The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(31)
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After three months, Mr. Huang comes to the decision that all the experimental fermented tea must be destroyed. Too many things have made homes in the odoriferous piles: worms, maggots, and strange-colored growths that if we saw them in the forest we would hurry away. Chickens, ducks, water buffalo, and oxen won’t eat the garbage. That’s how bad it is. Even the pigs turn away.
Mr. Huang refuses to give up, though. “You will spend this year tending to the trees. We’ll try again next spring.”
As his mountain vehicle is loaded, he grabs me by the shoulders. “When I return, you’ll take me to your grove. You’ll sell me more of your leaves.”
His touch makes me feel as though a bad spirit has entered me. It’s a sensation of disease and disease. I cannot go to the ruma for ceremonial cleansing nor can I go to A-ma for one of her potions. To do so would be to admit I did something completely unforgivable. To do so would also mean that there’s something dirty and fermenting inside me that wants what the foreigner has . . . Or my version of what he has, which is money to be with San-pa so we can follow our dreams together.
MOTHER LOVE
Waaa! But how quickly my hopes and plans fall apart. San-pa has been gone for a season’s length of cycles. I’ve been away from school for almost as long and have lost needed studying time for the gaokao. “Your spoken Mandarin is much improved, but that won’t be tested,” Teacher Zhang says. “You’ve wasted your opportunity.” The news is stunning, ruinous. After all my years of hard work . . . For days I languish in disappointment and regret for being so unthinking of the consequences of my new role in the village. Then Teacher Zhang comes again to visit. “You are not the kind of person who gives up,” he tells me. “You are brave and tough and smart.” His encouraging words give me strength. I can’t allow this setback—as distressing as it is—to destroy my future. I force modern thoughts of opportunity to open my Akha eyes to see bigger and wider. When San-pa returns, you’ll be married. You’ll work for Mr. Huang. You don’t need college or university. I resolve to stay positive—good will come.
And then, because I’m back to my regular routine—going to school even though I won’t be eligible to take the gaokao, doing home chores, and not thinking outward for Mr. Huang every minute of the day—I notice something I should have noticed a long while ago. I have not had my monthly bleeding. I’ve been so busy and filled with self-importance, that I ignored my body entirely. I thought I’d gained weight because Mr. Huang made sure I was fed. That my breasts hurt because they were growing fast as a result of the extra food that filled my bowl. That I was tired because who wouldn’t have been exhausted if they’d been following in my footsteps? With horror, I realize I’ve come to a head. That A-ma and the sisters-in-law haven’t caught on is just another sign of how occupied we’ve all been.
I temporarily fell apart when I learned I wouldn’t be able to take the gaokao, but I don’t panic now. I have my money, and I’ll go to San-pa once I find out where he is. The next day, I tell A-ma that I’ll be in the forest digging for tubers. She lets me go without a single suspicious look. I walk through terrible heat and humidity to Shelter Shadow Village. It’s just as San-pa described it—on the crest of the hill, easy to defend, with views in all directions. I am not someone San-pa’s a-ma wants to see, but she invites me into the women’s room anyway. Her hands show a lifetime of work, while her eyes reveal the concerns of motherhood. I must wait a suitable length of time before I ask about San-pa, but she surprises me by inquiring about him first.
“Have you heard from my son?” She may not want me as a daughter-in-law, but, I realize, her worry about San-pa is as deep as my own. “Has he sent word to you? At least we would know where he’s living.”
This information causes water to form in my eyes.
Tiny muscles in her cheek twitch at my response. “He’s so far away. And Thailand . . .” Her voice trails off. Then, “You know better than most that he can be called to mischief . . .”
I cry the entire way home. The knowledge that San-pa is unreachable is devastating. The idea that something evil might have happened to him is crushing. Either way, I’m alone and pregnant with a human reject, making me doubly cursed.
I wish I could confide in Ci-teh, but she might let my secret slip by accident. I can’t seek advice from my sisters-in-law, because it would be their duty to tell their husbands, who would tell A-ba. When girls find themselves in my condition they go to one person for help. This is the one person I absolutely cannot tell. A-ma would be so angry with me; I’m too afraid and humiliated to consider confiding in her. I do my best to hide the evidence of my pregnancy under my day wear: plain leggings and a tunic designed to hide a woman’s procreating status. I don’t know what will happen. I can’t think what will happen.
For the next three cycles, everyone in Spring Well Village goes about their daily tasks—preparing the paddies for planting, pulling weeds from vegetable plots, and, for the women alone, spinning thread and weaving cloth to have material to sew and embellish when the rainy season starts. In addition, we have new responsibilities: to care for the tea trees so they’ll be improved when Mr. Huang returns. A-ma shows Third Brother how to prune his previously insignificant trees, straightening branches and trimming diseased or withered twigs and leaves. My first and second brothers ignore their bushed terraces and pollarded gardens, instead turning over and feeding the soil at the base of the old tea trees that dot their allotted lands. I go to my hidden grove—sometimes with A-ma, sometimes alone—to do the chores I inherited from the generations of women before me. Sometimes I sit under the mother tree and stare across the mountaintops. San-pa is out there somewhere. He must return soon.