Offerings

Abstract

Offerings Samantha Xiao Cody (bio) It was mama888 from the forum who told me my daughter might be trying to conjure the spirit of her father. The forum was overwhelming to me, but my own mother had made me join it before she’d left with the old-Chinese-ladies tour group, which at this point had been nearly eight years ago, two years after the birth of my daughter, Fern. “Old-Chinese-ladies tour group” was not the official name of the group, but it was how my ma had described it to me: a group for old Chinese ladies who had never gotten to enjoy their youths, who were finally discovering freedom in their old age as husbands died and children grew families of their own. I didn’t know if my mother even had a phone anymore, but she occasionally sent me postcards from wherever she was, and they told of the men she was seeing, the drugs she was doing, the parties she was attending. Every now and then she sent a photograph, and I saw rows of smiling Chinese women my mother’s age, their skin loose and creased but glowing, their smiles enormous, wearing colorful dresses and shorts and makeup. The forum was for second-generation single mothers, like myself. Mothers discussed whether to send their children to Chinese school, how to cook certain recipes for Lunar New Year, what to do if their children had no Chinese friends. I’d mostly ignored it, finding it stressful, but it was where I’d turned when Fern had begun to act strangely. Where else was I to go? I had no husband, no friends, and my own mother was somewhere lost in the world to me, smoking weed or singing karaoke or kissing men. I described to the forum what Fern was doing. It was summer break, and she had too much free time. Mostly I noticed she had created a strange little box in her room by the window where she was putting food and snacks that she had stolen from the kitchen. I’d found a rotting banana, a juice box, a stale Snickers bar, and other strange, dirty things, and I’d felt afraid, the workings of my daughter’s mind obscured to me. She’d been quiet and withdrawn, even more than usual, staying locked in her room for hours. She’d also begun playing an unfamiliar song on her violin, again and again, rather than the piece she’d been assigned in her lessons. It was a playful, teasing song that made me feel strange, like forgotten dreams were stirring somewhere inside me. I made a post in the forum about these things, hoping for an answer. Mama888 replied. She had no profile picture. [End Page 54] Can you send a recording of the song? she said. I waited for Fern to play the song again and recorded it in secret. I sent the audio recording to mama888 in a private message. That’s “Liu Hai kan qiao,” she replied. “Liu Hai cuts firewood,” she translated for me, as if she knew that I wouldn’t understand. Then she sent an audio recording. I played it. Hu da jie ni shi wo de qi luo / Liu Hai ge ni shi wo de fu wa Her singing was silvery, perfect. It chased chills across my back. I didn’t understand the words. It was exactly the song Fern had been playing, although somehow truer. Have you told your daughter about huli jing? Fox spirits? mama888 messaged me. I had. I’d been telling Fern since she was young that her father was a fox spirit, which is why he’d never been in our lives. Tales about fox spirits were some of the only things I remembered of what my own mother had tried to tell me as a child. It was embarrassing to admit my lie, and my mother would have yelled at me for my inaccuracies if she knew, because the fox spirit almost always takes the form of a beautiful young woman who preys on and consumes the hearts of mortal men. But I’d always seen...