My aunt haunts me--her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, thought not origamied into houses and clothes. I do not think she always means me well. I am telling on her, and she was a spite suicide, drowning herself in the drinking water. The Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute.
Maxine Hong Kingston
