At the Heart of the Universe (49 page)

Finally, she pulls away and looks, just once, into the other woman's eyes. There she sees the same thing as in her own, sees the human grief at the twisting of their lives, and the twisting together of their lives, and at last—at last!—feels seen.

Clio, looking into her eyes, all at once sees her less as a woman or mother than as a child, the age her own child could have been—should have been, if only, if only. A poor, desperate child, coming back. Her mother, her daughter, her granddaughter. The red thread of shared sorrow unraveling back, and raveling back up, as care
.

Xiao Lu feels all their eyes upon her, the pressure coming down on her ears and eyes like when, as a girl in the river, she dived too deep. She struggles back up, goes on. “After I left you, Chwin, I wanted to kill myself. I wondered every day if you were all right, wondered where you were. I wondered about you
every single day
. For ten years I missed everything! The day you first crawled, your first word, your first step. I tried to imagine where you were, who you were with. I stayed alive at first for little Xia. But I refused to try again for a son, I
refused
, do you understand? I will
not
give up a baby again!”

Her rage fills the small room. She feels it tight inside her, a fist.

“They turned Xia against me. I left, came here. I wandered around in the woods, every day deciding this would be the day that I killed myself, that I would jump off a cliff. There are a lot of cliffs here, aren't there, Chwin-Chwin?”

Katie, staring at her now, nods.

“I had no hope of seeing you again, dear little one, and for that I almost did kill myself. But I also have... one other person. First Sister. She is my beloved sister, who raised me, with my mother. When she was fourteen, First Sister went to Tienja, to a meeting of the Red Guards in a schoolhouse there. No one ever saw her again. We tried to find her.” She looks at Katie. “I tried...”

“Do you think she is still alive?” Clio asks.

“She
is
alive,” she says, her eyes glittering like black mica.

The vision of this young woman, this First Sister, coalesces in the small room, as present as if she just walked in, much like when, at a certain hour of the evening in such rooms all over the world, all those present fall silent, and in the shared stillness it is commonly believed that there are angels passing overhead.

“And
I
am alive too,” Xiao Lu goes on, fiercely. “Not like others who give up their babies and years later realize what they have done, what it
means
to give up your baby—and kill themselves!” Her heart feels like it's on fire, smoldering. “I will
not
become another of the missing girls.” With her good arm, slowly and deliberately, she wipes away her tears. “I began to search for you. I went back to the market. I went back to the orphanage... I could not do anything—I'm poor, and ignorant, and timid, but... then Second Sister, Tao, found you.”

“Like a miracle!” Pep says.

“I'm so sorry for what I did! I think of her every day. Now I can't bear to...”

Lose her again
, Clio hears, in the silence. She senses the moment as a delicate fabric that might just, with the right words and despite its delicacy, hold.

“You don't have to,” Clio says, her voice softened by her tears. “Now that we know. It's a gift, what you've told us.”

“Yes, thank you,” Pep says, wiping away his own tears, “for her.”

Silence—but for the crackle and hum of the burning wood.

Clio stares into the flames.
Reaching on and on, but never reaching. Combustible, eternally. In the wood, the fire; in the fire, the wood.

“Xiao Lu?”

They turn. It's Katie, looking at Xiao Lu from the calligraphy table.

“Yes?”

“Why did you give me up?”

Even before Rhett finishes translating Xiao Lu looks stunned. In the ten years of every single day in which she has thought of this child, she has imagined answering this question. Now, the usual answers echo in her mind:
I had to. I was forced by my family. We didn't have enough food. They said we had to have a boy. People said it was a better life for you. If I did not give you up, you might have died, or been killed.
But now with her child looking at her, waiting for her to say something, she realizes that none of these answers are reasons, they're just stories she made up. Before she says anything Chun asks her another question.

“I mean, is it something I
did
?” Rhett, translating, hits the word hard.

“No! You were a wonderful baby, a beautiful, curious baby—your eyes then were like your eyes now, they seemed to reach out and hold the world in their grip!”

“Well, um... was it something wrong with me? Like how I looked, or—”

“No, no, Chun, you were perfect! There was something wrong with
me
!”

“Like the one-child-per-family thing?”

“I had one child already, but they said it would only be worth it if you were a boy.”

“Why?”

“Because they are stupid and care more about money than girls!” She lowers her eyes, ashamed of this childish outburst, and goes on, with her head down, “I... I could not stand up for you, with them. Not that they were at fault, your father and grandparents. No, it was me, my fault. They were doing what they had been told to do—and I knew I shouldn't do it. I could not stand up to do what I knew I should do, as your mother who carried you inside her. I could not do it and I am sorry!”

She thinks she will cry again, but she is all out of tears. These are the accusations sent from her ancestors—no, not them, they would approve of her giving her girl baby away—but sent from the gods, from those little statues and icons lying in her mother's box. She is out of tears, out of anger, out of words. She has nothing left but her shame. She can no longer look at Chun or the others—these three dear, kind souls!—and gets up suddenly and somehow finds herself out in the clearing on the stones, and then on the cliff edge beside the willow, staring down into the stream and the rocks far below, feeling desperately alone. The waterfall roars up at her.

Arms tighten around her arms, Clio and Pep are on either side of her, holding her back, talking to her.
They are scared I will kill myself.

They talk to her, through Rhett, the words at first seeming to come from far away. They are worried about her, they don't want her to hurt herself. Everything's okay. They forgive her.

Clio takes her by the shoulders and turns her so they are face-to-face. “Tell her, Rhett,” Clio says, “that she
saved
... Chun's life, and that we will always be grateful to her,
always
.”

“Saved
our lives too,” Pep adds, “risked hers for us all.”

As Clio holds her, faces her, Rhett repeats this.

Xiao Lu looks up into Clio's eyes, sees the truth of this, and nods. Embarrassed, she turns away, looking out into the great expanse that stretches from this mountain to the next. The fishhook of the new moon is resting on its curve. The bright jewel of the Evening Star shines just above the upper horn as if it's about to fall into the curve and rock back and forth like in a cradle—it reminds her of sitting out under the stars of a summer night, her mother telling her stories about all the gods in the sky.

42

Rhett and Thalia are in the hut. In the cave, Pep and Clio and Katie are awake in the large bed, Xiao Lu still awake in the other. When any of them moves, the light from the wood stove makes their shadows jump like liquid ghosts against the calcified wet of the rock walls. The bats are out for the night. Clio is using Pep's flashlight to read to Katie, yet again,
The Little House on the Prairie
. Xiao Lu lies quietly, her arm freshly bandaged. The wound is healing. Her energy is coming back. Rhett and Thalia are anxious to get back to civilization and are pushing to leave tomorrow.

After a while Katie yawns loudly and says, “I want to go to sleep.” Clio closes the book and puts her arm around Katie, who snuggles in. “Goodnight, Mom, Dad.”

“Goodnight, dear.”

“'Night Kate-zer. Have a beautiful sleep.”

“Okay,” Clio says, “now everybody says goodnight to Xiao Lu. In Chinese.”

“
Wan-an
,” Katie says, echoed by Clio and Pep.

Xiao Lu lies there, knowing that it is the last night she will see her baby. She wants something more, but does not know what. She lies there rigidly, a thousand images racing through her mind.

“Mom? Dad? This is our last night here, right?”

“Probably,” Clio says.

“And we can't stay here any longer?”

“No.”

“Can I sleep with Xiao Lu tonight?”

For an instant they each pause, and then, almost in unison, each says, “Yes.”

“But you'll be right here too, right?”

“Of course,” Pep says, “for sure.”

Xiao Lu hears them talking. She hears the pine boughs creak and footsteps on the stone and sees her little girl gesturing to her to move over and give her some room. She feels the pine boughs respond as Chun gets into bed with her. She is afraid to move.

They lie there for long moments, side by side. She is afraid even to breathe.

Then the girl yawns loudly, says something, and lifts her head. She puts her good arm around her and feels her head settle onto it and in the settling start to relax—once, twice relaxing—and she breathes, and soon her baby is asleep in her arms. She looks at her face, and she sees in it the face of her lost one, and then the faces of all her lost ones, alive now in the breathing of her child. She vows to stay awake the whole night this way, for it is not only her baby in her arms again but it is she herself in her mother's arms and her dear lost sister back and all the floating dead come back to life, and for the longest time she is aware of feeling every touch of her daughter's skin against her own, a lost world found, until an edgeless sleep, of love redeemed, prevails.

43

Maybe Chang-O the moon goddess,

Will pity this single swallow

And join us together with the cord of light

That reaches beneath the painted eaves of your home.

Rhett translates this, the calligraphy on the wall of the little hut, as they sit in the clearing finishing their lunch. “The name of the poem is ‘To a Traveler,'” he says, “the signature is Su Tung P'o.”

“Did Xiao Lu do the calligraphy?” Pep asks.

He asks her. “No, it was here before she came. She thinks it is ancient.”

“Worth a fortune,” Thalia says, “if you could crack it off the wall in one piece.” She smiles. “Well, then, are we almost ready to go?”

Clio, irritated, snaps, “No, we are not.”

Thalia lets out a sigh of disgust and boredom.

Katie, Clio, and Pep have spent the morning doing the usual chores and delights—the deer, the fire, the cooking, the cleaning, the calligraphy. Xiao Lu is much better, stable on her feet again, and even though her arm is in a sling she says she is ready to walk back to the monastery with them.

They carry the plates back inside and make fresh tea. Then they sit, using Rhett to ask all the questions that they could not before. Pep is interested in finding out about the family history of illnesses, to pin down Katie's risk factors. Clio asks about Xiao Lu's marriage, about Xia, Katie's sister, and about the circumstances of her giving up Katie. Katie sits at the calligraphy table, listening. Thalia announces she does not want to hear “all the gory details,” and goes outside to read her latest
New Yorker
.

Xiao Lu tells them about her decision to give Chun up and about the trip to Changsha. She takes out her one souvenir from the trip, the pair of pink plastic sandals she has never again worn. Then she asks Clio, “Why don't you have your own baby?”

The bluntness startles Clio—she looks to Katie, to see how she takes this.

“She doesn't mean anything, Mom,” Katie says, reassuringly, “she just doesn't know how we put it.”

Clio smiles and nods. “We tried,” she says, “tried incredibly hard.” She glances at Katie again and decides for the first time to tell her. “Every month I had to take my temperature, first thing in the morning, and when I was ‘right,' I had to call Pep to come home, to make love. And then every month, when my period came, month after month, it was like something had died—and some part of us had died.” She sees Pep nodding in sympathy. “Once, I did get pregnant. We were so happy! Finally! We celebrated—yes, Katie, celebrated, told people. I felt such a
glow
! And then, after about two months, in the middle of the night I... lost the baby.” She can't keep talking, looks down, and then up at Pep. He has tears in his eyes, and tears roll down her own cheeks, turning to salt on her lips. She looks at Katie, and sees in her fallen face a sadness, and a puzzlement too. “I lost her.”