Comfort Woman (8 page)

And as we beat our clothes clean, we watched out of the corners of our eyes as she tightened the knot on her baby's shroud and set it into the water where the current pulled it down. Into Saja's mouth, oldest sister told me later in an attempt to torment me. An offering for the gatekeeper of hell.

When I was dry from my bath, I took the rags that had held back my blood and all that was left of my first baby, and instead of throwing them into the water, I planted them in a clean patch of earth next to the stream.

I like to imagine the face of my first child, what she would have looked like had the features evolved from fetus to infant. I imagine her as perfectly formed as my living daughter: her head, her hands, her toes, everything perfect and human-looking, except in miniature. No bigger than my fist, her tiny body crosses in on itself, arms and legs folded over her chest and belly. Her eyes flutter against closed lids, and her mouth opens and closes as she dreams of suckling. I like to imagine my first baby in this way: nestled in the crook of the river's elbow, nursing at its breast.

Like the rats and cockroaches that ruled The Shacks, Saja the Death Messenger, Guardian of Hell, lived in the spaces between our walls. Each morning before dressing, I inspected the clothes hanging in the closet for the light dusting of gray fur or pawprints, and for the poppy-seed shit or fragile rice-paper skin of molting roaches. In the same way, I looked for indications of the Death Messenger: As I brushed and beat the dresses hanging in the closet, or shook and sifted through the underwear drawer, I unearthed the jade talismans my mother pinned to the insides of my clothes, the packets of salt or ashes she sewed into my panties.

I imagined the Death Messenger as an ugly old man with horns and ulcerous skin, burning yellow eyes and a gaping, toothless mouth that waited to feed ravenously on the souls that lined up in front of our apartment. Our open door was Saja's gaping mouth, my mother his tongue, sampling each person for the taste of death. The demon waiting to snatch me off to hell if I did not carry a red packeted charm, Saja was the devil my father had preached about and, through my mother's chants and offerings, became more real to me than my father ever was.

Sometimes when I could not sleep at night, I would hear the murmurings of the people who shared the building with us, or the shrieks of the cars in the street, and I would think, I would know, that it was Saja feeding on the dead. At those times I would squeeze closer to my mother, who continued to sleep, and listen for the true sounds of the night.

When I heard Sweet Mary come home from her shift at the Lollipop Lounge, the clicking of the lock next door and the gurgling of the pipes as she drew a bath became Saja cracking his jaws and slurping rivers of blood. And the pacing of the old man who lived above us—about whom the only thing I remember now is the way he smelled, like piss and fingernail polish, and the way his pants wedged into his crack as he shuffled through the halls, calling out “Three o‘clock!” no matter what time it was—became Saja emerging from the walls to hunt.

I must have woken my mother on one of those sleepless nights, or maybe we had just turned off the alarm clock and lay in bed, drowsing in an early-morning dark still heavy with sleep. I have a memory of the two of us wrapped in the covers, my head tucked into her armpit, listening to the old man creak across his floor, waiting for him to shout “Three o‘clock!”

When he did, my mother giggled, but I clutched at her arm. “It's Saja the Death Messenger,” I blubbered. “I heard him come into our apartment. He looked through our kitchen and opened our refrigerator. He got a drink of water. And now he's coming for me.”

“Are you dreaming?” my mother asked.

“It's Saja, Mommy,” I whispered. “I can smell him.”

“Wake up, Beccah!” My mother grabbed my shoulders and shook. “Wake up from your dream!”

“He stinks, Mommy, with his bubbling skin, black and green, fermenting with pus!” I wanted her to know that I saw him, as clearly as she ever did, and that I knew he was real.

My mother untangled herself from the sheets and ran into the kitchen. I heard the suction of the refrigerator door opening, and then she came rushing back into the room. Held aloft in her hands, swinging by its legs, was a raw chicken.

“Sit up,” she said. “Quickly.” My mother waved the chicken at me, and its liver and gizzard plopped onto the sheets.

“Aigu!”
my mother swore as she stuffed the innards back into the bird. Without looking up, she told me, “Take off your nightgown.”

“Why?” I asked, but when she started pulling the material over my head with her bloody fingers, I wriggled out of it myself. She grabbed my shift, rolled the chicken in it, swung the bundle around my head, and, singing, ran back out of the room.

“Mommy?” Wrapping my arms around my bony chest, I followed her into the living room-kitchen area, praying that I had not pushed her into one of her trances.

With the chicken tucked under her arm, my mother fumbled with the locks on the front door. After wrestling the door open, she charged to the railing and flung the chicken out into the street. The arms of my nightgown flapped loose, as if trying to fly away from the body that dragged it down. “Goodbye, Beccah's ghost,” my mother called after it.

She turned back toward our apartment slowly, humming what I think was the river song, the only song my mother ever taught me. I waited, watching as she refastened the locks on the door, her greasy fingers slipping over the brass. She wiped her hands on her nightgown, said, “Well, that's that,” and then I knew that she was still in this world, still with me.

“If that was Saja bothering you,” she said, “though I don't think it was, he should have been fooled into thinking that was you I sacrificed to him.” My mother walked into the kitchen, closed the refrigerator door, turned on the water faucet. As she washed her hands, she explained, “Saja may be handsome, but he's not too smart.”

My picture of Saja was correct only in the fact that he was a glutton. And though he craved the human spirit above all other foods, he could be fooled or placated with offerings of chicken or pork, heap ings of barley and rice, oranges and whiskey.

According to my mother, Saja was neither old nor ugly, but young and handsome, a dark soldier, alluring and virile. When she told me this, I then imagined Saja looked like my father, the hand- somest man I could imagine.

Though his picture showed someone tall and thin, with brownish-gray hair receding sharply from the steep bank of his forehead, I thought my father, because he was haole, looked like Robert Redford. At times I would hold the picture up to the mirror, trying to find my father's parts in my face, in my high, straight nose, perhaps, or my mouth with its protruding teeth. Not in my tilting eyes or my hair, a sheet of relentless black like my mother's.

If I imagined Saja looked like my father, it helped me understand why my mother flirted with death. She, too, must have thought my father was handsome above all other men, at least when they were newly married. I could see them when they first met, looking into each other's eyes, stunned with love, humming “Some Enchanted Evening,” as their features melt into those of Liat's and Lieutenant Joe Cable's in
South Pacific.
Later, when I believed myself in love for the first time, it was this image I tried to call upon, but the only character I could see clearly was Bloody Mary, Liat's mother. Her body, materializing in lucid majesty between them, dwarfed the minuscule lovers who clamored over and around her, pitiful in their attempts to speak or to kiss.

When my mother entered into her trances and began to dance, she would cajole the soldier of death, tease him, beg him to take her with him. She would dance, holding in her arms raw meat—chicken, or pig's feet, or a pig's head—calling, “Saja, Saja,” in a singsong voice. When I'd hear her call his name, as if she were summoning a favorite pet or a lover, I would cry out, “Mommy, what about me?” and throw myself across her body in order to keep her from floating away. Mother would step over me and continue waltzing with the pig's head, daring Saja to cut in.

Tired of waiting, my mother twice tried to meet the Death Messenger on her own terms. The first time, she almost drowned in the bathtub. Apparently, after toasting Saja with a bottle of Crown Royal, she tried to take a shower and passed out. Sweet Mary, mad as hell when the relentless clanking of the water pipes woke her up before noon, called the police, as she had threatened to do so many times before. When they broke into our apartment, they found my mother dreaming under a thin layer of water, her nose pressed to the sluggish water drain.

The second time, like the first, no one could say for certain she had been trying to commit suicide. The doctors gave her the benefit of the doubt and said that she had fallen into the Ala Wai Canal by accident; she shouldn't have walked so close to the edge when she couldn't swim.