“I don’t want to go anywhere—”
Then the old woman snatches my tea cake and runs away! Without thinking, I take off after her, but she’s a lot stronger than she looks. She’s sure-footed as she dashes up the narrow mountain path. I’m a lot younger, but I’m not a farmer and I’m not accustomed to the altitude. I have to grab on to the limbs of trees and scraggly weeds to keep from falling. Higher and higher we go. I should have turned back after five minutes, but now it’s too late because now I truly am in the middle of nowhere. In the forest. Picking my way through a spidery network of pathways. Monkeys screeching. Birds calling alarms. A half hour, an hour, longer. I can’t lose sight of the old woman, because if I do, not only will my tea cake be gone but I’ll be hopelessly lost. My lungs burn, my thighs ache, and all I can think about are my mom and dad, how much I love them, and how broken they’ll be if I don’t come home.
The old woman stops in a small clearing, finally allowing me to catch up. I’m gasping for breath, but she’s fine. She gives me a steady look, takes my upper arm with a firm hand, and turns me toward the view. She holds up the tea cake and then points to the mountains. Instantly I see it—the V’s, the terraces, the stream. The realization makes my knees buckle. Is the old woman my mother? She can’t possibly be.
She practically drags me up the hill. We’re climbing and climbing. The whole time she’s jabbering something that sounds like a-ma-a-ma-a-ma, stopping occasionally to point at her belly and then up the mountain. Pretty soon the path disappears entirely. Up ahead I see a boulder—the squiggly circle I know so well. No one could find this place without the map, because it’s so well hidden. The old woman tucks my tea cake inside her tunic. Like a crab she edges around the boulder with me right behind her. I’m shaking badly, but I make it to the other side.
Camphor trees centuries old create a canopy above us, sheltering several tea trees. The old woman pulls out the tea cake, but I don’t need her to point out the tree that’s been the symbol I’ve dreamed and wondered about my entire life. Up in the boughs a woman picks leaves, which confirms my impression that this grove, while hidden, is both well cared for and private, as though only these two have ever been here. I start to feel something. Memories. Although I can’t possibly have a single memory of this place. Then, from deep within me, a profound sense of love radiating out to everything around me complemented by reciprocal waves of love coming at me, enveloping me. All that seems impossible too. I’m both perplexed and overwhelmed.
Finally, the woman in the tree notices us. Her eyes widen. Then she becomes so still it’s as if her heart has stopped beating and her muscles have frozen. At last she begins to move, slowly climbing down, stepping gracefully from limb to limb. When she reaches the ground, she looks from the old woman to me. A moment of confusion. Then recognition. I know her too, because I’ve seen traces of her in my face in the mirror.
My mother. My a-ma.