Tradition says those who’ve died a terrible death must be buried right where they fell, but I have no digging tools. After searching the area, I find a small depression that might serve as a burial place. I manage to drag San-pa to the hollow. But once he’s there I can’t just pile stones over him, because one special rule applies to the interment of those who’ve died a terrible death. A sacrificed dog must be placed over the corpse to serve as a barrier so that the disturbed spirit won’t feel a need to roam and cause trouble for humans. There are no dogs in the jungle. I’m a woman, so I’m not a hunter either. I sit on my haunches, think, and wait. Finally, it comes to me. The tiger. I could never move it, but its power, even in death, might be strong enough to work. I try to cut off one of the tiger’s paws, but the sinew between the bones is too gristly. The thinnest part of the tiger is his tail. I wedge my knife between two of the bones, pry and pry. The length comes loose at last. As quickly as I can, I toss the tail on San-pa, then hurriedly cover his body with rocks, branches, and thatch. Anyone who passes the mound will know that someone is buried in this spot. They will recite incantations, seek ritual cleansing when they return home, and, I hope, remain safe.
I say a few last words to my husband. The first are phrases I’ve heard the ruma speak at proper funerals. “When you were alive, your a-ma and a-ba loved you, and you loved them. Now you are dead. When you were alive, you liked to hunt. Now you are dead. When you were alive, you liked to sing and dance. Now you are dead. It is time for the living and the dead to separate. May you travel to your ancestors. May you never disturb living people.”
Next I add a few words of my own. “You must forget all about me. You are dead completely. Do not try to follow me. I say goodbye to the tears you caused. I thank you for saving my life, but do not come back to earth again—as a spirit or in your next incarnation—until I am dead.”
I want to leave this place, but I’m covered with dirt and dried blood. At the stream, I bathe fully clothed so I can retain some decency in case someone should come upon me. My husband’s blood tints the water. My wedding clothes will never be completely cleansed, but my headdress is fine. Dripping wet, I gather wood for a fire, collect some tubers, find a patch of sun, and make a simple meal. Afterward, I lie down—hoping the sun’s rays will dry my clothes—and fall into a sleep as deep as death.
In the morning, I pick up San-pa’s crossbow and arrows, pass by the tiger’s corpse one last time, and find my way back to the path. I search the shards of sky peeking through the branches above me so I can track the arc of the sun as I continue my journey.
* * *
I never find the village where I saw Deh-ja. I get lost. When fog descends or a storm washes through, I end up walking in circles. I ask people for directions, but rarely do I find someone who speaks Akha or Mandarin. Surrounded by the thickness of the forest, I spend hours trying to make sense of all that happened as things I should have paid more attention to crowd my eyes. Two years ago, I overheard A-ba saying to San-pa, “You’ve been trading in things you shouldn’t and trying things you shouldn’t.” I didn’t ask either of them about it, but could it mean San-pa was already involved with the drug? When San-pa hid me from the drug traffickers, did he recognize them because he’d worked for them? Was that how he’d earned money to come for me? Even if we’d gotten Yan-yeh, what did it say about San-pa as a father that he’d been willing to take her to that awful village? Would he have eventually become the kind of man who would sell his wife or daughter? These are questions for which I’ll never know the answers, and that knowledge is a torment. But the memory that cuts the worst is in many ways the simplest. I married a man who lied to change the day of his birth as a way to fool the universe. That act was a pure violation of a most basic tenet of Akha Law. And for what? To marry what he called a number one girl? I find myself speaking aloud to A-ma Mata, the great mother of the Akha people. “What does it say about me that I went along with his lie?”
After days of walking, I reach the trails I know so well. It’s all I can do to keep from running home, but I do what I know I must and go straight to San-pa’s village. The story I tell my in-laws is short and simple, revealing only that their son died a terrible death. And while I avoid details that will haunt their sleeping hours, they can see from my stained clothes that their son must have suffered greatly.
“We knew he’d get in trouble in Thailand,” my father-in-law comments, resigned but accepting, “but we didn’t think it would be this.”
I hold my mother-in-law’s hand while she weeps. Since San-pa died a terrible death, he will not be worshipped and no offerings will ever be made to him. Rather, incantations will be recited to keep him away, and his name will never be mentioned again. If he’d had a younger brother, then I would have been asked to marry him, but he had no brother.
Once my mother-in-law and I have retreated to the women’s side of the house, she gives me a change of clothes. Later, we stand together as I feed my marriage leggings, tunic, and skirt to the fire. All I have left is my headdress. San-pa’s mother hands me a pair of embroidery scissors, which I use to clip off the silver balls and coins. This is my final act of dismantling my husband from my life. I tuck the silver pieces in my pocket and drop the now worthless headdress into the flames. My dreams—and that’s all they were—of happiness are soon ashes.
* * *
Unsure of what to do next, I seek the solitude of my grove and fall asleep under the grotto’s canopy, feeling the age and protection of the trees around me. Many hours later, the smell of food cooking over a fire reaches into my slumber. I can tell by the warmth of the air that it must be midday already. I open my eyes, see a pair of legs, and follow them up.
“A-ma . . .”
“Girl.” She squats next to me and rests her elbows on her knees. Her eyes pass over my wrists, notice her dragon bracelet gone, and then drift away. I sense her hardening herself against the miseries I will tell her. “People saw you on the mountain. Word reached me last night. I knew I would find you here.”
I tell her more than I told my in-laws, but I keep it just as basic: my baby was given to a family in America, my husband was an addict, I ran away from him, he was killed by a tiger. She could say many things, all of which could begin with “I told you . . .” Instead, she says, “We Akha believe that every human lives and dies nine times before becoming a special kind of spirit, which is like the wind blowing, unseen yet comforting and necessary. Even San-pa will reach that level one day. But your daughter’s path . . . I don’t understand it.”
We sit silently for a long while.
“May I come home?” I ask at last, knowing the humiliation I’ll face from my family and neighbors for the rest of my life.
“I wish you could—”
“It’s against tradition,” I acknowledge, “but I’ve seen enough of the outside world to know that it is not something I wish ever to see again.”
“No place is as beautiful or as comforting as our home, but—”
“I don’t have to marry,” I hear myself begging. “I can work hard. I’ll become the midwife you always wanted me to be.”
“Girl—”
“If you don’t want me in Spring Well Village, I could live here in the grove.”
“You could, but people on Nannuo will hear what happened to San-pa. They’ll blame you for his terrible death, and your life will not be what it should.”
She pours tea made from big leaves from old trees. The taste of my childhood. The taste of home. The taste of sorrow.
“You are my daughter,” she picks up. “You and I are connected by blood. We are also joined by this grove and your daughter. When you were gone, not a day passed that I didn’t worry about you. And not a day went by that I didn’t know you would come back. It took longer than I thought.” Her smile is sad. “So . . . I’ve had much time to think about what should happen when I next saw you. I wish with all my heart that you could stay here—despite the embarrassment for our family and t
he regrets for you—but you must leave.”
I haven’t cried once since deciding to run away from San-pa, but now that all hope has vanished, I weep.
“Don’t.” A-ma nudges me with the back of her hand. “You must listen. Teacher Zhang and I have prepared for this moment.”
“Teacher Zhang? But how could he know anything about—”
Again, she gives me that sad smile. “We know you, and we knew San-pa.” She puts her hands on her knees and pushes herself up. “You’re going to that trade school—”
“What?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “How?”
“Teacher Zhang always said he had friends there. He was right. He secured a place for you for whenever you returned.”
“But you never wanted me to go—”
“That’s correct. As your a-ma, I didn’t want you to be away for four years. Who knew how you would change or if you would ever come home? But now I need to make this sacrifice if you are to have any chance at life. And you need to do this so maybe you can return one day. People will forget eventually . . .”
Will they? They never forgot about Ci-do and Deh-ja.
She glances up at the sun, judging the time. “I was awake all night. Third Sister-in-law helped me gather clothes for you. We’ve also packed a basket of tea. The best. I made it myself from the sister trees. This morning, I went to Teacher Zhang’s house. He’s waiting for us now at the tea collection center. But before we leave, I must tell you some things.”
All this is happening too fast. I don’t know what to think or how to feel. Disappointment. Confusion. Guilt. Worry. Fear. Sadness. Grief. And more. But one emotion overrides them all: deep love for my a-ma. Tears of gratitude streak my face.
A-ma stares down at me and shakes her head tolerantly. “Just sit. Just listen.” Then she begins. “You’ve heard the stories of how the Tea Horse Road spread civilization through the trade of salt, matches, and so many other necessities. None was more important than the exchange of our tea for Tibet’s warhorses. I can still remember the caravans from when I was a girl. Some had mules to help them, and they were decorated with beautiful stirrups, embroidered breastplates, and tasseled reins. Other caravans were composed solely of men, who carried heavy packs of tea cakes on their backs for fifteen hundred kilometers through jungle and rocky passes, across rivers and around lakes, over icy peaks, until reaching the treacherous plateau that is Tibet.”
I’ve heard all this before. Why is she telling it to me again?
“Each caravan might take six months to reach its destination,” she continues. “One part was so steep that it took twenty days to go two hundred and twenty-five kilometers, with rests every hundred meters or so. Many died from the hardship, falling from cliffs or freezing in blizzards, but those who survived to come home would turn around after a few days and start the trip all over again. Back and forth. Never ending. The road was also a way for monks, pilgrims, armies, and peoples to move. For the Akha, the road gave us a path to follow when we fled down—”
“From Tibet a thousand years ago.”
“Exactly. Now, Girl, think of your female ancestors thirty generations back, walking all that way. As they traveled, they picked up wanted and unwanted guests on their bodies and in their belongings—pollens, seeds, and spores. Now look at the mother tree.”
It’s as gnarled and twisted as ever. The trunk and branches are still infested with various types of fungi, molds, orchids, and, of course, the yellow threads.
“All the life on the mother tree came from somewhere else. It was transported by our nomadic ancestors. You could say the tree shows the history of our female line. You must remember, Girl, that not only men Recite the Lineage. We women do it too. For generations, the nima and ruma of Spring Well and so many other villages have sought the help of the women in our family. We give them leaves, bark, and even the yellow parasite from the mother tree to use as medicine.”
She puts up a hand to stop me from stating the obvious: I know all this.
“If you were to open the tea cake I gave your baby,” she continues, “you would see yellow threads twisted and growing throughout. That cake is a link to time and to the women who came before us.” She taps my chest right above my heart. “You’ve had difficult times. No question. But you, Li-yan, are unique.”
It’s the first I’ve heard A-ma speak my real name, and it’s overpowering.
“You have special abilities,” she goes on. “I don’t mean you are a witch or a fox spirit. And you’ve never seemed drawn to the special gift of healing or magic. Rather, you are like A-ma Mata, who gave birth to the Akha people, who pushed against her restraints, who said, ‘No, I will not accept my bad fate,’ and who endured against all odds with her intelligence, compassion, and perseverance. All that comes from this grove. And the mother tree.”
A-ma had told me some of this the first time she brought me here. All I remember is my disappointment. Maybe I had to suffer to hear the words in a new way.
“Your a-ba didn’t give you this land because you’re worthless. He had no rights to it at all. I insisted that it go to you. It can only belong to you, as it will belong to your daughter one day.” She has to correct herself. “The daughter you will have one day.”
She hastily kicks dirt over the fire, not giving me a chance to comment. “Now, come. We can’t keep Teacher Zhang waiting.” Only as I’m about to begin shimmying around the boulder does she hold me back. “Take one last look. Remember.”
I try to absorb everything that I see with new eyes: the mother tree standing with such dignity, the sister trees offering their protective embrace, the camphor trees hiding them all, the ancient strength of the boulder, the cliff at the edge of the grove, the mountains in the distance.
* * *
My riot of emotions is no less jumbled when we reach the tea collection center, but seeing Teacher Zhang looking exactly the same in his blue Mao suit and cap is comforting. I’m in my borrowed outfit, with a basket of tea over one shoulder, a basket of new clothes over the other, and clutching a small woven bag filled with rice balls, fruit, and an earthenware jug of water. The courtyard bustles with activity as families bring in their autumn pickings to be weighed. Even the old Dai woman is here, and the aroma of her scallion pancakes is as tempting as ever.
“You’ll be taken by truck to Menghai,” Teacher Zhang explains. “When you get there, ask the way to the bus station. Buy a ticket to Kunming. From Menghai, the trip will take another eighteen hours.”
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
He pats my arm awkwardly. “You’ve already been far away,” he says gently. “You will manage.”
A-ma gives last-minute advice: “Always follow Akha Law. If you adhere to our ways, you’ll be protected from problems whether from the spirit world or the human world. Never forget us.”
“I’ll come home one day—”
A-ma places her fingers lightly on my lips as if to stop me from making a promise I might not be able to keep.
“I’ll be waiting to see your face,” she says. I hear hope below her deep melancholy. She folds money into my hand. “I’m told you’ll need two hundred yuan a month for room and board. I promise to send more each month through Teacher Zhang.”
I clamber onto the back of the truck. Teacher Zhang and A-ma pass up my baskets, which I secure in the bags of tea bound for the factory in Menghai. The driver starts the engine.
“Always remember how to behave, how to speak to people, how to respect the world around you,” A-ma calls up to me, fighting the sound of the truck’s engine. “No matter where you go or what you do, don’t abandon our customs.”
“I promise to do my best, A-ma,” I say. Then I recite, “A good Akha no more has the ability to throw away the customs than a buffalo has the ability to place his footprints in one spot while having his body somewhere else.”
* * *
Sun and Moon! Am I sick! I’m so sick going around the curves and over the bumpy roads that I think
I might die. I hang my head over the edge of the truck, and everything pours out of me. This is so much worse than Mr. Huang’s mountain vehicle, which was small and I could sit in the front seat. Even when I’m empty, the nausea doesn’t leave.
For every kilometer, I feel the past stalking me. As we veer ominously close to the edge of the steep mountain road, I recall yet another mistake I’ve made. At every jolt over rocks or dip through rain-eroded holes, I have to accept in my bones the price I’ve paid. A-ma said, “Always follow Akha Law,” but all my errors have stemmed from ignoring the very principles that make me who I am. I’ve learned and been scarred by the inevitability of pain and defeat. Now that I’m totally alone, I feel the blessings of my culture feeding me strength. I gave birth to a daughter and lost her. I married the man I loved and lost him—in so many ways. I may be separated from my family, my village, and my mountain, but in my heart I’m connected to them more than ever.
We finally arrive on flat land. The truck grinds past the Social Welfare Institute. My daughter is not there. She’s journeyed afar. This knowledge gives me the last bit of courage I need to find the bus station after I’m dropped off, buy my ticket, and suffer more sickness all the way to Kunming.
The bus pulls into Kunming late at night. I thought Menghai was big, but it is a fleabite compared to Kunming. Most of the roads are paved with cobblestones or asphalt. The crooked lanes are crowded. Concrete buildings six stories high loom over houses made from mud. I find my way to the trade school, show the letter from Teacher Zhang at the guard gate, and am escorted to a dormitory, where beds are stacked two high, side by side, down both sides of the room. I lie on top of the blanket. I hear other girls breathing. Teacher Zhang comes into my mind. Over the years, as he tutored me, I realized how much he lost by being sent to Nannuo Mountain. I also remember how Ci-teh and I used to speculate about why he never returned home to Beijing and what he possibly could have done to have been forever exiled. But what if remaining with us was his choice? Maybe he understood that he could never go home. What if that happens to me?