He roughly wipes the tears from his cheeks with the backs of his hands. Then he nods to his wife, tucks the bundle under his arm, and leaves.
“Watch him,” A-ma orders. When she adds, “Do it right,” I know she’s still disappointed in me for trying to stop Ci-do earlier. “Make sure someone meets him. He must be accompanied into the forest.”
I hurry to the door. The rain sheets down—a waterfall of heaven’s tears. Two elders stand in the mud at the bottom of the steps. Ci-do is not the same heartbroken man who was in the newlywed hut with us. He stomps down the stairs with his shoulders pulled back and his chest pushed out. When he reaches the men, he gestures angrily with his free hand. His words don’t reach me through the rain. The elders take positions on either side of him and march him out of the village.
The room is so quiet now. Deh-ja silently weeps, her tears staining the birthing mat, but her suffering is not over. Blood escapes from the place where the babies exited her body. A-ma packs the area with a handful of leaves and dirt, but a moment later more red liquid seeps through. A-ma peers around the room until she finds me.
“Girl, run back to the house,” she orders. “On the top shelf in the women’s room, bring me the basket third from the left.”
Outside, a deluge. The lane that divides the village has become a muddy river. I don’t see a single person or animal.
My sisters-in-law turn their backs and shield their children’s eyes when I enter the women’s room. I grab what A-ma asked for and then trot back to the newlywed hut. Deh-ja’s skin is even paler now, but she’s stopped crying. A mound of blood-soaked leaves and dirt has grown on the floor next to her. Deh-ja may have brought human rejects into the world, but if she dies that will be an even greater triumph for bad spirits.
A-ma sifts through the basket.
“Pangolin shell,” she says softly.
I’m not sure if she’s speaking to me or to Deh-ja. Perhaps—and this idea scares me almost more than anything that’s happened so far—she’s addressing the spirits.
A-ma rubs the shell between her hands, seeming to warm it. Then she kneads it across Deh-ja’s belly. “Do you see what I’m doing?” she asks me. “Take the shell. Keep sending it over the flesh in gentle circles to help contract her womb.”
My hand quivers as I move the shell over and around Deh-ja’s belly, which feels distressingly spongy under the smooth hardness of the shell. The blood is still coming out, pooling beneath her. I avert my eyes and see A-ma open a tiny box.
“I want you to watch exactly what I do,” she says. She pulls out strands of hair that have been tied into a loop to keep them from tangling. “These were taken from a woman killed by lightning.”
She places the oil lamp between us, then burns the hairs over the flame, making sure the ash falls into a cup of water. Once the concoction is finished, she hands the cup to Deh-ja.
“Drink it all,” A-ma says. “When you’re done, the bleeding will end, and you’ll feel better.”
The bleeding stops, but maybe Deh-ja didn’t have any blood left in her. I wouldn’t say she feels better either.
From her satchel, A-ma extracts a small piece of limestone polished flat and smooth, which she folds into Deh-ja’s palm. “Nothing will completely take away the agony of your milk coming in with no child to suckle it away, but if you massage this on your breasts, the pain will be reduced.” A-ma pauses. When she speaks again, it’s as if she’s delivering the worst news. “Soon you’ll need to get up.”
I’m confused, because every woman in our village gets up after childbirth. I’ve seen my sisters-in-law do it. A-ma helps them have their babies. They wait for the three-cry ceremony. And then they rise and go back to work. But Deh-ja gave birth not just to a baby missing a finger or ruined by blindness—who must also be smothered by their fathers—but to twins, the worst of all human rejects. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen next.
“I suspect you’ll continue to have pains and bleeding from here.” A-ma gently touches Deh-ja’s abdomen. Then she unwraps a bird’s nest from a piece of cloth. Deh-ja watches with sunken eyes as A-ma breaks off a piece no larger than the tip of her finger. “This is from the nest of the great hornbill,” she explains. “The great hornbill builds its home from mud and from the blood of its kills. Earth and blood help in cases like these. And last . . .” She picks up the egg that has been on the birthing mat this whole time. “You need to eat this heart-forget egg. It’s supposed to help you forget the pain of childbirth. Maybe it will help you forget the pain of . . .”
There’s no need to finish the sentence.
We sit with Deh-ja all through the night. During the long hours, A-ma’s disappointment in me continues to radiate from her body like a low fire. Perhaps she could have overlooked my lapses as part of my learning, but my purposefully trying to stop Ci-do from his duty may be a miscarriage of Akha Law from which I’ll never recover. I hate myself for failing A-ma, but I hate myself even more for not stopping Ci-do. Even considering those two ideas at the same time makes me a not very good Akha.
Roosters announce the morning, and light begins to filter through the bamboo walls. The spirit priest’s voice calls through the insistent clatter of the rain.
“People of Spring Well Village, come!”
A-ma and I do as we’re told, leaving Deh-ja alone. The spirit priest is positioned on his veranda, staff in hand, waiting for everyone to gather. Ci-do and the two elders stand a short distance away. Ci-do still looks angry, as A-ma told him to do.
The ruma raises his arms as he addresses the crowd. “A great power has sent an abnormal birth to our village. It’s a terrible tragedy for Ci-do and Deh-ja. It’s a terrible tragedy for all of us. Ci-do has completed his requirements. He has burned the rejects in the forest. Their spirits will not trouble us again. Ci-do is a good man from a good family, but we all know what has to happen next.” Clack, clack, clack goes his staff on the floor of the veranda. “Our village will have ceremonial abstinence for one cycle. Everyone must be careful with their arms and legs.” (Which is his way of saying no one can do the intercourse.) “Magic vine needs to be laid end to end to ring our village to protect us from more bad spirits. No school for the children. And . . .”
Ci-do’s mother and Ci-teh weep into their hands. His father stares at the ground.
“The parents of the human rejects must be banished and their house destroyed,” the ruma finishes.
Ci-do, the ruma, and the nima enter the newlywed hut. The rest of us wait. The wind picks up, driving rain into our faces. The ruma reemerges, holding up Ci-do’s crossbow. Next, the nima displays Deh-ja’s silver wedding bracelets for all to see. It’s their right to choose whatever they want as payment for their services, but they’ve taken Ci-do and Deh-ja’s most valuable possessions.
Ci-do steps outside. He doesn’t wear his turban. He lugs a pack on his back, and his arms are loaded with as much as he can carry. Deh-ja appears behind him. The fact that she isn’t wearing her headdress is one of the most shocking things I’ve seen yet. The rain quickly soaks her hair, leaving it in strings that plaster themselves to her face and clothes. On her back, she carries her tea-picking basket—with the wood across her forehead to hold the straps that support the weight of her belongings packed inside. She takes a couple of steps and staggers. I want to help her, but A-ma holds me back.
As Ci-do and Deh-ja head for the spirit gate, the ruma calls after them. “Spirits of chaos and destruction, leave this village and never return.” Once the couple disappears from sight, the men in our village bound into action. Within minutes, Ci-do and Deh-ja’s newlywed hut has been destroyed. Then the men go in groups into the forest to collect meh, a magic vine related to the ginger plant with long stems and red flowers that spirits are very much afraid of, to wrap around the perimeter of Spring Well Village.
“You see, Girl?” A-ma says. “This is why the rule that babies must be born in the newlywed hut is a good one. Otherwise, the main family home woul
d have to be burned instead.”
“Where will Ci-do and Deh-ja go? Where will they sleep?”
“So many questions!”
I tug on her sleeve. “A-ma, will they ever come home?”
She clicks her tongue to show her impatience and bats me away with the back of her hand. I am so confused . . . I long to bury my face in her skirt.
THE LENGTH OF A SWALLOW’S BLINK
For the next twelve days, our village follows ceremonial abstinence. On Tiger Day, fetching water is not allowed. On Donkey Day, I’m sent to bring water, because donkeys carry things. On Rabbit Day—and the rain has not let up for one instant—I gather firewood. A-ma chooses not to notice or praise me, and her silence enshrouds me like a heavy cloud. I live in a house with many people, and yet no one speaks to me. I’ve never felt so alone or lonely.
On the fourth day, we hear the voice of the spirit priest. “It’s time for the sacrifices,” he calls. “I’ll need nine sacks of grain, nine pigs, nine chickens, and nine dogs.” But Ci-teh’s family doesn’t have nine pigs. Our entire village doesn’t have nine pigs. Ci-teh’s family turns over their grain, four pigs, and all their chickens, while young men go through the village to catch stray dogs. By the end of the ceremony, Ci-teh’s family has lost a lot of its wealth.
* * *
Once our full cycle of ceremonial abstinence ends, life seems to return to normal. The women go back to embroidering, weaving, and doing chores. The men go back to smoking pipes, hunting, and trading stories. But the birth of the twins and what happened to them, although traditional, has transformed me as irreversibly as soaking cloth in a vat of dye. I cannot accept what I witnessed. But while my soul has changed, my flesh and bones must still follow the course laid out for me, which means also returning to school.
A-ma and A-ba didn’t learn to read or write. My brothers started working full-time with A-ba when they reached eight years, so they don’t know much about reading or writing either. I’m the first person in my family to reach such a high level in primary school. I’ve always liked coming here; today it feels like a refuge. The one-room schoolhouse—which sits at the edge of a muddy lot—looks very much like houses on Nannuo: built on stilts, made of bamboo and thatch, and illuminated inside by a smoky fire pit. We’re nineteen students altogether, ages six to twelve, all from villages scattered on our side of the mountain. The older girls share a mat, while three big boys huddle together on the opposite side of the room. The littlest children wiggle and squirm on their own mat. I sit with Ci-teh. We still haven’t spoken about what happened to her brother, Deh-ja, and their babies. She must be reeling from shame and loss, and I don’t think I could ever tell her what I saw in the newlywed hut.
Teacher Zhang shuffles into the room. He wears blue wool pants, a blue wool jacket, and a matching blue cap with a red star on the front. Everyone on Nannuo Mountain feels sorry for him. Ten years before I was born, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, he was pulled from his university post in the capital and “sent down to learn from the peasants.” When the Cultural Revolution ended and others were called home, he remained unable to get a permit to return to his family. He can’t have yet reached fifty years, but his bitterness makes him look like a village elder. So sad. But everything seems sad to me just now.
Those of us from Spring Well Village have missed two of what he calls weeks of attendance, but he neither welcomes us nor chastises us. Instead, he pins a map of China and its neighbors to the school’s bamboo wall.
“Who can tell me the name of your ethnic minority?” he asks.
We’ve memorized the answer just the way Teacher Zhang likes to hear it. Today, I’m happy for the normalcy.
“Chairman Mao categorized us as Hani,” we chant together, “one of fifty-five ethnic minorities in China.”
“Correct.”
Except it isn’t. Mandarin speakers call us Hani. We are called Aini in the local dialect. But we are neither. We are Akha. When Chairman Mao proclaimed that China was home to fifty-five ethnic minorities, no one had found us yet. When we were discovered, powerful people elsewhere said we would become part of the Hani, because Chairman Mao could not be wrong. Over time another thirty peoples were added to the Hani, including the Juewei, Biyue, Amu, Enu, and so many more.
Teacher Zhang sniffs, wipes the back of his hand across his nose, and adds, “Since you are Hani, you must learn in Hani.” Although the Akha and Hani share most of the same words, the pronunciations and the ways we end our sentences are so different that we wouldn’t be able to understand each other if not for what we’ve been forced to memorize in school. Teacher Zhang looks furtively around the room, as though one of us might report him. “Be grateful. The Hani have their own written language—thirty-one years old. Do you not think it hilarious that it’s written in the letters of the imperial West?” He laughs, shakes his head, and something comes into his voice that I can’t pick apart. “But soon I’ll switch all my teaching to Mandarin, the national language of the Han majority.” He pronounces this carefully, making sure we hear the difference between the Hani (tiny) and the Han (huge, because they make up more than 90 percent of the population of China). “To learn a different language is to learn a different way of living,” he recites. “This, I’m told, will be your way to learn how to cultivate your fields scientifically and appreciate proper sanitation. It will also help with your political indoctrination, which will promote loyalty to the state.”
Sometimes I don’t know if Teacher Zhang is teasing or torturing us with his comments.
He turns to the map with its swaths of green, blue, and brown. He’s marked where we live with a red X, although once, when I was called up to identify the capital of the country, I saw no written characters under the X to mark our villages or the names of our mountains. Even Jinghong, the largest town in Xishuangbanna prefecture, was not on the map. When I asked why, he explained, “Because where you live is unimportant. No one knows you’re here.”
Someone must have known, which is why Teacher Zhang was sent here, but I understood what he was trying to say. It’s only through his maps and posters that I know anything about the outside world. He has described their contents, but why would I need a hospital when I have A-ma? Why would I want to work in a factory so far from the forest? I’ve seen drawings of secretaries, and I wonder why a woman would want to wear the same head-to-toe plain blue jacket and trousers that Teacher Zhang wears.
He now asks for a volunteer to come up to the map and point out the places where the Akha live. A weak man always seeks to hurt those lower than he is, so I suspect he’s going to be tough on Ci-teh and me today. Hoping to protect my friend—she lost her brother and so much more—I quickly raise my hand. He calls on her anyway.
She goes up to the map and studies it. I know the answers and itch to help her, but I’m hoping she’ll remember the stories she’s learned from her a-ma about where our people roam, even if she can’t point out the countries on the map. She surprises me, though, by putting the tip of her finger on the wrinkled paper.
“Here is Tibet,” she says at last. “A thousand years ago, maybe less, the Akha grew tired of the cold.” (This is the story we’ve learned from our elders. Our ancestors were cold.) “The Akha . . . I’m sorry . . . We Hani”—a few of the boys titter at her correction—“walked down from the Tibetan Plateau. Some of us settled in Burma. Some in Thailand. Some in Laos.” Her finger moves from country to country, until finally settling on the red X. “And some came here, to Xishuangbanna prefecture.”
“Is Nannuo included on the list of the Six Great Tea Mountains of Yunnan?”
“No, Teacher Zhang. Those would be Mansa, Yibang, Youle, Gedeng, Mangzhi, and Manzhuang, which lie on the east bank of the Lancang River. But here, on the west side of the river, we have the six second-greatest tea mountains: Hekai, Banzhang, Bada, Mengsong, Jingmai, and our Nannuo. There are even lesser known mountains where tea grows in our prefecture too.”
When Ci-teh retu
rns to our mat, I squeeze her hand, proud of her.
“I did it,” she whispers. “I did it even better than you could have.” Her comment stings, and I pull away. Doesn’t she realize I’m sad too and need her love as well?
Of course, Teacher Zhang saw and heard everything. “Yes, Ci-teh, you’re very smart for an Akha,” he says, using our real designation. This is never a good omen, because he considers everyone in our province to be brainless and crude, and Ci-teh has just proved him wrong. “The world knows that the Akha are the butts of national jokes. Even the Hani are ridiculed as being tu.” It’s a Mandarin word, but one that everyone—including the youngest children here—recognizes. In Mandarin, tu means earth, so we’re considered filthy, backward, and of the dirt. Teacher Zhang continues: “This is where poets and scholars were exiled in centuries past.” (And where artists, teachers, and students like him were sent during the Cultural Revolution.) “If all that were not enough, your proximity to Burma is an added black mark, because the Akha there have built a bad reputation for opium growing and drug smuggling.”
I glance across the room and see the older boys roll their eyes. People like Teacher Zhang can’t know us, just as the Dai, the Bulang, or any other minority can’t know us, let alone the Han majority. Yes, we grow opium and, yes, A-ma uses it in her medicines, but that’s not the same as drug smuggling.
“None of the hill tribes like the Akha,” Teacher Zhang continues. “You’re stupid and violent. Ci-teh here wants to prove them wrong.”
It’s hard to listen to Teacher Zhang when he’s like this, and I wonder if something more personal has happened—and not just mountain gossip about Ci-teh’s family and my behavior in the newlywed hut—that’s pushing him to be so cruel today. Was another petition to return to his home rejected? Did he hear that his wife, who divorced him long ago, remarried? Or is it the rain that’s been coming down steadily for weeks now, leaving everyone and everything smelling of mildew, and all ears tired from the unrelenting deluge that spatters nonstop on thatch roofs and the trees of the forest?