I never find the village where I saw Deh-ja. I get lost. When fog descends or a storm washes through, I end up walking in circles. I ask people for directions, but rarely do I find someone who speaks Akha or Mandarin. Surrounded by the thickness of the forest, I spend hours trying to make sense of all that happened as things I should have paid more attention to crowd my eyes. Two years ago, I overheard A-ba saying to San-pa, “You’ve been trading in things you shouldn’t and trying things you shouldn’t.” I didn’t ask either of them about it, but could it mean San-pa was already involved with the drug? When San-pa hid me from the drug traffickers, did he recognize them because he’d worked for them? Was that how he’d earned money to come for me? Even if we’d gotten Yan-yeh, what did it say about San-pa as a father that he’d been willing to take her to that awful village? Would he have eventually become the kind of man who would sell his wife or daughter? These are questions for which I’ll never know the answers, and that knowledge is a torment. But the memory that cuts the worst is in many ways the simplest. I married a man who lied to change the day of his birth as a way to fool the universe. That act was a pure violation of a most basic tenet of Akha Law. And for what? To marry what he called a number one girl? I find myself speaking aloud to A-ma Mata, the great mother of the Akha people. “What does it say about me that I went along with his lie?”
After days of walking, I reach the trails I know so well. It’s all I can do to keep from running home, but I do what I know I must and go straight to San-pa’s village. The story I tell my in-laws is short and simple, revealing only that their son died a terrible death. And while I avoid details that will haunt their sleeping hours, they can see from my stained clothes that their son must have suffered greatly.
“We knew he’d get in trouble in Thailand,” my father-in-law comments, resigned but accepting, “but we didn’t think it would be this.”
I hold my mother-in-law’s hand while she weeps. Since San-pa died a terrible death, he will not be worshipped and no offerings will ever be made to him. Rather, incantations will be recited to keep him away, and his name will never be mentioned again. If he’d had a younger brother, then I would have been asked to marry him, but he had no brother.
Once my mother-in-law and I have retreated to the women’s side of the house, she gives me a change of clothes. Later, we stand together as I feed my marriage leggings, tunic, and skirt to the fire. All I have left is my headdress. San-pa’s mother hands me a pair of embroidery scissors, which I use to clip off the silver balls and coins. This is my final act of dismantling my husband from my life. I tuck the silver pieces in my pocket and drop the now worthless headdress into the flames. My dreams—and that’s all they were—of happiness are soon ashes.
* * *
Unsure of what to do next, I seek the solitude of my grove and fall asleep under the grotto’s canopy, feeling the age and protection of the trees around me. Many hours later, the smell of food cooking over a fire reaches into my slumber. I can tell by the warmth of the air that it must be midday already. I open my eyes, see a pair of legs, and follow them up.
“A-ma . . .”
“Girl.” She squats next to me and rests her elbows on her knees. Her eyes pass over my wrists, notice her dragon bracelet gone, and then drift away. I sense her hardening herself against the miseries I will tell her. “People saw you on the mountain. Word reached me last night. I knew I would find you here.”
I tell her more than I told my in-laws, but I keep it just as basic: my baby was given to a family in America, my husband was an addict, I ran away from him, he was killed by a tiger. She could say many things, all of which could begin with “I told you . . .” Instead, she says, “We Akha believe that every human lives and dies nine times before becoming a special kind of spirit, which is like the wind blowing, unseen yet comforting and necessary. Even San-pa will reach that level one day. But your daughter’s path . . . I don’t understand it.”
We sit silently for a long while.
“May I come home?” I ask at last, knowing the humiliation I’ll face from my family and neighbors for the rest of my life.
“I wish you could—”
“It’s against tradition,” I acknowledge, “but I’ve seen enough of the outside world to know that it is not something I wish ever to see again.”
“No place is as beautiful or as comforting as our home, but—”
“I don’t have to marry,” I hear myself begging. “I can work hard. I’ll become the midwife you always wanted me to be.”
“Girl—”
“If you don’t want me in Spring Well Village, I could live here in the grove.”
“You could, but people on Nannuo will hear what happened to San-pa. They’ll blame you for his terrible death, and your life will not be what it should.”
She pours tea made from big leaves from old trees. The taste of my childhood. The taste of home. The taste of sorrow.
“You are my daughter,” she picks up. “You and I are connected by blood. We are also joined by this grove and your daughter. When you were gone, not a day passed that I didn’t worry about you. And not a day went by that I didn’t know you would come back. It took longer than I thought.” Her smile is sad. “So . . . I’ve had much time to think about what should happen when I next saw you. I wish with all my heart that you could stay here—despite the embarrassment for our family and the regrets for you—but you must leave.”
I haven’t cried once since deciding to run away from San-pa, but now that all hope has vanished, I weep.
“Don’t.” A-ma nudges me with the back of her hand. “You must listen. Teacher Zhang and I have prepared for this moment.”
“Teacher Zhang? But how could he know anything about—”
Again, she gives me that sad smile. “We know you, and we knew San-pa.” She puts her hands on her knees and pushes herself up. “You’re going to that trade school—”
“What?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “How?”
“Teacher Zhang always said he had friends there. He was right. He secured a place for you for whenever you returned.”
“But you never wanted me to go—”
“That’s correct. As your a-ma, I didn’t want you to be away for four years. Who knew how you would change or if you would ever come home? But now I need to make this sacrifice if you are to have any chance at life. And you need to do this so maybe you can return one day. People will forget eventually . . .”
Will they? They never forgot about Ci-do and Deh-ja.