Black Water Sister

by Zen Cho

  “Dad,” said Jess painfully. “I’m sorry. But you guys don’t understand. Sharanya doesn’t even—”

  Want to be with me anymore, she was going to say, but Dad cut her off.

  “Don’t need to say so much,” he said. “I don’t want to hear.” He put his head in his hands. Mom touched his shoulder.

  “Painful, is it?” she said softly. “You want a drink? I made herbal tea, I’ll bring for you. You drink, then lie down and rest.”

  “Don’t need,” muttered Dad. “I’ll just go to sleep.”

  Jess went to help him up, but he withdrew his hand from her, quite gently. He turned to Mom, who took his arm. They walked slowly to the stairs while Jess stood, stupid and empty, feeling like she’d been beaten clean like a carpet. The shame was crushing, unbearable.

  At first she didn’t hear the voice. But it spoke again:

  Use the charm.

  It was Ah Ma’s voice in her head.

  What? thought Jess. She stared at Dad’s bowed shoulders, Mom’s hand on his arm.

  The charm Ah Yen gave you, said Ah Ma. Use it! Look in your pocket!

  Jess remembered touching the yellow cloth, moved by this small show of support from a relative she’d never met before. The charm, of course . . . she reached into her pocket.

  But the charm would be back with her body where she’d left it, praying at the temple. She didn’t remember getting home from the temple. What had happened? Had she found the god?

  She looked up and saw the Black Water Sister watching her through the glass of the sliding doors. The back of Jess’s neck started to throb.

  Her surprise was muted. The Black Water Sister’s presence seemed inevitable at this moment where her life was going awry. The god stood where she had appeared before, when Kor Kor had tried to cast her out. Jess had promised her a sacrifice then.

  Well, the god had had her sacrifice. What was she doing here now?

  “Better if I died in US,” Dad said to Mom, his voice soft but horribly distinct.

  “No, no,” said Mom.

  Jess froze, humiliating hot tears rising in her eyes. But her hand was already in her pocket. Her fingers brushed the charm.

  The dream split open. Memory rushed back.

  Dad was in remission. Nobody had ever taken nude pics of her and Sharanya, and even if they had, it was incredibly unlikely Kor Kor would have got ahold of them.

  The Black Water Sister was fucking with her.

  Jess’s hand squeezed into a fist around the charm.

  She spun around, heading for the god where she stood behind the glass.

  Suddenly Ah Ma was next to her, panting, “I shout shout shout so many times, you never answer. The god blocked your ears, is it?”

  “I didn’t hear you,” said Jess grimly. “That bitch!”

  The living room seemed suddenly vast, but Jess crossed it. The glass of the sliding door and the metal grille and the wall around it melted away as she hurtled toward the god. She threw herself on the Black Water Sister, slamming bodily into her. They crashed into the ground together.

  The god was small and fine-boned—she’d grown up eating rice and not much else. Physically she was no match for Jess, with her sturdy body nourished on American milk and Chinese meals lovingly cooked by her mom, her body that had never had to go hungry.

  Of course, neither of them was embodied, but for the moment the god had forgotten that. Terror flashed across that impervious face. She flinched away from Jess, raising scrawny arms to shield herself.

  Jess had been furious enough to do something terrible, the kind of thing that would be unthinkable in her normal waking life but seemed plausible, even necessary, here. Like strangle a woman who was already dead.

  But the movement of those thin arms gave her pause. It reminded Jess how the Black Water Sister had died, what she had endured. Men like Master Yap became divine after living revered lives, dying serene deaths and getting promoted by the Jade Emperor. Women like the Black Water Sister became gods because their lives were so shitty, their deaths so hideous, that people prayed to them to avert their vengeance. Because they had died with all that fury left to spend.

  The moment of unbidden sympathy gave the god time to remember she wasn’t actually weaker than Jess. She shoved Jess off her. Jess landed on her side, jarring her shoulder, but: I’m not in my body right now, she thought, and the pain evaporated.

  She rolled onto her feet. The god was already scuttling away.

  At first Jess was chasing the god, but suddenly they were running side by side, outdoors. Trees lurched out of the darkness. The ground was covered with slippery leaf fall, wet from rain. Roots emerged abruptly from the ground, slowing their progress. Stray twigs snapped and rolled under the soles of their feet.

  Then there was only one of her and she was running alone in the forest, her heartbeat loud in her ears. Behind her a man was shouting, swearing at her.

  “Useless. Bitch. Whore. I hate you. I’ll kill you.”

  The words had been flung at her so many times that they had lost their sting. She was sobbing as she ran not because of them, but because she knew what was coming.

  She couldn’t keep up her pace. She was going to fall. He was going to catch her. And then . . .

  But she’d been here before. She had died this death many times. Death meant being crystallized in horror, unable to break free, except when she could find a living soul to give her respite. When she was in another’s head, occupying their warm living body, her terrible death gave her power—a power that came from the fear and belief of the living.

  She liked it when they asked her to do things—poison healthy minds, blight lives, cause accidents. Best of all was when there was blood, blood that she drew, in exchange for her own spilled blood that had never been paid for.

  She tripped over the root of a tree, as she had known she would. Anger clawed at her throat, all the more terrible for being ineffective. She fell, bashing her cheek against the tree trunk, rough bark scraping her skin.

  This was how it would always go. This was why she could never move on, never forgive, never rest. Her death was a debt owed by all the world. She would make every living soul pay penance for it if she could.

  “You have to help her settle it. No choice.”

  The voice was new. The girl looked around, confused.

  It was an old woman who had spoken. She was wiry, hardy-looking, her thin face stern under cropped gray hair. She had never been there at the girl’s death before, yet there was something familiar about her.

  She pointed. “Look.”

  She was gesturing at the girl’s hand. The girl found it was curled into a fist, so tight her fingers were cramping. She opened her hand and saw a piece of yellow cloth lying on her palm, with red writing on it. A charm.

  “Make him pay,” said Ah Ma. “The big sister helped you when those men came after you. Now you help her.”

  “I don’t have a weapon,” said Jess, or the Black Water Sister. She wasn’t sure, at that moment, which of them she was.

  Ah Ma glanced back. “He’s got one what.”

  The Black Water Sister’s lover came through the trees, moving fast despite the uneven ground. It was so dark he was mostly sound—twigs crunching, heavy breathing. He’d stopped yelling. As he approached, a stray beam of moonlight caught his face.

  He was skinny and ordinary-looking. Jess wouldn’t have taken a second look at him if she’d passed him in the street. He didn’t look crazed, or even especially angry. His face was tense and absorbed.

  He grabbed her roughly and slapped her once, twice. Her head rocked on her neck from the force of the blows. Pain resonated through her body, but it was distant, not her own. She was looking out for the knife.

  He pushed her against the tree that had felled her. The trunk was knobbly against her back. It’s t
he same tree, she thought. The bodhi tree. It didn’t grow from her blood. It was here all along.

  What a thing a bad death was. It made a mythology that caught up in its wake old trees and young women alike, the violence of it reverberating through the years.

  At least this time, the death wouldn’t be hers.

  The moonlight gleamed off her husband’s knife as he took it out. She reached out and seized the knife with the hand holding the charm, wrapping the cloth around the blade.

  The knife slipped out of her husband’s hand easily. With a strength she could never have had before she died, she brought her knee up into his stomach. She heard him gasp.

  As he faltered, she pushed him off her, shoving him to the ground, and Ah Ma held him down.

  Now. Now! she thought. Exhilaration bore her up. She felt like she could fly. I want to do it!

  Hunger roared inside her, bottomless and fierce. She would make this slow. She would relish every moment. Only his anguish, long drawn out, could soothe hers.

  Jess watched the Black Water Sister fall to her knees, crouching over the man who had killed her, crooning in delight.

  “Help me, sister,” said the god.

  Jess gave her the knife. Ah Yen’s charm fell away, fluttering to the ground. She focused on it, letting it take up her field of vision, staring so hard that the Chinese characters started to blur.

  Jess felt the Black Water Sister’s movements in her own body. The muscles in her arm tensed as the god raised the knife over her murderer. She tasted the god’s hunger on her own tongue. When the knife fell, when the man’s blood soaked into the earth, finally she would be at peace.

  That was what the god thought. But as Jess stared at her charm, the fug in her mind seemed to clear. It became easier to decouple herself from the god.

  This is pointless, she thought.

  The Black Water Sister was dead and so was her murderer. There was nothing to be done about that any longer. It was too late.

  So what? Jess didn’t have to intervene. She could let this happen. He wouldn’t be the first person whose murder she had enabled, probably, and he was already dead. Maybe his blood would sate the god, even if none of this was real.

  Jess wanted to stand by. She wanted to be done with all of this. And a small part of her wanted to see the man die, slowly and in pain. It would be some return for all that had been done to her and the god and Ah Ma and Mom and Dad and those men under the hot sun at the construction site . . .

  It was like she kept dropping off into a poisonous daze, her mind blurred by the Black Water Sister’s ancient rage. She bent so she could touch the charm, feel the fabric under the pads of her fingers. Clarity returned.

  The Black Water Sister’s murderer had nothing to do with all that suffering—in one sense. In another, he and what he represented had everything to do with it. But if Jess knew anything, it was that his tools—the knife, darkness, secrecy, violence—were useless to end that suffering. That was why the Black Water Sister was still bound to the horrible moment of her death, unable to escape the soil that had drunk up her blood. It was like she was under an evil spell, but it was a prison of her own making.

  Who had said that? It didn’t matter. They were right. Jess had to find another way out.

  The Black Water Sister might be a god now, but before her appalling death, she had only been a girl. Jess had felt from the inside her powerlessness and her fury, her endless grief. If she didn’t do something now, the girl the Black Water Sister had once been would be trapped here forever, striking at shadows in her own mind.

  “Sister,” said Jess. “Sister!” She seized the god’s hand holding the knife, pulling it back. “Stop!”

  “What are you doing?” said Ah Ma. She kept the man pinned with ease, but that was no surprise. Ah Ma was a ghost, but the man was even less than that—the impression of a person in a dead girl’s heart. “Don’t interrupt!”

  The Black Water Sister turned to look at Jess. Her face was the impassive god’s face again, the face that had watched Jess the first time she’d walked into her temple, that had peered into Kor Kor’s house, that had terrorized Jess’s dreams. And she was angry.

  Fear stopped Jess’s voice. But—

  What’s the worst she could do to me? she thought.

  She remembered Dad’s curved back, his low voice saying, “Better if I died.” The Black Water Sister had already done her worst and it was Jess who had given her the ammunition. That horrible fantasy belonged to Jess.

  It was hers, and that meant Jess could survive it. That was true for the god as well.

  “Sister, he’s dead,” said Jess. Her voice came out small and wavering, a mere thread of sound. She cleared her throat and tried again. “He’s already dead. Listen to me!”

  “What are you talking about?” said the Black Water Sister. She tried to tear her hand away. But Jess held firm, even though the back of her neck was aching again, the god’s marks on her burning.

  “He can’t hurt you anymore,” said Jess. “And you can’t hurt him. He’s gone.”

  The Black Water Sister shook her head. “You’re lying! When did he die? You tell me that!”

  “He died a long time ago,” said Jess. “It’s been more than a hundred years. Sister, it’s time to put it down. There’s nothing you can do about it anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said the Black Water Sister. “You’re lying.”

  But she did believe Jess; she couldn’t not. Their souls had cleaved together so that for a short time they had been the same person and their minds had been one. The god could feel the truth of what Jess said.

  The man lying on the ground disappeared. Ah Ma blinked, disconcerted at being deprived of her captive.

  “He’s dead?” said the Black Water Sister. “Really?”

  “Yes,” said Jess. “He’s never coming back. You’re safe.”

  The Black Water Sister stared at Jess.

  “He’s gone,” said the girl, and it was no longer a question. Her face crumpled.

  “But I loved him,” she said. “I loved him.”

  Her voice came out in a wail. She brought her hands up to her face and slapped herself, the noise startling in the dark forest.

  Jess took the girl’s hands in her own so she couldn’t hurt herself again.

  The girl was sobbing so violently she was shaking. Jess put her arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. A sweaty human smell came from her hair—her hair, which was wet, because Jess was crying too.

  “It’s OK. It’s over now,” said Jess, again and again. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When Jess visited the garden temple for the last time, she went with offerings. She had learned that much by then.

  They drove round to the sales office first, where the Datuk Kong’s altar was. Jess had taken care to come on a Sunday, so the office itself was closed. The joss sticks had burned down to stubs in the incense urn in front of the little statue, but the spirit wasn’t totally forgotten. A packet of cigarettes had been left there for him.

  Jess unknotted a blue plastic bag, releasing a warm delicious scent onto the air. She’d eaten before she had come, but the smell almost made her wish she was hungry. Pak Din’s nasi dalca lived up to the hype. It made sense that even a spirit might crave it.

  She set the food out before the statue, carefully balancing a plastic bag of neon-pink air bandung next to the rice. She lit the joss sticks she’d brought and closed her eyes, recalling the Datuk’s image—the kindly, wrinkled face above the crisp white baju.

  Enjoy, she thought. The prayer was in English. She’d lost her Malay in the weeks since she’d last been here. Her improved facility in Hokkien, weirdly, had stuck with her.

  Maybe it wasn’t that weird. Her family and their friends spoke Hokkien around her all th
e time. She probably would have gotten better even without Ah Ma.

  The garden temple itself was quiet, bathed in sunshine. It was just after lunchtime and the heat of the sun was almost tangible.

  Jess couldn’t help feeling a twitch of apprehension as she walked between the shrines, but nothing happened. She no longer saw spirits. No statues sprang to life. No gods or ghosts started whispering in her ear.

  She lit the rest of her joss sticks for Kuan Kong, waving them in the air before planting them in the incense urn before his altar. She paid her respects to Kuan Kong whenever she saw him now—quick prayers when she saw his idol at the back of a restaurant or overseeing a checkout counter. But until now she hadn’t had the chance to light incense for him, in thanks for the charm.

  There was one last god to visit.

  Her steps slowed as she approached the bodhi tree, but all she felt when she stepped into its dappled shade was the relief of being out of the glare of the sun. Leaves cast flickering shadows on the grass. A breeze lifted the vines before letting them drop again.

  She picked her way among the roots, circling the tree. And there she was, propped up on the ground between roots like miniature petrified rivers—the Black Water Sister. Cracked and worn, but still there.

  The idol was nothing more than a statue now—an empty house. Someone had left an offering in front of it, a small pile of oranges. They should have saved the fruit for one of the other deities in this crowded garden. The god wasn’t coming back.

  Jess didn’t pray or burn incense. She’d given the Black Water Sister all she had to give her, and the god had taken from her all she would take. She stood looking at the idol, remembering.

  It had been dark by the time she’d woken up in the garden temple, her crutch on the ground next to her, the day she had escaped from the hospital. Ah Ku had been bending over her, shining a flashlight in her eyes and yelling, “Ah Min ah! Wake up!” about an inch from her face. Blinking, she’d seen her parents behind him.

  He’d brought the whole gang—Mom and Dad, but also Kor Kor, Kor Tiao, Ah Kim and a shamefaced Yew Yen. Ah Ku had reamed Ah Yen out when he woke from his nap and heard that Jess had taken the god’s idol off to the temple by herself. He’d called Mom up on the phone and they’d all come out to find her en masse.