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From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

I fear I have done something wrong, and you are the only person who may understand.

It always comes back to our pencils and

the stories we force out of them.

I didn’t think Monica would write anything so personal with the pencil.

She is always on her computer.

I thought the pencil

would be like a toy for her, a novelty.

Maybe she would doodle and write her name.

She only had it for a week.

And yet she

opened her heart to it in a way she never has for me.

And then I Reforged it, without first telling her what would happen.

Or maybe I did?

I can’t remember.

Regardless, it was

not a story she had wanted to share with me, and there I was, wrenching it out of her pencil, and all she could do was watch.

It was all too familiar.

All too much like what I did to you.

Luckily, there is no rift between me and Monica.

It may even have brought us closer, now that I understand her.

What’s done is done, yet it feels as if I have not learned anything at all after all these decades.

How the pencil can hurt as much as it can heal.

This is the first time I wish you had given me more than your pencil.

How about a phone number, Meng?

Do we not live in the

twenty-first century?

I am very good with a computer; an email address would have been fine as well.

A few days ago, I would

have agreed with you that this way of sharing our feelings is better, more accurate, more intimate.

But when the news is urgent,

this hardly suffices.

There is something circular about this, that you should be the only person I know other than Monica who has met this girl,

Louise.

And if I had an immediate way to contact you, I would grill you—is she nice, is she caring, is she going places in

life?

Monica likes her in a way I would not have fully comprehended had I not Reforged her pencil.

And I need to know that

this person would treat her well, because I won’t be around much longer.

I need to know she will be happy and safe.

I want everything in the world for her.

I want her happiness so much that sometimes I wake at night, gripping my blankets

so tightly my fingers cannot unclench.

I don’t deserve any wishes granted—you know that better than anyone—but every one of

my memories would be a trivial sacrifice to ensure this future for her.

Have I said this before?

It runs through my mind all the time.

I’ve been tossing pages I wrote, pages I realized were repeats

or not about our lives at all.

It will be a tremendous task to piece together all this nonsense I’ve written.

But I believe

you’ll understand me because we have been through too much together—and it all started when you had to change your name, when

we became sisters.

It was an attempt to distance us from our fathers, who at the time were fighting against the Japanese.

It would have been

impossible to account for two missing men, so your mother became childless, a woman staying with her sister, and Mother became

a widow whose husband died years ago, before the Japanese had ever come to China, and you became my sister.

“I’ve only seen your younger daughter during the last few years,” a neighbor might say, suspicious of our family.

Why had he never seen you before?

“She was sickly, and it was difficult to care for two children without my husband,” Mother explained carefully.

“I had to

send her to my sister.”

The lie managed to explain away your sometimes shaky Shanghainese and the way you gravitated toward your mother, even unconsciously.

The neighbors left us alone, at least for a while, and Mother holed up in her workshop.

Our mothers never wore qipaos out anymore.

They swapped their dresses for drab blue clothing, doing their best to go unnoticed.

The few times I had to run an errand, even Grandmother told me to ride my bicycle, no matter how improper.

Gasoline was far

too expensive, and they wanted me home as quickly as possible.

I’d bike past the old cabarets and restaurants that once teemed

with Americans.

They were still popular, thriving even, but now with a new set of patrons: the Germans, the Italians, and

of course, the Japanese.

At the beginning, the police came often, collaborationists of the puppet government.

Your mother tried to charm them in her

usual way.

They were gruff and uninterested.

If they brought a Japanese official with them—tan uniform, bayonet at his side—our

mothers made us hide behind carefully placed boxes of graphite.

One time, the policeman threw a pile of pencils at Mother.

Even contorted behind those boxes, I could see them roll toward her, all of different lengths.

“These were found in the homes of Nationalist spies,” the policeman said.

“These pencils were made here, yes?”

Mother picked one up and pretended to take her time inspecting it, as if there were any way she would not recognize her own

pencil.

“Yes, sir,” Mother answered smoothly.

Your mother sat very still at the counter, eyes determinedly looking away from our hiding

spot.

“So you admit to selling to Nationalist spies?” the policeman pressed.

“Our pencils are often passed around. We are unfortunately unable to track what happens to them after they are sold.”

“One of the spies told us they bought straight from you.”

“I have never knowingly sold to a spy.”

“You should interrogate all of your customers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now you have supplied the enemy with the means through which they communicate. How they spread their propaganda and how they

plan to bring down China.”

“We will be more careful, sir.”

“Where is your husband?”

“He died many years ago.”

“Do you have proof?”

“No. But my mother-in-law still lives here. Would you like to ask her?”

The policeman turned away.

“No. We will be keeping an eye on who you are selling your pencils to.”

“Of course.”

After they left, you pushed me out of our hiding spot.

My arm had fallen asleep, and you were rubbing your back.

We hated

hiding, but we did not argue about it.

We had heard too many rumors of what they did to young girls.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

Our mothers exchanged a look.

“It’s impossible for us to prevent our pencils from being borrowed or taken,” I continued when nobody replied.

“There’s no

way to ensure who is using one, even if we interrogated them.”

“We could stop selling pencils,” Mother said quietly.

Nobody spoke after that.

When our mothers were not looking, you picked up one of the pencils the policeman had thrown.

Our eyes met.

You nodded and slipped it up your sleeve.

At night, when I heard the rustling from your bed, intentionally loud, I followed you.

It would be too easy for our mothers

to hear us from their bedroom next door.

We ran through the courtyard to the front of the complex, to the workshop.

I turned

on a light, and you sat at the table where Mother normally sat, pulling a blank notebook off her shelf.

“You do it,” you whispered.

I took the longest pencil.

It would have written the least.

Up until then, I had only Reforged the samples, never anybody’s

real words or stories.

I sharpened the point.

I took a breath and pushed the pencil into my wrist.

It was immediately different.

Whereas the samples were typically light memories of a day out shopping, this was all darkness.

I could see the inside of somebody’s house, a grand desk with a scholar’s rock on the side and art hanging on the walls.

The

smell of cigarettes and wet calligraphy ink.

I could feel the writer’s pulse and the words they scrawled against my skin,

as if someone was writing directly on my arm, each stroke carving, each sentence ending with a period on my wrist, drilling

through it.

The characters formed something about a daughter, a girl, not so different from us, who was tired of being told to hide in

closets when the soldiers came, tired of only being defined by her body, unable to do anything for the war.

Who left the house

one night, dressed in her brother’s clothing, leaving a note to her parents that she had to do something other than hide,

was going to fight in any way she could.

Whose body was brought back the following week, bayoneted, raped, white and bloated

from the river, larger than it had ever been in life.

I don’t remember more.

Is it the illness, or did I block it out long before that?

I remember my own body convulsed—the floor crashing into my knees and you wrapping your arms around me, shoving a bundle of bandages into my mouth to stop my screaming.

I could only rock back and forth, holding on to myself, mind racing between pain and bodies and women, and what it meant to have to be all of those things during a war, wondering if the pain was inescapable.

We did not Reforge any of the other pencils.

All I remember taking away from that night was a deep unease and a flinching

terror whenever I saw a police uniform.

I became all too eager to hide behind the graphite boxes.

It was also the first night we experienced a story that did not connect, that hurt us instead.

The story told a truth I could

not face, a truth that showed us a brutality we had been sheltered from.

We did not tell our mothers about that night.

I think they might have known somehow, noticed our trepidation.

I was sure Mother

Reforged the rest of the pencils the policemen had thrown at us, hiding their darkness within herself.

Then, two months after our occupation, in the early months of 1942, Mr.

Gao showed up at the pencil company.

It was three

years since I had last seen him, when I had delivered a box of pencils to him and he sent my father away.

He looked largely

the same, young and severe, though a bit gaunter in the face.

Mother immediately let him inside, not wanting anybody to see

him at our door, then promptly told him to leave.

“We need your help,” he said.

He took off his hat.

He stood tall and imposing.

Though he was younger than our mothers, he

showed no deference.

“We are already under suspicion.”

“We can help divert their attention from you.”

Our mothers looked at each other.

“Is it messages you want?” Mother asked quietly.

“Yes. Messages keep getting intercepted, and we lose people, plans get foiled. But if the message could be passed by pencil—”

“I understand,” Mother cut in.

I wondered how it was Mr.

Gao knew of our abilities, if my father had told him.

“And if I don’t agree to your proposal?”

Mr.

Gao took out a cigarette.

He had to have been very rich to still buy cigarettes.

His voice was slow and calm, completely

in control.

“I can easily let slip who your husband is and where his loyalties lie.”

“I can turn you in at the same time.”

“I am well protected. Don’t do this to your girls.” He cast a pitying glance at us.

“Help us, and you will have my protection.

Surely you believe in our cause? Of a free China?” He exhaled smoke, cloudy and wavering.

Mother did not take long to respond.

I think she may have known this was always what was going to happen.

“Yun,” she said eventually.

“Please bring some tea for Mr. Gao.”

I slipped out of the storefront.

You followed me.

We did not say a word to each other as we pattered through the courtyard.

No words were safe.

We no longer left the pencil company.

Only Ah-shin did anymore, taking our identification cards to retrieve our rations.

The

police came nearly every day, but your mother had learned how to handle them.

You and I triple-checked our accounting.

They

wanted records of who we were selling to and how often.

“They fear the pencil,” Mother said quietly when it was only us around the dinner table.

“None of the other stores are receiving

as much scrutiny.”

“Stop talking,” my grandmother ordered, and we would eat our meager meal in silence.

My grandmother was right to monitor our talking.

We often saw neighbors lurking close to the complex.

Because we were grouped together, if one of us went out of line, the whole group could be punished.

And we were such a strange family—the men gone, the women running the business—that it felt like all the neighbors watched us, waiting for a moment when we would slip and they might earn their reward.

Without anywhere to go, you and I took turns writing our little story.

Though it quickly became depressing, to see our characters

go through the same fears that we faced.

“It would be better if they could actually fight with their pencils,” I said as we tried and failed to think of what should

happen next.

“Fight?” you repeated, amused.

“Like if someone ran at us with a bayonet, we could parry them with a pencil?”

“No,” I said.

I was excited by the idea forming.

“What if they could still Reforge the pencil, same as us, but instead of

bleeding it out, the pencil became armor over their hands! Like a layer of pencil heart, hard and strong, protecting their

skin.”

You perked up and continued the fantasy.

“And if someone tried to kidnap them, they could just go, bam!” You clenched your first, then released dramatically.

I could

almost see it, armor snaking over your skin, erupting from your phoenix, a hardened shell, molded perfectly to your hand.

“Then they could sneak into those Japanese buildings,” I said, practically bouncing.

“Nobody would suspect them because they’re

just two young girls. But really, they’re powerful spies. And then they’d be behind the guy in charge, their armored hands

at his neck, and he’d have no choice but to surrender, and the Japanese would leave, and we’d have our home back, and we wouldn’t

have to worry about food or if our fathers will make it back or the people flocking the streets, or the buildings being bombed

and tumbling down.”

You smiled.

I smiled back.

We spent the afternoon writing this new superpower into our characters, sending them on missions

we never would have dreamed of before.

“Wait,” you said when the sun was setting.

You had taken the pencil, stopped writing midsentence, the tip hovering over the

paper.

Then you crumpled the paper.

“What are you doing?”

You took the previous page and crumpled that one too.

“Stop. Why are you—”

You did the same to each successive page, each more violently, the paper crunching in your fist, even as I begged for you

to stop, as I tried to pull what remained of our story from you.

“We can’t write this,” you said, shoving me away.

“Don’t you remember the police who came by? They’re looking for people who

are against the Japanese, and here we are, writing about infiltrating their buildings and spying on them. As if they weren’t

already watching us, as if our mothers weren’t under enough suspicion.” You slumped against your bed.

“We can’t have even

this made-up story.”

“Yes, we can,” I argued, and took the pages you crumpled and gathered them into my shirt.

I left you in our room while I took

the pages to the front of the complex, to the workshop.

I started the kiln.

As soon as the fire was substantial enough, I

tossed our story in.

I knew you were right.

But I also knew there was a way around this.

I came back to our room with an old newspaper and a handful of pencils that Mother had tossed for not passing her discerning

eye.

You looked up questioningly.

I ignored your curious gaze and continued our story where we left off, writing over the article in the newspaper.

It was illegible,

my characters tangling with those of the article.

I kept writing, allowing my words to stack on top of one another.

Somewhere

along the way, as I wrote about our characters using the money they had pilfered on their last infiltration to buy two freshly

steamed fish, garnished with scallion and ginger, the aroma making their stomachs growl, you peered over my shoulder.

Only

when I finished the chapter did I put the pencil down.

You took the newspaper, trying to decipher my words, flipping the page, rotating it.

It was practically one solid black rectangle

where I had written.

The side of my hand was stained in graphite.

“It’s unreadable,” you said.

I tossed the pencil to you.

“We can still share our story with each other though,” I said.

“When you’re done with a chapter, give me the pencil, and I’ll do the same for you. Reforge it so you can experience the story but toss the Reforging immediately afterward or bleed it out over water.” I crumpled the newspaper.

“We’ll burn these too, just in case. The story will exist only between me and you.”

You took my pencil with great care.

“That’s clever of you,” you admitted, which pleased me to no end.

“We don’t have much, but we have this power, and we have

this story.”

“And we have each other,” I added.

You stared at me.

I was embarrassed to have said it, but it was the truth.

I could no longer imagine a world where you were

not by my side, eating rationed meals, quarantined in our home, writing a story just to make the days pass.

Eventually, you nodded.

“We’ll have to stick together, then,” you said quietly.

I watched you prepare my pencil for Reforging, your hands quick and precise, holding my words.

“Always,” I promised.