One Heartbeat

Today, Aneti brought me to her mother’s grave in the Galasu necropolis, the part of the city for those who have no room for the dead in their homes’ ancestral shrines. Most people honor the dead here because the Occupation displaced so many people that few know which ancestral homes even belong to them. The names lining the pathways of the necropolis are cracked and worn, a place where old naming techniques went to die and trends in personal and formal names stand out with the decades. We walked in silence because the man at the necropolis gate had bound our mouths with red fabric, and we bought red Tveshi veils from the vendors to cover our heads. The rough woven fabric dangled frayed fabric edges in Aneti’s face when she wore it, and the thick veil was uncomfortably warm in the oppressive summer heat.

We walked down one of the pathways, our hands linked together. Mute individuals made offerings at small shrines with packed urns beyond the path’s edge, and as we went deeper into the necropolis, everything around us seemed older, crumbling. We left the path soon after the gates into the older part of the cemetery, towards a shrine that bore the name “Kuresa” in the old syllabic characters. Most of its stone urns and the table in the center showed signs of laser scarring because people during the Invasion hid in the places of the dead. One of the urns had broken on the ground; someone had piled the fragments neatly by the stone altar’s side. The tree canopy above us made an organic room.

She hooked her finger through the red gag and pulled it down over her cheek so it rested on her neck. I followed suit, unsure of the custom; none of the others had removed these during prayer. I watched her take out a knife.

Aneti wordlessly offered blood from her palm on the altar. I watched her light the shrine’s candles and sterilize the blade in one of the flames. When she pressed it against her palm, she didn’t even wince. I wish I had self-control like that. She mumbled a quick prayer as the blood fell, not even reaching for the bandages and fleshknit cream until the prayers had finished and the wound on her right hand gaped at the small carved didomač.

They did not appreciate it when my mother married my father, she said quietly. My maternal family took her ashes to the shrine even though she had transgressed against sacred tradition in choosing him. My grandmother thought that our ancestors would deform my mother’s children, but as you see, that did not come to pass.

Your shrine is beautiful. I had no idea that the Tveshi honored their dead like this. I shuffled my feet and felt the sweat drip down my forehead into my eyes. It stung.

Aneti pointed at one of the empty slots on the shrine and took out a colorful box covered with syllabic characters. On one side, the characters spelled out her own name, but I could not read the rest. They only teach Narahji children the old Tveshi characters for a few weeks of the second language classes. My mother died nineteen years ago today. My aunt does not make offerings and has not since the funeral. I am the only one, and when I die, the family will retract those honors. It will forget her and the amazing possibilities that could have been mine had she lived. My aunt’s descendants will come here, and in a few centuries, the names of my mother and I will be mere curiosities in the wall of our dead, unremembered and unknown. They will never use our names to honor newborns or pray that we found happiness in death. It ends here.

I’m sorry. Her bandaged palm looked horrifying to me. We have a stylus with the names of our ancestors. The ashes usually go into the same giant urn. It’s more economical. I … we honor them all at once, unless we know the ones who died … and sometimes we can take some of the ashes with us if we go abroad to continue their worship.

She nodded. I want you to promise me something, Salus. I want you to swear it on my mother’s grave.

I would do anything for you.

When I die, be it four weeks or four decades from now, I want you to remember me. Any Shiji woman or man could teach you the etiquette, the style of honoring. Come here and pour candied wine on the altar. Burn kili cakes for me. Just don’t let yourself forget that I existed. She cleared her throat and wiped tears from her eyes, sliding her index fingers gently below her eyes. They will honor me no matter what I do, no matter how much they despise my mother.

I swear that I will honor you. I will pour candied wine on the altar and burn your kili cakes. I held out my hand until she clasped it and squeezed with her bandaged hand. May you have a long, happy life.

Thank you.

We bound our mouths from speaking and left the shrine as we had come, weaving among the graves like slow-moving water until we reached the outer gates and hurled ourselves back into the world of the restless living.