The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(24)
“Of me, because you visit the Flower Room and steal love in the forest with different boys, and none of them have asked to marry you?”
“That’s a mean thing to say when I’m just trying to be your friend.”
“Waaa! Don’t you think it’s mean to repeat gossip? And even if he does those things, what makes him any worse than you—or any other boy or girl on Nannuo Mountain—who tries the intercourse? That’s what we Akha are supposed to do before marriage.”
She remains silent for a long while. Finally, she asks, plainly and simply, “Are you one of those girls who forgets her friends when she does the intercourse? I didn’t forget you when I started doing it.”
That I don’t have an answer causes both of us anguish. But isn’t this how it’s always been between us—with one falling and the other rising?
* * *
San-pa comes often to Spring Well Village. We’ve met in the Flower Room. We’ve gone into the forest. I went ahead and asked him about other girls, and he asked me about other boys. My answer: “None.” His response: “No other girls for me either.” I’ve come to enjoy the intercourse, and we’ve even done it not like animals but face-to-face. I like that especially. Being able to look into his eyes. Kissing his mouth. Wrapping my legs around him. Afterward, when he walks home, I stay perched on our pine-needle bed, and we sing call-and-response love songs across the hillsides.
“The flowers bloom at their peaks, waiting for the butterflies to come—”
“The honeycombs wait for the bees to make honey—”
“A beautiful flower calls to her love—”
“The bee flies through the air to find her—”
“He drinks her nectar—”
“She holds him in her petals—”
We sing the refrain in unison, letting all who hear us know that our love is absolute. “Let us pick flowers together. Alloo sae, ah-ee-ah-ee-o, ah-ee-ah-ee-o.”
We’re happy, but one thing has not changed since the pancake incident. As A-ma reminded me, I was born on Pig Day, and San-pa was born on Tiger Day. This is not an auspicious match, so naturally our families are against a union. In the manner of all Akha fathers, A-ba sends messages to me indirectly. First Sister-in-law touches my shoulder and confides. “A weak boy grows up to be a weak man.” Second Sister-in-law is brusque. “The whole mountain knows he’s lazy.” Third Sister-in-law, my favorite, mutters to me, “You won’t have anything to eat if you marry that good-for-nothing.” They can say whatever they want, but that doesn’t make it so.
A-ba has allowed San-pa into the house, and the two of them have spoken. The situation for my family is better these days, which influences how the conversation proceeds. Three years ago, my a-ba was able to trade some of our extra rice for a young female pig. She grew up, was bred, and now we have three pigs sleeping under our floor. We’ll never be as well off as Ci-teh’s family, but A-ba’s improved status gives him the confidence to hold out for the best marriage proposal that will arrive for me.
Sitting next to our home’s dividing wall, I’ve been able to listen to the conversations between San-pa and my a-ba. San-pa announces that he’s come to fetch a wife, which is how Akha men refer to marriage. “No,” A-ba says. San-pa recites his male ancestors back fifty generations. “No,” A-ba says. San-pa points out that we don’t have any matching ancestors for seven generations, which means we’ve passed the incest taboo. But A-ba doesn’t care. “No,” he says. Adding: “It is not yet time for my daughter to go-work-eat,” which is the way Akha women look at marriage. “My daughter plans to take the gaokao and be the first on Nannuo Mountain to go to college.”
That’s how much he doesn’t like San-pa!
Five months later, the Month of Rest arrives. In the West, it would be considered comparable to February. Since the men don’t have to work, they put their most formidable efforts into settling their marriage plans. Unmarried women spend their time weaving and waiting for proposals, which is why this month is sometimes called the Month of Marriage and Weaving. So far, I’ve done plenty of weaving but have seen no marriage arrangements made.
During the last half of the second cycle, San-pa comes to the house to ask yet again if we can be wed. He receives the usual answer: “No.”
“I will be a good husband—”
“I don’t think so.” Today, instead of the usual mismatched-day argument, A-ba goes in a different direction. “You might think that you live far away and that we would not hear about you. But we have heard. You’ve been trading in things you shouldn’t and trying things you shouldn’t. If you were as respectable as you claim, then your parents would have sent two elders from your village to ask for Girl to become a daughter-in-law. They would have sent gifts. If we reached terms, then she would go to your home for a night, make sure she thought she could be happy, and three days later the two of you would marry. None of that has happened, because they disapprove too. I remember your a-ba, Boy, and he was an honorable man. Even all those years ago, he was prepared to protect my daughter’s reputation from the actions of his own son.”
San-pa has no way to defend himself.
My father speaks again. “The matter is finished.”