The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Read online

  She also gives me some last-minute advice, and it’s as traditional as can be. Next come the messages that A-ma actually wants to give me, passed through intermediaries. She pushes First Sister-in-law forward: “Remember that if you want to terminate your marriage, you can always run away, but you can’t come home.” From Second Sister-in-law: “Remember that if you have children, you will need to leave them behind when you run away.” Third Sister-in-law’s message must not be a good one, because she looks embarrassed. She whispers in my ear: “If a gopher does not have his escape route dug and ready ahead of time, then it will be difficult to run away when he needs it.”

  These are the last things A-ma wants to tell me as I leave home? Does she really think that after all San-pa and I have been through I would ever follow the Akha rituals that would give me a divorce? Never. Neither will I give him cause to divorce me by being lazy, arguing with his parents, stealing love with another man, or not giving him more children in addition to our Yan-yeh, who is days away from my arms.

  Then it’s time for goodbyes. A-ba and my brothers blink back emotions, the sisters-in-law openly weep, and A-ma dabs at her cheeks with the hem of her tunic. I see the headman, the nima, the ruma, Ci-teh and her family, and so many others. Even Teacher Zhang has come to wish me farewell.

  The voices of the women in my natal family rise up in song:

  “When living under your father-in-law’s roof, you must obey his rules.

  When living next to your mother-in-law, you must follow her instructions.

  When living near a brother-in-law, avoid him as a pestilence.

  When living with your son, know his life comes first.”

  San-pa and I reach the spirit gate. I should be crying loudly to show the pain of leaving my family and my village. But I don’t cry. I don’t even look back.

  When we arrive in Shelter Shadow Village, San-pa’s mother greets me with a boiled egg, signaling her acceptance of me. Mothers-in-law are difficult the world over, and I’ve seen how severe A-ma can be with my sisters-in-law, but so far my future mother-in-law seems determined to put aside her past disapproval.

  A few hours later, Ci-teh comes to perform the next part of the ritual. She’s brought with her the heavily decorated headdress that first announced my maidenhood and will now mark me as a married woman. “Remember that a wife must never overstep her husband’s knowledge,” she recites. I’m glad she’s here, and I try to absorb her words—which she herself will receive upon her marriage to Law-ba—so that I’ll become a perfect wife. As soon as I have that thought, a realization comes to me. “I’m sorry, Ci-teh, that I won’t be able to deliver your headdress when the time comes.”

  “That is a pain beyond imagining,” she admits.

  “Please know that into every life my soul is born, I’ll always be indebted to your soul—whatever form it takes—for all the ups and downs we’ve shared.”

  She nods tearfully before resuming her marriage duties. “Remember never to overtake your husband on the path,” she says. “Remember never to crow like a rooster. Remember always that you are only a hen.”

  San-pa’s a-ma takes the headdress from Ci-teh and places it in the newlywed hut. Ci-teh gives an almost imperceptible nod: Good luck. I hope you’ll be happy. We’ll be friends forever. I smile at her and try to memorize every detail of her face, not knowing how long it will be before I see her again. As she turns to begin her journey home, San-pa and I enter the newlywed hut. The village ruma waits for us. He gives us our Meal of Joining—a single cooked egg, a single glass of rice wine, and a single cup of tea—to share. Once I put on my headdress, our wedding ceremony is complete. I am now Wife-of-San-pa and Daughter-in-law to his parents. I’m happy, but a part of me—that hard stone I carry within me at all times—reminds me of our daughter. Why couldn’t things have happened differently? Why couldn’t San-pa have come sooner? But then another thought: Only two more days and I’ll have her next to my heart again.

  San-pa and I go back outside. A group of men herd a pig to our door. San-pa stabs his knife into its throat. The men restrain the animal so its blood can spurt into a bowl. Once the pig dies, San-pa slits it open and removes the liver. This is taken away for the ruma, nima, and village elders to examine for good and bad omens.

  Each minute that passes is another minute of joy. Our marriage feast begins with a soup, followed by fried potato wedges, bitter melon with scrambled egg, sautéed eggplant and garlic, pickled mustard greens, and special meatballs made from minced meat from the slaughtered pig mixed with its blood. The people of Shelter Shadow complete their welcome of me by singing a wedding song filled with good wishes:

  “You are the new bark on the tree of our village.

  May your life together become strong as wood,

  Rings growing one link at a time,

  A part of the Akha line.”

  That night, San-pa sleeps in his parents’ house, and I retire to the home of one of his uncles. To say this is difficult . . . Waaa! Tradition!

  The next day, a woman elder escorts me into San-pa’s family house to bathe me. I feel embarrassed for her to see me naked. Will she be able to tell I once had a child? Meanwhile, villagers hit the eaves with long sticks. “Move in, soul. Move in! Move in!” I wish I could tell them that they don’t have to work so hard at this, because my soul moved in with San-pa’s a long time ago. Once I’m dressed, I return to the main room. Three elders take turns circling an egg around us. It sounds easy, but it’s hard for one elder to pass the egg to the next elder without dropping it. I hold my breath, so nervous. I look over at San-pa for encouragement, but he’s even more anxious than I am. If one of the elders drops the egg and it cracks, then we would not be able to have any (more) children, have a happy life, or live to become elders ourselves.

  At the end of the evening, I’m invited to sleep on the women’s side of San-pa’s family home, while he sleeps on the men’s side. How tantalizing it would be to slip out, run into the forest, and do the intercourse, but if we did that our newlywed blessings would decrease. We’ve already had such ill luck that I don’t want to attract bad spirits intent on troublemaking.

  On the third morning, San-pa and I go door to door to Beg for Blessings. We carry bowls of chopped pig meat and liver, as well as a bottle of liquor to share. In exchange, people give me gifts of money and silver trinkets. Again and again, we hear, “May you have a long life. May your animals multiply. May your tea pickings and rice crops be plentiful. May you have many children.”

  Finally, finally, at the end of a night of feasting and dancing, San-pa takes me to our newlywed hut. I feel nervous yet eager, shy yet bold, as I start to undress.

  * * *

  The next morning, Shelter Shadow’s ruma kills a chicken and inspects it for bad signs. The tongue is in the normal position, which is fortuitous. If it had been twisted, it would mean that San-pa and I would argue on our journey. I can’t imagine ever arguing with my husband.

  “Has a tiger ever killed an animal in or around our village on this day of the cycle?” San-pa asks.

  The ruma and nima consult and agree that no such thing has occurred. With no more rituals left to complete, San-pa and I lift our baskets to our backs and depart.

  San-pa has told me that it’s 250 kilometers from Nannuo Mountain to the village outside Chiang Rai in Thailand where we’re going. First, though, we head in the opposite direction, to Menghai. After a half day’s journey, we join the path I took when I carried Yan-yeh off the mountain. When night falls, we sleep among the rubber trees. In the morning, San-pa uses his machete to scratch the dirt where we rested. “Wake up! Wake up! Let’s go!” He smiles at me and explains, “All hunters do this to make sure we don’t leave our souls behind.” I’m not a hunter, so I didn’t know this ritual when I came this way with our baby. What if Yan-yeh’s soul got lost? What if mine ran away? What about all the ways both small and large that San-pa and I have skirted fate? By the time we reach the Menghai Social Welfare Instit
ute, I’m both hopeful and frightened.

  As we enter, the smell of urine hits my nose with a powerful slap. On the floor in front of us, a scramble of babies and toddlers. There are so many of them! Even as San-pa talks to the woman in charge, I dart from child to child. They’re all girls. This one too old. That one too young. Eyes too squinty. Ears too pronounced. Too much hair. Not enough hair. All this, as though I would recognize Yan-yeh after leaving her months ago in a cardboard box down the street. But, I tell myself, a mother would know.

  “Wife!”

  When I turn, I expect to see San-pa with our baby in his arms. Instead, he anxiously shifts his weight from foot to foot. Next to him, the woman has puffed her cheeks in anger.

  “Did you leave a baby here?” she demands shrilly. “Do you know that is against the law? I’m going to call Public Security!”

  “Wife!” San-pa calls again. “We must go! Hurry! Now!”

  But I can’t move, because a couple of the toddlers have latched onto my legs. But even if I could move, would I? I came here for Yan-yeh.

  San-pa crosses the floor and grabs my hand. The babies and small children startle at his abrupt action. Two begin to wail. Then another two. And more after that. Caretakers in pink smocks come running from other rooms. In a different situation, San-pa and I would look comical the way we tiptoe in and around and over the babies. The woman in charge crosses her arms indignantly as we approach.

  “We have a child here,” I confess, my voice coming out as breathless as if I’d raced Ci-teh up a mountain. “We’ve come to get her.” Only the truth will help me, and maybe this woman will have a kind heart. “We’re just married. We’re beginning our lives together at last, but we need our daughter with us. If we take her, you’ll have one less mouth to feed. And”—I pull one of my new silver wedding bracelets off my arm and offer it to her—“we can pay.”

  Babies howl. The caretakers scoop up the loudest screamers. San-pa glances apprehensively from the woman’s face to the door, ready to bolt. I hold the woman’s gaze. “I want my baby, please.”

  “My name is Director Zhou, and I prefer that bracelet,” she says, pointing to the one A-ma gave me just days ago. It’s my most valuable possession, but I readily give it to her. “So tell me,” she asks, slipping the bracelet onto her wrist, “what day did your baby come to us? Does she have any scars or a birthmark?”

  “She was wrapped with a tea cake—”

  Director Zhou instantly brightens. “I remember that one!” But as memories of Yan-yeh return, her face falls. “We sent her in a caravan with other infants to Kunming two months ago.”

  I reach for San-pa. “We can go there—”

  Before San-pa can respond, the director continues. “She’s been adopted. She’s no longer in China. She has new parents in America.”

  The world around me goes black, and I feel myself falling to the floor.

  * * *

  I follow San-pa on mountain path after mountain path. Up. Down. Up. Down. My mind is deadened from heartbreak. San-pa keeps his thoughts to himself. He’s barely spoken to me since I fainted in the Social Welfare Institute. A few times a day, he wordlessly flicks his fingers at me—Stay!—before disappearing off the path and leaving me alone with my anguish. I’m a wife now, and I must grow accustomed to his male ways, but I worry he won’t come back and I’ll be lost out here, alone, forever. While I wait, I mark a tree or build a stack of rocks, just in case. But he always returns, jittery and anxious or sleepy and lethargic. I’ve been married only a few days, so what do I know? Maybe A-ba was like this to A-ma when they first wed.

  We reach Daluo, on the border between Yunnan and Myanmar. San-pa asks some men if there’s been any recent movement along the border because we don’t have papers, but nothing has changed since he last passed this way. After we make our camp back in the jungle, he sits down across from me.

  “Wife, we must forget the human reject. We’ll have more children.”

  He’s trying to be kind and soothe my pain, but how can I forget Yan-yeh? I lost her once, and suffered. I had hope, and then I lost her again. She’s so far away now, it’s as if she’s dead. That knowledge—sharp as a knife—twists in my heart, doubling, tripling, the pain I had when I abandoned her.

  When San-pa says, “We should start right now, trying to make another baby,” I turn away from him and weep into the crook of my arm. When I recite, “No wife should deny her husband in the first cycle of married life,” he wordlessly accepts the depth of my guilt.

  The next morning, “Wake up! Wake up! Let’s go!” We traverse thick jungle—reeking with rot, heavy with humidity, and empty of people. At some point we pass an unmarked border and travel on to our first Myanmar village, where San-pa leaves me to buy supplies. I’m standing in the path that divides the village, staring at nothing, my mind with my baby and her “new parents in America,” when a woman’s voice speaks my name. “Li-yan.” My eyes try to focus. I see a woman in filthy rags. Her face is thin and worn. It’s Deh-ja, and it’s been eight years since she and Ci-do were forced out of Spring Well for having human rejects.

  “Are you real?” I ask. “Is it you?”

  “I shouldn’t have spoken.” She lowers her eyes, humiliated for me to see her in such abysmal circumstances. “Forget you saw me.”

  “Forget?” My body surges with sudden urgency. “Destiny—my a-ma would call it coincidence—has brought us together, for only you can understand what I’m feeling now.” I glance down the path that separates this hideously poor village. “Where is Ci-do?”

  Instead of answering, she takes hold of my arm—more forcefully than is necessary—and pulls me with her to the right, past a few molting chickens and a single house, and into the jungle, where ruthless greenery instantly swallows us. Above us, a thick canopy of branches blocks the sky. Mosquitoes whine, and tropical birds screech. We reach a lean-to made of bamboo and thatch. A fire pit is dug in the ground before it. Trash has been tossed here and there. A few pieces of clothing hang from low branches. The person who lives here has no respect for nature or herself, and that person is Deh-ja. Together we squat on our haunches. How long will it be before San-pa wonders where I’ve gone?

  “Did Ci-do go back to Spring Well?” Her eyes gleam with an unsettling combination of desperation and loyalty. When I tell her we have not seen him, she remains silent for a long while. “I hoped he’d gone home,” she says at last.

  “What happened?”

  “Where do I start?” she asks. “When my monkeys were born”—I wince at the euphemism for her human rejects—“no one would look at us. You know that Ci-do wasn’t allowed to wear his turban nor I my headdress. He didn’t carry a crossbow, and I had milk leaking from my breasts. It wasn’t hard for people to guess we’d been banished for having human rejects. We kept walking until we reached Thailand.”

  “San-pa says life is good there.”

  “You’re here with him?” she asks, surprised. Of course she’d remember the incident of the stolen pancake. “But how—”

  “Finish your story, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  She sighs. “Life for the Akha is bad in Thailand—”

  “But San-pa says—”

  “We circled back to Myanmar. We never entered a village, but we kept looking for one where we might be accepted. We built this place between this village and the next. The people here are all Akha, and I began to barter with them. My embroidery skills have always been praised, so I made pouches and kerchiefs, which I traded for eggs. Eventually, I was able buy Ci-do a crossbow—not as good as his old one, but he was always a good hunter and we no longer went to sleep hungry.”

  In the distance, San-pa shouts, “Wife! Wife!” I don’t respond. A part of me hopes he’ll come looking for me, and yet I need Deh-ja’s advice.

  “Tradition demanded we could not speak to anyone for twelve months,” she continues in a monotone, “so we gestured and grunted to make ourselves understood. One morning I woke up, and he was gone
. That was seven years ago.”

  I should offer comforting words. Instead, I weep at the inescapable brutality of fate. “I also had a human reject. I didn’t perform the rite. I took her to Menghai. Now San-pa and I are married, but she’s gone. To America.”

  Deh-ja draws the back of her hand across her mouth. How can I know which part of the story shocks her most? That the little girl she once knew had a baby without marriage? That I didn’t rid the world of my human reject? That I gave her away?

  “Wife! Wife!”

  I ignore San-pa. I’m less than one full cycle married and already I’m disobedient.

  Now it’s my turn to grab Deh-ja’s arm. She doesn’t pull away, but her muscles tense under my fingers. I’ve been through too much already. Leave me be.

  “What do I do?” I ask. “How do I go on?”

  Her laugh carries weariness and despair. “All you can do is live,” she says. “You don’t have a choice. Life continues whether we want it to or not. The sun will rise despite our suffering.” She pauses. Her eyes take in the meagerness of her surroundings. “Maybe this is better than nothing. Maybe this is all we deserve. No nima can find a cure for us. No ruma can mix a potion. But isn’t this better than no life at all? Isn’t it better than hearing the tree that represents me in the spirit world crash to the ground?”

  I don’t want to accept her words, but a part of me knows she’s right. I remember that woman who had multiple stillborn babies but kept trying until one lived. And Deh-ja has been through the very worst that can happen to a woman and yet she’s still scraping by.