The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(86)
Once the routine requirements might have settled things, but this hasn’t been a simple matter of someone touching the spirit gate or a dog climbing onto a roof.
Someone yells, “What about my land? Will Ci-teh sell it back to me?”
The suggestion jags through the crowd.
“That might work for you,” another farmer shouts, “but I can’t return money I’ve already spent.”
“Shouldn’t Ci-teh be banished?” another man calls out.
Then a person from Ci-teh’s faction lets his views be known. “Why should she go? I leased my land to her. Why can’t I work for her and grow coffee?”
“Make the outsider leave! Look at her. She’s not a true Akha.”
Several click-clicks of tongues reveal support for this last suggestion.
“If a woman marries out, does that mean she’s no longer Akha?” the ruma asks. “In the past, when our men traveled the Tea Horse Road for months or years, were they no longer Akha? If Li-yan wishes to stay among us, she’s welcome. As for Ci-teh . . . She’s not a human reject. She’s not a murderer. I cannot banish her. She has her own home outside the protection of our spirit gate. Let her continue to live there. Those who want to do business with her know that good and bad spirits are watching.”
None of this absolves Ci-teh, and it’s clear she could easily rile the crowd again. Instead, she straightens her back and begins threading her way through the crowd, stopping here and there to speak to her supporters. Knowing the effect the birth of the twins had on me, I feel empathy for her and the losses her family endured as a result. I even grudgingly admire the desire that ignited in her when we were girls to help her family. But as she walks away, I know the two of us will never again be friends.
* * *
Having exposed Ci-teh, I feel I need to be more present in the village. I want to help the people of Spring Well regain pride in our tea trees, help revitalize the Pu’er business, and stabilize and bring back the money everyone has come to rely on. Fortunately, Jin agrees. During the following weeks, as the monsoon season continues and little can be done for the trees themselves, I go from household to household trying to build trust, while Jin makes business calls on his cellphone and occasionally meets associates in Menghai or Jinghong. At night, we sleep in an abandoned newlywed hut. It’s not the time of year to build a house, but the ruma and Jin begin to seek a proper date for construction. On the appointed day, men go into the forest to cut bamboo. We women gather thatch and fashion bamboo lashing. Our new house—minus the modern conveniences Jin promises he’ll provide eventually—is completed by lunchtime. We move in that afternoon. That night I dream of water. Two weeks later, I wake up sick to my stomach. I’ve come to a head.
Jin is delighted. He calls his mother, and I can hear her joy through the line. A-ma’s smile is open and wide. She says, “It took you this long to figure it out? The sisters-in-law and I could tell a half cycle ago.” Her words sound matter-of-fact, but her happiness radiates like the sun on a spring morning.
And this is what I’ve wanted. This is what will make our lives complete, but the worries my condition stirs up are troublesome. What if I have a girl?
“I don’t need a son,” Jin reassures me. “You don’t need to do that for me.”
But he doesn’t understand that every Akha wishes for a son first, followed by a girl, followed by a boy, followed by a girl. It’s how we keep balance in the world. I had a daughter; now I must have a son.
Teacher Zhang inadvertently adds to my anxieties when he and two old women from the Family Planning Office at the tea collection center visit Spring Well to paste posters on the sides of buildings, marking the launch of a new campaign seeking to address “the dark side of the miracle” of the One Child policy. “China already has a huge surplus of men over women, and that number is expanding by about one million each year,” Teacher Zhang announces. Each poster has a different slogan, all bearing the same core message: Daughters constitute the next generation. Men and women build a harmonious society together. Nature will decide the sex of the newborn. Giving birth to a girl is the will of nature. The villagers don’t remove the posters, because all the slogans are in accordance with Akha Law. Then my three eleven-year-old nieces come home with memorized sayings, which they recite with alarming frequency.
“Care for girls. Support the girl class.”
“Protect girl children. Benefit the state, the people, and families.”
“To care for today’s girls is to show concern for the future of China.”
All this should make me want to have a girl, but the more I’m encouraged to give birth to one, the more apprehensive I become.
Let it be a son.
* * *
In October, five months after the confrontation with Ci-teh, Jin and I feel comfortable enough to go back to Guangzhou so he can take care of business and I can visit the tea market to research what it would take to open a new shop. We have to pass through Menghai to get to the airport in Jinghong, so, as promised, Jin and I stop at the Social Welfare Institute. The rains should be over, but today they’ve reappeared. A beggar woman sits under a makeshift shelter on the steps of the orphanage . . . in this weather, with no one about. I wonder if she’s the same person I saw sleeping under the cardboard sheets when we drove through Menghai on our way to Spring Well. Jin splits off, drops a few coins in her cup, and bounds up the steps to catch up to me as I enter the institute.