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The folds in the goddess’s robes had been rendered with extraordinary delicacy Her eyes were gentle, her face double-chinned Her halo was a red moon circled by ornate clouds

"It’s for Nai Nai," said Wei Yi "Maybe Kwan Yin will have h she’s so blasphemous"

"Shouldn’t talk like that about the dead," said Vivian

Wei Yi rolled her eyes, but the effort of her craft seeies Her response was mild: "It’s not disrespectful if it’s true"

Her devotion touched Vivian Surely not many seventeen-year-olds would spend so much time on so laborious a task The sleet of impermanent art piled around her must have taken hours to produce

"Did Nai Nai teach you how to do that?" Vivian said, trying to get back on friendlier ground

Wei Yi’s face spasmed

"Nai Nai was a rubber tapper with seven children," she said "She can’t even read! You think what, she was so free she can do all these hobbies, is it? I learnt it fro on and flung it down on the floor to join the flickering red mass

"Oh, whatever!" said Vivian in the fullness of her heart

She bought the whitest, fluffiest, sheeniest, most beaded dress she could find in the boutique It was strapless and low-backed to boot Nai Nai would have hated it

That night Vivian drearandmother

Nai Nai had cli roo a kebaya, with a white baju and a batik sarong wrapped around her hips No modern creation this--the blouse was fastened not with buttons but with kerongsang, ornate gold brooches studded with pearls and rhinestones

Nai Nai was struggling with the kerongsang In her dream Vivian reached out to help her

"I can do!" said Nai Nai crossly "Don’t so sibuk" She batted at the kerongsang with the slim brown hands that had been so deft in life

"What’s the matter? You want to take it off for what?" said Vivian in Hokkien

"It’s too nice to wear outside," Nai Nai complained "When I was alive I used safety pins and it was enough All this hassle just because I am like this I didn’t save Yeh Yeh’s pension so you can spend on a carcass!"

"Why do you want to go outside?" Vivian took the bony aro back to sleep It’s so late already Everybody is sleeping"

Nai Nai was a tiny old lady with a dandelion fluff of white hair standing out fro like the spotty, tubby, furiously aard Wei Yi, but her expression suddenly showed Vivian what her sister would look like when she was old The contemptuous exasperation was exactly the sao outside?" she said "I have a long way to go Hai!" She flung up her hands "After they bury "

She started hopping towards the door, her arht was comic and horrible

This was the secret the fa shi

"Nai Nai," choked Vivian "Please rest You’re so old already, you can’t run around so much"

"Don’t answer back!" shouted Nai Nai from the foyer "Cory He cannot stand when people are late"

Vivian envisioned Nai Nai hopping out of the house--past the neighbourhood park with its rustling bushes and creaking swings, past the neighbours’ Myvis and Peroduas, through the toll while the attendant slu the curves of the Titiwangsa Mountains, her halo of hair white against the bleeding red of the hills where the forests had peeled away to show the li oil palreen under the brassy glare of sunshine--sleepy water buffalo flicking their tails in wide hot fields--rows of nehite terrace houses standing in e North-South Expressway, to her final home