Ancestor Money
In the afterlife, Rachel lived alone. She had a clapboard cabin and a fine. Purple morning glories grew by the
kitchen door. It was always an early summer morning and had been since her death. At first, she had wondered if this were some sort of Catholic afterlife. She neither felt the presence of God nor missed his absence. But in the stasis of this summer morning, it was difficult to wonder or worry, year after year.
The honking geese told her someone was coming. Geese were better than dogs, and maybe meaner. It was Speed. “Rachel?” he called from the fence.
She had barely known Speed in life—he was her husband’s uncle and not a person she had liked or approved of. But she had come to enjoy his company when she no longer had to fear sin or bad companions.
“Rachel,” he said, “you’ve got mail. From China.”
She came and stood in the doorway, shading her eyes from the day. “What?” she said. “You’ve got mail from China,” Speed said. He held up an envelope. It was big, made of some stiff red paper, and sealed with a darker red bit of wax.
She had never received mail before. “Where did you get it?” she asked.
“It was in the mailbox at the end of the hollow,” Speed said. He said “holler” for “hollow.” Speed had a thick brush of wiry black hair that never combed flat without hair grease.
“There’s no mailbox there,” she said.
“Is now.”
“Heavens, Speed. Who put you up to this,” she said.
“It’s worse ’n that. No one did. Open it up.”
She came down and took it from him. There were Chinese letters going up and down on the left side of the envelope. The stamp was as big as the palm of her hand. It was a white crane flying against a gilt background. Her name was right there in the middle in beautiful black ink.
Rachel Ball
b. 1892 d. 1927
Swan Pond Hollow, Kentucky
United States
Speed was about to have apoplexy, so Rachel put off opening it, turning the envelope over a couple of times. The red paper had a watermark in it of twisting Chinese dragons, barely visible. It was an altogether beautiful object.
She opened it with reluctance. Inside it read:
Honorable Ancestress of Amelia Shaugnessy: an offering of death money and goods has been made to you at Tin Hau Temple in Yau Ma Tei, in Hong Kong. If you would like to claim it, please contact us either by letter or phone. hk8-555-4444.
There were more Chinese letters, probably saying the same thing.
“What is it?” Speed asked.
She showed it to him.
“Ah,” he said.
“You know about this?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “except that the Chinese do that ancestor worship. Are you going to call?” She went back inside and he followed her. His boots clumped on the floor. She was barefoot and so made no noise. “You want some coffee?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Are you going to write back?”
“I’m going to call,” she said. Alexander Graham Bell had thought that the phone would eventually allow communication with the spirits of the dead and so the link between the dead and phones had been established. Rachel had a cell phone she had never used. She dialed it now, standing in the middle of her clean kitchen, the hem of her skirt damp from the yard and clinging cool around her calves.
The phone rang four times and then a voice said, “Wei.” “Hello?” she said.
“Wei,” said the voice again. “Wei?”
“Hello, do you speak English?” she said.
There was the empty sound of ether in the airwaves. Rachel frowned at Speed.
Then a voice said, “Hello? Yes?”
Rachel thought it was the same voice, accented but clear. It did not sound human, but had a reedy, hollow quality.
“This is Rachel Ball. I got an envelope that said I should call this number about, um,” she checked the letter, “death money.” Rachel had not been able to read very well in life but it was one of those things that had solved itself in the afterlife. “Ah. Rachel Ball. A moment . . .” “Yes,” she said.
“Yes. It is a substantial amount of goods and money. Would you like to claim it?” “Yes,” she said.
“Hold on,” said the voice. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
“What’s going on?” Speed asked.
Rachel waved her hand to shush him.
“Honorable Ancestress, your claim has been recorded. You may come at any time within the next ninety days to claim it,” said the strange, reedy voice.
“Go there?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the voice.
“Can you send it?”
“Wait,” she said. But when she pushed redial, she went directly to voicemail. It was in Chinese.
Speed was watching her, thoughtful. She looked at her bare feet and curled her toes.
“Are you going to go?” Speed asked her.
“I guess,” she said. “Do you want to come?”
“I traveled too much in life,” he said and that was all. Rachel had never gone more than twenty-five miles from Swan Pond in life and had done less in death. But Speed had been a hobo in the Depression, leaving his wife and kids without a word and traveling the south and the west. Rachel did not understand why Speed was in heaven, or why some people were here and some people weren’t, or where the other people were. She had figured her absence of concern was part of being dead.
Rachel had died, probably of complications from meningitis, in 1927, in Swan Pond, Kentucky. She had expected that Robert, her husband, would eventually be reunited with her. But in life, Robert had remarried badly and had seven more children, two of whom died young. She saw Robert now and again and felt nothing but distant affection for him.
He had moved on in life, and even in death he was not her Robert anymore.
But now something flickered in her that was a little like discontent. Amelia Shaugnessy was . . . her granddaughter. Child of her third child and second daughter, Evelyn. Amelia had sent her an offering. Rachel touched her fingers to her lips, thinking. She touched her hair.
What was it she had talked to on the phone? Some kind of Chinese spirit? Not an angel.
“I’ll tell you about it when I get back,” she said.
She did not take anything. She did not even close the door.
“Rachel,” Speed said from her door. She stopped with her hand on the gate. “Are you going to wear shoes?” he asked.
“Do you think I need them?” she asked.
He shrugged.
The geese were gathered in a soft gray cluster by the garden at the side of the little clapboard cabin where they had been picking among the tomato plants. All their heads were turned towards her.
She went out the gate. The road was full of pale dust like talcum powder, already warmed by the sun. It felt so good she was glad that she hadn’t worn shoes.
As she walked, she seemed to walk forward in time. She came down and out the hollow, past a white farmhouse with a barn and silo and a radio in the windowsill playing a Reds baseball game against the Padres. A black Rambler was parked in the driveway and laundry hung drying in the breeze, white sheets belling out.
Where the road met the highway was a neat brick ranch house with a paved driveway and a patient German Shepherd lying in the shade under a tree. There was a television antenna like a lightning rod. The German Shepherd watched her but did not bark. She waited at the highway and after a few minutes, saw a Greyhound bus coming through the valley, following the Laurel River. She watched it through the curves, listening to the grinding down and back up of its gears. The sign on the front of the bus said lexington, so that was where she supposed she would go next.
The bus stopped in front of her, sighing, and the door opened.
By the time she got to Lexington, the bus had modernized. It had a bathroom and the windows were tinted smoky colored. Highway 25 had become Interstate 75 and outside the window, they were passing horse farms with white board fence rising and falling across bluegreen fields. High-headed horses with manes like women’s hair that shone in the sun.
“Airport, first,” the driver called. “Then bus terminal with connections to Cincinnati, New York City and Sausalito, California.” She thought he sounded northern. Rachel stepped down from the bus in front of the terminal. The tarmac was pleasantly warm. As the bus pulled out, the breeze from its passing belled her skirt and tickled the back of her neck. She wondered if perhaps she should have worn a hat.
She wasn’t afraid—what could happen to her here? She was dead. The bus had left her off in front of glass doors that opened to some invisible prompt. Across a cool and airy space was a counter for Hong Kong Air, and behind it, a diminutive Chinese woman in a green suit and a tiny green pillbox cap trimmed with gold. Her name tag said “Jade Girl” but her skin was as white as porcelain teeth.
Rachel hesitated for the first time since she had walked away from her own gate. This grandchild of hers who had sent her money, what obligation had she placed on Rachel? For more than seventy years, far longer than she had lived, Rachel had been at peace in her little clapboard house on the creek, up in the hollow. She missed the companionable sound of the geese and the longing was painful in a way she had forgotten. She was so startled by the emotion that she lifted her hand to her silent heart.
“May I help you?” the woman asked.
Wordlessly, Rachel showed her the envelope.
“Mrs. Ball?” the woman behind the counter said. “Your flight is not leaving for a couple of hours. But I have your ticket.”
She held out the ticket, a gaudy red plastic thing with golden dragons and black. Rachel took it because it was held out to her. The Chinese woman had beautiful hands, but Rachel had the hands of a woman who gardened—clean but not manicured or soft. The ticket made something lurch within her and she was afraid. Afraid. She had not been afraid for more than seventy years. And she was barefoot and hadn’t brought a hat. “If you would like to shop while you are waiting,” the woman behind the counter said, and gestured with her hand. There were signs above them that said “Terminal A/Gates 124A” with an arrow, and “Terminal B/Gates 1-15B.” “There are shops along the concourse,” the Chinese woman said.
Rachel looked at her ticket. Amidst the Chinese letters it said “Gate 4A.” She looked back up at the sign. “Thank you,” she said.
The feeling of fear had drained from her like water in sand and she felt herself again. What had that been about, she wondered. She followed the arrows to a brightly lit area full of shops. There was a book shop and a flower shop, a shop with postcards and saltand-pepper shakers and stuffed animals. It also had sandals, plastic things in bright colors. Rachel’s skirt was pale blue so she picked a pair of blue ones. They weren’t regular sandals. The sign said flip-flops and they had a strap sort of business that went between the big toe and second toe that felt odd. But she decided if they bothered her too much, she could always carry them.
She addressed it to Simon Philpot, Swan Pond Hollow. At the door to the shop there was a mailbox on a post. She put the card in and raised the flag. She thought of him getting the card out of the new mailbox at the end of the hollow and a ghost of the heartsickness stirred in her chest. So she walked away, as she had from her own gate that morning, her new flip-flops snapping a little as she went. Partway down the concourse she thought of something she wanted to add and turned and went back to the mailbox. She was going to write, “I am not sure about this.” But the flag was down and when she opened the mailbox, the card was already gone.
There were other people at Gate 4A. One of them was Chinese with a blue face and black around his eyes. His eyes were wide, the whites visible all the way around the very black pupils. He wore strange shoes with upturned toes, red leggings, elaborate red armor and a strange red hat. He was reading a Chinese newspaper.
Rachel sat a couple of rows away from the demon. She fanned herself with the beautiful red envelope, although she wasn’t warm. There was a TV and on it a balding man was telling people what they should and should not do. He was some sort of doctor, Dr. Phil.
He said oddly rude things and the people sat, hands folded like children, and nodded.
“Collecting ancestor money?” a man asked. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and tie and a Fedora. “My son married a Chinese girl and every year I have to make this trip.” He smiled.
“You’ve done this before?” Rachel asked. “Is it safe?”
The man shrugged. “It’s different,” he said. “I get a new suit. They’re great tailors. It’s a different afterlife, though. Buddhist and all.”
Buddhism. Detachment. And for a moment, it felt as if everything swirled around her, a moment of vertigo. Rachel found herself unwilling to think about Buddhism.
The man was still talking. “You know, I can still feel how strongly my son wants things.
The pull of the living and their way of obliging us,” he said, and chuckled.
Rachel had not felt much obligation to the living for years. Of her children, all but two were dead. There was almost no one still alive who remembered her. “What about,” she pointed at the demon.
“Don’t look at him,” the man said, quietly.
Rachel looked down at her lap, at the envelope and the plastic ticket. “I’m not sure I should have come,” she said.
“Most people don’t,” the man said. “What’s your seat number?”
Rachel looked at her ticket. Now, in addition to saying “Gate 4A,” it also said, “Seat 7a.” “I was hoping we were together,” said the man. “But I’m afraid I’m 12D. Aisle seat. I
prefer the aisle. 7A. That’s a window seat. You’ll be able to see the stars.” She could see the stars at home.
“There’s the plane,” he said.
She could hear the whine of it, shrill, like metal on metal. It was a big passenger 747, red on top and silver underneath, with a long, swirling gold dragon running the length of the plane. She didn’t like it.
She stayed with the man with the Fedora through boarding. A young man in a golden suit, narrow and perfectly fitted, took their tickets. The young man’s name tag said “Golden Boy.” His face was as pale as platinum. At the door of the plane, there were two women in those beautiful green suits and little pillbox stewardess hats, both identical to the girl at the counter. Standing, Rachel could see that their skirts fell to their ankles but were slit up one side almost to the knee. Their nametags both said “Jade Girl.” On the plane, the man with the Fedora pointed out to Rachel where her seat was.
She sat down and looked out the window. In the time they had been waiting for the plane, it had started to get dark, although she could not yet see the first star.
They landed in Hong Kong at dawn, coming in low across the harbor which was smooth and shined like pewter. They came closer and closer to the water until it seemed they were skimming it and then, suddenly there was land and runway and the chirp of their wheels touching down.
Rachel’s heart gave a painful thump and she said, “Oh,” quite involuntarily, and put her hand to her chest. Under her hand she felt her heart lurch again and she gasped, air filling her quiet lungs until they creaked a bit and found elasticity. Her heart beat and filled her with—she did not know at first with what and then she realized it was excitement. Rising excitement and pleasure and fear in an intoxicating mix. Colors were sharp and when one of the Jade Girls cracked the door to the plane, the air had an uncertain tang—sweet and underneath that, a many-people odor like old socks.
“Welcome to the Fragrant Harbor,” the Jade Girls chorused, their voices so similar that they sounded like a single voice. The man with the Fedora passed her and looked back over his shoulder and smiled. She followed him down the aisle, realizing only after she stood that the demon was now behind her. The demon smelled like wet charcoal and she could feel the heat of his body as if he were a furnace. She did not look around. Outside, there were steps down to the tarmac and the heat took her breath away, but a fresh wind blew off the water. Rachel skimmed off her flip-flops so they wouldn’t trip her up and went down the stairs to China.
A Golden Boy was waiting for her, as a Jade Girl had been waiting for the man with the Fedora. “Welcome to San-qing, the Heaven of Highest Purity,” he said. “I am supposed to be in Hong Kong,” Rachel said. She dropped her flip-flops and stepped into them.
“This is the afterlife of Hong Kong,” he said. “Are you here to stay?” “No,” she said. “I got a letter.” She showed him the Chinese envelope.
“Ah,” he said. “Tin Hau Temple. Excellent. And congratulations. Would you like a taxi or would you prefer to take a bus? The fares will be charged against the monies you collect.”
“Which would you recommend?” she asked.
“On the bus, people may not speak English,” he said. “So you won’t know where to get off. And you would have to change to get to Yau Ma Tei. I recommend a taxi.” “All right,” she said. People wouldn’t speak English? Somehow it had never occurred to her. Maybe she should have seen if someone would come with her. This granddaughter, maybe she had burned ancestor money for Robert as well. Why not? Robert was her grandfather. She didn’t know any of them, so why would she favor Rachel? That had been foolish, not checking to see if Robert had wanted to come. He hadn’t been on the plane, but maybe he wouldn’t come by himself. Maybe he’d gone to find Rachel and she’d already been gone.
She hadn’t been lonely before she came here.
The Golden Boy led her through the airport. It was a cavernous space, full of people, all of whom seemed to be shouting. Small women with bowed legs carrying string bags full of oranges and men squatting along the wall, smoking cigarettes and grinning at her as she passed with the Golden Boy. There were monkeys everywhere, dressed in Chinese gowns and little caps, speaking the same language as the people. Monkeys were behind the counters and monkeys were pushing carts and monkeys were hawking Chinese newspapers. Some of the monkeys were tiny black things with wizened white faces and narrow hands and feet that were as shiny as black patent leather. Some were bigger and waddled, walking on their legs like men. They had stained yellow teeth and fingernails the same color as their hands. They were businesslike. One of the little ones shouted something in Chinese in a curiously human voice as she passed, and then shrieked like an animal, baring its teeth at another monkey. She started.
The Golden Boy smiled, unperturbed.
Out front, he flagged a taxi. The car that pulled up was yellow with a white top and said Toyota and Crown Comfort on the back—it had pulled past them and the Golden Boy grabbed her elbow and hustled her to it. Rachel expected the driver to be a monkey but he was a human. The Golden Boy leaned into the front seat and shouted at the driver in Chinese. The driver shouted back.
Rachel felt exhausted. She should never have come here. Her poor heart! She would go back home.
The Golden Boy opened the back door and bowed to her and walked away.
“Wait!” she called.
But he was already inside the airport.
The driver said something gruff to her and she jumped into the taxi. It had red velour seats and smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. The driver swung the car out into traffic so sharply that her door banged shut. A big gold plastic bangle with long red tassels swayed below his mirror. He pointed to it and said, “Hong Kong in-sur-ance pol-i-cy,” and smiled at her, friendly and pleased at his joke, if it was a joke.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I want to go back home.”
But apparently, “Hong Kong insurance policy” was most, if not all, of his English. He smiled up into his rearview mirror. His teeth were brown and some were missing.
This was not what Rachel thought of as death.
The street was full of cars, bicycles, single-piston two-cycle tractors and palanquins. Her driver swung through and around them. They stopped at an intersection to wait for the light to change. Two men were putting down one of the palanquins. In it was a woman sitting in a chair. The woman put a hand on one of the men’s shoulders and stood up carefully. Her gown was a swirl of greenish blues and silvers and golds. Her face was turned away but she was wearing a hat like a fox’s head. There was something about her feet that was odd—they looked no bigger than the palm of a human hand. Rachel thought, “She’s walking on her toes.” The woman looked over towards the taxi and Rachel saw that it wasn’t a hat, that the woman had marvelous golden fox eyes and that the tip of her tongue just protruded from her muzzle, dog-like. The light changed and the taxi accelerated up a hill, pushing Rachel back into her seat, queasy.
Narrow streets strung overhead with banners. The smells—dried fish and worse—made Rachel feel more and more sick. Nausea brought with it visceral memories of three years of illness before she died, of confusion and fear and pee in the bed. She had not forgotten before, but she hadn’t felt it. Now she felt the memories.
The streets were so narrow that the driver’s mirror clipped the shoulder of a pedestrian as they passed. The mirror folded in a bit and then snapped out and the angry startled cry dopplered behind them. Rachel kept expecting the face of the driver to change, maybe into a pig, or worse, the demon from the plane.
The taxi lurched to a stop. “Okay,” the driver said and grinned into the mirror. His face was the same human face as when they had started. The red letters on the meter said $72.40. And then they blinked three times and said $00.00. When Rachel hadn’t moved, the driver said, “Okay,” again and said something in Chinese.
She didn’t know how to open the car door.
He got out and came around and opened the door. She got out.
“Okay!” he said cheerfully and jumped back in and took off, leaving the smell of exhaust. She was standing in an alley barely wider than the taxi. Both sides of the alley were long red walls, punctuated by wide doors, all closed. A man jogged past her with a long stick over his shoulders with baskets on both ends. The stick was bowed with the weight and flexed with each step. Directly in front of her was a red door set with studs. If she tilted her head back, above the wall she could see a building with curved eaves, rising tier upon tier like some exotic wedding cake.
music sounded very musical.
There were red pillars holding up the eaves of the temple, and the whole front of the building was open, so that the courtyard simply became the temple. Inside was dim and smelled even more strongly of sandalwood. A huge curl of the incense hung down in a cone from the ceiling. The inside of the temple was full of birds; not the pleasant, comforting and domestic animals her geese were. They had long sweeping tails and sharply pointed wings and they flickered from ground to eaves and watched with bright, black, reptilian eyes. People ignored them.
A man in a narrow white suit came up to her, talking to the air in Chinese. He was wearing sunglasses. It took her a moment to realize that he was not talking to some unseen spirit, but was wearing a headset for a cell phone, most of which was invisible in his jet-black hair. He pushed the mic down away from his face a little and addressed her in Chinese.
“Do you speak English?” she asked. She had not gotten accustomed to this hammering heart of hers.
“No English,” he said and said some more in Chinese.
The envelope and letter had Chinese letters on it. She handed it to him. After she had handed it to him, it occurred to her that she didn’t know if he had anything to do with the temple or if he was, perhaps, some sort of confidence man.
He pulled the sunglasses down his nose and looked over them to read the letter. His lips moved slightly as he read. He pulled the mic back up and said something into it, then pulled a thin cell phone no bigger than a business card and tapped some numbers out with his thumb.
“Wei!” he shouted into the phone.
He handed her back the letter and beckoned for her to follow, then crossed the temple, walking fast and weaving between people without seeming to have had to adjust. Rachel had to trot to keep up with him, nearly stepping out of her foolish flip-flops. In an alcove off to one side, the wall was painted with a mural of a Hong Kong street with cars and buses and red-and-white taxis, traffic lights and crosswalks. But no Jade Girls or fox-headed women, no palanquins or tractors. Everything in it looked very contemporary; the light reflecting off the plate-glass windows, the briefcases and fur coats. As contemporary as the white-suited man. The man held up his hand that she was to wait here. He disappeared back into the crowd.
She thought about going back out and getting in a taxi and going back to the airport. Would she need money? She hadn’t needed money to get here, although they had told her that the amount of the taxi had been subtracted from her money. Did she have enough to get back? What if she had to stay here? What would she do? An old woman in a gray tunic and black pants said, “Rachel Ball?”
“Yes?”
“I am Miss Lily. I speak English. I can help you,” the woman said. “May I see your notification?”
Rachel did not know what a “notification” was. “All I have is this letter,” she said. The letter had marks from handling, as if her hands had been moist. What place was this where the dead perspired?
“Ah,” said Miss Lily. “That is it. Very good. Would you like your money in bills or in a debit card?”
“Is it enough to get me home?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, yes,” Miss Lily said. “Much more than that.” “Bills,” Rachel said. She did not care about debit cards.
“Very good,” said Miss Lily. “And would you like to make arrangements to sell your goods, or will you be shipping them?” “What do people do with money?” Rachel asked.
“They use it to buy things, to buy food and goods, just as they do in life. You are a Christian, aren’t you?”
“Baptist,” Rachel said. “But is this all there is for Chinese people after they die? The same as being alive? What happens to people who have no money?”
“People who have no money have nothing,” said Miss Lily. “So they have to work. But this is the first of the seven heavens. People who are good here progress up through the heavens. And if they continue, they will eventually reach a state of what you would call transcendence, what we call the three realms, when they are beyond this illusion of matter.”
“Can they die here?”
Miss Lily inclined her head. “Not die, but if they do not progress, they can go into the seven hells.”
“But I have enough money to get back home,” Rachel said. “And if I left you the rest of it, the money and the goods, could you give it to someone here who needs it?
“At home you will not progress,” Miss Lily said gently.
That stopped Rachel. She would go back to her little clapboard cabin and her geese and everything would become as timeless as it had been before. Here she would progress.
Progress for what? She was dead. Death is eternity.
She had been dead for over seventy years, and she would be dead forever and forever. Dead longer than those buried in the tombs of Egypt, where the dead had been prepared for an afterlife as elaborate as this one. In her mind, forever spread back and forward through the epochs of dinosaurs, her time of seventy years getting smaller and smaller in proportion. Through the four billion years of the earth.
And still farther back and forward, through the time it took the pinwheel galaxy to turn, the huge span of a galactic day, and a galactic year, in which everything recognizable grew dwarfed.
And she would be dead.
Progress meant nothing.
It made no difference what she chose.
And she was back at her gate in Swan Pond standing in the talcum dust and it was no difference if this was 1927 or 2003 or 10,358. Hong Kong left behind in the blink of an eye. She wasn’t surprised. In front of her was the empty clapboard cabin, no longer white-painted and tidy but satiny gray with age. The windows were empty of glass and curtains and under a lowering evening sky, a wind rhythmically slapped a shutter against the abandoned house. The tomatoes were gone to weeds, and there were no geese to greet her.
And it did not matter.
A great calm settled over her and her unruly heart quieted in her chest.
Everything was still.