Black Water Sister

by Zen Cho

  You’re willing to help me? said Ah Ma.

  Are you going to get out of my head if I don’t help you? said Jess.

  I cannot die yet, said the ghost. I have things to do in this life.

  Then let’s get them done, said Jess. You are my grandmother. I guess I kind of have an obligation to help you move on.

  Oh, now you believe? said Ah Ma acidly. Last time you were like the police only. Kept asking for proof.

  My mom has the wrong date of birth on her IC, said Jess. You were right.

  You asked her? Ah Ma sounded a little surprised.

  Jess raised her eyebrows, though she wasn’t sure if Ah Ma could even see her do it. You told me to.

  Hmm, said Ah Ma—but she was pleased. Who knew you’re so guai?

  Every one of Jess’s relatives knew she was guai—that was to say, good, obedient, compliant, filial, never giving her parents a moment’s worry. She found things were easier that way.

  Now you know, she said lightly. I’m so guai I’m going to do what you tell me to. But I need you to do some things in return.

  Ah, here it comes, said Ah Ma. You want 4D numbers, is it?

  Uh, no, that’s not what I meant, said Jess. She paused. Wait, can you help me win the lottery?

  No, said Ah Ma. If anybody tells you they can give you winning numbers, whether it’s a god or a ghost, you don’t believe them. You think bookies don’t know how to pray ah? They all pray to the rice sieve. The spirit stops people from guessing the number.

  The spirit of the rice sieve? Jess wondered if her Hokkien had failed her. You mean, the thing you wash rice in?

  Yes. Very powerful spirit.

  Right, said Jess. She couldn’t afford to get distracted, she reminded herself. I didn’t mean favors. We need some ground rules if you’re going to be riding around in my head. That’s fair, isn’t it?

  What rules? said Ah Ma cautiously.

  Rule number one is, you can’t take over my body unless you ask me first.

  Even at night? said Ah Ma.

  So the night was different, thought Jess.

  Especially at night, she said firmly. You’ve been taking over when I’m asleep, haven’t you?

  The silence was as good as an admission.

  No more talking to people when I’m asleep, said Jess. If you want to talk to someone, you can ask me. But you can’t just talk through me whenever you feel like it. What was up with you telling my aunt I was fine with working for my uncle?

  What else are you going to do? Not like you have a job, said Ah Ma. You’re living in people’s house. Helping their business is a small thing only.

  That’s not the point, said Jess. If you keep doing stuff like that, people are going to notice. I don’t speak fluent Hokkien!

  I talked to your aunt once only, said Ah Ma. I asked so many times also, you didn’t want to tell me about Ng Chee Hin. If you told me, I won’t need to go ask other people. Not like I want to talk to your aunt. I cannot stand these Chinese people who run off and worship the white people’s god.

  Yeah, OK, fine, said Jess. Do you agree with the rule, though? No talking to anybody through me. And no more of this getting up and doing stuff when I’m asleep.

  Even if I just want to walk around only, I have to ask you first?

  Yes, said Jess. It’s my body. I can’t be doing ten thousand steps a night, it’s tiring! And if people find me walking around at three a.m., they’re going to ask questions. It’ll start with seeing a doctor, but who’s to say it won’t end with an exorcist?

  The point went home.

  Fine, said Ah Ma grudgingly. What else?

  No looking at my phone, or my computer, or going through my wardrobe, or any of that stuff.

  I can’t do anything what. You said already.

  Yeah, but you can’t peek when I’m looking at my phone or whatever. And no eavesdropping on my conversations.

  That one I cannot, said Ah Ma, delighted to have an excuse to be uncooperative. If you see or hear anything, I see and hear also. Your eyes are my eyes. Your ears are my ears.

  Really? You experience everything I experience? said Jess. Don’t you, I don’t know, sleep sometimes?

  I’m dead already. Why I have to sleep for what?

  Jess thought of the first time she had realized Ah Ma was talking to her, in Kor Kor’s living room, with the uncles and aunties talking about Ng Chee Hin and his son.

  If you overhear everything I hear, said Jess, why would you need me to tell you what Kor Kor’s friends were saying about Ng Chee Hin?

  Sometimes I don’t pay attention lah. You think your life is so interesting meh?

  Then you can zone out when I’m doing personal stuff, can’t you?

  Jess was rapidly losing credit with the ghost.

  You’re very choosy, hah, said Ah Ma, peeved. What other rules you want to impose?

  Just one more, said Jess. If I ask you a question, you have to answer. And you have to tell me the truth. OK?

  This time there was a pause.

  Ah Ma said, Some things, you have to be ready before they can be told.

  Try me, said Jess.

  You have what questions to ask?

  There were so many it was hard to know where to start.

  What’s so special about the temple? said Jess finally. Why does it matter?

  Ah Ma sighed. If I want to explain, it’s very difficult. Especially for you. Everything also you don’t know.

  Jess frowned.

  That’s not my fault, she began, but Ah Ma cut her off.

  You want to know about the temple? she said. Better I show you.

  FIVE

  Driving Ah Ma to the temple the next day laid to rest any remaining doubts Jess might have had about the voice in her head being her grandmother. The ghost was precisely as annoying in a car as Mom was.

  Go left after McDonald’s, Ah Ma said. Then, Why you didn’t go left? You’re supposed to go left back there, that road there. You’re wrong already!

  The road before McDonald’s? You said after McDonald’s, said Jess. Where should I go now?

  How am I supposed to know? said Ah Ma. If you went left back there, then I can tell you. Here, I don’t know. Why you don’t want to use Waze? Ah Ku always uses Waze.

  I put the name of the temple into Waze, said Jess, gritting her teeth. It didn’t come up. It’s not in Waze.

  So many people go there to pray. Cannot be it’s not in Waze, said Ah Ma. You wrote the name in English, is it? You should write in Chinese.

  I don’t know Chinese!

  Why your mother didn’t teach you how to write Chinese? Aren’t you Chinese?

  They drew up at a traffic light. Jess began to say, “She didn’t teach me Chinese because she couldn’t read it herself and anyway we went to live in America and she didn’t think I’d need it because she had no idea I’d come back to be haunted by my dead grandmother!”

  But the man in the next car over was giving her a funny look. Jess realized she was talking out loud. She swallowed her irritation with an effort.

  I’ll go back to McDonald’s, OK? she said—inside her head this time. She smiled reassuringly at the man and sped off when the light turned green.

  There were no further misadventures. At Ah Ma’s direction she parked in an open space next to a hawker center. There was a ticket booth at the entrance manned by a drowsy Nepali guy, but otherwise not much effort had been made to distinguish the space as a parking lot. It was unpaved, the ground uneven, and there was no lighting. On the far side was a threatening dark mass of trees—undeveloped jungle, Jess supposed. Once it got dark, the only light would be from the hawker center.

  Mom would kill her if she got murdered here, she thought.

  She got out of the car, locking it. Are you sure this is it? It looks lik
e somewhere the Mafia would bring people to finish them off.

  I went to this temple every day, said Ah Ma. You think I don’t know where it is? What is Mafia?

  Oh, gangsters, said Jess. You know, like in The Godfather.

  What nonsense are you talking? said Ah Ma. A temple is a holy place. People come here to pray, not to fight or do bad things. You should learn to respect. Don’t simply talk.

  OK, OK, sorry, said Jess. Where is the temple?

  There, said Ah Ma.

  Where?

  There, repeated Ah Ma, in the tone she adopted when she thought Jess was being stupid. Come to think of it, it was the tone she used pretty much all the time. Where you’re looking right now.

  She meant the jungle.

  * * *

  • • •

  THERE WAS IN fact a sign. As Jess got closer to the trees, she saw a red gate, like a humbler version of a Chinatown gate. It had a roof on it with curved ends, like the roofs on Chinese temples, and a black board inscribed with what Jess assumed was the temple’s name, in gold Chinese characters. But any grandeur it might once have had was faded—the gilt had come off a couple of the characters, and the red paint on the gate was flaking off in patches. Beyond the gate was a path leading to a flight of worn steps, also painted red.

  The signs of human habitation should have been reassuring. Yet Jess couldn’t shake a feeling that she was walking into danger, going somewhere she wasn’t supposed to. The trees lining the path gave off a good green smell, but also a sense of oppression; darkness seemed to gather around them. She went through the gate, the skin prickling on the back of her neck. She kept glancing over her shoulder to check she wasn’t being followed.

  What’s there to be afraid of? she asked herself. You’re already haunted. Ah Ma was such a prosaic ghost it was hard to find her spooky, but objectively she had to be scarier than anything Jess was likely to encounter going along the path.

  It was still light, but evening was on its way. The glare of late afternoon had subsided and the color of the sky had softened. Soon the light would turn blue. Jess looked back longingly at the hawker center, coming to life with early dinner customers. It seemed to represent everything ordinary and human, falling away with every step she took.

  At the top of the steps the path petered out, swallowed up by long grass. There wasn’t even a building. A huge tree towered over a mess of scrub, weeds and wild banana trees growing in tropical profusion.

  This is just jungle, Jess said to Ah Ma.

  Then the music started up.

  It was more noise than music, a cacophonous jangling layered over the deep thudding of a drum. It sounded like there was a lion dance going on or something. The smell of incense came to Jess on a gust of soft air.

  It’s a garden, said Ah Ma. You think that big tree will simply grow anywhere? That kind of tree, Buddha meditated under it. It’s a special tree.

  Jess looked at the tree again. This must be the bodhi tree the article had mentioned, the one that was over a hundred years old. It looked like several smaller trees had been stuck together to make it. Tangled vines hung down from its spreading branches. Jess stepped gingerly over knobbly roots humping out of the ground.

  Now that she was studying the place more closely, she could see it was a garden, a space laid out by humans. Some of the plants, overgrown and jungly as they looked, were in pots. Through the wild grass she could make out paths with cracked paving.

  They’re behind the tree, said Ah Ma. Her voice in Jess’s head vibrated with impatience.

  Jess went toward the noise.

  There was a crowd of people in the clearing on the other side of the bodhi tree. Jess hung back, not wanting to be seen, but the crowd seemed engrossed in the performance.

  It had clearly been going on for some time. The musicians consisted of two men playing a drum and a gong respectively. They were sweating, like they had been at it for a while. But it wasn’t a lion dance.

  In the center of the clearing a scrawny Chinese man in yellow satin pants was doing what looked like kung fu. He had a sword in his mouth, his teeth gritted on the blade, and a flag in one hand. He was topless except for a satin bib tied around his neck.

  The watchers were mostly middle-aged men and women, nearly all Chinese. Their expressions, grave and slightly bored, gave the scene a surreal air of mundanity.

  There were a few altars right under the bodhi tree—small, red-roofed structures like miniature houses, sheltering the statues of gods. An incense urn crammed with joss sticks stood before the altars, filling the air with smoke. A cough rose inexorably in Jess’s throat, escaping despite her efforts to stifle it.

  One of the watchers turned around and saw her. He seemed mildly surprised by the sight of a girl lurking in the shrubbery.

  “Are you looking for the god?” he said in English. “You can wait here. He hasn’t started consultations yet.”

  Jess emerged cautiously, joining the circle of watchers. The performer looked familiar, now that she had a better view of him. She’d seen him before, but where?

  The man who’d invited her into the circle smiled at her. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses and a red baseball cap with AIRASIA on it, but close up, Jess could tell he was younger than most of the other people there, around her own age. It was hard to peg his background—with his skin tone, he could have belonged to almost any of the major or minor ethnic groups resident in Penang.

  “Pretty weird, huh?” he said. His accent sounded American. That wasn’t what she would’ve expected in a place like this.

  “Yeah,” said Jess. “Not really my scene.”

  “Me neither,” said the man. He was listing slightly toward her, speaking in the half shout used to order drinks and conduct flirtations in noisy clubs all the world over. The association made him seem even more incongruous. “My father asked me to come. I’m not very religious.”

  “What’s he, um—” An auntie was peering at them. Jess lowered her voice. “What’s that guy doing?”

  “You mean the medium?”

  The man they were all watching gave an indistinct yell. He seized the hilt of his sword and started slashing industriously at the air.

  Nobody seemed alarmed by this behavior. The peeping auntie started recording him on her phone.

  “He’s gone into a trance and Kuan Kong has entered him,” the man in the AirAsia cap explained. “The God of War, you know?”

  Jess’s expression must have made it obvious that she didn’t know.

  “They have an altar with him in all the Chinese restaurants,” said AirAsia. “He’s the one with the red face and the beard. He’s a powerful general. That’s why the medium’s got that sword.”

  “So he’s acting as the god?”

  AirAsia’s forehead wrinkled. “No, he is the god. He’ll start taking questions after this.” He looked at Jess’s face, which was no doubt doing all kinds of things. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  I didn’t ask you to come here so you can pak tor with boys, said Ah Ma. Tell the god I’m here.

  What, talk to that guy? said Jess, looking at the performer. I can’t interrupt now. Everyone’s watching him.

  The medium turned. His eyes locked with Jess’s. His face twisted.

  He charged directly at Jess, screaming.

  Jess recoiled. “What the hell!”

  Call him to stop! Tell him it’s me, said Ah Ma, sounding panicked. Faster!

  “Don’t worry,” whispered AirAsia. “He’s just getting rid of the bad spirits. He’s not actually attacking you—”

  The medium grabbed Jess by the front of her T-shirt, swinging his sword over his head. The auntie who’d been recording him scuttled out of the way, squeaking. “Oi!” said AirAsia. A couple of men in matching polo shirts detached themselves from the circle of watchers and rushed toward the med
ium.

  Jess was raising her hands to shove the medium away when her eyes met his. She froze.

  Whatever it was looking out of the medium’s eyes, it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t human.

  What are you doing? said Ah Ma. Tell the god who I am! Once he knows, he’ll be OK.

  Jess couldn’t talk. Her terror of the thing inside the medium was immediate and visceral, drawing every muscle taut, locking her mouth.

  AirAsia grabbed the medium’s arm before the sword could descend. “Hey, uncle, cool down!”

  The medium—man—thing wrenched his arm back from AirAsia. But before the medium could do anything else, the guys in the polo shirts pulled him away.

  Jess struggled, hurling herself against the wall of her paralysis, until a crack appeared. Her voice escaped through it, thin and wavering with fright.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I brought somebody with me. She wants to see you. It’s . . .”

  This was when she realized she did not know Ah Ma’s name. Mom had always referred to her as Ah Ma. Her actual name had never come up.

  As she stuttered, the thing in the medium looked right through Jess and said:

  “Eh, you came back?” The voice was surprisingly deep; it didn’t seem like it should be coming out of the medium’s thin chest. It spoke Hokkien with a strange accent.

  The medium shook off the polo-shirted men absently. It didn’t look like he was exerting any effort to do it, even though the men were trying their best to hold on to him. “You didn’t say it’s you! I thought it was some naughty ghost. You want me to call Little Sister?”

  No, no, said Ah Ma hastily. Tell the god I came to talk to my family only. Ask if I can talk to Ah Soon.

  Jess opened her mouth. Ah Ma added, Say nicely! Gods, you must ask nicely.

  “She says she wants to talk to Ah Soon, please,” said Jess. “Can she?”

  “Right now?” said the thing grumpily. “We just started only. Come back tomorrow cannot ah?”

  “No,” said Jess, before Ah Ma could tell her what answer to give. Ah Ma could say what she liked. Jess was never coming back here.