Ghost Month (39 page)

The girl crossed her arms but headed back to the booth.

I bent down and picked up the pack and dusted it off. Twenty betel-leaf-wrapped nuggets were packed in a bag featuring an inkjet picture of a lingerie model.

The dark-skinned girl angry-walked from the stand to Dwayne. Nancy trailed her and then came toward me.

“Are you all right?” I asked her under my breath.

“Yes. Actually, this is kind of fun.”

“We’ll talk later.”

I looked over at Dwayne. He had a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and they were both laughing. I handed over a fifty NT bill to Nancy.

“No tip?” she asked aloud. I handed her another fifty NT bill. “Thank you.” She walked over to the other girl and handed her both bills. Nancy was about to reenter the cube when Dwayne called out.

“Hey, you girls want to see something funny? Watch my friend here try
binlang
for the first time!” He pointed at the bag in my hand. “C’mon, give it a shot. It’s not that bad.”

I pulled out a betel nut and popped it in my mouth. Not too bad. A vegetable smell and a hint of lime. It caved in when I bit it, and a foul liquid spilled over my tongue. It tasted like a dead frog had just spit into my mouth. I gagged. Everything came tumbling out onto the ground. Red juice dribbled from my chin into my crotch.

Dwayne, Nancy and the other girl all laughed as I wiped my face with my shirt.

“Girls!”

We all looked over to the stand. The
lamei
was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, looking sexy and furious. The two betel-nut girls instantly sobered up. The
lamei
observed that her message had been received, nodded once and disappeared. The dark-skinned girl took Nancy by the hand, and the two walked back.

When they got far enough away, Dwayne said, “That girl is from the mountain!”

“What mountain?”

“You idiot. I mean she’s aboriginal! I think she’s into me, too.”

“She was into you because you tipped her.”

“Hell, yes, I tipped her! Say, Jing-nan, are you all right?”

“My mouth tastes like shit, but I’m all right.”

“Now you know how our customers feel when they eat your cooking, ha ha. How about getting that crap off your chin?”

I wiped my face again. I really needed to wash up at home and
soak my clothes to get the red out. “It’s fine, Dwayne.” I started up my moped.

“More importantly, is Nancy all right?”

I showed him the piece of paper I had found in the
binlang
pack. Nancy had scrawled “OK.” Dwayne looked at it, pursed his lips and nodded. We put on our helmets, and I stared at the stretched-out reflection of my face in his visor. I looked like I was in severe pain.

I
SHOOK MYSELF AWAKE
on the couch and wiped off my mouth. In my dream I had just bitten into a rotten apple. Mouthwash hadn’t helped to get the taste out.

“Whoa, calm down!” said Nancy, who towered over me. “That’s the last time I’ll kiss you while you’re sleeping.”

I swung into a sitting position and yawned, feeling my jaw crack. “What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s about five in the morning.”

I put my hands on her hips and felt her body heat through her jeans. “How did you get back?”

“I did what Dwayne said. I took a cab to some
weizhang jianzhu
area in the hills near Taipei 101. Then I got out and took another cab here, so nobody knows where I live.”

“That’s good, but Dwayne just said to go to some other district. Why did you go to a neighborhood full of illegal buildings? It was probably pretty scummy.”

Nancy screwed her face up. “My mother lives in a
weizhang jianzhu
, okay? I grew up in one … and so did you!”

I held her hands. “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I just thought it was strange. I worry about you, and I want you to be safe.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“That’s why I love you.”

She grabbed my chin and kissed my lips. “That kiss went better,” she said.

“Tell me that everything went fine, Nancy.”

“As fine as could be. The spicy sister is a pain in the ass.”

“Did anything funny happen?”

Her eyes rolled to their upper left corners. “Hmm. No, nothing.”

“What were the customers like?”

“Truck drivers, cab drivers. A few military guys. They were all perfectly nice. Bauhaus had more weirdos.”

“Military guys? You mean soldiers?”

“No, higher-ups. Guys with soldiers as their drivers.”

“I see.” I gently pulled her down to my lap. “Did anybody try to touch you?”

“They all did.”

“What!”

Nancy made a snorting sound. “None of them touched me, silly. ‘This is a classy joint!’ like the
lamei
says. Other places you get to touch the girls’ nipples for one hundred NT. Not us. The other girl says she would do it, though.”

“That girl was mean to me. What’s her name?”

“She wants to be called ‘Xiaomei,’ and she’s really sweet. She’s only mean sometimes to defend herself.”

Xiaomei literally means “little sister.” It’s a nickname for little girls, but some unfortunate women have it as a given name.

“Dwayne says she’s aboriginal. Is she?”

“Maybe he’s right. I didn’t ask her. I don’t think someone calling herself ‘Xiaomei’ is going to give me an honest answer, anyway.” I held her closer. A shocked look came over her face, and then a knowing smile. “You’re really awake now, huh?”

J
ULIA AND
I
WERE
riding in the back of the pickup truck. The road was bumpy, and we were holding hands. Then we were lying on a beach, watching the sun rise over our toes.

“Is this what you thought our lives would be like?” I asked her.

“I didn’t know we would live so close to a beach. It’s perfect.”

“I don’t miss Taiwan at all,” I said.

She laughed. “Well, I don’t either, because we’re still here!”

“This is Taiwan?”

“Where else would we be?”

“We were going to make it big in America! What happened to that?”

“Those were the dreams of children, and they were beautiful. But not realistic.”

The sun was now high overhead.

“What’s wrong with wanting to make it in the US?” I whispered.

“Nothing’s wrong with that. That was what you chose to believe in.”

“You believed in it, too.”

“I did. With all my heart. But you and I made a big mistake.”

“What?”

“We had no right to put down other peoples’ beliefs. If people want to go to temples or
tang-kis
for comfort or consolation, it’s none of our business. We didn’t have to call them stupid or backward.”

“But there are no such things as gods!” I blurted out.

“Maybe for you there aren’t.”

The sun was now setting behind our backs.

“You know now whether they exist, don’t you, Julia?”

She smiled and tilted her head away from me. I had forgotten that she used to do that when she was reluctant to say something.

“It’s not for me to tell you, Jing-nan. In any case, only you and I are here right now.”

“I should have called you. I should have written to you.” She reached out to me and touched my nose.

“I was disappointed that you didn’t, especially after your parents passed away. Then I realized that it was your love for me that held you back.”

“It was my pride, really, that I wouldn’t break a promise.”

“It was a promise that you made to me, Jing-nan. Don’t you see?”

The only light now was from the moon and its reflection on the water.

“How about we build a fire?” she asked. We dug a pit and threw in a pile of driftwood. Julia gathered her hands together to light the tip of a branch. Soon, the fire was alive and biting the air hungrily like a chained dog.

“All the elements are here,” I said. “Earth, wind, fire and water.”

“Where’s metal?”

“My belt buckle.” I checked it. “Yeah, it’s here.”

“We have both light and darkness, too.”

I nodded and shifted in the sand. “What’s going to happen now, Julia?”

“I have a letter for you.”

“A letter?”

“A goodbye letter, Jing-nan.” Her hands seemed to be empty.

I sighed and pulled my legs up. “Well, let’s have it, then.”

“You have to do something for me first. Burn my diploma at Longshan Temple.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to have it.” She stood up.

“If I burn the diploma for you, you’ll give me a letter?”

“Yes.”

The fire grew hotter. I could feel the flames reaching out for my face.

I sensed that she was walking away.

“Wait,” I said.

I woke up with the late-morning sun in my eyes and the dream vividly etched on my mind.

I
KISSED THE STILL-SLEEPING
Nancy on her forehead. Her eyes shot open.

“I had a dream!” she soft-screamed through her yawning mouth. “I saw Julia!”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t remember, but she was smiling.”

“I had a dream about her, too.”

“What happened?”

“She asked me to burn her diploma at Longshan Temple, because she wanted to have it. I, uh, took it out of the box. Must be my conscience getting at me.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“Yes. I’m going to do it right now. You stay here and rest, Nancy.” I kissed her again. I washed my face quickly and then brushed my teeth. If I left soon enough, I could get there around the time of day my parents used to take me.

W
E WERE BOTH NONBELIEVERS
, but Julia and I disagreed about temples in general and Longshan Temple in particular. She
liked
Longshan and enjoyed going.

Our two families went to temple together for the big holidays, Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, when the crowds were insane and the temple set up extra decorations and displays in the outer courtyard in an apparent effort to further congest foot traffic.

Sometimes Julia went to Longshan on a whim, merely to see the architecture and contemplate the history, she said. It made her happy to be there, so that was reason enough for me to accompany her several times.

Both Chinese and Taiwanese enjoy the sight of water cascading down rocks, so the temple obliges with waterfalls in the outer courtyard. Approaching the front gate can be intimidating, as you see the multi-tiered roofs and mystical animals leering down from the corners. As a little kid, I would nearly piss my pants as we headed to the entrance. My father told me that I had nothing to fear as long as I was “righteous.” When I was older, I knew that the only thing I had to fear were the temple hucksters inside.

As soon as you entered the dragon gate on the right side, the sham began. Counters lining the entire south wall of the temple sold joss sticks, prayer pamphlets and fruits and vegetarian snacks meant to be left at an altar for the gods to eat.

When Americans think of a temple, they probably think about an enclosed area, a building with a roof. Longshan, however, is essentially a large, walled courtyard with a Buddhist main hall featuring Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, in the center and a Taoist hall featuring Mazu, the goddess of the sea, along the north side. The two main deities are both women. The niches along the surrounding walls are altars for lesser gods and folk gods, the divine bench warmers. Everything is so ornate that you’d have a hard time finding an inch of wood, metal or stone that isn’t carved, gilded or both.

The open-air design allowed for all the burning incense to waft heavenward to the nostrils of the gods and to pollute Taipei’s skies. It used to be worse. Longshan once had open-flame braziers set up for worshippers to burn bamboo-paper notes, but they were scrapped when the Environmental Protection Administration started cracking down in the 2000s. Yet even the EPA knew they
couldn’t stop incense-burning at temples. It would be like prohibiting bakeries from smelling like fresh bread. Besides, temples made way too much money selling joss sticks. People also bought temple charms to wave around in the incense smoke, to make them more effective when worn.

When I went with Julia to Longshan, I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes and contemplating the sky, pointedly ignoring the idols.

“Jing-nan, that’s disrespectful,” Julia chided me once.

“I don’t have to respect fake gods,” I replied.

“I know the gods aren’t real and they don’t feel anything. But you have to admire the craftsmanship that went into this place. It’s almost four hundred years old. Think of all the people who have been through here, nursing their hopes and desires.”

“This isn’t the original temple, Julia. This is like the third or fourth one on this site.”

She punched me in response. “You can’t deny that this temple is an admirable achievement by the Taiwanese people.”

Followers of Guanyin began to chant loudly and off tempo in the courtyard before the main hall.

“When I come here, I can’t help but think, what if all the effort, time and money were put into building something really useful? Do you know how many more MRT stops could have been built?”

“This is a nice place to come to. The MRT isn’t.”

“Well, if you like it so much, then let’s go join in the chanting.” I grabbed her arm.

“I don’t want to!”

We both laughed out loud as we had a little tug-of-war. Julia wasn’t as strong as me, but she was shorter and had a lower center of gravity that worked in her favor. Her little hands had a tighter grip, too. At some point our bodies collided and we were suddenly holding each other.

She then fought to get out of my arms. I held on to her playfully.

An older man confronted us.

“You two kids are being very disrespectful! You should come and beg forgiveness from the goddess of mercy, or go to a love hotel!”

We went to the love hotel. It was our first time, and we didn’t
really do anything. We were only seventeen. I was sure, though, that going from a temple to a love hotel was a well-worn path.

E
NTERING THE TEMPLE NOW
, eight years later, I caught a whiff of that mildew smell that comes from improperly dried clothes. I never noticed it at the night market, where the frying smells could cover any odor less potent than a pulp mill. If I rode the MRT, I would definitely notice the smells of the seventh lunar month.