The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Page 23

  “The unridden stallion gets lazy,” Xian-rong recites in Akha. His voice still sounds weary, but for the first time since he entered my shop, his eyes have lit up, sparkling with our secret communication. “A boy who does not have skills will have difficulties. This is true the world over, is it not, Auntie?”

  I love hearing the Akha coming from his mouth, and it pleases me that he’s retained what he learned as a youngster. In the future, if they visit again—and knowing Mr. Huang’s persistent ways, I expect him to come back next Saturday and the one after that—Xian-rong and I will have a way to converse without his father understanding.

  Mr. Huang ignores his son, shifting the conversation to memories of the tea mountains and what it was like for them when they first came to Spring Well Village. On the surface, it all sounds polite and harmless, but the whole situation is disconcerting. Mr. Huang pokes at me with our connections: Why didn’t I know he did business with my a-ba and brothers last spring, what did I think of Mr. Lü’s iconic Pu’er, and why do I suppose Tea Master Sun never told me that the two of them have known each other for years from time spent in the highest circles of tea connoisseurship?

  “I opened one of the cakes we made from your special leaves,” he confides, so sure of my interest. “Do you care to hear what I found?”

  I jut my chin, pretending indifference.

  “The entire cake was flecked with yellow—”

  The threads from the mother tree must have spread and grown. But what’s even more striking is that this is what A-ma told me was in my daughter’s tea cake.

  “The aroma was . . .” His voice drifts off. “Sublime.”

  I can’t help myself. “How did it taste?”

  He laughs all the way from his belly. “I didn’t drink it!” This is what Tea Master Sun told me had been rumored during my interview, but I still find it incomprehensible until Mr. Huang continues. “I wrapped it up again. That’s what you’d do with gold, isn’t it?” He turns to his son, pinches his cheek affectionately, and then lets his hand come to a rest on the boy’s shoulder. I remember how A-ma always said Mr. Huang loved his boy, and it’s still so clear.

  But Xian-rong is now of the wrong age for such fatherly tenderness. He waits a minute or so before edging away from his a-ba’s protective touch. In many ways, though, the boy, still unformed and underdeveloped, is more sophisticated than his father when it comes to tea. His ability to taste the brews I pour is unusually refined. At the end of the visit, when his father goes down the hall to the WC and Xian-rong asks if he might return—without his father—I listen warily. Once Mr. Huang reappears, strutting down the dim hall, reflexively checking his fly as he stares through the windows of my competitors’ shops, Xian-rong’s pleas turn desperate.

  “I beg you, Auntie. Please let me visit. We’ll speak the language of the mountains and share our friendship through tea.”

  He seems so lonely and frail that against my better judgment I agree.

  * * *

  The subway is packed, but it feels even more suffocating than usual as I make my way to the stop closest to Shamian Island. Walking alone to the café to meet Jin, I struggle to rein in my emotions. Mr. Huang. Why did he have to come to my shop? When the café comes into view and I see Jin sitting at our favorite table under the colored lights with a single cup of tea before him, it’s all I can do to keep from running to him for solace. Instead, I take a deep breath to fortify myself, mortar into place another brick to hide my secrets, and settle my face into what I hope is a pleasant expression. When he sees me, he rises, drops a few coins on the table, and leaves the café before I reach it.

  “Li-yan,” he says, his voice serious, “will you come with me?”

  My mind is in such turmoil that I automatically think he’s going to tell me he no longer wants to see me. We walk together side by side. I try to memorize the moment: the height of his shoulder next to mine, the occasional brush of his sweater against my jacket, the sound of our footsteps on the cobblestones, the way the trees rustle above our heads.

  When he passes through an iron gate and into a courtyard, I have enough sense to call out, “Wait! You can’t go in there!”

  He doesn’t respond or even glance back at me. Instead, he strides along the rose-lined pathway and up some steps to the porch of a colonial mansion I’ve admired, despite its run-down condition. Now the layers of peeling paint have been stripped away and replaced by a coat of yellow, with the shutters and other woodwork shining glossy white. Jin opens the front door and extends his hand for me to join him. He must know what he’s doing, I tell myself, but a part of me is terrified we’ll be arrested for trespassing.

  Once I reach him, he takes my hand, pulls me through a small entry, and brings me into a large room to the right that overlooks the garden and the tree-lined pedestrian walkway. I soak in the details in seconds: Fragrant freshly cut flowers in crystal vases. Handwoven Chinese silk carpets in intricate designs. Antique lamps on the end tables, but recessed lights to create atmosphere. A pair of ancestor scrolls hang on one wall. The opposite wall is dotted with small paintings of life in the city that must have been done when this house was first built.

  “What is this place?” My voice shakes. “What are we doing here?”

  “For months we’ve visited spots in the countryside and neighborhoods in the city,” he answers. “I’ve shown you villa parks and apartments abutting the river, but always you’ve seemed happiest on this little island, which is why I bought this house a while ago. I’ve been restoring it since. I hope we’ll be happy here.”

  I’m too stunned—beyond stunned, really—to speak. My confused silence sends a flicker of doubt across his face. Then he sets his jaw.

  “I’m asking you to marry me, Li-yan,” he forges ahead. “What I mean is, will you marry me?”

  I answer without hesitation. “Yes, I’ll go-work-eat with you.”

  We kiss. I’m dizzy with emotion as the walls I’ve built to guard my heart crumble. In my chaotic mixture of confusion and joy, I manage to put together a clear thought.

  “I once promised myself I’d never marry unless my mother and father thought it was a good match.” I leave out the word again, as in I would never marry again. Jin can’t possibly know that, but a knife of guilt slices into my happiness. Before it can overpower me, Jin delivers into my hands a large and surprisingly heavy package wrapped in homemade indigo fabric.

  “Open it,” he says. “Your parents’ blessing is inside.”

  I fold back the layers of fabric to find a new headdress decorated with trinkets I immediately recognize: a silver fish from First Sister-in-law, a string of silver balls the size of peas from Second Sister-in-law, a burst of appliquéd butterflies done in Third Sister-in-law’s fine stitches, a coin from A-ma, as well as feathers and colorful pom-poms. Beneath that are folded a traditional wedding skirt, tunic, and leggings, plus a belt buckle, earrings, breastplate, and necklaces. All in all, there’s perhaps fifteen kilos in silver—so much heavier than when I married San-pa—between the headdress and accessories. While I’m trying to take it all in, Jin is still talking.

  “I’ve lied to you about some things,” he begins. “I’m rich, as you can see. I didn’t tell you, because I wanted you to love me for me and not just for my money. But that’s not my only lie. This week, I wasn’t in Los Angeles. I was in Spring Well.”

  My cheeks flush in embarrassment to think of him in my backward village.

  “It wasn’t my first visit,” he continues, purposefully ignoring my obvious shame. “In the last six months, I’ve traveled four times to Spring Well to meet your family and ask permission to marry you.” He pauses to let that sink in. Then, “Your father kept telling me to come back another time.”

  I cover my eyes and shake my head. “This is too much.”

  “They wanted me to prove to them you were happy. I brought photographs I’d taken of you. I wouldn’t accept no. I even met with your . . . What is he called? The person who sele
cts propitious dates? Like a feng shui diviner?”

  “The ruma.”

  “He gave me a date.”

  That Jin’s been planning this moment for such a long time . . .

  “And that’s not all,” he goes on. “It seems a spirit incantation needed to be held for me. No one told me why, but it included the killing of a chicken and a goat and the passing from hand to hand of an old coin. What was all that about?” he inquires genially.

  “Are they asking us to come home for the wedding?” I manage to choke out, because I’m not about to tell him that a special ceremony must always be performed when a widow remarries so her new husband won’t have his life cut short. The goat is added to protect the new husband of a widow whose first husband died a terrible death.

  “Your mother had a different idea. It seems she’s heard about honeymoons,” he says, bemused. “She thought you might like a honeymoon in America.” He grins as he confides, “She pulled me aside to tell me that the first time I visited.”

  Which means she liked him from the beginning . . . Which is why I now have a wedding outfit, as well as a passport and visa . . . But which also means she deliberately wanted to remind me of Yan-yeh . . .

  “Even before I met you,” he says, “my mother made me love you. Then, when I saw you the first time, sitting on the bench with her . . . You were even more beautiful than she’d described.”

  “Beautiful?” Since we Akha don’t use this word to describe people, this is the first time it’s been applied to me. Beautiful.

  “My mother liked you because she saw you as hardworking and honest. Please forgive me for my lies. I promise they won’t happen again.”

  I have to bite my lips to hold back my emotions. He’s been keeping secrets, but they’ve come from a place of goodness and kindness, while mine . . . How could I have said yes to him when I don’t deserve him? I bow my head, and let the tears come. He pulls me into his arms, probably believing I am overcome by happiness. I lay my head against the softness of his sweater. I feel the warmth of his body and the beat of his heart. For a few seconds, I allow myself to relish what might have been. Then I make myself pull away. I cannot go into marriage with lies and secrets as my only dowry.

  “I love you,” I say, “and I would love to marry you, but you may not want to marry me when you know the truth about me.”

  “Nothing you could say would make me think less of you.”

  “You haven’t heard my story yet.”

  We sit on the couch, facing each other. Jin holds my hands, and I hesitantly begin to speak. I start with the easiest and least damning sin I’ve committed: that I broke a promise to my a-ma by selling leaves from my grove which should only be used for medicinal purposes and shouldn’t have gone to any man, especially someone like Mr. Huang. Jin easily accepts this, saying, “You were young and poor. You made a mistake. And it sounds like the mother tree was not permanently damaged.” Next, I tell Jin about being married and widowed. His eyes widen with each new detail. When I get to the end, he takes time to compose his response. “I’ve never been married,” he says at last, “but would it be fair for me to look into your eyes and deny that I’ve been with other women before you? If I’d grown up on your mountain, I would have been married too.”

  “Whatever happens next,” I say, “I want you to know that I’ll always think of you as an honorable man.” He squeezes my hands, giving me strength. “Before San-pa and I were married, I got pregnant. I didn’t realize it until after he’d gone to Thailand, so he didn’t know. I gave birth in secret and abandoned my daughter. By the time San-pa returned to Nannuo Mountain, she’d been adopted by a family in America.”

  Jin slowly releases my hands, stands, and crosses to the window. He keeps his back to me, as though I no longer exist. I don’t blame him. I sigh and get up to leave.

  “Wait,” he says, swiveling to me. Twin trails of tears trickle down his cheeks, which he roughly wipes away. “You’re very brave, Li-yan. Far braver than I am. We both have secrets, but you had the courage to be honest with me.” He visibly struggles. “One mistake can change the course of your life. You can never return to your original path or go back to the person you were.”

  “That’s how I’ve always felt. If I hadn’t taken a bite of San-pa’s pancake. If I’d only listened to A-ma when she said she didn’t want me to see him. If I hadn’t let false ideas of the future compel me to sell leaves to Mr. Huang—”

  “But nothing you did resulted in death.” He pauses to make sure he has my full attention. “I’m responsible for my father’s.”

  “How can you say that?” I ask, bewildered. “Your father died of pneumonia. You were a child when he got sick—”

  “Perhaps you can understand a little of what it was like for my parents. They went from Guangzhou to a village in Anhui province called Moon Pond. Such a pretty name, but it held only darkness. I was born there, and we lived in a one-room shack made from mud bricks. It was more miserable and wretched than anything I’ve seen in your village.”

  That stings, especially since he didn’t see Spring Well before all the changes. But this is not the time to take offense.

  “My parents lost their positions, clothing, papers, photographs, friends, everything,” he goes on. “The only tokens from the past they carried with them were five of my father’s philosophy books, which they kept hidden under the wood platform that served as our bed. My mother learned how to haul water, wash clothes by hand, and make soles for our shoes from whatever scraps of paper she could find. My father gathered night soil from different families and hoed it into the fields. My parents weakened from the physical demands of working under a merciless sun or being soaked to the bone during the monsoons. My earliest memories are of having dysentery from the bad water and poor sanitation. We were all sick.” He takes a moment to ask, “What do you remember of the Cultural Revolution?”

  “I was born not long after it ended,” I answer softly. “Besides, we were peasants already. My family and all our neighbors had always lived that life. But I have a friend, Teacher Zhang. He was sent to Nannuo Mountain. He suffered—”

  “Suffered,” he echoes. “Suffering takes many forms. Hunger. Cold. Fear. Physical and psychological pain. The villagers were bad enough. They had opportunities each day to torment us. But sometimes a Red Guard unit would visit. Everyone was forced to gather together so that my parents could be publicly punished and humiliated. They endured numerous self-criticism sessions. I don’t remember much about my father anymore, except that sometimes, late at night, I’d wake up and see him reading one of his books by the light of our oil lamp. He’d quickly close it, put it back in its hiding place, and say to me, ‘You’re only dreaming, Son. Go back to sleep now. Forget everything.’ ”

  Jin falls into melancholy silence. I suspect where his story is going, which doesn’t make it any easier to hear.

  “The Red Guard came again just after my fifth birthday,” he resumes at last. “They were so young, you know? They played with me. They gave me a piece of candy—the first I’d ever tasted. I thought they liked me. When they asked if my mother or father kept anything hidden, I eagerly volunteered what I knew. After that, they dragged my father from our home and made him kneel in broken glass. They tied his arms up and back into the airplane position. Then they beat him with switches. They tore every page out of his books and set them on fire. They made me stand right in front of him, so he would forever know who’d betrayed him.”

  “You were only five. Just a boy—”

  “But what son does that?” he asks, tortured. “I broke his heart and his will to live or fight for us. The rest is as my mother told you. My father got pneumonia and died very quickly.”

  My heart aches for him. “Those were deviled times filled with very bad people,” I say, trying to offer comfort. “You were a little boy, and you were tricked. Tragedies of this kind happened to people who were far older and with far more knowledge than you had. You can’t blame yourse
lf.”

  But of course he can, because I blame myself for so much too. I take hold of his arms, and our eyes meet. What I’d always seen in them, I now recognize from looking in the mirror at my own reflection: pain and guilt.

  “You said earlier that one mistake can change the path of your life forever,” I say. “It sounds like it did for you. I know it did for me. But what if this is an opportunity to do something purposefully right? Won’t that put us on an entirely new path? A good path? Maybe even a happy path? Will you still have me?”

  * * *

  My new life requires adapting to one surprise after another. The next day, Jin and I drive to the airport to pick up Ci-teh, who’s agreed to leave her husband and daughters for a month to take care of my shop while I’m on my honeymoon. She’s arranged to have the most recent batches of tea my family made, as well as several kilos of Pu’er from Laobanzhang, sent directly to Midnight Blossom. My impression, seeing her for the first time out of Spring Well Village? Chubby and tu, with her ill-fitting Western-style clothes and numerous overstuffed bags made of red, white, and blue plastic mesh hanging from her arms. Ci-teh catches the judgment in my eyes, so the first thing she says to me is “I’m the first person from Nannuo Mountain to fly on an airplane.” Ours is a long and complicated friendship, and I’m beaming at the joy of it.

  Next, we pick up Jin’s mother and continue straight on to the marriage bureau. Ci-teh and I peel off to the ladies’ room so I can change into my Akha wedding clothes and she can ask what feels like dozens of questions.

  “Has your future husband tested the machete yet?”

  The last time I heard that phrase was when the ruma asked it of San-pa as part of our wedding ritual. When I tell her no, her eyes go as wide as soup bowls.

  “Don’t they have a Flower Room in Guangzhou?” she asks.

  No, but there are many equivalents where boys and girls, men and women, can be alone together for talking and kissing: bars, nightclubs, a friend’s apartment. I apply lipstick so I don’t have to answer the question.