Black Water Sister

by Zen Cho

  The remainder of the group appeared to be a mix of ethnicities, and some of them did seem wary. It wasn’t only the Chinese among them who glanced nervously at the altar and the incense urn with its smoking joss sticks.

  “You all must get out,” said Chief Thug to Ah Ku. “Tell everybody.”

  What right does he have to come to this temple and tell people to get out? said Ah Ma, furious. Who sent him? You ask!

  I’m not asking that guy anything, said Jess. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but his friends all have knives! Anyway, I thought you knew who sent him.

  I want to hear him say that bastard’s name!

  “Boss, we are praying right now,” said Ah Ku. “It’s not good if we suddenly stop. The spirits will be angry.”

  A devotee chimed in, “Abang, you should respect people’s religion.” It was AirAsia. He looked apprehensive and his Malay was awkward, like he wasn’t used to speaking it, but he forged on. “This is a sensitive issue. If you try to interfere, you’ll cause offense.”

  This increased the other thugs’ nervousness, though it was probably the prospect of angering the spirits that worried them more than offending religious sensitivities. One of them said to Chief Thug, “Maybe we should let the ceremony finish first.”

  Chief Thug ignored him. He stepped forward, looming over Ah Ku.

  To Ah Ku’s credit, he didn’t flinch or back down, though Jess saw his throat move in a swallow.

  “This is not your land. You all are squatters,” said Chief Thug. “You want to go or not?”

  “We don’t want to fight,” said Ah Ku, spreading his hands. “But we have a right to be here. This temple has been here a long time. You ask anybody, all the neighbors know. Under the law, we can stay here until the judge gives the order—”

  Chief Thug punched him in the face. As Ah Ku’s head snapped back, the thug smashed a fist into his gut.

  The devotees shrieked and scattered. Ah Ku fell to the ground, and the thug started kicking him in the stomach. His expression hadn’t changed at all.

  Ah Soon! screamed Ah Ma.

  Jess’s throat was tight with terror. She looked around for someone to help, but most of the devotees had cleared out. AirAsia was nowhere to be seen. The men who’d been playing the drum and the gong were still there, as were the polo-shirted assistants, but they hung back, uncertain.

  Help him! said Ah Ma. Stop them!

  There was only Jess.

  “Don’t,” she said. Her voice was pathetically wobbly. She cleared her throat. “Leave him alone!”

  Chief Thug ignored her. Every fiber of her being was urging her to turn and run.

  Ah Min, do something! said Ah Ma.

  Jess shot forward before her body could rebel against the dumb orders her brain was giving. Chief Thug had stopped whaling on Ah Ku for a second while he wiped sweat off his brow. Jess bent, slipping her hands under Ah Ku’s arms and dragging him out of reach.

  “Stop it,” she said. “He’s a medium! If you kill him, what do you think his god will do to you?”

  Left to himself, Chief Thug probably would have smacked her out of the way and kept on kicking Ah Ku. But her words went home with his companions. A couple of them stepped in, pulling Chief Thug back.

  The polo shirts took Ah Ku from Jess’s hands. Ah Ku stirred, groaning, so at least he wasn’t dead.

  Ah Ma was going wild. That bastard! He doesn’t want to wait already. His men won’t go until the temple is no more. You saw, that dog was willing to kill Ah Ku!

  Her rage and fear washed over Jess, but they didn’t touch her. Everything had gone very clear. Jess knew she was scared, but it was like her emotions had been packed away behind several protective layers. She felt preternaturally calm.

  She looked up at the polo shirts. “We’ve got to get my uncle to the hospital.”

  The men looked at each other, hesitating.

  “If we go, they all will spoil the temple,” said one of the polo shirts.

  “Would you rather they wreck the temple or wreck us?” hissed Jess. “You can move! Rebuild the temple somewhere else!”

  It was like she had run headfirst into a wall. The devotees didn’t say anything, but they didn’t need to. They radiated negation.

  They’re scared the gods will be angry, said Ah Ma. Gods are like humans. Some will forgive, they won’t hold a grudge. Others don’t give face. If they’re not happy, you will feel it.

  Chief Thug said to the other men, “We’re supposed to clear the site. What are you doing? Wasting time only!”

  “If we kill people, it’ll make trouble,” protested a fellow thug.

  “Who said we’re going to kill people?” said Chief Thug. “Beating is not killing. You think they dare to report? Who are they going to report to? Police won’t help them.”

  Ah Min, said Ah Ma.

  Not now, said Jess. She said aloud to the devotees, “Please. We have to go.”

  Ah Min, repeated Ah Ma. Let me do.

  Do what?

  I can settle these men, said Ah Ma. After you die, you become strong, stronger than the living. I’m not scared of them. But I need a body.

  Pressure descended in Jess’s head. It was like the harbinger of a migraine, or the oppression exuding from a lowering sky when a storm is brewing. She resisted it instinctively, pushing back.

  I don’t understand, she said.

  But she did. She understood fine. She was just frightened of what it would mean to say yes.

  You don’t need to understand, said Ah Ma. I will do everything. But you must let me in.

  “Abang,” said Jess aloud, calling Chief Thug “big brother,” as AirAsia had done. “Why don’t we all go home and wait for the court to decide? If the judge says the temple’s got to go, I’m sure the temple committee will comply. Right?”

  She turned to the polo shirts. But before they could answer, Chief Thug grabbed her and slapped her. He seized her hair, wrenching her head back.

  “You’ll go now!” he said. He started shaking her back and forth. “You think you can tell me what to do? Bitch!”

  The other devotees were shouting, but that was as much as they dared to do. Chief Thug was roaring at her, shaking her, his face purple with rage, spit flying from his lips. She couldn’t tell what he was saying; the world was going past her in a blur. She cut the inside of her mouth on her own teeth, tasting blood.

  Ah Min, let me in. Ah Ma’s voice was calm inside Jess’s head, a steady point to cling to. I can get rid of them. Let me do.

  Beneath the ghost’s calm, Jess heard something that echoed her own feelings—a rage that had been festering for longer than she had been alive.

  OK. OK, said Jess. She was still in control, just. What was it she wanted to say to Ah Ma?

  Oh, yes.

  But you have to promise me one thing, said Jess.

  What? This time there was a trace of impatience in Ah Ma’s voice.

  Fuck him up, said Jess.

  She let go, allowing herself to be subsumed by the pressure in her head.

  A blinding light washed over her. White noise filled her mind—voices she’d never heard, faces she’d never seen, memories that weren’t hers. Someone turned her head easily, as though Chief Thug wasn’t holding a fistful of her hair. Someone spoke through her mouth:

  “Ah Hock”—she was addressing one of the polo-shirted assistants—“you go now. Take Master Lim to Dr. Rozlan. Not the hospital, remember! I will handle this.”

  Confusion crossed Chief Thug’s face. Awe and dread dawned in the assistant’s.

  Jess thought, This must be what it’s like to be God.

  And then the light blotted everything out.

  SEVEN

  Someone was prodding at her eye and it hurt. Jess struck out, snarling, “No!”

  She was in h
er own room in Kor Kor’s house, sitting at the desk with a small vanity mirror in front of her. It was dark outside, but the light was on, and the air from the open window smelled like morning.

  She wasn’t alone. There was someone else reflected in the mirror, standing behind her.

  Jess spun around, but that was a bad idea. Pain scythed through her head. She jammed her hand against her temple, whimpering.

  “Who asked you to move like that?” said Ah Ma.

  “Wait,” said Jess. “How come I can see you?”

  Asked to envision Ah Ma, she would have imagined a cantankerous old woman, but in fact the ghost’s appearance was constantly shifting. One moment Ah Ma was a middle-aged woman, like the aunties who crowded Kor Kor’s living room, only less well-dressed—Kor Kor’s friends wore nice dresses and skirts and capri pants, good quality and new-looking. Middle-aged Ah Ma wore a faded pink T-shirt and black shorts, the kind of cheap clothes sold at pasar malam.

  But the next moment her face shimmered and she turned young, around Jess’s age. Now she was in laborer’s clothes—a wide-brimmed hat, long-sleeved top and trousers. Her skin was tanned a deep brown from the sun, but apart from that, she looked familiar. She looked like a shorter, less well-fed version of Jess.

  That was creepy, but fortunately it didn’t last long. Jess blinked, and Ah Ma was old again. Her skin went from dewy to wrinkled, her hair from black to gray and back again.

  The only thing that stayed the same was her expression, which was exactly what Jess would’ve expected. She looked like something had crawled up her butt and died in 1953 and she’d never gotten over it.

  “You want to wake up ah?” said Ah Ma. “I haven’t finished yet.” Her voice sounded strange coming from outside Jess’s head.

  Which was throbbing. In fact, Jess ached all over, and there was something weird going on with her vision. She closed her eyes again, opened them—then, as an experiment, squeezed first one eye shut and then the other.

  She was seeing two different images at once. Her left eye saw her room, with her cousins’ old posters of race cars and soccer players on the wall, and Ah Ma frowning at her. Her right eye saw the same room, posters and all—but no Ah Ma.

  Ah Ma peered at her suspiciously. “You look you want to vomit like that. Let me go inside. Then I can get the dustbin.”

  She came closer, looking determined. Ah Ma intended, Jess realized, to enter her and take over her body. Jess squirmed away until her back hit the desk.

  “No!” she said. “I’m not going to puke. I’m fine.” She did in fact feel nauseated, but she would have thrown herself out of the window before she let Ah Ma possess her again.

  She closed her right eye, which helped. She still felt incredibly rough, but seeing only one version of the world steadied her stomach.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “What happened last night?”

  “What happened? That bastard sent his samseng to beat Ah Ku. You saw what.”

  “I mean, after that,” said Jess. “After I”—she swallowed—“let you in.”

  “Oh, I got rid of those men,” said Ah Ma. “I told you I’ll settle them.” She made a fist.

  It should have been funny. Ah Ma was tiny, no higher than Jess’s shoulder. But it wasn’t.

  “You beat them up?” said Jess. Except Ah Ma had been doing it with her body, so . . . “I beat them up?”

  “This type of man, you cannot negotiate,” said Ah Ma. “They’re not scared of anything. You must beat them, then only they’ll respect you.”

  “You’re kidding me,” said Jess. “How could I even—that big guy was twice my size!”

  “You don’t believe? You look at your hands and see.”

  Jess looked down. She raised her right hand to her face, gingerly straightening the fingers. The bruising on her knuckles was already going from red to purple.

  “No matter how big that samseng is, he is a human,” said Ah Ma. “I am a ghost. It’s not the same.”

  “No,” said Jess. “I can see that.”

  “You’re OK already? Let me in,” said Ah Ma. “I haven’t done the other eye yet.”

  Jess leaned away from her. Ah Ma couldn’t actually possess her without her consent while she was awake, she reminded herself. “What are you talking about? What have you been doing with my eyes?”

  “Don’t touch!” snapped Ah Ma. “You can see me is because I’m opening your eyes. But I only did one, then you woke up and I couldn’t do already.”

  Jess was inspecting herself in the mirror. When she shut her left eye, opening her right, Ah Ma vanished, but she could see the large red dot on her left eyelid. A red marker pen lay on the desk—and there was red ink on Jess’s fingers too.

  “Did you draw this on me?”

  “I did it so you can see,” said Ah Ma. “When you get the new idol of the god, it’s empty. You have to open the eyes first, then only the spirit can go in. Right now you’re like the new idol, blind, cannot do anything. How are you supposed to be my medium if you cannot even see the spirits?”

  Jess stared, forgetting to close her right eye, so that she saw two worlds at once. The world without Ah Ma, peaceful and blessed—and the fucked-up actual world, in which she was being haunted by the worst ghost ever. “What do you mean, how am I supposed to be your medium?”

  “You’re supposed to use the god’s blood to open the eyes,” said Ah Ma. “But don’t have god’s blood, so I used the red pen. This Ah Ku, he always thinks you have to buy special things to do the rituals. He doesn’t listen to me. If you want to do, if you have the strength, you can do it. You don’t need all those expensive things.”

  Jess ignored this. “I’m not going to be your medium.”

  Ah Ma assumed a patient expression. It did not look natural on her. “Ah Ma told you, without a body, I cannot do anything. You saw what. That bastard doesn’t care! Even at the temple, he’s willing to beat people. Ah Ku is a good boy, but he cannot face up to that bastard. If I don’t help, there’ll be no more temple.”

  “If Ah Ku can’t face him, what makes you think I can?”

  “You don’t need to do anything.” Ah Ma didn’t even seem annoyed by Jess’s resistance. It was as if Jess was a toddler protesting bedtime. “Ah Ma will handle it. You just relax only, like last night. Come, let me go inside and finish your eyes. Then we can call Ah Ku and tell him he don’t need to worry, Ah Ma will handle everything.”

  It seemed to Jess there must be simpler solutions to the problem of the temple than picking a fight with the fifth richest man in Malaysia. “Can’t you just move the altars? It’s not like the temple has to be there, right?”

  Ah Ma said, in a voice like a shutter closing, “Better not talk about things you don’t understand. Do what Ah Ma tells you, enough already.”

  “No,” said Jess. “I don’t want to be your medium.”

  She braced herself for scoldings, guilt trips, emotional blackmail—all the tools with which Asian elders were wont to apply pressure to their wayward descendants.

  But Ah Ma laughed. “You think it’s so simple? Say you don’t want, enough already? Nobody wants to be a medium. Medium has to suffer. If you can choose, who wants to do? But it’s not you who chooses.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Jess.

  Her Asian friends had always considered her lucky for having parents who weren’t that exercised about her choice of career. Mom and Dad were anxious that she stay out of trouble and get decent grades at school, but compared to some of her friends’ parents, they hadn’t really pushed her. They’d been pleased but slightly taken aback when she got into Harvard: “Who knew you’re so smart!” Dad had told her, with more candor than tact.

  So much for being lucky, thought Jess wildly. It figured that she’d avoided getting nagged to go to law school, only to get nagged to become a vessel for the dead.


  “Ah Ma was like you,” said the source of the nagging. “Didn’t want to do.”

  Jess blinked. “You were a medium too?”

  But it made sense. Jess should have guessed it. That was why Ah Ma was so obsessed with the garden temple. It was the family business.

  “I told you what. I caught snake disease,” said Ah Ma. “Almost wanted to die already, but the god saved me. In return I had to serve her. What to do? These matters, fate decides. That’s why you can be a medium also, because you are my granddaughter.”

  Jess was busy processing this new information. “You were a medium, Ah Ku’s a medium. Was Mom . . . ?” It was a profoundly weird thought. Of course Jess knew in theory that Mom had had a whole life before she’d had her, but it was hard to really believe it.

  Ah Ma sniffed. “Your mother! No lah. She’s useless. Cannot see, cannot hear. Not good for women to be mediums. When you’re dirty, at that time of the month, the gods don’t like it. If a spirit enters you and they realize you’re not clean, they’ll suddenly leave. Then don’t know whether your soul will come back into your body or not. Very dangerous.”

  “You’re not really selling it to me here,” said Jess.

  “If I can choose another medium, I will also,” said Ah Ma. “But there’s no choice. Now I understand. After I died, I woke up and you were there. I didn’t know what was happening also. But must be the god sent me to you.”

  Jess was screwed if this became a matter of divine diktat. “How do you know? Did the god tell you that?”

  No answer. Jess saw a glimmer of hope.

  “It must be a mistake,” she said. “Why would the god appoint me as your medium? I’m totally unsuitable. You said so yourself. I can’t even speak Hokkien properly.”

  Ah Ma waved a dismissive hand. “That’s a small thing lah. I’ve been talking to you for a short time only, already you can speak better. You saw what, when you were talking to Ah Ku, you understood everything. Malay also you can manage now, right? You could follow what those samseng were saying yesterday.”