The Witch's Market

by Mingmei Yip

  But I was baffled about what to do with my suddenly discovered possible power. It was even scarier than the skull. My pretense about being a witch was simply to lure students to enroll in my course. Did my will really break the string, or was it just a coincidence? I was clueless.

  So I tried a little experiment in my office by focusing my concentration on a teacup on my desk. In a moment it seemed to slide back a fraction of an inch, but it did not crack. Was I just fooling myself?

  That night I had a dream. Dressed in a witch’s outfit complete with black cap, pointed hat, and a broom, I wandered around an island covered by ancient ruins. Instead of flying, I was sweeping the ground. Disturbingly, the more I swept, the more I discovered that the ground was made up of human skulls. As I was wondering why this was happening, a towering, thousand-year-old tree, no doubt the only living witness to whatever massacre had produced the skulls, suddenly spoke.

  “Miss Chinese Witch, you seek to know the deep mystery of the universe.”

  I put down my broom and looked up at him—if a tree can be a “him.”

  “Listen carefully,” said the tree. “You’re now on an island off North Africa. This is the city of virgin witches. . . .”

  I cast a curious glance at the faceless faces below me. “How can you tell from the skulls that they were virgin girls?”

  “Because I witnessed the ritual carried out here nearly a thousand years ago.”

  “What ritual?”

  “Be patient, young Miss Chinese Witch. The virgins were to accompany the King in death. Deeper down are the rest of their skeletons.”

  When I was about to sweep away the soil under the skulls, there was a loud crack of thunder, followed by drenching rains.

  Lord Tree’s sonorous voice was almost indistinguishable from the hissing rain. “You will awake now. Find this island and come to it. There you will find answers.”

  As I saw the rain trickle down the tree bark and onto the skulls I jolted awake, the sheets soaked with my sweat.

  I knew that dreams held knowledge because my grandmother Laolao had been an expert dream interpreter. But was this a real premonition, or just the result of reading too many strange books in the university library? I turned the bedroom light on and took several deep breaths, but the dream seemed no less real. Surprising myself, I decided I would follow the talking tree’s advice. But how was I to find the island—and did I really want to? An island of sacrificed virgins . . . did it make sense to follow a nightmare?

  The next day I went to the library to find information about North Africa. If the dream island was real, I figured that it must be part of the Spanish Carnarias Archipelago, or the Canaries in English. These islands are just off the north coast of Africa, close to Morocco.

  I mouthed the exotic names of the seven islands: La Gomera, La Palma, Hierro, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and Canaria. I could not imagine any reason why I would have dreamed about such strange and distant places. How foolish to trust a dream. And yet, the dream had been very specific, about a place I’d never imagined even existed, let alone thought of traveling to. Yet Laolao had believed in dreams and quite often she was right about what they meant. According to her they held the mysteries of fate.

  As I read more, it all seemed even stranger. These islands had been conquered in turn by the Dutch, British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, and through all these changes had been the hiding place of vicious pirates. And, it seemed, there were also witches, though exactly what they did my sources did not reveal.

  The indigenous inhabitants, a white-skinned and blue-eyed tribe, were either killed by invaders or sold into slavery. But I imagined that some of their secret knowledge had been passed on and somehow survived despite the bustle of trade and tourism.

  3

  The Lineage of the Shamaness

  Whenever I was worried about the future I felt again the pain of losing my grandmother, Laolao. When she was alive, I relied on her advice about all sorts of things. Now I wished I could ask her to predict my future with Ivan. Would we, despite my reservations, end up marrying, having kids, and living happily ever after? Or would we marry and eventually head for divorce? Either he would have an affair or I would tire of his constant money craziness. Brenda always pointed out that if I were divorced from him I’d get plenty of alimony and child support payments. But I was not going to marry someone just to get alimony.

  I’d trusted Laolao’s prediction, for she’d enjoyed a reputation among the Chinese for accuracy, based on her skill with the I Ching, the ancient 3,000-year-old Book of Changes.

  As a shamaness, Laolao had many supernatural talents: feng shui, fortune-telling, mind reading, even accompanying people on journeys to the underworld—or so she’d told me. Another talent she was hired for was daxiaoren, beating the petty people. When we lived in Hong Kong, Laolao supported all of us by performing this ritual. Her “office” was a deserted space under the Goose Neck Bridge in the Wanchai area that was occupied mainly by the poor: coolies, street vendors, construction workers, even prostitutes serving British sailors. Probably wanting to keep us away from her rough clients, Laolao never allowed Brenda and me to go with her. But one time we secretly followed her to her “office.” But instead of finding her rituals scary, we found them funny.

  Around six, my grandma Laolao sat on a small wooden stool under the Goose Neck Bridge and waited for the workers pouring out from the nearby buildings, factories, and restaurants. We could hear as they told her their problems, often about petty people spreading malicious rumors about them or otherwise stirring up trouble. Many were getting a hard time from family members. Brenda and I had to suppress giggles when one man, a particularly handsome one, said he had a mistress who was pushing him to leave his wife. He couldn’t decide if he wanted Laolao to “beat” his wife or his mistress—so either one would leave or leave him alone.

  Laolao had explained to us that “beating the petty person” is a very old Chinese tradition. Implements used in the ritual included a small stool, writing paper, paper cutouts resembling human figures, a pair of shoes (preferably the owner’s), pork fat, green beans, sesame seeds, duck eggs, and a small tiger statue.

  Laolao would ask her troubled clients to put their enemies’ name and age on a piece of paper. Then the victims would tell their grudges to Lord Tiger, known to be the protector against evil spirits, demons, villains, as well as the bringer of good luck and wealth. To bribe the tiger, she would grease the statute’s mouth with pork fat, then offer him the duck egg. Laolao would sprinkle the tiger with green beans and sesame seeds to symbolize the falling away of problems. After that, she’d use her wooden clog to beat the paper figure, representing the petty person, as she cursed, loudly calling out the villain’s name and saying:

  I beat you little man, so your breath has no place to vent!

  I beat your little hands, so they can’t draw money from the bank!

  I beat your little feet, so wearing shoes will make them bleed!

  I beat your head, so fortune will leave you sad!

  I’ll beat your little tongue, so you can’t chew meat and might as well be a monk!

  I’ll beat your little heart, so your life is like the bitterest tart!

  The next day, more often than not, the client would find that petty person—a gossiper, backstabber, troublemaker, or husband stealer—was in trouble or had fallen ill. By helping others in this way, Laolao also helped us by being able to bring home an extra dish for dinner—soy sauce chicken, pepper and salt shrimp, glistening roast duck. If business was extra good, the dish would upgrade to my favorite—crispy suckling pig that made a crack, crack, crack sound when I chewed on it!

  Eventually Laolao was able to quit her honorable profession of “beating the petty person.” She had become a rich and successful shamaness with a real office in Causeway Bay and upgraded her business to the less sordid one of communicating with the dead. Laolao boasted that not only could she see those “no longer existing,” the re
spected dead, she could also charge people basically for talking to the air. But when I asked her if she really possessed the yin eye, her answer was always evasive like this: “How do you think I raised your mother into such a big woman to give birth to you and your sister?”

  So the secret of what she believed about her yin eye, she carried with her to the yin world.

  Her new “office” was indoors, under a staircase instead of under a bridge. In old, dilapidated buildings in Hong Kong, spaces below staircases were mostly used as storage areas, stuffed with discarded furniture, worn-out clothes, and bags whose contents were long forgotten. Sometimes the landlord would clear this space and rent it cheaply to a single man as residence or to a family to be used as their dining room. In Laolao’s case, it was for meeting with clients.

  In this cozy—from a child’s point of view—little area, Laolao set up a small, round, wooden table with three stools and a lamp. On the walls she pasted lurid pictures of Daoist gods and goddesses. Here Laolao summoned the loved ones of the bereaved. Blindfolded with a red cloth, she’d tilt her head to show she was listening very carefully, then repeat messages in the loved ones’ voices.

  As word got around regarding Laolao’s talent of speaking for the dead, her business thrived. Because people would get sore muscles very quickly in the cramped space, they’d quickly pay and leave to make room for the next customer.

  When the dead spoke through Laolao, their words were always simple and curt. Her explanation was that she couldn’t let the dead dwell in her for too long since that would exhaust her and endanger her health. She emphasized over and over that, though paid, she was in fact doing her customers a huge favor by renting her body to their dead relatives and friends.

  Laolao had once told me about a young woman who had come to her to find her deceased lover. But this was one of the rare times that Laolao couldn’t speak for the ghost. The woman got very angry, calling Laolao an imposter and demanding her money back.

  I asked my grandmother what had happened, and she said, “It’s not that I couldn’t reach her lover; it was because the man was a murderer and I didn’t want to deal with him!”

  Before I had a chance to ask more, Laolao continued. “Of course I could still let him talk to her through me. But I’d found out he was a con man planning to kill her to get her money. But then he put the poison into her mother’s soup by mistake. She should have told me that he’d been caught and was executed—she was lucky to be rid of the bastard.

  “He reincarnated as a cat and was hit by a bus. You know, Eileen, I couldn’t possibly let my customer talk to a cat’s ghost.”

  “Why not?”

  “Am I supposed to just sit here and meow?!”

  I never found out if Laolao made this all up for fun or really believed it.

  And soon after that, Laolao died.

  It happened on a day when my grandmother was seeing a customer as usual. A Mrs. Song had asked Laolao to speak to her stillborn baby. But the negative qi emanating from Mrs. Song’s body made Laolao extremely uncomfortable. However, since Laolao had already meditated and been paid to open her yin eye, she felt obligated to continue. All at once, she clutched her throat and her face turned paper white as she exclaimed, “Ahh . . . Ahh . . . Ahhhh . . .” as if choked by invisible hands. Under the eyes of waiting customers, she slid to the floor, dead.

  Laolao had never seen a doctor in her life, so I had no idea about the state of her health, or what caused her to die so suddenly. The only explanation I ever received was from Laolao’s friend, who told me it was Mrs. Song’s dead baby who’d taken Laolao’s life.

  “But how, since he was a baby and dead at that?”

  “Ghost babies can be very powerful. You know parents have to appease their baby’s ghost by giving a proper burial and hiring monks to chant sutras for its soul. Sometimes people adopt ghost babies to harass their enemies.”

  “How can that be?”

  “It was after Mrs. Song learned that her husband had been cheating that she lost the baby. After the baby died, she secretly fed her baby’s ghost with all kinds of goodies so his yin qi built up and he could go out to harass her husband’s mistress.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The mistress felt her body being pierced by hundreds of needles—the ghost baby used her body as a target for throwing daggers. The pain became so severe that she couldn’t have sex, so finally the man left her and went back to his wife, Mrs. Song.”

  “You really think this is what happened?”

  “Oh, I know these things.” She paused and went on. “Then this ghost baby also killed your grandmother.”

  “Why?”

  “That was when Laolao tried to talk to him. Somehow the baby ghost mistook your grandmother for his father’s mistress and scared poor Laolao to death.”

  Even though this sounded like complete nonsense, it was still very scary. So, despite Laolao’s wish, I decided not to carry on her lineage as a shamaness but instead to study it safely as a scholar.

  One time before her death, when I asked if the dead really spoke through her, Laolao’s answer was, “Just because a person is dead doesn’t mean he or she turns mute!”

  “But do they really speak through you?”

  “That’s not for me to decide. I’m only doing my job as a medium.” She cast me a chiding glance. “It’s impossible to find out, so don’t even try.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the answer lies beyond this world.”

  Dissatisfied with my grandmother’s evasions, I decided to find out for myself, by becoming a scholar and researching shamanism and witchcraft.

  Laolao did not approve of my choice of profession. “Why be a professor lecturing to bored students? Why not be a shamaness like me? Besides, I make more than a professor.”

  “I like to teach—” I began.

  “Can you teach about the dead?” She rolled her eyes. “Dead means dead, period!”

  “Then how come you talk to them?”

  “I don’t. They come to me. I just lend them my body.”

  “So, is what you do real or not?”

  “Everything in this world and the other is real.” She knocked hard on the table, then my head. “See? Things and people exist. The dead are the same people; the only difference is that we talk about them in the past tense.”

  I didn’t understand her logic, so the argument ended. She never gave me a straight answer and so this woman with whom I spent much of my early life remained a puzzle to me.

  PART TWO

  4

  Journey to the West

  Timothy Lee and the dean granted my request of a one-year leave and found some grant funds to modestly support me. Hearing the good news, I immediately called Ivan to discuss my tentative plans to travel to places I’d never even known existed until a few weeks ago.

  He paused for a moment before asking, “Eileen, you really want to go to this non-place—why not Paris, or at least Madrid?”

  I couldn’t tell him that it was because of what a tree had told me in a dream.

  “I need to do fieldwork so I can write a book. Otherwise, no tenure and no job.”

  “Then marry me and I’ll support you.”

  I raised my voice. “I’m not joking, Ivan!”

  “Neither am I. But what exactly are you going to do there? When will you be back?”

  “Maybe in a year. I need to find witches, interview them, learn what they do, collect some of their juju stuff. Then I can write my book on comparative witchcraft. Maybe I’ll learn how to put a spell on you too.”

  “You know I’d wait forever for you. But a whole year? Geezzzz!”

  “Ivan, I don’t expect you to wait.” But I stopped short of telling him he would be free to pursue any woman he wanted—or that I might find a new man.

  I figured all women were as selfish as I. Even though he’s your ex, you still want him to think about you, be ready to dash to your side if you need help, and ideally,
remain single the rest of his life nursing his broken heart, because he will never find your equal. Or secretly hope you’ll change your mind someday and return to him.

  I could not suppress a giggle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing, Ivan, it’s not about you. Anyway, I’ll come back. Maybe you can visit me there.”

  “What gave you this crazy idea?”

  “Well, it’s hard to explain, but it started with a dream. . . .”

  Now he sounded a bit angry. “So, you decide to leave me and go to a few strange islands you know nothing about all by yourself. All of this because of a dream?”

  “Sorry, Ivan, but I’ve already booked my ticket.”

  “All right, then. I know how stubborn you are.”

  There was a pause before he spoke again. “Will you be safe there?”

  “I’ll be very careful. I speak Spanish, remember, so at least I can ask around if I get lost.”

  I actually felt a little disappointed that all of sudden Ivan wasn’t persuading me to stay. Was this a sign that we really were breaking up, this time for good? That while I was away, Ivan was actually going to look for another girl? It would be my fault, not his.

  I decided to put Ivan and our uncertain relationship out of my mind and busied myself preparing for my trip to the Canary Islands.

  There seemed to be lots of supernatural stories about the islands. They were even mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey. Legend recounted how, borne on gentle breezes, many had sailed to their doom on these islands, believed to hold golden apples hidden in a cave. The cave was supposedly guarded by beautiful nymphs who were actually wild animals ready to rip the sailors apart.

  I wasn’t worried about wild animals but wasn’t sure how safe the countryside would be for a foreign woman traveling by herself. So I decided to stay on the Grand Canary Island first, since it seemed the most modernized. Then I’d figure out the rest of my itinerary.