The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(10)
The firstborn baby lies alone, naked and unprotected. The second baby—a girl—comes out quickly. We don’t touch her. We don’t count her cries.
“Twins are the absolute worst taboo in our culture, for only animals, demons, and spirits give birth to litters,” A-ma tells me. “Animal rejects are contrary to nature too. If a sow gives birth to one piglet, then both must be killed at once. If a dog gives birth to one puppy, then they too must be killed immediately. None of the meat can be eaten either. The birth of twins—which has never before happened in Spring Well—is a calamity not just for the mother, father, and relatives of the babies but for our entire village.”
From outside, I begin to hear shouts and wails.
Ci-do enters the room. His tears mingle with the rain on his cheeks. He carries a bowl, his fingers kneading the contents in an awful rhythm.
“You know what you have to do,” A-ma says sorrowfully.
Ci-do looks down at Deh-ja. His face is as pale as hers. She tries to swallow her sobs. It doesn’t work. I can barely make out her words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Ci-do kneels by the first baby.
“Close your eyes,” A-ma instructs me. “You don’t need to see this.”
I’ve been shown mercy at last, but my eyelids refuse to shut.
Tears drip from Ci-do’s cheeks onto the baby boy, who still squirms and cries in his strange hiccuping way. Deh-ja watches her husband with eyes that are pools of sorrow. I also stare, aghast, as he scoops a mixture of rice husks and ashes from the bowl and tenderly tucks it into his son’s mouth and nostrils. The baby writhes for a few desperate seconds. My whole body rejects what I’ve seen. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened.
Ci-do moves to the baby girl.
“No!” I sound small, tinny.
“Girl!” A-ma’s voice is sharp.
“But, he can’t—”
A-ma’s open palm comes at me so swiftly and surprisingly that when it meets my face I’m nearly knocked to the ground. The stinging pain is shocking, but not as mind-numbing as the slap itself, because children are not beaten, kicked, or hit in our culture.
“We are Akha,” she says harshly. “These are our rules. If you are to be a midwife, you must—must—follow our customs. Human rejects need to be sent to the great lake of boiling blood. This is how we protect the village from idiots, the malformed, or those so small they’ll only prolong their own deaths. It is us—midwives—who keep our people pure and in alignment with the goodness of nature, because if human rejects are allowed to do the intercourse, over time an entire village might end up inhabited by only them.”
Her words are directed at me, but they also give Ci-do courage. As he kneels by his baby girl, I hide my face in A-ma’s skirt. Her hand on my shoulder feels like it weighs ten thousand kilos. The baby girl dies quicker than her brother, which doesn’t make it any less horrifying. If every living thing has a soul, as I’ve been taught, then didn’t Deh-ja’s twins have souls? If God created a tree to represent each and every Akha, have two trees now toppled in the spirit world? Shouldn’t we be hearing the echoing crashes, the sputtering of birds, the howling of startled monkeys? When A-ma finally lifts her hand, I feel so light that maybe I could float up to the ceiling, right through the thatch, and on to the stars.
She reaches into her basket, removes a length of cloth, and gives it to Ci-do. He silently spools out the cloth, places the infants side by side, and rolls them up. How does he know what to do? How has he known what to do for any of this?
“Ci-do, repair your face!” A-ma demands. “When you go outside, you must show our neighbors how angry—furious—you are at the spirits, who’ve allowed this hideous occurrence to curse you and your family. It is custom. Following it will help you.”
He roughly wipes the tears from his cheeks with the backs of his hands. Then he nods to his wife, tucks the bundle under his arm, and leaves.
“Watch him,” A-ma orders. When she adds, “Do it right,” I know she’s still disappointed in me for trying to stop Ci-do earlier. “Make sure someone meets him. He must be accompanied into the forest.”
I hurry to the door. The rain sheets down—a waterfall of heaven’s tears. Two elders stand in the mud at the bottom of the steps. Ci-do is not the same heartbroken man who was in the newlywed hut with us. He stomps down the stairs with his shoulders pulled back and his chest pushed out. When he reaches the men, he gestures angrily with his free hand. His words don’t reach me through the rain. The elders take positions on either side of him and march him out of the village.
The room is so quiet now. Deh-ja silently weeps, her tears staining the birthing mat, but her suffering is not over. Blood escapes from the place where the babies exited her body. A-ma packs the area with a handful of leaves and dirt, but a moment later more red liquid seeps through. A-ma peers around the room until she finds me.
“Girl, run back to the house,” she orders. “On the top shelf in the women’s room, bring me the basket third from the left.”
Outside, a deluge. The lane that divides the village has become a muddy river. I don’t see a single person or animal.
My sisters-in-law turn their backs and shield their children’s eyes when I enter the women’s room. I grab what A-ma asked for and then trot back to the newlywed hut. Deh-ja’s skin is even paler now, but she’s stopped crying. A mound of blood-soaked leaves and dirt has grown on the floor next to her. Deh-ja may have brought human rejects into the world, but if she dies that will be an even greater triumph for bad spirits.