Page 7

From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

I’m losing my memories, Meng.

It isn’t bad yet, but it will only get worse.

I need to write everything down, at least in pencil,

before I forget entirely.

I am not sure I am coherent every time, if you will receive the half-formed thoughts of an addled

mind or a seamless narrative.

Whatever it is, you will get all of it.

I am afraid of what my mind will be like without my memories.

Will it be eternal blankness, a liminal focus on what is in

front of me?

Eventually, I won’t recognize or remember Torou.

One day, maybe even Monica.

A strange ordering, perhaps, but

I am sure you or Monica will be the last person I remember.

You were such a fixture of my childhood.

The old memories, I’ve

read, are the slowest to fade.

And Monica because she is my life.

If I forget her, then it is no longer me remembering.

Merely

the dregs left over, keeping my body moving.

But today is a good day.

My mind feels sharp, Monica is home, and she brought me my favorite sandwich.

The weather is lovely, and there is soup on the stove.

Now that I am a grandmother, I understand my own grandmother more than I ever thought I would.

I’ve never told Monica about

Reforging, or even much about you.

Yet back then, I thought it the height of cruelty that my grandmother would not let me

learn whatever secret there was to the pencils.

I thought she purposefully isolated me.

Though we all lived in the same complex, I barely saw her.

She remained confined to her room, or if the weather was nice,

she ventured into the garden to meditate.

She could not move much farther than that by herself because of the pain in her

feet, part of the last generation of women in our family who had their feet bound, broken, and rebroken since a young age.

If I had been a good granddaughter, I would have spent more time with her in her room.

Especially in those months after my

father left, when she clearly missed him.

But I hated the smell of the smoke and the chance she would ask me to help load

her pipe.

She was also obsessed with reading the news, always looking for hints of wherever my father might be, the danger he could

be in.

You had already been living with us for two years by then.

You were the more considerate one, but she only ever called

me in to read her news.

I was thirteen and impatient to be away from her.

“Another British newspaper office bombed,” she’d say for what felt like the fifth time in a matter of months.

At first, I

thought she was happy about it.

She had no love for the foreigners, complained about how they spent all their time in Shanghai

gambling and throwing parties, brawling in barrooms.

But when the Japanese continued their bombing, targeting American and

French newspaper offices as well, her tone changed.

“They won’t know what is happening to us here,” she said solemnly.

One day we read that a famous Chinese newspaper editor was decapitated.

The Japanese had displayed his head on top of a lamppost

in front of the French Concession’s police station.

She gestured for her bamboo pipe.

I protested, but she insisted, so I

had to go to Mother, who gave me the key to the opium drawer.

I didn’t really know what it was at the time, only that my grandmother and Mother would get into terrible arguments over it—that

apparently my father did not want her smoking it, and when he was around, he regulated her intake, since she could never quit

completely.

During her withdrawal periods, she wailed that it wasn’t her fault, that everything hurt—her back, her mind, her

feet—and it was the fault of those white devils, the British, for forcing the drug into our country even after they had banned

it in their own, before they then carved up our land for their own pleasure and wealth.

The only thing that seemed to work

was this arrangement: Mother keeping track of her usage and me assisting with the task.

My grandmother miraculously cooperated.

If only I could pick and choose which memories to keep!

I’d certainly part with these—rolling the tiniest bit of drug between

my fingers, heating the needle, dropping the smoking pellet into her pipe.

How her whole body would relax, and I’d stash the

drug away, leaving her in temporary bliss as I scrubbed my hands clean and she counted down the days until we could do it

all again.

After my father’s visit, she took a long break from smoking.

A few days after he left, she called me into her room.

She was

sitting upright, her eyes remarkably clear.

“It has come to my attention that you have learned of a sorcery your mother possesses.” That was the word she used: sorcery .

“Yes, Father told me,” I lied.

I had not planned to lie.

I had no idea she would bring up such a topic.

But it seemed like

I spent my whole childhood spewing lies.

She glared at me, long and hard.

I met her gaze.

“Your father told you?” she repeated.

“Yes. He had to use Mother’s power to receive a message so he would know where to go next.” I held my breath, hoping I guessed

right.

“He sent me to deliver the pencils.”

“Hm.” Her eyesight was not good, so I hoped she could not see my trembling hands.

“Did you see your mother do it? Or was it

that frivolous aunt of yours?”

“Mother,” I invented with eyes lowered.

“Horrible, isn’t it?”

“When did you first see her do it?”

“The first time your father needed to receive a message. She didn’t mean for me to see. Something went wrong. Blood everywhere.

Ah-shin was out at the market, your father at work, and only I was here to hobble around and save her from losing all her

blood.”

“What went wrong?”

“How should I know?” she snapped.

“Is that why you don’t want me to learn?” I asked quietly.

“Only partly.” She reached over and smoothed my hair with her skeletal hand.

“I understand the utility. But I have lived longer

than all of you and have seen how the world can use your abilities for its own purposes. Sometimes it is best to forget and

move on. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Grandmother,” I said.

I knew if I was disagreeable, she would want her pipe.

“Good,” she said, and opened her newspaper to drown herself in news of all the battles China was losing.

I have not yet done anything with your pencil.

I am glad to have it though.

I would have been surprised if you gave me anything other than a pencil.

Hurt, even.

After all, if I boarded a plane (though I do believe those days are over for me) and showed up in Shanghai, on the doorstep of wherever it is you live now, would we even be able to understand each other?

We’d probably spend too much time being polite.

You would offer me tea.

I would have a box of chocolates from Boston for you.

We would nibble and sip, and I’d say, “My, how Shanghai has changed!” And you would either go along, and tell me exactly how Shanghai has changed, or you would slam down your teacup and order us to move on to what we really needed to talk about.

But the problem is, there isn’t really anything specific we need to talk about, is there?

Nothing that can be said in an afternoon

visit, or even a yearlong one.

Written words are incredible in this way—they take a whole idea and condense it down with the

help of the writer’s mind.

The writer pulls in only the important parts.

Each word is efficient, each tells the reader something.

No, a trip to see each other would not do us much good now, not when I have so few good days left.

I will get to your pencil, though, I promise.

I would like to explain myself to you first, independent of whatever it is you

have to say to me.

My time is short, and so I must hurry—to when I finally learned the secret of our pencils.

We stopped going to school once we reached middle school.

There didn’t seem to be a point when the world was falling apart—and

not only China, either.

My grandmother reported every gruesome detail she learned of the bombs tearing through England, the

massive German armies invading the Soviet Union.

Fewer people were buying custom pencils, not when they could use their money at the amusement centers instead, or in the Badlands,

the surrounding area where the Japanese made sure the opium usage was high and morale low.

Our mothers began to make batch

pencils almost exclusively, most popular among the students of Shanghai’s elite who continued their schooling at the foreign

missionary schools, and who burned through pencils faster than any other type of customer.

We could do math and speak Mandarin,

Shanghainese, and a smattering of English.

We were about as well-off as one could be for inheriting the Phoenix Pencil Company.

However, business was slow.

As our customers dwindled, for the first time, Mother wandered around the complex with nothing to do.

Your mother practically pounced on her.

“It is time to enjoy yourself,” your mother said with a wicked smile.

She forced herself into Mother’s room and let us watch as she brushed out my mother’s hair and carefully applied lipstick.

It was late in the night—my grandmother was already asleep—which lent the moment an unfamiliar electricity.

“Doesn’t she look beautiful, Yun?” your mother asked, fluffing Mother’s hair.

With a discerning eye, she chose earrings to

match the qipao she had loaned—deep blue with pink orchid embroidery.

Your mother put me in charge of choosing a perfume and

purse.

With her free hand, she held out a cigarette.

You jumped at the chance to light it for her.

Mother sighed, though she went along with it.

By then, it had been two years since my father’s departure, and we rarely heard

from him.

She was not the type to show her worry, but as your mother brushed her hair, she seemed to shed an incredible weight,

leaning into her sister.

“I suppose it is nice to relax a bit.”

They would go out to play mahjong.

Supposedly it helped them form connections, draw more potential customers to the company.

But it was also a source of important information—rumors floating around the city, speculations on which way the war would

turn, horror stories of what was happening outside the International Settlement.

Looking back now, I think it was also an important time for our mothers.

Hours my mother could spend free from her mother-in-law,

enjoying her sister’s company instead.

And for your mother, it was how she integrated herself in her new home, formed the

connections she so missed from the home she had to flee.

A reprieve from a war and a failing economy.

As we became more adept at running each aspect of the company, our mothers ventured out more and more.

They would return late at night, gossiping about the rumors they had collected—which families planned to test their luck in the countryside, which husbands had been seen negotiating with Japanese officials, eager for a better life by supporting their government.

They brought home other news, too: battles won by the Chinese army, the Japanese allying with Nazi Germany.

Our grandmother only condoned their nighttime ritual since the information they brought back was, indeed, valuable.

The Settlement was changing, though it remained preciously unoccupied.

My grandmother read out the headlines from abroad—the

war in Europe was taking a turn, France fell to Germany, and just like that, the French Concession was under new leadership.

The French troops were leaving, followed quickly by the British, shipped off to Australia to train for their war.

Only the

Americans and Japanese remained—the former determined to stay out of it, the latter waiting to strike and accepting our bows

in the meantime.

But the Settlement was more crowded than ever, and not only with Chinese refugees.

There were Jewish ones,

too, fleeing the Nazis.

Shanghai was now the only place in the world providing unconditional refuge for Jews.

We rarely saw

them, since they settled in the Chinese district, but we heard the stories of cramped spaces, starvation, disease.

At the same time many fled to Shanghai, others needed to flee.

One night, you and I were at the front of the store, boxing pencils.

As always, we competed.

Eight to a box, all facing the

same direction.

We had to read off your mother’s notes carefully to ensure each had the proper breakdown.

The composition

of a pencil was indicated by the phoenix logo—the more strokes on the logo, the more graphite the pencil had, the darker it

was.

The darkest pencil had a phoenix with a bushy tail, while the lightest pencil had a minimalist phoenix of a few strokes.

I was behind, and so I was relieved when a knock on the door interrupted our contest.

We both peered out the window.

It was raining.

I could just make out a woman huddled as close to the door as possible.

We

glanced at each other.

“Maybe we should ask your grandmother,” you suggested.

But I was too curious and did not want to waste time going to my grandmother’s room, escorting her out at her slow pace.

I

raised my head higher, trying to get a better look.

“Hui-ling?” the woman called.

We exchanged another glance.

“She knows Mother,” I said.

“Then I guess we should let her in?”

We had received all sorts of warnings about letting people inside, especially men, especially police, especially anyone who

could remotely be Japanese.

But she did not seem to fall under any of these categories, so I opened the door.

We both stepped aside as the woman entered.

She carried a thin coat over her head, shielding her from the rain.

She dropped

her arms with a sigh of relief, taking in the scene around her.

Then she looked at us.

“Is your mother here?”

She was a mousy woman, her thin hair wet and sticking to her cheeks.

Her eyes were sunken, her voice hoarse.

Unlike our mothers,

who wore their qipaos when going out, this woman wore loose clothing and drowned in it.

“Not right now,” I said.

“She won’t be back until late. Who are you?”

“A friend of your mother’s,” she said, fumbling with her purse.

Then she pulled out a wooden box, much like the ones we had

been packing earlier.

“Or rather, my husband is friends with your father.” She swallowed.

“Well, until...” She glanced

between us.

It seemed like she was going to make some sort of comment, maybe about our age, or how we shouldn’t let strangers

in the house, but then she started crying, a curled-up, violent sob.

“Sit down,” you offered, pulling over a chair.

She dropped into it, burying her head in her hands, still sobbing uncontrollably.

You jerked your head toward the back of the house.

I sighed.

You were right.

It was time to get my grandmother.

She was already on her way.

We ran into each other in the courtyard.

“What is that noise? Is somebody here?”

“Apparently she’s the wife of father’s friend,” I said.

I lent her an arm, and we walked to the front of the company, where

you sat awkwardly across from the woman.

She straightened when she saw my grandmother, and stood suddenly, sending her chair teetering before bowing her head a few

times, mumbling all the honorifics.

You passed her another handkerchief.

“Do you...?” the woman began.

“Can you also...?” She held out the box of pencils in front of my grandmother; her shaking

hands made it tremble.

Any sympathy my grandmother had for her evaporated.

She scowled.

“Come back tomorrow if you must,” she barked.

“Can’t you see it is late?”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I must leave Shanghai tonight. It isn’t safe for me or my son here anymore. I need to get these pencils—”

“We can’t help you.”

“Please. They were my husband’s pencils. He wrote poems with them. When we fled here, we lost them all. And now he’s—” Her

throat caught.

“Please. I want to remember him. I want something so our son can remember him.”

I expected my grandmother to be untouched.

But she softened.

Still, she scowled and took her time replying.

“Your husband... was a friend of Kangshen’s?” She said my father’s name softly, gently.

The woman nodded, vigorously at first, before turning timid.

“Same intelligence division. We got word today that my husband was caught. He...” Her words trailed off yet again.

My grandmother

paled.

“What about my father?” I asked.

“Oh,” the woman said.

For the first time, she seemed to really see me.

“I’m sorry, he is... he is probably fine if you haven’t heard anything.”

“I’m sorry,” my grandmother said.

“But we can’t help you. Not unless you wait for Hui-ling to return home. That will not be

for a while.”

“We have to leave. I’ve already wasted too much time coming here.” She gave a trembling sigh.

“I hope you hear from your father

soon.” She picked up her thin coat.

“I can help you,” you said, suddenly and clearly.

We all looked at you.

You shifted, unaccustomed to being the center of attention.

“I know how,” you said quietly.

“Please,” the woman breathed.

She handed you the box.

“I’ll do it in the back,” you murmured, casting my grandmother a wary glance.

And then you took the box of pencils and retreated

to the workshop.

The three of us sat at the storefront.

My grandmother still scowling, lost in thought, perhaps thinking about my father.

The

new woman fidgeted with her coat, brushing away droplets of water, perhaps from the rain, perhaps from her tears.

Meanwhile, I tried to remain calm.

A great distance had formed between us in the moment you volunteered to help.

We had started

getting along, even liking each other, but there would always be this imbalance—you knew something that I didn’t, you had

access to our family’s power, and I did not.

A power that was proving useful now, even critical, to this woman’s life.

I realized

then that even if I could make pencils as well as you, or pack them away just as fast, I would never match you in this, this

secret you all collectively decided to keep from me.

At some point, I gripped the sides of my chair, the wood indenting my skin.

I was barely holding back my tears.

The chair

creaked beneath me.

My grandmother looked over.

“I’m sure your father is fine,” she said.

“I’m not thinking about him,” I snapped.

I knew it was the wrong thing to say, cruel, even, but I said it anyway.

She was the reason I was so disconnected from the rest of you.

“I want to do what Meng can do. What my mother can do.”

I prepared myself for her admonishment, even for a slap.

For her to remind me that there was a whole war going on outside,

where people were dying, where my father might be dying, and all I could think about were pencils.

Instead, she looked away from me, silent.

You returned from the workshop, pale but triumphant.

You handed the woman a notebook.

Your left arm was sloppily bandaged.

“They’re beautiful poems,” you said shyly.

The woman took the notebook with both hands, as if it were a sacred object.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly.

She ran her finger down the page, where the characters lined up in neat columns.

“Oh,

thank you, thank you.”

You smiled.

You rarely smiled.

That night you did, though, as this woman thanked you profusely, as she took your hands in

hers and shook them, practically crying into them.

“He will live on, thanks to you.” She bowed deeply.

She had to leave in a hurry, thanking you even as she bundled up the notebook, even as she closed the door behind her and

left the three of us in the pencil company.

You looked at my grandmother again, that same wary look.

You flinched when she spoke, as if she would kick you out of the

house, right then and there.

She sounded so tired.

“We are going to wait for your mothers to return,” she said.

“We will need to explain what has happened.”

We nodded.

Neither of us wanted to anger her any further than we already had.

We resumed our pencil boxing.

By the time we

were finished, our mothers still had not returned.

At some point, we both dozed off at the counter, graphite on our fingertips.

When we woke, it was to the sound of the door opening, and my grandmother’s gruff “Finally.”

“What is going on?” Mother asked, looking around the room, her hair in its neat updo.

She and your mother seemed out of place,

their Shanghai elegance against a backdrop of graphite and your bandaged arm.

“Is everyone okay?”

Your mother rushed to your side, examining your arm even as you rubbed the sleep from your eyes.

My grandmother gave a spare account of the evening’s events—a desperate woman showed up, asking for Mother, begging us to

take her late husband’s pencils, how we couldn’t get her to leave, how you stepped in and granted her wish, and she finally

went away.

“Meng,” your mother said, slowly.

She had looked radiant when they came through the door, probably high off a mahjong win.

Now she paled.

She was eyeing my grandmother.

“I told you that you couldn’t—”

My grandmother waved a hand in dismissal.

“The woman said her husband was a friend of Kangshen’s,” she said.

Her voice shook when she said my father’s name.

“She said

they worked in the same division. She said her husband was caught and killed.”

Mother frowned.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything for Kangshen,” she said, always the rational one.

“His division is sent all over the

place, mostly on individual assignments.”

“I know.”

Mother’s frown deepened.

I glanced between them.

My grandmother was not angry that Meng had used whatever power she had to

help the woman.

Nor was she worried about my father’s safety.

Then what could she be pressing on about?

She took a deep breath.

We could hear all her subsequent ones too.

She took her time.

Her hands gripped her knees.

Instead

of giving us her normal piercing look, she stared at the floor.

“He is my only son. My only child.” She took a shaking breath.

“And he is out in a war where so many have already fallen. He hasn’t been around for half of his daughter’s life. I want...”

She raised her head.

For once, she was the one looking up at Mother, asking something of her.

“I want her to know him. Your power—it would allow this, correct? Even if... even if he didn’t come back.”

Mother gave a slow, single nod.

“Teach her, then,” my grandmother sighed in defeat.

“Teach her so she can know where she comes from, and what she can do.”

Mother bowed deeply.

“I will,” she promised.

As grandmother started to hobble out of the room, I went to her side, offering my arm.

She held on to it tightly.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

She did not reply until we were in the courtyard.

The bamboo lattice of the fence cast a web of shadows over her face in the

moonlight.

“I can’t protect you forever,” she said.

Her tone once again stern.

“But I also cannot keep you isolated from your family

forever. Be careful and use the power to survive.”

Decades later, I understand why grandmother did not want me to learn and why Mother went along with it.

How much pain the

pencils have brought to the both of us!

But it cannot be denied that you helped that woman and her son.

You helped restore

a story otherwise lost and reconnected a family through it.

That is the moment I always returned to when the world went dark,

and our power really became the only way I survived.

It would be easy to keep all this from Monica.

To not let her see the pain we once caused.

But then I think back to that woman, who desperately wanted a way for her son to connect to his father, so much so that as she fled for her life, she stopped first for his pencils.

I think back to my grandmother, who wanted me to be able to connect to my father.

And of course, I think of myself and Monica, and here I am, with such little memory left, and I’ve come to realize I want us to connect in the way only Reforging can allow.

I want her to know you, and our mothers, and all those who came before her, so she knows she is not alone.

How she might use a pencil or our power in her technology-filled life, I do not know.

But the cruel lessons we learned from the pencils transcend the wood and graphite.

Who is to say she won’t find a bit of pencil within her pixels?