The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(35)
“They say it’s about twenty kilometers or a day away by horse cart,” she says. “You ought to be able to walk there and back in three nights.”
We make a new plan. It must forever stay a secret—to protect my reputation, if I hope to marry one day, and to keep A-ma from being disgraced as a midwife and woman, who, until now, has been an ideal of our Akha ways.
When she goes home for supplies, I stare into my daughter’s face and tell her how much I love her, hoping my words will seep into her flesh, blood, and bones to be held within her forever. “You have been born on Chicken Day,” I whisper tenderly. “This is wonderful, because you’ll always know the opening and closing of the sun.” I tell her how sorry I am that I won’t be able to chew food for her when she reaches four months or feed her fish when she’s older so she becomes adept at fishing. “Always remember that if you’re afraid a spirit is coming toward you, spit at it, because spirits are afraid that if saliva touches them they will get leprosy.”
I teach her the sounds of the forest around us: how to distinguish the rustling of the wind in the trees from the crackle of an animal brushing against shrubs and vines as it makes its way on a wildlife trail; how to look at the sky and estimate from the number of stars if there will be rain, fog, or a blanket of humidity at dawn; and, most important, how to understand her place in the world. “From my a-ma to me to you, know that every plant, animal, and mote of dust has a soul. You must make correct choices for the world to remain in balance.” As I murmur these words, I’m on guard for a spirit to swoop down and suck the breath straight out of my lungs as punishment for keeping my daughter alive instead of sending her to the great lake of boiling blood.
Hours later, A-ma returns with a tea-picking basket strapped to her back. She makes a camp for us in the rocky grotto, where we’ll be protected through the night. She unpacks clean clothes for me, as well as rags to place between my legs to catch blood. For the baby, she’s brought some swaddling, including a cap with charms. A-ma inspects the place where the baby came out. I have bleeding, but nothing excessive or uncontrollable. I haven’t had need for opium or any of her poultices, but I’m exhausted from the months of hiding, from the disappointment that San-pa didn’t return in time, from the trek to my land, and from expelling my daughter. I lie on my side with Spiny-thistle cradled to my breast. The moon illuminates the trees, filtering leafy shadows across the grove. If only there were a way to make her remember this moment.
* * *
A-ma has already made a fire and heated water by the time I wake. I feel far worse physically this morning: sore, tired, empty. Mentally, it’s as though I’ve been inhabited by a spirit: lost, confused, but determined to carry out my misdeeds.
A-ma holds Spiny-thistle while I eat. “Look around you,” she coos to the baby. “This is the mother tree. These are the sister trees. You may never see this place again, but it is yours by right. Our blood is in this earth. It has nourished these trees. You are a part of them, and they are a part of you.” She pauses before continuing. “There can be no proper naming ceremony for you, since neither your father nor one of your grandfathers can perform the rite. You’ll live outside our Akha traditions, but you’ll take two gifts with you when you leave our mountain today.”
A-ma glances at me, commanding my attention. I put down my cup to listen.
“First, I name you Yan-yeh. You are the first daughter of my only daughter. Li-yan to Yan-yeh—”
With no father to properly name her, my daughter will never learn to Recite the Lineage. The sharpness of regret stabs into my chest, cleanly, cruelly, irrevocably.
“Second,” A-ma goes on, “I’m giving you the most precious gift we women have in our line.” With one hand, she reaches into the picking basket she brought with her and pulls out a round cake of tea. Wrapped in rice paper, the cake is not so big—maybe eighteen centimeters across and two centimeters thick. Age has faded the ink drawings. All my life I’ve lived in the same house with my a-ma, but I’ve never before seen the tea cake. And, not that it’s all that important, I thought we Akha didn’t make tea cakes, let alone wrap them in decorated papers. That’s why Tea Master Wu had to show everyone in the village what to do.
In answer to my unspoken thoughts, A-ma says, “Since I came to your a-ba in marriage, I’ve kept this hidden in the most powerful and safe place in our home—the space between the family altar in the women’s room and the friends-living-with-child that came from me and your sisters-in-law buried in the soil directly below. Girl, you think you learned so much about tea when the stranger was here with his son. He says he came here to save Pu’er from extinction.” Even in this most profound moment, she snorts her distaste for Mr. Huang. “He knows nothing. He learned nothing. He was looking for aged tea? This is aged tea. It has survived many changes and threats. Your great-grandmother secreted it away from the Japanese in the thirties. Your grandmother hid it from revolutionaries in the forties. It was my responsibility to protect it during the dark years of the Great Leap Forward in the fifties, when tea tree plantations were razed and replanted with tea terraces. We were forced to change our old ways and make vast quantities of inferior tea to sell to the masses. We worked so hard, and we were so hungry. Many people starved to death.”
A-ma is usually so careful with her words, releasing only those that are necessary. Not this time, and her urgency is marked by my need to absorb this new information about her and this strange tea cake.