At the Heart of the Universe

by Samuel Shem

  “I don’t want them—Aunt Thalia doesn’t even call me my right name—she calls me ‘Kate’—she’s retarded! Aunt Faith’s older than you! I want Carter and Sue.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yeah. They’re really cool and they live close by and they let me stay up real late and sleep late and they have two real dogs—like Cinnamon—not goldens. Can I?”

  “Sounds good to me, hon. I’m sure that Dad will agree, and we’ll tell them when we get back. But why are you thinking about all this now?”

  “’Cause of your birthday.”

  “And maybe because we might meet your birth mom soon?”

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  

  It is the last slip of afternoon by the time they emerge from the tunnel of thick, tall trees onto an open terrace. The terrace is under construction, stone being chiseled from the mountain. Tripods of bamboo poles hold pulleys and ropes for lifting. In a pit of muddy earth below, a dozen barefoot men in an assortment of faded shirts and long pants are digging. They haul dirt up to the terrace in woven wicker baskets with open tongues, two baskets per carrying pole across their shoulders, dump it, and then walk back down into the pit, their empty baskets dangling, tongue-side down, as if in supplication. From a different direction two men, a carrying pole sagging between them, are struggling valiantly to move a coffin-sized chunk of red stone across the terrace to its place in the scheme of things.

  When they see the Macys, they stop and stare and, laughing loudly, call out to Katie. The Macys—even Katie—wave back at them and offer up Nee hows. Clio’s guidebook says that a paved path leads along to a final two-hundred-step stairway up to the Elephant Temple. Sure enough, they spot a path of square concrete stones snaking around between tree trunks, leading away on level ground.

  “This is it,” Clio says. She looks up the narrow path. It tunnels through a grove of old bamboo. The trunks are thick and dark green. Her eyes are led up the lattice of stalks to the feathery tops, soaring high above, caressing the breeze. “Isn’t this divine?”

  “Wonderful!” Pep says, starting on ahead. “Lush green lush green...”

  Clio walks behind Pep, with her arm around Katie’s shoulders. A great old eucalyptus rises at the edge of the path, leaning over it. Clio ducks to pass under it, holding on to the trunk to stay on the path. Katie, talking to her, walks upright under it. The trunk is worn to silk from many decades of human hands holding on.

  A young Chinese woman wearing a bright orange plastic vest is sweeping the path. When she sees them coming, she stops. Pep passes her. As Clio draws near she notices the woman staring intently, first at Katie, then at her. Clio nods, and says, “Nee how.” The woman says nothing. She looks again at Katie. The expression on her face is peculiar—Clio reads it as embarrassment, or even fear. They pass by.

  24

  There is a commotion at the mouth of the path. She turns to look.

  The construction workers are laughing and chattering.

  Soon a large white man comes up the path. He puts his hand on the trunk of the great leaning eucalyptus and, with care not to hit his head, ducks under and goes on. Behind him is a white woman, wearing shorts that go down to just above her knees, and a tan shirt with many pockets all over it. With her is a girl.

  A Chinese girl. A Chinese girl who could be ten.

  As she watches, her heart starts to strike hard in her chest. Her eyes are riveted to the Chinese girl. She holds the woman’s hand. Her step is light, like a deer, easy and fluid. She and the woman are talking, and seem more caught up in each other than in the world around them. Xiao Lu understands then that the white woman is the girl’s mother. The little girl is trying to get her mother to understand something, or agree to something, and waves her arms and nods her head. The girl, focused on the woman, doesn’t notice the leaning eucalyptus and barely passes under it; the woman, at the last moment, ducks.

  Could it be? Could Second Sister have found them?

  She watches them approach. The stones of the path are narrow. There is only room for two people side by side. Over and over when people come up the path she steps off it, onto the packed dirt of the bamboo grove. Steps off it because they are tourists and she is a worker. Most people are Chinese. It is rare to have white people come here. The cable car will bring more white people.

  They come closer. She is straining to see her more clearly, to find, in this girl, the baby she placed in the pile of celery ten years before. She is slender, graceful. She wears blue shorts and a bright-pink shirt and carries a yellow beaked cap with a chicken on it. Her long hair is tied back. And her face? Oval more than square, her lips could be her lips, her eyes her eyes—and look!—she smiles. Is it her smile?

  Could be, yes. They are here now. They have come to this particular place at this particular time. Of all places this place; of all times this time. Has to be!

  They are upon her, the mother and girl. She steps aside but watches them. The girl doesn’t look at her. The mother glances at her and smiles and says something that maybe is “Ni hao” but sounds strange. She nods and says nothing and turns her eyes again to the girl, who is staring ahead and talking a foreign language.

  They pass by. She sees the double crown, two whorls from which her hair flows.

  Say something! Talk to them. Run up to them. Even if they are not them, the price of saying nothing is too high. It is better to be wrong. Shout out her name!

  It is the moment she has waited for, ever since she turned away from that woman at the vegetable stand who was screaming, “Whose baby whose baby?” It is the moment she has waited for to undo the regret, the fierce, relentless guilt, the shame. It is finally, for someone whose heart had stopped fully beating ten years ago and who has lived for something in the future—for this very moment—it is finally that moment.

  And in that moment something inside of her says no.

  Do I want to do this? What will happen if I do this? I have a life now. I have a life that I can live. I have reached a level of peace. Why disturb that? Who am I to do this? Who am I to disturb these people, this child? It is all for me, me! I, I. Selfish woman! Selfish!

  They are walking down the path. Their lives are whole. Let them go. Let her go.

  But if she is her, she has come here to have her life disturbed. Not her, but them, they have come here not to disturb their lives, but to find their missing lives.

  “Chwin?”

  They keep walking. Louder.

  “Chwin?”

  If she turns, it is her. If not, not.

  “Chwin-Chwin?”

  The little girl turns. The mother turns. The father turns.

  They stare at her. They stand absolutely still and stare at her.

  As if in a dream she is floating lightly upon water, weighing nothing and lifted up onto the stones of the path and moving toward her baby.

  The mother and father and child stand there as if they too are in the gossamer paralysis of a dream. She keeps walking toward them, and then something stops her. She puts her two hands flat on her belly, and stands there that way. She looks first at the child, and then at the woman. The woman’s eyes get big and her hands fly to her face, cover her mouth. Not a sound comes out. She finds herself down on her knees, feels the harsh grit of the concrete stone on her skin as a caress. Down on her knees, looking into the eyes of her beloved lost one, she says, softly now, “Chun.”

  The girl looks terrified. The man pulls her closer to him, and the woman moves quickly to her and puts an arm around her shoulders. She wants to reach out her hands, her arms, to her child, she wants more than anything to hold her in her arms as she has imagined doing for all these years, but suddenly she feels a roaring in her ears that spins her around so that she feels she is falling, and she cannot hold out her arms, she cannot reach out. Shame fills her eyes with tears, shame for what she has done n
ot only to this little girl but to these kind people, and she lowers her head and weeps. She has not wept like this since the day she left her, gave her up. The world around her dissolves. Nothing exists but shame.

  They are speaking to her, the woman is speaking to her. She raises her head.

  “Xiao Lu?”

  Their eyes meet. She nods. The child is standing between the man and the woman, protected by both. On her knees, Xiao Lu is at eye level with the girl. Her eyes show fear.

  “Chun, don’t be afraid.”

  The man, standing next to the child, wipes his eyes, and then whispers something to her. The girl shakes her head no.

  He gestures to her to get up. She does. They are all very tall. Even Chun is tall, almost as tall as she.

  The man is holding out his hand.

  She takes it. It is very large, fat and fleshy. His eyes are wet with tears. The woman holds out her hand. It too is large, but not fat, the skin buttery soft. For a moment the woman’s eyes are wide open and bright, but then they veil, wet. Her face is calm, but she bites her lip.

  She looks down at the girl, and she holds out her own hand.

  The girl reaches out.

  She takes her child’s hand.

  In the touch is the world.

  25

  In moments of overwhelm, Katie mostly reaches for her dad. He is almost always bigger than anyone else, and always solid—she can count on his being there. Now, as she takes this woman’s hand she feels a tingle go through her like when you hit your funny bone but going up and down her whole body. She trembles. For a second things blur. She nestles her head into Pep’s side and reaches her other arm around his thigh. He curls his big hand down around her shoulder to her back, and holds her tight. It helps. The tingling leaves her, and her eyes clear.

  The Chinese woman’s hand feels the same size as her own, but the skin is roughened, and her nails look worn. And she’s so small! Just a little taller than me! But her face isn’t a kid’s face. It’s a lot older. Her tan cheeks and forehead have tiny squint lines like sun rays around her eyes, like she’s outdoors a lot. As she’s so thin—like she doesn’t eat enough. Her hair is totally black, and cut short like a boy’s—she’s pretty, in a way, but she looks like she’s been through the wringer, as Mom would say. Her eyes are like mine, and her lips too I think, kind of plump in her worried face. She seems shy, like me when I meet someone new. She’s really crying—a lot!

  Katie feels her mother’s arm press more tightly around her shoulder and looks up at her. Clio’s eyes are pooling with tears, her lips trembling. And all of a sudden Katie is startled to feel her father’s body shake, like a rock slipping suddenly out of place in a pile—a shudder—and she looks up at him and he’s crying! He never cries.

  Clio is feeling like everything is happening in slow motion. This is it. No doubt now. This is she. And she’s so young! The age our daughter should be. Katie by rights should be our grand daughter. Xiao Lu has gone down on her knees in a crude but absolutely right gesture identifying Katie as the baby who came from her “tummy,” and is weeping. Clio’s own tears flow easily, in relief. Thinking, This is, because that is. We are, because she is. Finally, now, a chance to understand.

  Pep is taking a closer look at her. She’s poor, she sweeps up trash for a living. Despite her poverty she’s fastidious. A good sign. Though her clothes are plain, they’re clean. A collared shirt with fine blue stripes, sleeves rolled up above her wrists—strong wrists and hands—and brown sweatpants that loop around the soles of her feet, white socks. Well-worn clunky shoes with thin black rubber soles. The shoes are a strange color, a lime-green, matching the duct tape around her twig broom where the wad of reddish twigs meets the rough-hewn wooden handle. The once-bright-orange plastic vest that identifies menial workers all over the world. Her hair, cut short as a boy’s, is almost stylish. He searches her face for his daughter’s—her daughter’s too! It stuns him, this actuality. She is the daughter of both of us, all three of us. Not to mention William, good old fertile farmer Bill! The Chinese woman’s face is long and slender with lips and eyes like Katie’s. Exquisite eyes, really, and full of feeling.

  Pep feels Katie, who he is holding tight against him, tremble as she holds the hand of her birth mother. Seeing that touch, sensing all that is in that touch, cracks the enamel of his denial. A gritty warmth rises in his throat and rages into his sinuses. Katie looks up, having felt him shudder. She’s puzzled, a little scared. He hugs her harder, whispers that it’s okay. It’s more than okay—he feels glad that Katie sees him crying. The myth in the family is that he never cries—and it’s true he mostly breaks down when he’s alone. In an instant he realizes that he doesn’t want to always be the one with the dry eyes, the one unaffected, the he-man holding things together. That too, sure—but not only that. Not always outside-tough. He looks again down at Xiao Lu, still kneeling there but now with her reddened eyes raised to them, and he looks at Katie. Incredible, to actually find her.

  Clio and Pep reach down to Xiao Lu, offer their hands to her, palms up. She puts her hands in theirs, and rises.

  The four of them stand there awkwardly, wiping away tears, blowing noses on Pep’s tissues. The Macys try out some basic English words, and realize that Xiao Lu understands nothing. They’ve got to find a translator, but they realize they don’t even have a way of telling her where they are from.

  “Anybody know the word for ‘English’?” Clio asks.

  “I’ll try ‘American,’” Katie says. Pointing to the three of them she says, “Megoran.”

  Xiao Lu has no idea what this is, except maybe their family name. She nods and smiles and points to herself, and says, “Li Xiao Lu.”

  Pep shakes his head, and points to each of them, and says, “Macy. Macy. Macy.” Then, as if talking to an idiot, he says slowly, loudly, pointing to each, “Pep Macy. Clio Macy. Katie Macy—Katie Chun Macy.”

  Xiao Lu repeats this, “Pep Macy, Crio Macy, Katie Chun Macy.” She feels good about getting this right, and she smiles.

  “Good, good,” Pep says. “Now.” He points to each of the Macys, to all of the Macys as a group, and says, “Megoran.” Xiao Lu wrinkles her brow.

  “Try charades,” Clio says.

  “You’re the whiz at charades, you do it.”

  Clio makes the gesture of pointing to herself, Pep and Katie, and then with one hand moving back and forth between them and Xiao Lu, and the other hand at her mouth she moves her thumb and fingers like a duck quacking.

  Xiao Lu thinks that for some strange reason she is interested in ducks, and mirrors her gesture.

  Clio smiles and shakes her head no, and then takes both hands and moves them out from her mouth in a gesture of speaking and says, slowly, “Meg-oh-ran?”

  Now Xiao Lu is puzzled. She is getting that the duck is sending out a message called “Megoran.” She shakes her head no, and says, “Bu megoran.”

  “We’re sunk,” Pep says.

  “Hey, Dad, why don’t we show her our passports? The visa is in Chinese right?”

  “Good thinking.” Pep takes out Katie’s passport, shows Xiao Lu the great seal of the United States. Xiao Lu admires the photo of Katie, laughing. Then Pep shows her the visa stamp, written in both Chinese and English. As he does so, he is startled to see that their visas have expired that very day. We are now illegal in China. In the past, this would have floored him; now he is surprised at his reaction: Big shit.

  Xiao Lu stares at Katie’s visa, reading the Chinese—dates of entry and exit, days for each stay, and then a number that sends a shock through her, the date of her birth. It brings it all back, the birth, the month of horror, the trip to Changsha. She starts to feel ashamed, looking down past the little blue booklet to the ground. But then she understands where they come from, and says, “Mei guo ren! ” They nod and laugh. Now she understands. They want to find someone who speaks Mei
guo ren. They want to talk with me—and how good it would be to talk with her, with them! Suddenly she realizes that this is the reason for her silence ever since she came to the mountain, her isolation from people and her silence when she is with people. If I could not talk with my lost child, I had nothing to talk about with anyone.

  Maybe one of the monks or nuns knows Mei guo ren. She gestures for them to go with her, along the path up to the temple, to see if someone up there can translate for them. They seem to understand, and wait for her to lead. She cannot lead, she has to sweep up after them all. Through gesture she makes them understand. They start to go, glancing back all the time as she sweeps up their trail. She smiles at them. She senses that they don’t understand that this is not so much a job as a practice. That she is clearing the old path of human intrusion so that it can be a new beginning for the goddesses and gods. Usually she concentrates so wholly on her job that for a time she forgets her past, and can’t imagine her future. This is new. For the first time she cannot concentrate. It is not easy to sweep or even walk, for her legs have gone wobbly, hardly in touch with the stone. Her mind is busy with questions and hopes, and her heart is full of memories and fears.

  They climb the two hundred wide stone steps leading up to the Elephant Temple. The steps are steep, and ratchet out of sight—a hard climb. Above the horizon of the top step, only the peaks of the encircling mountain can be seen, and then the sky, full with the first russet of dusk. But if you could ask each of them about the steepness of the steps, the portent of the dark, even the beauty of that russet or the other scenery, each might say, “What effort, what portent, what scenery?” Each of them feels light, the climb not a matter of effort and portent but of challenge and seeking, like when you are hungry in a city and searching for a place to eat, you don’t notice the passing crowds, the buses, the parks. From time to time one or another of them will stop, stare, and then smile and bow—a way of saying, It’s a miracle, this, our having found each other at last!