Page 36

From the diary of Monica Tsai

December 29, 2018

Oh man, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

It’s not that I’ve given up journaling.

I actually appreciate it more than ever.

But

there was a lot going on, and for the first time I felt like I could handle it without all the constant reflection.

I can hardly believe the events that led to me being here in Shanghai.

I guess it started with my father’s invitation.

Then

grandmother asked me to go, and since my father lost Meng’s contact details, it turned out the only person who knew how to

get in touch with her was, of all people, Louise.

I composed and recomposed a message to Louise.

Sometimes they were heartfelt; others, a few basic lines asking if I could

have Meng’s information.

By then, it was almost Christmas.

And then her pencil arrived.

Grandmother was the one who brought the package inside, passed me the pencil just as I had given

her Meng’s all those months ago.

“How did she get one of these?” I asked when I saw the unmistakable black of the Phoenix Pencil Company.

“Did you... ?”

“Not me,” she said.

Then she looked at me pointedly.

I stared right back at her.

I did not want to miss any of these moments

with her, no matter how she might glare at me.

There were fewer with each passing day.

Her recovery has not been easy, but

I don’t want to write about that.

I want to write about how she looked between me and the pencil with a clear mind and how

she nodded, as if it was something I was always meant to take.

“I’ll Reforge it,” I said, and she nodded approvingly.

When I was alone, I took a breath and melted the heart into my wrist.

I felt way too many things, afterward.

She was going to be in Shanghai.

She was sorry.

I felt it, the truth behind her words.

I felt her confusion, also her determination to lift herself out of it, and I felt strangely proud of her.

I called her that night.

It was a simple call, really.

I was prepared to offer only kindness, yet even so, I was guarded,

at least a little, until her first words melted all of that away.

“Hi,” she said after the first ring.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

“Did you get my pencil?”

“I did. And I Reforged it.”

“Oh. I hope—I hope it made sense. I was kind of a wreck when I wrote it. I’d understand if you still don’t want to—”

“It’s okay,” I said.

Something unclenched in me as I said it.

“I’m going back to school next semester.”

“Really? No EMbrS?”

“I quit EMbrS.” I paused.

“Actually, I kind of ruined EMbrS, maybe just temporarily though. I’m pretty sure my professor hates

me now. But you were right. It took too much data and was sneaky about it and it wanted even more data and I couldn’t do it

anymore.”

“I get it,” she said, that thoughtfulness I loved so much in her returning.

“I did the same thing, didn’t I? Wanted your family’s story, tried to be sneaky about it, destroyed myself in the process.”

“I forgive you, you know,” I said.

And I was pleased by how easy it was to say and how much I meant it.

“Mine was worse, since

the tech amplified it.”

“But you burned it down.” Her voice was a mixture of a sigh and a laugh.

“Look at you, you rebel.”

“A rebel?” I repeated.

A rebel was pretty much the last word anyone would use to describe me.

“Totally!” Her old familiar enthusiasm kicked in.

“Think of it as a new way of looking at yourself. Rebel you is skeptical

of this sort of tech and won’t be drawn to it in the future. Rebel you has a history of taking down this sort of thing. How

cool is that? That’s something to celebrate.”

“Celebrate with me, then.” I said it too fast, before I had thought it through.

It felt right all the same.

“Nothing would make me happier,” she said without missing a beat.

“I’d even drive to come see you.”

“Fly.”

“Well, that’s a bit expensive—”

“To Shanghai. I’ll meet you there.”

I heard her rearrange herself.

Maybe she was on a bed, or a chair, her long legs folded beneath her, her phone switching hands,

pressing against a cooler cheek.

“You’ll be in Shanghai?”

I filled her in on grandmother’s pencil, my father’s offer.

“But until now, until I thought I might see you there, too, I wasn’t really looking forward to it.”

She laughed, a soft one, followed by a sniff.

“That’s incredible.” Her voice was warm with a trembling joy.

“I will see you in Shanghai then.”

Grandfather promised he could handle a week by himself.

The nurse, to our relief, has been great with grandmother, and will stick around for a while longer.

I stocked the fridge and freezer and thoroughly cleaned the entire house.

I let our neighbors know too—it was weird to share this vulnerability, that my elderly grandparents would be alone for a week—and yet they were so kind about it, promised to check in on them, even admitted that they had been looking for a way to help us out after the many times I had cat-sat for them.

Their cat rubbed fondly against my leg.

I said goodbye to my grandparents on the porch.

Grandfather made me take grandmother’s senior card, of course, since she can’t

really take public transportation anymore.

Grandmother smiled blankly when I bent down to hug her.

My first day in Shanghai, my father picked me up from the airport.

He was taller than I remembered, until I realized I also

felt taller here.

Not as wary of standing up straight, not here in this place where I can blend right in.

We took the fancy

maglev train out of the airport.

My father lives in a nice apartment, though it is far from the city center.

He had the day off, and after dropping off my

stuff at his place and calling grandfather to let him know I made it safely, he took me to the site where the Phoenix Pencil

Company once stood.

It’s now a flashy convenience store, fluorescent lighting showing off all the bright packaging.

I bought

a notebook and wasabi-flavored chips I knew grandfather would find amusing.

It turned out my father never knew Meng’s address.

He had met her here, at this convenience store.

She was still very mobile,

he told me, and refused when he offered to buy her a treat from the store—a tea egg, a lunch box, a hot drink.

She drank from

her own thermos.

Something medicinal, he guessed, crinkling his nose as he said it.

They had gone to a small park nearby.

They used to sit there and chat.

It had been a while since he last saw her.

“The older generation has more of a community here than they do in the States,” he said.

“I used to ask to meet up, and half the time she would say she was too busy.”

He took me to his favorite restaurant for dinner, right down the street from his apartment, small and homey.

He ordered lion’s

head meatballs.

They were huge and perfectly round, thick droplets of soy sauce gathered on bok choy.

“I think grandmother’s are better,” I said.

The meatballs were awfully good, just not the same.

“I agree,” my father said, and I wondered if he thought of home more than he let on.

On day two, he had to go into the office.

Louise sent me Meng’s contact information.

she’ll understand you, Louise wrote.

but you probably won’t understand her

Louise was already in Shanghai.

I told her I wanted to see my family before meeting up.

I had to download China-specific apps

in order to message and otherwise get around.

I am not nearly as familiar with the data surveillance here as I am with America’s,

and in a way, it is a relief.

I am sure it is happening, likely on a scale larger than I can imagine.

But I am also leaving

soon, merely a ghost passing through, an ephemeral packet of data.

Finally, I called Meng.

I stammered my way through it, made sure to pronounce grandmother’s name slowly and carefully, speaking loudly in case she

was hard of hearing like grandmother.

Meng’s voice is higher.

It’s fast and clipped, and Louise was completely right—I could hardly understand her rapid Shanghainese.

Even when she slowed down, even when she attempted Mandarin.

“I’m sorry.” I was sweating, wishing I had asked my father to call instead.

It felt like my responsibility.

And I felt connected to her, through her Reforged words.

It was only these real-life words that were hindering us.

She asked a question.

I tried to say again that I’d like to meet her, maybe at the convenience store where the pencil company

used to be.

She repeated the same question, this time faster, repeated it again before I even had the chance to answer.

Then

she hung up.

I wished I had thought to record the call, so I could play it back, slow it down, and see what I had missed.

Maybe I would

have been able to send the audio recording to grandmother and have her translate it for me.

Then my phone vibrated.

我们在铅笔厂旁边的公园见面

Even as I scrambled to copy the text into my translating app, she sent another message.

?? ??

?

I sent back.

I had not even realized the emoji of the clock I sent had a time on it.

Her eyes were sharp.

I prepared my backpack, tucked

grandmother’s pencil into the side pocket, then ran out the door to ensure I would catch the train and make it there by the

emoji time.

She was already at the park near the old pencil company when I arrived, sitting on a bench.

She held a cane in front of her

that appeared less to support her weight than to hold her posture upright.

Her expression was far sterner than grandmother’s.

“Hi,” I said, instinctively in English, running over.

“Monica?”

She said my name carefully, like porcelain on her lips.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” I said in Chinese.

Meng smiled.

Her teeth were small and crooked.

So she did understand me.

She gestured to the open space beside her, and I sat down.

She said something I only partially understood.

It was a question, asking if I did something.

Then she pulled out a pencil.

She pointed first to herself, then to the pencil, then to my wrist.

She spoke her words again.

“Yes,” I said.

I startled her with my excitement, understanding what she was trying to say.

“I Reforged your pencil. Grandmother

asked me to.”

She asked something else.

This time, I could recognize the word for “grandmother.”

I took out grandmother’s pencil and handed it to her.

She looked at it for a long time before taking it.

“She spent a lot of time writing with that,” I said.

“She really wanted to find you again.”

She held the pencil in both hands, cradled in her lap.

“Her memory is fading now.” I had looked up how to explain her disease, practiced saying it.

“And she had surgery on her hip.”

Meng did not say anything, so I kept talking.

“It means she can’t do all the things she used to do, like cook or even walk across the room without someone helping her.

The doctor says that will take a toll on her memory, too, if she can’t do things herself. Ever since she stopped writing,

it’s like she’s fading faster and faster, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” It was rare that I could speak so freely

in Chinese.

Somehow it felt easier with her, knowing her responses would be slow and careful, that there was already a gap

in our communication that would not be made worse if I couldn’t find the right phrase.

“But for now, I am grateful to have

more time with her.”

“You really love her,” she said, the first complete sentence I understood.

I nodded.

“It’s weird,” I said.

“Sometimes she will have these bursts of clarity. But there hasn’t been one in a while. And I wonder—”

I paused.

It was my first time voicing this out loud.

“I wonder if I’ve already had my last conversation with her.”

She said something else, except this time I did not understand a word.

She took out her phone.

It was a huge one.

She spoke

into it then squinted her eyes at the screen.

She showed the words to me.

“Can you send it to me?” I asked sheepishly.

Whatever app she had used translated her Shanghainese into characters on the

screen, though I could barely read them.

Once they were on a message in my phone, I could copy it into my translation app.

I tried to ignore all of the data I knew I was sharing just to be able to communicate with a family member.

Your grandmother tried many times to give people a place they could call home.

I think she finally succeeded with you.