Chapter Fifteen

I was standing outside the house, keeping watch over the coffin all on my own, the world around me pitch black and as still as death itself. The front door opened, and someone came out to join me.

I turned to look, and saw that it was a boy. A boy about my height and my size, walking over to where I was standing, and I recognised him the instant he was close enough. The boy was me.

It felt so strange to see this, yet, I wasn’t afraid. And as soon as he had reached me, pictures of that boy’s life began floating through my head, flitting glimpses of the things that I’d been told about him. I saw the boy on a ship leaving China, waving goodbye to his parents for that would be the last time he’d ever see them. I saw him toiling away at a sewing machine from dawn till dusk in the backroom of his foster family’s shop, the skin of his fingers raw and blistered. I saw him getting reprimanded by his foster father for not being subservient enough. Getting reprimanded by customers for not being subservient enough. Getting reprimanded by soldiers for not being subservient enough. I saw him taking it all, patiently, not speaking a word in return. I saw him growing up, getting married, buying his own shop, then two more shops, then four more …

When the boy reached my side, the images faded. There we were, the two of us standing in front of the coffin, neither speaking to the other, but both knowing exactly what we had to do. A basin containing a ready-made, self-perpetuating circle of fire was at our feet, and we began throwing things inside it, for them to burn. I started with a ripe banana, and my companion threw in something wrapped up in brown sackcloth with roots dangling out of it. Then I tossed in a chewed-up sandal, and he the obituary page from today’s newspaper. Then, he turned to look at me. And he disappeared, right before my eyes.

And where he had stood only a moment ago lay a doll now, lifeless and inanimate. I picked it up and held it in my hands, bringing its eyes in line with mine. The boy had transformed into this marionette, and it still had my face, and it was staring right at me.

It was obvious what I had to do next.

Looking down at the basin before me, I held out the doll then dropped it into the fire. Folding my arms, I stood back to watch it burn, feeling quite right with myself and with the world as that face continued to look up at me, almost imploringly, while its sides singed and turned black, and yet the face itself somehow resisted complete incineration by the flames that had enveloped it.

Why wasn’t he burning properly? I reached out a hand to test the fire myself.

And that was when the alarm clock woke me.

Why had we set it so early again? Ah, yes. Today was the day we were going to bury my grandfather.

By the time I had got downstairs, everyone else was already seated at the kitchen table for breakfast, except for Ah Em and Ah Koh, who were outside carrying out the wake. We all looked tired and worn out to varying degrees, the girls coming off the worst with their puffy eyes and drained faces. Even Frida didn’t look as perfect as she usually did, and was caught half-dozing off in between bites of her sandwich. Mugs of hot tea went untouched, and little was said between the adults. Even Uncle Ben looked serious, though that might have had something to do with getting busted by Ah Peh for sleeping on the job, and the earful he must have received for it.

A little relief seemed to come our way, however, when some close relatives and family friends started arriving to give their last respects to Ah Kong before the burial. A touch of joviality even returned to both Ah Peh and Uncle Ben’s demeanour, and they started to smile again as they spread themselves out amongst the guests.

This time, there were no serving duties allotted to us children for the few hours until the ceremony began. Crates of fruit juice packs were stacked up near the seated area for the guests to help themselves to, and that was about it in terms of the day’s refreshments.

Of course, I soon discovered that this didn’t necessarily mean we were free to do as we pleased. Aaron and I were ushered back to the ingots and the circle of fire to relieve the ladies, and Michael was similarly exiled to sitting through this duty with us.

“This is even worse than yesterday …”

“No kidding, Michael.”

“This is all so screwed up. I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming here.”

“You wanted to come here, remember?” I snapped back. “Look, everyone’s tired. It’ll be better once it’s all over.”

“Yeah, right …”

The three of us toiled away in silence, without any energy left in us to talk or fight. Free to let my mind wander, I allowed it to drift back to thoughts of yesterday’s events – the creepy house, the crazy poklans, my strange friend Mohidin – all the while carrying on with the paper folding with the least amount of diligence I could muster. I carried on in this trance-like state until Pa walked up to us to announce that the ceremony was about to begin.

We watched on as a middle-aged man dressed in a green polo shirt and cargo shorts picked up a microphone and began making announcements in Mandarin. We couldn’t understand him, not only because we didn’t know any Mandarin, but also because the speaker to which he was hooked was broadcasting a sound so fuzzy it sounded like he was talking through a mouth stuffed with a swarm of cicadas. Fortunately, a second person was available to translate the instructions for the non-Mandarin speakers present, of whom there were a fair few, including many of the deceased’s own kin.

We were told to stop with the ingot-making and the circle of fire, so Aaron, Michael and I left behind our duties to join our father near the altar. I peeked back at the untended bags and basin, and felt a little guilty about deserting them. The fire must have gone out by now, I realised with some unease, and wondered if Ah Kong had made it to his final destination on time.

The girls and Ah Em emerged from the house and stood beside us. Only one person from the family was missing now. Well, two persons actually, if you counted Mum, but I wasn’t sure if anyone was really keeping count of her.

“Pa, where’s Ah Ma?” I asked.

“She’s inside.”

“Why?”

“The wife isn’t supposed to join in, Jonathan. Only the children and grandchildren do,” Ah Em, who was standing next to me, explained.

“Yeah, but she’s the wife. Isn’t she the person who needs to say goodbye the most?”

“Oh, such a sweet boy,” Ah Em cooed. “No, it’s tradition. Ah Ma has to stay there for the rest of the funeral, and she can’t follow us to the grave. But she’s okay. Her family is in the house with her.”

I still felt sorry for my grandmother. But before I could challenge her absence again, the MC’s distorted voice boomed through the speaker and announced that it was 10.00, thus time for us to commence the ceremony. Apparently, it was up to us bereaved descendants to start things off, and as with traditional Chinese hierarchy, it was to begin with Ah Peh, who was Ah Kong’s eldest son.

The MC removed himself from the microphone and walked over to hand my uncle the framed black-and-white photograph of Ah Kong from the altar. Clutching it with both hands, Ah Peh got down on his knees and proceeded to drag himself through the grass and soil around the coffin. The sight of my big, important uncle doing this in front of us and the guests caught me off guard, and I stared in shocked silence as he completed three such rounds with absolute compliance.

When Ah Peh was finished, my father was given a bamboo staff, thin and flimsy but nearly two metres long and with a white flag tied to its tip. He propped it onto one shoulder, the flag-end dangling high above him, and repeated my uncle’s actions just as devotedly and subserviently, making for a viewing that was just as unsettling to watch. Down on his knees and bent forwards, his head bowed low, he crawled around Ah Kong three times, his face as hard and clenched as it usually was. I was sure that the image would stay with me long after the funeral was over; this man whom I would’ve never thought capable of bowing down to anyone under any circumstance was doing it here so willingly. When he was finished, it was Ah Koh’s turn, who executed the coffin-crawl holding on to a paper umbrella.

Ah Em and Uncle Ben as the in-laws followed suit, empty-handed, and then it was down to us grandchildren. We were given no items to hold on to either, but we were provided an additional instruction to get on with it on both our hands and knees. The funeral customs mandated this as a mark of respect, the MC informed us.

While going around the casket on all fours, I realised to my horror that the ground was much damper than it looked. Muddy soil squeezed in through the gaps between my fingers and caked on to my fingernails each time I planted a palm down. The worst part was when I accidentally touched a patch of stripped-off earth on the other side of the coffin, closer to the guests, while finishing my first circle. Pasty, greyish-brown muck got stuck all over my hands, making me balk with disgust as I recalled that this was the exact same patch that two stray dogs had messed up a year ago, and the neighbour’s mutt the year before that.

The ickiness notwithstanding, I trampled on as fast as my limbs would take me, and completed the circles without showing my hesitation to my family or our guests, and only noting to avoid the bare spot on the next two passes. When I was done, I rejoined my relatives and saw out Aaron as he finished off his last circle around our grandfather.

Then came the prayers, and this was to go family by family, again according to hierarchy. The portrait was returned to its original position on the altar, and we knelt down before it to pray with joss sticks, and then got up before kneeling down once again for another round. We did three such rounds in total, and when we were done, the MC handed us a bottle of liquor and instructed that we empty a bit of its contents onto the ground.

I noticed a bit of a stir amongst the onlookers when Ah Peh and Kevin did this together, and very generously with regard to the amount they offered their lawn. There was no such controversy with my father though, who tipped out only a little and without any request for assistance from his children.

When Ah Koh and Uncle Ben stepped away after their turn, it was time for the guests to pay their last respects. Watching on from afar, we observed them walking up to the altar in batches, each group making their prayers with joss sticks provided by Ah Peh and then planting them into the urn beside the portrait before making way for the next set of mourners.

Not far from this, a number of funeral workers were grouped around a black hearse that was resting on the driveway, its rear facing the tent, parked around the same place the coffin-truck had been yesterday. They looked to be biding their time until their services would be needed, doing little to fit in with the sea of sombre faces moving around them. Closer to the main gate was a second vehicle; a white minibus that I guessed would be our transport to the cemetery for the burial. Both the hearse and the bus had white funerary banners slung over them, probably as a sort of signal to help us have a smooth and unobstructed journey on the road.

Ah Koh walked over and squatted beside me.

“Do you know who all those people are?”

“Not really,” I said, my eyes fixed on the proceedings of the ceremony.

“Let’s see … That group’s from the Kinmen Association … Ah, and those two are people from the Lai family, of the Lai shipping company. See how they’re all paying their respects to your Ah Kong? Look at that one; that man’s the second son of the elder Lai, the patriarch of the Lais. Did you know that he owns about half of all the houses and shops in this area, on his own? Now imagine if I told you that he’s the poorest son in his family! Amazing, yeah? If only I could find clients like that …”

“Is it going to be over soon?” I wasn’t terribly interested in where this conversation was heading, and I interrupted her so we could get back to talking about the proceedings.

“Yes, soon. Look, see those people over there? Those are my colleagues from the bank. Now, that’s my boss. Do you know what a regional manager is? It’s a very, very important person …” She began to explain the intricacies of her job to me, and I didn’t half understand her jargon-filled blabbering, nor did I really want to. She must have realised this, because she eventually gave up and went back to giving me a running commentary on the guests who had turned up for Ah Kong’s funeral, with particular attention to all their individual assets and holdings. I couldn’t help but feel quite amazed that my aunt knew so much personal information about so many people, especially since she wasn’t on close terms with most of them.

In all honesty, it was a bit surprising to conceive my grandfather having so many well-wishers and friends. Sure, he’d done his bit for charities and other philanthropic stuff, but I couldn’t think of anything he’d done that deserved so much attention or affection, something truly extraordinary like saving a drowning man or winning a special prize from the Sultan. By all indications, he’d lived an ordinary life, and had been an ordinary person with a bit of good and a bit of bad (maybe more bad than good), like every other adult I knew.

Wave after wave of visitors kept streaming in towards the urn, filling it with a big mass of smoking incense that soon started to resemble a giant cigarette butt, and then flowed from the altar to the seated area. Like yesterday, it was cloudy this morning as well, but there was no sign of imminent rainfall fortunately, and we were probably going to get away with not having hired a second tent for the guests to shelter under. What we weren’t going to get away with, however, was not providing enough chairs for the guests, and a number of them were forced to remain standing while others resorted to sharing seats. I could see why no-one was keen on planting their bums on Kevin’s lawn, given what I’d gone through earlier.

After the last group of mourners had finished their prayers and moved along, the MC gave Ah Peh and Pa the go-ahead for the final part of the ceremony. All of us, being Ah Kong’s immediate family, gathered around the coffin and then gradually dispersed to the sides as the hearse reversed towards it, giving way for the funeral workers to get to the coffin. The MC called something out, and Ah Peh translated it for us, asking us all to turn away from Ah Kong, which we did in unison.

The MC then made another slightly longer announcement, and this time it was Ah Em who assumed the role of translator. “Okay, children,” she said with a breaking voice. “When the man gives us the cue, you must all cry, okay? Don’t turn around and look at the coffin but cry as loud as you can for Ah Kong.”

She was cut off by the MC’s signal, and immediately let out an impassioned wail, and was joined a split second later by the rest of us in a co-ordinated display of grief. Even Pa gave it his all, and this shocked me even more than the crawl he had done around the coffin. Amongst us grandchildren, Kevin, Frida and Jen seemed to be crying in earnest and sounded the most grief-stricken. Michael looked emotional, but wasn’t quite on the same scale as them, although he was a lot more vocal than I’d have expected from him. Aaron was screaming out Ah Kong’s name, over and above everyone else, and I suspected that he was simply trying to be the loudest in the group.

I raised my own voice with the others, but I doubted that it lent a great deal more to the overall din being conveyed to our guests as well as to Ah Ma and her relatives indoors, and of course to Ah Kong himself, wherever he was at the moment. He’d lived through war, poverty, and above all, the trauma of having to bring up, and then put up with, this family for years; hopefully he was going to finally get the rest he very well deserved.

I also spared a thought for my grandmother, and wondered yet again if she would rather have been out here with all of us than stay confined to the inside of the house. Well, considering her stroke and all, I didn’t know for sure how aware she might have been of the ceremony’s proceedings and how much she’d have appreciated being allowed to watch us take her husband to his final resting place. Nonetheless, it didn’t feel entirely appropriate that she wasn’t outside here with the rest of the family.

At the MC’s beckoning, we stopped with our cries and wails, and turned around to see that the coffin was now sitting inside the hearse. The vehicle was already facing away from the house’s compound and was ready to go, and so were we.

As they entered the hearse, Pa, Ah Peh and Ah Koh were handed again the objects with which they’d paraded around the coffin. The car’s confined interior was just enough to accommodate them, but it was so cramped in there that Pa’s bamboo staff almost curled back in on itself, the flag on the other end nearly touching the floor between my father and Ah Koh. The in-laws and we grandchildren walked past the hearse and got into the minibus near the gate; it seated about twelve, including its front row. I found a seat at the back, and Kevin plopped himself down next to me.

“Oh, how come you’re taking that?” I asked, pointing to his lap. He was carrying the basin full of ash from the now-extinguished circle of fire.

“Mum asked me to bring it along. See, they’re bringing the ingots as well.” He pointed to the bus’s door, where a funeral worker leaned in to throw the bags onto the front seat. Ah Em was sitting closest to the bags, and was thus responsible for repositioning them so they didn’t spill over on the way. All in all, we had five big sacks, which I thought made a good number for our efforts.

Once the hearse got started and moved past us, the workers closed the door to the bus, and our driver released the brakes, trailing behind the coffin and its bearers. The hearse glided along at a moderate pace, and our bus did the same, keeping to this speed even when we got on the main road. We didn’t really need to step on the accelerator anyway, for we reached the outskirts of the cemetery in less than twenty minutes. I’d never been to this (or any other) cemetery before, but I did recognise the junction leading in to it. It was one that I’d passed by several times, and I remembered it most for its two parallel roads that went off in two different directions, one up a slope winding around the hill against which the main road ran, and the other that ran flat and eventually supplied a cluster of nearby houses and a power substation.

Though they weren’t that far from the main road, these houses somehow managed to feel rather secluded to me, and more so than those ruins I’d encountered near the coffin warehouse. There were no cars, clothes on laundry lines, or any other signs of human habitation to be seen anywhere in the area, let alone people, and the houses themselves were no better, with their crumbling paint, moulding façades, and their lawns’ grass grown to a height that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the African savannah.

Untroubled by this road’s meagre traffic, our convoy turned in, only for our minibus to take the lane that would lead to the houses while the hearse took the one that went uphill, into the cemetery proper. Evidently, I was the only one who was confused by this; everyone else seemed to be alright with the detour we were seemingly taking.

We parked at the compound of the first house, and I noticed that like all the others around it, this house was as empty as a poklan’s brain. After the minibus came to a stop, I got out and approached the abandoned shell of a home. Decay and neglect aside, it had probably made for a cosy little bungalow in its heyday, in spite of the distasteful coat of lemon-yellow paint it was covered in. I imagined a family living there, children and their parents playing and talking behind the house’s closed, tinted windows, or walking about on its now dusty porch.

Standing on a clearing in the grass, only a few metres from the minibus, was a severely rusted-over canopy swing, listing badly from having partially sunk into the soft, pliable earth. It was a bit hard to tell if it had ever been used, or if it could still be used, and I started moving towards it with the aim of examining it a bit more thoroughly. It couldn’t hurt to maybe give it a go now …

“Jonathan! What are you doing? We’re going up!” I heard Jen shout from behind me.

I turned around to see that the others had walked over to the beginning of the slope and were already some distance away from the minibus and its driver, who was sprawled across the front seats and settling into a nice late morning nap. Jen, peeved as ever, was gesturing wildly at me to hurry on up.

“Sorry,” I shouted back as I raced to my family.

The procession was led by Kevin, who had the container of ash pressed to his chest. Michael and Uncle Ben followed close behind, carrying the bags of ingots, and Ah Em, Jen and Frida were next in line. Aaron and I trailed them, taking the opportunity to linger a bit and savour our surroundings, enthralled just by the thought that we were going to enter a cemetery for the first time in our lives.

It was a short walk to the top, where the ground levelled off into a plateau-like flattened area. The road stopped abruptly here, and we continued along a footpath that ended at the cemetery’s gateway, a concrete structure painted in pink with a small, green-tiled roof at the top. Hanging below the roof’s rafters was a wooden sign with Chinese characters inscribed on to it in gold against its black background, and below it, instead of a door, was a bar set across the gateway like a barrier at a tollbooth; it was currently lifted out of the way to let us walk in. The whole thing was set in the middle of a brick wall, also painted in pink. The hearse was parked alongside this wall, on ground that was more dust than soil and overrun by masses of weeds with spidery, finger-like tendrils. Camouflaged amongst this overgrowth was a nasty surprise that, fortunately, was presented to the leader of the pack and not the runt.

“Ewww!” Kevin cried, jumping to his right. “Dog poo! I just stepped on it.”

“Never mind, Kevin, just walk past it now,” his mother urged him on.

“Arrgh! There’s another one there!” He skipped to his left this time, dancing around the unsanitary obstacles.

Could those dogs not leave me in peace? I immediately stood on my tiptoes and trained my eyes to the ground, avidly hunting for any fresh brown forms as well as older whitish bits. Luckily, I did spot the deposits that my cousin had already alerted us about, and had contaminated himself with, and avoided them carefully as I joined the others in going through the gateway.

Once inside, the sight of all the gravestones spread over the cemetery’s ground got me instantly interested. I had only seen them in books and movies before, where they were all Christian-style crosses. The ones here were very different, mostly mounds of grass-covered earth, each almost completely encircled by a waist-high ring of tiled-over concrete and with a large headstone at the front that displayed the deceased’s picture and the dates of birth and death. Only a few of the graves were simpler, just beds filled in with pebbles or even plain concrete slabs accompanied by their markers.

Each one of these graves occupied quite a bit of space, leaving very little in the way of walking room between any two plots. Even the main path through the cemetery, which we were taking now, was narrowed down considerably by this congestion of graves, and its bottlenecked state was made much worse by an obvious utter lack of planning; many of the graves hadn’t been set down according to any particular order nor arranged to make neat rows, and were instead packed together into disorganised groups.

It was quite the chore to make sure we didn’t step on them as we ventured further in, but this disarray did let me get a good look at the headstones. Most of the pictures showed old people in traditional Chinese dress; the youngest-looking one I saw seemed like he had been in his mid-50s when he had croaked. I wondered why these people had used their most recent photos to represent themselves on their tombstones; I’d have figured that they’d want themselves remembered as they had looked in their prime, young and full of life.

The most interesting plot I saw was a joint one, a bed filled with stones and shared by a husband-and-wife pair who’d died within three months of one another. It looked to be the only twin burial plot I’d seen so far.

“Hey, Ah Em,” I called out. “Look at this … They were buried together.”

“Come on, Jonathan, don’t look at other people’s graves,” she brushed me off without even looking at the tomb I was pointing to.

“What’s Ah Kong’s plot like?” I asked, leaving the deceased couple behind. “Where is it? Is it far?”

“We’re almost there, don’t worry.”

“Does it look like these graves here?”

“You’ll see …”

“Does it have space for Ah Ma too?”

Jen and Frida gave me their most contemptuously evil eyes. Either Ah Em hadn’t caught my last question, or she was pretending she hadn’t.

“What?” I asked Jen, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Shut up, Jonathan,” she hushed me. “You’re asking for it.”

“It was just a …” They were off again before I could finish, so I kept the rest of my reply to myself. Kevin continued to lead the procession like a little emperor, and the rest of us followed him like a cortege of fawning courtiers, Uncle Ben and Michael hopping around like the royal fools they were and letting out apologetic squeals each time they accidentally glanced against a tomb that came too close to the path, often only to bump into another one on the other side.

When I looked back to the gateway we had entered through, it was a small hole in the distance. Ahead of us, the cemetery sloped downwards into another section, leading to newer-looking graves with more recent dates. Some of these graves appeared to have been recently visited and still carried the flowers, trinkets and freshly-burnt incense that had been left behind for the newly-dead by their families. This part of the cemetery looked twice as large as the first one had, and at the far end, the rest of our procession was gathered at Ah Kong’s plot.

I saw that it was a choice location, laid down on a slight elevation and set apart from the other graves by a generous distance. A frangipani tree stood over the site, offering a nice amount of shade to the grave as well as the people gathered by it.

We finally caught up with Ah Peh, Pa and Ah Koh, and I got my first up-close view of the gravesite: a concrete-lined pit set into a large, flat sheet of marble. A pulley-like device had Ah Kong’s coffin suspended directly above it, and a large pile of earth lay beside the grave; it was amazing to imagine that this massive load had been wheel-barrowed all the way in here, for surely no vehicle could have delivered it through the gateway and past all the tombs that we’d passed by to reach this part of the cemetery.

What was noticeably absent was a headstone for the tomb; I saw only a plain wooden board with an inscription, held up by a stand placed in front of the burial plot.

“Hey, how come it’s just this?”

“They will build it afterwards,” Pa answered. His bamboo staff had been put aside, as had Ah Peh and Ah Koh’s respective items.

“Why?”

“We don’t build our graves before we’re dead.”

“Not even a …”

“Quiet. They’re lowering the coffin into the ground soon.”

We gathered around the grave in silence as Ah Peh approached the funeral workers and had a word with them. He then addressed us, saying that Ah Kong was about to be laid to rest, and that we were to look away as the workers did it, just like we had when he’d been loaded into the hearse. Pa reiterated the message to Aaron and me, and then we fanned out, forming a semi-circular line around the grave. Our positions set, we all then turned our backs to the coffin. Moving my head ever so slightly to the right, I saw from the corner of my eyes as Frida, who was standing beside me, reached out to hold Kevin’s hand, and then both of them looked on ahead with tears welling in their eyes. Standing on my other side was Jen, squinting stoically, her hand thankfully not extending towards mine.

It wasn’t more than a minute when we were told we could face the burial site once again. The coffin was in its final resting place now, and the workers speedily moved the machinery out of the way. Several members of our group started to sniff loudly, and Ah Peh, sobbing, grabbed a handful of soil from the nearby pile and threw it into the pit. Pa, still stone-faced as ever, and Ah Koh joined in, and then the rest of us followed suit, throwing in clumps of dirt that rained atop the coffin lid in quiet thuds and splatters. The sole exception was Kevin, who tearfully poured in the ashes from the basin he was carrying, scattering them onto Ah Kong’s casket. My feet placed close to the edge, I crouched and peered at the coffin inside for one last look. Covered in the earth we’d just pelted at it, it lay nestled in there like a book at the bottom of an old trunk, the story over and never to be read again.

Standing close to the plot was a round and wide brick brazier as high as my waist, with a metal grille positioned halfway along its height. As per Ah Peh’s orders, after we’d all done a couple of throws and Kevin had emptied the basin, we went over to this brazier to carry out the last part of the funeral. There, we grandchildren started lining the grille with the paper ingots we’d brought along, using up about one sack’s worth in the process, and then we set fire to them. The strategy was to let the flames consume the bulk of the ingots before we added any more, so as to avoid having to continually face the high temperatures and smoke created by the pyre of paper offerings. The first heat wave that we generated was the result of not abiding by these rules, and I took it in my face full-on, being too slow to get out of the way. The flash was searing, but not as much a problem as the cloud of dirty grey soot that accompanied it, sending me into a retching fit.

After we had wisened up to the process, the burning of the ingots turned out a mildly enjoyable exercise, and Aaron and I even had a race to see who could finish off the bag we were sharing. We should’ve felt remorseful watching something that we’d slaved over for days get destroyed before our eyes in mere seconds, yet, strangely, the only thing we felt was a great deal of satisfaction in seeing it all get reduced to cinders. When we were done with our complete supply of ingots, we packed up the now-empty plastic bags and departed together, leaving behind the workers to finish with the burial. We walked all the way down the hill and back to the driveway of the deserted house where we had parked the minibus; Pa, Ah Peh and Ah Koh climbed in with us this time, along with their funeral artifacts. The seating got rearranged slightly, owing to the extra passengers, and Michael, Aaron and me ended up at the bus’s rear.

“Okay, we’re heading home now,” Ah Peh announced. “Nobody look back, alright? Don’t look back at the road going up the cemetery.”

“Why not?” I called out.

“Just don’t, Jonathan!” my uncle cried. “Otherwise, you might get taken away with Ah Kong.”

“Really? But how will …”

“Don’t argue with us,” Pa flashed me a steely glare. “Just do as we tell you to, okay?” The driver hit the ignition, and we began to pull out of the driveway and towards the main road.

“How long before we can look back again?” Aaron asked me quietly, eyes directed forwards.

“I don’t know … Never, I guess.”

“What? Never?”

“Yes, you’ll always have to avert your eyes every time you pass by this place,” I whispered. “Or Ah Kong’s ghost will latch on to your back and never let go.”

“You’re lying. I’m asking Pa.”

“Should I turn around now? I’m sure I could try,” I teased him.

“No, don’t! What if you get taken away?”

“You’ll inherit my toys, right? Why should you care?”

This made my brother pause for thought.

“You’re actually thinking about it. Ha! You want me to get taken away, don’t you?”

“Guys, shut up!” griped Michael, putting his head against the windowpane. “You’re giving me a headache.”

I ignored him and turned back to my younger brother.

“If you get taken away, can I have your books?” asked Aaron. “Don’t give them to Michael.”

“Why the hell would I want this loser’s books?” our eldest sibling muttered under his breath.

“Yeah, Michael wouldn’t be able to understand them anyway. He’d need something easier,” I replied to Aaron. “Like your old My First Alphabet or The Counting Donkey or …”

I was suddenly grabbed from the side by my neck, in a chokehold. “Who’s the smart one now?” Michael jeered, squeezing me tightly.

“I don’t know,” I spluttered. “The one who knows what’s zero minus two hundred dollars?”

He didn’t take too kindly to that, and upped the pressure. I twisted and turned in a fruitless attempt to strike back against him, but succeeded only in causing enough of a ruckus to draw the attention of everyone else in the bus towards us. We received some blustering outrage from Pa and Jen, a measured warning from Ah Peh, and squeamish implorations from Uncle Ben. Nothing doing; Michael remained relentless.

And yet, even as I struggled to break free from the wrestling move my brother had most probably stolen from one of those cheesy TV shows he watched, and even as I attempted to block out the threats of serious repercussions we were receiving from the adults for the tussle we’d got ourselves in, I couldn’t help but feel that, for the first time in a long while, this was where I was supposed to be, fitting in as perfectly as my head did inside the crook of my brother’s elbow.

The funeral was over and finally, I was going home.