Drawn Up From Deep Places by Gemma Files

Author:Gemma Files [Files, Gemma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JournalStone
Published: 2018-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

HELL FRIEND

You could make paste for Hell stuff from flour in a pinch, but it didn’t burn as well and customers didn’t like the smell, which even incense wouldn’t cover. Jin-li Song bought three unmixed boxes for five bucks at the Dollar Store—just add water—and negotiated her way back out, threading a narrow path between teetering wicker receptacles of every given size stuffed haphazardly in/on top of each other and piles of open boxes packed full of Fung’s Gold Rosette sandalwood-, rose-, or jasmine-scented soap.

Outside, the air reeked like smeared goose-shit, pressing down with a palpable weight. It almost hurt to breathe as Jin drifted back slowly, through Chinatown’s sluggish, skipping heart. The smells of home were everywhere, thick enough to slice: Dhurrian and fireworks gunpowder, dried persimmon, pickled ginger, red bean jelly. The stiff stock and vinegary dyes of Hell money. The sweet stink of joss-sticks. Kuan Yin and the Monkey King staring down, smiling and glaring. The zodiac’s animals, rat to pig and back again, contorted in red lacquer poses.

And since it was the last week of Zhongyuan Jie, after all, getai were indeed everywhere, just as her Ah-Ma had warned her—blooming in every doorway, on every porch and corner: little shrines, wilting plates of food, smoking joss-sticks. Passersby whose ages ranged from roughly eight to eighty swirled carelessly around them, wearing brightly-colored clothes designed to insulate their chi against the streets’ death-heavy atmosphere; everywhere Jin looked, people (maybe tourists, maybe not) could be seen laughing, dancing and singing to entertain whatever ghosts might be lurking—resentfully, implacably, invisibly—in their immediate vicinity.

Step lightly, Jin, Ah-Ma would say if she was here, and even if she wasn’t. This is a time of confusion, in which every decision—no matter how well-intentioned—may bring harm . . . less a celebration than an inconvenience, even to we who honor it. The doors of Hell stand open, letting the dead back up onto the earth. And so, though we may make money from Hungry Ghost Month, it is Hell money only . . .

Yeah: Hell cash, thick and crisp and useless; only fit to spend in Hell, by those who lived there—or rather, who didn’t. And this was what Jin’s ma spent her days cobbling into commissions, stuff made expressly to burn, falling down through the fire to give some lucky ancestor’s ghost a big surprise—Hell cars, Hell fridges, Hell air conditioners. Hell cellphones.

While up here above, there was no buying a new house, no renovating the old one, no going on vacation or hanging at the beach, for fear of ghosts luring you down into the water . . .

Jin stopped short in front of the Empress’ Noodle restaurant, between its flanking totem dragons, and bent over for a minute, rummaging for her inhaler. Inside, framed by the front window’s fever-red rows of halved pigs and Peking duck-flesh, Mrs. Yau—the Empress’ owner—sat alone at her usual table near the back, playing mah-jongg with herself. A cup of green tea steaming at one elbow.

Her

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