Lan’s knuckles stiffened, her grip on the pencil awkward, clenched tight as if it might slip away. These hands had planted rice in the paddies, scrubbed dishes in restaurant sinks, scoured hotel toilets, yet never once held a pen.
Six-year-old Lilin leaned close, her soft little hand propping up Lan’s coarse finger. “Grandma, your index finger should go here.”
Lan lifted her gaze to her daughter, Mei. Her face gave nothing away, but behind the glasses that had corrected countless student essays, her eyes glimmered. “Remember how to write 人?” Her voice was deliberately stern.
After dinner, the living room turned into a classroom, the dining table their desk. Lilin would start first grade in half a year. “Learn alongside her,” Mei said. “Isn’t your greatest regret never setting foot in a school?”
Lilin’s small feet swung beneath the chair as she clamored for a contest. Lan bent low, the pencil tip inching across the paper: one slant, then another. The character stood like a tiny figure, legs spread apart, just as Mei had explained the first time.
Mei leaned down to compare the words, the corners of her mouth lifting. “They both look good.”
Lan gazed at the trembling character beneath her hand, her heart turning soft. She thought: whether at six or sixty, the first scratch of a pen breaking ignorance rang just as clear.
Huina Zheng is a college essay coach and an editor. Her stories appear in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and more. Nominated thrice for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in Guangzhou, China with her family.
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