The Ghost Bride (8 page)

I coughed violently. The powder was gritty and felt like ashes. It stuck to my face and clung perniciously to the front of my dress. I groped for my handkerchief, but Amah was already cleaning my face with hers. As I blinked my eyes open, the medium chuckled. I stood abruptly.

“You give up too easily,” she said. “If you go now, that young man will follow you forever.”

“What man?”

“Ah, young lady. You think I couldn’t see him? I gave him a taste of some medicine. He won’t be back for a while.”

I sat down again. “He’s following me?”

“I’m sure he’ll be back. But at least we can talk without him spying on you, eh?”

“What does he look like?”

She cocked her head to one side, favoring the clouded eye. “A fine well-fed fellow. Only recently dead, isn’t he?”

“Less than a year,” I whispered. “I thought he could only come into my dreams.”

“In your dreams, yes. He talks to you?”

“He says he wants to marry me.”

“And were you betrothed?”

“No!”

“He seems to have some hold on you. The dead don’t usually do this to strangers.”

I flushed. “Well, he said . . .   He said he had seen me at a festival before he died.”

“That’s possible. Some who die of love can come back as revenants.”

I couldn’t stop myself from snorting. “Him? Die of love? I don’t believe it.”

“Then did you walk through a cemetery at night? Make a vow to something, even a god or a tree or a river? Did you cast a spell on someone? Do you have a secret enemy?”

I shook my head. “Isn’t he dead? Why hasn’t he gone somewhere else? The Courts of Hell, or wherever the next passing is?”

She smiled. “Don’t we all want to know that! Some stay because of their attachments to this world. Others have no one to bury them so they become hungry ghosts. But this one looks well provided for.”

I shuddered, remembering the vast empty halls and endless corridors of Lim Tian Ching’s mansions.

“He wants something from you.”

“I can’t marry him. Can you help me get rid of him?”

The medium rocked to and fro. “It depends, it depends.”

“I have a little money,” I said stiffly.

“Money? Ah, your money isn’t worth that much here.” Her sharp smile revealed a single canine tooth. “Not that I’ll say no to it.”

“But you just got rid of him!”

“So I did, so I did. But that was just for a while. I can give you something that will keep him away. But it won’t last forever. You want to be completely free of him, you may have to do more.”

“Like what?”

“Now, that I can’t tell you right now.”

I felt indignant, which was, I suppose in retrospect, rather foolish for I had come all this way in disbelief; and at the merest sign of help from this woman, pinned all my hopes on her.

“Take this powder.” She took out another pouch and poured a coarse black dust into a paper cone. “Mix it in three parts of water and drink it every night before you go to bed. If it doesn’t work, you can decrease the water to two parts. But it’s very strong, so be careful. And wear this amulet.” It was a grubby thing sewn of cloth and stuffed with pungent herbs. Finally she took out a fistful of yellow papers stamped with vermilion characters. “Paste these on your doors and windows. That will be five cents.”

That was all? She had spoken at much greater length to the young man.

“Surely there must be more I can do!” I burst out. “Should I go to a temple, give alms, pray to a god? Should I cut my hair off and make a vow?”

She regarded me almost pityingly. “Of course, if you want to. Won’t do you any harm. But as for cutting off that pretty hair and making vows . . .  well, why don’t you wait first. Don’t do anything rash.”

Silently, I handed over ten copper half-cent coins, wondering whether I would have received better advice if we had, in fact, offered her tin-animal money. As I leaned over she suddenly grasped my hand.

“Listen,” she whispered harshly. “I’ll tell you one more thing, though it may get me into trouble. Burn hell banknotes for yourself!”

Taken aback by her grip, I said, “The money for the dead?”

“If you can’t do it yourself, ask someone to do it for you.” Turning, she said in a louder voice, “You want promises of success, assurances that all will be well? I don’t do that. Ask your amah here. That’s why I’m the real deal.” She chortled again. “It’s not a gift, my dear young lady. No, no it isn’t. Those feng shui masters, those ghost hunters and face readers. They like to tell people that they can do what they do because they’re so talented and blessed by heaven.”

“And aren’t they?”

She leaned close to me. Her breath was pungent with a yeasty odor. “Tell me, do you think it a blessing to see the dead?”

When we left, she was still laughing.

O
ur journey back was subdued. I could see that Amah wanted to ask me what the medium had whispered, but she was too proud to speak of our private affairs in front of the rickshaw puller. Instead, I thought over the medium’s words. Burn cash for yourself, she had told me. Did that mean funeral offerings? Was I fated for death? I lifted up my hands and pressed them against my eyes. Against the brilliant sunlight I could see the flush of blood pulsing through them. To die seemed impossible, unbelievable.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught Amah looking at me anxiously, and decided against telling her the medium’s last instructions, disturbing as they were. I gazed out of the rickshaw, overcome by a flat sense of depression. We were descending the slope of Bukit China, past the enormous cemetery with its rows of Chinese graves. Some still bore traces of wilted flowers and burned joss sticks, but by and large they were neglected.

Most people were terrified of ghosts and would not go near a tomb unless it was Qing Ming. Indeed, some of the graves were so overgrown that you could barely make out the carved characters that proclaimed their occupants’ names. The oldest had collapsed into themselves so that the slope was dotted here and there with gaping holes, like the empty tooth sockets of some giant creature. How different it was from the quiet Malay cemeteries, whose pawn-shaped Islamic tombstones are shaded by the frangipani tree, which the Malays call the graveyard flower. Amah would never let me pluck the fragrant, creamy blossoms when I was a child. It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures, we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.

Chapter 9

T
he medicine tasted like ashes. Like bitter herbs and burned dreams. That evening I watched as Amah prepared it, using hot water poured from a small kettle that she kept for herbal infusions. To Amah all medicine must be taken hot. We had carefully pasted the yellow spell papers on the inside of every window and on the front door. When we finished, it was as though a host of small flags waved from each aperture. Uneasily, I noted how they seemed to flutter even when there was no draft. I hesitated, however, over the medium’s instructions to burn funeral money for myself, not wanting to mention it to Amah. Instead, I passed her a small oilcloth packet. “Can you help me sell this?”

She shook out some gold hairpins. They were old-fashioned and ornate and I had forgotten who had bequeathed them to me. “Why do you do this?”

“Because we need more money and you can’t keep dipping into your savings.”

She protested, but in the end promised to ask her amah sisterhood if any lady wished to buy jewelry. That was the way it was always done. Discreet inquiries, the exchange of gold pieces or jade pendants for ready cash. No wonder every concubine and mistress asked for her favors to be returned in cold metal and gleaming gems. Surely, if I were a courtesan I would demand no less. As it was, the thought that we had come down to selling jewelry scraped at my conscience like a little claw.

I
went straight to bed after imbibing the medium’s draught. As I swirled the dark gritty powder in the bowl, I had some misgivings about whether I would be poisoned. In the end, however, I swallowed it and with a feeling of surprise, woke almost ten hours later to brilliant morning light. Amah was hovering anxiously over me, and as I sat up she managed a watery smile.

“What time is it?”

“Almost the hour of the snake,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”

It had been a deep, almost smothering sleep, but mercifully uninterrupted by any dreams. I wondered whether the medium’s secret ingredient was merely a sleeping powder. Looking at Amah’s eager face, however, I couldn’t help but smile back at her.

I made my way downstairs to my father’s study, feeling a pressing need to talk to him about our finances, the marriage negotiations, and all kinds of things that we had not had the occasion to discuss for a while. I even longed to copy poems under his critical eye again. But his study door was closed and when I prised it open, the room was empty. All that remained was the musty smell of books and the heavy sweet odor of opium.

“Where has my father gone?” I asked Ah Chun.

“He went out early.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, miss.”

Dissatisfied, I closed the study door and leaned against it. What was happening out in the world of men? Had Tian Bai talked to his uncle again? What were we to do with our debts? How I wished I could go out and make inquiries by myself. If only I had a brother or a cousin to rely on. Despite the fact that my feet were not bound, I was confined to domestic quarters as though a rope tethered my ankle to our front door. Even Amah, with her sisterhood placed in the employ of many families, had greater recourse than myself. I had heard nothing further from Yan Hong. Maybe she too had forgotten me. I wondered what Tian Bai was doing, and whether he even thought about me anymore. Disconsolate, I took up my sewing basket and attempted to finish a pair of panels intended as sleeve borders for a new dress. The work kept my hands busy as my thoughts churned incessantly.

I didn’t see my father the next day either, which was worrisome. My father was not the kind of person who liked to go out, partly because of his smallpox scars. I was used to my father’s looks and the few old friends who still frequented our house did not seem to care, but strangers would often stop and stare. When I was younger, I sometimes wondered whether my father would remarry. He had loved my mother, though, and perhaps no second wife, chosen from the dutiful ranks of impoverished spinsters, could have compared to her. She, he had once told me in an unguarded moment, looked like a houri from paradise. Our house was a shrine to my dead mother. My father still worshipped her in his study, and Amah could not help recalling her girlhood even as she helped me grow through mine. I sighed, wondering if Tian Bai would think so fondly of me if we were married. Despite the absence of dreams, I felt weary. There was an ominous heaviness, like the air roiling before a thunderstorm.

T
wo days later, the front door flew open with a crash. It was early in the morning and the sound reverberated through the house like a crack of thunder. I ran downstairs as fast as I could. In the entrance hall, Ah Chun was white-faced, hands pressed against her mouth. A great stain showed wetly on the door, trickling into a dark pool. It was as though some creature had been slaughtered on our front step. I looked out but the street was empty. Dread filled me, as though I had swallowed a cold and heavy toad, for surely this was unlucky, very unlucky, indeed.

“What happened?” I asked Ah Chun. “Did you see anyone?”

“No . . . there was no one.”

“But why did you open the door?”

She burst out crying. “It opened by itself.”

“Surely you must have seen someone running away?” There had not been enough time, I thought, for the perpetrator to vanish.

“There was no one,” she repeated. “The door was locked.”

“Maybe you forgot to lock the door last night.” Amah appeared anxiously behind her.

Ah Chun shook her head mulishly. “The bolts hadn’t been drawn yet.”

She started to cry again and talked about leaving.

“What do you mean, you foolish girl?” said Amah.

“It was ghosts. Ghosts did this.”

T
he rest of the day passed gloomily. Ah Chun wept and repeated she wanted to go home. She said she had heard of such things happening in her village before and it always ended in disaster for the household. I looked at the doorstep again after Old Wong had washed it. He was a lean old man, his sparse hair turning gray, but I had never been more grateful for his taciturn presence.

“What do you think it was?” I asked.

“Blood,” he replied tersely.

“But what kind of blood?”

“Pig maybe. Get a lot of blood when you slaughter a pig.”

“You don’t think it was human?”

He scowled. “Little Miss, I’ve known you since you were as high as my knee. How many times have I made you steamed-blood pudding? Smells like pig, I’m guessing pig.”

I looked down at my feet. “Ah Chun says ghosts did this. Do you believe her?”

He snorted. “Ah Chun also says that spirits ate the leftover rice dumplings in the pantry.” With a curt nod, he stumped off.

“Could it be that some thugs mistook our house?” asked Amah hopelessly. Her words sent new fears snaking into my heart. Moneylenders. What had my father been doing? Miraculously he was home. He had been home all morning, in fact, and had slept through the entire incident. When he opened the door of his study, the room reeked of opium.

“Father!” I was torn between relief and fear at his appearance. He looked wild-eyed, his face unshaven and his rumpled clothes hanging off his gaunt frame. When I told him about the morning’s incident, he seemed to barely register it.

“Is it gone?” he asked.

“Old Wong washed it off.”

“Good, good . . .  ”

“Father. Have you borrowed money from anyone?”

He rubbed his red eyes. “The only man who holds my debts is the master of the Lim family, Lim Teck Kiong,” he said slowly. “And I don’t think he would resort to such tactics. Why should he? When all he wants . . .  ” His voice trailed off as he looked shamefaced.

“He wants me to marry his son. Did you say yes?” For an instant, a dreadful suspicion entered my heart.

“No, no. I said I would think about it.”

“Did you talk to him again?”

“Yesterday. Or maybe the day before.” He turned and went back into his study.

L
ater I told Amah what my father had said and asked her if she thought the Lim family would do such a thing. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought it of them. But who knows?” Between us lay an unspoken dread. Amah would not give voice to it in case it strengthened any evil spirits, but I wondered if the ghost of Lim Tian Ching had become more powerful. Or perhaps the Lim family, living or dead, meant to drive me to madness.

I took Amah’s thin hand in mine. This hand had dried my tears and spanked me as a child. It had combed my hair and spoon-fed me. Now it was spotted with liver marks, and the knuckles and joints swollen. I wasn’t sure how old she was, but I felt a surge of melancholy affection. Sooner than later she would need someone to care for her. I wondered whether rich and fortunate young ladies ever had to think of such things. In a household such as the Lim family, I had seen so much abundance that even the senior servants had underlings to fetch and carry for them. If I married Lim Tian Ching in a spirit wedding, it would satisfy almost everyone, I thought. Amah would have a better old age; my father’s debts would be canceled. But to live in that household as a widow and be forever separated from Tian Bai! To watch him marry someone else while I was visited nightly by a ghost. I couldn’t bear it.

“I would rather die,” I said.

“What?”

I had spoken aloud without thinking. Amah looked at me with concern. “Don’t worry so much about what happened today,” she said, thinking that I must be frightened.

“I’m not worried,” I lied. “I know what to do.” I took out a purse and counted the money inside. Amah had managed to sell the gold hairpins and for once the little purse was heavy with cash.

“Amah, will you do something for me? Can you buy some funeral offerings?”

She looked at me in surprise. “What kind of offerings?”

“Cash. Hell banknotes.”

“How much?”

“As much as you think is necessary.”

“But surely his family has burned plenty of money for him?” she asked. I realized that she thought we were to bribe Lim Tian Ching to leave us alone.

“The medium said to burn some,” I replied evasively. Amah looked irresolute, but in the end she agreed to go. In the meantime, I had preparations of my own to make.

W
hen Amah came back, she showed me a paper parcel containing printed stacks of hell banknotes, their colors garish with the seal of Yama, the god of hell. In addition to this, she had also bought gold paper to be folded into the shape of ingots, another favorite currency of the underworld. The numbers of the banknotes were in tens and hundreds of Malayan dollars. Hell must surely have seen inflation, given the recklessly high amounts of currency that were regularly burned. What of the poor ghosts who had died long before such large notes were printed?

Later that afternoon, when Amah had retired for a rest, I brought the funeral goods to the courtyard where we burned family offerings to the ancestors. I folded the paper ingots into the proper shape and now they sat, neatly stacked like small boats, on a large tray. I wanted to do the burning on my own without Amah, because it was better if she continued to believe the offerings were for Lim Tian Ching, and not me.

In the past, I had simply followed along with Amah at the appropriate festivals. She was the one who arranged everything at New Year’s, or at Qing Ming, piling the paper funeral offerings to one side and laying out a tray of food for the ancestors. This was an elaborate affair, consisting of a boiled chicken complete with head and feet, cups of rice wine, a head of green lettuce tied with red paper, and pyramids of fruit. After the offering had been made, the family consumed the food. Apparently, the ancestors only needed to partake of the spiritual part of the offering. I had always thought this a practical way to approach things, though it didn’t seem to entail too much sacrifice for the living. The paper grave-goods and funeral money were burned afterward. This was the part, I decided, that I needed to do.

Amah burned incense facing the ancestral tablets upon which the names of the deceased were written. I wasn’t sure what to do about the lack of such a tablet for myself, but while she was out, I had prepared a makeshift one of wood and paper. My hand had trembled when I inked my own name on it, the pigment sinking into the paper like a dismal stain, but I had gone so far that I might as well try everything.

Long ago, I once saw my father burn handwritten poems. It was late one evening, and a blue dusk filled the air. When I asked him why he was destroying his calligraphy, he merely shook his head.

“I sent them,” he said.

“Where?” I asked. I must have been very small at the time, for I had to peer up at his face.

“To your mother. If I burn them, perhaps she’ll read these poems in the spirit world.” His breath was heavy with the sweet reek of rice wine. “Now run along. You should be in bed by now.”

I climbed the stairs slowly, watching as he stood in the dark courtyard. He seemed to have forgotten my presence as he lit yet another poem and watched the paper spark up then dwindle to nothing. After that incident I had asked Amah if I too could burn things for my mother, such as my drawings or my first tentative embroidery stitches. She had seemed unduly cross, snapping that we didn’t do such things out of the right time and where did I get such ideas from? Amah was always a stickler about the correctness of worship and feast days.

Now I wondered whether my father still indulged himself by writing letters to my mother and burning them. Somehow, I doubted it. It was hard to imagine him still having the energy to execute such projects. And what of my mother? Was she still in the spirit world? Amah had always said my mother had surely already been reborn somewhere else. I hoped so. Otherwise I would have to pray that she would take pity on the daughter she had left behind. I had not been taught to pray directly to my mother, even though her death had remained a central, unspoken part of our lives. Amah clung to her belief that my mother had been spared the torments of hell and long since passed on to rebirth. Other than that odd incident from my childhood, Father did not acknowledge it either. I thought of Tian Bai—if I died, would he write letters to me?