Leaving Mother Lake (13 page)

Every now and then we stopped to greet friends and relatives, or to look sideways at someone of interest, or to peer over the counters of the small wooden shops where Naxi women in revolutionary caps gossiped and sold everything you could ever dream of owning — blue-rimmed enamel basins, pink-and-white thermos flasks, brass ladles, iron pots, rolls of blue cloth, leather belts, and Tibetan locks. Then I followed my sister and the other grown women as they moved from stall to stall, with their long skirts hovering over the steaming, muddy ground, and as they commented on the freshness of the vegetables and the fat on the chickens, and as they chatted with the watchmaker and joked with the shoemaker polishing a horseman’s boots, and when they gave their prettiest smiles to the young Moso men who had caught up with them.

Oh! I so wanted to be a grown woman! I so wanted to wear a long skirt that would sweep the ground before my feet and to have men smile at me, and to have men sing for me and dance with me — I so wanted to be like my sisters and my cousins and our neighbor Dujema, to be a big woman, beautiful and powerful, and to have many lovers. And then I also thought of falling in love and of finding just one boy for myself as my Ama had with Zhemi. But then, I thought, if I fell in love, he should be from Qiansuo, so that he could be just like my father and because whenever my mother was with my father, she always reverted to the speech of her girl-hood. Oh, yes! All I wanted was to be a grown woman with my own boyfriend from Qiansuo.

Now, I did try my best to look grown-up. I felt the vegetables and smelled the eggs, and I sat next to my sister and the other women and listened in on their conversations, but they all showed so little interest in me that eventually I gave up in disgust and went off to play with my little brother Howei and the rest of the children.

For the remainder of the day, we went running in and out of the pools at the hot springs, throwing stones at each other. The next day we spent most of the afternoon collecting cold ash from the bonfires and wrapping it into leaves to make grenades. In the evening we went out to play war. But while I was looking to ambush Howei, I found a couple making love in the dark.

“Che sso!
Naughty boy!” they shouted in my direction. Of course, they never thought that a girl would do anything so bad as throw an ash grenade at them. They never suspected that a girl with all her hair shaved off could be jealous of the good time they were having.

But perhaps the mountain goddess did.

WHEN I WAS BACK LIVING
in the tent with Uncle, I woke up one morning with a backache. It lasted two days. I thought that maybe I had hurt myself riding on the yak. And then, because the weather was unusually hot, I thought that perhaps a dip in one of the mountain springs near our meadow would do me good. I loved bathing, although I could not swim, and I was very careful never to go into the water above my waist because the pools are sometimes very deep and dangerous.

But the water did not ease my back pain. To the contrary, and my stomach now began to hurt as well, and I thought that perhaps the water was too cold. When I came out, I found blood running down my legs, and I thought that I had been bitten by leeches. But then I realized that the blood was not coming from my legs but from inside me, and I quickly dressed and ran back to our camp and went into the stable to take a closer look at myself. When I found nothing, I knew that it was woman’s blood. I should have been relieved, but when I lifted my face and saw Uncle’s horse looking straight at me, I knew I had done something terrible because you are not supposed to show this dirty thing to the horses and the yaks. Moso people must always show a lot of respect to yaks and horses. Today I can still see the horse’s eyes, and I still shudder at the thought.

And of course, I could not show the dirty thing to my uncle either, so I sat on the grass and waited for him to leave before going back into the tent. But then, when I was inside the tent, I didn’t know what to do, so I put the black goatskin on the floor, and I sat on it. Every now and then I got up and sneaked outside to wash myself, and then I went back to the goatskin, stepping backward and rubbing dirt and ash into the ground to clean up the spotting I left in my tracks. When I heard Uncle coming back at the end of the afternoon, I quickly wrapped the goatskin around my waist and I did not get up for the rest of the evening. Uncle said nothing, and he asked no questions. Perhaps he knew, and perhaps he didn’t. Either way, this was not the sort of thing a man could discuss with his sister’s daughter.

The next day Uncle had to go to the village. He would leave early in the morning with the three horses loaded with pads of butter, and he would not be back until the evening with our supply of vegetables, rice, and corn, and salt for the yaks. Now, because I had spent years living with my uncle, I had only the vaguest notion about women’s blood, but I knew I had to do something, and I spent a great deal of the evening thinking my problem over. The next morning, as soon as Uncle was gone, I tore off one of my shirts and took out the sewing kit, and I made up a pad and a pair of suspenders that went over my shoulders and crossed on my chest. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing, but it was better than sitting on the goatskin all day not daring to move.

The blood lasted a whole week. And it came again, every month, at about the same time as Uncle took the butter to the villagers. During all this time, I said nothing. I never told anyone, not even my Ama when I went home for New Year. But my sister found the pad in my little bundle. She knew right away what it was for and she went to tell about the suspenders to all her girlfriends, and everyone laughed at me. After that I did not talk to Zhema for a week, but she talked to my mother, and then my Ama knew that I was probably about thirteen years old and ready to come back to live in the village to become a grown woman.

My Skirt Ceremony

W
hen Uncle came home from his butter delivery, he handed me the rice cakes my Ama had cooked and said, “Next time I deliver the butter, you’ll come with me. Your mother has already talked with the lamas about your Skirt Ceremony.”

At these words my heart leaped in my chest, but although I wanted to jump for joy, I only nodded my head. I could not possibly show my happiness to Uncle. I did not want to make him think I was happy to leave him. Yet, for the rest of the day, I could not help thinking of my ceremony — of all the beautiful clothes and the silver jewelry and the presents the neighbors would bring me, and how I would go dancing and how the boys would talk to me. I tried so hard to suppress my joy, and my poor Uncle tried so hard not to show his sadness, until, later in the evening, after his usual cup of wine, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. And then I felt lonely. So lonely. So much happiness, and no friend to talk to, no one to tease and pinch me and run after me. No one but Uncle, who would soon be fast asleep and snoring, and then the yaks, who would be stomping their hooves on the ground, and the horses snorting and the dogs scratching at their fleas — all of it keeping me awake into the long night.

The first thing that came to my mind when I woke next morning was: “Twenty-nine days before the next butter delivery” — and I began counting to twenty-nine, and then I started again. When we had finished breakfast, I took the yaks to graze on the side of the mountain path, where I could look down into the valley, just in case my Ama had decided to send for me earlier. I did this for a few days, until we ran out of grass and I had to take the animals to another pasture. But that evening I thought, “All Uncle needs are ten pads of butter; if I get more milk, we will have the butter sooner and we will go to the village earlier.” And I pulled hard on the cow’s teats to try to get more milk. The cow lifted her back leg, turned her head, and looked at me with surprise — so I stopped pulling and stroked her side to make her feel better. Animals can look into your soul and they always know when you are being bad to them, and I knew I should be kind to animals because of my karma.

Before dinner I placed five potatoes near the fireplace, one for each of five days, and after dinner I took one potato away. When four more days had gone by, I put another five potatoes in the same place. Uncle looked at the potatoes and said, “Don’t worry, it will pass soon enough.” But it did not and my heart itched with impatience.

But perhaps when you want something badly enough, you can make it happen. Because the night I would have removed the eleventh potato, when Uncle and I were sitting near the fire eating our corn soup, the dogs began barking from the corral and then we heard the hooves of horses coming up near the tent. It was my brother Ache. He had come to get me. It was harvest time and my Ama did not want to wait until the end of the month. She needed help in the house.

Now I could not eat. And as soon as Ache and Uncle had finished their soup, I got up to clean their dishes, and then I cleaned them again. That night I don’t think I slept at all.

The next morning Uncle tied my little bundle on the horse, and then he took the leaves that were drying on top of the tent and wrapped up some milk curd. “Here, take this,” he said, avoiding my eyes as he handed me the curd. “And when you’re home, be good and listen to your mother.” After that he turned around and picked up the broom to sweep the tent — because we should never sweep the floor after a person leaves, since that would mean we are sweeping away the memory of their presence. When he was done with sweeping, he lit some sagebrush a few feet away from the entrance of the tent, and as he stood watching us get ready, he took hold of his prayer beads and began chanting softly to himself.

We said good-bye, nodding to each other, our eyes shining with tears. There were no embraces or kisses because this is not the way we do things.

I felt so sorry for my lonely uncle. But we had not gone more than a few hundred yards on the mountain trail when an irrepressible feeling of happiness welled inside my chest. And now I could not wait to get home. I was so impatient I could not even sit on the horse. So I got down on the ground and handed the reins over to my brother. Then I ran and skipped and ran, and I shouted for joy.

When we arrived home in the late afternoon, the streets were empty except for a few old people taking care of babies. Everyone else was out in the fields. But in our house, we did not have any old people to take care of the little children, so my Ama was in the courtyard, chopping firewood, and my little sister, Jiama, was sitting at a safe distance building a miniature mud house. On seeing us entering the yard, she ran to Ache and ignored me.

“Hey, Ama!” I called to my mother.

My mother looked up from the pile of wood and smiled. “You’re here already!”

“She ran all the way!” Ache said, laughing.

He passed Jiama over to me so that he could take care of the horses, but she wriggled and I put her down.

“Sit down, Namu,” my mother said, pointing to a little wooden chair on the porch. “You must be very tired.” She went inside to fetch some hot water for me to bathe my feet. When I was all cleaned up, she handed me an old pair of canvas shoes. Zhema’s shoes.

“Where is Zhema?” I asked, as I put the shoes on and then took them off again.

“In the sunflower fields,” my mother answered.

I was so happy to be home. I tried coaxing my little sister to come for a tour of the house with me — after Uncle’s tent, our house always seemed so big, the vegetable garden so full — but Jiama ran back to Ama and I decided to go look for my big sister. I found her, bent over her rake, working much too hard to notice me. I crept up behind her, very quietly, to play a game I sometimes played with the yaks. When I was just about touching her, I whispered
boo!
into her ear. She jumped and turned around — and glared at me.

My big sister Zhema was very quiet and clever, and she was a good girl. When my mother went visiting, she always took Zhema with her because she was never any trouble. All the men loved her too. Everyone spoke nicely about my sister; nobody ever had anything bad to say about her. But maybe she was too quiet for me. When I whispered in her ear, she jumped. It was very easy to scare my sister: although she was older than me, she wasn’t very brave.

Zhema softened her eyes, wiped her dusty forehead, and smiled somewhat slyly. “So, you’re back already! Are you sure you’re old enough to become a grown woman?”

MY INITIATION CEREMONY
was to take place during the New Year festival because this is when the Skirts and Trousers Ceremonies always take place. In the meantime, we had to finish the harvest, and after the harvest, we had to fertilize the fields, and after fertilizing the fields, we had to slaughter the pigs.

Twice a year we kill the pigs, once in November and then just before New Year, and at least three pigs in total. Two pigs of three hundred pounds each can provide a family with meat for a year, and one pig must be saved for gifts and offerings, for funerals and any other special event. We Moso waste no part of the pig. After the animals have been bled, the legs are cut off and the bones and innards removed, and the cavities are filled with chili and salt. Then the pig is sewn back up. We call these salted pigs
bocher.
We keep them piled on top of each other on a bench in the main room of the house, and traditionally, the greater the number of
bocher,
the wealthier the family. Aside from making
bocher,
we also debone the legs and fill them with salt and chili and make them into ham. As for the bones, we hang them from the rafters to smoke and make soups for old people and children. The fat we boil down to pour into bladders and make cooking lard, and with the blood and the leftover meat, we make delicious sausages.

Butchering and salting pigs is a great deal of work, so people always send the children from house to house to ask for their neighbors’ help. As a child, I loved doing this. We would stand outside people’s courtyards and shout at the top of our lungs, and people would let us in and give us soup. Thanks to the time I had spent in the high mountains, singing and shouting in the rarefied air, I could scream louder than any of the other children.