Year 1970. My name is Meili. I turn fifteen this year and I live with my Grandmother in an old four square wooden house in the southern coast of Pintung, Taiwan. My Grandmother likes to wear her hair in a bun. The beauty on her face is hidden behind her smooth wrinkles. A portrait of her painted during the Golden Age Era still hangs magnificently on the wall in the living room. Every time I look at my Grandma, I try to imagine her dressed in a qipao ornated with elegantly weaved embroidery of delicate plum blossoms that traverse from her neck to the hem of her dress. This is still her favorite wear to this day.
My Grandmother has lived through eighty years of turmoil in China. Sitting on a small wooden stool with my elbows against my knees and both palms spread on each side of my chin, I would always gaze upon Grandma as she sits at her redwood rocking chair, and listen attentively to her describe stories about the world wars, the revolutionaries that overthrew the Ch’ing Dynasty in 1911, and much more. Never in her stories did she mention a man she loved dearly until I uncovered a letter in her elegantly carved scarlet, wooden jewelry box.
Grandmother told me she never learned to read and write; however, she understands many things that sometimes, instincts tell me that she must be literate, but she chooses to conceal a past. I must be right. She once told me lightening is the key of the sky. As the key unlocks the sky, the sound of water droplets will, then, be heard from the windowsill.
This letter was from someone very dear to her. I know. It will not be until years later that I will come to understand that the water droplets released from the sky would allude to her tears, as she had once sat daily next to the window in this very same humble abode waiting for an unfulfilled promise.
Many years have passed. She never tore the letter open. I asked her why she did not open it.
She responded with sullen eyes, “Child, I never attended school as a child. I cannot read. I have told you. Have I not? One day you will understand that putting something painful behind is a way to comfort oneself. Loneliness suits me well now.”
My curiosity grew stronger and stronger whenever her nostalgia strikes her to speak more of the past, though she me seem hypocritically reminiscing the stories that linger in the past. Facing her, I asked Grandmother, “Why not open the letter?”
She responded, “A person who loves but has no courage to face his true feelings, so he chooses to use written words to say his goodbyes…I dear not read this letter or have it read to me.”
"What do you mean?" The next moment Grandma has fallen asleep. Intentionally. She always uses this passive dissuasion to avoid my nonsense interrogation.
I know grandmother could read. I know she has a hidden story behind her.
To be continued…
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