Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization

by Jan Alexander

  She made a detour to visit the cave, as was her habit now. A crowd clustered outside. Some had brought food, pillows, and quilts, while another faction hovered there to make their views known.

  “You see? Here is all that is wrong with New China!” a member of the Raindance Party hollered. “Too much knowledge turns the human clock backward!”

  Jing Yin had become live entertainment.

  Zoe had thrust note after note into the cave, hoping to coax the girl away. “They’re waiting for you to show your face,” she’d written. “Don’t be their freak show. Just come out, and go back about your business.” She’d added, because Mississippi Sunday School teachers used to say such things, “I think God would want that.” But Jing Yin stayed inside the black mouth, poking her head out just often enough to titillate the spectators. That day Zoe heard her howl three times. The howls sounded rehearsed. She’s trying, it occurred to Zoe, to talk to God.

  It was time for Zoe to disappear from view, though. Down the stairs and the incline. When she opened the door, she saw William pacing, his feet hitting the floor like a martial drumbeat. Ming was there too, seated, head bowed. Their mouths dropped when they saw Zoe. As if she were an intruder.

  “I was going to call you,” William said.

  “I did a terrible thing,” Ming said in that little girl soprano voice.

  “You might as well sit down.” William gestured to a chair. “Ming brought Jeff to the bunker.”

  Ming began to let tears fall. “Jeff and I got a whole confession out of Charles Engelhorn. He used to be in love with your mom. She had a boyfriend named Malcolm, but they had a fight and she slept with Charles. She got pregnant along the way. Either the good one or the bad one could be your father. Malcolm walked out on Billie. Charles asked her to marry him, but she laughed in his face. Jeff was stoned and…I brought him here. I was lonely, and we’d just found the key to the mystery of your life together. But…I’m not that stupid. I blindfolded him and made him think he was hallucinating…”

  William shook his head, then pointed out that an invisible man could steal opium from a dealer in the peasant village, and then a bug could fly into Jeff’s room at night and slip a dosage into his veins. He would wake up to beautiful colors.

  Ming stopped crying and shrieked, “If we let Jeff go free, we might be spoiling everything for a billion people who are finally starting to get their opportunity to evolve to some higher rung of humanity. If we destroy his mind, we’re the cruel ones. And then how can we be arbiters of this higher rung of humanity?”

  “Ming’s ruined everything, but even so she’s right,” Zoe said. “We’ve crowned ourselves arbiters.” She stared at William. “This is a test, right? And we’ve passed it.”

  William looked truly incomprehensive.

  “I mean, you weren’t really going to drive poor Jeff to insanity!”

  He still didn’t answer, and that told her everything.

  Was she going to marry a ruthless man who would destroy Jeff to protect their paradise? Zoe stormed out the door. Back in the office, she looked out her window and watched a mist overtake the afternoon sun. She thought about returning to America, perhaps finding a Danny Hirsch replica. She shuddered, imagining a place where she could never fly again, where she might live with a husband and kids whose imaginations might reach only as far as what they had in the bank. And she recalled that strange thing Ming had said. The mystery of your life.

  Might as well get on with business for now, so Zoe checked her e-mail. There was a message from Professor Engelhorn, addressed to her and to William. The subject line said Emergency Trip. The message was terse: I have to go to Beijing on some emergency business. Not sure I’ll be able to make it back for your wedding, so best wishes to you both. Best, Charles Engelhorn.

  When was there ever emergency business in academia? Zoe felt a sickly blob begin to regenerate in her sinuses.

  “Zoe, are you here?” The voice from the hallway was Ming’s. So she showed Ming the message.

  “Oh my god.” Ming turned pale and twisted her shoulders in a way that looked apologetic. “What time is it? I’ll be back in just a little while.”

  Ming was back within the hour, and she presented Zoe with a crisp white envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper covered with boxes and codes, a lifetime lost in two dozen rows of numbers. A footnote below declared: The tested man cannot be included as the biological father of the child.

  “The mystery of my life.” Zoe glared at Ming, not sure if she wanted to deliver a kickpunch or fall into her arms for comfort.

  “I’m sorry,” Ming said, then took it upon herself to squeeze Zoe’s hand. “I was, well, I was hoping he’d be your father and we’d all fall into place.” She looked eager-to-please in a way that reminded Zoe of Professor Engelhorn himself. It occurred to Zoe that Billie would have eaten such an eager-to-please young pup alive.

  “Maybe…” Ming hesitated. “Maybe you’d like to call your mom?”

  Good idea, though it was just before six a.m. in New York and she knew Billie wouldn’t pick up.

  Zoe listened to her mother’s voice belt out “Hello, you have reached 212…” like an acapella choir resounding through a Mississippi heat wave. They had never left their names on their outgoing voicemail because it might be the landlord calling.

  Zoe could just see her mother—in her darkened room with a white noise machine and ear plugs and sleep mask; the landline in the bedroom would be shut off, but Billie would still hear it from the living room and, for the rest of the day, she’d complain that she had bags under her eyes because the phone woke her at some ungodly hour.

  “This is your daughter, Zoe. Call me as soon as you can. This is very important.” She slammed the phone down. “Aren’t parents supposed to answer calls from their kids at any time of day?” she pondered aloud, then realized that Ming had left the room and it was William standing there watching her.

  “Darling,” he said. “I know I failed your test, somehow.”

  “Just leave poor Jeff alone.”

  William shifted about like an unwelcome guest. “I have enemies,” he said, finally. “You should know that before you marry me. I can’t promise you we’ll be able to live happily ever after.”

  Instead of breaking up, the two of them spent the evening walking along the cliff, saying little, just watching the river lap the shore while a lutist played beside the big Buddha and other lovers sat on rocks, drinking wine and laughing. At this hour the spectators had abandoned the cave girl, though there were plates of fresh food outside.

  Around twilight, they settle on a bed of moss, and Zoe called home again. This time Billie’s live voice croaked, “Hullo?”

  “Mom….”

  “Zoe? That you, darlin’? Whatever bee you’ve got in your bonnet….I’m sleeping. Was that you who woke me up this morning?”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  “You’re drunk. Is William…?”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “Then I’m going to strangle your pretty little neck.”

  “Just tell me—how well did you know Charles Engelhorn?”

  “Who? Oh, your professor. You have such a good memory, darling, makes me feel like I’ve got early dementia.”

  “I know he isn’t my father. Who was my father?”

  “C’mon baby, I have an audition this afternoon and I’m going to have ten-ton sacks of lead under my eyes. You always were special. I had dreams that you were going to save the world.”

  “I have reason to believe my father was someone named Malcolm.”

  “Who told you about…?” Billie’s voice cut like lightning. “We were better off without him, honey. I should’ve married the very smart Charles Engelhorn. Are you happy with William? If you have a man who’s got a lot on the ball and wants to accomplish big things and he’s devoted to you, for god’s s
akes marry him.”

  “Your mortal genealogy is just a blip in the heavens,” William said afterward.

  Zoe examined her own mortal hands and feet. “I’d like to have children and earthly descendants into the next thousand years, and they should know who they are. But I’m not going to sit down and write about history, I’m never going to finish the dissertation. You missed a meeting today with people who might use our chips to make sure the world has enough drinkable water. We’ve done something. I like directing this theater of life.”

  She didn’t call off the wedding. The infamous fog rolled over Sunshine Village, though it didn’t rain. Zoe appointed herself emissary to Jeff, who hadn’t left town after all, and wanted to ramble about nothing else but the night of true confessions.

  “Do people even get malaria in these parts? I think he kind of wanted to be your father all along. Wish you’d been there to save me though. Evil Ming, I’m sure she slipped something in my drink. Someday we’ll find your asshole father, Malcolm.”

  Two days before the wedding, Jeff told Zoe he’d been to the cave, imagining he might crawl in there with the Cave Girl. “She let me take her picture,” he said, and held up his camera like a trophy. “I’m going back today. Do you want to come?”

  They went together. The crowd had fashioned its own line of demarcation—on one side Raindancers, on the other Civilizers wearing tee shirts that said in English and Chinese, “Knowledge is for everyone.”

  “It’s all alive,” Jeff said. Zoe noticed a slur in his words. Jing Yin sat cross-legged and chanting.

  Zoe called out her name. “The moon will come out twice, then when the sun is up again I’m getting married. Come to our wedding.”

  She saw Jing Yin look up.

  “Both sides want the Cave Girl as their mascot,” Jeff observed. “I think she might come to your wedding, though. Should I drag her out?”

  The shrine adjoining the resort across the river was close enough to finished and Zoe had thought it would make a perfect spot for the wedding. The shrine was a solarium, with cedar-frames around walls of glass, with a view of the woods and the Buddha across the river, but also the sky, so that any god could peer down through the stubborn fog. Zoe and William had written and rehearsed the ceremony; they had stage blocked Ming as maid of honor and Simon Sun as best man—Number 3 could work the bunker for a little while. They had ordered lavish altars of oranges and grapes and flowers, the fragrances mingling with incense and fresh cedar. And as the guests assembled, Zoe saw the sun wink through the glass walls.

  Zoe wore a red gown, Buddhist style, and carried a bouquet of lacquer-red roses and mandarin-orange orchids. A Buddhist priest shifted his feet at the makeshift altar; the bridegroom was late.

  “Sometimes you wait and sometimes you rush. You see, that’s how you recycle minutes,” Zoe whispered to Jeff, who had agreed to give her away.

  “I’m getting older with each minute,” he grumbled.

  William appeared, finally, aglow in his tuxedo. “Sorry,” he whispered in his bride’s ear. “Numbers. You look ravishing, Mrs. Kingsley Sun. By the way, look who followed me.”

  Jing Yin stood in the doorway, so frail that her limbs seemed pieced together like pottery shards. Her clothes hung in threads about her scrawny frame, and her dirty feet were bare.

  “I see we have some more late arrivals. If everyone will find their seats,” said the priest in a voice that sounded like a tranquil stream, “we will begin.”

  Zoe glanced toward the back of the room. Good heavens—Jing Yin wasn’t the only one who’d come through the door. Standing in the back was none other than Charles Engelhorn. And beside him, Tom Wendall, still in his pilot uniform. She nudged Ming and whispered, “Do they know each other?”

  A choir of villagers in saffron robes began the ceremony with a chant: Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sambuddhassa—Homage to Him, the Exalted One, the Supremely Awakened One.

  “We are uniting two people bound by a commitment greater than religion…”

  A violet cloud sailed across the sun, and Zoe, glancing up, saw raindrops gathering in rivulets across the glass. William’s face had taken on a grayish hue—was he ill? His hand crept beneath her bouquet and tapped her ring. He smiled at her faintly.

  “Friends, we are together today in the presence of this congregation, and in the sight of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, to witness the vows of William and Zoe. I earnestly ask anyone who knows of any impediment to this marriage to make it known now, or else remain silent.” And after the obligatory pause—“Now you may exchange rings.”

  The bride and groom each placed a plain gold ring on the finger of the other.

  “May its circle remind you both of those things that are eternal,” the priest continued. Wrapping a string of beads around their wrists, he urged, “Be compassionate to all, and set your feet on the Path which leads from illusion and sorrow to Enlightenment and Peace. I pronounce—”

  A shriek, followed by a stampede of boots drowned out the priest’s soft words. Zoe heard crystal shatter and guests run amok like wildebeest before a tiger, just as a horde of Chinese police charged into the solarium and swooped down upon her groom. She saw his wrists in handcuffs and screamed.

  “Run—” William whispered to her. Why didn’t he transform himself into a microscopic creature? Zoe tried to say something, but Professor Engelhorn was seizing her arm and dragging her from the solarium. She kicked and kept screaming, but Tom Wendall scooped her up and deposited her in the back of a crowded van. “This is for your own good, Zoe,” he insisted, and held her down with his meaty paws.

  She tried to move and get out the door in the back of the van, but someone else grabbed her and she felt a sharp prick in her arm. Then the faces around her started to fade. She heard Ming’s voice, as if it were coming from a faraway room, saying, “Sorry, no room for Jing Yin!”

  When Zoe awoke she was lying on a narrow bed in a room. Tatami mats covered the floor, and she could hear the muffled noise of traffic outside.

  “I didn’t think you’d get hysterical, but they all insisted. Men,” Ming shook her head in disgust. She pulled a pair of jeans and several tee shirts out of a shopping bag.

  “There’s a bug in the room,” Zoe rasped. A dull pounding echoed through her head.

  “I won’t kill anything,” Ming promised.

  “Where are we?”

  “Tokyo. We’re leaving for New York this afternoon. Put these on.” Ming held up the clothes, and Zoe saw her hands trembling.

  On the plane to New York, Zoe found herself wedged between Ming in the window seat and Lulu Pang in the aisle seat. “Leaping continents,” Zoe mumbled. Ming, staring out at the clouds, ignored her. Zoe saw that she was trembling again.

  “Can we trade seats for a while?” Zoe looked up and saw Charles Engelhorn speaking to Lulu. When he took Lulu’s seat, it turned out he wanted to talk to her, not Ming. “I’m so sorry about the way your wedding turned out. The authorities claim that the Sunshine Finance Company was operating without a banking license, and they claim the money for loans came from the sale of opium. It’s all ridiculous, clearly, but that’s Chinese justice for you. They want to stop someone and they find a way to do it, and unfortunately some people saw your husband as a danger to the old capitalist order.”

  “We didn’t finish getting married.”

  “You came close enough,” the professor offered, and patted her hand. “There are preposterous rumors circulating about William brainwashing the populace, about deliberately contaminating the water supply. I’m so sorry, Zoe.”

  “Have you heard that?” She was asking Ming, but their companion in the window seat just kept staring at the clouds, in a world of her own.

  “My mom remembers you. She said she was stupid. Did you two really talk about getting married?”

  “I did.” Heat rose to his cheeks.
Then they sat in an awkward silence until the plane landed with a bump of the wheels at JFK airport.

  “Zoe has the only mom in the world who’ll say, ‘Sure, you all come and camp on my floor!’” Jeff told Lulu as they disembarked. “Assuming she hasn’t been evicted. Have you called your mother, Zoe?”

  “No, and I don’t even have a key.”

  Charles, the only one among them who had foreseen the trip, had his cell phone, and handed it to Zoe. Hello. This is 212…

  “Mom, are you there? I’m coming home. With friends.”

  There were five of them, and they had to separate at the immigration line. After the three Americans had passed through, they scanned the crowds for Ming and Lulu. At last, they spotted Lulu, chewing on her long hair like a frightened child. “The customs officials pulled Ming into a room,” she told them.

  “Oh motherfucking shit…I’d practically forgotten!” said Jeff.

  “She was scared,” Zoe whispered to him.

  The bedraggled party lined up against the wall and waited.

  “I’m going to go talk to the airport police,” Professor Engelhorn said. “And I’ll stop at an ATM. You might have all forgotten—in America you need legal tender. Why don’t you wait at the bar? Order something and I’ll pay when I get back.”

  Maybe he’s going to desert us, it occurred to Zoe. But no, he handed Zoe his leather satchel and cell phone to look after. He would be back.

  “Let’s get a car and drive across America looking for your father,” Jeff whispered, as they hauled their meagre baggage to the nearby bar. “I’ll take photos of spool museums and sharecroppers and pay our way.” His face shone with sweat, and his complexion had a greenish cast to it. How much opium did he smoke in Sunshine Village? Zoe wondered.

  Charles’s phone rang. “Zoe?” It was Ming, and she was weeping. “I am having some trouble. Can I talk to Jeff, please?”

  Zoe passed the phone to Jeff. He listened without speaking, his mouth falling open. “Holy shit. What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Jeff was ashen when he hung up. “They did arrest Ming. I’m not feeling so good either…”