Nima

by Adam Popescu

  Next to the mirror, right where Nurse Lanja kept the syringe with the medicine, there is a drawing of a muscular ape with long teeth and a yellow stare. He stands over a pool of blood, a half-eaten yak at his feet. A Sherpa woman is running away from the slaughter, off the page.

  “Yeti?” Val asks, behind me.

  The picture is simple, but it tells the story well, a story I’ve heard more than once. I don’t care if Val believes, it’s a story many do, and even though I’m not sure, I feel a certain pride to recite it. “A woman close to here was attacked several years ago,” I begin. “She was walking with her yaks in a field and then fell asleep while they grazed. When she woke, two yaks had been killed, heads and bodies ripped apart.”

  Val laughs, a single ha!

  I feel the blood cooking in my veins but say nothing. Realizing her mistake, Val adds quickly, “But surely it could have been—”

  “The scalp is in a monastery not far from here, you heard the lama talk about it. We have no time to go now, it’s in the opposite direction, but it’s there, I’ve seen it.”

  I’m lying, I’ve never seen it, and I’m defending what must be nonsense, but I want Val to stop being such an all-knowing mikaru.

  She doesn’t say anything. She nods, looks away. Val pulls out her notebook and scratches a few things down, but it looks like she’s pretending. She’s not really writing anything down. I can tell she’s just moving her pen so she can turn away from me.

  Next to the yeti picture, there’s another in pinks and oranges and reds. I instantly recognize it’s made by a girl’s hand even before I realize what it is: a girl surrounded by jewels and smiling people, stick figures and shiny stars all around, but it’s obvious. It’s a dream wedding.

  “This was my school,” I tell her finally. “This was where I learned so much. I wanted to show it to you, it’s important to me. I wanted you to meet the woman who reminded me of you.”

  Val doesn’t have a smart response, I think I’ve finally gotten through to her and she nods, hanging her head.

  For some reason, I know the girls being taught here will have a better chance than me. Just seeing those pictures, they’ve been taught something important. Whether it was conscious or not, they’ve been allowed to dream, even if that dream is something that now seems so old-fashioned: choice. Something that took me so long to learn.

  I lead us all back out, and it’s likely none of us will ever return here. Just beyond the gates, just thirty minutes from our return to Namche, we pass by a pair of girls, girls my sisters’ age, their heads weighed down by heavy baskets and supported by thump lines and tokmas to help them up the trail. Ethan says something I can’t understand and Daniel laughs. The two girls trudge up the trail, heads hanging not from the weight, but the shame of the foreigners’ jibes. I open my mouth, but no words come out. And then I cry. I cry with all my heart for everything. And I do it right in front of my mikarus, who stop, stone still, not knowing what to do.

  “Why’s he mad?” one of the mikaru men asks.

  Val keeps her mouth shut. I can feel her eyes on me even with my own overflowing. The men are puzzled, they begin to roll their eyes and laugh nervously, making me more upset. I was wrong to listen to Val, wrong to hide my true nature. Val never had to hide who she was.

  She’s not afraid to be a woman, she’s proud. I should be, too. I am young, but I’m not inexperienced, suffering was revealed to me at a young age. My pain is age old karmic residue which must be erased. I was never Ang. I was always Nima. I shouldn’t have pretended otherwise, I know that now.

  I pull off my knit cap and strip off my pack at the edge of the school where the Khumbu’s first female nurse taught me so much about myself. This is the place where I first became proud of the sex I was born, the first time I felt unashamed of what I was.

  I take off my jacket to reveal that I have breasts, to reveal who I really am. “Woman,” I say in English, staring straight ahead, a word I’ve been repeating in my mind. Then I turn to the mikarus, feeling my voice grow louder: “I am a woman.”

  21

  THE RETURN TO NAMCHE IS A BLUR. I DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF IT, except for the mikarus talking among themselves. Arguing. And Val was defending me, that I know. And now, they’re nowhere to be seen. Still arguing, they disappeared to their rooms, and I no longer am sure I have a job.

  When I open my eyes, I’m in the dining hall and all the climbing Sherpas are standing in a line, Lasha at the front. Their arms are folded, jaws clenched. Val stood up for me, I remember that—but what Ethan and Daniel thought, I couldn’t say. I was so full of pain in that moment that I blacked out. I led us here without really knowing where I was going, walking without thinking. And when we got here, Lasha was outside to greet us, whispering to Val as she went by him.

  And now this roomful of Sherpa men arguing:

  “It’s bad luck to have a woman porter, bad luck for all of us,” Lasha bellows. “She has magic, she used it on me in Phakding to cut my throat.”

  He pulls down his collar to show where my blade poked through soft flesh.

  “There was no magic,” I yell, “just my kikuri to his neck after he tried to have his way with me! If I was your sister or your wife, would they do any different?”

  “She’s a lepcha!” he yells back.

  “What should we do?” one of Dorjee Sherpa’s sons asks.

  “I don’t want to sleep under the same roof as a witch,” his brother responds. “We should throw her out.”

  Lasha shakes his head, takes out his kikuri and holds it at his side. A hush falls over the room. “We know who you are. We know who your family is. The ru’ that struck four years ago and destroyed Khumjung, was that your making, too?”

  He takes a step closer. I’m frozen, watching a glint of light shine on the steel.

  “Is that why your brother died, so you could steal his soul and live as a man?”

  Lasha grabs my arm. And then all of them reach out, too. Hands on my arms, grasping everywhere, they pull and push me towards the door. I drag my feet, thrashing and screaming, the rubber soles of my boots shrieking. The wind hits as I’m heaved outside and away from the lodge. I fight with every fiber of my being, and then I feel my body go limp. Looking up, through an army of dirty hands and contorted faces, it’s there, the same view I was faced with when the ru’ struck four years ago, when it took my father and my brother. I was frozen then, I’m frozen now. The color of the leaves on the trees—turned from green to a petrified gray. The air feels heavy and the wind blows. Then I hear pounding footfalls and heavy breathing and something else I haven’t heard in I don’t know how long: rain. Real rain. It comes down like bullets, a hard, wet gift to the farmers.

  I focus on the feel of the shower instead of the hands on me, watch each drop drip down and hit my naked skin. I open my mouth, let a drop find my tongue. I go deep inside, far, far away like I have so many times before. And under that steady fall of rain, there’s a scuffle, a fight: it’s me, swinging and kicking wildly at Lasha and his Sherpas. Their hands won’t let go, they’re too strong. Raindrops hit me right on my brow, where my third eye hides. Arms like tree trunks are tearing me to pieces. And then the dirty hands release me. Everyone steps back. Only Lasha remains, still holding up his blade.

  “Stand aside,” he growls at the figure making them all cower. “She’s a lepcha!”

  Norbu hits Lasha with such force, it sounds like Sangwa Dorje has landed back on earth. Lasha crumples to the ground and stays there. The others scatter.

  Norbu Norgay lifts me into his arms.

  I’m nervous, so is he, I can tell by how quiet he is. We’re lying side by side on the cot, both of us careful not to touch the other. I’m afraid to turn and look, to see if his eyes are open. He’s a man, I know what men want—even good men like him.

  “What do you think will happen?” I ask finally.

  “What do you mean?” he answers, both of us staring at the wooden ceiling.

  �
�Lasha. And the others—”

  “They won’t bother you again. They don’t matter, they’re the past. Scared of women, scared of change.”

  I hope he’s right.

  “Nima, the real question is what do you want?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you want from life?”

  No man has ever asked me this before.

  “I want to finish this trek. Whether or not the mikarus decide to keep me around. I want to do it for me.”

  “And then? After you finish? What then?”

  “I want to start my life over.”

  Why didn’t we discuss this before I left home?

  Next to me on the pillow, he nods. “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. I don’t know. I know I want more than what my mother had. I want to lead treks up the mountain or go down to the capital and study a trade. But I want to finish this trek first. Then I’ll decide.”

  “You wouldn’t be scared to go to the capital? You’d be all alone.”

  “Before I left home, yes. Now, I don’t know. A part of me wants to be scared, wants to feel something new, something different.”

  “You’re not one of the mikarus yet. And you’re not even really Nepali. You’re a Sherpa.”

  “Why should that matter?”

  Long pause. “Do you want a Sherpa husband?”

  “I want to be the one who makes the choice of who my partner is. Marriage is forever, they say.”

  He nods again. “Yes, yes. At least it should be.”

  There’s a long silence between us. Then Norbu shifts on the cot—he’s moving towards me. “Norbu, no. I can’t.”

  He sits up. “I only wanted to take another blanket. It’s cold in here.”

  It is cold. All men can’t be scoundrels and monsters, can they? Norbu stretches to take a yak wool blanket from the foot of the cot. He drapes it over me. Itchy and warm.

  “Thank you.”

  “Better, no?”

  “Much.”

  It is nice under the blanket. Warm. And nicer still to have warmth from a body right next to me. A strong body—a man I can trust. The blanket is wide enough for two, and I drape it over his strong frame. There’s room for both of us. When I close my eyes, I feel safe for the first time in as long as I can remember.

  It’s early morning when I wake, and the cot is cold. I rise with a bolt—he’s at the foot of the cot, lacing his boots.

  “I have to be ready for the mikarus,” he says. “We head off today.”

  “Us, too.”

  “You’ll continue with them, even if Lasha has been planting bad seeds with your mikarus? I heard it last night.”

  “I told you I’m going to continue, whether with them or on my own. We’ll see if they still want me.”

  Norbu nods, pulls on his blue coat. Still under the blankets, I’m suddenly shy to be so close to a grown man. But I’m fully dressed. We’re looking at each other, him and I. I feel a flutter in my stomach and run my hand through my short hair.

  “Do you think I’m ugly, like this?”

  “No. I liked your hair long. But I like it like this, too. It’s different. It suits you. Maybe that’s what they wear in the capital.”

  “It’s not by choice. I did it for the mikarus—so they would hire me.”

  “There’s that word again.” He smiles. “Choice.” Norbu rises and strides to the door. “On the trail then, I’ll see you on the trail. And when we both return from Base Camp… ?”

  “When we both return from Base Camp.” I smile—I can’t help myself.

  “You’ll make some choices?” He’s smiling wider now.

  Before the door shuts behind him, I feel the cold air rush into the room and a shiver down my spine. Soon, I’m dressed, packed, and out of the room, but before I’m two steps down the corridor, Ethan blocks my path, holding something in his hand. I’m not sure what he’s doing. He comes close, and as he opens his mouth all the yelling between the mikarus—Val defending me, Ethan arguing angrily—it all floods back in sharp detail. But his face, it doesn’t look angry—it’s between emotions, like he’s unsure of what he’s doing.

  Get out of my way, I want to shriek, but I don’t have the words in English.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan says, lifting the pack off my shoulder, so carefully I’m not sure what’s going on. “Please.”

  He goes through the bag, takes out the team’s gear: plastic wrapped food and folded clothes, bundled wires and batteries. An extra notebook for Val’s story. My heart is beating wildly as he collects it all. I mouth the English words: “Where is Val?”

  He straightens and stuffs a wad of money into my hand. “Take it.” He can’t even look me in the eye when he speaks. “Paid. For a-week. Understand? Paid. Please, just go home. We don’t want trouble. Just go home.”

  Ethan leaves me in the drafty corridor, holding my fistful of money. After the span of seven breaths, I pace to the door, push it open, and peer out into the dining hall. Val, Ethan, and Daniel all have their loads already strapped to their backs. And Lasha is with them. He has a welt on his face from where Norbu hit him. None of them notices me. Val’s in the middle of saying something to Ethan—she looks upset—but I don’t understand what she is saying.

  I open my mouth to yell out, to tell Val to stop—she knows why I did what I did, she helped me, Lasha’s lies are polluting everyone—then someone pushes me hard from behind and I stumble forward, falling to the floor. It’s one of Dorjee Sherpa’s sons, the youngster who hit me yesterday.

  “Lepcha,” he sneers. “Dirnmu.”

  The door to the lodge slams shut. Val and the team are gone.

  I get up, dust myself off, watching from the doorway as something in my heart holds me back from running after them. The other mikarus—the ones who speak English different from Val—they’re preparing to leave, too. But I don’t see Norbu with them. He must already be on the trail, but his words ring in my ears: You’re not one of the mikarus yet.

  There’s a plump mikaru girl with hair the color of fire lying back on a bench, mouth agape, holding a mobile to the sky. Another girl stands next to her, blond and waifish, doing the same with her mobile. A mikaru man with a thick gray beard and a hanging belly hands Dorjee Sherpa a stack of rupees. She bows to him slightly, and he turns and shakes the girl’s foot. “Come on.”

  The girl pulls her foot free. She won’t get up. She’s arguing—it’s something about her mobile. The other girl joins her in complaining. The red-haired one wheezes as she runs her finger across her mobile’s screen. Then she takes her finger off the screen and sticks it in her mouth. It’s truly miraculous they’ve gotten this far up the mountain. If that pot bellied man were my father, he would have snatched that toy and hurled it into the stove without a second thought.

  I count the members of their group: more than ten, all with faces as red as that girl’s hair. All large, loud, clumsy. The pot bellied man yells something that might mean “we’re leaving,” and the girls finally gather their things, join the rest of the troop. Dorjee Sherpa bows her head at the departing guests. I feel her eyes on me. Go, girl.

  Back on the trail. The forever frittered trail.

  Dorjee Sherpa, the remover of obstacles, didn’t have any wise words to offer me before I left. She only looked at me with a mix of purpose and pity. Find what you’re looking for. I hurry to catch up with Norbu. He must be ahead. I’m doing this for myself now, but if I can walk with him, my journey isn’t for nothing. At least I’ll show him, too. I’ve earned more in the last few days than Father has earned in years.

  Soon, I’m striding past the red-faced mikarus. They’re stirring so much dust and dirt that even with my kerchief as a shield, I’m choking. I hustle to get by. I give a side glance to that girl with bleeding crimson hair. She’s even younger than she looked at the lodge, her and the other one. No Sherpas with them now, and I can see why. I hurry on.

  Out of Namche and over the mountain, beyond the airs
trip and the huge mani stones looking down over Khumjung, past the mutely watching Pasang Lama Sherpa, with his legs crossed, still stroking his prayer beads. I climb past it all, through the tiny villages of Kenjuma and Sanasa, no sign of Norbu or Val. Too wrapped in thought, I’ve either somehow passed them or they’re far faster than I would have thought possible.

  The trail descends once more to the Dudh Kosi, and I cross bridges and hike into a cluster of huts. Phunki Thanga, I recognize it from the water-driven prayer wheels that give its lodges electric power. I poke my head into a tea house perched on the river’s edge—a very skinny cripple sits inside with his equally skinny wife, feeding an even skinnier goat. The goat crunches a ginger tuber, bleats when I slam the door shut.

  I try the next tea house, right next door, this one’s completely empty.

  I walk to the river and sit by the water’s edge, flipping stones into the fast-moving current. It’s less cold down here, the water free to move, free from freezing. Yellowing grass grows by the riverbanks. The aphids climbing the stalks remind me of the hill overlooking Lukla’s airport. When was that? And what happened to that girl?

  My mother’s words, words of the great Milarepa, flood my mind.

  All beings tremble at punishment,

  To all life is dear.

  Comparing others to oneself,

  One should neither kill nor cause to harm.

  Just a few days away from my mother’s home, yet I am so different. And another woman’s words have begun to dominate my mind: