The ruma, nima, and village elders join us. As is tradition, it’s the ruma’s responsibility to declare the outcome and announce the nima’s recommendations.
“Accusations have shot back and forth like poisoned arrows,” he begins, “but we’ve weighed everything, including what the nima saw in the netherworld.” When he asks, “Could a spirit have entered Ci-teh?” I feel a touch of optimism. “If the nima told me that her spirit was gasping for breath, then I would take banana leaves stuffed with ash, husked rice, and coins and rub her body with them, but she is not suffering thus. If she’d become wild, tearing off her clothes or howling like an animal, I would ask three honorable women of our village to urinate on a broom, which I would use to brush away Ci-teh’s problems, but she is not suffering thus. If she had seizures, I would wrap her in magic vine, then sacrifice a goat, a pig, and two chickens, but again, she is not suffering thus. Ci-teh does not suffer from a spirit affliction. Everything she has done has come from her own hands, heart, and mind—”
Relief floods through me, but Ci-teh is outraged. “How much did Li-yan pay you to say those things?”
“Shamans and spirit priests don’t lie,” the ruma replies indignantly. “We can’t lie. If we were to lie, the spirits would vex us. Now please, let me continue. A spark lights a fire. Water sprouts a seed. The Akha Way tells us that a single moment changes destinies. Therefore, the nima and I have searched through time to find the instant that changed every person in Spring Well, but these two most of all. I am speaking of the occasion when evil spirits forced the birth of twins upon us.”
Everyone instinctively recoils, but I’m thrown back in time not to the birth of Deh-ja’s babies but to my cleansing ceremony after the pancake-stealing incident. I’d felt the ruma had magically understood everything that had happened, but now I realize his gifts may have less to do with magic than with interpreting the world around him in a magical way.
“For Li-yan, the arrival of the human rejects caused her to begin looking beyond our spirit gate to the outside world,” he says, and I see how clever he is to allot a portion of responsibility to me. “For Ci-teh—”
“We lost our wealth, our reputation, and my brother,” Ci-teh finishes somberly.
“Which caused you to work hard to regain your family’s prosperity and position. You’ve even been able to bring your brother—if not all the way back into village life—closer to you.” He stamps his staff. “Let us now, as a village, chase away the evil spirits who have haunted these two women. Release them! Be gone! Be gone forever!” He pauses before adding, “We will now practice ceremonial abstinence.”
Once the routine requirements might have settled things, but this hasn’t been a simple matter of someone touching the spirit gate or a dog climbing onto a roof.
Someone yells, “What about my land? Will Ci-teh sell it back to me?”
The suggestion jags through the crowd.
“That might work for you,” another farmer shouts, “but I can’t return money I’ve already spent.”
“Shouldn’t Ci-teh be banished?” another man calls out.
Then a person from Ci-teh’s faction lets his views be known. “Why should she go? I leased my land to her. Why can’t I work for her and grow coffee?”
“Make the outsider leave! Look at her. She’s not a true Akha.”
Several click-clicks of tongues reveal support for this last suggestion.
“If a woman marries out, does that mean she’s no longer Akha?” the ruma asks. “In the past, when our men traveled the Tea Horse Road for months or years, were they no longer Akha? If Li-yan wishes to stay among us, she’s welcome. As for Ci-teh . . . She’s not a human reject. She’s not a murderer. I cannot banish her. She has her own home outside the protection of our spirit gate. Let her continue to live there. Those who want to do business with her know that good and bad spirits are watching.”
None of this absolves Ci-teh, and it’s clear she could easily rile the crowd again. Instead, she straightens her back and begins threading her way through the crowd, stopping here and there to speak to her supporters. Knowing the effect the birth of the twins had on me, I feel empathy for her and the losses her family endured as a result. I even grudgingly admire the desire that ignited in her when we were girls to help her family. But as she walks away, I know the two of us will never again be friends.
* * *
Having exposed Ci-teh, I feel I need to be more present in the village. I want to help the people of Spring Well regain pride in our tea trees, help revitalize the Pu’er business, and stabilize and bring back the money everyone has come to rely on. Fortunately, Jin agrees. During the following weeks, as the monsoon season continues and little can be done for the trees themselves, I go from household to household trying to build trust, while Jin makes business calls on his cellphone and occasionally meets associates in Menghai or Jinghong. At night, we sleep in an abandoned newlywed hut. It’s not the time of year to build a house, but the ruma and Jin begin to seek a proper date for construction. On the appointed day, men go into the forest to cut bamboo. We women gather thatch and fashion bamboo lashing. Our new house—minus the modern conveniences Jin promises he’ll provide eventually—is completed by lunchtime. We move in that afternoon. That night I dream of water. Two weeks later, I wake up sick to my stomach. I’ve come to a head.
Jin is delighted. He calls his mother, and I can hear her joy through the line. A-ma’s smile is open and wide. She says, “It took you this long to figure it out? The sisters-in-law and I could tell a half cycle ago.” Her words sound matter-of-fact, but her happiness radiates like the sun on a spring morning.
And this is what I’ve wanted. This is what will make our lives complete, but the worries my condition stirs up are troublesome. What if I have a girl?
“I don’t need a son,” Jin reassures me. “You don’t need to do that for me.”
But he doesn’t understand that every Akha wishes for a son first, followed by a girl, followed by a boy, followed by a girl. It’s how we keep balance in the world. I had a daughter; now I must have a son.