The Period of a Dead Man Was Over .....by Estha Simon
Once more...
The period of a dead man was over, my sisters were already in beautiful clothes, the light dance in them, their hearts poured out the forgotten old man that laid deep in slumber, tightly in his burial chamber. Mother sighed without anymore of complains, she said enough and yet the sisters played around in red, light blue and glittering silk imported from China, the old house stood within the firecrackers, it's already opened for light and inviting friends. And it's only the fourth day after the death of the old man. Mother said that perhaps it's what people calls Vengeance, the once piety daughters of his, now rebellious into the luxurious and handsome lust, they came back late, called for gigolos and of course and in the expense of his will.
The will was not yet to be seen, mother thought it was better to have the will reading a few days later, the will was left to the guardian of the lawyer, Mr. Ching and none of them had actually seen it. I thought that Mother would be pleased to get the will declared, but no, she asked the lawyer to wait, for a few more days to get everything passed over. The lawyer said yes, it's good to let things cool down. Mother thanked him and sent him off with another red packet. For days, Mr. Ching had already received six red packets in total, one each whenever he arrived. However, the red packet was not full of money, but gold.
Mother couldn't find any at all, after father's death, she sighed with everything and paid with gold, then she said she'll claimed it back after the reading of the will. I wasn't so sure about mother, I sensed a bit of odd curiosity and felt the likeliness of encountering nothing. Hail to the God of Wealth, I was there in front of the altar praying, with the incense burned into slow ember, the smoke rose up into the heavenly sky, to the God of Wealth, then he'll looked down in despair, another plight for material wealth and he'll dispatch his 'wealth dust' and bless our house.
Of course this was not what it seemed. The day came where the will was supposed to be read out, mother fell ill because father's mining company was declared bankrupt three weeks ago and it seemed after much clarification from other doctors, he was certified death of suicide. My mother at the instance of her awakening from her slumber sleep, went off in her blue sedan Father bought her as a gift for her 64th Birthday, and throttled Doctor Li, the doctor who confirmed hundred percent that father died of cardiac arrest.
Oh, how my heart ached with her, I was the heir to my father's mining company and yet in despair unable to even hold my first executive management meeting with the board, I felt crumpled as I was washed away with the tide and the pulling ripples that tore me, and brought me far far away.
My sisters came back late, no more gigolos for them, the money washed away from their savings which they thought could be claim from father's will, now they were devastated and pleaded for my help, I've no idea until a few men came over to the house. They asked for a total of 6000 and by now, nothing was left, it seemed that my sisters had borrowed that sum from the loan sharks to feed their hunger of lust, but now as it seemed, we are all dead with a stunned, while they clenched their teeth marks and buried the once beautiful house of ours, into a destroyed playground. And still just as before they almost chopped father's memorial plaque into half, mother gushed out offering her last bit of gold jewelry, her cries lamented the death and the pity, the loan sharks left us with a mere house to be vacated at dawn, the bank will be here then, to take away our once called home.
We were offered to stay in Uncle Joe's house, the priest from the Anglican churches which father had befriended during one of his attendance to the fellowship party, not that he's in any account of interest into converting as a Anglican. He was there to strike a business deal and to meet Mr. Goh, a pioneer businessman who could save my father's company into plunging deeper down the wealth drain. Uncle Joe was indeed kind to my mother and the rest of us, however my second sisters felt rebellious to such kindness, she quarreled with the brothers on the altar flowers arrangements and didn't came back after that. My mother fell ill after three days of stay and Uncle Joe led her to a spiritual healing seminar on that very night in the church.
It did not help at all, in fact, it made everybody feel awkward of her sudden burst into tears and often little giggles from her fatigue look. All agreed to pray for her, but not to the extend of helping, just merely praying, and maybe praying that the lunatic old Buddhist hag should be send to the asylum and not disturb the ground beneath her feet, which was blessed and holy.
The prayers withdrew her away from us, further and further away, each time her glaring was emptier and emptier. All that went in came out from the same hole, the mouth that was, that smelled stinking rotten without her chewed food swallowed but merely stuffed and puffed her cheeks, and when time comes, she threw... up. It was a rational thing to do, I believe so, being a rich man's son and without obtaining a further degree, my knowledge and education was only of lower secondary. I have nothing else but to become a labor, the rice shop wanted workers to deliver rice to their customer's houses, and seizing the opportunity, I was sneered past and given a grin for my unfit physical to lift even a bag of rice. I crunched and sank deep, however, it did not manage to be lifted up, for my slow and inactive muscles brought disadvantage to my current situation, yet each day, we both waited silently for the return of the month-long gone sisters of mine, each withered each day away and gone.
The priest gave us another week, we gave him the creeps and yet refused to convert into Anglicans, and my mother was furious but protective of her pure Buddhist intentions. Uncle Joe made his stern didactic warning that the church people were giving him a hard time and if they don't convert, they might have to leave for the sake of God's constitution. My mother thanked the priest, gave her warm smile and left that very night in the cold chamber room of the church before I came home, she was discovered squatting at a corner, as though in fear of something she saw, and withdrew into the darkness, among lives that past away, forever.
The priest wanted me to convert into a Christian, with hours and hours of frequent calls and talks, he was convincing me to join the force of God. He sorrowfully declare that he saw my mother burned in hell, wavering news to me that I have to repent or to join her deep in the lake of fire, far more painful and sorrowful than cries of life.
That of course I was no believer of him and I snared with a fist waved in front of his cocked eye. He banished his plans to convert me then, and stopped calling after I moved to a flat-studio far away from the Church, the rent was cheap and that it was far cheaper because rumour went around that the house was haunted. A white-lady with a grim sickle with come over and haunt your nights and burn you by throwing you into a furnace that suddenly appear through the concrete walls.
However that maybe, whether was there really a lady-in-waiting to served me to the devils of fire, I continued staying in avoiding the fate of meeting with the babbling-mouth priest that indirectly cursed my mother into hell. Of course she's in hell, isn't she?
As a Buddhist, I'm a believer that all-souls goes to hell after they departed from the worldly society and that they have to passed through different levels of hell in order to re-incarnate back into their human form. A very keen sense that he said my mother was in hell and I believed. But not burning, but leaving that rotting place in grace, because my mother was a grace and nothing can make her a grace more graceful.
As I believe that all grace souls fly through hell and didn't need to receive any form of punishment. We are of the great right?
Each morning I opened my eyes with the filtered light splashing and playing with me on my soft and comfortable bed, they dance and filled the room with luminescence that shaped me, that brightened my days and far beyond the grope of sunlight. My heart shone rays of light from present to past all away from the hidden sorrows long ago.
Already six years had past since sorrow entrapped me into a corner of grieve and derived me from moving on, but two years later, this very day was the first day I'm going back to work. After two weeks of holidays, I'm stretched with endless joy when my wife came in with a cup of coffee, her draped gown was mother of pearl yet it reflected the light that came to visit and lit our lives. I'm bound to understand the love already, yet this very love I cannot unite the family that lost sex years ago. That was no more, the litter in the bag, and if I could just find them, the sun will shine again, everyday, till the day I die, and perhaps forever.
Love propelled me far away from realizing and finding back a family lost. Three of my sisters, Ning-ma, Ning-Ching and Ning-Hong all gone before mother died and without coming back to favor the last respect. I felt the deep lens of hidden somber and further the tales that they will unfold to me, their struggle, their plight and their wanting to be back, one big happy all together. This was my dream, long before love came, the 'love' of a brother and sister was taught to be 'like' and that the 'like' slowly faded past my eyebrows. As invisible as it seemed, perhaps, long lost are the dreams of forever bond.
My life danced with me eight months later, as though life had a proof of meaning in it, my wife was pregnant, with a boy of my flesh and blood. And I love the light that sprawled deeper into me as I succumbed the temptation to sing and dance and fill myself with nothing but love and happiness, those blissful moments are blowing reunion away, deeper, and further from consciousness. Things were not eventually smoothing and going well nine months later after the birth of the heir of my ever-glory crown. My wife, a Christian wanted to baptize the son of mine that fated according to the Monk should live a life of a humble Buddhist or the wrath of the Gods will strangled and impure my wealth.
We fought days and night and I made it clear that the fortune teller and the monk was indeed upholding the truth and the meaning of life, their assumption were indeed from the dreams ascend from heaven and that my son should recognize the Goddess of Mercy as his godmother. My wife became furious and fought with Uncle Bob, in line, both of them attacked the sacred religion of Buddhism as it was hurtful and pained me deeply, all for the worse the weaken my fatherhood spirit.
We divorced three years later, after my son was baptized as an Anglican despite my roar of objections, my wife and the priest teamed up with a colony of Christian prayers. Praying in our lawn for God's mercy into letting the child of 'His Highest' to be part of the Kingdom and cursed unto me that if I wanted to go to hell and burn and rot forever, but do not dragged the boy of innocence who needs to be prepared for the kingdom come.
Eventually, my wife's father who owned the company fired me the next day. In confession, I would not lie that my success was through the tubes and manipulations of cronyism. All those money came fluttering to my desk with a few stroke of signatures, a secondary educated who never dreamed of this position, except it came true for me, now, like butterfly, gone with the beauty that you can't hold on to, anymore.
I moved to another cheaply rented flat-studio, but this was infested by cockroaches and it bugged me with it's creepy shadow and eerie shapes whenever it crawled pass the window sill with a cast of silhouette like death march of a departed roach. The cigarette packets were often empty, quicker then ever, each packet gone faster than ever. The light shunned itself and no more dancing, the liver crammed with the sour moan of continuous alcohol and the lungs were choked and dried from the puffy nicotine. Half moons shaped below my eyes, dreaded for more of these, cigarettes to drinking, all drunk and gone and out again are the somber songs of my life that I used for seeking solace.
Was months later that while heading out to buy another packet of cigarettes (And started wondering if the roaches ever stole a taste and took the entire pack) that I felt the blast of wind that smacked me wide awake, slapped as though the Gods were slapping me and telling me to go to the mirror and look at my pathetic self. I've no more voice, dried from drinking, yet the near by mirror reflected someone that stood opposite me with complete ignorance, that I hardly could recognized!
A lady tripped over the unburied pipeline that was jutting out from the drain, she fell with her groceries scattered mildly on the floor, yet within me still a conscience, I squatted to picked up the cans of tomato soup that rolled towards my feet. Then, at an instance a flash came to my inward eye, the lady turned her head and her hair pounced, with such a flair, as it unfold and swayed back to its position, the lady's eyes glimmered and shot a familiar look that all my life I've understood and studied it.
No doubt, it was my sister.
" Ning-Hong!" I laughed with joy.
" Brother?" she dropped the can of vegetable soup back on the floor with and stunned with our sudden reunion. " Is that really you? God! Is that you? Is that you?"
We ran over, harboring the pain left long, too long ago to be shared with words, and now our fingers ran into each other's hair, each other's face and into dreams touched after long lost. Perhaps it was long, perhaps the dead man reunite us, in all accounts. I laid with a rest to find my youngest sister, the girls are coming back, her image, her plump looking figure, shaped the rest and long to come and then, I'll meet them all, like the prince's dream of life ever after.
" God! God! I still don't believe it..." she squeaked. " I don't know what to say!"
" Great gods..." I sighed in over-joy. " Where's Ning-ma and Ning-Ching?"
" We've gone separates roads." She softened with her finger still running through my hair. " Thing are hard and Ning-ma didn't make it, Ning-Ching went off to the United States, she became a whore to a rich man's son, and committed suicide. Left me, the sad one here..."
" No more..."
She smiled, like in my father's dream that we should be together, like in my father's world that we are strong and standing, like in mother's hope that we are always one, like a child, once more.
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