The nine months went by and my gran gave birth. But it was not the desperately wanted boy child. This was a betrayal for my granny, because the pregnancy yielded a girl child who could not carry the family name.
That girl child was my mother.
Later I would find out that there was also a boy child born to my grandmother a few years after my mother, but he survived only a few days.
He did not even make it past his first full moon, the first month of life, which is the primary milestone of a newborn’s life.
“He would have survived if only your grandfather had agreed to let him go to see the modern doctors, I know that, I know that...”, Gran would say, pleading even after all those years.
There were doctors who had started to move away from the remedy of old wives’ tales and the hit-and-miss of homemade brews and potions. My granny probably trusted these remedies for most of her life, but when the child was lost, his death could be blamed on the one thing that was never tried – the one thing my grandfather never tried.
My grandfather must have had his own pain to bear when his son died. He never mentioned that child to us. My mom did not remember this brother who had only a fleeting presence in her toddler life.
She remembered playing around the altar that my Por Por had erected for her dead son soon after his death. And she remembered being scolded severely by my gran for fooling around the altar and disturbing the spirit of her dead brother. My granny was probably angrier than she should have been.
But how could my mother understand that the anger was not for her but was directed at my grandfather? Anger also at the gods and the ancestors who had cursed her by taking her son away, and with him a part of her heart.
For my mother, though, the incident was enough for her to hold on to her child’s resentment for a brother she never knew. My gran loved her only child and my mother was never like a consolation prize, but maybe my mother felt like that every time she clashed with my granny. My mother remembered the presence of the dead brother even years after he had died. The altar remained in the home, an eerie spectre stronger than the loss. Her dead brother took on a kind of phantom presence.
When my mom was in her late teens, she was struck by a period of illness and none of the healing concoctions my gran came up with made her better. My gran visited medicine men and women and followed their instructions for brews and poultices to the letter. She prayed to the gods, the ancestors and consulted with the elders as she always did when there was disquiet in her heart and her home. My mom did not get better.
Then came a revelation, and one that made most sense. Her dead son was unhappy in the underworld and was causing ructions among his living relatives. He was lonely and in need of a bride.
I have heard of the macabre and spooky rituals of ghost brides, where a live person is said to be killed in a sacrificial murder so her spirit can be joined with the spirit of a dead man who cannot rest. In a spirit marriage, a man and a woman can be joined and the living relatives will be blessed for having fulfilled their obligations to the deceased.
Fortunately, my gran opted for a symbolic ritual. Instead of sacrificing a live person, she consulted with her family and they made inquiries to the neighbouring villages. Eventually, they learnt of a young woman who had recently died and the two families arranged for a spirit marriage.
My mother remembers only her brother’s seat in the altar was moved to a higher rung, symbolising that as a ”married man” he had taken on a higher position in the realm of the afterlife. My granny remembers that my mother started to feel much better and to emerge from her illness after that.
By the time I was old enough to talk freely to Ah Por, it seemed like much of her life had concertinaed into a few memories, so many of them painful and raw with every new mention of them.
The misery and bitterness haunted her all her life. Towards the end of her life, they managed to chase her down, leaving her defeated and spent.
Even my Por Por’s black mutt, the only dog she ever owned, fell into this bleak recollection. He had to be killed or her entire village would have had to forfeit their rations during the Japanese occupation.
The villagers decided to slaughter and eat her dog. Chinese people do not eat dogs ordinarily, but meat in lean times was a delicacy and her dog’s flesh could not go to waste.
”I could not eat my dog when they bought me back a piece of meat. But I cooked it for your mother, who was too little to really know the dog.
“That dog was so loyal. When we women went to help the neighbouring villages with their harvests, we would be gone for days and my dog would not eat until I came home. He would always come running to the edge of the village to greet me when he finally saw us returning.”
I tried to separate those haunting memories from the images of the granny who would moan about our bad diets as teenagers but would then tell us where to find her stash of potato crisps, which she would have spent her pension money on to spoil us.
My gran knew when there was a four- or five-rand increase in her telephone bill but she spent her pension money on these extras for us.
She also saved up little pieces of meat for our two small dogs, Mozart and Snoopy, which we would bring along on our weekly visits to her retirement complex when we were older. She could not say the English names we had given them and she would shout that the dogs were not really allowed into the complex and that she could get into trouble, but then she would produce the neatly wrapped-up morsels she had saved during the week and let the dogs gobble them up in the small area partitioned as a kitchen in her cottage.
I tried to remember also the granny who told us stories as children with so much animation and vigour that we never tired of hearing the tales over and over again and how we would gasp for air trying to breathe in between laughing so hard.
There were stories of old Chinese myths and legends. Like the two young lovers forbidden to love in life, who in death would meet as two stars joined together only on one night a year, on the night of the mid-autumn festival. It is a full-moon festival that falls on the 15th of the eighth month on the lunar calendar.
On that one night a year, Ah Por would tell us we should gaze up at the celestial magnificence of the moon, and if we looked carefully we would be able to make out two stars that seemed to be moving closer to each other.
They would appear to touch for a few magical moments, then separate as the night sky surrendered to day.
Another of my favourite stories was of an enchanted princess who washed up into a young man’s life when he picked up a beautiful, odd-looking shell that was actually the princess’s home.
Bringing the shell home, he placed it on a table and went to sleep. The next day as he left to tend to the fields, he was unaware that the princess had emerged from the shell while he was away.
She cooked dinner and tidied up for the young man, then, satisfied with her task, she returned to her shell before he came back. The grateful but confused man decided one day to sneak back from the fields to find out who had been cooking him the delicious meals and he witnessed the magical princess climbing out of her shell.
I do not remember the details of the ending well, but I am sure it led to a happy-ever-after as only magical tales can do. - Weekend Argus