After Buddhist Mom Invented the Merit System, She Went Mad

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My mother called herself a cool and detached holy woman, and she set down a strict merit system for our family.

She was always kneeling before the shrine, telling me in the most devout voice:

"Beryl Fox, merits can be traded for happiness. As long as you keep doing good deeds, any wish can come true."

So I kept doing good deeds.

I did all the housework, took the scoldings and the punishments meant for my sister, even jumped into freezing water to save someone, all to build up a thick store of merits.

But my sister was born with a rotten streak, doing every bad thing there was, never once holding back.

On my eighteenth birthday, I carefully held out that merit ledger, asking only that she spend one birthday with me.

What I got instead was a vicious slap from my mother.

She snapped at me:

"How can your heart be so filthy? You do good and store up merit, and you dare ask for something in return!"

"If your merits are spent, what am I supposed to take to the shrine to atone for your sister? Are you trying to send her to hell on purpose?"

She snatched the merit ledger out of my hands, tore it to shreds in a few quick motions, grabbed my sister, and turned to leave, leaving me alone in the empty room.

I slowly lifted my head, looking at the shrine statue on the wall, and a sudden rush of warm, salty-sweet blood came up my throat, running down from the corner of my mouth.

The doctors had told me long ago that I wouldn't live past eighteen.

Among the scraps of paper all over the floor, I suddenly smiled.

I wondered whether these merits would be enough to trade for a different mother in my next life.

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Drop by drop, the red fell, first into my palm, then seeping down through the gaps between my fingers.

It was warm, with a sweet, iron-rust smell.

If my mother came home and saw all this blood on the floor, she'd scold me again, wouldn't she.

Staining the prayer cushion, that was merits docked. Offending the sacred statue, that was merits docked.

Crying in front of the shrine statue, having a nosebleed in front of it, all of that was disrespect, "foul energy," something that would displease the Buddha.

Everything my mother said, I remembered.

But I really had tried my hardest.

The truth was, I was very afraid of dying.

My mother always said that people with few merits go to hell after death.

Mountains of knives, seas of fire, cauldrons of oil, turning without end.

Every time she said these things, her voice was calm and unhurried, as if she were relaying some perfectly ordinary law of heaven.

But hearing it frightened me. I was afraid of pain, afraid of the dark, afraid of walking the road to the underworld all alone, without even a single lamp to light the way.

So I earned merits with everything I had, willing to do anything, willing to endure anything.

The winter before last, a child fell into the river.

It was bitterly cold, and a thin layer of ice covered the water, breaking at the slightest touch.

I didn't think much about it at the time, I really didn't, I just saw the child sinking and jumped in.

The water was cold enough to cut to the bone, like countless needles stabbing in from every direction, the ache reaching into the marrow.

Afterward I pushed the child up onto the bank, but I couldn't climb out myself, my fingers frozen stiff, unable to grip the stones at the edge.

It was a kind person who pulled the two of us up together.

After I got home, I ran a high fever for a whole week.

While I was burning up and drifting in and out, my mother, for once, sat down at the edge of my bed, opened the merit ledger, and wrote in it right in front of me.

Saved a life from cold water, saved one life, ten merit points added.

Ten points.

I had earned a full ten merit points.

I was so feverish then that I could barely keep my eyes open, my body heavy as if filled with lead, but when I saw that line, I still smiled.

A silly smile, straight from the heart.

Ten points, I thought. That's really a lot.

One more step away from hell.

But before I could finish being happy, my sister's crying came from the living room.

She was crouched on the floor, a butterfly pinched in her hand.

She had torn off its wings, and the butterfly fluttered twice and then went still, the colored dust from its scales stuck to her plump little fingers.

My sister cried until she could hardly breathe, saying the butterfly was dead, so pitiful, and that she hadn't meant to.

My mother put down the merit ledger and hurried out.

By the time she came back, the ink on the open page of the ledger still wasn't dry.

She picked up the pen and, beside the line that read "Saved a life from cold water, ten points added," she wrote another line:

"Florence Fox harmed a butterfly, one life lost, half deducted in atonement."

And so the ten points I had traded my life for became five.

My mother looked up at me, her voice flat:

"Beryl gives half her merits to her sister, to atone for her before the bodhisattva. You're more sensible than she is, you won't hold it against her, will you?"

My fever hadn't broken, my face burning hot, but the smile was still there, only stiffening for that one instant.

Five points, then. Better than nothing.

That was what I thought at the time. There was even a trace of relief in it.

At least my sister had only torn one butterfly. If it had been two, my whole trip into that icy river would have been for nothing.

So my merits were slow to earn and quick to spend.

Three years of hard saving weren't enough to cover one vase my sister smashed.

Jumping into an icy river in the dead of winter wasn't enough to make up for one flower my sister snapped off.

The number in the merit ledger could never catch up to the speed of the deductions.

And now the blood was still pouring out, staining the scraps of paper until they couldn't be recognized for what they had been.

My body grew colder and colder, but the blood on the floor was still warm.

It seemed I really had died.

My soul really was as light as a feather.

And that me on the bedroom floor, small and thin, curled up amid the scattered paper and bloodstains, looked like an old rag doll someone had thrown away. I drifted over, wanting so badly to hold myself.

But the next moment, the sound of a key turning came from the living room.

My mother was home.