully a long time ago. The warmth turns to heat, the heat suddenly a fire in the center of his back.
The guy's set me on fire!
He tries to struggle free but the monk has him pinned down. The pain suddenly increases, as if an insect with a big hot mouth is trying to suck his skin up in a ball and swallow it—is he doing
leeches
? Clio and Katie gasp. His cry of pain is muffled by his being facedown in the quilt. The insect releases with a
pop!
He burns. He yelps.

“Relax, darling,” Clio says, trying to hide her disgust at the smell and the round red welt where a cup has been removed, “it's just moxibustion.”

“It's what?”

“Moxibustion. An ancient remedy. Tulku gave us a lecture on it, on traditional healing. I think the smell is mugwort. He's combining it with cupping. Trust him.”

“
Why
?”

The monk has let go, and Pep manages to turn his head to see what's happening. True Emptiness is staring at the small glass cup he's removed and cursing under his breath, as if it were defective. He throws it against the wall and it shatters, sending flying shards of glass onto the stove. Xiao Lu berates him. He growls back at her, and indicates that all of them should leave him alone with his patient.

Clio protests, in vain. “Just relax, Peppie,” she says. “We'll be right outside.”

“Fine. Do me one favor—when he's done cooking me, don't let him
eat
me, okay? And no fancy funeral. Just family, dog, and bird.”

As they leave, the monk indicates that Pep should lie back down.

Biting down on the edge of the quilt, Pep feels a series of hot mouths starting to suck at his body, from the nape of his neck to the crack of his butt. Each sizzles for a while, sucks at the skin, and then—
pop!
—is torn off. But after a while the mugwort fumes seem to be working on his brain, as if loosening screws and leaving him in a high that reminds him of his peace movement years.
Fun years, the only time I was loose, except meeting Clio. Love does that. Loosey-goosey love.

The monk is chanting quietly to himself, a two-tone chant: a high short note—
hm
—then a low long note like a hum—
hmmm
. Pep tunes in to the silky rhythm.
Hm
,
hmmm
.
Hm
,
hmmm
. Soothing. Words come to mind, latching on to the enticing sounds, in the same tone and duration:
Tight
,
loooose
.
Tight
,
loooose
.
Hm
,
hmmm
.
Hm
,
hmmm
. Pep finds his grip on the pain loosening, his mind filling with all the ways he lives tight—family, job, even golf, even
love
, hell, even
sex
! All these phobias—trying to tighten, to close down and live without feeling. If you
do
feel something,
kill it
. And—here's the
real
killer—if you
have
opened up once to someone so that the other person really sees you, shame comes down on you like a baseball bat! You feel
so
ashamed of
having been seen
that you
kill it off
, once and for all, so the next time you see that person you pretend that what happened didn't happen, you just go right on with the pretend-shit, so that even if you're dying of cancer you repudiate the offer of a last true touch of your child's love.

Like my own father, on his deathbed, when I went to embrace him, even kiss him, said, “Now, now, Pep, none of that puff stuff now.”

Pep feels a need to tell someone. “Hey,” he says to the monk, “this is working.”

“
Hm
,
hmmm
.”

“No question I'm tight,” he goes on, relieved the monk can't understand. “Getting older, I'm getting tighter. When you're old, it's not about what you
think
anymore, it's about what you
feel
, right?”

“
Hm
,
hmmm
.”

“So it all boils down to this. Loosen up. Either you do it or you miss it. Right?”

A pause. And then: “
Hm
,
hmmm
.”

34

The morning passes. Katie, Xiao Lu, and Clio do the chores: gathering and chopping wood, hauling water, washing, fixing, cooking, cleaning, starting a new quilt. The monk continues to work on Pep. He moves on from moxibustion to a brisk massage, pounding Pep's back with a wooden mallet rife with knobs, which seems to make his internal organs wobble. Next, oral treatments, concoctions of herbs, mushrooms, a slimy green and foul-smelling potion Clio thinks is the notorious bear's bile she's seen on TV, gathered from bears chained in cages with infected catheters in their bile ducts. Gamely, Pep swallows it. After each treatment, the monk stares at him suspiciously as if he hasn't really drunk or endured it, then, gingerly placing a finger on Pep's wrist, mutters a curse and withdraws to the chair to drink some more green tea and brood. The only noticeable effect of all this on Pep is in his bowels. He spends much of his time limping back and forth to the latrine.

On one trip, taking his own pulse—fast and random like two steel bands dueling—Pep suddenly thinks of his poker buddy, Marty Van Buren. Dr. Orville Rose diagnosed Marty with a heart arrhythmia, “atrial fib.” When meds couldn't control it, Orville told Marty he
had
to go on blood thinners,
right away
—otherwise a clot could form inside his heart and blast up into his brain and stroke him out. Marty refused. Two days later, he stroked out. Never walked or talked again—never even played poker. Died years later a vegetable. Pep breaks out in a cold sweat.
Shit. If this is what Marty had, and doesn't stop in a day or two—I'm dead!
He shivers
. But what can I do? Take a ton of aspirin. And don't tell Clio.

As Xiao Lu works with Katie, she points out all kinds of animals, birds, and plants, and mixes play with the tasks. Clio does her best to join in. Each chore is turned into a game, a chance for her to teach Katie the Chinese words for things. Katie repeats each one, and then Xiao Lu goes to work on the tones until Katie gets it right. Clio can hardly hear a difference in the tones, and for the life of her can't remember the words for any length of time. Katie can, and does. As if, as Katie said before they left for China, the language is
in
her, ready to come out.

Clio is amazed at how Katie, who steadfastly neglects to do her only two chores—to feed and water Dave and Cinny, and carry her dishes to the sink—is pitching in with everything, even hard things, like getting down on her knees beside Xiao Lu to clean the old stones of the floor, one by one. Side by side they work with picks and brushes, stone by stone. With each chunk of muck dug out there's a triumphant laugh—two happy prospectors chipping out gold.

Katie likes working with Xiao Lu.
She makes it a game, like a friend, and she's happy when I do good, and laughs—she's a good laugher!—and helps me on the hard stones—like cleaning out Velcro's hoofs with Mary. It's so fun to learn things—how to tip the pail to get the water from the stream without getting mud in it and how heavy water is! Xiao Lu's way strong, and even though I'm huffing and puffing—Dad said we're at like eight thousand feet—she doesn't even breathe hard. She let me chop wood, showed me how to use the hatchet so I don't hatchet my legs or fingers. The way if you put the edge of the hatchet just right and hit the back with that big wooden hammer she has it goes
shhhwittt!
and like magic there are two pieces of wood the inside all tan and smelling sawdusty and the grains running up and down like veins. At home Mom and Dad don't do stuff like this with me, not even fixing a flat tire or washing the windows or mowing the lawn. They pay somebody else to do it. They pay people like Xiao Lu to do their things. I wish they'd teach me themselves like she does.

Xiao Lu indicates it's time to stop cleaning the floor and start preparing lunch. Katie stands up in front of Clio proudly, pointing to the dozen or so stones they've finished.

“Great! But you're filthy—please go wash your hands?”

“
She
isn't washing her hands.”

“That doesn't mean
we
don't. I'll go with you to the spring. And remember—don't get any water in your mouth, not a drop.”

Katie glances at Xiao Lu and sees that she's picked up this tension.
Like Mom thinks it's a kinda contest—but all it is really is a pain.

When they come back from washing their hands Xiao Lu teaches Chun how to cut up the vegetables—bok choy, onion, bamboo shoots. Soon Chun is following her, matching her precise shapes. It is a slow process, a challenge to Chun. She concentrates hard and seems to admire how fast Xiao Lu does it, how fine she chops, how alike the pieces are. But Chun does it too fast. Xiao Lu grasps her racing hand, pats it, and smiles, meaning “Careful!” She and Chun stir-fry the vegetables with wood ears in the beat-up wok. Garlic and soy are added. Rice follows. It is a simple, healthy meal that Chun and the others seem to like very much.