The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  I finally made good on my smuggled half-pound of multi-grind, if you care to know. It occurred to me that one might simply use the hot water from the boiler/purifier—there’s one in every hotel room in this country—and strain the grounds through a paper towel. This is after you take the plastic bag from the waste basket, tear a hole in one corner, place the paper towel inside the bag and place the grounds in the paper towel. Next you hold the plastic bag above a bowl and, chanting, “Cof-FEE, cof-FEE, cof-FEE,” pour and watch with increasing anticipation as a liquid more or less the color of a reggae artist forms in the bottom of the bowl. Then you throw the liquid away and eat the paper towel.

  Lillian’s new curtains lie spread across the double bed. Yellow flowers on an emerald field. I guess there was nothing in pink.

  “Did you say something about coffee, dear?” calls Lil from the kitchen.

  “No, I didn’t. I want a gin sour, light on the sugar.”

  Through the front window, I see much of the campus, such as it is. Shenzhen High School of Electronic Excellence is composed of two five-story classroom buildings, an eleven-story office building, two concrete dormitories, and a regulation soccer field ringed by an asphalt track. Directly below the balcony are two tennis courts in a soft green. The office building owes to the fact that the school is fully endowed by China’s government-owned telephone company. The students here, mouth-breathers all we’re assured, will be fed into low-paying jobs at Wa Bell. Like all the other apartments on this campus, Lil’s is composed of a modest studio, a postage-stamp kitchen, and an abbreviated john. But there’s air-conditioning and an actual Western toilet—which the Chinese prefer, by the way, when and wherever they’re able to get their little bee-hinds onto one.

  My sister returns with my drink and a green tea for herself.

  “I can’t believe,” she says, squeezing into the other settee chair, “that classes start in two days and my boss doesn’t even know what classes I’m teaching, let alone when or where. I’ll find out when I walk in Monday morning. And I don’t get my own classroom. And I teach in a five-story walk-up with no heating or cooling. And the power has gone out in this apartment twice today. And anyway it’s the new moon, and you know how I always get.”

  “I know.”

  “And Tree says Mercury’s in retrograde, which just…”

  I stop listening to my sister. Who over-sugared my drink. I’m anticipating Tree’s arrival and the subsequent appearance of everyone’s favorite world savior and lover of small children and randy lapdogs—whom Tree has not actually promised, but at least she’s willing to sit down and let her eyes roll back.

  I can feel the weight of those new pages in my hands.

  “. . . And I was promised I wouldn’t have to keep rolls or give grades, so now it turns out I get to do both, plus I have fifty kids per class, which if I teach fifteen classes is how many grades?”

  “Seven hundred fifty,” I tell her.

  If this gin is English, I’m Lithuanian.

  “Seven hundred fifty,” says Lil. “And they all look alike, which I hate to say, but everybody wears the same uniform and has exactly…”

  Again, I tune out my sister while maintaining eye contact, having learned years ago that Lillian equates being looked at with receiving attention. Frankly, I enjoy the sense of control, those nice secret serotonin puffs that come from successfully misleading my nemesis just a tiddly-tad. And honestly there are worse things than listening to my sister’s voice without following the strained lines of Lillian-logic. It’s a case of a seasoned musical instrument in the hands of a child. When my sister is really wound up, which is usually, her words tumble over one another in a mad unself-conscious dash, little gasps between. Pure proximal differentiation. I haven’t gasped since fifth grade. See earlier reference to lilac and pink sweaters.

  Proximal differentiation, for the uninitiated, means that twins who grow up together polarize. One becomes the talker, the other the recluse. One becomes the achiever, the other the neuroser. Good twin, bad twin, basically. I’m holding up my end of the bargain.

  “. . . Anyway, it’s a good thing I’m not freaking out,” says Lil, falling silent.

  I reach for a reassuring tone. “It’s just the Chinese way of doing things, dear. You’ll get used to it.”

  Lil looks unreassured.

  Our Dr. Carter is facing the stray challenge, as well, I’m told. Tree has a PhD in Ed Psych, a string of publications, and a strong classroom background, so the headmaster of Primary School Focus Youth Shenzhen takes one look at her and assigns her to an office. Clearly here is a woman way too scary-looking to put in front of small children.

  “Look at Tree,” I tell Lil. “They don’t want her anywhere near the kids, and is she freaking out? No. She’s just going to charm them all into submission.”

  “If anybody can,” says Lil drearily, “she will.”

  “And so will you.”

  True, actually. My sister’s a charmer. More proximal differentiation.

  Two neighbors’ faces appear in the window, hands cupped, mouths sagging open. After a glance at them, Lil says glumly, “Didn’t we read that the Temple of Heaven is the navel of the world?”

  “The Heaven’s Heart Stone inside the temple, specifically,” I say, waving to the people outside. They wave back.

  “Shenzhen is a thousand miles south of there. What body part do you suppose that would be?”

  I take it for a rhetorical question.

  Hanging the curtains turns out to be easy enough. First you drink the gin sour, then you complain of your aching broken hand. Then it’s a simple matter of watching your sister thread the new curtains onto the old rod. Outside meanwhile is an increasingly unruly mob of neighbors who cheer happily as Lil closes the curtains. At the same moment, the power goes off. Suddenly we hear the traffic on the nearby thoroughfare.

  “Three times,” says Lil.

  I picture three blackened farmers smoking atop Shenzhen’s electric fence.

  Seconds later, the power returns. Again the roar of the air-conditioner consumes everything. I ask Lil for another sour, lighter on the sugar this time, and follow her to the kitchen. It’s too small for both of us, so I lean against the doorway to ask, “So, who was the dead guy?”

  “Dead guy?” says Lil, slicing a lemon. “Oh, the dead guy. Nobody seems to know. All I can tell you is he wore red socks.”

  There’s a knock at the door.

  “Must be Tree,” says Lil, dropping the knife and hurrying past my stunned expression.

  Dr. Shatrina Carter sweeps into the American Teacher’s Apartment. “Air conditioning! Ahhhhhgh! I’ve died and gone to heaven! And here’s my Julian!”

  “No hugs,” I say.

  She hugs me anyway, practically lifting me off my feet. While Lil shows Tree the apartment, I fill my glass with straight gin—Filipino, it turns out—while asking myself why anyone would want to find himself freshly murdered in broad daylight in front of the building where my sister has just opened her suitcases, say nothing of political affiliation, insurance plan, or stocking preference. Say what you will. Even in the basic Crayola box of twelve, red constitutes a mere eight percent probability, which begs the question: do rival groups now vie for the viewing grounds surrounding the lives of my sister and myself, and what exactly might that mean in terms of normalcy, privacy, and daily pursuit of dalliance?

  A question for another time. A séance seems to be forming in the front room.

  “You want to extinguish that drink, Doo?” says Lil. “Tree wants to get started.”

  I down the gin and go into my bag for two freshly sharpened German number-two pencils and an official Gregg mini-steno notebook in institutional green. I’m not half bad at shorthand. A hundred eighty words per minute, depending on the minute. A hundred ninety when tipsy.

  Tree wrinkles her nose. “I still smell alcohol in here.”

  “I’ll light some incense,” says Lil.

  “Incense contains
saltpeter,” I inform her, “besides which, if the idea is to attract Truman, shouldn’t we be dousing ourselves with martinis?”

  As Lady Shatrina arranges herself cross-legged on the center of the double bed, Lil and I pull up settee chairs at either side. In my lap are the two number-twos and the mini-steno, open to a fresh page. Across the top, in near-perfect Gregg’s shorthand, I write, “Chapter Thirteen” and stare fixedly at Tree.

  Lil asks for my moldavite. I hand it to her. She places mine and hers in Tree’s palm where the third pendant awaits. Deftly, Tree arranges them into one roundish stone.

  “Listen, Jules,” says Tree, closing her eyes, “I have no idea what this session is going to be about. I’m just willing. You say something new came in when you were out in the countryside. What involves you, involves all three of us, okay? I hope you’re beginning to understand that. You are in this country for a reason, Jules, just the same as your sister and myself.” Tree’s eyes slide open, and I realize that she’s been staring at me through the lids. “You decided to come here. Now you’re here, and it’s time you started to be here.”

  I turn away from Tree’s gaze. When I glance at her again, the brown eyes are once more closed.

  “We send a voice to the highest of our highest-most selves,” begins Tree, the mahogany voice deepening as it rises in volume, “and to all those who work on behalf of the brightest of the light and the lightest of the bright, and say be here now and help us in this which we do, Lord God Heavenly Jesus Uma Sofia.”

  “Lord God Heavenly Jesus Uma Sophia,” drone Lil and I.

  “Here and now, we seal this space in all its dimensions and times, ways, varieties and vacuities, expanses expressions and dominions,” say Tree, voice dropping still farther till it’s etching the floor tiles, “that no one shall come unto us now except that lamb of the immortal blessed dawn known to us as Truman—be he now present and accounted for, Holy Lord God Immortal Soul of Abraham Wagga Wagga.”

  Lil and I look at each other. “Holy Lord God mmmm… Wagga Wagga.”

  “Be it hereby and forevermore so,” says Tree.

  “Be it hereby and forevermore so.”

  Pulling myself a bit taller in my chair, I watch as Tree sinks into her signature trance by slow and, it would appear, tender degrees, dropping her head farther and farther till it hangs on the bone and her breathing becomes ragged.

  It shouldn’t be long now.

  I remember one stretch when Tree brought in a series of deceased professional wrestlers who’d entered the next world with serious maladaptations to soul-evolvement in the absence of leotards. Attachment, the Buddhists call it. The whole thing was touching, actually. I’ll never forget the moment when Minter the Tormenter first admitted he’d been dragged along the tunnel of light kicking and begging for his Capezios. Not that I’ve ever believed that Tree is actually bringing in spirits of the dead. But there was and is no better entertainment value in west Tennessee, outside the summer tent-revival circuit, than Tree’s channeling sessions, drinkable English gin or no.

  Suddenly Tree rears her head. A frown-line forms between her eyebrows, and she opens her mouth to speak.

  “Gweeeeetings,” caws Truman’s voice.

  Oddly, Tree’s mouth did not move. Truman’s thin nasal voice seemed to have leached from some other place entirely. Tree opens her eyes in confusion, and we stare at one another.

  “It’s twuuuue,” says Truman. “I have chosen another medium this time.”

  Tree and I turn in the direction of Lillian, whose eyes are closed and lips moist and parted. “I come through Lady Lillian for a weeeason,” says my sister’s mouth. “Your doubts, Julian. Your doubts are holding everything back. All that must end here and now. Are you listening?”

  “Write,” says Tree, jostling me.

  I begin to transcribe.

  “I’m just some fwaaaagment of Tree’s personality? Is that what you believe, Julian? And all those wonderful chapters. Do you think those could have come from just anywhere? You still believe that you’re in China for your petty personal weeeasons, but the time for doubting is over. The battle is joined. Your wake-up calls will no longer be gentle ones.”

  “Awesome,” I say. “Now, about The End of Day? I think we were just beginning Chapter Thirteen.”

  “I gave you the title of the novella.”

  “Dipping Between the Dip Slopes is a title?”

  “It’s allegorical,” says Truman.

  “Allegorical is a nice word for that title,” I reply. “It happens that I’ve found a publisher very happy with The End of Day. Now if we can just—”

  “You’ll get your final chapter, Julian. But first you must pwoove your intentions.”

  “My what?”

  “You will be tested, Julian. Be weady.”

  “Wait. How about proving your intentions?” I say. “Give me a page. A compound sentence. A gerund.”

  “Be weady, Julian. And remember. Beware the sheeeeen of the blue and the greeeeen.”

  With a gasp, Lillian opens her eyes and says, “But Arnie, I hardly know you.”

  Tree puts her hand on Lil’s shoulder. “Baby, you just channeled. You were beautiful.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I say, slamming down my number-two pencil. At the same moment, the overhead lights blink and go out. The air-conditioner dies. Four times.

  “We need you,” says Tree, looking straight at me.

  In the semi-darkness, Tree Carter leans forward to gaze into my eyes. Her voice is soft. “Julian. We can’t do this without you, okay? I wish to God we could, baby, but we just can’t. No one can say what you’ll choose when the moment comes, not even yourself. But the moment’s coming, and you’ll have to live with your choice for a long, long time. Like you’ve had to do since the last time you chose.”

  My belly tightens. I don’t know what Tree is talking about. And I do.

  Lillian gives her head a shake. “Why do I have this sudden urge to visit death row?”

  “Just be ready,” Tree says to me with a smile. “That’s all, baby. Just get yourself ready, okay?”

  Who is this woman kidding? I was born weady.

  Part Two: The Year of the Ram

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lillian just called to say she’s ringing in the New Year by admitting our mother to Baptist Memorial Hospital of Memphis—or is that ringing out the old? Anyway it’s just Chinese New Year, not the real one. We’re now entering 2003, the Year of the Ram. Fortuitous perhaps for the Dodge Truck Division. The rest of us will have to wait and see.

  “There’s no other way I can leave Memphis,” said Lil’s voice on her bunny phone. My sister’s bedroom telephone is pink and shaped like a young rabbit. You speak into its little rabbit ear. “Golden Acres isn’t set up for really sick people, and Mom’s really sick, okay? She’s literally green.”

  Vital signs are stable, said my sister, but our mother’s weight is dropping like a semi-precious stone, and she has no aura at all. It’s a good thing Lil went. I’m sure I wouldn’t have known what to do. Some withered someone is curled on a bed. And she’s green. So I’m holding down the American Teacher’s Apartment, where Lil’s plants need watering and her pirated DVDs need watching, especially the three dirty ones. I have the whole dorm to myself actually. Because of Spring Festival—a colloquialism for Chinese New Year—Shenzhen High School of Electronic Excellence is shut down like Enron. Everyone is out visiting relatives. Chinese ones, most probably.

  “You know,” I told my sister, “it’s possible that Mom’s just checking out.”

  “Yes, that’s possible,” replied Lil, “but since she can’t tell us that, we have to assume that she wants to live—and that’s just the kind of statement I’d expect from you. Throw her off a bridge and save the money.”

  “Did I say anything about a bridge?”

  “I wish you’d settle your Mom issues before she—”

  “What? I can’t hear you for the fireworks.”

&nb
sp; “I said, you’d better settle your Mom issues before she crosses over. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

  “Write down her meds,” I said. “I’ll go online and see what does what. It’s always the meds.”

  “How are yours holding out?”

  “Fine,” I lied. “And you can stop reading me.”

  Lil let a moment pass before saying, “Who’d want to read you? Anyway you’ve been blocking me since forever. You have your own personal Great Wall now. I hope you’re happy.”

  “I’m always happy,” I said. “I’m a happy guy. So, you plan on making your flight this time?”

  “Can’t. I’ll have to fly out Saturday.”

  Lillian’s trip to Memphis was supposed to be four days, including eleven-hour time differential, date change, New Year, wormhole, whatever. It’s now seven days and counting. Not that I really care. My sister’s apartment beats the altogether out of mine. I have a key to a one-room cold-water flat with a view of the hiney of a dumpster. Really. There’s a rusty crack near the bottom of the dumpster where brown ooze drips out.

  Hiney.

  The flat belongs to my employer, the snappily-named Shenzhen Textbook Publishing Company, from whom Bellamy swears I’ll get a paycheck any day now. He’s been saying that for over a month. I’m starting to make excuses for not returning his discs.

  I bet he has copies.

  Credit where it’s due, Bellamy scored me some antibiotics or I’d be peeing from my navel by now. He also turned me onto ma huang, which I find really hits the mark when you don’t skimp on the dose. Weight loss has nothing to do with it. Ma huang is about diamond-studding the moment.

  “Somebody came here looking for you,” Lil told me on the phone. “He said something about you owing some money.”

  “Who was he?”

  “How many people do you owe money to? I told him to never come to my house again. I think he was from one of the casinos.”

  “Small misunderstanding. Forget about it.”