The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(63)
She waves off my words as though they mean nothing. “Look at me. I’m fat, but you’re still beautiful. I could find someone to marry you by nightfall.”
She could too, but I’m not interested.
Ci-teh’s inquisitiveness spreads to others. The sisters-in-law, A-ba, my brothers, even some of the nieces and nephews buzz their noses at me like persistent gnats, asking why I haven’t remarried, giving me advice, and trying to prove how much they care for my well-being.
“We don’t want you to be lonely,” Third Brother says.
Second Brother takes a more practical approach. “If you don’t get married, who will look after you when you get old?”
First Brother is even more frank. “If you don’t get married, who will care for you when you go to the afterlife? You’ll need a son to make offerings to you.” He shakes a warning finger at me. “You can only be a leftover woman for a limited time. After that, it will be too late for you. No one will want to marry you.”
A-ba, who shouldn’t speak directly to me on such matters, sends messages through the sisters-in-law, as is proper.
Third Sister-in-law speaks to me one morning as we gather firewood: “You can’t act too picky.”
Second Sister-in-law passes on the following: “No man wants to marry a woman who is overly ambitious or wants to outshine him.”
A-ba has First Sister-in-law deliver the bluntest caution: “People will say you don’t like to do the intercourse, but it is your duty to the nation and to the family to have a child.”
Their talk leaves me feeling both irritated and insecure.
During the third week, I walk to Shelter Shadow Village to pay respects to San-pa’s parents, only to find they died five years ago in a typhoid epidemic. I also visit Teacher Zhang at the primary school, where the same old maps and posters hang on the bamboo walls as when I was a girl. I confide in him my concerns that I failed my interview and will let my family down again. Here’s what he says:
“There’s nothing you can do about it now! But if you ask me—and I guess you are—I believe you will get in. Who is more qualified than you, after all?”
Which lifts my spirit.
I don’t get to see or talk to A-ma much at all. She’s the only person, apart from Teacher Zhang, who seems unchanged—from the way she dresses to the way she moves to the way she ignores the spiraling world around her. She’s as busy as ever, though, cooking for the family, settling arguments between the sisters-in-law, washing clothes by hand, spinning thread, weaving cloth, embroidering and decorating caps for her grandchildren, delivering babies, and mixing potions for those who come to her ill or injured. She’s so busy that I’m alone with her only once—when we visit the mother and sister trees on my last day. As we wander through the grove, she stops here and there to stroke a branch, clip a few leaves, or pick some of the parasites that cling to the mother tree for medicinal concoctions. The last time we were here together . . .
“Nothing will take away the pain of a lost child,” A-ma says. “My feelings for your daughter are always strongest here. In nature. In the atmosphere. Because that’s where Yan-yeh has gone. Into the ether.”
“For me, my grief is like a huge hole. Everything flows around that hole. I have forced myself to move forward, but I can never move on.”
A-ma regards me, weighing so much. When she finally speaks it’s to drive forward the theme that has come at me from every direction since I’ve returned home.
“You shouldn’t be alone. You cannot let memories of what happened in the past turn you into someone you wouldn’t recognize. Be who you are, Girl, and the right person will find you and love you.”
While I still don’t think love will happen for me again, her words give me strength—to say goodbye, walk alone back to Bamboo Forest Village, board the minibus to Menghai, and travel on to Kunming.
* * *
When I enter my apartment, I find a note from Teacher Guo, asking me to visit him immediately. He breaks away from dinner with his family to give me the news. Of the two thousand people who applied, I’m the only student accepted into both programs. I’m ecstatic. I sell my moped and most of my belongings so I’ll have money to live on without taking an extra job to support myself.
For the next twelve months, I’m rarely apart from Tea Master Sun. In the first track, he teaches me how to buy raw tea, store it, and let nature do its job of aging. I learn to judge the minutes required for wilting, killing the green, kneading, the sunbath, and fermentation. (I’ve had a head start on some of these things, which gives me an advantage over the other students.) In the second track, I study the best qualities of tea so that one day I might become a tea master myself, like—and here’s my first French word—a wine sommelier.
“Taste requires a lifetime of dedication,” Tea Master Sun instills in me. “You have a simple palate shaped by your childhood, cultivated by mountain springs, and enriched by the soil. I like this about you, but you must learn subtlety and refinement. You’ll stumble and make mistakes, but as long as you’re humble and honest, you’ll learn. You love tea. I see it in your face. Always remember If you don’t love tea, you can’t make good tea.”
Nothing romantic grows between my tea master and me, but after months of being around him the last of the sadness and loneliness I’ve felt about the past dissipates like clouds after a storm. When I look back at my life—all twenty-six years of it—I see the many men who’ve helped me, but none of them will ever be as important as Tea Master Sun, who opens my eyes, heart, and soul. The things he teaches me range from the practical to the spiritual.