Insignia (7 page)

The numerous prayer rituals were a burden on
my time, not to mention an expense my family could ill afford.
Every
yuan
my father earned went first to my education,
second to keeping the four of us clothed and fed. But my mother
always gave up something she needed in order to pay for the
extravagant altar gifts and priest’s blessings she ordered for her
only son.

I missed my older brother too of course, but
sitting in front of Xun’s altar only saddened me and made it hard
to concentrate on my studies. I saw no point in dreaming of his
afterlife, I didn’t even believe he had one, but it weighed on my
parent’s and grandmother’s mind long after Xun was buried.

They had talked of finding him a ghost
bride; a ridiculous thought, not only because it was such an
outdated practice but also because it would require money we simply
didn’t have. But I watched my mother, toying with her last piece of
jewelry of value, the twenty-four carat gold bracelet given to her
by Father on their wedding day. It would probably fetch enough to
pay for the wanted bride and ceremony, but they would still be
paying my student loans for years until I was able to take over the
debt alone. It would be foolish not to keep something for
emergencies.

One night, I overheard my father gently
talking to my mother in the kitchen. He had had a change of heart
and was now against arranging a bride for Xun. Mother wept, but she
nodded her head in agreement and then leaned into Father’s chest to
be consoled. My parents had a good marriage, better than most I
imagine, and it pleased me to see them together in such a
moment.

The matter then seemed resolved, and the
talk of a ghost wedding faded like the paper joss money scattered
at Xun’s funeral. Sometimes, when I was walking around the
neighborhood, or hiding in Mother’s flower garden, I would find a
bill snagged on a branch, or it would blow across my feet from
nowhere. Xun’s money had his name printed on it; another
extravagant expense Mother had insisted upon, but one I was
reluctantly glad about. We burned a small amount of joss money at
Xun’s funeral, but it was my mother’s preference to hold the paper
money out to the wind. She would do this on auspicious days, saying
the money would reach Xun in the spirit world and he could buy
himself a gift from her. I thought this silly too, but whenever I
found one of those papers randomly on the street I found a piece of
my big brother again. Each one gave me a flash of memory from my
childhood and reminded me not to forget him.

Perhaps I would one day, I thought. In a few
years, when I married and moved to my own home where there was no
altar, no joss money in my path to find, I would simply stop
recalling his face and voice and laugh. I would forge my own life
where there was no pity for the dead, no obsession over their
well-being or fortune, or even any thought to where they were
now.

So I was content for a while, driven to
study hard and show my parents that their sacrifice was worthwhile,
for all of our futures. I went to school early to work in the
library and I stayed in the library until closing time every night,
writing up my assignments. I thought less and less of Xun as the
weeks after his anniversary passed. I wasn’t home as much to see my
parents kneeling at his altar and leaving food and trinkets.

But that all changed one night when a
stranger stepped in my path and pushed me into a darkened doorway.
He tore at my clothing, calling me vile names and promising to
punish me. I fought with all my strength, scratching and pushing
and lifting my knee. I prayed for someone to come along the road
and see my plight, to rescue me, but my screams echoed back in the
silent abyss.

He finally stopped groping at my body and
stepped back. For a second, I thought he might simply run away and
leave me be, but instead he pulled a small knife from his boot.

He thrust it deep into my stomach and I
gasped at the cold pain of the blade. My attacker ran then,
dropping my body right there in front of the closed antique stores
to bleed out on the dirty concrete. My soul swam free from its
physical cage and left the world behind.

That night, my fate entwined with my
brother’s and I became a believer in all the things I had shut my
eyes to in the past. The spirit world was real. Ghosts were real
too–they remained alone, trapped in the middle plane waiting for
happiness to find them and help them move on. I knew this because I
became one of them.

I felt the last drop of blood escape my body
and lay prone on the ground, waiting for the cold to reach my
bones, but it never did. I opened my eyes and it was neither day
nor night but something in between. Lines were clear but colors
were muted and I struggled to understand where I was. Then, I saw
Xun.

He leaned against a store window, looking at
the items on display with a blank, unreadable expression on his
face. He wore the suit we had buried him in, not new, but well made
from good fabric. It had first belonged to a relative, I
recalled.

“Xun,” I said, my voice weak and alien to my
ears. There was no other sound to absorb it.

“Hello, sister. I want to say I am pleased
to see you again, but of course, you should not be here.” He
frowned, and sat on the curb by my side.

I sat up and looked at my bloody dress. The
murderer had taken the knife with him, but an image of his brutal
attack flashed before my eyes.

“Why did this happen to me?” I asked, not
expecting him to really know.

He squeezed my hand.

“I watch you sometimes, but I was not near
you tonight. Only when you died, I was pulled to you immediately. I
saw a man running in the distance, but no details. Tell me, did you
know your killer?”

“No, I’d never seen him before. He was just
some…some vagrant, I suppose. If I am truly dead, which I must
accept, then nothing can be done, right?” I wanted to cry but
strangely no tears came. Another thing I had lost.

“The earthly world will care and seek
justice, but it is not your concern any longer, no.”

“What is there to even care about now?” I
had believed that dead was dead; there was nothing else. It was
going to take me awhile to catch up to my reality.

Xun stood up and pulled my hand to help me
stand too. I realised I felt no pain. No clear emotion at all.

“Oh, we have something very important to do
now. Come on.” He walked fast and I quickened my steps to keep up.
The street looked exactly the same as I knew it, but there was not
a single soul around.

“Where are the other people?” I asked. The
shops didn’t look abandoned, but they were all closed, the shades
drawn on some. “Where are we going?”

“There’s no one else here. Just us two now.
And, we’re going home.”

“Home?” I was so confused.

“I’ll take you to Mother and Father, so you
can say goodbye, but then we must get to work.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Figuring out how to get out of this
place.”

There was already a gathering of neighbors
at our front stoop when we approached the house.

“Don’t worry, they can’t see us. Well, most
of them can’t,” Xun said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Some can?” I asked incredulously.

“Some of the old ones. Those who have lost
many loved ones and are close to their time.”

I did notice one old woman, Mrs. Han,
squinting our way. But we were still across the street and partly
obscured by a birch tree. At ninety-four years old, I’d be
surprised if she could see a living person from the same
distance.

“Come on.” Xun took my hand and pulled me up
into the air. With no effort at all, we leaped over the street,
vehicles, and the humming crowd surrounding my family’s home. I
braced to land my feet on the roof but we dropped right through,
like a child’s hand dipping into water.

My parent’s knelt on the hardwood floor on
either side of my dead body. Our local priest was administering
last prayers from his place above my head. They had dressed me in a
clean robe and my hair looked like it had been brushed with my
mother’s loving hand one hundred times or more to make it shine. I
looked down then and saw my bloody dress change to match the robe
on my physical body.

They both cried hard; their tears dripping
onto the worn silk of the robe and leaving moon-shaped stains on
the front. I broke down too, sinking to my knees, but not feeling
the coldness of the boards as my parent’s would be. Xun joined me
and put an arm around my shoulder but his face did not change from
its earlier stillness. He had been dead long enough to detach, I
presumed.

“Can I just go back?” I asked. A ridiculous
question, but my body was right there and I couldn’t have been out
of it more than a few hours at most.

“No,” Xun said a little sternly. “You must
say goodbye to them all, and your life. Now.”

“Wait. Grandmother isn’t here. Where is
she?” Panicked, I jumped up and hurried to the main room.

Xun was already there, having gone through
the dividing wall. I would learn these things.

Grandmother knelt in front of Xun’s altar
and was talking to him quietly.

“Now you’ll have your sister to take care
of. You won’t be alone,” she whispered. “But it is not enough. No,
it is not. A brother and sister are not a family, and should not be
together for eternity. A soul mate is necessary, for each of you
now. I have said this all along, Xun. I’m sorry my words were not
given weight by your father.”

“What is she prattling on about?” Xun asked,
clearly bored.

“Oh, no. Since your death, she and Mother
have schemed to find you a ghost bride, but Father eventually put
his foot down about it. They had my college fees to pay; a burden
on Father’s meager income as it is.”

Xun paced the room, looking at the
photographs and ink paintings on the walls.

“I haven’t been here for some time. I had
forgotten hearing them discuss it.” He pointed to a painting of a
yellow sunbird. “You did this one, didn’t you? It’s still so
vibrant.”

“Yes, I did. In junior high school. I
haven’t had the time to paint at all since I started medical
college.”

“You should have married when you had the
chance. Then you could have been an artist, or a teacher as you had
wished.”

“When you died, they offered the funds to
me. It was a rare chance for a woman in this town to have a higher
education. I could not say no. Especially after you were gone,” I
said these things that had been tightly locked away in my
heart.

Xun didn’t look at me, but kept scanning the
items decorating the walls. I watched Grandmother pour two cups of
green tea and place them on the altar–one for me and one for Xun. I
had seen her do this offering a hundred times, likely more, but the
odd thing was that I did feel somewhat warmer in those next few
minutes. Whether it was a real connection, or just my lingering
human desire for physical comfort, I couldn’t say for sure.

“If I hadn’t died. Would you have married
then?” Xun asked.

“Perhaps.” The truth was I had never been in
love. I had had the odd boyfriend since my seventeenth year, but my
heart had never bloomed. I had always preferred my books and
studies; the solitude of my own thoughts and dreams were all that
mattered.

“I had planned to marry Su Wing, did you
know that?” He asked me wistfully. As if it had been important
once, but was now merely a recalled moment in time.

I was surprised by this news. My brother had
been a known womanizer of sorts about the village, and we had not
taken any of his romances seriously. Su Wing was a beautiful girl
though, a year older than me at school.

“I didn’t know,” I answered. “She married
last spring. To an official in Deng Feng.”

“I watched the wedding,” Xun replied.

“It was a ridiculous show. Clearly she was
unhappy with the union,” I said, hoping to show some sympathy to
any pain he felt.

“Yes, I agree. Let’s get away from here. I
should teach you how to move through the two planes freely, and
other such things. Unless you want to witness your own funeral
days?” Xun asked.

I shook my head.

“Not at all.” I had no wish to see my
family’s pain at losing both their children.

“Good. Take my hand.” We flew straight up
through the ceiling and arrived in an open parkland that I didn’t
recognise.

“Is this in the real world?” I asked.

“No, it is on the spirit plane. You’ll get
used to the subtle differences in color and depth of vision
here.”

“It’s beautiful, but I can’t stand that
there are no people. No children or animals playing. Are we truly
cut off from other people and spirits?”

“Occasionally, someone I knew in my life
passes through here. I have a chance to say something if I wish.
This park is the crossover point, so it’s a good place to
wait.”

“Wait for what?” I asked.

Xun looked over to the far trees.

“Just to wait. To pass time until someone
comes for us.”

“It seems so pointless,” I offered.

“Everything that happens here is
significant, but there is a lack of the sorts of pointless,
everyday things in real life that shows you clearly what is truly
important.” Xun tried to explain. “Time is no longer real, so there
is no need to feel that you have to fill it. You can simply…wait.
For the next significant moment.” He smiled then, like it was a joy
to experience this nothingness. It still made no sense to me, but I
smiled back.

“I’ll try to relax then. But I can’t help
but wonder what happens when our parents marry us off to other
ghosts. You know I never believed any of this existed, so it’s hard
to swallow just now.”

“Don’t worry. It’s a good thing if they do
marry us, something significant will happen and we can both move on
to the next place.”