AI JIANG
Chopsticks, Tissues, and Altars
CW – Death
The first thing Jinshi saw when she entered the kitchen was her three-year-old sister with her unaware, rice-speckled face, sitting in front of her bowl. Fenfen gripped a single chopstick in one hand like a wand. The other chopstick stuck up from the middle of a mound of rice. Even with the number of craters scattered across the condensed grains, the wooden chopstick remained upright—like a grave.
Jinshi hurried towards her sister and whisked the chopstick from the bowl, dropping it onto the kitchen table.
“Fenfen! Don’t do that again,” she said.
Her younger sister only looked at her, unblinking, her brows drawn upwards in bewilderment, as though she didn’t know whether she should laugh at her sister’s anxious expression or cry because of the sudden shouting. If their grandmother were present, she would no doubt give both children a beating.
Jinshi snuck upstairs towards her grandmother’s bedroom and peeked inside, heart beat quickening when she saw the bed empty with the sheets neatly folded on top of the pillow. The closet sat ajar, and Jinshi caught a glimpse of the red fortune and health charm dangling from the ceiling within.
She found her grandmother in the garden, thriving with the plants, the sun pelting her back; the heat having little effect on her grandmother’s strong will.
“What are you doing out here?” Jinshi’s grandmother asked.
Jinshi shook her head and ducked back inside. Before continuing her meal, she replaced her sister’s chopsticks with a spoon.
* * *
When Jinshi finished her homework at nine p.m., she rushed to the living room to watch T.V. The sound of Fujian Min opera drifted from her grandmother’s room upstairs. Jinshi smiled as she recalled the words of the opera she often listened to with her grandmother—before cartoons claimed her interest—watching the elder’s hands, lined with crevices marked by farm work, rewind each cassette tape before placing them back in their scratched holders.
In the living room, Fenfen danced as though a spirit had taken a hold of her small, round body. She swayed with her hands in the air. The T.V. was off. In each hand, she waved a tissue—another piece bobbed up and down on her head as she moved, threatening to, but never actually, falling. Fenfen was trying to mimic the white-painted faces of the opera performers she and her sister had seen once on T.V.
“Let’s show Nai nai!” Fenfen said.
The two stampeded upstairs with tissues gripped between fingers and one hand holding the piece sitting atop their heads. With a fit of laughter, they burst into their grandmother’s room, dancing while the delicate white tissue paper fluttered through the air.
There was a click, drowned out by the joyous chorus of Jinshi and Fenfen as they sang along to the opera. The music and voices disappeared. The two children’s twirling slowed to a stop. Their grandmother, first silent and unblinking, paused before speaking:
“Do you want me to die?”
* * *
Jinshi and Fenfen’s grandmother passed four years later at seventy-eight.
A few days after the passing, Jinshi entered the room of her grandmother alongside her father, carrying plates of steaming dishes and whole fruit—some still had the supermarket stickers attached. Relatives on her father’s side, who were present in the country, gathered around the altar they set a few days after Jinshi’s grandmother’s death. Jinshi’s aunt approached the altar and lit the incense. The smoke drifted upwards and spread throughout the room until it was so thick her grandmother’s portrait was shrouded in fog.
With bowed heads and closed eyes, Jinshi’s family stood around the altar. Fenfen, hidden behind their mother, looked around with curiosity before mimicking the actions of those around her.
As Jinshi left the room, she could not help but imagine the incense sitting amongst ashes resembling chopsticks on a mound of rice and the smoke dancing like the fluttering white tissues gripped in she and her sister’s unblemished hands. Jinshi couldn’t help but wonder perhaps if they had known better, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps—
Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, an immigrant from Fujian, and an active member of HWA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in F&SF, The Dark, PseudoPod, The Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Hobart Pulp, among others. Find her on Twitter (@AiJiang_) and online (http://aijiang.ca).