“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.”