姥姥 | Samantha Lu

She’d starved for weeks before her heart sighed for the last time. The tumors in her intestines meant that she could no longer digest her food properly, and, in her delirium, she’d tried to bribe nurses to buy her just a few, juicy pork dumplings from the restaurant that squatted in the alleyway next to the hospital’s main entrance.

I’ve never been to Beijing in the winter, but I know that it’s a brutal city in the summer, when the heat presses against your neck like a hot, smothering expanse and the sky is white with smog that never seems to dissipate. I can only imagine how my grandmother felt, immobile on the sterile hospital sheets, looking out the window at the pure, blinding snow, pleading for someone to please just get her something to eat.

When I picture her, it’s never of her in that bed, the tumors in her organs wasting her away. My Lao Lao had a permanently bent spine from a car accident ten years past and walked with a shuffle and a hunch. Her hair was short, wavy, and dyed brown-black at one point, although she had abandoned the dye in favor of her naturally gray-white hair by the time I’d gotten to high school. In summer, her favorite outfit to wear out was a collared, light-brown silk dress paired with one of the straw hats from her slowly growing collection of headwear. My mother would add a new style every time she went to visit.

Lao Lao smelled like the pink Maxam face cream that she patted on every morning and night and lived in shrill, perpetual fear of those around her arriving late for anything. Often, she would remind us to leave for an appointment or even a grocery trip a hour before the planned departure time, her voice insistent with a tinge of worry. If we told her we wanted to go sightseeing, she’d urge us out the door before we had even finished breakfast—Quickly, now, before the sun gets too hot!

She’d come over to America several times: once when I was born, once when my sister was born, and then once again quite a few years after that to help my parents raise us. Even though she technically lived on the other side of the world, she felt like a constant presence in my life.

Lao Lao was meticulous in how she used everything, especially electricity; the click of light switches followed her as she shambled steadily through the small apartment. When journaling at the couch in my room, the lights would sometimes go off abruptly before my yelp of surprise alerted her that there was, indeed, a person in the room. She avoided turning on the sputtering overhead air conditioning unit. Instead, when the summer heat got painfully hot, she stuck to lukewarm showers and moving as little as possible, urging us to do the same.

Lao Lao would save the rinds when she sliced cold watermelon for us to eat, peeling off the tough, green-striped skin and magically transforming the remaining crunchy white meat into a tasty veggie sauté. When the pungent, yellow bars of kitchen soap wore down to tiny nubs, she’d smush them onto new bars to ensure that nothing was wasted. I was always surprised by the strength of her arms when she hugged me. When she was cooking, her cleaver could chop through bone. I cannot remember a single instance in my life when she was sick. But sometimes I think about her silences when she was still alive and question if what I have left of her is truly her at all.

In fourth grade, when Lao Lao came to America for the last time, she waited for me at the bus stop every day that I rode the bus home. Usually, she carried my backpack so that I could run ahead, screaming and laughing with my friends. I don’t remember exactly how far up the street I was, or what my friends and I had been doing—Throwing rocks? Picking grass? Floating away in whatever kind of daydreams nine-year-olds weave for themselves to pass the time?—but soon there was another one of the neighborhood kids running up, shrieking something about grandma and fell.

I darted back to her shaky figure on the pitted sidewalk, my lavender backpack heavy on her shoulder like an accusation, bright and unavoidable in the glaring sunlight. The thin, delicate skin on her hands was scraped raw and stinging with specks of blood—which, to my shock, was just as red as mine.

For the rest of the day, I burned with guilt; of course, I knew Lao Lao wasn’t invincible, but some part of me still expected her to be immune to any sort of injury or illness. Though my aunt was the head nurse at a nearby hospital, she was usually busy with work, and so Lao Lao was the all-knowing healer that patched me up whenever I scraped up my knees from falling in the midst of tag. She would scold me for not being careful enough, but, despite her warnings, I always returned from China with scabbed up knees.

I wish that I could remember something that she’d said to me. I know we talked, but I can never quite seem to recall what our conversations consisted of. It didn’t help that my mom, my sister and I spent a lot of time sightseeing during our visits back, and Lao Lao rarely came with us — she couldn’t walk for long periods of time because of Beijing’s ruthless heat and the pain of her own swollen feet.

When the three of us went to visit the Forbidden City, shopping in one of the city’s glossy malls or boating at the Summer Palace with Uncle or Aunt or sometimes both, I couldn’t help but wonder how Lao Lao spent her time at home alone. Did she read? Probably not. Even with her glasses on, she had a hard time seeing newspaper print, so I assumed she had the same difficulty with books. Though she was somewhat able to use the cell phone Uncle had gotten her a few months before, the computer was way out of her element and she had never had much interest in the internet anyway. Drawing? Writing? Painting? The only thing I knew for sure was that she enjoyed watching soaps… but did that ever get boring? Was she ever lonely?

These questions came about partially because of guilt and partially because of my own loneliness. In elementary school, I read books voraciously, preferring fantasy fiction to talking. I had always been shy, but my shyness grew ever more crippling with the onset of puberty.

In middle school, I knew I would never be a popular girl; I didn’t have the looks, much less the ability to strike up a fluttering conversation. If someone I didn’t know tried to talk to me—which was pretty rare in itself—I tended to freeze up, shooting back the first sloppily constructed sentence I could come up with rather than something that could lead to a more profound conversation. In my friend group, I always felt like an accessory rather than a mainstay, and even the few Asians I knew were invariably smarter and more socially adept than I was.

I hated the flatness of my nose compared to the slim, pointed noses of my peers, and I was always deeply conscious of my lack of breasts. The first time I wore a real bra to school in seventh or eighth grade, I spent nearly all of first period terrified about whether or not the perky-nosed blonde girl sitting behind me could see the straps through my shirt and if she knew that the swell of my chest was almost all padding.

China was different—first and foremost, everyone’s noses were the same. It didn’t matter that I never tanned because pale skin is prized in Chinese culture, and the streets were filled with girls who had the same boob size as I did. Most importantly, my preoccupations with my appearance seemed infantile in Lao Lao’s very presence. Why was I so focused on such surface-level things when she had lived through so much?

In the months since my grandmother’s death, I’ve found myself unable to stop thinking about how loneliness changed for her as she aged. How painful was it for my mother, her daughter, to leave her for America? When my mom immigrated, she was only a few years older than I am today—far too young to be plunked down in a country where she could barely speak the language, and with a brand new husband at that. Did Lao Lao lay in bed at night, dreading the sharp, rattling ring of the red telephone in the family room? Had she ever wished things were different?

If my parents hadn’t immigrated, I would have grown up without the “American” differentiation of my Chinese American identity in a collectivist, far more homogenous culture. I certainly wouldn’t have to wrestle with the divided heritages that all ABC (American Born Chinese) kids deal with from a very early age — not quite American enough for Americans, and definitely not Chinese enough for Chinese citizens. We’re forced to determine our own balance.

To sort out the hypotheticals, I tried to write a story. What started out as a timid venture into my family history turned into a variation of how I wished my grandmother and I had known each other. The fictional granddaughter connected with her Lao Lao through the language of cooking, over steamed buns, red chili oil, and pan-fried vegetables. It didn’t matter that she could barely speak Mandarin; they figured out ways to convey what they wanted to. In the end, her Lao Lao gives her a key to the apartment and tells her she’s always welcome there. In real life, I still have trouble accepting that my Lao Lao’s steadfast support is really gone.

***

The summer before my senior year of high school was the first time I ever went to China alone. I’d cut my hair so short that it no longer covered the nape of my neck, which was the most drastic change I’d ever made to my hair. When I walked through the sliding doors that separated the airport terminal from the waiting area, I was acutely aware of how small I was and how easy it would be for me to get lost. The revelation was a sharp contrast to the euphoria I’d ridden since I’d turned seventeen in June, the last of my friends to do so. Did I know how to work one of the electronic subway ticket machines, or even remember the address to my grandmother’s apartment?

I missed my mom. Beijing’s airport was huge, with high ceilings and cluster after cluster of chattering people, and, though I was fluent in Mandarin, I was by no means literate. I breathed an immense sigh of relief when I spotted my uncle’s shiny, bald head moving towards me, a grin on his face and his car keys in one hand.

The ride to Lao Lao’s apartment felt like the first time I’d ever been to China, even though everything carried a shred of familiarity with it. The prospect of a summer spent without my mother as a translator and crutch was somewhat dizzying. The highway was so congested that it sat at a complete standstill—even a wailing ambulance flashing its lights and siren on full blast couldn’t make its way through the crowd. Up above us, pedestrians walked to and fro, sometimes wearing face masks in an attempt to filter out the terrible air quality and sometimes sporting umbrellas to protect against the harsh glare of sunlight. In the backseat of my uncle’s car, sweat-gray against my white T-shirt, PVRIS blasting through my earbuds and my window cracked open, I closed my eyes and thought about crisp Peking duck, fresh bedsheets, and the exhaustive joy of finally being back.

During those five weeks, I tried to absorb everything I could about Beijing, from the way the frosted windows in the kitchen bathed the small room in a luminous glow during mid-afternoons, to how the streets chorused with honks and beeps at the height of rush hour. I journaled a lot, writing about the mosquitoes that stung angrily and how the air smelled from day to day — sometimes heavy with the odor of unidentified food frying, and sometimes dusty with a bite of car exhaust.

Most mornings, Lao Lao would go down to the little yard nestled behind the apartment building and do exercises among the potted flowers and creeping cucumbers; I’d peer down at her from the sunroom at the back of our second story apartment, taking note of how the plants seemed to bob with her as she flowed through Tai Chi poses and slapped her limbs to increase her circulation. Like all grandmothers, she loved to watch me eat, going as far as picking out tasty morsels from her plate to put on mine, such as a shred of tender white meat from a pot of braised chicken drumsticks or a particularly crisp looking stick of cucumber. Even when I was stuffed to the brim with food, she’d insist that I take just one more bite. Most evenings, the four of us—Lao Lao, Uncle, Aunt and I—would play cards, squatting around the tiny family room table and chortling explosively when a play was especially ingenious.

I didn’t tell her, but I loved when we went to the market together. We’d set out, just the two of us, my hand in hers even though I was far too old to worry about getting lost anymore. When we walked, I’d match my pace to hers so she didn’t feel hurried, and also so that I’d have more time to look at everything. Maybe it’s because I grew up in suburbia, but I have loved every single city I’ve come across; despite the dirtiness, the lack of fresh air, and the shortage of space, each of them have a different vibrancy.

Beijing had food carts and vegetable vendors at every bend, along with countless worn storefronts advertising interesting curios I’d never seen before — lamps shaped like poop emojis, stickers of cartoon characters, and little gadgets that lit up as they flew through the air. The market itself was even better; several rectangular, one-room buildings that were equal parts organized and messy, with predetermined booths that each represented a vendor selling a different category of products and loose clusters of vaguely related categories clumped together. One building had a huge array of electronics, and carried everything from hearing aids to toy helicopters that boasted a flight time of fifteen minutes. The very last building housed food, with booths that sold fresh produce and even one that specialized in handmade noodles.

Our trips were usually spent in amicable silence punctuated by some sort of narration from her about our surroundings; You always have to watch where you step here or The cars don’t stop for people or Are you sure you’re not thirsty?

No, I’d tell her, even if I was. I didn’t want her to worry.

***

It’s a year later. My eighteenth birthday flies by without a hitch.

On the last day of our trip, I wake up early in the morning, but not so early that the sun has yet to rise. The city is stirring—there are a few grandmas taking their morning walks, weaving about the buildings that make up the apartment complex—but the cars have yet to take to the streets. When the taxi driver wrestles my purple suitcase into the trunk of his car, I wince, fearful that the bang of suitcase against metal is somehow loud enough to wake up the entire complex.

I go back up to see the apartment one last time, up the sharply squared stairs, into the dim coolness of the stairway, my fingertips light on the white wall that’s been scuffed into a muted, pitted gray. I walk through the door that squeals when I pull it open, across the shiny, patterned, worn wood underfoot, pausing when a wet flup sounds from the huge, clay fishtank that sits on the ground by the TV.

In the sunroom, Spring Onion, the parakeet, chirps brightly as I poke a finger through the bars of his cage. Damp laundry hangs from the drawing line, shirts and pants ghostly figures against the brightening dawn. The blue mosquito netting that hangs over my bed flutters softly, as if beckoning me back to sleep. As quiet as I try to be, my footsteps still seem to resound in the small space. I can hear my mom and aunt talking softly in the kitchen and the sound of water running as they fill up last minute water bottles for the car ride. The finality hits me like a load of bricks.

I think back to the conversation between my uncle, my mom, and Lao Lao. They’d been concealing the results from her for at least a week, whispering between themselves when she was napping or down in the yard doing her exercises. Tumor. Cancer. Test results. Untreatable. Grandma might not be here for much longer and you should spend as much time with her as you can. (I never quite knew how to respond to that last bit. I think, now, it might have been because I hadn’t fully grasped what it meant at the time.)

When she had finally demanded the paper, my uncle dug it up from its hiding place underneath the stack of newspapers in his room and handed it to her, a forced casualness in his voice. She read it with her glasses perched on her nose, her hands steady and firm against her lap. The fan by the TV whirred. Someone flushed the toilet upstairs. I coughed and pretended to browse my phone. I’m not afraid, she’d finally proclaimed. There are treatments for this! And my uncle nodded his assent while my mom stared at the two of them, grief looming in her heart.

Now, Lao Lao hunches on her chair in front of the blank TV, dressed in her white sleep-shirt and a pair of blue boxers that belong to her late husband. As the sun crawls steadily towards its peak, so does the end of our stay. In a minute, she will get up to see us off—when the taxi drives away, she will stand in the kitchen window and wave, her hand fluttering feather-light—but for now, she sits, her face impassive but bordering on sad, her white eyebrows furrowed slightly. I reach to hug her and feel a fragility in her frame that terrifies me. Don’t worry about us, Lao Lao, I say, just as I would over the phone four months later. Rest well, okay? I love you.

It is the last time I see her.

***

It’s January, a few months after her death, right at the midway point of my freshman year of college. The semester is bright with promise and I’m fixated on the idea that if I just get to sleep earlier and study a few more days in advance, I won’t feel stressed. As the days flit by, I know in my bones that my grandiose plan of attack won’t work the way I want it to, but I stick to the lie, letting exhaustion peel me apart and lay me out to dry.

Most days, I don’t think about her, but when I do I’m terrified at how even the few memories I have slip away like nothing. I’ll get the echo of her laughter, an image of the worn, white cap she used to wear when cooking, or the taste of crisp watermelon. When I try to remember her face, I can only ever seem to pull out her individual features—the curve of her nose, the soft wrinkles under her cheeks, or the stoop of her shoulders.

Grief has shaped me in weird ways. When I first got the message from my dad that Lao Lao had finally passed, I wasn’t overwhelmed with sadness—I felt joy at the thought of finally seeing my mom again after two months of Skype calls and Wechat messages. But, the instant I registered that thought, I was immediately filled with remorse. My mom had spent two months in the hospital waiting for her mom to die. There couldn’t possibly be anything good about that. I was ashamed at how normal I felt; what kind of granddaughter didn’t even cry when her grandma died?

For a few days, I didn’t even tell most people that she had passed; I went to class, pounded out assignments, hung out with my friends, and gorged myself on dining hall food. Was I in shock? Or did I truly never love her? I spent more nights absorbed in my inability to react in the “right” way than I did allowing myself to mourn.

A few months later, after I’d stopped trying to squeeze emotions out of myself like an empty tube of toothpaste, I burst into tears in the middle of puzzling out an Econ assignment in my room. When my roommate returned from class a few minutes later, she found me sobbing uncontrollably, unable to draw breaths full enough to form words.

I haven’t been back to Beijing since Lao Lao died. Part of me still thinks that she would still be there if I were to hop on a plane. Another part of me doesn’t even want to think about the possibility of her apartment existing without her; it doesn’t want to see the finality of her absence. My family told me that upon exiting the car during my very first visit to Beijing as a toddler, I gazed up at the towering apartment block and exclaimed, “Is this all Lao Lao’s house? It’s so big!”

Sometimes, I’ll see an old person—they don’t even have to look like her, they just have to be old, with that same delicate, tentative walk—and then think of her hands, only to realize that I’ll never actually see her hands again. I’ll wonder what she would have thought about the boy I love, or about how I’m finally beginning to feel like I have some idea of where I want my life to go. Would she still tell me that I need to go into the medical field if she could see how much the decision not to means to me? If I could go back, I’d try harder to translate my writing. I’d tell her that I think of her every time I think about unconditional love and that she’s changed me irrevocably, even if she has no way of knowing.

I want to say something about pieces and how I’ve always been terrified of being incomplete – some fragmentary chunk of a more important whole, just a mirror girl made out of shards. A stolen identity. An unoriginal copycat. I think what I’m beginning to realize is that no one is ever truly whole and that sometimes all we have left are questions.