At the Heart of the Universe
Page 37
—Tu Fu (713–770), “South Wind”
45
Pedaling hard uphill on the rackety bicycle, the girl thinks, I won’t give up until I reach the fork in the path.
The branches of the persimmon trees scratch her, but she puts her head down and pedals on. She remembers how the red-dirt path, all rutted and twisty, keeps going up until where the tree is, that one lonely fig tree at the fork. This time we’ll go the new way, to the right. When we got to the village down below it was easy to find out where they live. It’s not far now. “See, I told you, didn’t I?” I said to them. “I said trust me—we’ll find ’em.”
From the day they showed up again at her little hut in the woods, Xiao Lu was determined. As soon as she was healthy, she would go back. And they would go back with her, no question. This morning down in the village, Xiao Lu wouldn’t take no for an answer—she was tough. I’ve been right almost every time in China except when I ran away—and if that hadn’t happened then, this wouldn’t be happening now. But is this gonna be right too?
Katie clenches her teeth, pushes hard, harder, and when the bike slows after a hard push she takes a quick glance back and doesn’t see anybody. It’s a steamy morning in late July. She wants to wipe the sweat off her face because it’s mixing with the sunscreen to make some weird goo that’s stinging her eyes but she knows that if she takes her hand off the handlebars to wipe it she won’t be able to make the next turn of the wheel and keep moving up. It’s like if she can make just one more turn of the pedal this whole adventure will turn out well, but if she gives up it will tilt like a bicycle defeated and wobble and throw her off, down into the red dirt. Eyes stinging, she does one more hard push. The bike moves at first barely but then when the pedal goes all the way down it moves faster and everything else but pedaling gets blotted out, and she puts her head down and does one more and when she looks up she sees it just up ahead, the fig tree at the fork in the path. I’ll stop up there and wait for them to catch up. I’ll go, “La-dee-da what took you so long?”
Catching her breath, she looks around. To the left, the path goes up to the house of the scary grandparents. To the right the path dips into a valley of rice fields. A lot of paddies climb the hills like steps on either side. Some fields are green, others are flooded with no sign of planting and reflect the sun in wedges. Far down in the valley she sees somebody working in the field, a white shirt with a golden straw hat, bobbing up and down like a bird. I think they told Xiao Lu to go down there, way down there, maybe three farms or five, and that’s where they’ll be.
“Katie? Wait!”
Katie watches them walk their bikes up toward her. First Clio, in her straw hat, then Xiao Lu, hatless, smiling up at her—she’s always smiling at her now—and then Pep, huffing and puffing and bent down almost double over the small bike like a clown in a circus act. Katie laughs at the sight of him, his big knobb-ley knees going here and there, his face sunburnt red, his nose like a half tomato, skin peeling.
They come up to her and stop to rest.
“Thank God we don’t have to go up there again,” Clio says, nodding to the left fork.
“Up to the beautiful nice grandparents?” Pep says. “Hey—how ’bout we drop in for a cup of tea and a torrent of abuse? Shall we take a vote?”
“I vote no!” Katie says.
“No,” Clio says.
“Xiao Lu?” Katie communicates, in gesture and a few Chinese words, what the choice is. Xiao Lu’s eyes get big, her mouth falls open, and she shakes her head no.
“Good,” Pep says, “I vote no too.”
Xiao Lu gestures to the other fork of the path, the one leading down alongside the rice field with the bobbing figure.
Her eyes are different, Katie thinks, as if she could start crying really easy. It’s a big thing for her to bring us to them, for her to see them again after so many years. She’s scared of what she might find there—real scared. I’m scared too. They might be mean like the others!
Clio nods to Xiao Lu. Xiao Lu gets up on her bike and sets off, Clio following.
“Excited, Kate-zer?” Pep asks as he walks his bike alongside Katie.
“Yeah.”
“Gonna be great to meet your beautiful nice sister, eh?”
“Yeah, Dad, like as great as your meeting my beautiful nice birth dad too!” He looks like he’s swallowed a toad, the slimy thing caught halfway down his throat. She laughs and gets up on her bike.
“You little foozle! Ha! Haha!” He grabs the seat of her bike and pushes her a few steps along. She screeches—“Heeeee!”—and with a hard push he lets go and she keeps on going, fast and faster down the slope.
Feeling his push, the bike floating along, she remembers the moment when she learned to ride. He had been teaching her, running alongside and holding the bike while she pedaled, catching her when she was about to fall. It seemed she would never get it. But then one warm evening as he ran along beside her and she wobbled and wobbled as if once again she would fall, he ran faster and she pedaled faster and suddenly he seemed a little behind her and he had already let go of her and it worked!—as if he was still there pushing her but he wasn’t, he’d let her go on alone and she was floating, flying, screeching with delight, and he was still with her and not.
She glances back. He’s pedaling hard to catch up. She hurries after the two women, thinking, My mom and birth mom side by side, how cool is that?
But he’s given her too hard a push for the sudden downhill. She flies way too fast down the long slope and is suddenly scared that she’s just gonna crash into them on the narrow path or have to steer off into a paddy and she cries out, “Hey, watch out, here I come!” and they turn and seem to be laughing because as if by magic the red-dirt path swells out like a big belly into a road wide enough for everybody and they make a place for her to slip on in between them and grab her and slow her down and hold her, Clio by her shirt and Xiao Lu by her handlebars until she moves with them and they move with her along into their pace, all of them suddenly a living character of three people riding in the sun.
“Look! No hands!” They look back. Pep is barreling down toward them, hands high in the air. He brakes hard and swerves dramatically, tires spitting red dirt, and, laughing, joins them. He rides on the outside of Xiao Lu.
The three women and the man ride along together seeking a girl named Xia, whose name means “Summer.” And if you could ask each of them what they are feeling at just that moment, each might say in their own way that they are feeling part of something else, part of something at the heart of the universe, a universal law of love.
Notes
With appreciation of the marvelous volume China: Empire of Living Symbols by Cecelia Lindqvist, translated from the Swedish by Joann Tate. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading MA 1989.
With appreciation for constant scholarly and cultural advice on China from professor and friend Tianja Dong, Westfield State University, Massachusetts
Note on the two different translations of the “Birth Mother’s Letter”: on Page 64, the Americans are reading the English translation; on page 290, the letter is being read by Xiao Lu, who of course makes and the correct Chinese translation.
Note on the Chinese character “Chun”: As to the word 屯. It is supposed to be the very original character 春 in its most ancient form. Originally “Spring” was symbolized by the growth of a bud, like a sprouted broad bean, which is the synergy of energy of growth—the “Qi.” The original form of the character 屯 is this bud. These two words were supposed to be interchangeable by people three or four thousand years ago. And later 春 incorporated 日.
About the Author
Bestselling novelist samuel shem is known as the author of the three million copy–selling modern classic, The House of God, which with dazzling humor describes the horrors and banalities of working in hospitals—and is required reading for medical students
and doctors. A Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School faculty member for over three decades, Shem is currently Professor of Medicine in Medical Humanities at NYU Medical School. He has given over sixty medical school commencement addresses on “Staying Human in Medicine.” His other books include The Spirit of the Place, named USA Book News Best Novel of the Year and Independent Publishers Best Novel of the Year in 2009. His award-winning play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, co-written with his wife, Janet Surrey, about the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, ran for ten months Off-Broadway in 2013. Surrey and Shem are co-authors of the 2015 book, The Buddhas’s Wife: The Path of Awakening Together. He was a visiting artist/scholar at the American Academy in Rome in 2012. He lives in Boston and Costa Rica, together with Janet and their daughter. www.samuelshem.com
About Seven Stories Press
seven stories press is an independent book publisher based in New York City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Martha Long, Luis Negrón, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including Subhankar Banerjee, the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Greg Palast, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. In 2012 we launched Triangle Square books for young readers with strong social justice and narrative components, telling personal stories of courage and commitment. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com.