Page 10

From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on three servers spanning two continents

September 4, 2018 (2018-09-04T20:13:29.

681998)

loc: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

United States of America (42.

3721865,71.

1117091)

It’s September in Cambridge now, which means the students have returned.

The curbs are littered with furniture looking for

a new home, the shuttles ferry students to campus and to the store, everyone wearing a backpack.

It’s weird seeing them ease

back into their lives while mine has stalled—it’s like I’ve gone from being a character in my own movie to being a member

of the audience, watching as something more exciting plays out before me.

I try not to think about it too much and channel my energy into EMbrS instead.

I’ve learned a ton and developed a good routine.

Somehow, Prof.

Logan always finds time to review my code, leaving insightful comments around 3 a.

m.

As I work, grandmother sits across from me at the dining table, writing.

She pauses and crosses out words or a line often, murmuring under her breath.

Sometimes she only writes a few characters and then stops, distracted, forgetting what she’s doing.

Other times she writes without pause, the sound of the pencil scratching on paper the perfect white noise as I code.

Sitting with her, both of us working independently, her with pencil and paper, me at my computer—it almost makes me feel like I’m back at school.

When I’m not coding, I run whatever errands my grandparents need done: packages returned, medicine picked up, groceries bought.

The bike has been amazing for getting around, for getting out of the house, for letting me feel like I’m still moving forward

in some way.

let me guess.

your is biking again

Dinner is always prepared by grandmother and grandfather, with me observing.

Then it’s the postmeal walk through the neighborhood,

and finally, returning home, where I message Louise my and hope our conversation might last late into the night.

And if there’s something I need to process, I turn back to this

journal.

Which brings me to yesterday, when, after our postmeal walk, grandmother called me into grandfather’s office again.

“How did you enjoy your time with the pencil?”

It was really a strange thing to ask about a pencil.

I tried to reply enthusiastically.

“It was great. Do you have more?”

“Not a lot. I lost most of them after I came to America.”

“What happened?”

“There was a fire at home.”

I had never heard her mention such a thing before.

“What? Here?”

“No, when I was in California.”

“You were in California?”

“For a little bit. It was not a good time. Can I have the pencil back?”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” I was sad to part with the pencil.

I thought it was a gift.

She held the pencil with her left hand.

Her scars snaked from her palm down her wrist and into her sleeve.

“You will have to forgive me, Monica,” she said.

“I have kept a secret from you, one that you had every right to. Of course

you wouldn’t know to ask for it. But you know our family used to run a pencil company in Shanghai.”

She held the pencil tenderly, almost with a sense of wonder, though it was just a pencil.

Was it possible her eyes were wide

from fear?

“In Taiwan too,” she continued, “and even a little bit in America. Crafting the pencils was one part of it. We were very good

at it, of course. But we could not have survived the wars with only that.”

She rolled up her sleeve.

I used to trace my hand along her scars when I was little.

They must have been more prominent then.

Now they sag with her skin, pale and unnoticeable if you aren’t looking for them.

She used her other fingers to splay her

skin flat.

The scars ran down her arm, curving, familiar.

I suddenly recognized the pattern.

I found the carving on her pencil.

It was the same—the tail of the phoenix flowed and curved

in a shape that matched her scars.

She noticed my realization.

“These scars are remnants of that power. We called the power Reforging.”

“And what is Reforging?”

“The power to bring a story back to life. The power to understand a writer’s words, exactly as they intended them. The power

of perfect connection.”

I shivered.

“And what did you use this power for?” I asked.

She made a strange sound then, somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

“Too many things,” she said, barely above a whisper.

I changed the subject for her.

“And you could all do this? You and Meng? You both have these scars?”

“And your great-grandmother. Your great-grandaunt. And so many before you.”

I was not used to thinking of myself as part of a long line.

I had grown up in a totally different country than grandmother

and did not have much of a connection to my parents.

But for the first time I thought of the chain of people who came before

me, who survived wars and more, and I felt a bit braver, a bit surer of myself.

I still did not completely believe what she was saying, thought it perhaps a side effect of her illness.

Except then, in an

unforgiving stabbing motion, she stuck the pencil into her wrist.

I was beside her in an instant.

I tried pulling her hand away.

She was surprisingly strong, and I didn’t want to hurt her.

I screamed for grandfather to come help, and grandmother told me to quiet down, as if I were throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.

I looked at her wrist.

The pencil heart had—I can’t believe I’m writing this— melted into her wrist.

And her eyes rolled back, in pleasure or pain I could not tell.

She breathed hard, closing her eyes.

The

scars on her arm pulsed, and for a moment, I saw the phoenix so clearly, dark and swollen.

Eventually, the pencil heart emptied,

and the wood casing fell to the floor, a husk.

When she opened her eyes, she was looking at me in a way I had never seen before, as if she was seeing past me or through

me or maybe into me.

And I froze because I could sense it—the pencil had marked my words and, somehow, they were in her body

and she knew, she knew everything I had put into that pencil, all my questions and uncertainties, all the unsure feelings

toward Louise, the jumble of thoughts I had tossed away thinking nobody would ever see.

My story brought back to life.

Understood

perfectly by the Reforger.

I stepped back slowly.

Then I slumped into my chair.

It’s just—it wasn’t how I envisioned coming out to her.

In truth, I didn’t envision it happening at all.

It’s a terrible reality

that neither she nor grandfather will live much longer, and I figured I’d rather let them go happy than risk their potential

disapproval.

I didn’t know how they felt about any sort of sexuality, and I was content to remain in blissful ignorance, or

maybe for them to remain in blissful ignorance.

I mean, they’re old, they grew up in a different world, so I wasn’t expecting

them to be super open-minded.

It’s not something we’ve ever talked about.

I haven’t been in any real relationships, much less

with a girl, so it was easy to avoid—and it’s not like I wrote anything as direct as I think I’m really starting to like this girl .

But grandmother knows me in a way nobody else does—and I sensed the pencil had told her all she needed to know as it melted

into her.

She’d seen right through my unsure scribbles to my state of mind, to the pining that I tried to hide, that I had

not even fully admitted to myself.

All of that was going through my head, my self-doubt and paranoia so all-consuming, I barely even registered when she sliced

into her wrist.

She bled black ink out onto a notebook.

I watched everything I wrote and drew with the pencil recreate itself on the page

before her.

The drawing of the lion on the bed of cabbage, the note, the scribbles, and the message: How can you make me feel this way?

Grandmother looked at the wet scribbles for what felt like hours.

“Does father know how to do this too?” I asked in a desperate attempt to get her to look away from my words.

It should have

been easy enough.

She had just done something absurd, after all, yet neither of us seemed to be able to stop staring at my

scribbles.

She shook her head slowly.

“I never taught him,” she said.

“Or even told him about it.”

“Why not?”

“The skill seems to pass to women. And I don’t think your father would have been interested.”

“To women? Why’s that?” I really thought I was succeeding in changing the topic.

“I don’t know. Maybe because we are more used to bleeding.”

Then she touched my still-wet words with the tips of her fingers.

I swallowed.

“What does this mean?” she asked, looking so small with eyes so wide.

“It’s nothing,” I said immediately.

I could only hope what she said earlier about understanding a writer’s words, about perfect

connection, was an exaggeration.

“Really.”

“This is about the girl you wanted to send food.” Her voice revealed nothing.

“What was her name?”

“Louise,” I said weakly.

“But really, it’s nothing—”

Her hand ran over the scribbles again.

I wanted to grab the notebook, to run out of the house, hop on my bike, and ride out

of Cambridge, over the river, past Boston, to be anywhere except here.

But then she said:

“Maybe you can invite Louise over sometime.”

We looked at each other.

Grandfather’s clock ticked on the wall.

Outside, a truck rattled by, and a dog barked.

Grandmother’s

hand brushed my Reforged words again, the lead from my pencil heart staining her fingertips.

She understood.

And I fell apart.

I can’t remember what happened after that.

I must have crossed the room, seeking her embrace the way I had since I could first walk, her arms always open and ready to accept me.

Even when my parents were still around, it was her arms I sought, as if I knew even then, she would be the one to love me unconditionally.

I ended up in her embrace, and she stroked my hair, that familiar pattern of her strokes, the same after all these years.

She hummed a lullaby I had not heard before, or maybe I was too young the last time I had, but the tune went straight into my ear, a soothing buzz until my eyes were swollen, my head hurt, and my throat stung.

“You won’t...” And I had to pause because I was breathing too hard.

“You won’t forget this, will you?”

She held me tighter.

“There is not a single moment with you that I will ever forget.” She kissed the top of my head.

“Every part of you is precious

to me and marked on my heart.” But then I felt her warm tears on my scalp.

“I won’t forget.” She took a handful of my hair.

“I won’t... I won’t.”

By then it had become more of a plea than a promise.

But I believed her anyway.