The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

  “I took the friend-living-with-child when the man at the hospital wasn’t looking,” she practically crows.

  “You stole my placenta?” I ask, which causes Jin to look up. My husband, who’s been brave throughout, goes as white as sand when she flops it carelessly on the bedside table.

  “I’m going to bury it under the house, beneath where you keep the family altar. Your son can’t be separated from it! And don’t worry. I’ll take all the responsibility for watering it twice daily until it shrivels to nothing.”

  Later she comes back covered in cobwebs and dirt from the crawl space.

  The next morning, we do our best to perform an Akha naming ceremony. I should have bought a rooster and raised it for Jin to sacrifice. (Deh-ja has pestered me endlessly about this.) Instead, Jin goes to a butcher shop in Monterey Park, watches a chicken get killed and cleaned, and brings it home. After Deh-ja cooks the meal, she dips three strings in each dish, then ties them around Jin’s, the baby’s, and my wrists so we’ll never be separated for long. Then she picks up my son and recites, “Get big! Be strong! Don’t cry! May your crops be good and your animals healthy!”

  The name Jin has only one syllable, so we name our baby Jin-ba.

  “I hope he’ll be the first in a long line,” Jin says.

  My feelings about Akha superstitions have wavered from the time I was a little girl and they’re part of what drove me to ask for Teacher Zhang’s help so many years ago, but if even one of Deh-ja’s precautions will make Paul safe, then I’ll never object. And I’ll teach him the right traditions, like never crossing his legs near adults, and when thunder comes, dumplings must be made. I’ll whisper in his ear that spirits are not too smart, and all the ways to fool them. I’ll tell him that earthquakes are caused when a dragon living underground pulls at roots and shakes them and that lunar eclipses are caused by a spirit dog eating the moon. I’ll tell him stories about A-ma Mata, the mother of humans and spirits, and how she divided the world. And, of course, I’ll teach him to Recite the Lineage, even if it’s only for my family and not his father’s.

  * * *

  Two months later, Jin, Deh-ja, and I eat dinner in front of the television so we can watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics taking place in Beijing. I rub a little food from our meal on Paul’s lips to let him know we’re eating, but really we’re all distracted, mesmerized by the pageant our homeland is mounting for the world. The parade of twins from China’s fifty-five ethnic minorities looks to be made up mostly of Han majority people dressed to look like minorities. Nevertheless, Deh-ja cries at the spectacle. Jin says that the most beautiful of all China’s women are Akha, but what else can he say? And I contentedly hold my son.

  The next few months in Arcadia are the happiest of my life. Jin’s an ambitious and busy father. I’ve helped my village, and my new shop in the Fangcun Tea Market is doing moderately well, giving me hope that the value of Pu’er will return. I’m thirty years old. I love my son more than my own life. I’ll do anything for him. So, personally, I’ve bounced back once again. But during this same time, world economies have been faltering. Now they take a deep dive. By the end of the year, property values in the United States and China have fallen into a chasm. All across the globe, people close their purses and fold up their wallets. Everyone is so scared that they stop buying toys, air conditioners, flat-screen televisions, and all manner of goods that would be shipped in cardboard. We’re unsure if Jin’s company will make it through this difficult period. But as Mrs. Chang reminds us on the phone one afternoon, “You and Jin are fortunate to have a son in the era of the One Child policy.” That is what gives Jin the strength to fight for his business, and me the determination to help him as he has helped me.

  PART V

  THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE

  2012–2016

  Assignment: In AP English, we’ve been focusing on writing essays in preparation for the college applications you’ll be writing next year. Now I’d like you to take a different approach by exploring your imaginations with a short story. (No groans, please.) Writers are often told to write what they know. Take something that happened to you and reimagine it as a piece of fiction. You may write in the first or third person. You may also change the names, if you feel that will give you more freedom. (Submissions will be read only by me.) Please remember that for your college apps, everyone does a sport, aspires to be a doctor, or writes about their parents’ immigrant experience to America. You can’t get in with these clichéd topics on your applications. Be creative, expand your minds, and let’s see if you can come up with something that will be translatable to a college essay designed to make you stand out. Due October 13, 2012.

  The Disappointment

  by

  Haley Davis

  On a dark night in March, Adam and Alice Bowen sat their daughter, Amy, down for a talk. Was it going to be another lecture about not raiding the liquor cabinet? Or concerned inquiries about what was happening in therapy? Or would it be the same old “How was school today? How did you do on your AP Chemistry test? Did you finish your homework?” Were they going to tell her they were separating? (Which, honestly, wouldn’t have surprised Amy one bit.) Maybe her dad had been diagnosed with cancer or needed open-heart surgery? (This would have terrified Amy but wouldn’t have surprised her either, because her dad was already pretty old when she was adopted.) Instead, when Adam began, “This summer . . .” Amy’s hopes flew through the roof. Were they finally going to relent and let her go to Europe with her friends, by themselves? “We’re taking you to China. We want you to discover your roots.” That was about the last thing in the world Amy wanted or would have asked for. Really. Because who wanted to go on a family vacation at her age? But what can you do? Fight against it. That’s what.

  “I’m not going on one of those stupid heritage tours,” she said.

  Once upon a time, she would have loved to have gone to China. She’d wanted to get information about the object she’d been found with. Most babies abandoned in China were left with a special gift from their birth mothers: a locket, a good-luck charm, a hand-knit sweater or hand-sewn quilt, maybe even a little Chinese money. Amy knew this because she’d seen those things in pictures: some new mom and dad posing with their baby and holding up her little gift like it was a soccer trophy. Amy’s memento from her birth mother, however, was a little unusual: a round cake of tea, decorated with meaningless symbols, and weighing about a pound. When Amy was little, she used to take it out every night and stare at it. It had to mean something, but what?

  Then there’d been this incident in the second grade when she’d done a project and told everyone in the entire school—and their parents—that she was the first person in her family to come to America. It was the truth, but she’d caused her adoptive parents pain, which hadn’t been her intention, at all. Amy had gotten really scared. Would they send her away? She still struggled with her identity, and she sometimes searched the Internet to see if she could find anything about her birth mother or the tea cake. In secret, because she’d never forgotten the repercussions of the second-grade episode. She didn’t want to hurt her parents again, but they just weren’t getting it. After all, what did they think she’d get out of a trip to China now? She wouldn’t find her roots, she wouldn’t get any answers about the tea cake or her identity, and—here was the kicker—the trip would make her feel worse. She already ached with loss over her birth mother. Traveling to China would be no help. Besides, practically all the girls she knew who’d been adopted had already gone there with Roots & Shoots Heritage Tours, a company that specialized in expeditions for families with adoptees, so a trip like this wouldn’t make her special or anything. She was merely part of a big wave that had brought thousands of girls like her to these shores. Pretty weird. Pretty sad. And no big deal.

  “Have we ever taken you on a tour—anywhere?” Alice asked. “We don’t do tours. You know that.”

  “But—”

  “This might be th
e last time we all travel together,” Adam said, and again Amy flashed that something might be wrong with him. “After you graduate, you’ll probably want to go on a trip with your friends.” Damn straight. “And after that, you’ll likely be spending your vacations in a lab somewhere, or out in the field, or helping some scientist change the way we view the world, like your mom—”

  “Oh, Adam—”

  It went on like that—some stupid lovefest—but Amy didn’t put up much of a fuss, because what if this was the last vacation they all took together? Still, did it have to be China? Why not go back to the South of France or do something new, like hike the Outback? And, of course, once the itinerary came in, Amy saw how her parents were shaping the trip to be a heritage tour, even if it wasn’t called a Heritage Tour, because their last stop before flying home would be Yunnan province, where she was born.

  The Bowen family left LAX at night. They were all half dead by the time they landed in Beijing thirteen hours later. They went through passport control and customs. Then they pushed through a set of double doors and oh my God! Always Amy had felt like the one Chinese face in a sea of white faces. Now here were a bazillion people who looked like her, and it was her parents who stood out.

  They spotted a young woman holding a card with the Bowen name printed on it. She introduced herself as their Beijing guide, and her English was pretty pathetic. She wore a wrinkled skirt, a little white blouse, and scuffed shoes. A supercheap plastic purse hung off her shoulder. She led the way through the writhing throng with her arm extended to clear a path for the mismatched threesome. Amy was seventeen, but she clung to her mother like you wouldn’t believe.

  They went through another set of doors, and it was like stepping into an oven. Truly. Like you got a baking sheet all ready with cookie dough and your mom was going to let you slide it into the oven, but when you did, all you could think about was Hansel and Gretel and the way the witch wanted to cook them. People pushed and shoved as they loaded their suitcases, beat-up cardboard boxes, and these satchel things made out of some kind of plastic woven material in red, white, and blue into trunks, the underbellies of buses, even onto the roofs of cars. They shouted. They noisily sucked junk from their noses, coughed, and spit on the ground. It was beyond gross. And the smell? Too much garlic—like Amy had landed in a gigantic mouth with really bad breath. Add to that too much sweat and too much cigarette smoke wafting off people’s clothes. Nasty.

  “Honey,” Alice said, “you’re cutting off my circulation.”

  Amy loosened her grip on mother’s hand, but not by much.

  They piled into a minivan. The guide sat up front with the driver, who didn’t say a single word. The traffic? It was crazy! And it was the middle of the night! They crept past apartment buildings—gray, with dim fluorescent lights illuminating a room here and there. It took Amy a while to figure out what was hanging out all the windows: bamboo sticks draped with laundry.

  They arrived at the hotel, and it was ginormous! And superfancy. Adam handed over their passports and his credit card. A uniformed boy put their luggage on a cart and escorted the family to connecting rooms. Alice and Adam were excited, talking nonstop about all the things they were going to do. Suddenly Alice stopped midsentence to stare at her daughter. “Do you have to sneer?” she asked. “We’re doing this trip for you!” Later, after she got in bed, Amy heard her mother say, “Teenagers!” A part of Amy wanted her dead.

  When Amy woke the next morning, she was disoriented, because her mom was still talking about everything she and Adam had planned, except now she was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Amy was so embarrassed, she wanted to pull the covers back over her head, but that wasn’t on the itinerary. An hour later—showered, fed, and sunscreen slathered on every exposed piece of skin—they left the hotel. The air outside was disgusting. By the time Amy got to the minivan, her arms were totally wet. No one could sweat that fast, but there was so much moisture in the air that it was like someone had sprayed her with hot water. And it was only nine in the morning.

  They walked across one blisteringly hot square or courtyard after another: The Temple of Heaven. Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City. The sun glared down. Adam asked the guide how hot it was. She answered, “The government gives people the day off if it goes over forty degrees centigrade.” He asked, “So, again, how hot is it today?” She gazed across the square like she wasn’t with the Bowens. “I heard it was going to be forty-four degrees centigrade and eighty percent humidity.” Adam whistled; Alice sighed. Amy took the trouble to make the calculation to Fahrenheit. 111 degrees!

  Adam bought bottles of water. The Bowens drank and sweat, drank and sweat some more. Adam took Amy’s picture about a thousand times. She saw more people from around the world in the first hour than she had in her entire life. And then there were the Chinese. They were everywhere.

  Since the weather was so gross, Amy ended up changing her clothes three times every day. Even her bra and panties. The Bowens visited more tourist spots: the Summer Palace, the Great Wall of China, the tomb soldiers in Xian, the Bund in Shanghai. China was strange, though. It didn’t have much connection to what she’d learned about it in Families with Children from China or even from going to her friends Jasmine’s and Jade’s houses. It was big, polluted, and crowded. If Amy had once daydreamed about meeting her birth mother, she now understood it would be impossible to find her—one woman out of the proverbial 1.3 billion people.

  Finally, they flew to Kunming in Yunnan, where it was much cooler. They stayed at another fancy hotel, which prompted Adam to ask Alice, “Can you believe how much everything’s changed since the last time we were here? You’ve got to hand it to Deng Xiaoping. To get rich is glorious . . .”

  When they were out with their new guide, Amy heard sounds that were vaguely familiar, yet had no meaning. She saw people with skin like hers—darker—who turned out to be members of hill tribes. Sometimes people nodded to her on the street or pointed at her, but what did that mean? Did they recognize her in some way or did they simply think she looked peculiar with her white parents? A couple of times, people came up to her and spoke to her in Chinese. “I don’t speak Chinese,” Amy always answered, in English. Then those same people would turn to her parents and ask, in perfect English, “Is she your tour guide?” But how could Amy have possibly been their tour guide?

  The Bowens spent the next two days hiking up mountains to take in this or that scenic spot. Amy’s opinion? One view was just like another, even if these had a temple or a big statue on them. Still, something about the air and the panoramas got to her—like she had something in her eye, or pollen up her nose, or a memory she could sense but couldn’t capture. Then one day, during one of their sightseeing hikes, she was standing and looking at yet another view. The pattern of the hills, a stream running through them, a path winding up through the terraces . . .

  “Mom! Look!”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Do you see it?” She pointed, buzzing with excitement. “It’s just like my tea cake!”

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked.

  “We’ve always looked at the V’s as V’s, like simple bird drawings. But don’t you see? They’re the canyons between the mountains! The wavy lines are terraces. The design that meanders”—she traced what she could remember from the tea cake in the air with her index finger—“is a river or creek or something like that. The design on my tea cake is a map!”

  “Oh my God!” Adam exclaimed. “You’re right!”

  But Alice, ever practical, asked, “But a map to what?”

  “To where I was born!” Amy was so energized by her discovery that she was practically jumping up and down. “So I can meet my birth family!”

  Adam and Alice exchanged glances. Amy thought, Don’t ruin this for me. Her father looped an arm over her shoulder, pulled her close, and stared at the view with her.

  “It is a map. And it’s amazing you figured that out. Truly amazing. But
, honey—”

  “Remember how there’s that design in the middle of the tea cake?” Amy interrupted. “I’ve always thought it looked like a tree, but it’s got to be my real mom.”

  Alice edged away.

  “Your mom is your real mom,” Adam said softly.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” Amy didn’t either. “But think about it! X marks the spot! It’s got to be her.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He still had that gentle tone, trying to manage his wife, who was all upset that Amy didn’t consider Alice to be her real mother, and his daughter, who was as excited as she’d ever been. “But with any map you need a starting point. The V’s—the canyons and mountains—could be anywhere. We don’t even know which direction is north.”

  What felt like a bomb going off obliterated Amy’s elation. Her father was right, and it was a huge disappointment. But then she realized . . . I always thought my birth mom was trying to send me a message. I was right. Goose bumps rippled along her arms.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Alice said, extending her hand.

  Amy took it, because she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings any more than she already had when what she felt inside was a buoyant thrill. Her birth mom was real to her in a way she’d never been before.

  That night Amy dreamed about her birth mother and the map. In the morning, she tiptoed into the adjoining room and stood at the foot of the bed, waiting for one of her parents to wake up. Alice’s eyes flickered open first, and she startled when she saw her daughter staring down at her.

  “What is it? Are you okay?”

  “My real mom . . . I mean my birth mom, wants me to find her.”