by Adam Popescu
Where did she come from?
She holds one hand up shyly, but her eyes are full, penetrating, older than the rest of her. She takes my hand and leads me down a short path, back through the stupa towards Lukla, but not into the town. We go down by the river to an old wooden home with a young woman sitting on an old chair, resting a mug on top of a swollen belly. We trade “namastes,” and she holds up her mug. “Would you like some?”
Inside, the familiar smell of yak dung fills my nose. It’s tight, dark and smoky, just like at home. The woman’s name is Mashi. A toddler boy crawls over and climbs on Mashi like a forest monkey. “How is the tea?” she asks, freeing her breast for the boy.
“Very good, thank you.” It’s more bitter than what I’m used to—stale leaves probably.
When she tells me her age, I can’t believe it. Mashi looks at me closely, her cheeks sunken and heavy, face ringed with deep circles. She is barely older than me.
“You say you’re from up the mountain? The drought is killing us. Did you come to Lukla to sell at the market?”
I nod.
“Did you bring potatoes and cabbage? No? That’s too bad. Too bad. This year’s crop has been so expensive, we haven’t been able to afford good vegetables for months. Or millet.”
Rich or poor, no one in the Solukhumbu has escaped the drought.
“My husband would never let me travel by myself—why are you alone? You’re of marriageable age. Excuse me for saying, but it’s very strange.”
Every time Mashi brings the cup to her lips, she pauses as if thinking of a new question and goes on chatting instead of drinking. It’s like she’s forgotten how to hold a conversation, no patience to wait for a reply. When was the last time she had a visitor? I take another sip, debating how honest I should be, trying to stay calm and count my breaths. Let her do the talking.
“I had a sister who used to travel a lot. By herself. Of course, she was unmarried.”
Unmarried.
“People would always talk. And they were right, of course, they always are. Why else would she travel alone?”
“I’m not like that,” I whisper defensively. “I’m a merchant. My whole family are merchants. But my father is sick, his leg was injured, so I’m the one who travels.”
She smiles, finally takes a sip. Then she looks me over again. “Where is your tokma?” That T-shaped walking stick. How could I have forgotten it?
“I broke it yesterday,” I muster.
“Broke it? From sitting on it?” She laughs. “You look far too skinny for that. Me, maybe, but you…”
“It was already cracked, it was years old, older than me. No use to keep.”
“Mmm.” Mashi nods, sips the tea. “My family must be the only one left in Lukla that aren’t merchants.” Pause, a sore spot. Mashi opens her mouth to continue, stops, presses her hand down onto her belly. “Ooh. The little one. I know he’s a boy, that’s why he’s kicking, he’s eager. He wants to see the world.” And then she frowns.
“Very auspicious to have two sons,” I respond.
Her eyes narrow, as if she reads my thoughts. “Do you know how difficult it is to walk down to the river to fetch water every day? With this?”
Mashi raises her shirt, belly protruding, white stretch marks around her middle, and…blue and yellow bruises on her side. Am I staring at the future self I ran away from? Alone, tired, filling my children’s mouths while my husband is away. And when he comes back, he’s not gentle. He fills me up with more and then leaves again.
Mashi holds her cup to her lips. “I hate Lukla. All the mikarus, coming, going. I’m from Machermo, but I haven’t left here since I had Sia.”
The little girl’s face shines when she hears her name, and she tugs at her mother’s skirt.
“She’s six,” Mashi says. “I never thought six years could go by so fast. Even with all the hardship, she makes me forget.”
I thought the girl was younger. Her legs and arms are like twigs.
“Did your village support the Maoists?” Mashi asks suddenly.
“My father always said to spit on a Maoist if we ever met one.”
Is it wise to be so honest? I blurted the first thing that came to mind—the truth. Mashi just sips her tea, slow to respond.
“My village was on the Maoist side,” she begins. “But no one knows that because the Gorkahs killed them all. They came during the night, we didn’t hear a thing, but in the morning, half the village was gone. The Gorkahs knew where to look. Someone told them. One day, you go to bed with everything seeming normal, then you wake up and so many people—people I thought were good people—gone. It was a bad time, I thought it would never end. And now I’m here. With drought instead of war. Has the monsoon ever been this late before?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember it ever being like this.”
She nods. “Some days I can barely rise from bed in the morning. It’s so cold, I feel the cold in my bones. How can it be so cold, and yet we have so little rain and snow? I can barely walk around the house like this, barely do my work. My husband”—I think of the blue and yellow bruises—“he works in the trekking. Always gone. And when he returns, always…” She mimics the act of tilting the chang, a motion I know well. “One good thing about him being gone: I don’t have to sleep in a chhaupadi.” Mashi shakes her head. Another centuries-old tradition so many are forced to suffer with. Impure, they call it, when we bleed. Not fit to be in the house with others. Not fit to take water from the public well, not fit to serve food. Not fit to even touch livestock. Dirty.
Mashi throws another cake into the fire. “A woman not far, a Hindu of course, she died from fire during a cold night,” she says. “Burns and suffocation, just from sleeping in a chhaupadi. Count your blessings you were born a Buddhist.”
The smoke wafting, Mashi gets up and the clinging toddler lets out a yelp. Mashi puts down her tea, picks up the boy. Hands full, she can’t even wipe her tears.
Sia presses the crown of her head onto her mother’s leg. And then I lay my hand on Mashi’s back—something so foreign in our culture, to touch another person, it’s something a Sherpa would never do—but I wipe her face as if she were my sister. And I haven’t even told her my name.
Mashi touches her stomach, lets out a whimper. “Ooh. Again, always kicking, a little Gorkah in my belly.”
I take the baby from Mashi’s arms, cradle him close. The boy grabs my thumb with a tiny hand and stops crying. “You’re the first woman to hold Jamling besides me. He won’t let anyone else touch him.”
A dash of light through the dark cloud.
“Jamling, like his father. Jamling Babu.”
We share a smile, the first truly unguarded one since she offered me the tea. Not a frown, but a smile. A moment of peace, of compassion. Why do smiles mean so much? Why do they make us feel light, whole, trusting? It’s just a movement of the lips and cheeks, nothing more.
Why does the impermanence of our faces have such power? And why do I care, why do I allow a smile to have such power over me? I’m still smiling when I look into the little boy’s eyes. And then my smile is gone, just like that.
The impermanence of life.
The baby boy’s eyes are completely white. Glossed over. Little Jamling is blind.
Mashi offers me a place by the fire to sleep. It’s late, and I accept. And I tell her the truth, or at least part of it. I don’t tell her I ran away. Or why. But I do tell her that I want a new life—she’s seen through my half-truths anyway.
I’m hungry, and Mashi serves me dal bhat. Then she scoops clumps of rice and curry into Jamling’s mouth, always watching but never seeing. She asks me what I’m planning to do, for work, for money. I tell her about my failed attempt this morning and she laughs, light, with a birdlike sound: “A woman can’t be a porter, even if she is a Sherpa.”
The meal over, little Jamling falls asleep on the floor. Sia rests at Mashi’s knee. I reach out, touch Sia’s face, just like with Fifth, m
y favorite Fifth, and Sia laughs, burying her head in her mother’s dress.
“Why not? Why can’t a woman be a porter?”
Mashi curls her lips as if I’ve asked why water is wet or why fire burns. It just is. “You can’t be a porter because of this.” She touches my long hair. “Or this,” pointing to my breasts. “You’re a girl. Men won’t listen to you. They see all girls the same: something to take. And on the mountain, away from your village, that’s what they will do to you. It’s what they always do.”
There’s a hint that she knows from experience, and Mashi’s words stay with me as I stare into the fire. Life is always set in a pattern, for man and all creatures. You’re a girl. Men won’t listen to you.
She’s right. If I’m a girl, that’s all I’ll be, something to take.
I fall asleep on the floor, under wool blankets. The blankets are thick, but it gets so cold during the night I wake up and put on my coat. Teeth chatting, a dream takes me back to my village. It’s a special day. My Second sister is marrying Norbu. Nyi will be happy, her path mapped. I feel like I’m floating, looking down from above Is this our near future? Second wanted Norbu as a husband. And maybe, given time, Norbu will become happy with her. And my parents will finally be happy.
I float above my father, his face soft for once, so unlike how I remember him last. Then I’m over my sister as she says her vows in front of a line of lamas. Each bless her. Nyi is beautiful: kneelength robe woven of yak wool, a white khata wrapped around her long neck, a bright blue turquoise necklace dangling, cheeks red from excitement. She looks so happy.
Everyone does.
My sister looks up—and she sees me, still floating above everything. She touches my face with an outstretched hand, a hand adorned in jewels, red coral glass beads, golden rings. Our foreheads touch.
“Thank you, sister.”
I’m floating away now, up and through the roof, out of Khunde, into the mountains, floating, floating, floating, through wind and snow. I blink and I’m in a cave, above the mother leopard and cub. She licks her little one so gently. Maternal love. Wait. Something’s wrong. She keeps prodding, and the cub doesn’t move.
I stop floating, my feet drift down to the soft floor of the cave.
The mother leopard doesn’t look up at me, she’s too focused, and I look closer and see why: his little eyes shut tight, his little chest still. The cub is dead and she cannot accept it, she keeps prodding him.
I can feel her pain, and it’s as strong as the happiness that I saw glowing around my sister. I reach out to soothe her, but when she looks up, finally seeing me—there’s nothing in her green orbs. Nothing to comfort, nothing to soothe, nothing I can do to stem her pain. Just two empty shells that stare back, so big and sad, and I fall into them. I fall in and out of the cave, inside those green holes, and when I open my own eyes, I’m back in Mashi’s home, the fire burning low and my heart pounding. In the dark, the mind has no leash.
I can hear Mashi’s labored breathing all the way on the other side of the room. Her enormous belly heaving with each breath, little Jamling by her side, Sia only a few feet away, all bundled close for warmth.
Do not scorn the weak cub, for she may become a vengeful tiger.
Why would the gods give me this signal? What are their plans for me?
Fool—there is no point to thinking this way. What manner of gods mock us by giving us lives like these? I doubt there are gods. Belief is something we’ve created, a wish to make sense of all the pain. The tears running down my face are welcome—long suppressed thoughts bubbling up. But deep inside I know there must be more, there must be meaning, or why live?
Animals choose life and the pain and suffering that comes with it, and they do it with none of the trappings, none of the wealth or ego that we carry. Still they choose life.
Back and forth, I believe, I don’t believe, I do, I don’t.
Confused and tired, in between dream and waking, the span of seven breaths, I make my choice.
11
I LEAVE BEFORE MASHI AND HER CHILDREN WAKE UP. BUT NOT BEFORE I fold half of what’s left of my rupees under a rice bowl. Thank you, Mashi. Marching back into Lukla, down the main street, every step symbolic of my affirmation for change. The shopkeepers and merchants, the children who play in the dirt, none of them frighten me, none of their stares, none of their words, their fists, their jabs, punches, kicks—none of it can touch me.
Yesterday was a black day. Today, my life force is high. But I’m already famished.
I stop in front of the strange restaurant I passed yesterday. The animal that’s been part of every important moment of my life poses on the sign: Yak Don-naal-ddss. Inside, there are pictures of yaks everywhere. Animals I’ve lived with my whole life. Holy creatures.
Lamas say that if we don’t eat meat, we earn the merit of one hundred fasting rituals. But I know the power of this animal will help me grow—and I need the strength. Save for what they sell, the restaurant looks like any other Sherpa tea house: small, with a low, wooden ceiling, a stove in the center for warmth. There are a few mikarus sitting at a table, and at the counter stands a girl close to me in age, wearing a red hat with a picture of a yak on it. She waits for customers—that could be me if I was born here.
“You’re the first of the day,” she says. “Well”—she nods at the table of mikarus—“you’re the first Nepali.” She hands me a paper, laminated in plastic. “Menu,” she says, her teeth very white for a Sherpa girl. Maybe she’s lived in the capital. Maybe her life is larger than just this place.
I try to read the menu, but it’s full of English words I don’t understand. The girl smiles once more, flashing those bright pearls, as if saying: It’s all a game, a game I’ve learned, a game between the people of the East and the outsiders, the ones who come with money.
“What is a yak burger?” I ask finally.
“Yak burger: patty of ground meat, fried, served with bread and vegetables. A very large meal for one.”
What is a patty? Without finding out, I dig my hand into my pocket, lay the rupees on the counter. Different notes, each denomination in a different size. A rhino, a tiger, a blood pheasant. The girl counts, nods, takes the bills.
“Okay, just sit, we will make it. It will come.”
I sit, wait. Finally, it arrives, and she’s right, it is enough food for two full-grown men.
My last rupees for a thick piece of yak meat in between two pieces of thick bread. I’m so hungry, I don’t feel remorse or fear or sadness for eating this creature. The first bite, warm and tough—and wonderful. I’ve never eaten like this, gasping from hunger, juices trickling from the corners of my mouth.
My last rupees, I think as I chew and swallow. No more after this—but wait, I still have the mobile. I could sell it—how much would it be worth? Not the seven hundred and fifty my father paid, but perhaps half. I shake my head ruefully, imagining what my sisters would say if they could see me here.
There are three mikarus in the restaurant. They sit at a table right next to me, speaking in English. The two men have long hair and beards. The woman wears a knit cap over blond hair. Real mikarus, the ones with hair and eyes totally different from ours, double-lidded and colored.
I keep chewing and watching them before I recognize just which mikarus they are: it’s the woman from the airplane from yesterday and her two companions.
One more bite and I finish my meal. Satiated, I gather my bag, rise, ask the girl at the counter where the bathroom is. I’ve been thinking about this nonstop. If I make a little money as a porter, I could be down the mountain in two weeks, even if I have to do it on foot. Two weeks to the capital. And once there, could I find Nurse Lanja? I could try the hospital where she trained. What was it called…
Still, the first thing to do is earn money.
I stand before the bathroom’s dirt-streaked mirror, take out my kikuri. I know what I need to do. I need to become someone else to become myself. I smile, my mother would like th
at thinking. Thinking in riddles, very Buddhist. Circular logic.
My trembling fingers trace each strand, each lock. My braids are woven so tightly, I’ve been growing my hair since I was a girl. The corners of my mouth shake as much as my hands, lower lip quivering. I wipe my eyes and raise the blade, hands still shaking. My hair falls in clumps in the sink, tears falling with each clump.
Soon, my hair is the length of a monk’s and my braids lay like slain serpents in the sink. Out of the mirror, someone looks back at me. And it’s no longer the girl known as Eldest. I’m no longer a girl at all. What kind has hair so short?
On my revealed neck, I can see where my father struck me. I put the knife down and roll up my sleeves: both arms are dark purple. I pick up the knife again, and then the door opens. It’s the mikaru woman, frozen in the doorway, startled by the blade in my hand.
Up close, her skin reminds me of fresh snow, eyes green like the mother leopard’s.
Another sign?
She looks down at the braids that fill the sink, up at the blade, back to my eyes. Neither of us break the stare—I must look like a monster—then she speaks, in Nepali: “What are you doing?”
I’m so surprised, a mikaru woman speaking Nepali, I don’t know what to say. When I do find my words, it’s as if I’m speaking as someone else. This isn’t my voice. “Cutting my hair so I can get a job,” I explain.
“What kind of job?”
I’ve said too much. She puts her hands up slowly, as if to say she means no harm, then takes a step back and out of the bathroom, the thin wood door shutting behind her.
I look at myself in the mirror. I really don’t look like a girl any longer. Good. I gather my clumps of hair, throw them into the open latrine and step out.
She’s right there, not three meters away. Holding two steaming mugs, she approaches me. Again, in her fluent Nepali, she asks if I would like a tea.
I want to flee, to scream even, but I nod yes and we sit away from her companions, at another table.
This is the first time I’ve been so close to a foreigner. I study her face. It is different from mine. Fuller, and at the same time, slimmer. I want to touch it, to see if it’s real. It’s all so fine, so perfect. Like a great dream—if I touched it maybe this moment would shatter before me. No one here looks like that. Her nose is more pointy than mine, and her eyes seem alien. Mine are almond shaped, struck in the middle by a dark iris. Sherpa features may be different, but our eye color is always the same. Always solid brown. Shiny bullets. Mikarus, by comparison, show so much white. White eyes. And hers—I can’t keep eye contact with her.