The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(85)
That would have to be the monstrosity Jin and I saw on our walk here. Whatever improvements have been made in Spring Well—as dramatic as they are—are dwarfed by the riches suggested by Ci-teh’s new home. All of this makes me feel like a fool. If Ci-teh had been anyone else, I would have asked questions, but I never looked beyond the surface of our friendship. Ci-teh was right when she said I underestimated her.
Leave it to the women to know what’s happening with Ci-teh’s family members.
“Her brother and his family are at Disneyland in Hong Kong.”
“Her husband and their daughters are in Myanmar, buying rubies.”
“Child of a dog!” someone shouts. Others call out even harsher epithets, but that doesn’t mean the tide has fully turned. Many people here earn their livelihoods from Ci-teh. If they abandon her, then what will become of them? The tension is palpable. I worry a physical fight could break out.
The ruma stamps his staff. The crowd falls silent as he consults with the nima. After considerable whispering and gesturing, the ruma announces, “We’ll hold a ceremony in my house.”
* * *
We make a somber procession to the ruma’s home, where he and the nima slip on their ceremonial cloaks. The elders sit in a circle around us. Once everyone is settled, the nima beckons Ci-teh and me to kneel before him. He rubs soot from my forehead down to the tip of my nose. He repeats the process with Ci-teh.
“These two with the marks are who you are to look at and examine,” he notifies A-poe-mi-yeh—our supreme god. Next, he ties string around Ci-teh’s and my wrists. “Let them be joined together for the journey to the netherworld.” Last, he pours a little alcohol on the floor, where it seeps through the bamboo to the ground below. “I call on you, ancestors, to help us look for the truth. What, if any, spirit has been chewing on these women’s souls and strangling our village?”
His eyes roll back until we see only the whites. His arms and legs tremble, causing the coins and bones on his cloak to rattle. Unrecognizable words escape his mouth: “Ooh, aww, tsa.” The ceremony continues for three hours, during which the rain finally lets up. The absence of the constant clatter only amplifies the nima’s groans.
When he comes out of his trance, Ci-teh and I are ordered outside so he can confer with the ruma and village elders. Every man, woman, and child of Spring Well Village still waits in the misty drizzle. The divisions are obvious: the group that’s most benefited from Ci-teh and the group that’s held on to their land and the old ways. I’ve been away for more than a decade, while she’s been a constant and influential presence. I’m promising something intangible for the future, while she’s already changed many lives. I’m asking for honor; she’s guaranteeing livelihoods.
The ruma, nima, and village elders join us. As is tradition, it’s the ruma’s responsibility to declare the outcome and announce the nima’s recommendations.
“Accusations have shot back and forth like poisoned arrows,” he begins, “but we’ve weighed everything, including what the nima saw in the netherworld.” When he asks, “Could a spirit have entered Ci-teh?” I feel a touch of optimism. “If the nima told me that her spirit was gasping for breath, then I would take banana leaves stuffed with ash, husked rice, and coins and rub her body with them, but she is not suffering thus. If she’d become wild, tearing off her clothes or howling like an animal, I would ask three honorable women of our village to urinate on a broom, which I would use to brush away Ci-teh’s problems, but she is not suffering thus. If she had seizures, I would wrap her in magic vine, then sacrifice a goat, a pig, and two chickens, but again, she is not suffering thus. Ci-teh does not suffer from a spirit affliction. Everything she has done has come from her own hands, heart, and mind—”
Relief floods through me, but Ci-teh is outraged. “How much did Li-yan pay you to say those things?”
“Shamans and spirit priests don’t lie,” the ruma replies indignantly. “We can’t lie. If we were to lie, the spirits would vex us. Now please, let me continue. A spark lights a fire. Water sprouts a seed. The Akha Way tells us that a single moment changes destinies. Therefore, the nima and I have searched through time to find the instant that changed every person in Spring Well, but these two most of all. I am speaking of the occasion when evil spirits forced the birth of twins upon us.”
Everyone instinctively recoils, but I’m thrown back in time not to the birth of Deh-ja’s babies but to my cleansing ceremony after the pancake-stealing incident. I’d felt the ruma had magically understood everything that had happened, but now I realize his gifts may have less to do with magic than with interpreting the world around him in a magical way.
“For Li-yan, the arrival of the human rejects caused her to begin looking beyond our spirit gate to the outside world,” he says, and I see how clever he is to allot a portion of responsibility to me. “For Ci-teh—”
“We lost our wealth, our reputation, and my brother,” Ci-teh finishes somberly.
“Which caused you to work hard to regain your family’s prosperity and position. You’ve even been able to bring your brother—if not all the way back into village life—closer to you.” He stamps his staff. “Let us now, as a village, chase away the evil spirits who have haunted these two women. Release them! Be gone! Be gone forever!” He pauses before adding, “We will now practice ceremonial abstinence.”