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 would 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.