The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(46)
After that, Wife-of-Ah-joe took me to the village ruma. He warned me about our men working for the drug traffickers. He told me about husbands selling their wives and fathers selling their daughters into prostitution to earn money to buy drugs. He explained that after Chairman Mao took over China, the imperialist West—America—sponsored the Nationalists in the mountains of Thailand. Those men stayed and began to cultivate opium. By the time of the Vietnam War, the Golden Triangle supplied half the world’s heroin. “You are now living in the midst of that,” he told me wearily. It was nearly impossible to believe. Be grateful, I told myself. San-pa may not have a job, but at least he doesn’t work for the drug men.
The announcement of our guests’ arrival comes first through our feet—thud, thud, thud. A toothless woman helps her grown son, sick with a disease that comes from the needles, into the privacy of their hut. As the sounds of thrashing and honking reach us, followed by laughter and chatter in languages none of us comprehend, other men sidle wordlessly into the jungle. The lead elephant comes into view, his immense body swaying delicately from side to side, his trunk constantly searching. A handler, bare feet dangling, perches between the elephant’s ears. Behind him, white foreigners sit on a painful-looking platform shaded by a canopy: tourists. (The first time I saw a foreigner, I thought it must be a spirit, for no one living could be that tall, white, or fat. Fatter than pictures of Chairman Mao. Fatter than Mr. Huang. So fat that sometimes I even worry for the elephants, which is silly, I know.) Once all the elephants have been tethered and the tourists helped down—with much laughter and cameras snapping—my friends and I approach.
“You want to buy?”
“You want to buy?”
“You want to buy?”
We’ve learned the English words, which all foreigners—no matter where they’re from—understand. To tourists like these, we sell woven pouches for their sunglasses, laptops, and cellphones. Sometimes sophisticated buyers—who call themselves dealers—come, and they wheedle us to sell our wedding headdresses, embroidered tunics, silver-adorned breastplates, and our baby carriers woven and decorated with special charms and good wishes, representing all the love a mother can give.
A huge man shouts at me and waves his camera in my face. Garble, garble, garble.
“Photo five baht,” I recite in English.
I pose with him, then with a family from America with two sour-faced sons, then with an elderly couple with gray hair, sunhats, and legs so white I can see the veins under the surface of their flesh. I secretly hope that one day a tourist family will arrive with an Akha child in the wife’s arms. Yan-yeh would be almost a year old now.
I go home with fifty baht, my minuscule earnings from posing and selling, which is not enough to live on if your husband isn’t hunting or working. At least I’m not a beggar. No Akha anywhere has ever become a beggar. Always keep your pride, I remind myself as I hide half the money where San-pa will never find it—not with my clothes or even with my cookware, not anywhere he would suspect me of concealing something of value. I hide it at the bottom of his carrying basket with his belongings.
When San-pa arrives, he demands that I give him what I earned. “I need it. Give it, Wife.” When I don’t hand over what he considers should be the full amount, he makes other impossible requests. “Give me your bracelets. Give me your headdress. I’ll sell the silver.”
I try reason. “If I don’t have those, then the foreigners won’t want to take my picture. If they don’t take my picture, then how will we have money to eat?”
The look on his face tells me I’ve gone too far.
“You know what happens to wives if they don’t obey,” he says in a low voice. “It can happen this quick!” He brings his hands together for a single loud clap. I can’t believe he’d beat me, but three months ago I wouldn’t have believed I’d be as hungry as I am now. I give him the money from my pocket. I’ll use coins from his carrying basket to buy rice and oil.
Later, on our sleeping mat, he nuzzles against me. “Forgive me, dear one,” he whispers tenderly. We do the intercourse, and he’s as gentle as ever. But afterward, when he slinks out the door to smoke his pipe, I’m left with suspicions. He never tells me how he spends what I give him. Maybe he loses it gambling. Maybe he purchases rice liquor or a woman’s time. Maybe he buys opium. But he couldn’t be taking opium, because I would have noticed. Or maybe that’s why he stays away for days at a time. To recover before coming home. I reject the idea. He wouldn’t do that to me. Soon, though, my mistrust returns. He did it that time in Deh-ja’s village . . .
I go outside and ask directly: “Have you tried opium again?”
His eyes become hooded. “On rare occasions,” he admits, “when I want to get away from the misery of my life.”
As his wife, I long to help him, but what can I do?
* * *
The next day follows the usual course: foraging, followed by selling trinkets. In the late afternoon, after the tourists have returned to their hotels and we’ve gone home to change, my friends and I gather outside once again. We sit on logs to embroider, trade stories, and sing. We’re united by sorrow, and I’m comforted by the fact that we all speak the same language and follow the same traditions. We all wish for the bounty of the earth to reward us. We all hope for peace, quiet, and sanctuary. We just want to be left alone to sojourn through our lives—apart from lowland dwellers, apart even from other hill tribes. We want to be embraced by the warmth of the earth’s soil, the energy of its trees, and the fragrance of its blooms. But since our lives are out of alignment with the world, today we must endure a visit from the strangest creatures of all: missionaries. Akhas are taught never to hate, but this particular group of foreigners, who tell us our practices are evil and there is only one god, challenge my patience.