My grandmother is the wisest woman in the village.
From my childhood until now, whenever something disastrous or unfortunate happened, she would always say it happened for a reason. What are these reasons? Reasons are very complex things—sometimes it’s because I did something wrong, sometimes my father did something wrong, and sometimes it’s the fault of the unlucky and annoying neighbour who mentioned rain during a heavy rainy season or wished it wouldn’t rain when it was supposed to.
“Bad luck!” she would say angrily. Even the three incense sticks she placed in the burner for praying would go out one after another.
“Every word you say, Lord Pu remembers,” my grandmother warned me, her eyes glaring in a somewhat frightening manner.
As for how he remembers, she couldn’t explain. Who is Lord Pu? He might be equivalent to Zeus for the ancient Greeks or Vishnu for Hinduism. My grandmother never clarified. When I looked it up in books, I found various celestial emperors and benevolent figures, but none with the name Pu. Perhaps he wasn’t even named Pu. However, my grandmother is illiterate and couldn’t write it down, nor was she willing to explain clearly.
Talking disrespectfully about Lord Pu was usually not allowed in our family. Only during a major disaster, bad weather affecting my grandmother’s harvest, or when her knee acted up—which was always due to windy and rainy weather—would she start cursing Lord Pu on her own without needing us to join in. Sometimes I wondered if Lord Pu was actually a Bodhisattva because, in the Jianghuai dialect (our hometown’s language), the ‘p’ sound can be muddled and unclear, which is similar to ‘bod’.
After she finished chanting, I would chew on the words in my mouth like a parrot, feeling as useless as a fed but foolish bird, unable to savour the taste of food like a sick person, my tongue tied, unable to articulate the words.
My grandmother could tell ancient stories and had many skills. Whenever something happened in the village, people would often ask for her help, saying, “Please, old lady, take a look. The child is very sick. The hospital only gives IVs, and it doesn’t help. It’s heartbreaking to watch.”
She would diagnose simple illnesses by looking, smelling, questioning, and feeling the pulse, then suggest some medicine and remedies that wouldn’t kill people but also wouldn’t completely cure them—either for reducing internal heat or cold. For serious cases, she would bring out a pair of arm-length chopsticks, have someone assist in praying, and after the prayer, the chopsticks would tremble and point to a direction, indicating which deceased relative was dissatisfied and how much Joss paper and funerary offerings were needed to appease them.
Some children with whooping cough were brought to her. She had a special massage method for this, pressing hard on the neck and the spot between three points until it hurt, then moving to the webbing between the thumb and index finger for another pinch. The child would be so scared they wouldn’t dare to cough again—friends and relatives all believed the massage had worked.
I am most afraid of being pinched, so whenever I coughed, I would hide from her, always suspecting I might die from it one day.
So, during the Chinese New Year, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, my grandmother got more and more busy. In her view, coughing had to be treated this way. She performed her rituals on each of us. A few days later, whether it was her magic or the ibuprofen and amoxicillin she disdained, we all got better, but my grandmother fell ill.
At first, she just had a fever. After taking some medicine, she started complaining about knee pain and insisted my father take her to a hospital in Shanghai to get a mechanical joint. A mechanical joint? My father thought it was absurd, but my grandmother was adamant, accusing him of being unscientific and conservative.
Unfortunately, due to the pandemic lockdown, the village government restricted our movement. My grandmother’s dream of becoming half-human, half-machine was ultimately shattered, and she believed her condition worsened. Until late one night, unable to sleep, she brewed some dandelion tea for herself. After just one sip, she declared she was dying and woke the whole family to come to her room and listen to her.
“Little one, Lord Pu is going to take me to the heavens,” she sorrowfully hugged my younger brother, began to sob, and then started to sing:
“My dearest mother, I’m on my way,
A world without you is cold and grey.
My dearest mother, I’m almost there,
I long for the meals you lovingly prepare.
My dearest mother, have no fear,
For I am coming back, so near.”
Finally, when dawn broke, my grandmother came to her senses. She didn’t die—instead, she got out of bed, took a few steps, and cheerfully stood in the yard, scolding my father for not feeding her chickens properly.
She never mentioned Lord Pu again after that, perhaps fearing that he would remember her and take her to heaven.
What an extraordinary lady she is!