The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(88)
She gives me the photo and the footprint, then the three women escort us to the front door. Babies wail in their cribs. The toddlers in their walkers push their way toward us. The older children seek our eyes, hopeless, knowing we haven’t come for them. The director puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. The ridge of A-ma’s bracelet presses into my flesh.
“I would help you if I could,” she says.
Through my tears, I ask, “If I can’t have my daughter, is there something I can do for the other children?”
“Oh, no. We’re fine. We’re given everything we need.”
“Maybe . . .” I try to think big. “What about a washing machine and a dryer?”
“We could never accept such generosity,” she says, but she’s just being Chinese-polite.
So our flights back to Guangzhou will be put off another day. We open our umbrellas and step out into the rain. The beggar woman, who’s been here all this time, waves to Jin to approach. He gave her money earlier, but he reaches into his pocket again and begins to move laterally over the steps to her. It hurts enough to see beggars in Guangzhou and the homeless in Los Angeles, but to encounter one in my prefecture? We grew up living on the land. If we caught or found food, we ate it. If we had nothing, we ate nothing. But the idea that one of us would beg?
“Sir, please come a little closer,” the woman entreats in broken Mandarin. “Let me show you something. I’ve been waiting for the right buyers. You and your wife look like people of fine standing. I know there are collectors from afar who will pay good money . . .”
I only had to hear the first few words to recognize the voice, and they catch me like a spring trap. It’s Deh-ja. The irrevocable loss I feel about my daughter followed by this chance encounter with Deh-ja, again, feel as humbling and cleansing as a tidal wave. For a moment I can’t move, because it’s all so hard to take in. When I saw her on San-pa’s and my way to Thailand, she was barely surviving, but this is different. Deh-ja—an Akha—has become a beggar. Unheard of. I sweep in a deep breath to steady myself and then walk to my husband’s side, where Deh-ja—filthy, nearly toothless, and as brown and wrinkled as a salted plum—holds out her most special possession for sale: her wedding headdress.
She doesn’t recognize me until I speak. That’s how much I’ve changed.
“Fate sent you in one direction,” she says, showing no embarrassment about her circumstances. “Destiny sent me in another. Now, would you like to buy this headdress? I think you remember it.”
“Of course I remember it, but I’m not going to buy it. You’re coming with us.”
Jin raises his eyebrows, clearly surprised.
“No coincidence, no story,” I recite before going on to explain. “Deh-ja once lived in Spring Well. She and I have been together at our worst moments.” I pause to look in her eyes. “We’ve also bumped into each other in the most unlikely places. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
The next two hours should be filled with the sad tale of Deh-ja living as a hermit in the jungle for many years before traversing mountain trails—always alone—back to Xishuangbanna prefecture. Instead, a cacophony of laughter and hoots of surprise stream out of Deh-ja as she experiences her first shower, her first flush toilet, her first restaurant meal, her first television program, her first mattress, her first air-conditioning, her first nightgown, and her first use of electricity, flipping on and off the bedside lamp.
“Why are you doing this for me?” she asks as I sit next to her on the bed, holding her hand, trying to assure her about sleeping inside a room with four solid walls for the first time in her life.
“Maybe it’s not for you. Maybe it’s for me. Tomorrow, we’re going home—”
“To Spring Well Village? I can’t go there!”
“We’re going to Guangzhou—”
“Sun and Moon! Not possible!”
“As Akha, we’re linked in one long chain of life. Do you still believe in the malevolence of spirits and the power of our ancestors to overcome them?” I ask.
Of course she does.
“We were both on those steps today,” I continue. “We don’t have to know why. All we have to do is accept that our spirit ancestors must want us to be together. Akha Law tells us never to ignore portents or coincidences.”
The following morning, Deh-ja gets her first experience in a car as the driver takes us to Jinghong to buy the appliances. Terror turns her face as white as a phantom. I keep reminding her that we can stop if she needs to be sick. The appliances cost barely three hundred dollars—a modest amount for us, but a washer and dryer will change the quality of everyone’s lives at the Social Welfare Institute. Not wanting to take any chances, we follow the truck back to Menghai and watch as the items are hooked up and proven to work. The three caretakers smile through their tears. The older kids shoulder in, wanting to get a closer look. The toddlers surround Deh-ja with their walkers, and her laughter is as light and clear as water tumbling over rocks in a stream.
It’s close to 4:00 when Jin gives the installer a tip and sends him on his way. Director Zhou offers more tea and a meal. Now that she sees we’ve adopted a beggar, she expects us to take a child with us too. When I tell her I’m carrying a baby, she exclaims, “Wonderful news! Later, when you want him to have a little sister, you’ll know where to come.” She walks us to the door, takes my hand, and transfers something into it. A-ma’s dragon bracelet. “You have a big and generous heart,” the director says. “I’m sorry for your sorrows and for whatever part I may have had in them, but we’re required by the government to do our jobs.”