The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(33)

Sometimes at night, lying on my sleeping mat with my palms spread underneath my tunic against my bare belly, I feel my baby jut its elbows and knees, as though it’s trying to touch my fingers. Deh-ja, Ci-teh’s ill-fated sister-in-law, used to chant, “Let it be a son. Let it be a son. Let it be a son.” My chanting is simpler. “San-pa, San-pa, San-pa.” No matter how far away he is, surely he must hear the call of my heart.



* * *



Then, on a day that is dead still without a whisper of a breeze—suffocating, really—the first spasm of labor starts in my spine, grabs around my abdomen, and presses down. When the second pain arrives, followed by so many others—the relentless pushing of a baby ready to come out—I try everything I can to keep the baby inside. I cross my legs. I use my hands to lift my belly against the spasms. A-ma is too knowledgeable about these things not to notice. When she approaches me to say, “It’s time,” despair whooshes through me, draining whatever hope I had. I fight back tears. I mustn’t cry. I absolutely cannot cry, if A-ma’s and my plan is to work. We’ll go to the forest, I’ll expel my human reject, and kill it before it has a chance to cry. “Quick,” A-ma has said, “so you’ll suffer the least amount of anguish.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, A-ma announces to the rest of the family that she and I will be gone for a day or more to care for the tea trees on my land. The men hardly pay attention, while the sisters-in-law stiffen their shoulders to show their irritation at the extra work they’ll need to do in our absence. A-ma puts a few things in her satchel, including a hard-boiled egg wrapped in protective cloth. I see her palm the tin with the ash and husk mixture just as the worst spasm yet grips around the thing inside me. I try to keep my face relaxed so no one will notice. A-ma says our goodbyes and pulls me from the house. Once on the veranda, I scan the lane that divides the village, hoping to see San-pa. He’s not there. How could he have failed me—failed us—so?

I choke back my emotions. I must leave the village looking as I usually do if I’m to come back and resume my life without being tainted by my mistakes.

Our progress is slow. I’m filled with dread and sadness, but I’m as scrabbly as a crab, climbing the mountain, grabbing for rocks, hunched close to the earth every time another pain disables me. If anything, our journey is speeding my labor.

“We must hurry,” A-ma urges, clutching my arm and dragging me up the path.

The hardest part is edging around the boulder that hides the entrance to my grove, because my belly, facing that immutable wall of stone, upsets my balance and threatens to throw me off the cliff. When we enter the clearing, I’m too weak to make it to the shelter of the grotto. Instead, I collapse under the mother tree. A-ma spreads a mat, and I roll onto it. She helps me out of my leggings. She opens her satchel and lays out her knife, the tin with its deadly contents, and a few other small bags and boxes that hold the herbs that will help stop bleeding, fight pain, and tranquilize my mind after I’ve done what will be required. My circumstances are calamitous, but in the mother tree’s spreading branches above me, I see a dome of protection.

A-ma follows the proper rituals, monitoring the messages my body sends her. She has me squat and brace myself against the trunk of the mother tree. The spasms are strong and frequent until my body is reduced to that of any animal. Strange sounds escape my mouth. My water breaks, rushing forth from my body, seeping through my birthing mat, and into the soil. A-ma’s fingers feel around beneath me.

“You may push,” she says.

I grasp a low branch. My back presses against the trunk as I push as hard as I can. A second push. A third push.

“I feel the head,” A-ma announces. She massages my opening. “You can do this without my cutting.” A fourth push. “The head is out. The shoulders are the hardest, Girl, but you can do it.” Gods and spirits must be looking out for me, because none of this is as painful as I anticipated. A-ma seems to read my mind, because she says, “You’re lucky. Now push!”

I suck in air and hold it for one last push. The feeling? The one I’ve sensed from births I’ve witnessed, only this time it’s from the inside out—like a fish slipping through greased fingers. Whoorp.

“It is a girl,” A-ma announces. What should follow is “You and your husband will always have water to drink,” meaning that she’ll fetch water for us, as is proper. Instead, A-ma mutters, “A little happiness.” Does she realize she’s quoting the Han majority saying for the birth of a girl? I don’t think so. Rather, she’s reminding me how fortunate I am that my human reject is a daughter instead of a son. A little happiness that I will only have to kill a worthless female.

The plan was for me to act quickly. Instead, I find myself staring at my daughter on the mat. The cord still spirals from her belly to my interior. She’s covered with the white wax that’s protected her inside my body, smeared with blood, and speckled with yellow threads that have shaken loose from the mother tree. Even if my baby were not a human reject, no one would be allowed to pick her up until she cried three times. But she doesn’t cry. Her arms don’t flail. She looks calmly up at me. Perhaps it’s because the day is warm and the labor was fast. Perhaps it’s because she knows she’s a human reject and her time on earth is numbered in minutes. I’ve been told that newborns can’t see, but if that’s so, then how can my daughter be staring into the depths of my soul?