A couple of hours later she barged into Vivian’s room. “Why you’re here? Why you take so long? Come and see!”
Vivian got up sheepishly. “I thought you need some time to finish mah.”
“Nonsense. Nai Nai going to be buried tomorrow, where got time to dilly-dally?” Wei Yi grasped her hand.
The paper dress was laid in crisp folds on the dining table. Wei Yi’s scissors had rendered the delicate lace of the kebaya blouse with marvellous skill. Peacocks with uplifted wings and princely crowns draped their tails along the hems, strutted up the lapels, and curled coyly around the ends of the sleeves. The paper was chiffon-thin. A breath set it fluttering.
The skirt was made from a thicker, heavier cream paper. Wei Yi had cut blowsy peonies into the front and a contrasting grid pattern on the reverse. Vivian touched it in wonder, feeling the nubby texture of the paper under her fingertips.
“Do you think Nai Nai will like it?” said Wei Yi.
Vivian had to be honest. “The top is a bit see-through, no?”
“She’ll have a singlet to wear underneath,” said Wei Yi. “I left that for you to do. Very simple one. Just cut along the line only.”
This was kindness, Wei Yi style.
“It’s beautiful, Yi Yi,” said Vivian. She felt awkward—they were not a family given to compliments—but once she’d started it was easy to go on. “It’s so nice. Nai Nai will love it.”
“Ah, don’t need to say so much lah,” Wei Yi scoffed. “OK enough already. I still haven’t done shoe yet.”
They burnt the beautiful cream kebaya as an offering to Nai Nai. It didn’t go alone—Wei Yi had created four other outfits, working through the night. Samfu for everyday wear; an old-fashioned loose, long-sleeved cheongsam (“Nicer for older lady. Nai Nai is not a Shanghai cabaret singer”); a sarong for sleeping in; and a Punjabi suit of all things.
“Nai Nai used to like wearing it,” said Wei Yi when Vivian expressed surprise. “Comfortable mah. Nai Nai likes this simple kind of thing to wear for every day.”
“Four is not a good number,” said Vivian. “Maybe should make extra sarong?”
“You forgot the kebaya. That’s five,” Wei Yi retorted. “Anyway she die already. What is there to be pantang about?”
They threw in the more usual hell gold and paper mansion into the bonfire as well. The doll servants didn’t burn well, but melted dramatically and stuck afterwards.
Since they were doing the bonfire outside the house, on the public road, this concerned Vivian. She chipped doubtfully away at the mess of plastic.
“Don’t worry,” said Ma. “The servants have gone to Nai Nai already.”
“I’m not worried about that,” said Vivian. “I’m worried about MPPJ.” She couldn’t imagine the local authorities would be particularly pleased about the extra work they’d made for them.
“They’re used to it lah,” said Ma, dismissing the civil service with a wave of the hand.
They even burnt the fake Gucci bag and the polo shirt in the end.
“Nai Nai will find some use for it,” said Wei Yi. “Maybe turn out she like that kind of style also.”
She could afford to be magnanimous. Making the kebaya had relieved something in Wei Yi’s heart. As she’d stood watch over the flames to make sure the demons didn’t get their offerings to Nai Nai, there had been a serenity in her face.
As they moved back to the house, Vivian put her arm around her sister, wincing at the snap and hiss when her skin touched Wei Yi’s. It felt like a static shock, only intensified by several orders of magnitude.
“OK?”
Wei Yi was fizzling with magic, but her eyes were calm and dark and altogether human.
“OK,” replied the Witch of Damansara.
In Vivian’s dream a moth came fluttering into the room. It alighted at the end of her bed and turned into Nai Nai.
Nai Nai was wearing a green-and-white striped cotton sarong, tucked and knotted under her arms as if she were going to bed soon. Her hair smelled of Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo. Her face was white with beduk sejuk—powder moistened and spread over the face as a cooling paste.
“Tell your mother the house is very beautiful,” said Nai Nai. “The servants have already run away and got married, but it’s not so bad. In hell it’s not so dusty. Nothing to clean also.”
“Nai Nai—”
“Ah Yi is very clever now, har?” said Nai Nai. “The demons looked at my nice things but when they saw her they immediately run away.”
Vivian experienced a pang. She didn’t say anything, but perhaps the dead understood these things. Or perhaps it was just that Nai Nai, with 65 years of mothering behind her, did not need to be told. She reached out and patted Vivian’s hand.
“You are always so guai,” said Nai Nai. “I’m not so worried about you.”
This was a new idea to Vivian. She was unused to thinking of herself—magicless, intransigent—as the good kid in the family.
“But I went overseas,” she said stupidly.
“You’re always so clever to work hard. You don’t make your mother and father worried,” said Nai Nai. “Ah Yi ah . . . . ” Nai Nai shook her head. “So stubborn! So naughty! If I don’t take care sekali she burn down the house. That girl doesn’t use her head. But she become a bit guai already. When she’s older she won’t be so free, won’t have time to cause so much problems.”
Vivian did not point out that age did not seem to have stopped Nai Nai. This would have been disrespectful. Instead she said, “Nai Nai, were you really a vampire? Or were you just pretending to turn into a kuang shi?”
“Hai, you think so fun to pretend to be a kuang shi?” said Nai Nai indignantly. “When you are old, you will find out how suffering it is. You think I have time to watch all the Hong Kong movies and learn how to be a vampire?”
So that was how she did it. The pale vampirish skin had probably been beduk sejuk as well. How Nai Nai obtained beduk sejuk in the afterlife was a question better left unasked. Vivian had questions of more immediate interest.
“If you stayed because you’re worried about Wei Yi, can I return the cheongsam to the shop?”
Nai Nai bridled. “Oh, like that ah? Not proud of your culture, is it? If you want to wear the white dress, like a ghost, so ugly—”
“Ma wore a white dress on her wedding day. Everyone does it.”
“Nai Nai give you my beduk sejuk and red lipstick lah. Then you can pretend to be kuang shi also!”
“I’ll get another cheongsam,” said Vivian. “Not that I don’t want to wear cheongsam. I just don’t like this one so much. It’s too expensive.”
“How much?”
Vivian told her.
“Wah, so much ah,” said Nai Nai. “Like that you should just get it tailored. Don’t need to buy from shop. Tailored is cheaper and nicer some more. The seamstress’s phone number is in Nai Nai’s old phonebook. Madam Teoh.”
“I’ll look,” Vivian promised.
Nai Nai got up, stretching. “Must go now. Scared the demons will don’t know do what if I leave the house so long. You must look after your sister, OK?”
Vivian, doubtful about how any attempt to look after Wei Yi was likely to be received, said, “Ah.”
“Nai Nai already gave Ah Yi her legacy, but I’ll give you yours now,” said Nai Nai. “You’re a good girl, Ah Lin. Nai Nai didn’t have chance to talk to you so much when you were small. But I’m proud of you. Make sure the seamstress doesn’t overcharge. If you tell Madam Teoh you’re my granddaughter she’ll give you discount.”
“Thank you, Nai Nai,” said Vivian, but she spoke to an empty room. The curtains flapped in Nai Nai’s wake.
On the floor lay a pile of clothes. Moonlight-sheer chiffon, brown batik, maroon silk, and floral print cotton, and on top of this, glowing turquoise even in the pale light of the moon, the most gilded, spangled, intricately embroidered Punjabi suit Vivian had ever seen.
The Faery Handbag
Kelly Link
I used to go to thrift stores with my friends. We’d take the train into Boston, and go to The Garment District, which is this huge vintage clothing warehouse. Everything is arranged by color, and somehow that makes all of the clothes beautiful. It’s kind of like if you went through the wardrobe in the Narnia books, only instead of finding Aslan and the White Witch and horrible Eustace, you found this magic clothing world—instead of talking animals, there were feather boas and wedding dresses and bowling shoes, and paisley shirts and Doc Martens and everything hung up on racks so that first you have black dresses, all together, like the world’s largest indoor funeral, and then blue dresses—all the blues you can imagine—and then red dresses and so on. Pink-reds and orangey reds and purple-reds and exit-light reds and candy reds. Sometimes I would close my eyes and Natasha and Natalie and Jake would drag me over to a rack, and rub a dress against my hand. “Guess what color this is.”
