Page 5

From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

Monica has returned home.

We prepared all her favorite foods: beef noodle soup, stir-fried peapod stems, soy milk, steamed

shrimp, lion’s head meatballs, red braised pork with tofu.

All food that is too rich for us now.

It gave us somewhere to channel

our anxiety.

After all, she is not coming home to good news.

The least we could do was provide her some comfort.

I don’t know if you ended up having children.

Torou hasn’t truly talked to our son, Edward, since he left, which was over

a decade ago now.

Even when Edward returns, the two of them avoid each other, meeting at the dining table, passing cursory

words between them.

Torou hated how Edward’s leaving impacted Monica, only eight years old at the time.

I did too, though

not to the same extent.

After all, you and I grew up largely without our fathers.

You met my father around what must have been 1939.

You had been staying with us for a year by then, and our family had started to adjust to living together.

My father’s return upended that progress.

Your mother was ousted from her room into ours, and my grandmother, with her only son home, claimed even more authority around the house than before.

It was the first time I had seen my father in seven years.

More than half my life had passed before he showed up, a stranger.

He had been part of the war effort in a nearby province when it was captured by the Japanese.

He escaped and snuck back into

Shanghai, where he awaited orders from the underground network.

Of my father’s job, I understood little.

Looking back, I see this was on purpose, for his role had been a dangerous one in

the intelligence division.

He was to gather as much information as he could on Japanese tactics, using whatever means necessary.

In other words, he was a spy.

He hadn’t always been a spy.

First he was a doctor.

He left for the war in the early days, when Japan first marched into China’s

northeast in 1931.

He was part of an aid effort.

I remember him hugging me fiercely, smelling of tobacco and pomade, before

he hopped onto the back of an ambulance that pushed its way through the crowd.

Where my mother was small and timid, my father was tall and loud.

He always wore a Rolex watch, but it was missing when he

arrived.

He had been forced to pawn it on his way back.

He had to sneak past all sorts of Japanese checkpoints, and apparently

had been caught at one, only to bribe his way out when the soldier took an interest in his watch.

He asked me to buy him a

new one.

His good luck charm, he called it.

It was too dangerous for him to leave the house though.

Our area was technically

safe from the laws the Japanese imposed on the rest of the city, but we were not immune from the thriving gang scene.

Gangsters

who had thrown their lot in with the occupiers would have had no qualms crossing the International Settlement border and turning

in enemy soldiers.

“How long will you stay?” I asked.

He remained in Mother’s room all day, the curtains drawn, out of sight of the neighbors.

He was writing a letter at his desk with one of our pencils.

He chewed on the end of it, his teeth biting into the phoenix

carving.

“Not long,” he said, readjusting his new watch.

“Ready for your next mission?”

He handed me the letter folded into one long rectangle.

I ran to the front of the house where Mother sat working the kiln.

She rummaged through her boxes of completed pencils before finding one with the surname Gao printed across it.

She opened the box, lifted the tray inside that held eight custom pencils, then slipped the letter in.

“Mr. Gao lives in the French Concession,” she said.

“Ask him to send his reply in pencil. Do not ask him any other questions.”

Normally, I would have taken my bicycle, which had a basket attached that Mother had made for me.

It was perfect for holding

boxes of pencils.

But my father did not think it proper for girls to ride bicycles.

That, and the city was becoming increasingly

cramped.

More and more, Mother told me to take the tram, sometimes even a rickshaw.

I would stare out the window, vaguely

aware that each morning corpses were being carted off the streets, out of the city.

Mr.

Gao lived on a tree-lined cobblestone street, Rue something or other, in an apartment with beautifully arched windows,

typical of the French Concession.

His house was larger than ours, and not far from the only other landmark I knew in the area,

the former residence of Sun Yat-sen, who overthrew the Qing dynasty two decades earlier.

“Delivery from the Phoenix Pencil Company,” I recited when he opened the door, holding out the box of pencils with both hands.

“Thank you,” Mr.

Gao said.

He was young, wore a high-collared suit with his hair carefully slicked back.

If he had not had

such a serious expression, I would have thought him handsome.

Instead, his severity made me straighten, speak clearly and

formally.

“How is your mother doing?” he asked.

“Very well, thank you for asking.”

“And your grandmother?”

“Very well as well, thank you.”

He pulled out an envelope with his payment.

I pocketed it quickly.

“My mother says you can reply in pencil,” I added, though I did not know what that meant.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Will you wait out here for a minute?”

“Yes, sir.”

He closed the door.

I planned to read whatever response Mr.

Gao sent for my father on the tram ride.

I wondered if Mr.

Gao

was his employer or a colleague.

Back then, I still thought my father a doctor, and so I assumed Mr.

Gao was one, too.

I hoped

the letter would say my father did not have to return to the war, that he could stay in Shanghai with us.

After all, there

were more than enough people in the city who needed medical attention.

But when Mr.

Gao opened the door again, he did not hand me a letter.

He handed me one of our pencils, a long, barely used

one, at that.

“Tell your mother I send her the very best of fortunes,” he said with a bow, then closed the door, leaving me with just a

pencil.

I puzzled over the pencil on the tram and why he would send Mother one of the pencils I had just delivered.

Did it mean he

was rejecting whatever my father had asked of him?

Or was there something more to my mother’s message to reply in pencil?

I flicked it a few times, weighing it in my hand, to see if maybe Mr.

Gao had removed the heart and slipped a letter inside.

But it was a true pencil.

“Mr. Gao sends his very best of fortunes,” I told Mother when I returned home.

“Did he give you anything?” she asked, glancing up from where she was overseeing the heart-hardening process.

I handed over his envelope of money.

She took it and flipped through, not counting the bills, looking for something.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I lied.

“Did you expect something else?”

“A reply to your father’s letter.”

“Mr. Gao didn’t give me a letter.”

“Did he give you a pencil?”

My breath caught.

So she did expect a pencil, and there was a secret inside it!

I gripped the pencil hidden up my sleeve.

Somehow, it would be linked to whatever secret she was keeping from me, the one that you knew, the one that your mother wanted

me to know.

“Why would he give me a pencil?” I asked, heart hammering.

Mother frowned.

“Never mind. Go check Meng’s accounting.”

I ran off as quickly as I could with my secret pencil.

The day after I visited Mr.

Gao, a policeman came in for a pencil fitting.

Our whole family was wary of the police.

Many of

them cooperated with the local gangs or, after the turn of the war, aided the Japanese in their control of the city.

With

my father hidden in the back room, it was an especially dangerous time for a policeman to visit.

Luckily, he was only interested in your mother, who did an awe-inspiring job entertaining him.

I handed her different pencil

hearts, and she slipped them into their temporary casings.

He barely looked at what he wrote, commenting on your mother’s

beauty in Shanghainese.

She either did not understand or pretended not to, continued showing him the pencil hearts until he

finally waved at a few and ordered two sets of eight.

While dialects could be drastically different, the written language

was standardized, and so, after finalizing the purchase, the man took one of the sample pencils and wrote a note to your mother.

I craned my head to see it, but she quickly folded the note away, her cheeks flushed.

He left with a smirk.

“What did he write?” I asked after the door closed.

“He wrote to say all twelve-year-olds should mind their own business,” she replied without missing a beat, then sent me to arrange the samples back on their shelves.

“Are you going to see him again?” I persisted even as I deftly completed my task.

“No, of course not. I am married.”

I huffed.

I had never met your father and could not imagine any man was good enough for your mother.

At least the policeman

seemed rich.

When nearly half an hour passed without another customer, I pulled out the pencil I had received from Mr.

Gao.

“Is that yours?” she asked skeptically.

The pencils that were left for me never looked quite this nice.

I was only allowed

the battered ones that did not pass quality control.

“No,” I said under my breath.

“The person I delivered a set of pencils to yesterday gave it to me. I was supposed to give

it to my parents.”

“And why didn’t you?” she asked, her voice steady, eyes penetrating.

“Because I want to know what everyone is keeping from me,” I said without breaking eye contact.

She had the same eyes as you,

and I had stared you down plenty of times.

“There’s something about this pencil, isn’t there? Some sort of message, but I

can’t figure out how, and Meng won’t tell me—”

“It is not for her to say.”

“Then would you tell me?”

“It is not for me to say either.”

“Why not?” I had viewed her as the one who would enlighten me, the one on my side, and now felt betrayed.

She took the pencil from me and hid it.

She glanced at the rear door before turning back to me.

“Your grandmother does not want your mother to tell you.”

“My grandmother?” I repeated, startled.

It had seemed like a secret between my mother, aunt, and you.

It hurt even more that my grandmother was involved.

“Yes. And your mother cannot go against your grandmother.” She scoffed.

“She can barely go against me. Your grandmother’s

rules are as good as law here. Meng and I stay here because she allows it. I can’t risk that. I’m sorry, Yun. If it were only

your mother’s choice, you would know everything.”

“What will you do with that pencil?” I asked.

“What was the name of the person who gave it to you?”

“Mr. Gao.”

“I will say Mr. Gao stopped by and dropped it off.” She gave another sigh.

“Oh, Yun, I’m sorry. It must be frustrating. But

your grandmother is trying to keep you safe. Here.” She gave me her handkerchief.

“The world is changing in ways we never

expected. Maybe your grandmother will change, too.”

I took the handkerchief and balled it into my fist.

“Can I at least see your arm?” I asked.

She hesitated.

Since the night you had shown me your scars, I had taken to observing our mothers.

I had always believed their

long sleeves a conservative act, the same way they told us to keep our heads down and move quickly down the street, to be

ready to hide should a Japanese soldier pass by—our whole bodies were to be hidden from them.

But our mothers were too perfect

about it.

Even in the damp Shanghai summers, their sleeves remained.

They never so much as rolled them up, no matter how close

to the fire they worked.

Your mother must have pitied me enough to give me this consolation.

She rolled the cuff of her sleeve just once.

The scar

was clear, much more prominent than yours.

It was the head of something larger, something all too familiar.

“A phoenix?” I asked in wonder.

The lines were the same as the ones carved onto our pencil.

I would have recognized that phoenix head anywhere, even if it was a few minimal lines.

I had carved it into our pencils many times.

Your mother pulled down her sleeve and said no more.

A few days later, my father left home again, this time bound for the wartime capital of Chongqing, where Japanese bombs supposedly

fell all the time.

Whatever message the pencil had carried connected him back to the underground network, and he was ferried

away.

It was as if he had never been home at all.

Mother took me to the department store that same day to choose a new qipao.

She even let me look at the fabrics, offered to

pay to have one custom-made.

I knew she was trying to cheer me up, since she hated shopping.

But none of the materials seemed

to shine anymore.

I insisted on going home empty-handed.

As we walked through the rooms of the company to the living quarters, Mother stopped me in her workshop.

She picked one of

the pencil boxes off the shelf and handed it to me.

Inside was a single pencil, a few centimeters long, worn down from intense

writing.

“Your father’s,” she explained.

“From when he was younger.”

“What was he writing?” I asked.

I rarely kept a pencil around long enough to wear it down that much.

“Love letters.”

“To you?”

“Who else?”

“Can I read them?”

“I think you would find them embarrassing.” She laughed.

I loved when she laughed.

“Please. I want to remember him.”

“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Instead of a bundle of aging papers, she handed me the pencil.

I looked up at her.

“One day you’ll find them yourself,” she said softly, then left me with his pencil pulsing in my hand.