At the Heart of the Universe (45 page)

They are soon chilled, shivering, and, because they can't see clearly and the stone steps are narrow and mud slicked, it is too dangerous to walk. They have to find shelter, but see nothing except a stand of pine and thick-leaved gingko growing out of a ravine whose face looks southeasterly. The four of them sit there under the ancient trees, huddled close together for warmth.

As wet as they have ever been. Like being thrown into a cold lake with all their clothes on. The only sounds are of the sempiternal torrent of water cutting down the mountain, and the raindrops, carried on cannons of wind, hitting the gingko bush and the fat leaves of the rhododendrons and even shaking the massive lower boughs of the pines. The horizontal rain seems to come in rollers, one long wave in that breaks and breaks and never seems to be about to subside, and then subsides, and then a lull as if the wind god is taking a deep breath, and then another big one rolls in over them, so loud and fierce that any attempt to talk is blown away, off the shoulders of the mountain, back down toward Tienja, or maybe even Changsha or Hong Kong.

It seems to go on for hours, and then it stops. They get up, weighed down by water, and take a few steps. Their clothes are cold wet rags plastered to their skin, their shoes cold lead. The sun is low and the air is chilly—in the mist they can see their breath. They need to hurry, but for a second they don't move. It is so still that even the stream seems to be listening.

After the rain

each hears

a bird.

38

By the time they get back to Xiao Lu's hermitage it is almost dark. Xiao Lu is hanging on even more limply across Pep's back, from time to time murmuring softly.

They need to stay together tonight. The hut is too small. They take Xiao Lu to the cave. While Clio and Katie prop her up, Pep moves the small bamboo bed over near the iron stove, and helps her gently down onto the mattress of pine boughs. She lies there with her eyes closed as if asleep, looking thin and frail.

Pep goes around the cave lighting the kerosene lanterns. Katie stokes the stove with kindling and split logs. Clio, holding the flashlight in one hand and the bucket in the other, fetches fresh water from the spring. By the time she gets back, Pep and Katie have fanned the fire to life. Clio puts a teakettle and soup pot on the stove to make sure they have boiling water. The iron stove soon radiates a reassuring warmth, and the water starts to boil. When Clio goes out into the chill mountain night to the hut to find dry towels and clothes for all of them, Katie follows.

When they come back they turn their full attention to Xiao Lu. They make tea and Katie's sweet drink and packaged noodles with vegetables. Pep props up Xiao Lu. They spoon it into her. Her eyes are not focusing all that well, but she drinks the soup down. Katie and Clio will undress her and wash her while Pep assesses what he has in his fanny pack for her lacerations and shock. He lays out the contents, all in a line on the crude wooden table, trying to recall what he learned from Orville, trying to make a diagnosis and a plan. As they bring the boiled water and clean clothes to Xiao Lu, Pep realizes how filthy they all are, covered with mud and blood.

“Hey, wash your hands—and then use the sterile Handi Wipes!” They look down at their hands, fingernails rimmed with black, arms scratched and bloodstained. They wash their hands, sterilize, and go to work.

Xiao Lu struggles feebly as they undress her, pointing toward Pep, embarrassed at his seeing her naked. They rig a sheet across the cave. Her clothes are worn, threadbare, filthy and stiff with caked blood and dirt. The green shoes are hardened muck, the soles like cardboard. Her dark pants are thin, torn, and stained; her boxer underpants gray. They cut off her blouse to get it over her wrapped arm, and then her gray T-shirt. For a moment before they cover her up with a quilt, Clio stares at her body, the exposed and now dirt-blackened ankles, neck, face, and arms that make the untanned skin seem stark white, the modest swirl of pubic hair and tight belly and small breasts with almost black nipples—a body worn down by years of work and abstinence, the muscles defined sharply beneath the skin. Xiao Lu groans as they move her. They try to do it even more delicately as they see, in the bright light of the lanterns, the extent of her scratches and cuts—and the wrapped wound.

First they wash her upper body and lay her back down and wash from her belly to her toes, using sea sponges they found in the kitchen to massage the warm, soapy water all over. Then they put on fresh underwear and pants and two layers of socks—she wants her shoes on but they are too filthy to use and Clio indicates that they will clean them and give them back. Then they wash her chest and back and face and hair—everything but where the bandage covers the wound on her back, shoulder, and arm. She is so dirty that they have to change the soapy water several times, going to the mouth of the cave to spill it out, watching it run down onto the moss covering the stone bones of the mountain.

As she and Katie wash Xiao Lu's limp body, Clio remembers washing her own mother during her long dying from cancer. Once, on what would turn out to be the family's final “locust” trip together, as she and her mother stood outside the Grand Souk in Marrakesh, her mother got strangely frank: “Hold the awe, Clio dear,
always
. Hold the awe.” Clio didn't understand, and asked her what she meant. She didn't elaborate. A month later she was dead. Clio was seventeen.

Like washing my mother, those last endless days.

To her now, Xiao Lu's skin feels the same, toneless on the bone, her eyes have that same mix of pain and fear, the way she can't move and Clio has to move her. The way Clio can't quite get the dirt out of her hair or her ears or the creases of her body is the same.
Washing my mother, washing my child.
That first night with Katie in the Jiang Jiang Hotel, their new baby never yet having uttered a sound so they feared there was something wrong, they put her in the hot, soapy water in the sink—she pinkening—and she gave a wail and their hearts lifted!
Washing my daughter, washing my mother. My mother washing me.

My mother washing me,
Xiao Lu thinks, hazily, sort of knowing that it is no longer her mother washing her when she was a sick child in the little house by the slow river, and sort of knowing that her mother was not the one washing her mostly because she was the baby of the family and everyone was starving and then there floats into her memory who it is she feels is washing her.
First Sister, who was my mother until she disappeared, and never came back. Never came back—ever!

“Mom, look,” Katie whispers, “she's crying.”

“I see, yes.”

“You think we're hurting her?”

“No, dear, I think she's afraid. We'll go gentle-gentle, and she'll know we're here and helping her to get better. You stay here and dry her while I get fresh hot water so we can clean her arm and back, okay?”

“Okay.” Katie takes the pine-scented fresh towel and starts to pat Xiao Lu dry, her neck and hair and then her face, looking into her dark eyes, sparkling wet from her tears. Katie is amazed at how deep her eyes seem, as if, if she could turn herself into a tiny person, she could just walk into them and go deep down like in the deep part of Kinderhook Creek under where the bridge used to be. She finds it impossible to keep looking at her but impossible to look away for long. So she just caresses her cheek, back and forth a time or two gentle-gentle, and the dark eyes get wetter and the lips turn down at the edges and she feels herself cry inside with her.
My birth mom and mom too. My body's not like my mom's, it's like hers. When Mom and I were naked trying on bathing suits I saw in the mirror her body didn't look like my body, it was strange. Now I know my body looks like hers.

Clio is back with fresh soapy water. Pep comes over with a kerosene lamp and his Ziploc plastic bags of pill bottles, needles and syringes, wraps and tubes.

The lamp casts an acrid warm light.

“I'm not sure you should see this, Katie,” he says. “It's a bad cut.”

“It's okay. I want to.”

“Sure?” She nods. “Okay.” Pep washes his hands in fresh soapy water and sterilizer and dries them on a fresh towel. They roll Xiao Lu over on her good side and start to unwrap the bandage they put on her back and arm. He tries to be as gentle as possible, but the gauze sticks to the bloody wound and she screams in pain. Katie winces, Clio grits her teeth.

Pep takes a deep breath to steel himself. Worse than he thought. The wound is ugly, a bite on the back and a rip from shoulder down to elbow, in one place a deep slash down to what might be bone. He has come prepared. Before they left he badgered Orville Rose to give him a complete ultra-medical kit suited to high-risk people who trek alone across Africa or through the gut of Asia to Kuala Lumpur. He also took an EMT training course, and invited Orvy to dinner twice to discuss the practice of the medical arts in disastrous environments—something the good doctor knew a lot about, from his “salad days” wandering the genocidal zones in
Médicins Sans Frontières,
before he'd come back under duress to his broken-down hometown, Columbia.

Now all of Pep's training kicks in. He cleans and tends the wound, thinks to suture it up—but then remembers that it's hazardous to sew up bites. The bacteria in mouths are anaerobic; without oxygen they'll form abscesses and spread. He knows from the good Dr. Rose that the worst bites for infection are from humans, not animals. They didn't talk monkeys. He slathers more Betadine disinfectant over the skin, wraps the whole wound with clean gauze, and splints it with a fresh clean stick from the inside of a split log. Finally, he uses the big capsules of his stash of Levaquin, the latest broad-spectrum-Western-antibiotic-that-kills-everything. He and Clio prop Xiao Lu up and pop the big pill in. Katie helps her to drink it down. He thinks of giving her a shot of Demerol, but she seems calm and not in great pain—as they lower her to her pillow she looks from one to the other and smiles.

“Go to sleep,” Clio says, smiling, patting her hand.

“
Wa-an
, Xiao Lu,” Katie says. Clio looks at her. “It means ‘go to sleep'?”

Clio smiles at her, takes her hand. They walk away.

“Mom, can I have Shirty?” Clio, as daytime Shirty-keeper, unzips her money belt, takes out the worn, soft little shirt, and hands it to Katie. Katie goes back to Xiao Lu, whose eyes are closed. “Xiao Lu?” Her eyes open. “Here, you need Shirty tonight.” She gives the little guy to Xiao Lu, who moves her good hand slowly up to take it. “You use Shirty like this.” Katie takes her hand with Shirty in it and moves it up to her cheek, showing her how she can hold the softness against her cheek gentle-gentle. Again tears come to Xiao Lu's eyes. She smiles. Katie goes to Clio and Pep.

“That's a wonderful thing to do, dear,” Clio says. “You never gave Shirty to anyone for the night before, did you?”

“Nope. But she really needs him tonight, more than me.”

The three of them get into the big bed and pull the quilt up to their chins. The scent of cedar calms.

“She risked her life to save us,” Clio says.

“She was brave,” Pep says.

“No foolin',” Katie says, and then, in awe, “Super brave.”

“Let's take a minute of silence to pray for her.”

To the soft flurry of bats rushing in and out of the mouth of the cave, they fall asleep.



Clio, Pep, and Katie are so sore the next morning they can barely move. Every muscle seems made of dry leather, every scratch a flicker of fire. Groaning, they hoist themselves up and go to Xiao Lu. She lies on her side, quiet and still, as if she hasn't moved all night. Her eyes are open, and her breathing is regular, but her forehead is damp with sweat. With difficulty Pep shows her how to keep the little plastic battery-powered thermometer under her tongue, and it beeps at 101.6. He's worried. Clio sees his concern, and asks if there's any way that they can get some help. But there's no way to carry her back to the monastery, and for one of them to try to get there alone is too dangerous. They're stuck. He gives her another Levaquin.

They set about organizing the tasks of the day. Pep is in charge of medical care, fire, heavy lifting, and controlling bugs, snakes, and any other pests. Clio and Katie are in charge of tending to Xiao Lu, cooking, and cleaning. Together they will hunt and gather food and water.

It is more difficult than they could have imagined. Clio and Pep have little idea how to take care of the basics of life in the wild. Katie, having tagged along with Xiao Lu, is the expert. She shows them how to carry water—not just one bucket, leaning to one side as you walk, but using a bamboo carrying pole to bring two, making it easier to balance on the path and up the slope. She shows Pep how to use the wedge and hammer to split wood, and shows Clio where the right vegetables grow, and which mushrooms to pick (Clio and Pep don't know which are the safe and which are the poisonous ones)—even, sometimes, saying the Chinese words for them. It is amazing how Katie's mind has absorbed all of this, even the smallest detail of daily life here. Katie is in heaven directing them.

Clio and Pep are better at taking care of Xiao Lu. The Great American Antibiotic may or may not be working, but it has certainly worked on Xiao Lu's bowels. With a shameful look in her eye she lets them know that she has not been able to control herself. Clio and Katie roll her over and confront the mess. At first they feel disgusted, but Clio remembers how, with Katie as a baby, there was no disgust. It helps. They clean and dust her with baby powder Clio carries, and reassure her that she just has to let them know when she has to go, and they will bring a flat bowl to use as a bedpan. Xiao Lu smiles wanly and soon goes back to sleep.