by Adam Popescu
Walking, keep walking, always walking.
I walk until I can’t walk anymore, stopping at the top of a small hill of dirt at the edge of town. Looking down, I kick a rock and it lands not on dirt or grass, but on something gray and smooth. Man-made. White lines are painted on it, broad and long, as if sending a message to the sky. There’s a single building with a wood frame, corrugated tin roof, the words TENZING-HILLARY AIRPORT in faded red paint, with the double triangle of the Nepali flag at the top of a flagpole.
I take out the mobile phone from my knapsack, the clock on the screen telling me it’s seven in the morning. Khunde is just waking, just discovering what’s happened. So many images rush forward at once: my father, my mother, my sisters, even Norbu. All of them realizing I am gone. What was I thinking, running away? Fool. I’m no nun, and I’m no painted woman or whore either—my only other real option.
I slump down, exhausted, take my boots off and then my socks, rub my battered feet. With what little water I have left, I wash them, wiggling my toes in the yellow grass. A tiny aphid mounts the top of a blade of grass, just next to my hand. Its small body looks like a white dot, a dot that cuts down the grass with a mouth like a living kikuri. I watch the insect eat more and more and more, belly not getting any bigger—where does it all go?—and then the tiny thing is plucked away by a green monster.
The mantis looks like a giant compared to the aphid. It has bean-shaped eyes, pure green, each with a red bindi in its center, each looking in opposite directions, one at the victim it slices with sharp mandibles, the other at me.
The bardo of life, the bardo of death.
I think of squashing the mantis, but I hold back. I still respect the balance, no matter what the truth is. Anything—even this little killer—could be the future reincarnation of a holy monk or a newborn infant. Anything. But could a creature like this really be reborn as the Buddha?
The flame of a dying candle serves to light the flame of another. Reincarnation is based on the merits—or demerits—of one’s life. So surely this creature could not be anyone of true consequence. A jilted lover, returned to samsara. A runaway bride.
The mantis stares at me with both odd green dots now, each knife-like arm holding a dead aphid—it plucked another from this world and sent it into the next while I sat debating—those jade pinwheels stare back at me blankly while its long white jaws chew one of its victims’ heads. I pick up my boot and slam it down, squashing the bug. Rebirth is immediate—if there is such a thing. And if it is, where is this killer now?
I’ve never done anything like that, taken my rage out on another living thing, and I feel a pang of guilt. I lie back in the grass, stomach aching. So much pain, I’ve pushed that part of me so deep, kept it buried like a rock in an icy crevasse. I eat a cube of dry, hard cheese, then another, and I think of the leopard mother.
Do snow leopards dream?
Staring up at the sky, scattered clouds peel off as the sun pushes its way through. A white day. She’s hunting right now. Or sleeping, with her cub pressed against her, in her lair. If it was winter I would have frozen last night. I won’t be able to last another night in the cold. Not like this.
Something cuts through the sky overhead. A bird of metal and plastic, wings like sticks churning the thin air. It heads closer and closer towards the narrow strip—coming right at me. The airplane flies by me, between patches of dry bushes and shrubs on both sides of the narrow strip, until the wheels hit the runway screeching. I’ve never seen one so close, but I know about this place’s history, all mountain people know about it. Many mikarus have died here before they even reach the mountain. Lukla’s runway is known to be the shortest anywhere, choked between peaks and ravaged by bad weather and air thin enough to make engines die.
In my language, Everest is Jomolangma. In Nepali, it’s Sagarmāthā. Both mean “mother of the world.” Everest was a British mapmaker who never even visited our country. I learned about him in my school, a place named after another mikaru, Hillary, the first and most famous white man to summit her.
I’m sure the people below—all the tourists coming from the valley—they don’t know. And they don’t care. They come, take pictures, then leave. They’ll come as long as there is a mountain. Jomolangma, our gift and our curse.
We know that when an avalanche strikes, or a storm, an ice fall, lightning, at moments like these, she makes her displeasure known. Foreigners call it an accident. We know better, and still we tug her tail, all of us, because the mikarus bring money—and we need it.
The airplane makes a halting turn to avoid a stone wall. The strip looks about a quarter of the length of our pasture back home, and like a vision—a classroom’s worth of children suddenly flock around the machine as it comes to a stop, gleaming in the morning light. I throw on my socks, lace my boots, and scurry down the hill to hide behind an oil drum, crouching low.
The door opens and little brown arms stretch to it, grabbing sacks of rice, salt, luggage, unloading the plane in seconds. They are blessed with a few rupees each, doled out by a fat man with a red nose and a wobble. Probably drunk from the night before, just like Father. In between yelling orders, he blows that red nose in a rag, checks it, then blows again. He yells to strong-looking Sherpa porters, men who grab the bags, toss them up and onto their backs, disappearing inside the rickety building.
Off the plane step white faces. I come a little closer to get a better look, scampering to a patch of bushes. They wear clothes that look too clean, the white of their shirts too white, stepping awkwardly in never-worn boots. Even their skin seems too clean, their faces look like they’ve never felt the sun. And among them, a woman. Her skin the color of freshly fallen snow. Lips pink, hair like light chestnut. She walks down the strip, shoulders back, head up. Two men follow her. Two husbands?
The Nepali boys fight over which one gets to carry her bag.
Could she be so different from me? I see her lips moving, pointing, smiling, but I can’t understand what she’s saying. I’m sure it’s English. The men with her nod to this living goddess. And then she touches lips with one of the men. She puts her whole face into his, pressing against it just like in the climax of a Bollywood epic.
Sherpas touch the crowns of our heads to show affection, we don’t touch lips. And we don’t do it for all eyes to watch. I’ve never seen anything like this in real life, just in the cyber cafe. And yet none of the locals here seem to care, neither does this woman or the other mikarus. Normal behavior for them, but it still feels so strange to witness an act that should be private made public. I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. Yes. Yes, she is different than me.
9
I TAKE MY PLACE AMONG THE BOYS, WHO ARE ALL STANDING IN a line, ready to work. The oldest looks half my age. I’m a head taller than all of them and the only girl. Even with my hair tucked under my wool cap, I’m still obvious.
“Move,” one of them yells. Every space is precious here. His face is thin, angry—but he’s still just a boy. Maybe eight years old—the same age Ang would be now.
Behind them, the strong-looking Sherpa men squirt something from a plastic bottle into a circular canister. Then one lights a match and throws it in, flames erupting. The men hold their hands up to the fire. It smells foul. I imagine Kathmandu, which is where all these planes come from, smelled like this to Norbu, only many times worse. That’s probably where Nurse Lanja is now, back down there, in the flat land.
The next man-made bird is in sight now. It lands in front of us, moves down the strip, stops, and then its hatch opens. I put one foot forward and am elbowed in the stomach by the boy who reminded me of Ang, knocking the wind out of me. Another boy trips me.
I get up, coughing, rush through a thick cloud of smoke. The boys descend like vultures, some of them working in pairs to lift the heavier bags. I manage to grab hold a sack of rice, but it weighs too much, and the bag is quickly snatched from my shaking hands. I look up, it’s that same angry boy. He sticks out his tongue an
d drags the prize away. Palms outstretched, the red-nosed man throws him a few coins and then shoos him off as he warms his hands over the fire.
There is nothing left to take off the plane, and I limp back towards that dusty old building where the bags are stacked, hoping to warm up by the fire. But a hand goes up, blocking my path.
“Women aren’t porters,” Red Nose yells, strands of dark brown tobacco hanging from the corners of his mouth.
“Why not?” I say, my exhaustion erupting in anger. “If I’m strong enough, why can’t I work here?”
“Women make babies,” he laughs. “Women clean house. Women complain. This is not women’s work.”
The men around him laugh as he wipes his nose in that rag, then spits brown juice. He takes a step closer and grabs my arm. He reminds me of my father, and like my father, I’m sure he’s looking for an excuse to cock back a fist and crush me. I steel my eyes over and let my face go slack, hoping to convey my fearlessness. My mask. But he looks right through it.
“What kind of woman comes alone to work? Huh? Women alone on the mountain is a bad omen and bad omens bring bad fortune. Go back to where you belong. Get out of here or we’ll drop you into the gully. No one will find you, no one will care.” He points that finger like he’s holding a knife, and I pull back.
The fat man roars deep, and the men join him, and then the boys, all of them laughing.
One of the boys throws a rock that whizzes by my face. “Where are you going, Sherpa girl?”
I turn and trudge back up the hill, the laughs following. I’m afraid they will follow, but I don’t run and I don’t look back. Sitting in the yellow grass, I open my knapsack and eat the remains of my food, drink the rest of my water. The sun moves higher into the sky and two more metal birds come and go during that time, each bringing money to the porter boys.
I take my boots off, tear a kerchief in two, wrap part of it around my blistered toes, stuff the remaining shreds inside my boots. When I put them back on, they fit me. I try to steady myself by listening to my breathing—my mother’s way. I remember watching her crying, when I was very little. She had just given birth, but too early. I didn’t even know she was with child. She didn’t show, no roundness to her belly, no fat. She had it in the house, of course, alone save for me. At first, I wasn’t even sure what was happening. Mother said her back was hurting. Then her abdomen. Then she was on the floor, writhing for what felt like hours. But it could have been far less time, minutes even, I was so young, I didn’t know. And I certainly didn’t know what to do. I watched silently and waited for Father to come home to fix everything. But he never came. So I did what Mother commanded, anything to make the pain stop. I thought she was just sick. But she didn’t double over and throw up like I expected. She loosened her bakhu robe and wan-ju shirt, squatted, and grit her teeth.
“Nima,” she moaned. “Boil a pot of water.”
Terrified, I huddled in the corner of the room, knees to my chest, my head tucked between them and my eyes half open.
“Get me a bowl!” she screamed. “Water now!”
We stayed up all night together. By morning, it was over. And somehow, without any help, she gave birth in that cold room on that cold floor. We were lucky the chickens were still in the yard and the yaks grazing in the hills, instead of clustered together in the house. My father in those times would bring the animals in for the night when he came in. But he didn’t that evening, he was on the mountain.
Mother gave birth to a boy, years before Ang or my sisters. But it was all wrong. He was too small. And red all over, with thin skin, like all his blood had settled just beneath the surface. He didn’t have any hair, and his eyes were shut, just two tiny slits that never opened—and his mouth—there was a wound somewhere inside him and there was so much blood, oozing out, how could such a small thing have so much blood? He didn’t move. No life to him at all. I’m ashamed to say it, but the baby looked—it didn’t look like a baby. It looked like something the elders would describe to scare children. Tales of demons and fallen deities. Gek and gdon.
He was so small, so unnatural, he fit in my mother’s palm. And Mother held him there, cradling him for I don’t know how long. She held a rag to his mouth, cleaning the blood, all the while chanting, calling the soul, repelling whatever spirits may have taken her child. If she was scared, she didn’t show it. He never breathed. Was he ever alive, even inside her womb?
We ended up putting him in a tea tin. Mother, or maybe Father, I don’t think he’d returned yet. I don’t remember who did it. It couldn’t have been Father—was it me?—I just remember that someone put him in there. Mother cried and chanted for a night and a day, clutching him and cleaning that wound—I don’t know how we got her to let go. I don’t know how she dealt with the pain. And then she stopped. She stopped crying and she inhaled and exhaled slowly, deliberately, suddenly controlled. She stopped chanting, and the tears dried on her face as she got up, took that little tin, opened the front door, and stepped outside. It was cold, nearly autumn, but she went out without a coat and stacked the wood and made the pyre by herself. And then she went back in to take the bowl with the placenta and the cord and placed it on the pyre next to the tin. How was she capable of standing? It felt wrong for me to interfere. This was at our old home in Khumjung, back when we had two stories and a window looking out onto our yard. And that’s where I stood, looking down from that window.
When she lit the pyre, the flames shot up, flames as tall as the juniper in our yard, and I remember looking for my absent father. Was he seeking absolution or ultimate truth? Did he believe his firstborn son a demon, fated to burn away in the front yard, sent to the sky? Was that the first step for Father? The first step to becoming what he is now?
When Mother came back inside, she was calm. And that scared me more than anything I’d seen that day. She closed the door behind her, then walked right past me, not once looking at me. Her eyes were big, circles ringing them. She looked off into the distance, but there was nothing there, nothing to look at. I stood in the middle of the room, watching. She went to the kitchen, filled a pot of water, placed it onto the stove and lit a match. That rag was still on her chair where she’d left it.
“I’m making tea,” she said finally. But she just stood there in front of the stove for a long while as if she had forgotten what she was doing. Then the calm passed, and she began searching for something—where is it?
She was looking for the tin where we kept the tea. And then she stopped and broke down, bending over, her face so close to the stove’s open flame that I thought she’d be set ablaze.
My mother and father never spoke of what happened—they never even gave the boy a name. Ang was their firstborn son, not this thing. My sisters never knew. They still don’t.
I run my fingers through the dry grass. I feel my heart slowing down.
“Every decision should be made in the span of seven breaths,” Mother would say.
I breathe seven times. Slowly. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. It’s a long walk back up the mountain.
Another aphid crawls just beyond my outstretched fingers, from blade of grass to blade of grass, and then me. It touches my palm, tests with one thin leg—safe—creeps up onto my thumb, all six legs moving in unison. The aphid doesn’t worry about money or marriage or memories. All it cares about is survival, always in the moment, always now.
10
WALKING. PAST YOUNG CHILDREN PLAYING IN THE STREET, COVERED in dirt, skinny, but with bright smiles on their faces. These are the lucky ones who don’t have to carry bags too heavy for their little arms. The lucky ones whose parents can afford to send them to school down in the Kathmandu valley.
The blessed children of Lukla dance in front of shops just opening, shops run by their merchant parents who sweep dust from their front steps, laying out jackets, sleeping bags, water bottles, trail essentials for shopping mikarus. Others sit in old wooden rocking chairs, tea in hand, waiting for
the mikaru money to arrive. Things would have been different if I had been born here, with my family running a business selling to tourists: five hundred rupees for a bottled water, eight hundred for a tin of crisps. I would have been smiling just like these children. Me and my sisters might have even been called by our names, not numbers. And maybe I would have still been in school. Maybe I would already be in the capital.
I feel the merchants’ eyes following me—they must think I’m a witch. If only I had the power of Milarepa, the first thing I would do is give my tired feet a rest and fly out of here. And then…what else would I do with my power?
I follow Lukla’s single narrow street, past shops and restaurants with names in English I try to pronounce. Ss-tar-buckss Cof-feee. With a picture of a steaming mug up against a snow-capped mountain. Yak Don-naal-ddsss. With a picture of a yak against the same snow-capped mountain.
Whoever can afford to eat yak meat must be very rich. Very rich to slaughter an animal that provides so much life. Each gives milk and cheese and hide for twenty years—how wasteful to make just one meal from it. And yet…what does that meal taste like? How special is it, to be able to eat something so few can, something that costs so much?
I put my hand into my pocket, finger the rupees I haven’t spent, feel a rumble in the pit of my stomach.
I’m at the edge of the village, past all the shops, all the playing children. I can hear the river again, still out of sight, around the bend. Feet as heavy as two lazy yaks, I walk through the domed stupa, and this time I stop at the huge wooden prayer wheel. I grip the metal handle. It’s surprisingly heavy. I have nothing to lose asking the gods one more time.
The wheel starts to turn. Unseen bells chime. I step through and under the stone archway of the kani. A painted English sign reads ENJOY YOUR TREK.
Standing under the sign, the bells still chiming, a little girl stares up at me. She is barefoot, cheeks pink and full, not more than four or five years old. She reminds me of my little sister, of Fifth.