The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(112)

Hearing his name, she scowls, turns her back to me, and walks to the edge of the cliff. I keep my yellowed hands before me as I come to her side. Together we stare out over the mountains.

“He says the yellow threads cured Xian-rong,” I say.

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye, deliberately avoiding my hands. “The boy was dying when he first came to us. Anyone could see that. I did what I could. I gave him tea from the mother tree and many other remedies.”

“And I made two cakes of tea solely from the mother tree, which Mr. Huang took for his son.”

“I only knew about the one.” I wait for further recriminations. Instead, she says, “Then you helped him too. Not everyone recovers on our mountain, as you know. He was lucky.”

“What if he gets sick again?” I ask.

“Each year when he visits, I look at him. He’s healthy. If someday he comes to me sick, I’ll do what I can for him as I do for every person on Nannuo Mountain.”

“What about when you become an ancestor? What if one of Xian-rong’s children gets sick?”

“You can—”

I don’t let her finish. “I can deliver a baby and help a girl with a pimple. Beyond that? You’re the last woman in our line with your skills. And we don’t know why Xian-rong got better when many others don’t.” I give A-ma time to absorb what I’m saying. Then, “And there’s one more thing.”

I’ll never stop respecting my a-ma. She’s farmed, harvested vegetables and threshed rice, raised and slaughtered animals, cooked for an entire household, spun thread, woven cloth, made clothes, and embroidered them. She’s walked every trail on our mountain. She’s attended births and cared for the weak, ill, and dying. I love her, and having to explain the idea of satellites and GPS to her hurts me deeply. They are as far-fetched to her as electricity, telephones, and television once were to me, and she looks horrified as I come to my frightening conclusion.

“People are looking for this place. Mr. Huang already knows where it is.”

“But no man can see it,” A-ma says, her insistence carrying the weight of generations. “I’ll never let that stranger—”

“Don’t you see? It might not be him.” A choke of understanding grabs my throat as I finally accept what he told me that night at the party. “It won’t be him. He warned us. Consider what that means. The inevitability of what’s coming . . . As uncontrollable as the wind—”

“No man can come here.” It’s agonizing for me to hear her fear and sadness. “They’ll die as your grandfather died.”

This is brutally tragic and terrifying for me too, but I come back at her with the type of reasoning I know she’ll understand. “What happened to Grandfather was fate. It could have happened anywhere.”

“But we must keep this place a secret.”

I raise my palms so she can’t avoid seeing them. “Isn’t it time we learn what this is? Where it came from originally and if there’s more out there? How, and if, it works? If it can be re-created? If it can help—”

“But the women in our line—”

“Yes, the women in our line, including you and me, are linked by these yellow threads. You and the generations before you protected the mother and sister trees from wars, caravans, and nomads that passed across Nannuo Mountain over many centuries. But now people—maybe callous men, maybe evil women, maybe deceitful dealers, maybe ruthless scientists—are going to come here with their GPS whether we want them to or not. Maybe our line has been protecting the mother tree for this moment.”

“I’ll always help the boy,” A-ma says, despairing.

“If you can treat him, then why not those on the next mountain? Would you turn away someone who came to you from Yiwu or Laobanzhang sick himself, with an ailing wife, or a feverish child in his arms? Of course you wouldn’t. If you say yes to someone from the next mountain, then what about people from other parts of China?”

A-ma begins to weep. I’ve cornered her with undeniable facts. Suddenly she looks like a broken, frail, old woman. I’ve done that to her.

“Who can we trust to take it out?” she mumbles, her voice trembling. “What’s going to happen to the trees once others know about them?”

I take her in my arms and hold her tight. I don’t know the answers.





A PILGRIMAGE TO THE PLACE OF ORIGIN


We linger at the entrance to the TSA security line. Mom looks elegant in a pair of cream-colored trousers and a peach cashmere sweater. Dad’s wearing shorts and a Lakers T-shirt. I’m in skinny jeans and a hoodie. My hair’s pulled back in a ponytail. In my carry-on, I’ve got my tea cake, laptop, books, and other necessities for the flight.

“I want to meet him,” Dad says for about the fiftieth time.

How many variations of a response can I come up with? He’ll get here. Maybe he’s inside already. Even if he doesn’t show up—which he will—I’ll be fine. This time I try out “I’m sure he’s coming.”

Dad gives me a look, and Mom says, “Now, Dan, stop worrying. Think of the places I’ve gone for research—”

“I don’t like that either, and you aren’t my little girl—”