I watched her. Every year I visited, and each year she grew older, thinner and more tired. How long had it been I wondered, as my gaze followed her trembling fingers light a match over a pile of hell money. Instantly the pile blazed. I knew that if I returned to hell now, there would be money waiting for me.
Yet I did not wish to return. I only wanted to be with my wife right now, for I sensed that something was not right this year. She poked the burning papers with a thin stick to make sure that every little bit was burned. Then she stood up and turned back into a strange tall building. Was she living here now, I wondered as I followed her up a narrow stairwell.
We climbed up to the fourth floor and along the way, she stopped at each landing to catch her breath. The whole time I tried to help her by holding up her arm but she felt nothing. When she reached her landing, we walked down an open corridor and passed three doors. On reaching a flat marked 4D, she fished for a bundle of keys from her pants pocket and unlocked the door.
It was a tiny place, and the only reason there was room to move about was because there was barely any furniture. My wife left her sandals just inside the door, walked a few paces forward and opened a window across the living room. I looked into the single bedroom and saw a mattress propped up against the wall on its side. The adjacent bathroom was so tiny I imagined her sitting on the toilet sit while taking her shower. Then I went into the kitchen, where she was now chopping a cucumber. She fried some shallots in a small pot then poured water into it. When it began to boil, she put in the cucumber cuts. A single stove, a single chair behind a small table. Where were my children and grandchildren?
I went back into the living room and noticed, lined on one wall, dozens of pictures of happy young faces bundled up in warm clothing with backgrounds covered in snow and more pictures of them posing in front of famous landmarks from places around the world. I stared: Where were my children? I returned to the kitchen where my wife was just about to begin her meal, and asked, “Where are our children?”
She put down her spoon and walked out to the living room where she picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Hello,” she said, “Nani, is the master home?” A pause. “Can I talk with one of my grandchildren?” Another pause, “Oh, I am sorry to have called at this time. Tell them I called, alright?”
I jumped into the phone’s mouthpiece and traveled down the wire, and just in time too because when I reached my destination, Nani put down the phone. She turned away shame-facedly. My son asked from a sofa in his spacious living room, “What did she want? More money?”
“No, Mr. Chiu. She only wanted to talk.”
“Your mother is very long-lived,” his wife Nancy said.
Daniel snorted. “More trouble than anything else, I tell you.”
“She should be getting the message that you want her out of your life by now.” Nancy giggled. “Getting her to move into a flat addressed 4D-4 should be obvious. How did you ever manage to persuade the landlord to rent you that place?”
Daniel shrugged. “I was quite persuasive, and he is always looking for ways to make money. He told me he never meant to rent or sell that address out, so he asked the contractors to make it as tiny as legally possible.” He laughed, either at his own ingenuity or cruelty, I could not tell.
I turned away, feeling sick to my stomach, and my gaze fell on a perfect photo of their family, and my wife was not in it. Three grandchildren, I had three grandchildren from this son, I thought then I vomited all over the photo.
A mobile phone rang. Daniel looked at the number on the screen for a moment then he pressed a button and spoke into it, “Hello, Stacy. What’s up?” He listened for a moment. “Yes, mother called too. You shouldn’t have given her your mobile number.” He laughed after a short pause. “How in the world is she going to fit all of us in that place of hers?” Another pause. “It’s up to you, but I’m not going. Anyway, she upsets my children.”
I could not listen anymore, so again I jumped into the phone’s mouthpiece and crossed the sky to another part of the city, to where my daughter Stacy was. They talked for a moment longer about the stock market and about how some industries were doing better than others even in the bad economy. Words that were meaningless to me in my perpetual state.
I could not hold it back any longer, I screamed to Stacy and through the mouthpiece to Daniel on the other end, “Your mother is more important than the market. Your mother is a human being; she is more precious than the numbers you talk about.” Neither of them reacted to what I said. Vengeance was the only solution left open to me, and I yelled, “You will get nothing! You will get nothing!”
I returned to hell and sought for an audience before the God of Wealth. When my turn came to prostrate myself before him, the stern faced deity scrutinized me and said, “What pitiful humans do you wish me to bless this year?”
My voice still trembling with rage, I said, “I wish you to curse my son and daughter and make them suffer in poverty.”
He laughed. “That is easy because they already are.”
I stared up, distraught. “But their life is good and rich while their mother lives in poverty and neglect.”
He leaned forward and smiled. “The day they threw their mother out of their hearts, was the day when the heavens took away their cloak of happiness. Man can only live so long without happiness before turning mad.”
“I don’t understand,” I stammered.
He leaned back on his seat and said with a gleam in his eyes, “Money is nothing more than a test for the soul. When the soul is rich, even the smallest amount of money brings happiness while a large amount showers blessings on hundreds more. However, when the soul is impoverished, the smallest amount of money brings distain and large amounts of money lead to madness. That was why they threw their mother out of their lives, because they were mad.”
Again I prostrated myself before him. “Then I begged that you bless my long-suffering wife.”
He nodded kindly then indicated with a sweep of his arm for me to leave his presence in peace. I returned to the world, back into my wife’s living room. There I found her listening to the radio and sewing a tear on a worn out blouse.
A knock fell on the door, and when she opened it I saw a young woman carrying a sleeping baby wrapped in a crocheted shawl standing outside. “Hi, Mrs Chiu,” she said. “I am sorry to bother you.”
My wife smiled, “That is alright, Linda. How can I help you?”
“My baby is growing really fast, and I wonder if you would mind sewing cotton pants for him. I can’t afford to buy the ones they sell in the supermarkets because they are so expensive and Bobby needs a lot of pants.”
“You don’t make him wear disposable diapers?”
“No, his skin breaks into a bad rash each time. I will pay you for the work.” She blushed. “I mean, I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, dear, I don’t mind at all.”
The woman smiled and passed her three types of cotton prints. My wife said, “Oh my, I can make quite a lot of pants with these. I will charge you $1 for each.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “No, you can’t. That is too little.”
My wife smiled. “Don’t worry. I have a good sewing machine and baby pants are easy to sew. Anyway, you provided the material.” And she invited Linda to come in.
It was a joy to sit on the floor and listened to them talk. Linda, I learned, worked as a clerk in a shipping company, and she was worried that she might lose her job because business had slowed down significantly. Her husband worked the night shift in the same company, and in that way they took turn watching the baby.
The more I listened, the more the words of the God of Wealth sank in, and I soon realized that this woman was rich, for she was happy with her baby, husband, job and neighbors. Every dollar she had in her purse was a thousand fold the value of my children’s. Before she left the flat, she and my wife had cooked up a plan to help them both make money from selling baby items. As they talked, the room grew brighter by the minute and I knew then that the God of Wealth had approved of their plan.
Read more short stories.
