But the two sisters didn't hesitate at all and started wheeling before us so naturally. They enacted "The Korean People Love Great Leader Chairman Mao," a sort of Loyalty Dance. Their long silk skirts waved around while their mother clapped her small hands, crying, "Chaota! Chaota!" That means "wonderful" in Korean. The flame of the kerosene lamp was flickering with the women's movements. Their shadows were flowing on the floor and the walls as if the whole house was revolving.
When they finished, they bowed to us, and we all applauded. Shunji looked like a young bride in her loose, white dress.
Guzhe and Guhua, Uncle Piao's grandsons, began to set off firecrackers outside. I went out to join them. They dared not light the big ones, so I helped them. With a burning incense stick, I launched the double-bang crackers into the sky one by one. It was snowing lightly. The air smelled of gunpowder as clusters of explosions bloomed among the dim stars.
--From Ocean of Words, a collection of short stories by Ha Jin (Vintage, 1998). This segment is from "Uncle Piao's Birthday Dinners," pp. 28-29.
Amy Brown's mother was the bus driver, and so to get to her birthday party all the girls had to do was stay on the bus. Amy Brown's mother yelled, Sit your asses down. The girls leaned headfirst over the vinyl seats. No one sat. Amy sat. The sun set. The suburbs stopped. Amy Brown's trailer was on the highway. Amy Brown's mother parked the bus in the grass.
--From "Wood Swallows," a short story by Anya Groner, NANO Fiction (May 8, 2015).
In a child's vision marriage is a house. Fine lines bisect each plane, clean bleak, like the edge of a farmhouse: flat land, flashes of power lines, old trucks lopsided in gravel, corn, soy, soy, corn.
--From "The Marriage Letters," a poem by Rachel Morgan, DIAGRAM, 14.1.
When I was a child, my mother worried that I would eventually abandon her for the company of friends. But when I still had not made a friend by the end of the second grade, she worried about my social ineptness. Mom blamed my diffidence on my genes. She believed that I felt self-conscious about being bun jan bun gwai, "half-human, half-ghost." Whatever the cause, she knew that I needed help.
"Little girl," she said in Cantonese. "Is there anyone you'd like to be friends with?"
She had just served Joe and me our dinner—fried spam over rice. I swallowed a juicy bite of spam and thought of Molly, who sat across from me in Mrs. Singer's class. I liked Molly because she was pretty, and because whenever she chatted with the other kids at our table, she also glanced at me. Her eyes always remembered that I was there.
"There's one girl," I said. "But she already has a best friend."
"Joe," Mom said. "Ask your sister what she's mumbling about."
"I can't be best friends with Molly," I replied, "because she already has a best friend, Chloe."
"Joe," Mom said. "Tell your sister that if she doesn't want to end up all alone, she better change her attitude."
--From "One-Legged Crow," a short story by Natalie Rogers, New Orleans Review (June 2015).
I called my grandma in Florida. It was bound to happen, she sighed. He just needs a hobby, she explained. But he's wearing your reading glasses, I said, and he has perfect vision. She suggested I get him a cat. I hung up the phone when I heard my father clicking knitting needles in the living room.
--From "Dad Grandma," a short story by Annie Hartnett, NANO Fiction (May 10, 2015).
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