I understand. More leaves means more money to be paid by the tea collection center. When my basket is full, I find First Brother, who transfers my pickings into a burlap sack, and the process begins again. We break for a lunch of rice balls rolled in dried moss, and then pick all through the afternoon. I stay close to my mother, who sings to keep us in the rhythm of picking and to remove our minds from the heat and humidity. Finally, A-ba calls, “Enough.” We gather at the spot where First Brother has been consolidating our harvest. The last leaves are packed into burlap sacks. Then each sack is strung with ropes and a flat board. A-ma mounts the smallest one on my back, wraps the ropes over my shoulders, and secures the board on my forehead. All this is to help us carry the weight evenly, but the pull of the ropes on my shoulders and the press of the wood against my forehead are instantly painful.
Once the others have their sacks on their backs and our picking baskets have been bound together for us to retrieve on our way home, we begin the two-hour journey to the tea collection center. We’re all aware we must hurry, but our pace can only be slow. One sure foot after another sure foot. We climb up and over more tea terraces, each one seemingly steeper than the last. And then we’re back in the forest, which has engulfed forsaken tea tree groves and gardens. Vines wrap around the trunks, which have become homes to orchids, mushrooms, and parasites like crab’s claw. How old are the trees? Five hundred years old? A thousand years old? I don’t know the answers. What I do know is that selling leaves from them was abandoned long ago. Only families like ours use the leaves from trees like these for at-home drinking.
By the time we reach the tea collection center, I’m so tired I want to cry. We enter through big gates into a courtyard. My vision flits around the open space, looking for Ci-teh’s distinctive cap. We Akha have our own style of dress. So too do the Dai, Lahu, Bulang, and the other tribes who live here with us. Everyone wears their work clothes, but every headdress, scarf, and cap is decorated, according to the traditions of that clan and the individual taste and style of each woman or girl. I don’t spot Ci-teh. Her family must have come and gone already. They might even be home by now, eating their supper.
My stomach calls to me, aggravated yet entranced by the smells coming from the food vendor stalls. The perfume of skewered meat on an open flame fills my head. My mouth waters. One day I’ll get to taste one of those. Maybe. Occasionally, we treat ourselves to scallion pancakes that an old Dai woman sells from a cart just to the left, inside the tea collection center courtyard. The aroma is enticing—not as rich as the grilled meat but cleanly fragrant with the smell of fresh eggs.
A-ma, my sisters-in-law, and I squat in the dirt as my a-ba and brothers take our bags through a set of double doors that lead to the weighing area. On the other side of the courtyard, I spot a boy about my age, lingering by a mountain of burlap bags filled with tea waiting to be transported to the big city of Menghai, where it’ll be processed in a government-run factory. His hair is as black as my own. He too is barefoot. I don’t recognize him from school. But I’m less interested in him as a person than I am in the steaming scallion pancake he holds in his tea-stained fingers. He looks around to make sure no one is watching—obviously missing me—before ducking out of sight behind the burlap mound. I get up, cross the courtyard, and peek around the corner of the wall of tea.
“What are you doing back there?” I ask.
He turns to me and grins. His cheeks are shiny with oil. Before he has a chance to speak, I hear A-ma calling.
“Girl! Girl! Stay near me.”
I scurry back across the courtyard, reaching my mother just as A-ba and my brothers exit the weighing area. They don’t look happy.
“We were too late,” A-ba says. “They already bought their quota for the day.”
I moan inwardly. We’re a family of eight adults and many children. It’s hard to live on what we earn during the ten days a year of prime tea picking, the two secondary picking times of another ten days each, plus what rice and vegetables we grow and what A-ba and my brothers provide through hunting. Now we’ll have to take the leaves home, hope they stay fresh, and then tomorrow morning—early-early—climb back up here and sell them before rotating to Second Brother’s tea garden to do our work for the day.
A-ma sighs. “Another double day tomorrow.”
The sisters-in-law bite their lips. I’m not looking forward to walking here twice tomorrow either. But when my second and third brothers won’t meet their wives’ eyes, I realize even worse news is coming.
“No need,” A-ba reveals. “I sold the leaves at half price.”
That’s only two yuan per kilo. The sound that comes from A-ma is not so much a groan as a whimper. All that work at half price. The two sisters-in-law slump off to a water spout to refill our earthenware jugs. The men drop to their haunches. My sisters-in-law return and give the water to the men. After that, the two women fold themselves down next to A-ma, adjust their babies in their swaddling, and give over their breasts for nursing. This is our rest before the more than two-hour walk downhill to Spring Well.
As the others relax, I wander back across the courtyard to the boy. “Are you going to tell me why you’re hiding back here?” I ask as though no time has passed.
“I’m not hiding,” he answers, although surely he is. “I’m eating my pancake. Do you want a bite?”
More than anything.
I glance over my shoulder to A-ma and the others. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but whatever started with my lies at breakfast continues now. I step behind the wall of bags that smell of freshly harvested tea leaves. Once I’m back there, the boy doesn’t seem sure of what should happen next. He doesn’t break off a piece for me nor does he hold it out for me to take. But he offered me a bite, and I’m going to get it. I bend at the waist, sink my teeth into the softness of the pancake, and rip off a mouthful—like I’m a dog snatching a scrap from his master’s hand.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Li-yan,” I answer, my mouth happily full. My given name is used only at school and for ceremonial purposes. In my village, people call me Daughter-of-Sha-li (my a-ba’s daughter) or Daughter-of-So-sa (my a-ma’s daughter). In my family, I am Girl.
“I’m called San-pa,” he says. “I’m from Shelter Shadow Village. My father is Lo-san. My grandfather was Bah-lo. My great-grandfather was Za-bah . . .”
Every Akha boy is trained to Recite the Lineage by naming his male ancestors back fifty generations—with the last syllable of one generation becoming the first syllable of the next generation. I think that’s what’s going to happen, when a woman’s voice—angry—interrupts him. “Here you are, you little thief!”
I turn to see the old Dai woman who runs the pancake stand looming between us and the open courtyard. She grabs the cloth of my tunic. Then, with her other hand, she takes hold of San-pa’s ear. He yowls as she drags us from our lair.
“Sun and Moon, look! Thieves!” Her voice cuts through the clatter of the courtyard. “Where are the parents of these two?”