The first woman on display, her brown hair cropped very short, was a tanner, which made of the pale green eyes headlights. I stood close enough to examine each eye quite closely and found tiny flames of gold and peach in the translucent irises. The woman’s body was aware of being desired. You could see it in the rise and fall of the paramilitary belly, its breath shallow and rapid. I imagined hearing the heart beneath the nearly flat chest.
There’s something about a flat-chested woman. Something simple and inescapable in her design. The note that her instrument plays is somehow deeper and more resonant than that of others, and a short haircut brings that forward somehow. She is a tomboy in her seventeenth summer. All she has to do is wear a plunging neckline, and everyone is in love with her. One wants to know just a little bit more. We want the whole story in two precise words. And no woman is completely flat. Her two little brown hi-there’s tip forward to meet your lips. They speak to the exact centers of your palms. Model number one was exactly that creature, and I removed my shades to enjoy her all the more. Maybe it had been Twenty-One Mule Team Borax.
And this is two-burro bad tea, I reflect, carrying my sister’s smiley-face mug into the front room. I think I may now be turning the corner from drunk to hung over, and frankly it isn’t working for me. But the screen of the American Teacher’s Computer now displays a snarling young Elvis in a black cowboy shirt. This would be Lil’s homepage. I take a seat and turn Lillian’s mug around, avoiding the smile. Here’s a fresh all-caps email from Jeremy. I delete it unopened. I’m growing less and less patient with this man’s inability to handle delayed gratification. And here we have a fresh email from Ralpho with a link to his latest findings on Chinese moon bases.
The idea of colonizing the moon, he has already divulged, arose from China’s worsening environmental pollution along with their commitment to burn Manchuria’s entire vast coal belt. Thus, it can only be a matter of time before people are falling dead on China’s streets. Ralpho says a twenty-person test pod has dwelled on the surface of the moon for some time now. Things have gone well enough, except that the twenty have nothing and nowhere to spit. The government is having to shuttle canisters of bus fumes—and saxophone music, of course—to the base while they figure this one out.
I click on a link where Ralpho writes, “I have uncovered that Bejing [sic] was the first point of human-alien contact somewhere around 3,000 BC. The Intrudors [sic] made a deal with the Chinese Emprer [sic] that provided them with secure living quarters inside the Forbiden [sic] City while they made repairs on their spaceship. That was the real reason for the giant walls and all the secrecy.” In return, reveals Ralpho, the emperor received instruction in an arcane system of medical intervention known today as Traditional Chinese Medicine. And the recipe for Twice Cook Pork. Nothing in the current article concerns gun control, vegetarianism, or gas retention.
Ralpho says the ETs bear a striking resemblance to us, the explanation being that they long ago seeded our planet with crosses between themselves and one of the more promising of the local primates, returning from time to time to see how the experiment is coming.
Not well, I take it.
Ralpho should really sit down with Tree, who maintains that the Great Pyramid was constructed as a blocking diode by a do-gooder extraterrestrial race endeavoring to halt further intergalactic interference with human evolution on the plains of Africa. Eventually, of course, our race sallied forth to other geographical parts, leaving the protection of the Pyramid behind and, well, Tammy Fae Bakker is the direct result.
I’m a fundamentalist. I maintain that God created the world in six days and watched pro football on the seventh. Still, I’m beginning to warm to some of Ralpho’s theories. I particularly enjoy his argument linking ankle tattoos, sushi consumption, and lesbianism.
Think about it.
I close out the email account and open a search engine. I still can’t get that pharmaceutical company out of my head. Tossing down a swig of two-burro tea, I enter two words into search: Regis and Laboratories.
Chapter Sixteen
“Tell me something, Tree. Do you love your mother?”
She gives me one of her sideways looks. Tree Carter and I are seated at her kitchen table eating inscrutable pink Chinese ice cream. Beyond the kitchen window is a view of the green- and orange-tiled building where Tree provides English to Shenzhen’s most out-of-body first-graders. Her refrigerator is covered with examples of their crayon art.
“Of course,” she replies. “She drives me crazy, but I love her. Why?”
“Just curious. Do people love their mothers in some kind of predetermined, preverbal, pre-vertebrate way, or is there a moment of choice at some juncture? Either way, I seem to be in need of reinstalling the software.”
“Talk,” says Tree.
Not easily done, actually. The space that my maxillary first premolar crown once filled seems enormous. Even my vowels are beginning to whistle. Unfortunately, I slept through this morning’s appointment with Dr. Xylophone, now rescheduled for the day after tomorrow. Bellamy’s busy that day but he promises to send his secretary, Ursula, whose hairline and upper lip are about a quarter-inch apart. That would be roughly five millimeters.
I’m going metric.
“Lil says I am defined by my Mom issues,” I tell Tree, dabbing at the pink ice cream at the bottom of my porcelain teacup.
“And what do you say?”
“I think I’m defined by a lot more issues than that. But Lillian always goes straight for the reductionism, projection, and self-justification. Not to mention the family mean streak. And she’s probably right.”
Tree waits for more.
I gaze at my ice cream. As with most of the prepared foods in this country, the color, scent, and tang are at sharp odds with each other. This particular flavor, I think, is called Bubblegum Hotdog Surprise.
“The first time I encountered the word adopted,” I tell Tree, “I said, oh that’s what I am.” I turn to her. “Why do I suddenly have the urge to call you Oprah?”
“You loved your mother, Jules. You still do. You’re no different from the rest of us. You just have to pass through the pain and the anger. Then you’ll find the love. You know why this is coming up for you now?”
I force myself not to squirm in my chair.
“Everything that is destined to be,” says Tree, her brown eyes softening, “already is. The work we came here to do is already complete, Julian. It’s calling back to us through time, guiding us in. When we feel that pull, that discomfort, that emotional wound crying out for healing, it means we’re being prepared for something that can no longer be postponed. Our job is just to be with all that. To feel it all, whatever it is.”
“Feel?” I say.
Tree nods.
Frowning, I place another spoonful of inscrutable Chinese ice cream on the left side of my mouth. Since losing the premolar crown, I eat everything on the left side, which leaves me feeling curiously half-fed. The crown, a small fortune in jewelers’ gold actually, now rides in my left shirt pocket. How nice to be falling apart both emotionally and physically. Maybe I’m spending too much time in Lillian’s bed. I keep having the urge to turn on all her sex toys just to see what they’ll do to each other.
Tree tilts her head slightly, as though seeing me for the first time. “It’s people like you who have the hardest time, you know. Smart people? You learn how to go inside your head, and after a while you forget how to come back out. The important thing is, Jules, you’re asking the right questions now. You’re starting to take a look at yourself and that’s very, very encouraging. I never thought I’d live to see the day when you’d come to me about your feelings for your mother.”
“I didn’t come for that,” I protest. “And while we’re asking all the right questions, what exactly is supposed to happen on the Three-three-three?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want to memo me when you figure it out? It’s February, you know. To be honest, I
have enough on my plate just now without all your little veiled references to things we’re supposed to do on behalf of God Almighty Jesus Jerusalem Hogwaller. Between you and that big blond you hang around with, I feel out of sync with inner processes I probably don’t even have.”
Tree’s eyes are steady. “What’s going on with you, Julian?”
I set down my spoon and share her gaze. “My publishing deal is dead, my novel is as unfinished as ever, you won’t even talk about bringing in Truman for me—”
“He said you have to prove yourself.”
“—I have to prove myself, the Shenzhen Textbook Publishing Company is stiffing me, my teeth are falling out, Lillian can’t seem to get out of Memphis, and I can’t seem to get out of China. And this ice cream is offensively bad.”
“Only if you’re expecting something different,” says Tree, lifting a spoonful. “You know, you might try enjoying China. It’s a pretty special place, you know.”
“And I haven’t been laid since the Year of the Pterodactyl,” I add. “And you can’t buy a decent number-two pencil anywhere in this country. Other than that, life couldn’t be much sweeter, now could it?”
I avoid mentioning the spot of worry that accompanied this morning’s web search. Not only does Regis Laboratories manufacture plastic hormones for old ladies, they also do a lot of hands-on genetics. That’s how I’d encountered their name before, years before while trying to uncover Lil’s and my birth records. In the end, the only solid fact I managed to unearth was that the artificial insemination of our mother had been conducted in Chicago, Illinois, by one Regis Laboratories. Which I’d call ironic at the very least. The same company that once horsed around with this woman’s ovaries is now managing their tour of obsolescence while cutting a monthly check for the attorney who hired her daughter at an obscure Memphis law firm whose usual clientele runs more to multiple-amputees than multinational pharmaceutical trolls. In fact, I’m not sure whether ironic quite covers it.
Tree’s smile spreads effortlessly. “Julian, everything you’re looking for is at the centermost of your heart.”
I wait for a little more information. When it doesn’t come, I say, “That’s really special to know, Tree. And why have you hidden this little nugget from me for so long? Listen. Seriously. How can I convince you to bring Truman in for me? Just once? This material is good for a Pulitzer at least. Do you know how few people get the Pulitzer?”
“Everything you need is inside your own heart,” says Tree, unfazed. “Ask. That’s all you have to do. There are guides, lots of them, whose whole business is to take you where you need to go.”
“You mean Jesus, Krishna, Buddha… ?”
She nods. “Mother Mary, Guan Yin, Meher Baba, the archangels, on and on.”
“Are you going to sing ‘Rock of Ages’ now?”
“They’re codes, Julian, that’s all. They’re codes that work.”
I try to give Tree’s proposition serious consideration. I don’t get very far. I tried om-ing once. It made my nose hairs itch.
“There’s one other thing you should know,” says Tree, pushing her empty teacup away. “When you ask, you receive. Don’t think it won’t happen. And don’t think this is just about you and your mother. It is, of course. But this stuff is old, Julian. It’s very old. It’s why we came into these bodies. It’s why we’re in this country, sitting at this table, having this conversation. It’s why this solar system is here, as a safe house, a hypothetical learning space for working out exactly these issues.”
I scowl at the word hypothetical. “What exactly do you mean by ‘when you ask, you receive?’”
“It’s too late to take it back now.”
“Take back what?”
“You signed on for this a long, long time ago, baby. Just pay attention. The universe will send you situations that will take you to your centermost heart. Some people call these kinds of things tests. Some say they’re punishments. But they’re all blessings, Julian, and I’ll tell you why. Each one gives us another chance to love what we could not love before.”
“I may need a few more chances with this ice cream,” I say.
Tree leans forward. “It has nothing to do with ice cream, or your mother, or your sister, or your novel, Julian, and I’ll tell you why. What you could never love before is yourself. That’s the battle you are fighting. All that adolescent behavior of yours, all that denial you like to wrap yourself up in—that will soon fall away, revealing the warrior within. Once that happens, our work truly begins. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter how many Three-three-threes come and go. You’re asking the right questions now. That’s what’s important. That means the answers can’t be too far away. Believe me when I say they are coming at you at the speed of light. Hear me when I tell you this. There will soon come a time when denial will no longer be a possibility.”
I give her a blank look. Go ahead, I’m thinking. Underestimate me.
Chapter Seventeen
I try to be as cynical as possible. It makes for fewer surprises. So it really pisses me off that I didn’t see this coming. Lillian will be delayed for just a few more days, and will I please please please sub for her until she makes it in? Me. A substitute schoolteacher. In China.
I said absolutely not, but my sister is a courtroom attorney and had all her arguments queued. The final argument was to burst into horrific sobs when I paid no heed whatsoever to arguments one through whatever, and the rest of the conversation was just an unhappy blur. I was had, and I knew I was had. Here I am lying against my sister’s nested pillows watching her pirated sex DVDs on the school’s computer while she attends our dying green mother.
So, at ten past eight on Monday morning, here I am climbing three flights of concrete stairs amid a surging sea of white-over-blue uniforms and querulous gazes en route to Lillian’s first class of spring semester at Shenzhen High School of Electronic Excellence.
Life is so whatever.
At least I know how to fake it. I stroll into Room 403 with such nonchalance, tossing Lil’s clipboard onto the desk and turning to erase the board with such aplomb, even I believe I’m a teacher. Behind me, the classroom is a riot of hoots, shoves, pseudo-laughs, and slammed textbooks, altogether equal in volume to any American public school that comes to mind.
No problem, I tell myself, writing my name on the board in a patient wavering line. I spent three hours online last night learning how to manage a classroom. That’s what it’s called now. Teaching, you no longer even attempt. It comes down to three things, they say. Talk loud, show no fear, and continue with the lesson no matter what.
I can do that.
For about two and a half days.
As I await the late bell, I survey Room 403, which is all windows left side and right. Fore and aft are nothing but old-fashioned green chalkboards. A few rags remain at this or that window where the curtains have rotted away. A few cheap plastic ventilation fans dangle miserably from the walls. It’s a somewhat chill February morning. Many of the windows don’t close. All the girls are heavily bundled, arms wrapped around themselves, shivering. The boys, fresh from pre-school basketball, are sleeveless and frisky. One boy torments the girls by throwing all the windows open, and they reward him with high wails. I watch as the nearest girl struggles to close the windows behind him. As soon as she takes her seat, the same boy throws them all open again.
This is going to be interesting.
The students’ wooden desks, sixty or more in number, are packed so tight that walking among them would require turning sideways. We won’t be doing that.
My desk, actually the common desk of all Room 403 teachers, is a disaster of broken chalk-bits, scraps of filthy rags, a few blunt, eraser-less pencils, and now Lillian’s clipboard and my bottle of Binihana purified water. I’m standing on a ten-inch wooden stage, beneath the framed blood-red flag of the People’s Republic of China, trying to look gun-boat authoritative.
“They’re mostly sweet kids,” Lillian has
told me, “but not necessarily all that bright, okay? This is a vo-tech high school, remember. Just keep it simple and you’ll be fine.”
Mostly sweet, I’m thinking. Lillian has never had these particular students. We may have Wang the Ripper right here on row three.
As mentioned, this school is wholly funded by the government-owned telephone company, which finds itself in regular need of warm bodies with opposable thumbs and not too much upstairs. These kids are certifiably dumb, but they know the score. Their futures are already written, and it doesn’t make much of a read. They have fallen to the lowest rung of a ladder leading nowhere. Of course their attitudes are going to stink.
Finally, the bell rings for what seems a full minute. As soon as it ceases, I bellow, “Good morning, class.”
It doesn’t come out clath because yesterday a dentist with crooked teeth reattached my crown, I think with Krazy Glue. Dr. Xylophone’s office is in the dental wing of an enormous government hospital where Ursula and I stood in line at three consecutive windows before sitting on our hands for an hour. Finally we arrived at a tiny cubicle where Dr. Xylophone smiled broadly with jumbled teeth. During the entire procedure, an unidentified woman stood just behind his shoulder and stared into my mouth. Afterward, I asked Ursula who that woman was. “Next customer,” she said.
Now, with an awful extended groan of wooden chairs against careworn tile, all fifty-odd students rise to their feet. “G-o-o-o-m-o-r-r-r-y-y-y-t-e-a-c-h-u-u-u-h,” they reply in slow-motion then remain standing, awaiting my instruction.
The Year of the Hydra Page 17