I don’t know why I want to forget my grandma, although it doesn’t seem easy. She keeps coming into my dreams, cleaning my room as she used to, without saying a word. Yet, I am sure she had told me something while walking around the room.    

    

When I was about five or six, my grandma was still alive. She took me home from school every day. The nursery was located on a bluestone alley in Suicheng. A well was probably nearby since the flagstone pathway was always wet, making the pedestrians’ shoes slippery. At sunset, the soft sunlight flooded the path, and the flagstones were shiny. One day, I plodded on a long, loose flagstone. Ka-tak! As one end went up, the other went down. The hen pecking nearby was startled. It froze for a second and clucked. Then it just moved a few steps away and continued pecking.  

  

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

  

After class that day, I rammed my school bag and coat on her, complaining as I walked away. To make sure she could hear my discontent clearly, I faced her and walked backwards, my butt leading the way. ‘Everyone knows! You all love her chubby face! I heard you say she has a rosy, adorable face, and smiling eyes. You only love my little sister! Everyone knows! You don’t love me anymore, and you always scold me,’ I shouted. In my memory, she didn't answer but just kept walking with short, quick steps. I cried and screamed. I felt miserable and hoped that she would see my despair and come to hug me. I kept on walking backwards. After a while, the more I got upset, the more I could not control myself, and I finally kicked a loose flagstone.   

   

Splash! Before I could stop it, my butt was in a washbowl. My trousers were all wet, chilling my heart too. I cried with no tears. The water in the bowl was ink-black with rainbow-like oily layers floating on top. A man rushed in, and I was carried away. His hands were so dirty. Soon I realized he was repairing bicycles, and the washbowl contained the water for cleaning the chains.    

    

Grandma did not smile during dinner. She was worried that I might catch a cold. But my dad and mum couldn’t stop laughing at me. Even today, after twenty years, they still treat this as a joke. However, the story had not come to an end. I am still jealous of my little sister’s appearance and the way people treat her and love her. I dream the same dream every night. In my dream, my parents took my little sister and brother to get ice pops, and I was left alone by the staircase. I woke up in the middle of the night and wiped my tears. Soon I realized we had grown up. My sister and I lived apart for twenty-four years.   

  

I recall Grandma standing behind me, wiping my face with a warm wet towel. I woke up from the dream, although the feeling still lingered in my mind. A sense that was like the tides ebbing along the beach, leaving behind scattered broken shells and silt. Again, I remembered the way my grandma walked. She was skinny, though not short, and her legs were long and thin. When she wore a pair of long, black silk trousers, only a few inches of the ankle were visible.   

  

I knew I loved my grandma. When I closed my eyes, I could recall the shape of her toes—her lovely, aligned toes. I could also see the thick cocoon and lines on the soles of her feet when she was sleeping in a fetal position in her king-sized bed. Soon I seemed to know more about it. I knew she had raised my grandpa’s two sons, who his second wife brought. Grandma taught them how to read and write. Grandma even travelled all the way to care for their ill mum, who I called the ‘step-grandmother,’ the one who had stolen the heart of my grandma’s husband.    

  

Before I took a leave from school to return to Suicheng, Grandma had passed away. Ash scattered during her funeral. Just over ten friends and relatives came. The wind blew hard. Dad stayed in Kowloon because he was worried about losing his job. My little sister held mum’s hand; my little brother stood behind me. At the funeral, surrounded by light and shadow, my tears dropped without consciousness. At that moment, I was not allowed to get in touch with pain and sorrow but only chaos and fear. Only after I had gotten back home did I realize the meaning of death. Walking along the corridor with flowery tiles, the ray of sunshine shimmering through the upper window suddenly evoked something in my mind—I could no longer hear the voice of how grandma’s chopsticks hit the bowl to call the cats. We had no choices. We could not call her back. I was standing there in sudden grief, shocked and embarrassed by such unexpected emotion. Grandma had gone. Only ashes remained. They are just like the dust floating in a ray of light. I couldn’t see nor grasp.    

   

And now, even though the water splash and clinking sounds ripple through our ancestral home at midnight, I know it won’t be my grandma but my sister washing the dishes. My sister always believes that she is grandma’s favourite, but I am sure she loves me the most.  

   

I believe that God has treated me well, so I have never been so jealous of anyone except my sister. I am extremely jealous of her. I realised that my love for grandma was incomplete when my sister stacked the clean dishes and hung the clothes-drying bamboo rack outside the balcony. Grandma always told my sister with an amiable glance, ‘Your sister studies hard in Hong Kong. It has been a while since she came back to Guangzhou. Don’t let her do any housework.’ Then my sister snatched the finished laundry and folded them by hand. ‘Just let me do it. You don’t know where to put them,’ she said. She placed them as quickly as grandma a few years ago. It grieved me to see the clean clothes disappearing and being placed in the drawer. I shed tears, and they wetted the pillow. I woke up and saw the pre-dawn sky from the gap between the curtains stroked by the morning breeze. In a moment, I had already faced the distance between Sai Ying Pun and Bluestone Alley, the distance between years, and the distance between life and death. I was now standing in the mouth of a bottomless valley, and I knew I was just the faint echo among all the mountains… But I could also feel the warmth of grandma between the pillow and mattress. My mother was once her baby sleeping in her arms. My mother’s every little breath had swept her loneliness. I turned over the wet pillow, stroked the soft bedsheet, and slept again like a child who had never had a nightmare.   

   

Note:  

Grandma has a lovely name, Kai Sin (啟倩). My sister’s nickname is Sin Yi (倩怡), in memory of our grandma. Sin Yi loves her grandma. She learnt kindness and tolerance from grandma. I could not help but envy her, though I was in no position. I had never thought of how I should reciprocate my grandma’s love until she passed away. When I realized that, she had already gone. My sister, though, keeps our grandma alive in many ways.