In a summer—or an autumn, or a winter, or a spring, I can’t be sure—many, many years ago, Nǎinǎi was born. She was born to a hardworking village, but hard work was not always rewarded. She was born to a country in turmoil, but the country was not involved—only the politicians were. She grew up alongside change, transition, a metamorphosis involving thousands—millions?—thousands of millions, then, coming and going.

But that Nǎinǎi is a stranger to me.

The Nǎinǎi I know is a short woman with white hair, highlighted by grey, who speaks in a Xuzhou accent that I cannot always understand. She likes to call my dad on Saturday mornings—our mornings, but her nights when she should be sleeping—and she talks, and talks, and talks, for ‘many tens of minutes’ on end, as my mother describes it. My father listens, interrupts with impatient but caring advice, tells her to sleep earlier because she needs it. She does. But she can’t.

Sometimes, though rarely, I pick up the phone when Nǎinǎi calls. She hears my voice, my unfamiliar greeting, and she asks, again, Wei? She asks if it’s my dad and I tell her: No, grandma, it’s me. I say my name, twice, because she asks again to confirm.

She can’t hear very well, and I tend to speak too quietly. I try to raise my voice, though. For her.

She always calls me small. I am not, but I always will be to someone in the world, until I’m truly not.

The next question Nǎinǎi asks me is: When will you visit China again?

I respond: Soon. Sometimes I say this summer. Sometimes I say next year. Sometimes, I tell her, I’ll visit you after graduation.

That last one, I told her twice. I only fulfilled it once.

After she repeats my reply and understands it, she asks how I am. Or maybe it’s before? I cannot remember. But I know this is how I answer: I’m doing well, my parents are well also. And before I can ask how she has been, Nǎinǎi moves on.

(Maybe it’s before, then. Maybe she asks if I am well first, then whether I will visit China—because that’s what it’s actually about, the possibility of my visit. That I really will go.)

We don’t talk for long. Not on the phone. Not ever.

Give your dad the phone, she says next. I comply.

Months, sometimes even years pass before we speak again, but I always know she is there, on the other side of the world, rambling to my father, every single weekend, without fail.

When I think of Nǎinǎi, I think of medicine. Supplements and vitamins from Costco, bottles upon bottles labelled Omega-3 or Omega-6 or something. Sometimes I can’t pronounce their names, most of the time I forget what they are—some, I don’t recognize in the first place.

My father always buys them before he visits China. He always lives in the guest room in Nǎinǎi’s home when he goes, but there is only space for one, so when we visit together, I live with my aunt and uncle—my father’s older brother.

I can’t comment on my father’s relationship with Nǎinǎi, and this isn’t about that. He visits her every year—he didn’t use to, but she’s older now and it’s important to them both. He is the only one of her four children who lives outside their home country—all born before the One Child Policy had ever been considered. But I cannot comment and I cannot judge.

When I was 10, Nǎinǎi bought me a watch. She shouldn’t have, and I was reprimanded by my aunt for wanting it: There were secondhand watches collecting dust somewhere, she said. I should have asked for one of those.

But I am still wearing that watch, so it hasn’t gone to waste, at least.

Not ‘at least.’ At all.

Nǎinǎi’s home was a short coffee table, a couch, a water dispenser, two bedrooms, and a stinky storage of food that’s probably rotting away. It was a tiny bathroom with no shower curtain and a tiny kitchen overlooking the back—not a yard, there is no yard. Boxes line the tops of the cupboards in the bedroom, untouched for—how long? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades?

Nǎinǎi’s home is a bed near the entrance and another bedroom within, still a short coffee table and a couch and a water dispenser, but the storage is gone. Or has moved. I cannot be sure. It’s still a tiny bathroom, but cleaner, and a tiny kitchen overlooking the small backyard with potted plants and chickens. Yes, chickens—the newest additions to the family. The youngest.

(Are they still there?)

I do not see Nǎinǎi often, but when I do—

I am ashamed afterwards, always, without exception.

She asks me what I want to eat.

She asks me if I want to buy any clothes.

She asks me if I’m doing well at school.

She asks me a million questions, one after another, and I respond, I try, I swear.

But I am ashamed.

I am ashamed I can’t always understand. Her accent is strong and her hearing poor, so I ask her to repeat and she asks me what I said and we repeat the cycle again and again, until my father steps in and translates. From the Xuzhou dialect to standard Mandarin, and back again.

I am ashamed of the creature in my heart, gnawing away at my patience, piercing through my rational thought with its claws, its horns, and I am agitated.

I am ashamed I do not even know her birthday. Birth month. Year. I don’t know anything about her.

I am ashamed that sometimes I want to leave so badly, even if it is into the heat of Chinese summers, and with a hasty murmur, Nǎinǎi zàijiàn, out the door I go.

I am ashamed I never said goodbye.

The Nǎinǎi I knew was a short woman with white hair, highlighted by grey, who spoke in a Xuzhou accent that I could not always understand. She used to call my dad on Saturday mornings and she used to talk, and talk, and talk, and my father would listen. She was not an optimist, slept too late for her children’s liking, and sometimes forgot to take her medication, but she was kind and independent and a worrier who cared for us—we were all she had left.

I promised to visit her after I graduated high school, like I had the last time I was there post-graduation, four years prior.

I promised to visit the home that is a bed near the entrance and a bedroom within, a short coffee table, a couch, and a water dispenser. A tiny bathroom, but clean, and a tiny kitchen overlooking the small backyard with potted plants and chickens. 

But there will be no such home, and she will not be the Nǎinǎi I knew, the Nǎinǎi I remember, if I go see her. When I go see her.

Now, she is ash.

Biography

Joy Mao is an English literature student who especially enjoys reading fiction of all genres and forms in both English and Chinese. When not reading or writing, she may often be found experimenting in her sketchbook, playing an instrument, or attempting to bake a cake.