Chapter 1
At the sight of it,
I jumped.
The shrine room was pitch-black.
Only the two candles before the altar cast a wavering glow.
In the flickering light,
I saw Grandma kneeling devoutly with her palms pressed together.
She leaned far backward.
Her vacant eyes stared up at the ceiling.
She was forcing her body into the grotesque shape of a C.
Crack. Crack.
Grandma’s spine made the sound of bones snapping.
But she seemed not to notice.
Still arched backward, she struck her head against the floor again and again.
She kowtowed
and chanted under her breath.
“One bow brings wealth, two bring prosperity. Three and four keep your descendants safe; five and six make the family flourish…”
The sight scared me half to death.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, terrified of making a sound.
Just then,
my younger brother, who had been sleeping soundly, suddenly sat up.
“This is so damn annoying. How is that old woman still kowtowing?”
He rubbed his bleary eyes and kept cursing.
“Stealing her lotus prayer mat wasn’t enough. Tomorrow I’ll smash that Buddha statue and see how she kowtows then.”
The instant he spoke,
the thudding outside stopped.
I turned to look.
The candles in the shrine room were still burning.
But Grandma, who had been kneeling there, was gone.
The room stood empty.
There was no trace of anyone inside.
Before my pounding heart could settle,
I heard a faint breath above my head.
I looked up.
Grandma’s face filled the crack in the doorway.
It hung down from above.
Her head was upside down.
Back bent like a bow, she crawled toward me…
Grandma smiled at me through the gap.
“My good girl, why aren’t you asleep?”
Later,
Dad’s slap jolted me awake.
“Sleep, sleep, that’s all you ever do! Your grandma is dead, and you’re still sleeping!”
The words struck like a thunderclap. I snapped fully awake.
“When?”
“Midnight last night.”
At eleven last night, my brother and I had both heard Grandma kowtowing.
Could she have died
not long after finishing her bows?
Now Grandma had already been laid in a coffin.
My eldest uncle was arranging her funeral.
Everyone kept insisting,
“A blessed passing. She had a blessed passing.”
The wind blew open the door to Grandma’s room.
A strip of red cloth hung from a ceiling beam.
Bloody fingernail marks scored the mottled white wall.
Grandma had hanged herself.
Before she died, she had struggled in agony.
How could a death so violent be called a blessed passing?
Just then, my aunt cried out,
“Where’s the lotus prayer mat Mom used for her bows?”
“She had to kneel on that mat whenever she kowtowed.”
I knew which mat she meant.
The previous evening,
my brother had complained about the noise of Grandma’s kowtowing.
He stole her mat.
I watched him cut it apart and throw it into the pond behind the house.
The woven mat did not float.
It sank straight to the bottom.