100 words (/223 words): smoke

My grandma is an eighty-year-old Chinese woman. Petite. Small feet. She stands at 5’0’’. Her hair, which is pure white, is cut short (because it is more practical that way). And she mends my socks in her spare time.

On this particular day, she is over at our apartment, mending my socks at the kitchen table. I am reading quietly beside her, and the balcony door is open, letting in summer air.

In the midst of my meditations, I become aware of an increasingly noticeable smell of cigarette smoke. My grandma looks up from her sewing as it seeps into the apartment through the screen door.

Two cigarette butts fall from the above balcony onto ours.

“Goddamn black people,” my grandma says loudly. She wets a thread and continues to sew.

What? I stare at her. What did you say, grandma?

“They must be black,” she says matter-of-factly. And in my shock, and abhorrence at her ignorance, I lash out. I fold my book and march to my room, shut my door, unwilling to have anything further to do with her.

But she made moon-cakes, that night, to make up for it. It was the wrong time of year to be eating moon-cakes, but she hand-made them and delivered them to my room where I was shut up, busy being ashamed of her.

100 words: pitcher

Blending things was part of growing up. At home, in the kitchen, we always blended things. We were constantly blending. My sister would throw in the strawberries as I spooned in the yogurt. She would think there was too much yogurt and so would throw in more strawberries which I then balanced out with more yogurt. It was a constant balancing, canceling, process, by the end of which we’d forget who had started.

When the lid finally went on, we took turns hitting the buttons. We didn’t just blend, we’d mix. Stir! C h o p. Puree. And we poured straight from the blender as if it were a pitcher. That’s how we served: by pitcher-blender. And when we’d had enough for the time being, we’d put the blender with its blended contents into the refrigerator and unplug the base that had no function while its other half was playing pitcher.

100 words: public bus

I was three quarters short, and everyone averted his eyes. I stood at the head of the bus, prodding, shaking my coin purse as if I’d missed something, fully aware I hadn’t, fully aware I was holding everyone up just by standing there, prodding, shaking my coin purse. People have meetings to get to, I told myself. I flipped over a nickel. Work, jobs, obligations. I turned a dime and shook my head. We are on a schedule here.

One quarter would be different. One quarter and someone would get up, say “Here, miss,” sit down. I snapped the clasp of my coin purse shut – smiled politely. “I think I need to make a trip to the bank”– looked around at the people looking out of windows, checking watches, feigning sleep. I smiled at them, politely, and stepped off the bus.

100 words: stethoscope

Every house has a doctor, in children’s games. When characters were picked, mom and dad were always picked last. Baby was fought over sometimes, but the most sought-after role was that of doctor. The doctor has a little bag of instruments that he gets to carry around. In it, among bandages and thermometers, eye-patches and cough drops, was the much-respected plastic stethoscope. When the doctor pulled the stethoscope out of his bag, baby laid quietly on the table to be examined. The doctor would then listen to baby’s bones, thinking he could hear the creaks in them. He would place the end of the stethoscope on baby’s head and listen intently, and announce that baby had a sore throat, and prescribe two cough drops for mom and dad to give to baby when they got home.