Chinese Spring Rolls

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Last time I saw my grandmother she looked the same as ever. I stayed with her for three days and two nights, and she spoke whilst I listened. She’s going a little bit deaf anyway. 

We made Chinese spring rolls for dinner. She’s ninety-one, but insists on walking around herself and won’t let me touch the stove, even though I had been expected to cook since I was eight years old. And I have no recollection of ever eating Chinese spring rolls before, but she tells me that she made them for me when I was about four and they flew to Australia to visit. 

And so she shows me how to peel the thin skins apart from each other and I’m surprised at the springy texture. And she reaches across the little table and shows me the order of toppings. 

Cilantro, peanut powder, dried seaweed, pork floss and the mixture of fried vegetable filling, hot from the pan.

And her hand shakes a little but she plays it off because you’re meant to shake the toppings around a bit. And her hand has the markings of old age, of wisdom, of events which I could never understand. 

And then she rolls it up for me, and tells me it’ll taste good. I don’t tell her that I don’t like cilantro. 

For a little while, that’s all it is. Us at the dinner table, making and eating spring rolls. And she would speak, while I listened. 

My grandma likes to talk to me. She likes the idea of grandchildren, because she didn’t really have any for a very long time. It wasn’t that me and my brother didn’t exist, but more that we weren’t allowed contact with them. And she tells me that I’ve grown up well even without them. But I think she knows that my parents never really were parents, and when she catches herself talking about them she changes the subject for me. 

My grandma likes to talk to me. But she speaks in Chinese, and I was raised with English as my first language. And there’s a lot of things she says which I can’t understand, and I’m not sure if it’s because I can’t understand her language or if I can’t understand her. 

Sometimes when she speaks, rather than listening to her words, I listen to her voice. The contours of her words, the rhythm of her sentences. Sometimes laced with a grating bitterness, edged with regret. But mostly her voice is soothing, an accent that is foreign yet familiar. 

She asks me things about myself sometimes, and I always answer. But she’s hard of hearing, and I’m soft spoken. She asks about my recent travels and I tell her, as much as I can, about the wonderful things I’ve seen in her country. And she looks happy, as she bites into her spring roll. She’s surprised by my enthusiasm for the history and culture. We have similar taste in food. She recommends me some other cities to visit. She tells me I’m brave for travelling alone, and I don’t tell her that I have no other option. 

My grandma is ninety-one, but after dinner she won’t let me wash the dishes. She tells me to stay sitting and drink some tea. She’s quite into floral teas. I have flowers tattooed across my shoulder. Another thing I do not say.

My grandma lives in an aged care centre in the Fujian Province of China. Six months ago, I saw her for the first time in twenty years. I had bought a bouquet of flowers with me in a poor attempt to bridge our absence from each other. I figured that I could never be prepared for a meeting like this, so showed up with little else. 

As I rode the elevator up to meet her, an elderly couple who had just finished their visit from their family joined me. And I hold the elevator doors open for them, and they tell me I’m lovely and that my grandparents youfuqi, which means they are fortunate to be visited. And I say no, zheshiyinggaide, which means this part of my duty. But what I actually wanted to say was that I was the lucky one, for my grandparents to still be alive. That I was the lucky one, to be able to visit them. That I was the lucky one. But the elevator ride ends before I find my words and I simply bid them farewell.

Last time I saw my grandmother she looked the same as ever. She looked old, and frail, but she spoke from her chest and moved around as much as she sat. We made Chinese spring rolls, and she spoke to me whilst I listened. 

And that was the last time I saw my grandmother.