She glances up at the sun, judging the time. “I was awake all night. Third Sister-in-law helped me gather clothes for you. We’ve also packed a basket of tea. The best. I made it myself from the sister trees. This morning, I went to Teacher Zhang’s house. He’s waiting for us now at the tea collection center. But before we leave, I must tell you some things.”
All this is happening too fast. I don’t know what to think or how to feel. Disappointment. Confusion. Guilt. Worry. Fear. Sadness. Grief. And more. But one emotion overrides them all: deep love for my a-ma. Tears of gratitude streak my face.
A-ma stares down at me and shakes her head tolerantly. “Just sit. Just listen.” Then she begins. “You’ve heard the stories of how the Tea Horse Road spread civilization through the trade of salt, matches, and so many other necessities. None was more important than the exchange of our tea for Tibet’s warhorses. I can still remember the caravans from when I was a girl. Some had mules to help them, and they were decorated with beautiful stirrups, embroidered breastplates, and tasseled reins. Other caravans were composed solely of men, who carried heavy packs of tea cakes on their backs for fifteen hundred kilometers through jungle and rocky passes, across rivers and around lakes, over icy peaks, until reaching the treacherous plateau that is Tibet.”
I’ve heard all this before. Why is she telling it to me again?
“Each caravan might take six months to reach its destination,” she continues. “One part was so steep that it took twenty days to go two hundred and twenty-five kilometers, with rests every hundred meters or so. Many died from the hardship, falling from cliffs or freezing in blizzards, but those who survived to come home would turn around after a few days and start the trip all over again. Back and forth. Never ending. The road was also a way for monks, pilgrims, armies, and peoples to move. For the Akha, the road gave us a path to follow when we fled down—”
“From Tibet a thousand years ago.”
“Exactly. Now, Girl, think of your female ancestors thirty generations back, walking all that way. As they traveled, they picked up wanted and unwanted guests on their bodies and in their belongings—pollens, seeds, and spores. Now look at the mother tree.”
It’s as gnarled and twisted as ever. The trunk and branches are still infested with various types of fungi, molds, orchids, and, of course, the yellow threads.
“All the life on the mother tree came from somewhere else. It was transported by our nomadic ancestors. You could say the tree shows the history of our female line. You must remember, Girl, that not only men Recite the Lineage. We women do it too. For generations, the nima and ruma of Spring Well and so many other villages have sought the help of the women in our family. We give them leaves, bark, and even the yellow parasite from the mother tree to use as medicine.”
She puts up a hand to stop me from stating the obvious: I know all this.
“If you were to open the tea cake I gave your baby,” she continues, “you would see yellow threads twisted and growing throughout. That cake is a link to time and to the women who came before us.” She taps my chest right above my heart. “You’ve had difficult times. No question. But you, Li-yan, are unique.”
It’s the first I’ve heard A-ma speak my real name, and it’s overpowering.
“You have special abilities,” she goes on. “I don’t mean you are a witch or a fox spirit. And you’ve never seemed drawn to the special gift of healing or magic. Rather, you are like A-ma Mata, who gave birth to the Akha people, who pushed against her restraints, who said, ‘No, I will not accept my bad fate,’ and who endured against all odds with her intelligence, compassion, and perseverance. All that comes from this grove. And the mother tree.”
A-ma had told me some of this the first time she brought me here. All I remember is my disappointment. Maybe I had to suffer to hear the words in a new way.
“Your a-ba didn’t give you this land because you’re worthless. He had no rights to it at all. I insisted that it go to you. It can only belong to you, as it will belong to your daughter one day.” She has to correct herself. “The daughter you will have one day.”
She hastily kicks dirt over the fire, not giving me a chance to comment. “Now, come. We can’t keep Teacher Zhang waiting.” Only as I’m about to begin shimmying around the boulder does she hold me back. “Take one last look. Remember.”
I try to absorb everything that I see with new eyes: the mother tree standing with such dignity, the sister trees offering their protective embrace, the camphor trees hiding them all, the ancient strength of the boulder, the cliff at the edge of the grove, the mountains in the distance.
* * *
My riot of emotions is no less jumbled when we reach the tea collection center, but seeing Teacher Zhang looking exactly the same in his blue Mao suit and cap is comforting. I’m in my borrowed outfit, with a basket of tea over one shoulder, a basket of new clothes over the other, and clutching a small woven bag filled with rice balls, fruit, and an earthenware jug of water. The courtyard bustles with activity as families bring in their autumn pickings to be weighed. Even the old Dai woman is here, and the aroma of her scallion pancakes is as tempting as ever.
“You’ll be taken by truck to Menghai,” Teacher Zhang explains. “When you get there, ask the way to the bus station. Buy a ticket to Kunming. From Menghai, the trip will take another eighteen hours.”
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
He pats my arm awkwardly. “You’ve already been far away,” he says gently. “You will manage.”
A-ma gives last-minute advice: “Always follow Akha Law. If you adhere to our ways, you’ll be protected from problems whether from the spirit world or the human world. Never forget us.”
“I’ll come home one day—”
A-ma places her fingers lightly on my lips as if to stop me from making a promise I might not be able to keep.
“I’ll be waiting to see your face,” she says. I hear hope below her deep melancholy. She folds money into my hand. “I’m told you’ll need two hundred yuan a month for room and board. I promise to send more each month through Teacher Zhang.”
I clamber onto the back of the truck. Teacher Zhang and A-ma pass up my baskets, which I secure in the bags of tea bound for the factory in Menghai. The driver starts the engine.
“Always remember how to behave, how to speak to people, how to respect the world around you,” A-ma calls up to me, fighting the sound of the truck’s engine. “No matter where you go or what you do, don’t abandon our customs.”
“I promise to do my best, A-ma,” I say. Then I recite, “A good Akha no more has the ability to throw away the customs than a buffalo has the ability to place his footprints in one spot while having his body somewhere else.”
* * *