Joss

First published in ‘HK24 - An Anthology by the Hong Kong Writers Circle’

The oily steam rising from the cracked bowl was ripe with the essence of burnt garlic and scallions, making her mouth water. Poh Leung knew from experience there would only be a tiny piece of boiled chicken awaiting her at home. And that was if her daughter-in-law was feeling generous. More often than not, Siu Yung would thrust a half-bowl of sticky rice in her hands, seasoned with salt, soy and a scowl.

She swallowed the first scalding mouthful of watery beef broth, just as a pair of polished black wing tips stopped before her.

'You come back ah?' she exclaimed, nodding towards a heavyset woman positioned nearer to the main street. 'Fong Lei not solve all your problems?'

The feet encased in the shoes shuffled twice, as the young man gave a brief, sheepish grin before returning his gaze downwards. He was dressed formally, his black suit and tie the uniform of thousands of salaried employees in the city. He ran his fingers through his gelled hair, an anxious tic she remembered from his visit a few weeks earlier.

'Yes, I’m back,' he muttered.

Expelling his breath with tidal force, he slumped on one of the two cheap plastic stools she placed every day on red tarpaulin masquerading as carpet. The cacophony of Causeway Bay traffic swirled around them in the early evening. The earlier rainstorm had left the city sweltering under trapped humidity, making clothes cling to sweaty skin like moist eels.

The man sat up straighter, loosening his tie. 'Po Po,' he sighed, using the term for grandmother, his manner suitably deferential for addressing a seventy-eight-year-old woman, and pitched just loud enough so only she would hear. 'I’m sorry, I should never have gone to her, but she was so… insistent, so certain she would drive away my lousy luck. But nothing she did worked.'

He fidgeted with the lapels of his jacket. 'Po Po, we did that ceremony when I came before, but do you… um, have anything... stronger?'

'Stronger ah? What you mean stronger?'

'More… effective?'

'Last time very powerful already! Good for taking away bad joss. Prayers and chanting for thirty-five minutes, five minutes extra, same same price.'

'But I’m still having bad luck. I need a more powerful solution.'

Poh Leung sighed, and put on an even thicker accent. 'No more powerful one la. You want it, we do same again today. I chant for forty-five minutes, give you good discount."

'No, not the same again. Po Po, you have to help me. It’s my boss. He’s horrible, always shouting at me and making fun of me. I have no time to rest, or eat. I try so hard, but he’s never satisfied. Please Po Po, I want to curse him.'

'Aiya! What are you talking about? Can only pray bad joss go away, good luck come. Curse person? Cannot!'

'Yes you can, Po Po. My Uncle told me da siu yan can curse people. And you are a very experienced villain hitter, no? More experienced than Fong Lei?'

Poh Leung mentally cursed the boy's relative for encouraging him, looking around to see if anyone had overheard them. The crowds streaming past Goose Neck Bridge continued their hurried strides while the rumble of cars crossing the flyover overhead diluted the earnestness of Salary Boy's pleas.

The uncle wasn't wrong though, she mused. There were curses meant to hex a specific person, rituals that would affect the wellbeing of the alleged wrongdoer. She hadn't used them in a while; nowadays, the practice was frowned on and the milder version sufficed. Listen to the client's woes, write the bad luck triggers on the paper and beat it with the shoe, light the joss sticks and chant, praying for good luck. That'll be a hundred dollars please. The tourists loved it. And aside from the yearly Jing Zhe festival, which brought the locals out in a brief, seasonal horde; tourists provided most of the bread and butter in her trade.

But now and then, there’d be a client like Salary Boy, who found it easier to blame his problems on the evil machinations of others. And easier still to pay for someone like her to swat the conspiracies and conspirators away, so he could go home and think he had eliminated the problem. Let me tell you about bad joss, Poh Leung thought. Everyone has it, and if one could wish it away, would I sit here everyday under this stinking flyover, listening to tales from the likes of you?

Something about Salary Boy tugged at her heart, however. He seemed like a nice lad. Overwhelmed, sure, but if he brazened it out, he would develop some much needed fortitude. Life knocked you down, you got back up and got on with it. She should know, she had been knocked down plenty. The odd tourist would ask her if she sometimes used the rituals for herself. She always answered she did not; that was as far as she’d go. Letting clients know she did not believe in her own methods wouldn’t do. Bad for business.

Salary Boy continued to urge her, pitch and volume rising in desperation, adopting a doggedness in pleading that would have been better employed solving the issues with his boss. Poh Leung would have liked to believe it was his gentle gaze or good manners that weakened her resolve but, truth was, she needed the money.

She engaged in a show of careful consideration, running her fingers through her thinning steel-grey hair, before relenting with a sigh. 'Don't worry ah! I do it for you, because special customer, see?'

She looked around and edged closer to him, dropping her voice to a whisper. 'But this curse is very, very powerful. Needs lot of energy, lot of strength, many special things. So will cost four hundred dollars. Ok?'

She braced herself for the bargaining that would no doubt ensue, ready to accept even two hundred. It had been a slow week, and it seemed even quieter today. Must have something to do with those demonstrations said to be growing along the road in Victoria Park. What luxury, to stand around holding up signs and shouting slogans, instead of toiling to put food in your belly!

Grateful she had agreed however, Salary Boy accepted her price with eagerness, making her wish she had asked for five hundred instead. How was she to know the silly boy was so desperate? Now she had to make him think he was getting his money's worth.

'Ok, you sit here,' she said, putting aside the now congealed beef noodles with care; she couldn't afford to stain her one good pair of black trousers. Rising, knees creaking in protest, she straightened her flower-emblazoned blouse, tugging it over her hips at the back where she sensed it had ridden up. She pulled out a small rag from under her stool to dust down the seat, careful not to disturb the cardboard box pieces that made up the walls of her little corner.

She spent the next few minutes swiping the rag over the makeshift altar, under which she had placed a statue of the white tiger Bai Hu. Then she rearranged the fruit in large platters before the effigies of the gods in their little shrines made from cardboard boxes papered in red. From the two ceramic urns in front of the shrines, she plucked out the week old joss sticks. She had left them there on purpose, for clients to see how popular she was. Drawing open a little bag, she extracted the villain papers, joss papers and paper effigies of the tiger, then pulled out three fresh sticks from a long red box.

'First, we pray. Here are gods - Guan Yu, Wong Tai Sin, Maitreya, Sun Wu Kong, and, most important, Guan Yin, goddess of mercy.'

She lit a half-collapsed candle and placed it on the altar. 'Now, you light joss sticks and push into the sand. Push deep so they don't fall.'

Salary Boy leaned forward and thrust the joss sticks into the candle’s flame before shoving them into the sand. The quick-burning ash scalded his wrists, prompting him to withdraw his hands into a prayerful pose. The sweet fragrance of incense wafted up, joining the odours of tar and diesel and rotting garbage that had impregnated the air.

Poh Leung pulled out a narrow wooden block and a cheap pen. She tested the pen on one of the joss papers before handing both to him.

'Write your name and date and time of birth.'

'Po Po, I told you last time already, I don't have the exact time.'

'Ok la, ok, we do with just date.'

He handed the joss paper back to her, and she put it aside. 'Your boss a man or woman?'

'Man.'

She handed him a thin, white villain paper, stencilled with the image of a man in an old Chinese costume. She looked around once more, lowering her voice.

'Ok, now you write boss name and date of birth on this. You have photo?'

'My photo?'

'No, no, boss photo! Otherwise gods get confused and curse wrong person.'

'No I don't. I mean I do, but not here, I didn't - '

'Ok, ok, no have, no problem. Gods are smart, ah, smarter than us. Today sixteenth day of lunar month, very high Sha Qi, evil energy. Good day for villain hitting.'

When he returned the villain paper to her, Poh Leung placed it on the wooden block.

'You want to use your shoe or my shoe?'

'Um… my shoes are new, so...'

'No problem ah. I use my shoe – very old and very experienced.' Poh Leung gave him a good look at her blackened teeth as she laughed at her own joke. She pulled off her scuffed black shoe and pounded the villain paper with short sharp whacks. With every thwack she chanted.

Da nei gou siu yan tau, dang nei yau hei mou ding tau.

I hit your head, petty villain, curse you to never have rest.

Da nei zi siu yan sau, dang nei yau cin m sik zap.

I hit your hand, petty villain, curse you to never enjoy wealth.

She kept striking the paper, cursing every part of the villain’s body. Foot, forehead, eyes, ears, heart, face, mouth, stomach - she damned them all with afflictions and deprivations. She kept up the barrage till the paper disintegrated into pieces under the onslaught. Salary Boy looked like he was picturing his boss' face on the wooden block, wincing slightly at every blow.

Poh Leung paused, catching her breath before opening a tiny plastic case. Using a pair of chopsticks, she clasped a small piece of raw pork fat soaked with pig's blood. She deposited it in the mouth of one of the paper effigies of the White Tiger.

'Now Bai Hu will not harm others.' She set the effigy aflame. Bending forward, she made quick circles around the young man's head with the burning piece of paper. It went into a red metal canister where it turned to ash within seconds. She pulled out two divination stones from a pouch hanging around her neck and cast them on the floor, completing the cursing ceremony.

'Now we pray to helpful spirits for their blessings.' She set alight red-coloured papers, and the joss paper with Salary Boy's name on it, bowing in deep obeisance to the shrine, with a surreptitious glance at her wristwatch. Long enough.

Salary Boy looked both impressed and relieved. She sat back up, mopping her face with the rag as the sweat ran in thin rivulets down the wrinkles and over the pockmarks.

'Finish. You like?'

He nodded, handing over the money to her when she presented her palm. The liver spots punctuating a bluish-green web of veins became more pronounced as her fist closed around the cash.

'So it's done? I need not come back now?'

Thinking on her feet, she smiled. 'Curse very powerful ah, but sometimes last only a few weeks. And maybe boss come to know you curse him and then put curse on you? Need to come back again to remove bad luck.'

She looked at his stricken face and was sorry for an instant. But her aching bones, and the crisp notes in her hand drowned out any thoughts of sympathy.

She had been that impressionable once, she mused, tidying up after he had gone. A gullible little girl, growing up in a village in Guang Dong. Her mother and grandmother both performed the rituals at the village temple. She grew up listening to the chants as lullabies, never imagining a future where they would become the songs of her subsistence.

An early marriage brought her to Hong Kong. The early birth of her son and the early death of her husband left her with few options for surviving in this hectic city. She slaved away at all kind of odd jobs - cooking, sewing, cleaning, collecting cardboard. Just about anything she could find, while working part-time as a villain hitter to make those extra precious dollars. A hard life, filled with strife, its sole reward an opportunity to eke out yet another day. The only piece of luck that came her way was when her son got a steady paying job. Hopes of resting a little from the toil of daily life had finally seemed neither futile nor impossible.

Her daughter-in-law, transplanted from the Mainland not six months ago, wasted no time in crushing any ideas of her taking it easy. In short order, Siu Yung asserted her authority on the household, her influence on her husband and her power over her mother-in-law's choices. Home soon changed from a place of rest and refuge to where Poh Leung felt the most fatigued.

The house was rented and minuscule, with one small bedroom that Poh Leung had relinquished to the married couple. She was relegated to the lumpy mattress in the tiny central space where she was always getting under their feet. Her constant need for the toilet meant many excruciating manoeuvres in the night, an endless agonizing cycle of rising from the floor and lying back down to sleep.

The thin walls and the small, cluttered space were also not enough to absorb the sting of the vitriol that spewed from her daughter-in-law’s mouth. Poh Leung hated the incessant bickering about money and the lack of it. She was fed up of Siu Yung’s sniping, and her outright insisting that the old woman pull her weight. And she was disappointed with her son’s awkward glances as he capitulated to his wife. The venomous atmosphere permeating the house ensured that she had to continue trudging to her post under the flyover, offering her services to other desperate people. People like Salary Boy, naïve enough to believe a superstitious rite would solve life's problems.

She should have gone for the acupuncture session today; it was three weeks overdue already. She could visualize the grimace on Master Chen's face when he saw how stiff her back had become. But at breakfast, Siu Yung had again brought up her usual litany of woes, a garnish to the watery congee. With a weary sigh, she had cancelled her appointment and had come to work instead. Where, in a rare happy coincidence, Salary Boy had shown up, resulting in a windfall equal to a whole weekend's work.

Opportunities like these were few and far between, she mused, squatting in pain in the dirty public toilet. A few weeks ago, a tourist, more interested in taking photos than performing the ceremony, had shown her something on his phone. He said people could now use their mobiles to curse anyone, anytime. She had laughed it off, saying cursing was serious business and needed the proper rituals performed by someone who knew what they were doing. But the encounter had left a worrying residue on her thoughts. Devices nowadays seemed magical; who knew what they were capable of doing? She had to do her best while she still could. Anything that granted her and her son a reprieve from Siu Yung’s constant carping.

On the way back from the toilet, she plodded past one of the bridge's supporting columns closest to the street, superior real estate for the business of villain hitting. The spot had long been the mainstay of Po Po Ching, one of the most experienced villain hitters the city had ever known. She had banished evil spirits and harbingers of bad joss from that very spot for several decades, her seniority in the pecking order of villain hitters unquestioned. When her long career came to an end in a public hospital, gasping for breath as her congested lungs gave out, the prime location became available for repossession. Given her seniority, Poh Leung had been all but assured the spot.

The next morning, she had dragged her shopping cart laden with the materials of her trade across from her old post to the new. But somebody else had already claimed the space. The corrugated panels were up, the dusty ground covered in red (the usurper had used a shiny red carpet instead of the common tarp) and the shrines positioned.

Even before she opened her mouth to protest, Fong Lei had placed both hands on her formidable hips and launched into a blistering tirade. 'What? What're you looking at? Your name’s not written here. You want, you come first. Now this my place. Why would I give up for you, just because you lao la?'

It's not just that I am old, Poh Leung wanted to say; it's tradition. And respect. But the words froze on her lips under the arctic blast of Fong Lei’s hostility. The little witch had seized her coveted spot.

The insufferable woman had strayed into villain hitting barely four years ago, and her limited experience was better used for simpler things - solving marital problems, or chanting as a remedy against illnesses. Villain hitting was serious business. Oh, she was loud, Poh Leung would grant her that. She attracted a fair number of customers by outshouting the others and haranguing curious by-passers with a steady stream of comments that made Poh Leung's insides cringe. Even Salary Boy hadn’t been immune to her ploys.

Suppressing the righteous anger that arose every time she passed by Fong Lei’s spot, Poh Leung perceived a scurrilous movement from the corner of her eye. What had made Fong Lei spring up from her seat (a ceramic urn, not the cheap red plastic stools that the others used) and stand in front of the client she was attending to, preventing anyone who shuffled past from seeing? Poh Leung stopped. She began to walk over.

As she came closer, she sensed Fong Lei’s extreme discomfiture, making her even more curious. She made as if to walk straight past. And then, in a sudden move that belied her age and fitness, she swerved around Fong Lei, intent on discovering who or what she was hiding.

She stared at the round head, hair done up in plaits, falling past the short neck and reaching midway along the flabby back.

'Siu Yung!'

Her daughter-in-law looked up at her with panic written all over her face, but quickly replaced it with the scorn and disdain with which Poh Leung was so familiar. Her hands though - those thick, wide fingers and broad palms - continued to scrabble nervously at the side of the table.

Poh Leung saw a pen drop and a scrap of paper vanish into the shadowy space under Siu Yung’s naked foot. With a boldness that surprised even herself, she bent over with an agility born from desperation, and grabbed the paper, just as Siu Yung lunged to hold on to it. The ensuing tussle ripped the scrap in two, but Poh Leung's old, rheumatic fingers held on to the larger part.

It was a villain paper. Although in two pieces, the fragment in her hand was large enough to see the outline of the female villain stamped upon it. She could read part of her own name, Fan Poh Leung, traced out as untidy characters in dark ink. She watched Fong Lei return Siu Yung her left shoe, taken off moments before, the black pointy toe with the frivolous bow stuck on with cheap glue.

'You miss some strokes,' said Poh Leung. 'See, here and here? Still cannot write my name, so stupid.'

If she was expecting an abject apology and repentance, she was disappointed. Siu Yung’s panic had evaporated completely by now, and the inevitability of the situation transformed her fear into defiance.

'What you think ah? You very smart? Only you know how to curse? Hah! I curse you. I curse you so many, many times!' She gripped her shoe, all ideas of covert action receding under the rising tide of her anger. 'You think I’m stupid? You’re stupid! You don’t respect me, never liked that I marry your son. Always fighting, always jealous. How many times've we said to you - house is too small. Go back to Guang Dong. You’re spending all our money on doctors and medicines. Your son and I work hard, but you don’t understand. So I come to Fong Lei to curse you.'

She hit the villain paper with her shoe. 'Your bones break, your skin rot, your teeth fall - '

Her screeching curses came to an abrupt end as Poh Leung's palm connected with her cheek. Her head swung sideways with the blow, sending her plaits flying in the air before they settled back on one shoulder.

'I tell him. I’ll tell my son you curse me. He’ll throw you out.'

'Hah! You think he’ll believe you?' Siu Yung rose, glowering at her.

'He’ll believe. He’ll believe when I tell him you curse me.'

'I’ll tell him first. Tell him you curse me.'

Before Poh Leung could react, Siu Yung slipped her shoe back on, turned around and bolted. For a few seconds, Poh Leung stood there, aghast, as the full import of what Siu Yung intended to do sunk in.

The treacherous bitch! Poh Leung limped back to her shopping cart as fast as her swollen joints would permit. Fong Lei fluttered after her, muttering, 'I didn't know, didn't know it was you', but her pleas fell on deaf ears. Poh Leung had seen the catty gleam in her eye as Siu Yung rained insults on her. Arguing with Fong Lei could wait. She had to get home, to present the truth to her son before Siu Yung poisoned his mind against her with her preposterous lies, turning who was cursing whom on its head.

Every day, at close of business, Poh Leung trudged from under the flyover to a side street where she caught a minibus home. She didn’t have far to travel; in the past she had often walked back, but those days were long gone. She closed shop, tossing everything into the shopping cart and covering it with the blue tarp as fast as she could. Grabbing her bag, she walked towards the side street where, if she was fortunate, she might find a red minibus. Their drivers were more reckless compared to those in green minibuses, but that might was just what she needed today to pip Siu Yung to the post. Besides, Siu Yung was likely to take the tram back; she often paraded her use of the cheaper mode of transport as a hardship she had taken on to save money. The tram stop wasn’t close by and it would take Siu Yung at least five minutes to get there, by which time Poh Leung would already be on her way.

She needed to stop twice en route to catch her breath and rest her tired legs. Soon after she reached the stop, a minibus arrived - green, not red. No matter. She boarded the bus, and found a seat near the front on the right side, willing the bus to fill up fast so they could get moving.

The returning-home crowd soon occupied the vacant seats and within minutes, the driver was reversing out into the street. After two quick turns, the bus joined the cars, bikes, vans and pedestrians jostling for space as they inched along at a snail’s pace on the main road. After a few metres, the bus came to a complete halt, stopped in its tracks by traffic that ceased to move, even though the traffic lights up ahead glowed green.

Poh Leung glanced outside the window, horrified to see the trams plying smoothly on their dedicated lines. She counted as five trams went by while the bus stood still, as if its wheels were mired in molasses. Her heart pounded as she tried to catch sight of Siu Yung in the trams. Was she in that crowded green one, standing in the middle aisle? Or was it the red one, with the Chow Tai Fook advertisement on it? At this rate, Siu Yung would have ample opportunity to get home, lie to her heart’s content and still have time left over to pack her mother-in-law’s belongings up for her exile to Guang Dong.

After an eternity, the bus moved off again, but progress came in fits and starts. The traffic snarl worsened as they approached Victoria Park. Even the trams were now finding it challenging to cleave through the multitudes swarming the streets. The bus ground to a halt again, unable to penetrate the flood of bodies engulfing it on both sides.

Now the trams were also stationary. After deliberating for a few seconds, Poh Leung reached a decision - she would have to walk the rest of the way. She rose out of her seat and signalled she wanted to get off, impatient to be on her way. She managed to find a tenuous foothold on the ground as she dismounted, clutching the handrail till the last second before letting go, adrift amidst the mass of bodies. Most of them were heading for the park, while she needed to go in the opposite direction.

The protests. She should have remembered; Hong Kong politicians had been popular villain hitting targets in the past few weeks. Today's demonstrations seemed larger than usual; it seemed half the city was gathering to vent their fury and frustration in Victoria Park.

She waited for a gap in the surging mass, growing ever thicker. There was none. She decided it would be better to cross the road and take the back streets home. With a deep breath, she took a step forward, and the throng sucked her in.

She tried to wriggle through, but after a few moments, the surrounding pressure became intense. The multitudes to her right, forcing their way towards the park, shoved her without mercy against the mass to her left. She tried to stick out her elbows, to jab her way through in the time-honoured tradition of elderly Chinese women, but to no avail.

The surrounding air grew thicker, more viscous, reverberating with the shrieks and roars of an incoming storm. The wails and jeers grew louder, and there was a pungency lacing the air, bringing tears to her eyes. She noticed a bunch of people running helter-skelter in the distance, chased by another group with batons.

The storm hit.

Gripped in an unyielding vice, she felt her arms squeezed against her body. Breath left her lungs with a loud sob. Her knees, weak to begin with, buckled under the pressure and gave way, her feet leaving the ground for a few seconds before her body collapsed.

Her cheek struck the rough ground with a smack. Instinct made her twist and try to rise. An indefinite mass of three or four bodies fell onto her as they lost their footing. They used her to right themselves and stand up again. Hands pushed against her back, her arms, her waist. She felt the weight lift off her. As she squinted up, trying to scrabble with her bruised and bleeding fingers for some purchase so she could rise, the first foot hit her face.

Stunned by the impact, she barely registered the pain before another foot hit her, then another. High heels, flats, loafers, lace ups - she recognized them all. You get to know shoes pretty well if you spend your days pounding them on wood.

The air seemed suffused with the sweet smell of incense. She couldn't feel her limbs, her legs and back pain-free for the first time in years. Something warm flooded her eyes, and the world turned crimson. The distant roar in her ears coalesced into the throb of her own heartbeat, growing softer, weaker, until her wheezy breath left her lungs with a final whoosh.

That Fong Lei had turned out to be an effective villain hitter after all, she thought. Maybe Salary Boy ought to go see her again next week.