The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(48)

“I thought coming back for you would change everything.” His breath still smells sweet, yet his excuses for his drug use merely incorporate variations of the same familiar torments. “But you doomed us by having the human reject. Then you made it so we couldn’t fix our mistake and save our daughter.”

I have a lot of remorse for the things I’ve done, but I won’t allow San-pa to make me feel guilty any longer.

“I’m the one who suffered. I carried Yan-yeh within me. I gave birth to her. I was her mother, and I did everything I could to save her. I needed you, and I still need you.”

Tears pool in his eyes. “You did this to me.”

“I didn’t make you into the man you are,” I say sadly. “You’ve always been exactly who you are. A weak man. A pancake stealer.”

They’re such gentle admonitions when I could say so much worse, but they cut to the very heart of who San-pa is. His eyes go cold, and he rolls away from me.

I lie down next to him. A canyon of sorrow and regret fills the space between us. By the time he sneaks out hours later, I know what I must do.

Still dressed in my wedding clothes, I pack the rest of my belongings in my carrying basket. I need to be gone from the village before others rise, but I’m not hurried or frightened. I calmly rummage through San-pa’s basket to retrieve my hidden money. We don’t have any food, but I’ll be able to survive in the jungle as long as I have my knife. Beyond that, I don’t have a plan. I can’t go home. Maybe I’ll end up living in a lean-to next to Deh-ja. Even that would be better than this.

I don’t bother to glance around the room to collect memories. Resolution guides me now. I brush off my skirt three times and recite the words that will begin to set my divorce in motion and instruct my soul to accompany me and not be tempted to remain behind. “I’m leaving, leaving, leaving.” I’m so very thankful I don’t have children, because custom would force me either to maroon them with San-pa or to give them to his parents.

I slowly walk down the lane that divides the village, careful not to rouse the dogs. But as soon as I reach the last house, I gallop for the dense protection of the jungle. My husband may have his drugs, but I feel something pulsing through me, giving me the strength to flee. At the top of a rise, I pause, crouch, listen. Nothing. I run again. I’m familiar enough with where I live from the long hours spent foraging that for now I know which direction to go. That doesn’t mean I’m confident. San-pa might come looking for me. I try to move carefully through the jungle, but I’m in a hurry and he is a good tracker when he wants to be.

The descent of fog over the mountain comes as either a gift or another danger. It will give me the ability to hide, but it’s also disorienting. Spirits lie in wait for the weak, the sick, the frightened. I try to build courage by reminding myself I’m Akha. We live in the jungle. We get food and medicine from the jungle. If we’re careful, we can protect ourselves from bad spirits, wild animals, and fateful accidents. But in running away from my husband, I’m not being careful. Then it hits me. What if he finds me? He has to know I won’t go back with him. My blood chills. If he finds me, I’ve left him with two options: sell me or kill me. Both would be his right.



* * *



Yunnan lies to the north. I follow mountain paths from dawn to dusk, watching the way the sun moves across the sky: to my right in the mornings, to my left in the afternoons. I drink water from streams and eat plants. I loop magic vine over my shoulders, hoping it will protect me from bad spirits and my husband. I walk—and sometimes run—until I can’t go another step. Then I veer off the trail and find a place to rest. I’m exhausted, but I barely sleep. If a gopher does not have his escape route dug and ready ahead of time, then it will be difficult to run away when he needs it. If I’d had an escape plan, I could have protected myself with rituals and talismans. Now I’m scared, never an emotion to have in the jungle. I spend the black night hours listening to every snap and creak coming from the shadows. On the fourth day, I feel San-pa’s presence. If he sang to me, I fear I would hear him. But there’s something else too. The wind shifts, and I catch the smell of wildness. A spirit or spirits?

Terrified, I sprint into a small clearing with high grass and hunker down. Hidden. Safe. But then, like a rabbit, I can’t keep still. I bolt up out of the grass and run as fast as I can back into the jungle until I reach the trail. I jump from rock to rock, scramble over outcroppings, slip in mud, pick myself up, and keep going. My legs and lungs ache with fiery pain.

My mind races with sick knowledge. If it’s true that A-poe-mi-yeh—the supreme god of the Akha people—has placed a stamp inside every person’s head that says how long he or she will live and that we each have a tree in the spirit world that represents us, then the due date on my stamp must surely be coming and my tree must have shed its leaves. So many aphorisms A-ma used to recite come back to me as recriminations. Why didn’t I listen? Because I was like every other girl. Stupidly prideful. Too sure of myself. Foolish in love. Yes, I’ve sinned—against my a-ma and a-ba, against my husband, against my baby. Now that the end of my life feels so close I inwardly beg for it to last a little longer. Let me go back home. Let me find my baby. Let me survive what is hunting me. Give me a chance. I will fight. I will be better. Sun and Moon, help me.

Behind me I hear someone—something—crashing through the dank undergrowth. I duck behind a tree, as if that could hide me from a hunter. I hear the hum then thwack as an arrow embeds itself in a tree near me. The thought that I won’t see death coming—that I’ll end my life with an arrow in my back—hurts more than I could have imagined. I want to see San-pa. I want to look in his eyes when he pulls back the arrow and lets it fly to my heart. When I die, I want to face all the mistakes I’ve made.