Page 23

From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

I can’t avoid fulfilling my agreement with Monica much longer.

I didn’t think she’d really hold up her end of the deal and

invite that girl over.

It is time to Reforge your pencil.

I have decided to ask Monica to do it.

The wisdom she can learn

from your words, feeling them in her blood, that is the best way for her to understand the power and danger of our ability.

As much as I want to feel your words run through me again, I must concede that I am not the best receiver for them.

More and more of my days are blank.

Torou tells me I keep asking him when he’s leaving for work even though he has been retired for years—and more troubling, Monica told me I mistook Louise for you the other night, briefly, during mahjong.

I do not remember these things.

I have no idea what it was about Louise that made even an addled me trust her to the point I would mistake her for you, the closest friend I ever had.

There is clearly something about her though.

She drew you in and Monica as well.

I fear she may not be all that she appears.

What do we really know about her?

She is the one Monica loves, or at least is beginning to love.

I don’t know how you feel

about a woman loving another woman, but I will always support Monica.

Torou even finds it preferable.

He is terrified of what

a boy might do to her, though I wonder how he can see it in such simplistic terms after the way I treated him back then.

I did not see or hear from him for months after he stormed out of the pencil company.

The next time I heard of him was from

my father, who called me into his office.

“The Tsai son,” he said without any introduction.

“I thought you two were close.”

“He came to study a few times.” I tried not to think about his warm breath at my neck or his fingers tracing my skin.

“Hm.” My father folded the newspaper.

“I’ve heard he is going to America.”

“Oh?” I could not say anything else.

“To MIT.” He enunciated each of the three letters.

“The only one from Taiwan accepted this year.”

“He must have studied well, then.”

He slammed his newspaper down on the table.

“Your mother said he was interested in you.”

“He might have been.”

“You could have been packing for America by now. Did you scare him away with all your talking?”

“I can’t say we talked much,” I said, a joke with myself, since in those last few days, there really had not been much, our

mouths otherwise occupied.

“There it is again. That quick tongue of yours was charming when you were young, but how will we be able to marry you off talking like that? The Tsai son might have been remarkable for his academics, but also in that he took an interest in you. Now what will we do with you?”

“I can keep working at the pencil company with Mother.”

“Your mother will have you, but don’t think she is pleased about it. She and her sister coddled you and your cousin far too

much while I was away. Neither of you will be able to carry on their family line.”

“You’ve heard from Meng?” I said, my tone sharp.

His eyes darkened.

He returned to his newspaper.

“Last night. She has ruined everything your mother built. Go ask her.”

I was grabbing my shoes, ready to run next door, when I saw Mother at the dining table.

“You haven’t left yet?”

She was normally at the pencil company long before it opened.

Instead, she sat kneeling at the table, writing, her pencil

scratching against paper.

“A letter from your aunt came last night.”

“What did she say? Was there anything from Meng?”

“There was.” She was frowning in concentration as she wrote.

The frown remained even when she stopped to look at me.

To my

horror, there were tears in her eyes.

“Are they—”

“They’re fine,” she assured me quickly, then wiped her eyes with a sleeve.

“It’s just... you can read for yourself.”

She pointed to a piece of paper with neat handwriting on the table.

Underneath it sat another stack of papers, the characters

bleeding in a way I knew meant they had been Reforged.

And next to both, a short pencil.

The letter on top was your mother’s writing.

It was marked from an unfamiliar address and name, a disguise on your mother’s part, since maintaining a Nationalist relationship was reason for persecution.

She wrote about how well the pencil company was doing, how the gangs were finally leaving Shanghai, how it was safer than it had ever been and you were staying active and healthy, though if we had some rice to spare, that would be lovely.

She was including a pencil to prove to her older sister that the quality of the pencils was as high as ever.

I can imagine you glowering behind your mother as she wrote this, watching each motion of her pencil as the characters emerged.

We knew other families who had received letters from China with large portions blacked out.

Your mother’s had none of this.

Her message appeared pristine, in stark contrast to the bleeding characters in the second letter.

The second told us the truth that could not be censored.

Mother burned it after I read it so there would be no proof.

I can

only recount it as I remember it, with this doctor-certified faulty memory of mine.

I remember the first lines— Meng burned down the pencil company.

This may be our last honest communication with you .

Burned it down!

You always had a flair for the dramatic.

Your mother was doing much of the same work Mr.

Gao had tasked her

with during the war, only now for the Communists.

The same work we were doing in Taiwan for the Nationalists.

That you and

I ended up on opposite sides of the war—it did not make sense to me.

How could we be on opposite sides of something as significant

as war, when we ourselves were not opposing at all?

You were the one who decided to rebel.

You made it look like an accident, of course, cutting off their supply of pencil hearts.

More could be made in time, but that was my mother’s specific skill and any Reforging would have to wait.

Your mother’s anger was clear even in the Reforged characters.

She called it a youthful symbolic rebellion—I believe those were her words—for we could still Reforge pencils that were not our own.

It would only hurt us more.

The Communists did not yet know you could Reforge other pencils.

Your mother was sure they would find out soon enough.

She feared they might hear rumors about our Reforging in Taiwan, and how Mother could Reforge any pencil.

She ended the note saying to reply under a pseudonym, all their mail was screened, and any connection to the Nationalists could result in public denouncement, ostracization, even a pencil might not be safe, not when they knew what they could contain.

I looked at Mother.

She was writing furiously.

Her tears were for the company, I realized, the one she had built, nurtured,

and that was suddenly, thanks to you, gone.

I did not feel the same sense of loss she did.

You cut off a means for the Chinese officials to spy on its people, at least temporarily.

I was in awe of you, as I always

have been.

All I had done in my time away was ruin a relationship and dutifully aid the Nationalist cause.

“I saved that pencil for you,” Mother told me.

“That one is Meng’s.”

I wasted no time Reforging it.

You wrote that you and your mother were feuding, that she had changed since we left.

She had

fully embraced Communism and that whenever people were around, she spoke endlessly about your father and his sacrifice for

the Communist party, even though she had hardly talked about him when he was alive.

You said she had come to believe in her

work helping to uncover insurgents.

You did not believe they were really insurgents though.

The Chinese government had flagged

three things as signs: corruption, waste, bureaucracy.

But anybody’s words could be twisted and labeled as these, you argued.

How I wish I could have kept your letter to show Monica.

You framed the problem and the gift of the pencils so clearly.

They

can unearth lost stories.

They can breach privacy.

They allow an intimate connection between the Reforger and the writer.

They can revive something that never wanted to be revived.

It was the kind of thing we never thought about when we were young

and Reforging felt like a superpower.

The note ended with a sentence I will never forget.

Come back for me.

It hurts me to write those words, because we both know that I never did, even though in that moment, I absolutely resolved

to, you must believe me.

I knew that if you wanted me to save you—you who so desperately longed to be rooted in place—and

had resorted to burning down the home we both loved, it meant the situation was dire.

Words concealed within our already concealed

words.

It was as if a fog had lifted.

I could see the situation clearly, practically, and everything told me I needed to leave.

But

the only voice I could hear was Torou’s, saying America was the place to be free.

China would not welcome us back, and Taiwan

would not accept you and your mother.

America was the only place we could all be together.

Should I swallow my pride and beg Torou to take me with him?

I cringed even thinking about it, reaching out to him only because

I knew he was going to America.

Maybe I should have.

Knowing what I know about him now, I am sure he would have taken pity on me.

Torou has always favored

quiet, careful people.

That is why he looks out for Monica in a way he never did with Edward.

He would not have liked me had

we met back in Shanghai when I was more brazen and teasing.

But had I gone begging to him then, our marriage would never have

been equal, we might never have survived those most difficult years when we raised Edward.

And yet how much pain I might have avoided!

That afternoon, I began to plan.

The Nationalists needed help if they were to have any chance of regaining control of the mainland.

Now exiled to Taiwan, their greatest hope was the American military.

We heard the Generalissimo’s wife was camped out in America, working her charm on the American senators, urging them to fund the Nationalists, to not let a nation as large as China be lost to Communism.

I helped Mother decode enough notes to understand their desperation.

It made the Nationalists rule with terror in Taiwan, fearing anyone who might stand against them.

Meanwhile, America, formerly severe in how many citizens were allowed in from Asia, was loosening its rules.

They passed bills

permitting an increase in immigrants in order to help those fleeing Communism.

This could apply to me.

The rule also applied

to the war in Korea—yet another war against Communism that America forced itself into.

The key to my plan was Mr.

Gao.

We rarely saw him except when he came north for business.

He would spend long nights with

my father, reminiscing about Shanghai.

He happened to visit shortly after your pencil arrived.

“A letter from Chi-ling,” my father explained.

He showed Mr.

Gao the letter—not the Reforged one, the one that said everything

was going well.

Mr.

Gao took his time reading it.

“All lies, yes?” he said, folding the letter and handing it back.

“It is good you left her,” my father assured him.

It did not sound like the first time he had said so.

Mr.

Gao had risen quickly

through the ranks since his arrival in Taiwan, which my father attributed to him no longer being distracted by your mother.

“Apparently, she has gone full Communist. You’ll find someone more suitable here.”

Mr.

Gao had changed since Shanghai.

His face, while still serious and severe, was softened a bit by facial hair.

It suited

him.

He turned to me then, his gaze lingering.

I sat up straighter.

He blinked, as if seeing me for the first time—and I knew

then he would give me what I wanted.

I know what you are thinking.

I can see you narrowing your eyes.

You knew how infatuated I was with your mother, the striking image of her on Mr.

Gao’s arm, how elegant they were, as if from another time entirely.

You think I wanted myself in that picture, that I would stoop so low as to seduce the man your mother once loved.

The thought occurred to me, I must admit.

But I did not think I could compare to your mother.

My self-esteem was terribly low at the time.

The only thing I was confident in was my Reforging.

I volunteered to walk Mr.

Gao to the train station when he left to return south.

He offered me his arm, and I took it.

“Work must be difficult for you these days,” I said.

The Nationalists had been all but driven out of China.

“Yes,” he answered.

“We are unfortunately reliant on the Americans.”

“What can we do to get them to support us?”

“Madame Chiang is doing everything she can. It is difficult to know what the Americans are thinking. It is too much for a

young woman like you to worry about.”

I ignored his condescending tone.

“But I do worry about it. I want Mother and Father to retire at home, in Shanghai. I want to see my family again.” I paused,

then took a breath.

“Send me to America.”

“You?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Let me start a pencil company there. Mother can handle everything here. You said it was difficult to know

what the Americans are thinking. I could tell you. I could share the truth with the Americans, stories of people like us who

have lost our homes and the people we love.”

For a long time, he did not reply.

We continued our walk.

His arm was tense.

By the time we arrived, he still had not spoken.

“You have grown so much,” he murmured, more to himself than me.

His gaze lingered on me yet again, and I did not shrink from

it.

“Let me consider it,” he said, finally.

“Thank you.” I spoke calmly, though my heart pounded.

And then he smiled, some of the handsomeness from his Shanghai years returning.

“And if you could go anywhere in America, where would you go?”

I hardly knew the names of any cities or states in America.

“Where is MIT?” I asked.

“The university?”

“Yes.”

“Massachusetts, then.” He fixed the collar of his coat and readjusted his hat.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

When I summoned the courage to tell Mother what I had done, she was not furious as I thought she would be.

She only looked

tired.

“I was hoping to spare you from this life,” she said.

“But maybe it isn’t time. Maybe, if you have a daughter someday, she

can be spared.”

I never had a daughter.

Only Edward, who I never told anything about pencil hearts.

He shone so brightly.

I would not burden

him with Reforging, and he would not have survived it anyway.

But Monica?

Monica, who I want to protect more than anyone in

the world.

Monica, who only learned about Reforging because I was looking for you, because Louise found you, because you told

Louise about Reforging and Monica loves her now.

I wish for her to know only the joy of our power, the moments of connection.

That it is not all pain, knives stabbing in your

wrist.

That it can be pleasure accompanied by wonder.

I want her to Reforge from pleasure.

Is it too much to hope for that?

That the world is safe enough now?

That if she were to write her story, it would be full of love and laughter and none of

the war and betrayal of our own?

Mr.

Gao made me work another year with Mother to prove I could run the business side of things as well as she could.

At that

point, I was better at Reforging than Mother, who was always exhausted.

I took on more pencils to relieve her load.

We cut

our arms over and over, bleeding out the words from each pencil whether they wanted to see paper again or not.

And I wrote to you.

I told you of my plan to go to America, and how once I was there, I would bring you over.

I used a service that promised anonymity, routing through Hong Kong.

I don’t know if you ever received that note.

I wrote that I would bring our mothers, too, and I would send you a message as soon as I reached the land of the free.

In the winter of 1952, Mr.

Gao convinced his higher-ups to send me to America.

I would be under strict orders.

I did not mind.

After three years on this island, I was finally leaving.

“I have found my own way to America. See? I did not need Torou,” I could not help boasting to my father.

I had not seen Torou

before he left.

He departed without saying goodbye, and when I found out, I cried.

Now I was triumphant and, for the first

time since leaving Shanghai, looking forward to the days ahead.

“Who?” my father asked gruffly.

“The Tsai son.”

He snorted.

“I suppose you can be clever at times.”

“Be careful,” Mother said.

“You’ll be alone.”

“They won’t let anything happen to me,” I said, confident in my value.

“Be careful of your mind,” she corrected.

The words chilled.

She was thinner than ever, always bundled up in bed or in a blanket.

“I’ll bring you to America,” I promised, grasping her cold hands.

I was so sure, so stupidly certain, that America would fix all our problems.

Their doctors would cure her.

Their senators

would welcome you.

All I had to do was get there and leave everything else behind.