The Day I Married My Pencil by Huina Zheng, Jasmine milk tea

I was always the good, sensible daughter. I rarely fought with my brother. I took care of him the way my mom expected a mature older sister would. The chicken legs always landed in his bowl. He picked the TV shows. On our way to and from school, I pedalled while he sat on the back of my bike. Though only two years apart, I felt more like his ‘little mom’ than his sister. All that care made him soft, helpless, and endlessly weepy. But one day, for the first time in my nine-year-old life, I rebelled. Because of Little Blue.

Little Blue wasn’t just any mechanical pencil. And she certainly didn’t belong to my brother. Our math teacher had promised her to the top scorer in the speed-calculation contest. When Teacher Li held her up, sunlight hit her just right. Her metallic blue body gleamed. The golden Monkey King on the barrel winked at me. The ribbed grip seemed made for my fingers. 0.7mm lead was my favorite. The moment our eyes met, I knew: we were meant to be.

For a whole week, I hunched over the dinner table, drilling calculations. The stack of scrap paper grew taller each night. In the final contest, I beat second place by one point. One question. But I won her. I held her in my palm and realized my hand was damp with sweat. She was mine. Only mine.

At home, I opened my pencil case and my brother grabbed her. Rough. Shameless.

I seized his collar, wrestled his hand, pried at his fingers. I won. Physically, this time. He screamed so loud my mom came running. She ordered me to give Little Blue to him. I needed to ‘learn to share.’ I had to ‘be a good sister’ and ‘let him have it.’ I looked at his snot-slick grin, my mom’s flaring nostrils and furrowed brow, then at Monkey King’s triumphant smile. I clenched Little Blue and bolted. In a weedy lot filled with dandelions, we held our wedding. A grasshopper officiated. Dandelion fluff floated like confetti. Halfway through the ceremony, we were caught. ‘You need to learn to share,’ my mom said as she took Little Blue away.

What was torn apart that day wasn’t just a pencil and a girl, but a child’s last belief in being good.

About the author

Huina Zheng is a college essay coach and an editor. Her stories appear in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and more. Nominated three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in Guangzhou, China with her family.

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