There are those who say their ancestors were abusive—both physically and mentally—while living. There are those who say they don’t have time to visit. And then there are those who ensure the altars are well-kept, but hate their ancestors and their families inside. They have no beliefs, fidelity, respect. Clean slates, dirtied. Clean in the sense that their backgrounds are scraped from their minds. Dirtied in the sense that they’ve taken on the colors of others not their own. But the teachings of your ancestors will find a way to return, remind you of their existence—they always do.
Pipes and cigars are much more elegant than vapes, not that women were allowed such scandalous indulgence back then, but you snuck a few without care. It’s not as fun now when everything is allowed. Marijuana is legal. Maybe you’ll try some of that, too. You wouldn’t have dared when you were younger. Now that you’re dead, it’s different.
Someone recently visited the altar within this old, empty house, but it was not the children—though they are probably now adults with age lines and hair loss. But they’re all children to you even when they tease the line of life and death, hair as white as first snow, face like the weathered bark of ancient trees. You remain the same, but it’s a curse, really.
Ashes from the incense sit at the bottom of the tray. Smoke drifts from the top of scattered sticks, some taller than others. The red light illuminating the altar from behind flickers, as though it’s a beacon signaling for attention—fix me; notice me. It is a call unanswered by the child and their children, who should be visiting on a regular basis but don’t. Busyness is always the excuse. They are probably at the movies, eating out, playing the latest trending games on their phones at home. What did they call it? Among something?—nothing in particular, nothing important anyway, to you.
The furniture—king-sized bed, nightstand, dresser, desk—are hidden under white sheets with a thin layer of dust collected on top, much like the furniture in the rest of the house. The only thing left uncovered is the altar. The red wood frame of the altar looks new, still. But everything else set up around and on it looks unattended to, neglected.
Phlegm wells up at the back of your throat. You turn your head, long for an appropriate place to spit; it is disrespectful to spit near an altar. Why do you still have such human things like phlegm, anyhow? Your ancestors must still be smiting you. These should have been left behind with your mortal body when you passed centuries ago, but who knows how the spirit world works really?
You head for the window, slide its rusted aluminum frame upwards, cringe at its grainy squeal. You don’t have to open the window physically, but doing human things makes you feel more alive and present. Your head dips forward, and you spit out the window, hair catching in the wind. Below, an unsuspecting passerby is unfortunate enough to get hit with the glob of saliva dripping from your lips—a clear marble with yellow swirls. It lands right on the shoulder of a stiffly pressed blazer. Not waterproof, sadly.
It is the child—though no longer a child but a man in his fifties, physically.
He takes out a handkerchief, wipes the spit from the wool before tossing the cloth aside. You watch as the breeze guides it down the street before it hits the ground. The handkerchief’s pinstriped pattern reminds you of the thin cotton shirts and matching pants your grandmother used to wear, stamped at the neck with red ink—a charm of sorts for safety. The style back then was very different from now. What a waste, the handkerchief. Those used to cost a fortune.
The child tilts his head up, but you duck back inside before he notices you.
Instead of closing the window, you leave it open. The wind wraps itself around the smoke accumulated inside, embracing it like a mother would a child, before shuttling it back outside. You can breathe better now, even though there is no longer air in your lungs.
Before you prepare yourself to meet the child at the entrance of the old family home, you take a last look at the picture of the child’s mother and father, faded because it is an old photo, with the edges singed black. You dip your head, bowing for a moment before leaving the bedroom, closing the door behind you.
At the bottom of the staircase, the child from outside stares, horrified as your body looms over him, casting no shadow. But he feels the chill of your sharp gaze, looks away, head ducking low. You know you look just like his mother when she was young. That is intentional. You wear his mother’s face because her spirit cannot be here, for she lingers—with her husband—in a place along the borders of the spirit world, disconnected from the land where her roots are grounded. Making yourself look like someone familiar makes it all the more frightening.
“Why are you here?” he asks, voice wavering. Ancestors do not visit often, but we all know it is a possibility—their visits often take the form of guidance or warnings, sometimes both.
“Why have you come?” you ask.
You know why he should be here but does he himself know?
“I’m here for old baby clothes and toys.” He looks down, clears his throat, adjusts his tie, revealing a stain previously hidden. Baby food. Was it trauma? New customs of Canada? Why has he abandoned his traditions, his parents, his ancestors? Will his children know you?
You know you shouldn’t, but you ask, “Are you happy here—in Canada?”
The child, like you, is not from here, but his own children are.
He doesn’t answer and fiddles with the navy curtains, frayed at the edges. But you already know what he will say. He is losing his connection to the land you both share, both walked, both are still rooted in deep inside—if only the child would realize. The water dripping from the sink tap thunders over the sound of traffic outside.
He’s not here for the altar or his parents. And you are not here to guide his soul to the spirit world. Not yet.
You ran across the courtyard of the temple at the bottom of a mountain near small villages on the edge of Fujian. Bare feet pattered against the cobblestone, laughter mixed with the sound when the growth between the cracks tickled your soles as they brushed past. Grandmother was tending a bonsai tree, a wooden water dipper clutched in her hands. A jade ring rimmed with gold she never took off glinted in the sun.
“Can I go play with Yunli by the stream?” you asked. Water was a frightening thing, but the sound of its trickle excited you—there was a strange allure when it came to danger.
Grandmother nodded and handed you a small red charm the shape of a pouch tied at the top with matching string. “For safety,” she said. “Your mother made it. I was going to wait until your birthday, but I think a day early is all right.”
You took it in your hands and ran to change your shoes, then left the charm by the aged oak tree next to the wooden frame of the entrance because you remembered you had no pockets. You’d be back soon.
As you approached the stream, you saw your friend Yunli who lived across the village hidden behind a tree. It was a weekly agreement you had with one another to meet by the stream to catch small fish—though neither of you were ever successful. Turned out the hands of children were not as nimble as you both believed.
“Why are you—”
Your eyes shifted in the direction Yunli was looking, her face half hidden by the straight black hair you wished you had. A body in a pink robe with red blossoming underneath. The liquid seeped into the grass and soil, trailed into the water—a thin sliver guided downstream by the currents. You watched for movement, but there was only stillness. The water, unaware of its intruder and hidden visitors, continued flowing downstream.
“There was a man. A thief,” Yunli whispered, shaking her head, rocking back and forth—ball, heel, ball, heel.
“Mother?” you called, knowing your words would not reach her departed spirit.
Your grandmother finally rose from her spot kneeling in front of your mother’s altar when the sun set after spending the entire day in the temple. Candles flickered next to her portrait, ageless, glowing, but lifeless. You ran to the tree next to the entrance, remembering the safety charm.
Your grandmother was nowhere in sight when you re-entered the temple, the small red bag clutched in your hands wrapped one over the other. Grandmother had forgotten to prepare dinner, but you didn’t mind. You weren’t hungry, anyway. A gurgle from your stomach echoed, seeming to bounce off the temple’s red wood walls.
You placed the safety charm on the altar, next to the candles and the bowls of fruit, before getting on your knees, bowing forth like your grandmother had done until your head touched the stone floor. Specks of dirt stuck to your perspiration. You held your breath after accidentally inhaling, dust collected in your lungs.
When you rose, you coughed—the sound echoed, far too loud, disrupting the unspoken peace—your fingers itched towards the fruit, tempted though you know you shouldn’t. It was disrespectful. But would anyone notice when there were so many? Your fingers met the waxy skin of an apple—pink, yellow, gold—plucked earlier that day from the tree next to the front door. You took a bite, the fruit’s flesh loosened by your teeth, caressed by your tongue as it retracted the sweet juice into your mouth.
“Mengyu.”
Grandmother stood by the doorway. Tears streamed down your face, tears were dried on hers. Behind her stood the spirits of your ancestors, faces from portraits you recognized from other altars within the temple. They did not look angry, but disappointed. You dipped your head forth, got on your knees once more, bowing to your ancestors, your grandmother, the guilt all-consuming. When you lifted your head, your mother stood with your ancestors; the sorrow within her eyes aged her by tenfold.
You woke the next morning unable to walk; purple welts littered the back of your calves like angry kisses. But next to your bedside, your mother’s spirit laid gentle caresses over the bruised skin, then leaned in to whisper in your ear and kiss your forehead before dissipating.
You suppose you’re here to stop him from eating the fruit—not that he would, actually. Even if he does, who’s here to scold him? He should replace them, though. They’ve been rotten for weeks. Small fruit flies swarm the altar like it’s a decaying body.
To experience your parents’ death before you are ready to part—if ever—is unfortunate. But this child doesn’t seem to realize it, or maybe he thinks it can no longer have an impact.
You wander back up the stairs, expecting the child to follow. He does.
“I must say, you are surprisingly more horrible than I was as a child. At least I knew I was wrong,” you say when you close the door to the room behind you. The door bangs, shudders in its frame. Bits of plaster loosen from the ceiling, white powder drifting down to collect in the child’s greying hair. You don’t want to provoke him, but his lack of care causes your anger to boil over.
The child turns up his nose and sneers, spitting near your shoe. You grind your teeth, then your eyes dart towards the altar before a silent mouthed apology leaves your lips. The child wrinkles his nose after taking in your black-cloaked body. You realize you might have looked comical to him with your hood inside-out, clutching the vape in your hand. You shove the vape into your pocket.
“I doubt that,” he says.
Again, your eyes trail to the altar.
He checks his watch with a flick of his wrist, annoyance apparent as his expression darkens, eyes squinting.
“Could we—” he begins.
“What could possibly be more important than your mother and father?” you ask. His impatience rattles your brewing anger.
“People who are still alive,” he says, then pauses, almost seeming to regret his words, face paling. Does he realize that his duty to his passed family is just as important as his duty to the one he has built?
Why do the youth today have no respect for the dead?
You stare at the photograph, at the eyes of the child’s parents—they are nothing but grey specks.
There is nothing more horrifying than dying without your family, dying on foreign soil, disconnected from your land by body with your spirit wandering, not knowing which way is home.
They say to scatter the ashes, bury your body in the land on which you were birthed.
They left for you. This was for you, the child who they sacrificed so much for. And for what? And for what for what for what? You want to scream at the child, force him to eat the rotten fruit, kiss his calves purple, make him regret.
When you return the next week, you find the child unconscious, bowing forward on his knees in front of the altar. Some of the sheets have been removed from the furniture in the room.
You frown when you notice the empty beer bottle next to his bare foot. The other foot still has on a sock with holes at the heel and toes. The alcoholic contents drip once every few seconds. There is a small puddle near the child’s knee.
You kick the bottle backward with such force it shatters against the bottom of the half-concealed nightstand, chipping the mahogany, waking the child from his drunken stupor, spittle dribbling down the side of his lips, the yellowing teeth—chipped at front—from tobacco looking as though they are browning in dim lamplight with its ripped, worn shade.
The child lifts his face, still damp from sweat or tears, eyes bloated, swollen to the point they protrude unnaturally. His eyes are still downcast with the whites showing, like a waving flag for surrender.
“I wanted to visit. I did. I do. Once a year. I know I should visit more but—”
Tradition in the world today, on foreign land, is not the same as in the past. The sounds of traffic, horns honking, wheels squealing, lights beeping as they change, pound against my eardrums, drowning out the blubbering of the child.
You walk to the window, slam it shut, before going back to the child.
You kneel next to him, your cloak sweeping the floor but without soaking up the spilled liquid, and bow to kiss each purple lid—the angry blue-green veins pulse under near-translucent skin.
You whisper what your mother whispered to you: “It’s okay.”
The child, though he had always been a man physically, has now become a man spiritually. He flies back to Fujian with his parents’ ashes, to the small village where they used to live, though it no longer exists. The man heads to the stream you knew as a child, but it looks different, even though it is the same—water still flows, endless, uninterrupted by the time that has passed; the soil still holds your mother’s sweet blood in its memories; and now it holds the bodies of your predecessors.
From behind the same tree at which Yunli stood before, you watch the man scatter the ashes of his parents from the urn into the water; the currents carrying the grey specks of bones, flesh, and memories downstream.
You are home, and so are they—now.
The man turns and spots you lingering by the tree. Next to you his parents’ spirits appear.
“Are you ready?” you ask.
His parents extend their hands toward their son. Though a man in his fifties, he suddenly looks much younger.
He nods, smiling.
Soon, you will visit his wife and children, though it seems they will be fine on their own.
In Canada, the man’s wife and children set up an altar in a spare bedroom for their husband and father. The wife cradles a baby to her chest with a plane ticket clutched in her spare hand while her five-year-old reaches up toward the bowls placed on the altar with an apple gripped within sure fingers.
| Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, a Nebula-, Locus-, Ignyte Award finalist, and an immigrant from Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. She is a member of HWA and SFWA. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, Uncanny, among others. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of LinghunI AM AI. Find her on Twitter (@AiJiang_) and online (http://aijiang.ca). |  |