Young Writers Society

For the first time in eight years, I went outside.

It was the day my father died. The police who were investigating his death found me upstairs in the attic, cutting out garlands from notebook paper. When they told me my father had died, I sat on the dirty mattress, uncertain how to react. I wasn’t even sure if what I was hearing was true.

They forced my mother to acknowledge me as her son, and told her that she had to take care of me ‘or else you’ll be charged for parental negligence’.

My mother begrudgingly relented.

Two days later, when it was confirmed that the cause of death had been a cracked skull from falling over the stairway, my mother buried my fathers’ body. All of the stall owners in Chinatown came to the funeral, a jaunty type of thing that was unlike its grimmer Western counterpart, and all of them successfully acknowledged me as ‘the White Ghost’. I counted five ‘Well I didn’t know you were still alive’ and three ‘Someone get the local mystic there’s a ghost among us’.

I stood a good distance away from my mother through the reception, and only got to approach my fathers’ grave the moment everyone else went home.

I didn’t cry. My insides were twisted into a bow and I was sure one of my internal organs had torn itself in half, but I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. There was too much to cry about, by then—my fathers’ death, my mothers’ seething hatred towards me, my lack of existence in the eyes of the people I watched over every day. If I cried then, I suppose I wouldn’t stop crying until I joined my father six feet underground. Misery carved itself into me, and left nothing of what I should’ve been. What I could’ve been.

A leaf fell from the sky, dropping onto my head. I plucked it off of my hair, studying it. A tea leaf. A glowing one.

“How are you doing, kiddo?” I didn’t need to glance behind me to know who was there. Da Baba laid a hand against my shoulder, picking the leaf from my hand. “Beautiful day to go outside, isn’t it?”

I nodded. His hand felt heavy on my shoulder, cold. Lifeless. “What does it mean to die, Baba?”

“What?”

“What does it mean to die?”

He fell silent, then. It was the first time I’ve ever caught him speechless. “I don’t know, Kale.” He confessed. “I’ve never died before, myself.”

“But surely you know how it is.” I looked up to him. “You know everything. Don’t you?”

“Death is something a divine doesn’t recognize. To the divine, nothing can truly die.” He looked down at me. He dimmed substantially since he arrived. Something about being near a grave irked him, from what I’ve seen. “Do you remember what I told you about the stars?” I nodded. “See, it’s the same thing. Physically, the stars themselves may die, but its light will continue on without it. Its legacy lives without its body. Death is a mortal concept, Kale. It’s as real as the mortal plane sees it. But so long as the dead—so long as your fathers’ memory rests inside you, he’s not truly dead. You have allowed him to escape oblivion. You are his light. He may be a black star, but you’re--”

“His White Ghost.” I interrupted, in understanding. I turned back to the marked grave, with the name ‘Nei Li’ carved onto it. “I don’t know how to be his ghost, Baba. I don’t even know how to live without him.”

The shining man opened his mouth, then closed it again. Nothing he said could’ve made a difference. Only action mattered, at that point; and he only knew how to do one.

He crunched the tea leaf in his hand, letting it vanish when he opened it. Only it wasn’t his hand anymore. I looked back, and instead of seeing the shining man with his brighter-than-the-sun face and grin, I saw something else. I saw someone else. I saw an Asian man in uniform blue night robe and white shirt and wrinkled khaki trousers.

I saw my father.

“You don’t have to.” He said, in a voice that sounded exactly like my baba’s, fluent in English but accented nonetheless. I covered my mouth, smiling under it. I hugged the dead man, a tear rolling down my face. Xie xie, I kept whispering, xie xie.

Da Baba just smiled, hugging back.