“You should wear the white hood.”

I turn around and see that Grandma Lanh has decided to stay at the funeral after all. “No. That’s for Auntie Men’s daughters,” I say. “It’s not my place. I’ll wear the band.”

Grandma Lanh tiptoes as she ties the band across my head. When she is done, she stares at me for a few seconds and then pulls out a red Sharpie from her handbag.

“Whoa. What’s that?” I ask.

“We need to color in a red circle at the center of your forehead,” she says. “Like when grandpa died. Remember?”

Sometimes I think Grandma Lanh is just making up these rituals; they always seem like they come from the Vietnamese-dubbed Chinese soap operas. Without the roots, without the back-up of history, I think, these traditions bear no authenticity, no lineage, no identity. But for Grandma Lanh, rituals are all about preservation, meaning making, and reassurance — no matter how they are conceived or, improvised.

 

I witnessed my first spirit possession at six. The woman was asleep. Then she sat straight up. “I am the Goddess of Mercy,” she said. Her eyes rolled as her fists struck below the collarbones, again and again. For the first few minutes I watched and I listened to the pounding and chanting — her voice, sonorous; her words, foreign — and I thought I was hearing a story told in prayers.         

My grandmother has seen spirits, too. Hers were in Vietnam and they hung from trees like monkeys. One night Grandma Lanh took my youngest aunt by cyclo to the hospital. The trees were filled with them. “Cyclo driver, look!” my grandmother said. But the driver kept peddling. His eyes closed. 

Growing up, I always listened to Grandma Lanh tell stories about spirits possessions and her conversations with the long passed. They were stories from below the equator where the dead were revived to visit loved ones — in dreams, in homes, in forests — and I liked that she knew about them, that she could connect me to a world I knew nothing of.