All through the morning Teacher Zhang asks questions related to the map, and for a while I’m distracted from my feelings. “Yes!” we chant in unison. “We live on the Tropic of Cancer.” And, “Yes! The Lancang River flows from Tibet.” The river passes through our mountains, changing its name to Mekong where China, Laos, and Burma meet, before flowing through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and eventually to the South China Sea. “Yes! It is called the Danube of the East.”
The lunch break comes. The other kids run through the rain to an open-air canopy, but Ci-teh takes my hand and holds me under the overhang that protects the entrance to our schoolroom.
“What’s going to happen to my family now?” she asks, staring out at the muddy landscape. “How will we ever come back from this? And my brother . . .”
I feel sorry for her, and I want to offer comfort, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Her cap is still better than mine. Her family still has its vegetable and opium fields. Her clan is still better off than any other in Spring Well. Despite my uncharitable feelings, she’s still my friend. I try to offer her some sympathy. “We’ll all miss Ci-do and Deh-ja.”
She presses her lips together, visibly fighting her emotions. Finally, she mumbles, “Don’t say anything more. It hurts too much.” Then she releases my hand for the second time today, steps into the rain, and joins the other kids under the canopy. I wonder what it would be like to be so proud and then have your belongings, reputation, and status taken from you.
I go back into the classroom to speak to Teacher Zhang.
“I hear you had a hard time,” he says somewhat kindly when I approach. “Your traditions can be harsh.”
His sympathy for me, given how he treated Ci-teh, is startling. So is my response.
“Thank you for understanding.”
“Work hard and you could go on to second-level school and beyond. You don’t have to stay on this mountain forever.”
I’ve heard there is a second-level school and even a third-level school. No one from our group of villages has passed the test to attend, so the idea is impossible to imagine, just as it’s hard to imagine him ever being allowed to leave.
“So what do you want?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a small piece of cloth tied with a strip of dried corn husk. Inside is a pinch of tea my family processed from last-grade leaves. A-ma likes me to give Teacher Zhang some of this tea for two reasons. First, he is a sad and lonely man. Second, I must respect my teacher. And maybe it’s just a dream, but today I would add a third reason: to distract him from Ci-teh, so she might have more time to deal with her family’s losses.
In the afternoon, I see my leaves floating in the big glass jar he uses to drink his tea.
* * *
Every twelve days, the cycle begins anew with Sheep Day in honor of the god who gave birth to the universe. No work is done, and school is closed. A-ma waits until my nieces and nephews have settled and their mothers have begun their spinning before saying to me, “Come. You’ll need your cape.” I’m afraid of what she wants of me, but I bow my head, and follow her into the rain. We quickly pass through the spirit gate and leave our village behind. Her feet are sure and swift, even in the slippery mud, and I have to hurry to keep up with her. We climb the main trail that will eventually reach my brothers’ tea gardens, but we don’t turn onto the smaller paths that lead to them. The clatter of rain on the leaves of my cape seems to magnify A-ma’s quiet determination. She crosses over the trail to the tea collection center without saying a word. We enter the clouds. Everything turns ghostly gray. The path narrows and then narrows some more. We’ve thoroughly entered the terrain of the spirits. I’m glad I’m with A-ma, because she’ll always protect me and make sure I find my way home. I can’t bear to think about what might happen if we were to get separated. With that, a frightening thought enters my mind. Maybe A-ma plans to leave me out here. Perhaps I’ve disappointed her that much. And still we climb.
After a while, she stops. An immense boulder blocks the last frayed remnants of the path. We have nowhere left to go. A chill runs through my body.
“Look around you, Girl,” she orders. “What do you see?”
Rain . . . Rivulets of water streaming down the boulder’s ragged skin . . . Ghosts of trees draped in shadowy mists . . .
I’m so, so scared. But as much as my body shivers and shakes, I can’t make my mouth move.
“Look, Girl. See.” Her voice is so soft I barely hear it above the rain. “See deeply.”
I lick the rain from my lips, close my eyes, and take a breath. When I open my eyes, I try to see the world as she does.
Ready, I try. “A hunter might call this an animal trail, but it isn’t.”
“Why do you say that?” she asks.
“I’ve seen broken twigs up here.” I gesture to the height of A-ma’s shoulder. “Someone comes up here often and passes too closely to the plants and trees. And look at those rocks.” I point to some stones on the ground. “Someone placed them here to make this journey easier.”
A-ma’s smile is perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. “I’ll need to be more careful in the future.”
Feeling braver, I study the boulder. Huge trees—camphors—tower up behind it. The rock looks round, but a section juts out—a ledge over a steep drop—and curves to the right. I follow my intuition, put my hands on the face of the boulder, and follow the curve. What ledge there was disappears, leaving only hollows to tuck my toes. I slowly creep sideways around the boulder, my body flat against its ancient surface. Except it’s not a boulder. It’s more of an outcropping, a wall, a fortification made by nature, with a soul so powerful I feel it through my fingers and toes.
The ground comes back up to meet my feet, and I step into the grove of camphor trees I’d glimpsed earlier. Sheltered beneath the canopy of their great limbs are scattered about a dozen old tea trees. In the middle—surrounded by the smaller tea trees with camphor branches hanging above and the solid and well-cared-for ground beneath it—stands a single tea tree. Anyone would be able to tell how ancient it is by the twist of its branches.
“Is this my land?” I ask.
“When I went to your a-ba in marriage, the old traditions were supposed to be over. No more buying and selling of women into slavery or marriage. No more dowries either. But it doesn’t matter what the government says. This land belongs to the women in our line. It is ours alone to control. It was given to me as my dowry as it will one day go with you into marriage.”
I’m only half listening, because I’m so disappointed. It’s just as A-ba and everyone else in my family has said. What I’ve been allotted is worthless. It will be hard to get a basket of leaves around the boulder and down the mountain to the tea collection center. The hope I’ve hidden that my land isn’t as bad as everyone has always hinted has been smashed, but A-ma doesn’t notice. Instead, she takes my hand and leads me farther into the grove. “Look how the stone on this side has opened to embrace this special place,” she whispers. “See how part of the rock comes up and over, so you could sleep under it and stay dry, if you wished.”
Yes, it’s hollowed out on this side, forming a grotto, but what difference can that make to me?
She tells me the camphor trees are eight hundred years old or more and that the “sister trees” that surround the ancient tea tree are more than one thousand years old. My stomach sinks even further. Not only could no one find this place, but no one wants leaves from old trees. Tea bushes and pollarded tea trees bring money and food. Not that much money or food, but something. The leaves from these trees? The word that has been so much in my mind lately pounds against the inside of my skull. Worthless. Worthless. Worthless.
“And here is the mother tree,” A-ma continues. Her voice is at once softer and filled with more emotion than it ever is during ceremonial sacrifices. She places her palms on the trunk as delicately as she did on Deh-ja’s belly. “Isn’t she
beautiful?”
Not really. The tree is much taller than the ones A-ma called sister trees, but the years show in the way they do in village elders. The bark is cracked. The limbs are bent and gnarled by age. Some of the color has faded from the leaves. And it also has eerie growths—not moles or cracked toenails, but parasites and fungi—that mottle the bark and fester in the crooks of the limbs and at the base of the trunk. I’ve seen things like this before when we’ve tramped into the forest, but one characteristic is new to me. Bright yellow threads have crept into, over, and around the other parasites. The tree looks like it could die tomorrow. Worthless.
“Rice is to nourish,” A-ma says. “Tea is to heal. Always remember that food is medicine, and medicine is food. If you take care of the trees, the trees will take care of you.”
“But A-ba hates this place. I’ve heard the others call it unlucky. It’s—”
“You don’t know a thing about it.” She takes my arm and pulls me—not so gently—out of the rain and under the crescent-shaped canopy formed by the boulder. “This tea garden has belonged to the women in my line since the Akha first came to this mountain thirty-three generations ago. The sister trees were still young back then, but the mother tree was already old. My grandmother told me it had to have lived more than one hundred generations already. And it has always been used for tea.”
One hundred generations? For the first time, I use Teacher Zhang’s math for something other than a class lesson. That would be over three thousand years old. The forest has been here since it was created by the gods, but did they drink tea?
“Do you see how the tree has grown?” A-ma asks. She strides back into the rain and climbs the tree! Each step is graceful and easy—from branch to branch, higher and higher.
“Footholds,” she says when she returns to me. “Long ago, the tree’s caretakers pruned and trained it for easy climbing . . . and picking. Look at any tea tree on our mountain, and you’ll see the same thing. But this one is the most ancient.”
“And most unlucky.”
“Girl!” The look in A-ma’s eyes tells me I’ve come close to making her break the taboo of hitting a child . . . again.
“I was told never to bring a man to this grove,” she says after a long moment. “But after my marriage, your grandfather—my father-in-law—insisted. He kept at me—every day, every night—claiming that now that I was his daughter-in-law the land belonged to him. I was only sixteen, and I didn’t know how to say no strongly enough. I finally gave in. I brought him here, and he climbed up into the branches. When he fell . . .”
A-ma guides me back into the rain and through the trees to the opposite side of the grove to the very edge of a precipice. I’ve lived on Nannuo my entire life, but I’ve never seen the tops of so many peaks at the same time. Even I understand that this spot has ideal feng shui with its marriage of mountains, wind, and fog, mist and rain. Everything in this spot—trees, climate, insects, and animals—has existed in natural harmony for centuries, millennia. Except for what happened to my grandfather . . .
“He was dead by the time I reached his side,” A-ma confides in such a low voice it’s as if she doesn’t want the trees to hear. “Broken neck. I had to drag him back to the village.”
Around the boulder and down the mountain? How?
“This tragedy,” A-ma goes on, “caused your a-ba and brothers to hate all wild tea. Since that day not even your a-ba has dared to follow me here. It’s my duty to care for these trees, especially the mother tree. It will be your duty too one day. And you must promise that you’ll never let a man enter this grove.”
“I promise, but . . . A-ma, this tree is sick. Do you see those yellow threads? They’re going to strangle the tree.”
Laughter bubbles out of her. “If I let your a-ba and brothers come here, they’d spray the mother tree with poison to kill all the parasites who’ve found a home in her bark. They’d scrape away the fungi and molds and smash the bugs with their fingernails, but in the long-ago time, farmers let their tea trees grow naturally. Look above us, Girl. See how the camphors protect and hide the mother tree from spirits? The fragrance from the camphors is soothing to us, but it also wards off insects and pests. In other parts of the forest, poisonous plants can grow around the base of ancient and neglected wild tea trees, which means the leaves can produce stomach upset, even death. But do you see anything poisonous here? No. What I’m trying to tell you is that the men in our family wouldn’t know what the yellow threads are, and they wouldn’t like or trust them.” The skin at the corners of her eyes crinkles. “I look at our trees differently.”
Our trees. I’m still not sure how to feel about that.
“These trees are sacred,” A-ma states simply. “And those yellow threads are the mother tree’s most precious gift. I’ve helped many people with the leaves and threads from the mother tree when all else has failed. Do you remember when Lo-zeh had that growth in his armpit? My tea made it disappear. And what about Da-tu? His face would turn red and veins throbbed in his temple. Akha Law tells us no man should beat his wife, but we know it can happen. After the ceremonies for wife beating didn’t work, the nima and the ruma sought my advice. I gave Da-tu my special tea. His face returned to a normal color, and his wild emotions calmed.”
Those are two examples, but I can think of many people she hasn’t healed, who’ve suffered terribly, who’ve died. I’m only ten years old, and I’m having trouble with the memories surfacing in my mind. The woman who wasted away to nothing . . . The man who accidentally sliced open his leg and eventually succumbed to the green pus that ate into the wound . . . Some of my own nieces and nephews who died in infancy from fever . . . No leaves or yellow threads or anything A-ma had in any of her satchels helped them, and they didn’t help . . .
“What about Deh-ja?” I ask. “What about the—”
“You need to stop thinking about the human rejects.”
“I can’t.”
“Girl, what happened to those babies was not about whether or not they could be healed. We have a tradition. This is our way.”
“But Deh-ja and Ci-do were punished too—”
“Stop!” It takes a few seconds for her to still her frustration. Finally, she asks, “Do you remember the time Ci-teh ate honeycomb?”
Of course I do. We were around five years old. Ci-teh’s a-ba had brought back to the village honeycomb from a hive he’d found in the forest. He gave some to Ci-teh and me as a treat. One minute she was talking. The next minute she struggled to grab breath and her arms flailed in panic. The ruma appeared right away and began chanting over her. Then A-ma came running . . .
“You put something in her mouth.”
“If I’d waited for the nima to arrive and go into his trance—”
“You saved Ci-teh.”
“Saved?” Again she makes that bubble laughter. “The spirit priest performed the proper incantations, and the shaman brings power with him wherever he goes.” She kneels before me so we’re eye to eye. “It’s always better to let them take credit for a good outcome. Do you understand?”
I love my a-ma and I’m grateful she saved my friend, but I’m still struggling. I look around the grove and see not health and cures but superstition and traditions that hurt people.
“So,” A-ma says as she rises, “you’ll start coming here with me. I’ll teach you how to care for the trees and make medicines.”
I’m supposed to feel special—and I can see that the mother tree and this entire garden mean more to A-ma than her husband, sons, daughter, or grandchildren—but everything I’ve learned feels like a cut into my flesh with a dull knife.
“It’s time to go,” A-ma says. “Remember, Girl, no man can come here. No one should come here.”
“Not even Ci-teh?” I ask.
“Not even Ci-teh. Not even your sisters-in-law or nieces. This place is for the women in our bloodline alone. You to me to my mother to . . .” Her voice trails off. She glides her hand down the mother tre
e’s bumpy trunk. A gentle caress.
She’s as quiet on the way down the mountain as she was on the way up. I can tell from the stiffness in her shoulders and the heaviness of her silence that she’s supremely disappointed in me. I didn’t react to my inheritance with enough joy, awe, or gratitude. But how could I, really? A-ma may be the most important woman in our village, but every single man and boy is above her. I would be violating Akha Law to believe her over anything one of them said, and A-ba says this grove is cursed, filled with old trees no one wants and one tree that caused the death of his father. For whatever reason—whether it’s punishment against A-ma’s female line for bringing the grove into his family or he just thinks so lowly of me because I’m a girl—this is what he has provided as my dowry.
My final acceptance of this allows me to see my future very clearly. I’ll have to hope for true love to find a mate, because I’ve been given nothing of value to take into marriage apart from my poor embroidery skills, a worthless grove of ancient tea trees, and my face, which may not be pretty enough to overcome my other disadvantages. The entire way home, I think about what I can do to change my fate. We Akha are meant to roam, and right now I feel anxious to escape. I have enough sense to know, however, that I can’t go anywhere yet. I’m only a child, after all, and I wouldn’t last many days alone in the jungle. Teacher Zhang said, “You don’t have to stay on this mountain forever.” Maybe education can help with my flight, if only in my mind.
* * *
The next day is Monkey Day. I leave the house when it’s still dark. And, yes, it’s still raining. I arrive at the schoolhouse wet but determined to enjoy the rhythms of learning. Teacher Zhang launches into a history lesson about the land. It’s one we’ve all heard before, but today I hear it very differently. He begins by talking about how for centuries the people in these mountains worked for big landlords, who passed down tea tree gardens from generation to generation, keeping and hoarding everything.