Black Water Sister Read online

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  JESS AND HER mom were greeted at Bayan Lepas by what seemed like half of Penang’s Chinese population. Jess hugged her dad while the flood of relatives swallowed up her mom.

  Dad didn’t say much, but he looked better than on their video calls, revived by the pleasure of the reunion. He smelled the same as ever—a comforting blend of Brut cologne and soap.

  This is going to work, thought Jess, and then, I have to make this work.

  “And this is Jessamyn?” said an auntie. “Grown up already ah! So pretty now! Last time I saw you, you were this tall only, you know.”

  They were staying at Dad’s sister’s house, in a well-off suburban neighborhood. Mom called it a bungalow—Malaysians seemed to use the word for any big house—but it was actually two stories. Past the wrought iron gates was a garden with bougainvilleas in extravagant bloom, magenta and peach and pale pink. The house, with its cream walls and brown tiled roof, had been built in the 1970s; the exterior had a slightly worn air that belied the family’s prosperity.

  Inside, the house was clean and comfortable and lived-in, as unpretentiously nice as its owners. The only luxuries were subtle ones—marble floors on the first story, Indonesian teak on the second. There was AC in the bedrooms and ceiling fans everywhere, and the house was designed to make the most of every breeze, with little holes for ventilation at the top of the external walls.

  Kor Kor’s kids had moved out—the eldest was working in Sydney, the younger two at college in Melbourne. Jess’s parents had the daughter’s bedroom, while Jess was given the room the sons had shared.

  Mom and Dad had initially refused when Kor Kor invited them to stay at hers while they looked for their own place (as she put it, but they all knew it really meant “until they could afford their own place”). It had taken some persistence on Kor Kor’s part to wear them down. In the course of a long-drawn-out video call, Mom had finally blurted, “My mother passed on few months ago. How can we stay at your house? By the time we come, it’ll be almost Chinese New Year that time.”

  “Aiyah, don’t worry. I’m Christian,” said Kor Kor. “All this pantang all that, I’m not scared. More fun if you stay with me. My kids are overseas, not coming back for New Year. I have an empty nest. Lonely, you know!”

  From this, Jess had imagined Kor Kor’s house would be quiet. But even though they’d arrived in Penang with a few weeks to go before Lunar New Year, the house was perpetually full. Jess couldn’t turn a corner without stumbling over a visiting auntie or uncle or their bored progeny.

  Her aunt was retired and sociable, but they weren’t all her friends. To Jess’s surprise, it turned out the visitors were there on her parents’ account.

  She hadn’t known her parents still knew that many people in Penang. She hadn’t really thought they knew people anywhere. She’d always seen them as introverts, their investment in work and family leaving no space in their lives for so tenuous a connection as friendship.

  She saw now that this was one of the unnatural changes being immigrants had wrought in her parents—one of the ways they had been warped under its pressures. Among their friends and relatives—people who shared their language, accent, values, preoccupations—Mom and Dad were different people: confident, gregarious and witty. It was Jess who was out of her element, navigating unfamiliar waters.

  Her chats with the visitors were more like interrogations, with Jess’s life choices as the topic du jour, but fortunately her active input was not often required. The aunties and uncles were perfectly capable of conducting conversations with Jess without any expectation that she actually speak.

  “No job yet? Ah, Harvard grad like you, you’ll have no problem finding.”

  “Must be she’s waiting for the right opportunity,” said another auntie. “Young people these days are picky. They won’t simply take any job.”

  “You all are suffering from abundance,” an uncle told Jess. Pleased with the phrase, he repeated, “Suffering from abundance,” a beady eye shining judgment on Jess. “In my day having a job was more important. Never mind what job. No matter what it is, you can make it if you work hard.”

  Jess smiled vaguely. This was her habitual tactic with obnoxious men of any age. But Mom fired up.

  “Why shouldn’t she be picky? You have to work for most of your life. Might as well find something she likes.”

  “No point being an employee, working for other people,” said Jess’s aunt. “Better if Min does her own business.”

  Kor Kor scooped up a newspaper on the coffee table, showing it to Jess’s mom. “Like this young fellow. He studied at Oxford, worked in US, then came back to do business. Now he has a chain, doing very well. Ching Yee took me to his café. One small coffee is twenty ringgit! Not like it’s kopi luwak or what. Just normal coffee!”

  “Where got people pay twenty ringgit for coffee?” said a skeptical auntie, but Kor Kor insisted:

  “You go and see. All the young people go there. They all like that style. Hipster style.” She pronounced the word “hipster” as though it was from an alien tongue.

  “Twenty ringgit for one coffee,” said Mom, impressed. “Nowadays the young people are so clever to make money.”

  She handed the newspaper to Jess, looking hopeful, as though if she only applied sufficient moral pressure, Jess might be persuaded to join the ranks of the young people who were clever at making money.

  The paper showed a man in his twenties, dressed in the successful millennial uniform of crisp blue shirt, gray jeans and white Vans. He was light brown skinned and good-looking, suave but approachable. He looked like exactly the kind of person who would found a chain of hipster cafés.

  The “suffering from abundance” uncle was peering over her shoulder, so when he burst out, “Ha!” he did it right in Jess’s ear.

  “Please explain the joke,” Jess said acidly, driven beyond endurance.

  The uncle ignored her.

  “Ng Wei Sherng? That fellow is the last person your niece should copy!” he said to Kor Kor. “His cafés don’t need to do well. You don’t know ah, the father is who?” He tapped the young man’s smiling face. “This is Dato’ Ng Chee Hin’s son.”

  “Really?” Mom peered over Jess’s shoulder at the newspaper with fresh interest. “True hor, looks like him. I didn’t realize because the boy is so dark.”

  “Mother is Indian,” said the uncle knowledgeably.

  Mom was talking over him, in her usual Mom way. “But he’s so young! I thought Ng Chee Hin is in his seventies?”

  A new voice said sharply, Ng Chee Hin?

  It was the raspy voice of a habitual smoker, oddly familiar, though Jess didn’t recognize it. She looked around for who had spoken, but she couldn’t tell which of the aunties it had been. Everyone went on talking as though they hadn’t heard the voice.

  “Not bad what, still,” Kor Kor was saying. “Even if the father is rich, doesn’t mean the children will be successful. Most rich men’s sons are playful, don’t like to work.”

  “The problem is the father,” said the uncle. “Ng Chee Hin is a rubber tapper’s son. You ask yourself, how did he manage to become so rich, until the chief minister also goes to his house?” He shook his head. “Your niece better find some other model to follow.”

  “Aiyah, who are we to judge?” said Kor Kor. “Maybe when he’s younger it’s different, but nowadays Dato’ Ng is very decent what. Kok Teng has a contract with his company. He says Dato’ Ng is very religious, always donates to charity.”

  The uncle snorted.

  “You know why the boy is so young?” he said to Mom. “Because he is the third wife’s son. She was twentysomething only when she married Dato’ Ng. He was fifty already by that time. Very pious man, Ng Chee Hin!”

  Why are you talking about Ng Chee Hin? said the raspy stranger’s voice.
/>   The aunties and uncles were gossiping about rich people and their peccadilloes, Jess’s career plans forgotten—except by Kor Kor, who withdrew from the general conversation, slightly put out.

  “Only thing I’m worried is it’s boring for you here, Min,” she said to Jess. “If the children are around, they can entertain you. But there’s only us old people. Nothing for a young person like you to do.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m great at doing nothing,” said Jess absently. She was trying to work out whom the raspy voice belonged to. She couldn’t connect it with any of the women sitting around Kor Kor’s living room, but then why was it so familiar . . . ?

  A memory floated to the surface of her mind. The same voice saying, Does your mother know you’re a pengkid?

  Jess stiffened, cold with horror.

  Outside in the world, Mom was saying, “Not good to do nothing! Why don’t you help Kor Tiao?”

  “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” said Jess, cutting her off.

  In the bathroom she washed her face and patted it dry, listening to her own breath.

  The stress was getting to her, making her think she was hearing things. It was nothing to freak out about. She’d had a lot to deal with in the past few weeks, and being lectured constantly by strangers wasn’t helping. She needed to slow down, do some self-care. She’d book herself a manicure or something . . .

  The voice sliced through all of this like a knife.

  You never answered my question!

  The speaker might have been standing next to Jess. She couldn’t see them, but it was impossible to doubt their reality.

  She gripped the sink, staring at her own terrified face in the mirror.

  You’re looking at what? said the voice impatiently. What were they all saying about that useless bastard? Tell Ah Ma!

  TWO

  What the fuck?” said Jess out loud.

  The sound of her own voice was reassuringly normal, grounding her in reality.

  She had obviously imagined the voice in her head. She was the one who was in control of her brain. So as long as she kept telling herself that, the voice would go away—

  Don’t talk like that in front of your Ah Ma, said the voice.

  “You’re not my Ah Ma,” said Jess, despite herself. “She’s dead.”

  The death of her maternal grandmother the year before had been overshadowed by all the other crap going on in her life at the time. Dad had been in remission, but struggling with the fact that he’d lost everything he’d worked for. Jess had been trying to cobble together some kind of income from freelance photography work while applying for jobs that never got back to her and conducting a clandestine long-distance relationship with Sharanya, who was living with her family at the opposite end of the country.

  As for Mom, she had been a straight-up mess. When she’d told Jess one morning, “Ah Ma passed on last night,” it took Jess a moment to remember who Ah Ma was.

  They hadn’t seen Ah Ma since they had moved to the States, though they met up with Dad’s side of the family whenever they were back in Malaysia. Jess hadn’t even thought to ask why they saw so little of Mom’s relatives till their last visit to Malaysia a few years ago.

  “Ah Ma doesn’t like to serve people,” Mom had said. “Better to visit people who like to have guests.”

  Sharanya could never believe that Jess had left it there. “You’re not even a little bit curious? Your mom hasn’t seen her own mom in two decades. That’s not normal.”

  “Mom says she belongs to Dad’s family now,” Jess said. “It’s a Chinese thing. Once a woman gets married, it’s like she’s left her family and joined her husband’s.”

  “That’s an Indian thing too,” said Sharanya. “Before Skype was invented. This is the twenty-first century!”

  “It’s not like it’s some big mystery. My grandmother’s probably just an asshole,” Jess told her. “Like my uncle. He only gets in touch to try to borrow money from Mom. It’s like it’s the 1800s and he thinks we went to Gold Mountain and we’re millionaires now, while they’re back in the old country eating millet. And Mom still talks to him, so my grandmother must be even worse.”

  The voice said now, Of course Ah Ma is dead. If I’m not dead, how can I talk to you? Your mother never called.

  The bathroom seemed to contract around Jess. She’d been perpetually sweaty since arriving in Malaysia, but the sweat was cooling on her skin.

  There was no such thing as ghosts, she told herself. Her subconscious was fucking with her. In an unprecedented, terrifying way, admittedly, but she didn’t have time to freak out about that right now.

  “Pull yourself together, Teoh,” she said to her reflection. “Go out there and make nice with the uncles and aunties—”

  You can’t go yet, said the voice. Outside is too noisy. Why does your aunt need to hold open house every day, she thinks she’s a politician or what? Stay here and tell Ah Ma what they all were saying about Ng Chee Hin.

  “You’re not my Ah Ma,” said Jess. “You’re not anybody! I’m imagining you!”

  Don’t shout, said the voice. You want to talk, talk inside here. No need to open your mouth. After people will hear.

  By “inside here,” the voice didn’t mean the bathroom. It meant the inside of Jess’s head.

  What would the uncles and aunties in Kor Kor’s living room say if they heard her talking to an imaginary voice? It wasn’t like Jess cared what they thought, but they might be shitty to Mom about it.

  She said, without opening her mouth, If you’re my grandmother, my dead grandmother, how can you be talking to me inside my head?

  I’m like the good brothers, said the voice, with the patience reserved by most people for children or idiots. Not everybody can hear. But our family can do this kind of thing.

  What is that supposed to mean? said Jess. I don’t have any brothers!

  “Good brothers” also you don’t know? said the voice. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?

  This is crazy, Jess said, or thought. It wasn’t like she could really be addressing anyone but herself. She was the only person in the room. There was no one else she could be talking to. Whatever this is, it has to stop. I have enough to deal with. I can’t start hallucinating that I’m talking to a ghost who thinks it’s my dead grandmother—

  Hallucinating what? said the voice tartly. If I’m not here, who do you think has been sending you all those dreams?

  The knock at the door made Jess jump. Mom said on the other side, “Min, you’re inside? You’re not feeling well, is it?”

  Wait, said Jess. Dreams?

  Mom banged on the door again. “Min?”

  Jess recognized the trembly beginnings of panic in Mom’s voice. She swore under her breath and opened the door. “I’m fine, Mom. What is it?”

  “Auntie Poh Eng waiting to go so long already,” Mom said. Then she got a proper look at Jess’s face. “Your lips are so pale!” She took Jess’s hands, pressing them between her warm palms. “So cold! Are you feeling dizzy? If you don’t feel well, you must tell Mom. Mustn’t suffer in silence.”

  Her expression pulled Jess out of her distraction. Mom had always been paranoid about health stuff, but Dad getting cancer had sent her anxiety into overdrive. She looked like she was already waiting for the doctor to pronounce Jess’s prognosis.

  “I’m OK,” Jess said. “I’m jet-lagged, that’s all. I’m going to go upstairs and take a nap.”

  “OK,” said Mom, but she looked troubled. “After one week you still got hangover? You’re so young, shouldn’t be taking so long to recover. I think you don’t have enough iron in your blood.”

  Surrender was usually the fastest way to cut short a bout of nagging.

  “Yeah, I’ll eat more spinach,” said Jess. “Make my apologies to Kor Kor, OK?”

  She was moving toward
the stairs as she spoke, since even surrender didn’t always work, but then a thought struck her. She paused on the first step, turning back.

  “Mom, if I say ‘good brothers’”—Jess said it in Hokkien, the same words the ghost had used—“what does that make you think of?”

  “‘Ho hia ti’?” echoed Mom. “Means ‘good brothers.’ Can also say to mean ‘good friends.’ ‘Dad and Uncle Fahmi are ho hia ti,’ like that. Why?”

  “No reason,” said Jess.

  * * *

  • • •

  BY THE NEXT day, the impression the voice had left was fading. She had a call with Sharanya, which helped. It was surreal seeing her face on Jess’s phone screen, but comforting too. It had been a couple of weeks since they’d been able to talk. Jess had been starting to feel like she’d made Sharanya up, like she’d never had a girlfriend at all.

  She told Sharanya this.

  Sharanya’s eyes crinkled. “How is Penang?”

  Jess shrugged, though her position made the movement awkward. She was propped up on her elbows on her bed, with the blanket over her head to muffle sound. “Same as ever. It’s not like I get to see Penang. I just hang out at my aunt’s house.”

  “Singapore’s like that too,” said Sharanya. “I’m looking forward to getting the chance to explore. It’s going to be so great when we have our own place.”

  Jess was less confident than Sharanya that she’d be in Singapore by the fall, when Sharanya would be starting her PhD there. Jess had to get a job in Singapore for that to happen—and she’d have to leave her parents.

  “Did you see that content manager job I sent you?” said Sharanya, before Jess could change the subject. “You’d be really good at that.”

  Jess could’ve pretended she was going to apply, but she’d always tried to be real with Sharanya. Lying to her family had become second nature; she didn’t want that to be true of their relationship too.