Mr. Huang talks about the connections between tea, Daoism, and Buddhism. Oh, how he goes on about hua—a Daoist concept he admires. It means something like transformation, and he applies this to the making of Pu’er in the sense that the astringent qualities of the raw tea are transformed—“metamorphosed,” he enthuses—through fermentation and aging. “You see? Bad into good!” He believes tea can promote longevity, although people in our village don’t live to be ancients. “Tea reminds us to slow down and escape the pressures of modern life,” he says as though he’s forgotten where he is and to whom he’s speaking.
I have to admit I enjoy being needed, though. I like feeling important. Except . . . He never stops nipping at me about my hidden grove. “You don’t realize how much I need this. I’ll pay you good money, young lady. I’ll pay you more than you ever dreamed of. Don’t you have somewhere you’d like to go? Someone you’d like to marry?”
Mr. Huang is as persistent as a termite, and his questions eat at me. I have contradictory feelings. At night I lie awake and think of San-pa and what a few leaves from the mother tree might buy us. I still wouldn’t know where to find him, because I don’t know exactly where he went. But if I had my own money, I could help us get our start as newlyweds when he returns and later help pay my tuition. During the day I must be with Mr. Huang, so even if I want to, I can’t sneak away. And if I did, and A-ma found out? I can’t imagine the consequences.
In the end, I’m only a girl, and my heart’s yearnings for the future triumph over my Akha morals. One day—and it only takes one moment to change your life forever—Mr. Huang goes to Menghai to buy supplies. While he’s gone and A-ma’s in another village setting a broken bone, I hike to my grove. I climb the mother tree and pick enough leaves to make a single cake. When Mr. Huang returns and we’re alone, I sell them to him. He pays me far more than they’re worth, saying, “I’m really thanking you for all your help. Now, let’s see what we can do with these.”
Every afternoon for the next three days, he takes me to a village on the other side of the mountain, where I can—as he puts it—process the tea in private. With the greedy eyes of a tiger, he watches everything I do. When the cake is finished, he hides it in the trunk of his mountain vehicle. I believe no one knows what I’ve done.
* * *
After three months, Mr. Huang comes to the decision that all the experimental fermented tea must be destroyed. Too many things have made homes in the odoriferous piles: worms, maggots, and strange-colored growths that if we saw them in the forest we would hurry away. Chickens, ducks, water buffalo, and oxen won’t eat the garbage. That’s how bad it is. Even the pigs turn away.
Mr. Huang refuses to give up, though. “You will spend this year tending to the trees. We’ll try again next spring.”
As his mountain vehicle is loaded, he grabs me by the shoulders. “When I return, you’ll take me to your grove. You’ll sell me more of your leaves.”
His touch makes me feel as though a bad spirit has entered me. It’s a sensation of disease and disease. I cannot go to the ruma for ceremonial cleansing nor can I go to A-ma for one of her potions. To do so would be to admit I did something completely unforgivable. To do so would also mean that there’s something dirty and fermenting inside me that wants what the foreigner has . . . Or my version of what he has, which is money to be with San-pa so we can follow our dreams together.
MOTHER LOVE
Waaa! But how quickly my hopes and plans fall apart. San-pa has been gone for a season’s length of cycles. I’ve been away from school for almost as long and have lost needed studying time for the gaokao. “Your spoken Mandarin is much improved, but that won’t be tested,” Teacher Zhang says. “You’ve wasted your opportunity.” The news is stunning, ruinous. After all my years of hard work . . . For days I languish in disappointment and regret for being so unthinking of the consequences of my new role in the village. Then Teacher Zhang comes again to visit. “You are not the kind of person who gives up,” he tells me. “You are brave and tough and smart.” His encouraging words give me strength. I can’t allow this setback—as distressing as it is—to destroy my future. I force modern thoughts of opportunity to open my Akha eyes to see bigger and wider. When San-pa returns, you’ll be married. You’ll work for Mr. Huang. You don’t need college or university. I resolve to stay positive—good will come.
And then, because I’m back to my regular routine—going to school even though I won’t be eligible to take the gaokao, doing home chores, and not thinking outward for Mr. Huang every minute of the day—I notice something I should have noticed a long while ago. I have not had my monthly bleeding. I’ve been so busy and filled with self-importance, that I ignored my body entirely. I thought I’d gained weight because Mr. Huang made sure I was fed. That my breasts hurt because they were growing fast as a result of the extra food that filled my bowl. That I was tired because who wouldn’t have been exhausted if they’d been following in my footsteps? With horror, I realize I’ve come to a head. That A-ma and the sisters-in-law haven’t caught on is just another sign of how occupied we’ve all been.
I temporarily fell apart when I learned I wouldn’t be able to take the gaokao, but I don’t panic now. I have my money, and I’ll go to San-pa once I find out where he is. The next day, I tell A-ma that I’ll be in the forest digging for tubers. She lets me go without a single suspicious look. I walk through terrible heat and humidity to Shelter Shadow Village. It’s just as San-pa described it—on the crest of the hill, easy to defend, with views in all directions. I am not someone San-pa’s a-ma wants to see, but she invites me into the women’s room anyway. Her hands show a lifetime of work, while her eyes reveal the concerns of motherhood. I must wait a suitable length of time before I ask about San-pa, but she surprises me by inquiring about him first.
“Have you heard from my son?” She may not want me as a daughter-in-law, but, I realize, her worry about San-pa is as deep as my own. “Has he sent word to you? At least we would know where he’s living.”
This information causes water to form in my eyes.
Tiny muscles in her cheek twitch at my response. “He’s so far away. And Thailand . . .” Her voice trails off. Then, “You know better than most that he can be called to mischief . . .”
I cry the entire way home. The knowledge that San-pa is unreachable is devastating. The idea that something evil might have happened to him is crushing. Either way, I’m alone and pregnant with a human reject, making me doubly cursed.