JESSICA: Some more than others— DR. ROSEN: So the grateful part seems pretty obvious. And, as Ariel pointed out, there are many adoptees who are perfectly happy— TIFFANY: Most of them, I bet.
JESSICA: That’s probably because they weren’t born with brains— DR. ROSEN: But, often, adoption is about loss: loss of your original family, loss of culture and nationality, and, of course, loss of a way of life that might have been. This is where the angry part comes in. Just today you’ve shared lots of variations on anger and why you might be angry. My profession narrows it down to this: anger that your birth parents abandoned you. So the label is grateful-but-angry, but in our private sessions you’ve heard me talk about anger in a different way. Haley, do you remember what I said?
HALEY: You said anger can be a cover for something deeper.
DR. ROSEN: Do you want to share what that was for you?
HALEY: Sadness. Really bad sadness, because somewhere out there I had a mother and a father who didn’t love me enough to keep me. They gave me away. They got rid of me. For their one child they didn’t want me. I’ve never had a way to grieve for that. I mean, how can I be around Mom and Dad, who I love a ton, and cry for my birth mom and dad because I don’t know them or have them in my life? At the same time, why wasn’t I good enough for my mom and dad in China? Now I have to work really hard—and not just with my classes—to be someone they would have been proud of, if they’d known me. And for Mom and Dad to be proud of now.
JESSICA: You mean I’m sad because my birth mother cared so little about me that she left me in front of a train station . . . By myself . . . In the middle of the night . . . In winter . . . That she didn’t even want to know me . . .
TIFFANY: Who wouldn’t be sad when you put it like that?
JESSICA: I’m not sad. I’m pissed.
ARIEL: Youth in Asia.
JESSICA: Fuck this. God damn it.
HALEY: I’m sorry I made you cry.
JESSICA: That’s okay. I think that’s what we’re supposed to do in here. And by the way, Haley, don’t pay any attention to what I said earlier. You’re probably gonna do a lot of the stuff I do—the drinking and all—but take it from me on the true down low. Keep up with your homework, don’t forget to do some extracurriculars, and don’t get caught. Okay? Don’t. Get. Caught. And, Heidi, I’ll try to be nicer to kids like you. It’s just kinda hard for me.
DR. ROSEN: All right, girls. I’m afraid our time is up. This was a good first session. Can I count on all of you to come again next week?
BREATHE, BREATHE, BREATHE
Jin, his mother, Tea Master Sun, Deh-ja, and I return to Spring Well Village at the beginning of March 2008, just before the start of tea-picking season. My mother-in-law, who has not one good memory of life in the countryside, makes quite an impression on A-ma and the sisters-in-law when she volunteers to haul water on her first morning. Mrs. Chang will do anything to be with her son and the child growing inside me. I’m six months pregnant and my baby—Let it be a son—rolls and kicks and jabs. He stretches against my lungs, pushes a foot on the inside of my rib cage, and leans on my bladder. A-ma makes sure I eat her special soups with pig’s feet, dates, and peanuts to nourish him and me. As for Deh-ja . . .
I was prepared to pay the fee to the headman, village elders, nima, and ruma for whatever sacrifices and ceremonies might have been required—as Ci-teh did for her brother—to allow Deh-ja back in the village. Although the birth of her human rejects was brought up by the ruma during the clash with Ci-teh, not a soul—by that, I mean everyone but A-ma, and she won’t say a word, knowing how Deh-ja cares for me—recognizes her. She had been married into Spring Well Village for barely a year when her twins were born, twenty years have passed, and her life has been very hard. She looks older than A-ma and stranger than anyone people have seen on their televisions with her new dentures. If we lived entirely by the old ways, what I am doing would be a violation of Akha Law. But if her human rejects had been born today, they wouldn’t have met their sorrowful ends and she and Ci-do wouldn’t have been banished. Deh-ja and I aren’t taking any chances, though. We will keep her identity a secret. Fortunately, Deh-ja is a common name, and Ci-do and his new family are on a trip.
The ruma and nima announce the day to begin picking. Early on that morning, when it’s still dark, I’m asked to say a few words. What is stranger—that half the village stands before me or that this worthless girl has overcome her past? And the risks are great for all of us. What we’re doing has to work or else Ci-teh will take over. I begin with what Tea Master Sun taught me.
“If you don’t love tea, you can’t make good tea,” I recite. “Our tea trees are gifts from God. We can see the Akha Way in them. If you have cloned terrace bushes, one gets sick, and they all get sick. Same with pollarded trees, which are so weakened by the brutality of constant trimming. But when we find a wild tea tree, we know certain things. It has been strong enough to survive and grow on its own. It has its own separate and unique genetic makeup. If one tree gets sick, others surrounding it are unaffected. We Akha understand this, because we have a taboo against close relatives marrying. This is why we Recite the Lineage.”
People murmur their agreement, understanding what’s beneath my words. Purity, not counterfeits.
“As we pick today, let’s remember our progress can only be slow—one bud set at a time. If we find perfect leaves, the tea we make will be the best. Together we’ll share the Akha Way with the outside world.”
When I step off the platform, Teacher Zhang approaches. “May I help?” he asks. I hand him a basket, and he joins us as we walk up the mountain guided by the last of the moonlight. The sun comes out and still we work, breaking only to have tea and eat rice balls. Once our baskets are full, we return to the village, where Tea Master Sun oversees laying out the leaves for their first rest.
The next day is even longer. We pick leaves and lay them out for their sunbath. Then we spend hours tossing six-kilo batches of yesterday’s rested leaves over woks to kill the green. After fourteen hours, we sit outside together—families with families—eating meals prepared by those daughters-in-law who’ve remained in the village to care for the children too old to breast-feed and too young to help.
On the third morning, who should arrive? Mr. Huang and his son.
“I’m on spring break,” Xian-rong announces, peeling out of the SUV. He’s as skinny as ever and a little pale, the last probably from the ride through the turns, bumps, and ruts of the mountain.
“And I’m looking—”
I hold up a hand to stop Mr. Huang from uttering another word. “Don’t say it!”
“To help,” Mr. Huang finishes with a grin. He wears a straw hat, a rumpled shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, khaki pants that he’s rolled up to his knees to keep cool, and plastic sandals.