by Zen Cho
“Shouldn’t you guys be going?” she said. “Ask Kor Kor’s church friends what they think of charms.”
She felt strangely deflated as she shut herself into her bedroom. Of course there was nothing wrong with her parents attending Kor Kor’s small group for the food and a discreet snoop around Penang’s fanciest neighborhood. They could even be attending for the Christianity. That would be fine. Wouldn’t it?
Jess found that it wouldn’t. Yesterday—half an hour ago, even—she would have said with complete confidence that her parents would never consider converting to Christianity. Now that certainty was taken away.
She was surprised by how much it shook her. Religion wasn’t something Jess would’ve said was important to her and her parents, in either its presence or its absence. But the idea that Mom and Dad might change that dramatically made her feel as though she didn’t really know them. As though they were leaving her behind. She felt like a child standing at a station, watching a train pull away from the platform with her parents in it.
What else did she not know about her family? Her assumptions about their relationship to religion had been wrong. Religion must have been important to Mom once upon a time, with a mother and a brother who were both spirit mediums.
And gangsters, thought Jess. Don’t forget the part where they’re gangsters.
Maybe Ah Ku was right.
“Better you go back to US,” he had said as they tidied up the mess Jess had made. “Safer.”
“Couldn’t Ng Chee Hin find me in America?” said Jess. “It’s not that far away. Especially for a millionaire. He probably has a private jet.”
“Who’s talking about Ng Chee Hin?” said Ah Ku. “You let us handle him. He is a human being only. You should be worrying about this.” He nodded at what was left of the altar.
“You think I’ve offended the god?” said Jess. Ah Ku’s expression rendered an answer unnecessary. “OK, stupid question. But I can’t escape a god by moving, can I? They don’t even need private jets.”
“In these matters, location is very important,” said Ah Ku. “This big sister, she likes this place only. Other places, she doesn’t want to go. That’s why we had to fight that bastard no matter what, even if he tried to bully us. She is not willing to move.”
He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “But now, might as well we move the temple. The other deities are more flexible.”
“You think the goddess might agree to move now that her altar’s gone?” said Jess.
The look Ah Ku gave her was familiar. Jess had seen it, at different points, on Ah Ma, Mom, Dad, Kor Kor, Kor Tiao and their friends. It was a look of realization that here was an alien to whom even the most basic things, things everyone understood, would have to be explained.
“No,” said Ah Ku. “We didn’t want to move is because we were scared the big sister will be angry. But now you spoiled her shrine. So makes no difference if we move also. Either way, she will want to punish us.
“But mustn’t be hasty,” he added. “See how first. We can rebuild the shrine, pray to the god, ask her to forgive.” He sounded singularly unconvinced.
Jess had to give Ah Ku a lift back to his house. His motorcycle had been stolen.
“Probably they all took when they were running away,” said Ah Ku. “It’s so old, nobody else would want.” He was remarkably philosophical about having been robbed by his fellow gang brothers. “If this is my punishment, considered very lenient already.”
His house was a terrace house with a concrete yard and a stainless steel gate, blinding in the sun. Jess pulled the brake and said:
“What about Ah Ma?”
There was a red altar in Ah Ku’s front yard. Jess tried not to look at it.
“Maybe she’ll have some idea about how to deal with the god,” agreed Ah Ku. “She was the medium.”
“No, I mean,” said Jess, “she’s going to be mad at me, isn’t she? For messing up her plans.”
“Oh, that one you don’t need to worry,” said Ah Ku. “At the end of the day, you’re Ah Ma’s granddaughter. You’re in this bad position, how can she not give chance?”
He paused, looking like he wanted to say more, but nothing came at first. The silence hung heavy between them. Jess thought he was going to ask her for money, but instead Ah Ku rummaged in his pocket and held out a couple of crumpled blue-green bills.
“Nah,” he said. “I don’t have angpow on me, but you take.”
Over Jess’s protests he folded the money into her hands. Jess’s initial position was that she didn’t need money and he shouldn’t give her any. When this failed, she fell back to:
“You don’t have to give me a hundred ringgit. That’s too much.”
Ah Ku waved this away too. “Small thing only lah. Aiyah, nowadays hundred ringgit cannot buy much. It’s for good luck. Give your mother my regards.”
“My mother doesn’t know I’ve been meeting up with you,” said Jess.
“Oh yeah. Forgot,” said Ah Ku. “Maybe I’ll see her another time. You look after yourself, yeah? Don’t stress. All problems can solve one.”
If the money hadn’t given it away, his voice would have, with its put-on optimism, gentle and unpersuaded. It was the tone in which one soothes a man on his deathbed, when lies no longer matter.
Lying in bed that night, Jess remembered Ah Ku’s seamed face, stamped with the conviction of her doom. Her skin prickled beneath her blanket, foreboding washing over her.
If she could go back to America, she thought drowsily, if she could go home, she would. But there was nothing to go back to. Her family was here; new tenants lived in what had been their apartment. Her friends were scattered. And Sharanya . . .
Sharanya was coming to her, kind of, eventually. All Jess had to do was find a way to move to Singapore, once all of this was over. Home wasn’t a place, Sharanya always said. It was people.
Jess reached for her phone, flicking open WhatsApp. Sharanya had forwarded an old group photo including the two of them. It wasn’t a great shot—Sharanya had red-eye and Jess had blinked at exactly the wrong moment.
The messages from Sharanya read:
Looking through old photos and found these dorks
I miss you
Jess remembered when the picture had been taken. It was at the café where they had first met, both of them nervous freshmen tagging along with new friends to a meetup neither felt in the mood for. The café had been nothing special, the meetup as awkward as Jess had dreaded it might be. But still the encounter was a warm golden moment in her memory, flooded with autumn sunshine. Sharanya’s hair had glowed in it, rich shades of brown and red shining out of the black . . .
Jess fell asleep smiling.
* * *
• • •
IN HER DREAM she was running.
It was nighttime. Soft earth squelched under her feet, long grass scratching her calves. Her legs ached. Her chest felt like it was being squeezed in an inexorable grip.
But she couldn’t stop. There was someone behind her.
She was in an open space, a field or something, hurtling toward a dark mass. It wasn’t till she was nearly up against it that she saw it was a stand of trees. The jungle swallowed her whole.
The canopy overhead blotted out the moonlight. The undergrowth slowed her down. She heard her pursuer bellowing like a bull, enraged by the same stray logs on which she stubbed her toes, the slippery leaf matter beneath their feet.
Fear quickened her pace. She stumbled over a root, twisting her ankle, and fell heavily against a tree. The bark scraped her face as she pushed off.
She struggled to her feet. Her face was wet, blood seeping from the raw skin. Agony flared from her ankle as she started to hobble, picking up speed.
But it was no good. The delay had cost her. Her pursuer caught up with her.
He did not reproach her and
she did not plead with him. Their relationship was a long-standing enmity; they knew each other too well for words to be useful at this point. Anything that was left to be said between them would be said through action—the arm upraised, the face averted, the hand warding off the blow.
She was scrambling away, still thinking she might live to repeat this scene, as she had survived so many scenes before, when she saw the knife in his hand.
It was then that she saw what was coming. Terror froze her flailing limbs in place, but she had her voice. She was screaming when he slit her throat.
Jess woke with her mouth open in a soundless shriek. It was dark. The Black Water Sister stood at the foot of her bed.
The god leaned over. There were beads of perspiration on her upper lip, even though the AC was on. Jess could smell her.
It was the smell that turned Jess’s stomach. It was the same smell that came off everyone at the end of a Malaysian day—the sweaty funk that filled buses and wafted off kids in uniform as they headed home from school. It made everything too real.
The god touched Jess’s forehead. The back of Jess’s neck burned where the god had held her before. It was like having hot wax dripped on her, individual points on her skin blossoming into pain. Jess yelped, trying to jerk away, but the god’s fingertips on her forehead wouldn’t let her move.
“You saw what happened,” said the god. “Now you know. You think you can run from me?”
She lifted her fingers and let Jess go, and Jess woke up for real.
She was alone in her bedroom, drenched in sweat despite the AC. She rolled over, the sheets sticking to her, and lunged for the trash can.
She didn’t throw up, but it was a close thing. She lay on her front, panting and swallowing, as weak as if she had been felled by a fever.
The god’s words echoed in her head. Now you know.
Jess wanted to get up, get a drink, creep into her parents’ room and climb into their bed, as she used to do when she had nightmares as a kid. But fear kept her pinned to the bed, listening to the sound of her own breath. At that moment she would have been glad to hear Ah Ma’s voice, just to know she wasn’t alone.
It never came. Jess stayed where she was, tucked up in her blanket as though it would keep her safe, until the lightening sky through the window heralded the end of the night.
FOURTEEN
What Jess really wanted was a Milo and unchallenging human conversation, unrelated to gods or ghosts. But she emerged from her room at around seven a.m. into a quiet house. Kor Kor was apparently sleeping in for once.
Jess could have tried calling Sharanya, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make it through the call without breaking down and telling her everything. And she didn’t want to tell Sharanya anything. She didn’t want to think about what had happened. Talking about last night would make it feel too real.
The Milo at least was available. Jess made herself a large mug, inhaling the comforting milky malt chocolate scent.
She would answer Sharanya’s WhatsApp messages. She’d fallen asleep before she had been able to reply. She opened the app on her phone.
What happened yesterday? Are you OK?
The message was from Sherng. Jess stared.
She hadn’t decided what she was going to do about Sherng. Keep her head down and hope he didn’t report her to the police, probably.
She’d assumed he wouldn’t want to have anything more to do with her. Apparently she was wrong.
She shouldn’t respond. Ah Ku would say it was a setup—would remind her that, at the end of the day, Sherng was the son of a gang boss.
But he had stayed at the garden temple when he could have run away. He had asked her what was going on, as though he trusted her to tell the truth.
Her fingers hovered over the screen.
She had to engage with Sherng, she told herself. If she didn’t explain what had happened last night—if she left him thinking she wanted him dead—she might find herself running into Chief Thug and his friends the next time she went out. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to go out. How had Ah Ku put it? His men will come to your house at night and catch you.
There were way too many things lying in wait to catch Jess at night as it was.
Shouldn’t I be asking if you’re OK? Jess replied.
What did Ah Ku know? He was the one who’d tried to poison her. All Sherng had done was try to interest her in his gentrification project.
If she was being honest with herself, despite everything, on some level she’d enjoyed talking to Sherng at his café. It wasn’t that she was attracted to him—thankfully. Being able to be attracted to men would have made Jess’s life easier overall, but not on this specific occasion.
It had just been nice hanging out with someone her age, someone who was more like her than her parents. Jess could guess what kind of restaurants Sherng went to, what he did for fun, what he was watching on Netflix. Even the fact that he almost certainly had a Netflix subscription marked him out as a member of the same species as Jess, a species with which she’d had minimal in-person contact since she’d graduated.
Sure, Sherng was rich, successful and socially adept, and she was a depressed shut-in who was only getting out of the house because of her dead grandmother’s posthumous mission of revenge. Jess still had more in common with him than with anyone else she knew in Penang.
Sherng was up early, or maybe he hadn’t slept. His response came promptly:
This is going to sound stupid. But was it you trying to choke me? You didn’t seem like yourself.
Jess typed, It’s hard to explain. Can we meet? NOT at the temple. You decide. You can bring a bodyguard.
It struck her that that could be misread.
I’m not going to do anything, she added. It’s just in case. I don’t think she’s coming back for a while, though.
Sherng’s reply said, She?
Can I tell you in person?
This time Sherng took a while to get back to her, long enough that Jess put down her phone and went upstairs to brush her teeth and change out of her pajamas.
Her reflection in the mirror startled her. Her eyes were hollow, her skin grayish. She looked more like a dead person than Ah Ma did.
She wasn’t used to being displeased with the way she looked. It offended her sense of self—and it might make Mom ask questions. She spent some time restoring her face to something that might belong to a youthful, reasonably happy person, covering up the marks left by sleep deprivation.
When she got back to her phone half an hour later, Sherng had answered.
OK. Meet at Tau?
Tau was a restaurant specializing in soy-based food and drinks (“We serve everything starting with ‘tau’!” said their Instagram profile). Jess was eating kaya toast, scrolling through photos of tofu-flavored gelato and braised pork in soy sauce, when Mom came in.
“Yesterday how ah, when you went to the café?” said Mom. “Forgot to ask last night.”
“Did you?” said Jess absently. “I thought I told you. I worked on some applications. Made some progress.”
“You can focus in the café? It’s not too noisy?”
There was something wrong. Mom hovered by the table, picking stuff up and putting it down again. She was radiating nervous energy.
Jess could ask what was up. But she felt exhausted, bled dry by everything that had happened. Maybe it would be OK to leave Mom to deal with her own feelings for once. Couldn’t she talk to Dad about them? Wasn’t that what people got married for?
“It was fine,” said Jess. “How was last night?”
“Last night?” Mom seemed to have forgotten she’d gone out. “Oh, Kor Kor’s small group? It was OK. Nothing much.”
She sat down. To Jess’s horror, she saw Mom was welling up.
“Kor Kor is lucky,” said Mom. “Her children are far
away, but they tell her everything. Ching Yee calls her every day, you know! What she’s eating for lunch also she tells her mom. What to do? I always want you to feel you can tell me anything. I must have done something wrong if you don’t trust me. How to blame you?”
Mom was full-on weeping by now.
“What didn’t I tell you?” said Jess. She found the rapidity with which Mom had gone from zero to meltdown as irritating as it was alarming. But at the thought of all the secrets she was keeping from Mom—how justified she was in reproaching Jess for her lack of candor, even if she didn’t know it—Jess softened. She got up and went round the table, putting her arm around Mom.
“Hey, come on,” she said. “What is it?”
Her mind was riffling through the things she didn’t want Mom to know. What was the worst secret her parents could learn?
The truth about Sharanya, of course, and what that meant about Jess. That was still the worst. Jess would rather Mom and Dad knew she’d spent the afternoon yesterday trying to strangle a man than that they find out about Sharanya. They would probably be more understanding about the former than the latter.
Mom spoke, but her voice was so clogged with tears she had to repeat herself before Jess understood.
“Ah Kim told me she saw you,” she said.
“OK,” said Jess. Ah Kim must be someone Mom had seen at the small group meeting, one of the aunties who regularly crowded Kor Kor’s living room. “Which one is Ah Kim again . . . ?”
“My sister-in-law,” said Mom. “Ah Ku’s wife. She phoned just now. Said why you didn’t come inside and greet her when you came to her house? So long never saw you and you didn’t pay your respects. She wasn’t happy you didn’t give her face. Told me off.”
Jess’s heart sped up.
But she was good at hiding. She let her face relax into an expression of apology, free of defensiveness or suspicion.
“Oh jeez,” she said. “Sorry I let you in for it. I didn’t even realize she was there. How is Ah Kim?”
“Why you didn’t tell me you went to Ah Ku’s house?” said Mom. “You used to be such a good girl, so open. Now you meet my brother also I must find out from Ah Kim. What more you haven’t told me?”
