When I finally opened my eyes, I saw not heaven but partially chewed and digested bits of ginseng root in the dirt next to my face. I felt clear and empty, as translucent as the river beside me. Noticing the bleeding between my legs had stopped, I peeled the rags, stiff as scabs, away from my body and, carefully folding them, placed them on some rocks away from the running water. After taking off the rest of my clothes, I waded into the stream and rubbed at the dried blood caked on my legs from groin to calves. The mud-colored flecks turned liquid red in my hands, then dissolved under the patient licking of the river’s tongue.
Rubbing handfuls of small pebbles against my head and skin, I washed my hair and body until I felt raw. I let the cooling air dry me. By the length of the day, I knew that soon it would be the season to replant the stalks of rice in the paddies. When my parents were still alive and I was still a child, everyone in our family worked to grow the rice. Where we lived, there was time only for one planting, one harvest, so everything had to be done quickly and well. As the youngest, I was responsible for feeding the workers their meals of rice and soup, carried to them on trays balanced on my head. When I delivered the food without spilling, I was allowed to play—a function also rooted in practicality; as I jumped through the rows of fragile plants, waving sticks into the air, I kept scavenging birds away from our future meals.
But as I grew and second and third sister were hired on neighboring farms, I took over more of the work. Mother, oldest sister, and I would spend hours bent over the knee-deep silt, our fingers cradling the baby rice, laying them into the oozing earth.
During one season of planting, my mother gave birth to a dead baby. Smaller than one of my mother’s outstretched hands, the infant slipped between her fingers in a gush of blood and sour-smelling fluid. My mother wrapped it in a bundle, packing it neat as a field lunch, before I could see it, but oldest sister saw. It was deformed, Soon Ja whispered. Tail like a tadpole. Or maybe, she added as an afterthought, it was a boy.
We walked with our mother to the river, taking the clothes that needed to be washed. My mother divided up the clothes between my sister and me, and humming under her breath, she walked downriver. We listened to her voice, rising in waves above the rushing of the water, sing the song of the river: Pururun mul, su manun saramdul-i, jugugat-na? Blue waters, how many lives have you carried away? Moot saram-ui seulpumdo hulro hulro sa ganora. You should carry the sorrow of people far, far away.
And as we beat our clothes clean, we watched out of the corners of our eyes as she tightened the knot on her baby’s shroud and set it into the water where the current pulled it down. Into Saja’s mouth, oldest sister told me later in an attempt to torment me. An offering for the gatekeeper of hell.
When I was dry from my bath, I took the rags that had held back my blood and all that was left of my first baby, and instead of throwing them into the water, I planted them in a clean patch of earth next to the stream.
I like to imagine the face of my first child, what she would have looked like had the features evolved from fetus to infant. I imagine her as perfectly formed as my living daughter: her head, her hands, her toes, everything perfect and human-looking, except in miniature. No bigger than my fist, her tiny body crosses in on itself, arms and legs folded over her chest and belly. Her eyes flutter against closed lids, and her mouth opens and closes as she dreams of suckling. I like to imagine my first baby in this way: nestled in the crook of the river’s elbow, nursing at its breast.
5
Like the rats and cockroaches that ruled The Shacks, Saja the Death Messenger, Guardian of Hell, lived in the spaces between our walls. Each morning before dressing, I inspected the clothes hanging in the closet for the light dusting of gray fur or pawprints, and for the poppy-seed shit or fragile rice-paper skin of molting roaches. In the same way, I looked for indications of the Death Messenger: As I brushed and beat the dresses hanging in the closet, or shook and sifted through the underwear drawer, I unearthed the jade talismans my mother pinned to the insides of my clothes, the packets of salt or ashes she sewed into my panties.
I imagined the Death Messenger as an ugly old man with horns and ulcerous skin, burning yellow eyes and a gaping, toothless mouth that waited to feed ravenously on the souls that lined up in front of our apartment. Our open door was Saja’s gaping mouth, my mother his tongue, sampling each person for the taste of death. The demon waiting to snatch me off to hell if I did not carry a red packeted charm, Saja was the devil my father had preached about and, through my mother’s chants and offerings, became more real to me than my father ever was.
Sometimes when I could not sleep at night, I would hear the murmurings of the people who shared the building with us, or the shrieks of the cars in the street, and I would think, I would know, that it was Saja feeding on the dead. At those times I would squeeze closer to my mother, who continued to sleep, and listen for the true sounds of the night.
When I heard Sweet Mary come home from her shift at the Lollipop Lounge, the clicking of the lock next door and the gurgling of the pipes as she drew a bath became Saja cracking his jaws and slurping rivers of blood. And the pacing of the old man who lived above us—about whom the only thing I remember now is the way he smelled, like piss and fingernail polish, and the way his pants wedged into his crack as he shuffled through the halls, calling out “Three o’clock!” no matter what time it was—became Saja emerging from the walls to hunt.
I must have woken my mother on one of those sleepless nights, or maybe we had just turned off the alarm clock and lay in bed, drowsing in an early-morning dark still heavy with sleep. I have a memory of the two of us wrapped in the covers, my head tucked into her armpit, listening to the old man creak across his floor, waiting for him to shout “Three o’clock!”
When he did, my mother giggled, but I clutched at her arm. “It’s Saja the Death Messenger,” I blubbered. “I heard him come into our apartment. He looked through our kitchen and opened our refrigerator. He got a drink of water. And now he’s coming for me.”
“Are you dreaming?” my mother asked.
“It’s Saja, Mommy,” I whispered. “I can smell him.”
“Wake up, Beccah!” My mother grabbed my shoulders and shook. “Wake up from your dream!”
“He stinks, Mommy, with his bubbling skin, black and green, fermenting with pus!” I wanted her to know that I saw him, as clearly as she ever did, and that I knew he was real.
My mother untangled herself from the sheets and ran into the kitchen. I heard the suction of the refrigerator door opening, and then she came rushing back into the room. Held aloft in her hands, swinging by its legs, was a raw chicken.
“Sit up,” she said. “Quickly.” My mother waved the chicken at me, and its liver and gizzard plopped onto the sheets.
“Aigu!” my mother swore as she stuffed the innards back into the bird. Without looking up, she told me, “Take off your nightgown.”
“Why?” I asked, but when she started pulling the material over my head with her bloody fingers, I wriggled out of it myself. She grabbed my shift, rolled the chicken in it, swung the bundle around my head, and, singing, ran back out of the room.
“Mommy?” Wrapping my arms around my bony chest, I followed her into the living room-kitchen area, praying that I had not pushed her into one of her trances.
With the chicken tucked under her arm, my mother fumbled with the locks on the front door. After wrestling the door open, she charged to the railing and flung the chicken out into the street. The arms of my nightgown flapped loose, as if trying to fly away from the body that dragged it down. “Goodbye, Beccah’s ghost,” my mother called after it.