Page 15

From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

Monica has been flitting around the house.

Half the time she is excited, using her new vacuum, biking to the store for supplies,

watching videos on cleaning techniques.

The rest of the time she is all nerves, fiddling with the art hangings on the wall,

using her phone to determine if they are straight.

You see, she finally worked up the courage to invite Louise to visit.

It’s

not even happening until the end of October, still a month away—and yet she’s frantic.

Her restless energy has infected me

and Torou.

We’ve resumed our early morning walks, and Torou spends a lot of time at his computer, responding to messages from

his former students.

As for me, I write.

Sometimes I get lost while I’m writing and end up wandering the house and find myself

back in my rocking chair, knitting needles in hand.

There are some things I can’t remember at all.

I don’t know if this is because of the disease or if I would have forgotten them anyway.

For instance, I cannot, no matter how hard I try, recall the name of that boy you were seeing, or even much of what he looked like.

You would say it’s because I didn’t like him.

That’s not true though.

I had nothing against him.

I only hated what he did to us, even if it was my own fault.

Shortly after Japan’s surrender, you went on your date, and then another, and another.

At first you told me everything.

When

the two of you went to that store that sold American ice cream sodas, and you thought it was too sweet and forced yourself

to finish to not appear rude.

Or when he took you to the silk shop and offered to have a dress made for you, but you were

never into silk or fashion, and so you fumbled out an excuse and left empty-handed.

Or how he learned from those not-so-successful

outings and brought you to the river and you both sat in silence, watching the ocean liners and barges drift, admiring the

American warships that now occupied the port.

As the year progressed, you would be gone for entire afternoons with him.

It was startling, to be suddenly without you, when

we had been trapped in the same house, the same room, for so long.

You even missed the day Mr.

Gao came with news of my father.

Mr.

Gao was dressed in a crisp western suit, his hair combed neatly to the side.

He looked impressive, even more so once your

mother took his arm, wearing a beautiful floral qipao.

“I have good news,” Mr.

Gao said to my mother.

“Your husband is on his way home.”

“He is?” I blurted.

We had not heard from my father in months.

“Yes. I suspect he will be here by the end of the week. His passage should be smooth, thanks to his devoted service.”

“Thank you for the news.” Mother bowed.

Something passed between our mothers then.

A look I only recognized because I had cast the very same look at you, a jolt of jealousy that hit when I learned you had something I wanted.

One of our mothers had a husband who was coming home alive.

The other had a new man in her life who took her out in the city at night to enjoy herself, the way our mothers used to together.

So who was jealous of who?

I think it most likely they both were, though I did not reach that conclusion at the time.

This exercise of looking back has proven useful.

It helps me untangle these memories, apply the wisdom of my years to our mothers who seem so young in comparison to how old we are now.

Mr.

Gao also brought more pencils he needed Mother to Reforge, even though he had assured us that with the war over, she would

no longer need to do this—and yet more and more pencils came, the same as before, the Nationalists paranoid of their old enemy,

the Communists.

They preferred to pass their messages the way he had established; none of the messages he had ferried during

the war had ever been compromised.

Because you were out most afternoons, you worked on your allotment that evening.

While you Reforged, I sat beside you, happy

to be finished, and told you my father was returning any day now.

“Oh,” you said softly.

You claimed not to miss your father, but in that moment your voice was far away.

Not long after, you

reverted to your father’s last name, casting mine away, no longer needed now that the Japanese were gone.

You spent even less

time at home.

The more I tried to reconnect with you, the more you pushed me away.

Whether it was intentional or not, I did not know.

You

stopped telling me about your dates, only gave me vague summaries when you used to give me every detail.

I was no longer more

knowledgeable of the city, the one advantage I used to have over you.

You were always out exploring, learning about Shanghai

as it was now, no longer under foreign control, a city finding its place in the world like you were.

You would return from

your dates bright-eyed, cheeks flushed, as if you had learned some great secret, and even if it had nothing to do with pencils

or Reforging, it turned out my heart could writhe with as much envy at nineteen as it had when I was ten.

One night, I confronted you directly.

“What are you keeping from me?” I asked the shadow you cast through the mosquito net.

We were lying in bed.

I knew from your

breathing you were still awake.

Your shadow shifted.

You asked, in a small voice, “Why do you think we bleed pencil hearts?”

“What do you mean?” I had not expected a philosophical question.

“I just mean, we already feel the writer’s words when we Reforge the pencil. So why do we bleed out the story too?”

“Maybe because it’s not ours,” I said.

It was nice, to speak this way with you again.

“Because it doesn’t belong in our body,

as part of us?”

“It seems like things might be easier, safer, if we could only Reforge, and not bleed it back out.”

“But then we wouldn’t be nearly as useful to Mr. Gao,” I said.

“The company would’ve fallen during the war. And we have to

bleed it out, there’s no way around it.”

“There is,” you said eventually.

“You can lose a Reforging.”

You had discovered the secret our mothers had alluded to.

“How?” I asked.

“How can you lose a Reforging?”

“It’s not that you lose it,” you said.

“It’s that the world loses it.”

The words made me shiver, even under my blanket.

“But how does that happen?” I asked.

“It’s—” You stopped.

I watched your unmoving shadow.

Finally, you said, “I can’t say.”

I tore my eyes away from you.

In that moment, I was thrust back to those nagging feelings I had experienced when we first

met, begrudging the elegance of your clothes, your pretty face, but most of all how you knew something that our mothers knew

and only I didn’t, and nobody would say why.

When I was welcomed into that circle, I thought we were equals.

I thought nothing

could separate us after that, not after we had lived through a war, cut our arms over and over, bled out onto the page together.

Now it was as if the war was the reason for our closeness—the only reason you came to Shanghai, the only reason we found anything

in common, both our fathers off fighting, and now that it was over, our natural differences reemerged and the resentment that

came so easily to me blossomed once again.

“Why not?” I asked, not daring to raise my voice for fear of what it might betray.

You took another long pause before replying.

“Because it’s something—it’s something between me and him.”

I flipped over in bed, turning away from you.

I closed my eyes, willed myself to sleep.

You called my name.

I ignored you.

I slept fitfully, waking every few hours, convinced you were no longer in the room, that I was alone.

In the morning, we ate breakfast together while our mothers chatted.

We had a rare day off.

Mother was heading out to buy

supplies in preparation for my father’s return.

And your mother was going to the department store with Mr.

Gao.

They asked

about our plans.

“We are going to a movie,” you said, picking at your congee grain by grain.

“Oh, lovely,” your mother said.

“Yun kept talking about wanting to see that new one, the American one—”

“I’m not going,” I said.

“She’s going with her boy.”

“Oh,” your mother said, looking between us.

“Then what will you do, Yun?”

“Stay home and Reforge, I suppose,” I said.

Before they could cut in with some compromise or attempt at solace, I shoveled

the rest of my breakfast into my mouth and went to the front of the store, intent on drowning my self-pity in pencil work.

When I reached the front, your boy was already there waiting to pick you up, standing outside the locked door.

I let him in.

“I know I’m early,” he said.

“I can wait here if Meng isn’t ready.”

The first thing I noticed about him was the pencil tucked behind his ear.

It was the one I had given him, back when I still

thought it a fun way to tease you.

“How is that pencil treating you?” I asked, an idea slowly forming.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, lifting it from behind his ear.

“Let me see how it’s doing.”

He handed it over without a second thought.

I brought it to the counter where your mother normally worked.

I took out a notebook and made a show of drawing lines of various darkness.

I flicked it a few times, held it up to the light, then stooped below the counter and came back up with your mother’s glasses, as if to examine it more closely.

It had been the easiest thing in the world, while I was out of sight, to swap his pencil for another.

“It’s flawless.” I smiled, handing him the new one.

He tucked it behind his ear.

Somebody like him, who had not grown up in a pencil factory, would never notice the difference.

“I’ll go get Meng for you,” I said.

You left with him shortly afterward.

Mother left too, then Mr.

Gao came for your mother, and finally I was alone.

I wasted

no time Reforging your boy’s pencil.

As his heart melted into my wrist, the overwhelming emotion I experienced was sincerity.

He wrote poems, like the husband

of that woman whose words you had Reforged all those years ago.

Did you have a soft spot for poets?

His poems kept coming.

The early ones slow and elegant, dwelling on the landscape, the rivers, the ocean around Shanghai.

But soon they morphed,

became fast and feverish, focused on bodies and desire.

They brought a heat to my cheeks.

His sincerity multiplied my guilt.

I had forced open a curtain I should not have, witnessed something intimate and special and private.

Yet I could not stop,

not while there was still pencil to Reforge.

It was like I had stuck my hand in a fire.

I couldn’t take it out now.

I forced

myself to feel every lick of the flame.

As soon as I had absorbed it all, I cut my skin and bled out his words.

The cool knife a relief.

By the time I was done, I

was out of breath.

I gathered my thoughts and cleaned up any evidence of my Reforging.

I hesitated to burn the notebook, though.

I opened it and read one of the early poems again.

It was well written.

I read the others, taking my time, even when I knew he was describing you in a way that was never meant for me to see.

Mother came home earlier than expected, and I had to shove the notebook away, no time to burn it, only enough time to make sure it did not go in the pile of Reforged papers Mr.

Gao would come to take away.

You did not return until after dinner.

I found myself observing you more closely, convinced you had changed.

Before you had

hunched, as if to protect yourself.

Now you sat up straight, leaning back comfortably in your chair, letting your phoenix’s

head peek out from your sleeve when our mothers were not looking.

I wondered if you had shown it to your boy, if you told

him about our ability, if he kissed your scars, pressed his lips to the stories within you.

The thought made my own body stir

in an unfamiliar way—different from the point of the knife or the fear of the soldier.

We passed each other in the hallway, when I was returning to our room and you were heading to the workshop to Reforge your

allotment.

“Hi.” I tried to act normal.

You continued walking without acknowledging me.

I was sure you had found the notebook in our room.

Why had I not hidden it

somewhere better than under my pillow?

I should have ripped it to shreds, even if I could not make it to the kiln.

Why had

I Reforged it in the first place, why had I tricked your boy, why could I not stop lying and deceiving?

Your shoulder brushed mine and your hand slipped what could only be a pencil into mine.

We moved past each other, not a single

word exchanged, your pencil hot in my hand.

Back in our room, I trembled, holding your pencil.

I feared what you might say, what you might have figured out about me.

I feared I had done something so unforgivable that it could not be addressed via conversation, only pencil.

To be honest, it was not so different than what I feel now, looking at your pencil.

But unlike now, I did not hesitate.

I held my breath and pushed your pencil into my wrist.

I almost laughed when I was finished, a laugh that was a mixture of relief, guilt, and sorrow.

It was nothing more than the next chapter of our story.

I did not know when you had written it—you had been out all day.

Had you written it while you were with the boy?

Were you thinking of our story even then?

It was a brilliant chapter, filled with our usual espionage and the dash of fun that had become prevalent since the war’s end.

Our characters used their new ability to armor themselves to great effect—a shock to the soldiers who preyed on them because they were young women—and as they worked on their plan to infiltrate some important government official’s house, disguised as housekeepers, they passed each other messages through pencils.

They pretended not to know each other, walked right past each other, and slipped the other a note without a word.

I went to the workshop.

You were bleeding into a notebook, surprised when I sat beside you and grabbed a handful of pencils.

“But you’ve already done yours,” you said.

I pushed a heart into my wrist anyway.

I didn’t apologize to you, not then.

But as we quietly sat, Reforging, I once again felt close to you.

Not in the same way

as before—it would never be the same.

It was the first time I understood that I did not need to know everything about you,

that it would be better, in fact, if I did not, and that not all stories are meant to be shared.

The beauty was in the ones

that we shared willingly and those were to be cherished.

Neither of us knew then that another war was right around the corner, or that we’d soon be separated.

In many ways, that was

the last peaceful moment we spent together.