HOME by Diana Xin
Grand Auntie Du passed away in her sleep on a bright April morning when the paperboy was parking his bike over her tulips and the live-in nurse was humming to Cat Stevens downstairs. The last breath sighed past her chapped lips. A ladybug crawling along the wall opened its wings and lighted on the window screen. The blue curtains rustled in the breeze as death waited for the nurse to come discover it.
Ooh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world, sang Cat Stevens and the nurse, and I’ll always remember you like a child, girl.
On the day of the funeral a week later, Mr. Chang returned from his trip to Taiwan and upon receiving news of the death, he grabbed some folders from his office and drove to the Liu’s house.
Mrs. Liu was preparing at least three hundred green tea mochi bean paste rice cakes for the reception that evening. Grand Auntie Du was one of the oldest members of the Chinese Baptist Church, and Mrs. Liu knew the attendance level would be unmatched. As one of Grand Auntie Du’s closest caregivers, nearly considered her surrogate, Mrs. Liu had many duties for the funeral but even so, she washed the flour off her hands and pared an apple for the lawyer.
They sat in the living room and Mr. Chang spread his papers over the coffee table.
“A ghost?” Mrs. Liu asked. “But what do you mean by a ghost?”
“She was very adamant about it,” Mr. Chang said, pushing his bifocals up the bridge of his nose.
Mr. Chang had handled Grand Auntie Du’s will since she was first diagnosed with stomach cancer. After four revisions and five calls in the night, he had quelled his habit for logic and obediently penned it all down. In January, he went to the hospital as requested and read it out loud to Grand Auntie Du. She was very satisfied, Grand Auntie Du had said, to tie up loose ends, and even a gold chamber pot couldn’t save a king. Before Mr. Chang left for his golf game, she reminded him once more about the ghost, for he had been the most bothersome of all her possessions.
“I believe it lived in her basement,” Mr. Chang told Mrs. Liu. “She said it followed her all the way over from China.”
Mrs. Liu pursed her lips, for she thought she could detect a hint of ridicule in Mr. Chang’s voice. “I don’t remember she ever mentioned it before. Did she say who it was?”
“That I would not know,” Mr. Chang said dryly. “She also left you a collection of teacups and some porcelain. And then there’s an old book. Those might be worth something, with the right market.”
“Yes, of course, the book was her father’s. The only one in his library that wasn’t burned. Have some more fruit, please.”
“Would you like to see the rest of the list?”
Mrs. Liu took the documents from him, her brows furrowing as she flipped through the pages. “How did she ever have so many things?”
“She left you mostly everything. I’m sure you can store it. You need to get everything out in a week though.”
“For the real estate people, yes. We’ll take care of it. I just hope there’s someone we can pass the ghost to.”
Mr. Chang chuckled and bit into a slice of apple.
The congregation of the Chinese Baptist Church picked out the best clothes they had in black and dark blue, making somber expressions into the mirror as they dressed. The most devout members, of whom were Mrs. Choi and Mrs. Harvey, directed the kitchen staff in cooking great vats of fried rice and spaghetti, to be served following the funeral.
Michelle Liu, the twelve-year-old daughter of Mrs. Liu, rubbed her eraser against her notebook until the paper wrinkled. She rubbed out four lines from the end of her poem and swept the eraser bits into her bed.
Uncle Moy, the eldest member of the congregation since Grand Auntie Du’s death, poked his granddaughter’s hairpin into his earwax.
Pastor Rickens flipped through his Bible and jumped up to run another comb through his hair. It was his first funeral service with this congregation.
Auntie Emmy called Mrs. Liu to say she had found a monk.
The ghost in Grand Auntie Du’s basement wept miserably, for it had been a week since he had any company.
Inside the casket that smelled of pine and formaldehyde, Grand Auntie Du blinked.
On the seventh day, the hun returned, and Grand Auntie Du rose from her body and her casket, the polished wood passing through her quite smoothly, if not a bit cold. She squeezed her way out the parlor through a keyhole and blinked in the sunlight. She did not remember it being so bright.
The sidewalks glittered and she followed them forward, crouching at the jarring screech of the cars. It had been so very quiet for so long. She found her way home despite there being no signs to welcome her and no talcum powder spread on the floor to catch her footprints. She flung open the doors to her basement and Ghost looked up, an iridescent blue tear dangling off the edge of his nose.
“I have the most tiresome song in my head, Ghost,” Grand Auntie Du declared. “And look how dusty you’ve become.”
She swept the cobwebs off his shoulders as he rubbed strings of sticky tears from his eyes.
“You must look your best at my funeral, Ghost,” Grand Auntie Du said. “It shall be my only one. How considerate of them to hold it today.”
But Ghost did not wish to leave Grand Auntie Du’s basement.
“You must come, Ghost,” Grand Auntie Du frowned. “Or who shall I sit with? And if you do not leave the basement today, you will have to anyway once the new people move in for they will not like you as I do. You are much too shy and you never practice your English.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him along.
It was magnificent weather for a funeral. A blanket of clouds had moved across the sun so that the sky was neither offensively blue nor lugubriously gray, but a soft overcast pearl, like the wings of a dove.
The guests took their seats and folded their hands, waiting for Pastor Rickens to begin. Grand Auntie Du sat perched on a tree branch with Ghost at her side, peering out through the budding leaves in excitement.
The choir sent chilling chords into the breeze, and no one was flat. Lizzie Gam had lost her voice at a baseball game, and so was resigned to lip syncing. Pastor Rickens began his message and he did not spit once, his mouth dry from drugstore antihistamines.
“And though we are most grieved by the departure of our dear sister,” Pastor Rickens paused as the translator interpreted. “We also rejoice that she has now returned home . . . Home to our dear Father in heaven . . . who will welcome her with open arms . . . into a place where all her suffering is over . . . where there shall be no more tears, no more pain . . . where she will join the cast of angels in the eternal glory of our Lord . . . where she shall rest forever in peace.”
Grand Auntie Du smiled broadly.
“It is a pity you cannot go there, Ghost,” she said, patting his knee.
Before she could comfort him, the eulogies began and she turned her attention to little Michelle.
Michelle tripped through the first few lines of her poem, the paper shaking in her hands. She hoped no one would mind too much that “time” and “shine” did not really rhyme. Her voice grew clearer as she went on, “And though now she has returned home to the Lord, I’ll always remember her whom I adored.”
Grand Auntie Du clapped her hands soundlessly.
“What a wonderful poet she’ll be,” Grand Auntie Du said. “You will like her, Ghost. I’ve left you with the Liu’s, so you must make yourself pleasant to them. Oh, but it was a lovely poem, was it not? Though now I have got that song in my head again.”
Auntie Emmy was at the podium next, recounting some bits of Grand Auntie Du’s difficult childhood in China and remembering her greatest recipes.
“It’s not just my pork bao,” Grand Auntie Du told Ghost. “My shrimp dumplings are better than hers as well.”
At the end of the eulogies, Grand Auntie Du was quite bashful to have received so many compliments, though she also wondered why no one had mentioned her exceptional salted fish porridge. Pastor Rickens closed the ceremony with a prayer and the guests rose from their seats, greeting each other as they left for the reception at the church.
“She was such a devout woman,” Pastor Rickens said to Mrs. Liu. “So faithful in her suffering.”
Mrs. Liu glanced at Auntie Emmy, who was shouting into Uncle Moy’s left ear about the benefits of fish oil vitamins and the wonders they worked for digestion.
A group of uncles discussed the best medical insurance providers and a cluster of aunties made plans for the sisters’ retreat.
Several of them congratulated Michelle on her beautiful poem. Though her knees were still a bit shaky, Michelle felt as if some new gift of power was speeding through her and everything she saw could be spun into literature like straw into gold. She studied the crumbling gray headstones and decided she would write a poem for every dead body underneath them. And one day the poems would be collected into a hardcover book and dedicated to the Greenwood Cemetery. The residents of the Greenwood Cemetery.
But then it struck her that the book would be disloyal to Grand Auntie Du. Hers would no longer be the only poem and then it would not matter. It would not have any importance at all.
For a moment, Michelle thought she could smell Grand Auntie Du in the air, the medicinal ginseng softened by a twang of oranges, and it felt as if that, the strange whiff of wind that sank down to her stomach before hurrying away, was really what death meant, and she had misunderstood it all along.
Grand Auntie Du followed her guests back to church and watched as the hallway filled to its capacity. She had grown quite adjusted to the world again and it was delightful to soak within the noise and hubbub as little children scampered through her legs. But Ghost, who did not like people in large quantities, wondered if it was perhaps time to head for heaven.
“Not yet, Ghost. We have much to do. And perhaps heaven will not be my home after all.” Grand Auntie Du smiled slyly as she spotted Mrs. Liu.
Mrs. Liu picked up a few used dishes and tossed them into the garbage. There was much to clean but she could not stay and help. She had to return home and meet the monk to fulfill Grand Auntie Du’s request. Dodging Pastor Rickens for she did not want his disapproval, she ushered Michelle toward the exit.
Knowing the impressionable nature of her daughter, Mrs. Liu sent Michelle to the library before heading home, so as not to risk leading her astray.
With Auntie Emmy’s help, Mrs. Liu cleared off the coffee table to make room for the altar. They wiped clean a framed photograph of Grand Auntie Du and placed her at the head. Then they planted the sticks of red incense into an old flowerpot and prepared a plate of fruit for offering.
“Don’t I look young, Ghost?” Grand Auntie Du asked, admiring the old photo. “I was thirty then. It was my first day in America. Or no, you are right, we were twenty-seven when we came to America. That picture was taken in a parlor in China, before my first wedding. The dress was a gift from my dear Kunshan. You remember him? But poor Kunshan did not go to heaven, either. We didn’t know about heaven then. Richard will be there, of course. And I was married a long time to Richard. But I do wish I had more time with Kunshan.”
She fell silent at a loud screech from outside.
The monk pulled into the driveway in his silver Lexus. “Sorry I’m late. I had to borrow a robe,” he said at the door. “It’s always better with the robe, though. I forgot to ask on the phone, but you don’t got any cats, do you? I’m allergic.”
Mrs. Liu welcomed him inside and showed him to the bathroom where he could change.
“Is he allowed to have hair?” she whispered to Auntie Emmy.
“I don’t think it matters anymore, hair, no hair, all the same. The woman at the bakery said he’s excellent. He lived five years in a temple in Xi’an where they didn’t even get tofu.”
“I don’t mind the hair,” Mrs. Liu said. “But there’s just so much of it.”
The monk came out swathed in a maroon robe. A yellow cloth hung off his shoulder and ran diagonally across his torso until it tied at his waist. His narrow face looked smaller than before as it hovered between his robe and his hair. Thick and a tad wavy, his hair was cut in a manner so that the middle stuck up more than the rest, like a mohawk or a hedge. He smiled at the women, displaying an uneven row of yellow teeth that once did not touch tofu for five years. The freckled skin around his eyes wrinkled.
“I’ll just sit here, do my chanting,” he said, pulling out a string of earthen brown beads from the side of his robe. “Could I get a glass of water or something? If it’s purified. You wanted three hours, right? You guys planning anything else? Music? Crying? Some people like it very traditional. I got some buddies who’ll cry for you on short notice. They really bring the emotion, these guys. One’s got an acting degree and he played a busboy on CSI last winter.”
“I think a few prayers should do fine,” Mrs. Liu said, glancing at Auntie Emmy for confirmation. “Do most people still include the crying?”
“Well, it all depends,” the monk said. “If they like the ceremony they’ll do it, but it’s all for show, you know? Always was. Hard to fit it all in these days, though. Even in China. No one has time for a proper death anymore. So, should we get started?”
Mrs. Liu lighted the incense and the monk began his prayers, chanting as he rotated the beads around his hand, one by one. His voice grew low and sonorous. Mrs. Liu turned to Auntie Emmy, approval in her eyes.
Swirls of incense filled the room and distorted the monk’s words. His prayers rolled out like waves of the ocean and muted thunder.
Grand Auntie Du yawned.
Ghost gave her a mutinous look but Grand Auntie Du refused to consider him.
“This is just in case I don’t like heaven. Or if there is a citizenship test and I cannot pass it. You know my memory is not what it used to be and I can never remember all those apostles. We must always explore our options, Ghost, lest we get stuck in a muck of our own making. Oh, don’t be a snob. Besides, it is nice to enjoy one’s culture. Now pay attention to the monk, Ghost. You are being very rude.”
Grand Auntie Du looked down demurely as she received her benedictions. When she awoke, the monk was already at the door, wearing a blue polo and slacks.
“You know,” he said to Mrs. Liu, “you’re supposed to have prayers every seven days, actually. It makes things easier, for the dead, I mean. I can come back next week, if you’d like, and I do the seventh for free. It helps make for a better reincarnation. Protection against the dung beetle, you know?”
“I think this will have to be it for us, I’m afraid. It’s really just . . . a courtesy.”
“Right-o then. Thought I’d check. That’s what’s wrong with Buddhists today, though. There’s no more fear of the dung beetle. Here’s my business card, anyway. I’m at the dealership up Broadway.”
“You sell cars?”
“It’s a hard livelihood for monks these days,” he said. “We all just have to adapt, isn’t that the truth? Or unionize. Well, good luck with everything now. Sorry about your loss.”
“Thank you for your prayers,” Mrs. Liu held the door for him.
“I can tune a piano, too, by the way,” he said from the car. “You gotta tune them in the spring after all that wet season.”
Grand Auntie Du waved goodbye to the monk from the window before turning to Ghost, who had grown quite peevish.
“I suppose we can only wait now,” Grand Auntie Du said. “I think I should enjoy heaven, Ghost, but there is so much I can do if I were to live again. I could visit the France museum or learn to ski. Perhaps I could have children my next life. I would have been a good mother, don’t you agree? And maybe I will meet my Kunshan again.”
Ghost nodded his transparent head.
“Do you think it is a bad time for reincarnation, Ghost? Remember that movie we watched about the global warming? Perhaps it will not be the same place anymore. I am much too old to deal with change. Though by then I will be young again. And it is wonderful to be young.”
They watched as Mrs. Liu came over, reaching through them to open the window. She waved at the incense to clear the air and offered Auntie Emmy some fruit from the altar.
“I should not like to catch cancer again, however. Dying is ghastly and it is preferable to do it only once,” Grand Auntie Du said, reaching out to feel her stomach where the cancer had lumped into tumors and clawed through her organs. “Ghost! Ghost! My stomach is missing!”
She wiggled her fingers in the gaping hole of her abdomen. The doctors had removed three-fourths of her stomach two years ago, but she had never had a hole.
“This is very peculiar indeed.”
The two of them retraced their steps, walking back towards the church to see where Grand Auntie Du had misplaced her stomach. The sun was setting and it washed the sky in red. Halfway there, Grand Auntie Du stubbed her foot against a fire hydrant and her pinky toe rolled into the street.
They hurried to the church, where Grand Auntie Du hoped she could find someone to help her. She went into the sanctuary for that seemed a place where one could find the door to heaven. As she seemed to be breaking, she thought it wise to leave for heaven instead of waiting for reincarnation. The Chinese were rarely punctual.
As she knelt before the cross, her kneecaps popped out with a ping but no stream of light flooded down upon her. She waited patiently and bade Ghost to keep watch. The red in the sky deepened to purple and soon it was night.
“Didn’t I say how important it is to explore other options?” she asked Ghost. “Especially in such important matters as the afterlife.”
Afraid that the Chinese gods would not feel comfortable inside a church, Grand Auntie Du went back outside and sat in the parking lot. The wind was cold and birds rustled overhead. In the distance, cars chased shadows down the highway and above it all, she could still hear a familiar voice thrumming in the breeze, Oh baby baby, it’s a wild world . . . .
“I wish that dreadful song would go away,” she said. “I can hardly think for all the racket. I don’t remember what I need to do anymore, Ghost, if I must drink the soup and forget my life or if I go to the judge first. Heaven at least had only one hell. But the Chinese decided to have nine. Perhaps they will be fast.”
As they waited, the wind picked up pace and the night grew cold. Grand Auntie Du’s remaining toes crumbled into dust and bits of leaves. Her fingers shriveled into long dry branches, numb from Dutch elm disease.
She tried to remember what she had once known. If she could remember it then perhaps she would not be abandoned. A memory as distant as golden strands of wheat waving in the fields rose from the past and she could smell the pungent air of China as if it were licking her on the neck. She was a girl staring at the contrast between her aunt’s tanned skin against the white mourning robe as her aunt stoked the fire for their porridge. Birth and death were stale in that morning breeze and her aunt was telling her about birth after death. Only half listening, she rolled a boiled egg along the dank wood table and felt the thin shell cracking against her palm. Her hands were small and smooth and the earth moved through them.
They had buried the baby outside beneath the willow. His fingernails were blue but her mother, suddenly thin and small again, had clipped them anyway. She had cut his hair as well, even though there were only thin wisps of it, and she had placed it all together inside a black silk pouch. Before they buried the baby, her father had collected the placenta from her mother’s bedside in a washbasin and took it to the cellar, where he peeled back the dusty floorboards. She had held the candle for him and peeked into the dark caverns and sifting dirt beneath the foundations of their house. Her father had dropped the placenta into the darkness and said it would be safe there.
The placenta was like a jacket and no matter how far one flew, the hun would always return and rejoin the placenta. The placenta was warm and dark and so secure one needn’t breathe; it was the blood and fluid that first housed life.
“Ghost, I have to find my placenta,” Grand Auntie Du stood. “I must go and find my placenta. Before it is too late.”
Her legs wobbled as they headed for the library, where information was organized.
“I was born in Beijing north of Old Cherry Road, but now everything has changed so much we must find a map.” She browsed through the dusty shelves. “A boy’s placenta is buried underneath the house, and the girl’s outside the house. Somewhere in China, my placenta is waiting for me, Ghost. And we must find it. Our front court spanned from the willow to the geranium pot, which equals . . . Why, Ghost! I do believe my placenta is buried directly underneath the U.S. embassy!”
She jumped from her seat in amazement. Her kidneys wiggled loose like rotting teeth and bounced into the corner.
Feeling pressed for time, Grand Auntie Du hurried along.
“But how do you suppose we can dig underneath the embassy?” she asked Ghost. “Would they allow us inside? Will we have to apply for visas, do you think?”
It was dark in the street and Grand Auntie Du squinted her eyes to see. Her intestines, both large and small, unraveled as she hobbled along. They dangled behind her like the strings of a kite and stretched longer and longer as she walked on.
“I don’t know how we shall get to the embassy, Ghost,” Grand Auntie Du said, but when she turned to look for him, even Ghost had left her.
“Ghost? Ghost?”
But she was alone, falling apart on a street that was dark and unfamiliar. Her heart jumped out of her chest as she rushed away. Her intestines reached the end of their spool and fell limply to the ground, the kite sailing free. Rats skulked out from the cracks of the earth and sniffed the air as Grand Auntie Du disappeared around the corner.
This is Diana Xin’s first publication in a national literary journal.