The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(36)
“Then came the sixties and seventies,” she continues, “when the Red Guards sought the Destruction of the Four Olds of ideas, culture, customs, and habits. We were no longer allowed to drink tea, because it was seen as recalling hours of leisure, as though we’d ever had those. We were forced to tear down the spirit gate and the village swing. To keep the old ways would have been to commit a political crime, but for anyone to think someone like me would forget? Or let something as precious as tea become extinct, as that stranger-fool said?”
All this time, she could have said something to Mr. Huang. She could have helped him more.
“This cake,” she says, turning her attention to Yan-yeh, “goes back many generations of women in our family. It is the best gift I can give you, my granddaughter, yet it holds many secrets and much suffering. Carry it with you wherever you go as a reminder of who you are and where you came from.”
A-ma places my baby on the tea cake so that it serves as a shield on which to rest her neck and fans above her head like a halo, and then binds them together with a handwoven blanket. She picks up Yan-yeh and gives her to me. “You must go.”
I shake my head. I’m terrified.
“Keep walking down the mountain.” A-ma gazes out across the peaks, blue and hazy in the distance. Her jaw tightens as she pulls her knife from her belt and tucks it in mine. “Protect yourself,” she says, and I clutch Yan-yeh closer to my body. “When you see people, ask the way to Menghai. Mark your route for your return.”
Getting around the boulder is hard with the baby, but A-ma is at my side, steadying me, keeping me from falling. As soon as we reach the old and faint path, she places on my back the basket packed with the necessities for my journey.
“Support her neck,” she instructs. “Keep walking. I told the others we would be gone for four nights. That gives you three more nights to get her to a safe place and then come home. I will wait here for you.” Then she turns her back on me, grabs on to the boulder, and shimmies out of sight.
I feel like a girl in an Akha fable.
The tiny trail that leads away from my grove joins the larger path. I bypass my village entirely, always heading down. Where the path branches, I build a pile of rocks or cut into the bark of a tree. I stop every once in a while to clear my throat three times and rub the hair on my arms and legs. The world knows that spirits are not that clever or brave. They are frightened of saliva and the sounds of human hairs are excruciating to their ears. When Yan-yeh whimpers, I hunker down and bring her to my breast. I lay her on pine needles when I need to relieve myself and change my bloody rags. I eat rice balls as I walk.
Night falls. I wend my way deep into the forest to find what I hope will be a place safe from the worst outside spirits. I strike three trees with my fist. “You be my home! Watch over us.” I roll out my sleeping mat and curl around my daughter. As soon as dawn brightens the sky, I’m up again. I hurt all over and my body screams for more rest, but I have to keep moving if I’m going to give Yan-yeh a chance at life. The mountains are still steep and should be unusable, but tea terraces undulate, following the curves of the hillsides and climbing until they disappear into the morning mists. The farmers have triumphed over nature as I must now conquer my physical pain and weakness.
When the sun is high, the mountain path widens and I start to hear rumbling sounds. I reach a dirt road with a truck going one way, a tractor going the opposite way, and a few people bearing wares trudging in both directions. I need to find this spot when I come home. I can’t leave a pile of rocks by the side of the road, because what if someone or something tips it over? I struggle to find a landmark, but I see nothing different from what I’ve been passing through all morning. I take one of the rags A-ma gave me and tie it to a branch. Please let it be enough for me to find on my return.
I step into the road, not knowing which way to go—left or right. I ask a woman wearing Dai nationality clothes and carrying a basket heaped with corncobs the way to Menghai. “We’re going there too,” she answers. “You can follow us if you’d like.” I feel better to be walking with someone from a hill tribe—a stranger but still familiar—because every step reveals something completely new. The land turns to gentle slopes and what’s planted on them changes. The impossibly towering tea terraces are far behind me now. Instead, trees I don’t recognize rise up in neatly planted rows. Now, when I stop to mark my route with a slash from A-ma’s knife, thick white goo oozes from the trunks like white blood. The Dai woman tells me they’re rubber trees. “Are they for eating?” I ask. She laughs and shakes her head. I begin to see houses, which are unlike any in the mountains—made of stones, clay bricks, and some type of smooth gray material. Then I see my first two-story building. And then the most astounding sight. Way above my head. My first airplane.
Yan-yeh stirs and squawks in her birdlike way. I say goodbye to the Dai woman and step off the road to find a spot of shade. I unwrap my baby and set the tea cake on the ground. I bring her to my breast. My milk hasn’t come in yet, but she sucks and sucks and sucks—my baby is strong, and she’ll need courage to survive what’s coming—while my insides wring and constrict. I have to bite my lips from the double pain, and yet the way she looks up at me . . . Her eyes are so clear . . . When she falls asleep, I wrap her back up, making sure to support her neck as A-ma showed me. Then it’s back to the road.