想家 (homesickness) — Michelle Wang
At midnight, I sneak downstairs for another bowl of cereal. There is a strip of light under my grandparents’ bedroom door. They’ve been in bed since nine thirty, but they stay up scrolling on Weibo.
“They shouldn’t be looking at their phones in the dark,” my mom has told my dad a hundred times over the last six months. “They’ll go blind.”
On the kitchen counter sits a rinsed takeout container my grandmother saved, and beside it are the seed packets she bought from the supermarket. She asks me, “Which is chive? Which is bell pepper?” The English names are printed in bold, and she scrawls the Chinese characters on the back.
We start our day together. My grandfather reads out the weather.
“Eighteen degrees here,” he tells me as I eat the dumplings my grandmother makes me every morning. “Just ten back home.” At half past seven, I leave on the yellow bus and they bring Stella to the dog park, where she plays with 大黄狗, “Big Yellow Dog.” My grandfather never uses the biodegradable poop bags hanging on Stella’s leash. He prefers the crinkly black ones from the pet waste station.
When they return, my grandmother lugs the plastic tub—the one she bathed me in as a baby—and sets it under the big tree in the backyard. She washes our clothes, talking softly to Stella as she scrubs. My grandfather sits nearby in a chair with ripped mesh and watches videos that his brothers have sent him on Wechat.
The night before their flight back to Chengdu, I tiptoe to the kitchen well after midnight. The light under their door still glows.
In the morning, my grandfather is sitting on the edge of the couch with his phone on speaker. He leans forward and nods every time 祖祖 (great-grandmother) speaks. “Don’t forget to take your afternoon medicine,” he reminds her. “I’ll be there in two days to sort the bottles.”
My grandparents leave twenty minutes after zipping their suitcases.
“Do you want to play one last round of cards?” I ask.
“You need to study,” they tell me. When the car pulls out of the driveway, Stella bursts out of the garage, whining, pacing back and forth in front of the driveway gate, smelling the concrete where their feet have pressed.
The next day, we take Stella to the park. There is an old man at the pet waste station, peeling black bags one after another until he empties the whole roll. Mom opens her mouth, but dad puts a hand on her arm to stop her.
On Monday, during a biology test, I look around the classroom. The person next to me is bouncing his foot. I cannot remember the amount of energy that comes out of the Krebs Cycle.
Afterwards in the nurse’s office, I try to explain why my head hurts and my chest feels tight, but the nurse has a ten o’clock meeting. Before she walks away, she turns to the lady at the front desk. “Homesickness,” she exclaims, pointing at me. “For grandparents! That’s adorable.” Two girls in the lobby turn to stare at me.
Tonight, the strip of light under my grandparents’ door is gone. I can still smell the Sichuan peppercorns in their hallway. Stella trots into their room and sniffs their bed. Through their window, I can see the plastic tub is still leaning against the tree outside, catching leaves.
Michelle Wang (she/her) is a writer from San Diego. Her work has been recognized by Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. When she’s not swamped with homework, she is on the tennis court, learning languages, or reading everything by Jane Austen and Kazuo Ishiguro.