You can step on the egg, miss. 

I placed my foot carefully on the ostrich egg, rocking it back and forth to make sure I wouldn’t fall. An ostrich behind the fence stared at me. I remember apologizing to her for stepping on her baby.

This egg won’t break easily, don’t worry, the farmer said. 

I stood on the egg for a long time, and it didn’t crack, not even a little bit. My guilt receded. The baby ostrich would be fine. 

Popo was holding a purple umbrella against the scorching sun, looking exhausted. 

“You can go back to the car and wait if you want. It’s too hot out here,” my dad told Popo. 

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” she replied, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her wrinkled handkerchief. She waited patiently on the side even though she was burning from the heat. She was just like the egg under my feet—unbreakable.  

***

TianTian. That was the nickname my grandmother called me.  Tian was the last letter of my Chinese name, which means “sweet”, sweet as the syrupy root beer floats. She was the only one allowed to call me by that name, even till today. 

Popo comes to mind every time I go to A&W, the restaurant that makes my favorite root beer floats. Going there was the best and last happy moment I remember having with Popo, and it went like this:

The fragile moonlight was shining against Popo’s temple in the misty, glowing night. It was almost 10 pm as we walked into the A&W across the bridge from my grandfather's tiny flat. TianTian, she said, calling me over and placing a root beer float in front of me. We sat in the corner booth chatting about my life in Shanghai while slurping our root beers down to the very last drop. That moment felt like it would last forever. 

 ***

A dent started to form on the egg. Maybe I was too heavy. 

Step off the egg, miss. 

Please, let me stay a little longer!! You told me this egg would never break, right? 

The mama ostrich opened her mouth, letting out a hiss.

“I’m going to get some shade,” Popo said quietly, smiling and wandering off under the tree. 

***

“TianTian,” Popo whispered, followed by muffled words of the Hokkien dialect. 

“What’s wrong with her voice?” I asked my dad. 

“She's a little sick. The cookie factory she worked in was very polluted. She'll recover soon though, don't worry.”

***

A small crack started to form along the dent. 

The egg won’t break, right? So I can stand here as long as I want. 

The farmer sighed, too exhausted to deal with me. 

Can you check if my Popo is still under that tree? 

Yes, I see her, don’t worry.

*** 

Every time I would visit my grandfather Gonggong’s tiny flat I would see the yellow plaid couch where Popo would sleep in the afternoon. My grandfather would sit in the blue plastic chair next to her, stroking her curly hair gently while listening to the murmured voices of news reporters on the TV. Her face was pale, like the moon we saw that night on the bridge. After she was diagnosed with nose and throat cancer, she slept during the day and was awake at night, always wandering around the flat alone. 

“Is she nocturnal? Like an owl?” I asked my dad. 

“Popo is just adapting to her new medicine. She’s the toughest person I know, don’t worry.

“TianTian,” Popo would whisper in her weak voice, reaching her feeble hands out toward me. I have no memory of how she talked before her condition.

“What are you saying, Popo?” I would ask her in Chinese. She just smiled like always, her dimples creasing on her flushed cheeks. I never learned Hokkien, and she wasn’t able to speak Chinese—not in her current condition. Instead, she’d call out to me over and over again. TianTian, TianTian.

Eventually, she stopped calling out my name, and I stopped looking for her. I felt like we couldn’t understand each other at all. 

***

The crack continued to spine down its side, getting longer and longer. 

Miss, Step off now! Don’t hurt the chick. 

The ostrich started to kick the fence with her huge feet. 

Miss, your grandmother is not under the tree anymore. 

She’s probably in the car waiting for me, don’t worry about it!

***

“Happy birthday,” we murmured. It was my cousin Shannee’s second birthday. She and her sister were playing with their pink Legos, smiling with their adorable crooked teeth. They didn’t know why their laughs were echoing in the miserable, dim-lit room, with everyone’s teardrops splattered across the marble floor. They didn’t know that Popo wasn’t just taking a nap.

My grandmother’s lifeless body was laid in front of me under the glass in her yellow floral dress. She looked calm. Happy, even, with a slight smile on her face. She had a smile on her face even when she was sick or in pain. That’s why I never knew she was suffering, because she always hid it in front of me. My dad said her smile was the widest whenever she saw me. TianTian, she always called, until her voice faded. 

I didn’t cry. I didn’t know why, I just couldn’t— maybe because I barely knew her, maybe because I could never understand her soft whispers. 

I tried to force myself. Your grandmother is gone. Why are you not crying? Did you not love her? Cry, scream—do something, anything. At least do it for your dad. 

Eventually some tears escaped from my eyes, but I felt so guilty because those tears were fake. How could you do this at a funeral? 

My dad trudged beside me in his leather loafers, his arms crossed. I remembered his face so vividly—how he covered his mouth and started to cry softly, how the color drained from his face, leaving his face pale, pale like an eggshell. That was the first time I saw him cry.

I wept at the sight of him.  

My grandfather stood in the corner, his expression blank. It’s strange that I’ve never seen my grandfather cry, even till today. Like my grandmother, I was never aware of the struggles he went through. He isolated himself in his apartment for five years. It was just the same dreary cycle— get coffee alone, work at his mechanic shop, sleep alone, repeat. The money he earned from fixing cars was only used to buy food. I wished I could have been there for him. I wished I could’ve stroked Popo’s hair, could’ve told her that everything was going to be okay.  

My grandfather had already bought the spot next to her grave for himself. 

“Why are you planning the end of your life already?” I asked him, appalled. Now that I’m older, I realized that he just wanted to continue stroking her frizzy hair, sitting in that broken blue chair.

***

I shouldn’t have stepped on that egg.

It’s not your fault, miss. All eggs crack open eventually under this hot weather. It’s just how the eggs are. They’re fragile.

***

The sea of black suits and dresses surrounded the casket as it lowered into the ground. 

“What will happen to her body?” I asked my dad.

“It will disappear.” 

That was frightening to think of— my grandmother, my sweet Popo, fading away with her voice, her strength, with only the smile left on the picture of her gravestone grinning back at us.

***

My family visits the cemetery once every time we travel back to Malaysia. At six in the morning, we would go to the local market to buy fruits, white unscented candles, two bottled A&W root beers and a bouquet of chrysanthemums. Then, we would drive an hour away to Seremban, my dad’s hometown. We light the candles one by one along her stone and place the opened bottle of root beer in front of her picture. My dad would always stay silent, standing behind us while my mom and I set everything up. 

We pray for half an hour and clean up before going back. Her bottle of root beer always 

feels lighter when I pick it up. 

“She drank it,” my mom says, “she knows we’re here.” I opened my other bottle and drank it too, for old times, clinking my bottle against hers. Cheers, I whisper. Sipping on the sweet root beer float, I’d imagine her calling me TianTian one last time. 

***

Popo told me she was standing under that tree. Why did she leave without telling me? 

She waited too long, miss. She couldn’t stand the heat, remember?

You told me that the ostrich egg was not going to break.

The egg wasn’t going to stay like that forever under this weather. That’s just how the world works, doesn’t it?