The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

Although the Akha people are travelers, it has gotten harder to find new land where they can settle. As a result, they must stay in one place and build only short-term homes. Li-yan’s family house comprises of the main residence and three huts for newlyweds—her three older brothers and their wives.

As the women and girls of the household do needlework around the fire pit, Deh-ja and her mother-in-law interrupt with gifts for A-ma. A-ma is the village’s midwife and will soon deliver Deh-ja’s baby. Li-yan notes that although Deh-ja is wearing loose clothing, her stomach looks much larger than usual during pregnancy: “[S]he looks like a melon left too long on the vine, ready to burst” (20). Deh-ja expresses her hopes that it will be a boy and promises to follow the Akha traditions when her baby is born.

In the meantime, Third Sister-in-law inspects Li-yan’s needlework and then tells her to do it all over again, adding that no man will ever propose to her because her needlework is so poor. A-ma interferes and assures everyone that Li-yan “will go to her marriage with a precious dowry,” by which she means “a remote tea grove high, high, high on the mountain and handed down by the women in her family” (22). Only A-ma knows its location because superstition dictates the grove brings bad fortune to trespassers. Afterward, A-ma gives Li-yan pieces of her beautiful headdress: a coin from Burma, a shell, and a feather “that caravanned on the Tea Horse Road from Tibet to [their] mountain” (23). A-ma promises that once Li-yan is of marriageable age, she will be able to attach these things to her headdress, and in the meantime, she should train to be a midwife. 

A week passes, and Deh-ja goes into labor. A-ma prepares her medicine and orders Li-yan to come with her to help with the birth. Terrified, Li-yan follows her to Deh-ja’s hut and notices many bad omens along the way. Once they are there, A-ma helps Deh-ja while Li-yan watches. After several hours of painful contractions, A-ma orders for the spirit priest and the shaman to come. After going into a trance, the shaman declares that “Deh-ja made a mistake in one of her ancestral offerings” (25) and must correct it. The spirit priest then orders her to sweep the floor so that “the spirit of the day [Buffalo] will help [her] sweep the room clean of malevolence” (25).

In excruciating pain and bleeding, Deh-ja gets up and follows the instructions. She thoroughly sweeps the floor before she may lie down again. Soon afterward, a baby boy “slides out and flops onto the mat” (26). Li-yan is terrified, but she doesn’t want to disappoint her mother. The boy looks perfectly healthy, and A-ma cuts his umbilical cord. Then Deh-ja moans and curls from pain. A-ma rushes to her side, touches her stomach, and announces that Deh-ja is having twins, which Akha culture considers as “human rejects” (27). Upon hearing the news, the little boy’s grandmother drops him on the floor, and he lies there, “naked and unprotected” (27). Li-yan, scared and confused, wants to leave, but A-ma orders her to stay. The second baby comes out fast, but no one welcomes her into the world.

The twins’ father, Ci-do, enters the room. Despite his pain and tears, he carries out an Akha ritual mandatory in such conditions. He takes “a mixture of rice husks and ashes from the bowl and tenderly tucks it into his son’s mouth and nostrils” (28). When he moves to do the same to the baby girl, Li-yan begs him to stop, but A-ma slaps her across the face. A-ma then tells Li-yan that she must obey these Akha rules if she wants to be a midwife.

As Ci-do leaves the hut to go burn his dead children in the forest, A-ma tends to Deh-ja, who is still bleeding. A-ma then tells Deh-ja that she will have to get up soon: According to Akha Law, “the parents of human rejects must be banished and their house destroyed” (32). While Li-yan and A-ma wait through the night by Deh-ja’s side, Li-yan feels how much her mother is disappointed with her for not obeying Akha Law. Nevertheless, Li-yan regrets not stopping Ci-do from killing his children.

After the ruma and the nima conduct the final ceremony, taking the couple’s most valuable possession—Deh-ja’s wedding bracelets—as a form of payment, Deh-ja and Ci-do step outside into the rain. Deh-ja is not wearing her headdress and is still so weak that she stumbles, but A-ma doesn’t let Li-yan help her. The banished couple passes through the spirit gate and is gone. Shortly after, the village people destroy the tainted house. When Li-yan asks if they will ever return, A-ma ignores her question.