2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category
Yang Qiuyue said she would buy the oranges herself.
Because her husband had always liked oranges and even if he couldn’t eat them anymore, he might still want to suck on them. But Rachel — that was what her daughter called herself now, after that girl with the hair from the American TV show — could not be relied on to properly choose fruit. She’d find the measliest ones and overpay for them too, thanks to the laowai taint all over her clothes and her tongue. Far better for Qiuyue to deal with the oubasang at the market herself, especially at this late hour, when they were closing and more likely to negotiate.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said.
Her husband did not answer. The last time he spoke was over a week ago, when he complained to the nurse about his IV drip. Lying now in his bed, he fixed her with pleading, marble eyes. But look at how disgusting the ceiling fan was! How could he breathe in here with all that dust? She would have a word with the housekeeper when she came by next week.
Rachel slid past Qiuyue into the room and settled in the chair by her father’s bed.
“Don’t worry, Ma. I’ll take care of him while you’re gone.”
As if she could take care of anyone. Rachel’s hands had not a single callous, burn mark, or even an old scratch from a kitchen knife. Besides childbirth, the most pain her body had ever endured was when she was thirteen and dropped a rice cooker on her big toe. But Qiuyue only nodded before turning away from her husband and daughter. It had been too long since she had gone anywhere besides the hospital or the A.Mart up the block to pick up groceries and adult diapers. How lovely it was, to put on her favorite jacket, fluff her hair, and leave the house for such a lighthearted, indulgent errand.
But she would not be out for too long. When she had taken her husband home from the hospital, the doctor had been very clear that he only had a week left, maybe ten days if he was lucky. Hearing this, her ninety-nine-year-old husband had gripped her hand with strength she did not know he still had, his mouth open like the fish on ice at the market. There was fear in his eyes. Odd, for a former soldier to be so terrified of death. Or had he simply seen too much to be delusional about the totality of it, the utter permanence? Qiuyue was not in the habit of showing her husband tenderness. However, caught off guard by his mortality, she had brushed the corners of his watery eyes with her lips. I’ll be there with you, she had promised. You won’t face it alone.
Qiuyue planted her foot carefully on the street and closed the metal gate behind her. All her friends said she was so lucky to have this apartment. Right off Zhong Xiao Dong Lu and with a parking spot to boot! But luck had nothing to do with it. She spent two years calling the Veterans Office every week until they moved her, her husband, and a one-year-old Rachel out of their old
dingy fifth-floor walk up into this place. Qiuyue knew the office had only given her such a great placement to ensure they would never hear from her again. No doubt every time the phone rang, they drew lots in case she was on the other end. But she didn’t care. Qiuyue would always do what was best for her family.
Of course her husband never thanked her. As long as he could watch baseball on the couch after a hot dinner, one apartment was the same as any other. And now he had chosen to die here, resale value be damned. Had he even stopped to consider her, the widow he was leaving behind
with nothing but expensive hospital bills? Then again, why should he be any different in dying than in living? After all, in their fifty-some years of marriage, when had he ever prioritized her needs over his?
Through the smoke of his cigarette, Ah-Bing watched Yang Taitai’s slow progress down the street. Her movements usually held a kind of quiet confidence, nurtured from years of caring for your neighbors and earning their respect. But today, there was an odd jerkiness to her steps. She held her elbows tightly at her sides, hands fisted at her stomach instead of swinging freely. Ah-Bing snuffed out his cigarette and stood up from his seat on the stoop.
“Hey, Ayi, what are you doing out so late? It’s past nine o’clock. You going to the clubs?”
Qiuyue ignored the arm he offered but allowed him to walk in step with her. She had known Ah-Bing since he was a little boy stealing candy from the corner store. Despite all the drinking and gambling, he was a decent man who never cheated a soul and always had scraps for stray dogs. “Don’t worry about me. What about you? Why are you out here smoking all alone like a vagrant?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Xiao Rou is pregnant! Yeah, tosia, tosia. I’m going to be a father!” He laughed. “Well, smoke isn’t good for her in her condition, you know. So into the cold I go. Look at me, not even a father yet and already sacrificing.”
When she was pregnant with Rachel, Qiuyue developed an intense craving for durian. The first time she brought some home, she sucked the seed long after the flesh was gone, wrapping her tongue around it again and again for the smallest traces of fruit. But when her husband came home from work that day, he flew into a rage. What was she thinking, stinking up the whole place with that awful stench? He was going to smell like durian all week now. Did she not consider that? Every day, he worked himself raw for her and their future child. Was she really going to make his life even harder just because she wanted some fruit? If you can’t control yourself, he said, eat it in the park across the street.
Qiuyue jabbed a shaking finger at Ah-Bing. “You listen to me. What Xiao Rou is doing for you is a big thing. Especially because your child will probably be big-headed like you. So here, go out and buy her some small eats. Maybe choutofu or loiboigao. You take good, good care of her now, you understand?”
“Aiya, Ayi. What kind of a man do you take me for? And why are you giving me money? If you keep acting like this, I’ll never be able to walk with you again. You know I was just kidding around. Every morning, I wake up and rub my wife’s swollen feet and thank the universe that a woman loves me enough to have my children. It’s a burden, I know. But to be loved is to be a burden, isn’t that right? All we can ask for is to find the specific burden our backs were carved to carry.”
Qiuyue didn’t answer. Her own back had been ground down to the bone. Her husband had spent their entire marriage being silent and uncommunicative, except when he was voicing a complaint, and then his mouth was suddenly full of words.
Ah-Bing left her where their street intersected with the main road. He would not have minded walking with her to the market on the other side of Zhong Xiao Dong Lu, but he knew her pride would not permit even this little favor when done so publicly. Before he turned back home, he popped into a Seven-Eleven, scanning the aisles for his wife’s favorite chips.
Oh but how lovely the night was! With a light breeze to break up the heaviness of the day. She would miss this when she too was in the ground. That is, if she was even in the position to miss anything. No, she was sure she would be. To believe otherwise would mean accepting that Abby was not currently missing the breeze, the smell of freshly made jidangao at the night market, or Qiuyue’s whispered bedtime stories about children born from pearls or tigers who transformed into mothers. It was already agony that she and her granddaughter were no longer under the same sky. She would not give up being on the same plane of consciousness as well.
She had not been able to consider the circumstances of Abby’s passing, not at first. But in the last few weeks, as her husband drew closer to his end, Qiuyue’s thoughts wandered to her granddaughter’s. Was the water that lapped at her bare arms and face cold? Did the mud at the bottom of the lake form a cushion for her body? Rachel said that the school told her Abby must have been quite determined. The lake was more like a pond. They said the water was so shallow, she could have just stood up, even with all the rocks in her hoodie.
Qiuyue turned into the labyrinth of the market. Her husband’s ashes would be interred in a cemetery in the mountains. He would be laid to rest near his parents, and when she was gone, Qiuyue would be beside him. Taiwanese flowers would grow above them, and on clear days, all of Taipei would be visible from their resting place. This was where Abby belonged. But Rachel
had insisted on burying her in America, dooming her to a forever with foreign soil in her mouth. Who would know her there, she who would be the first in her line? Who would care for her in those after lands on the wrong side of the sea?
When Rachel first brought up moving to America, Qiuyue said that she was either stupid or insane. Then she forgot about the whole conversation, because her daughter was always making grand declarations and then doing nothing about them. A few months after their first conversation, Rachel came by the house. She asked Qiuyue to watch Abby and disappeared into her childhood room with a suitcase.
Qiuyue hurried after her, holding the toddler in her arms. “Are you going on a trip?” “I’m moving to America, Ma. I told you.”
The grandmother gripped the hem of the child’s pants. “I thought you were kidding.”
Rachel did not answer. She opened the top dresser drawer, pulled out two shirts, and threw them into her suitcase.
“When are you coming back?”
“I’ll visit next summer.”
“Visit? So you’re going to live there? Permanently? You’re going to become an American?”
The bottom drawer opened. Three pairs of pants went into the suitcase. Rachel kicked the drawer closed. “That’s what moving means.”
“I see. You’re Miss America now. Taiwan isn’t good enough for you anymore. It’s all my fault. You always held your chopsticks so high up. The higher you hold your chopsticks, the farther you move from your parents. Everyone knows that. I should’ve forced you to hold them lower. I should’ve forced you to hold them so low, your fingers touch the rice. But I was weak and I let you do what you wanted and now you’re abandoning me in my old age.”
“I’m not abandoning you, Ma! Can you please not make this a bigger deal than it is?” “I don’t understand why you’re going.”
Rachel ignored her. She pulled an old shoebox out from under the bed and began sorting through a pile of old papers and photographs.
“If you really have to go, then why take Abby? Moving is very stressful. You should go first and then send for Abby when you’re settled.”
Her daughter shoved the shoebox back under the bed. She snapped her suitcase closed and lifted the sleeping toddler out of Qiuyue’s arms. Cool air replaced the warm heft of her granddaughter, and she felt weightless, pulled up at her roots.
“If you want to know the truth, I’m going for Abby. You know what it’s like being a kid here. All the cram schools and tutors. The pressure to compete. I don’t want that for my daughter.”
“What are you talking about? You grew up in Taipei and —”
“And I was miserable!”
Rachel’s shout startled them both. Qiuyue stared at her daughter, who flushed and looked down at the ground. It could not be true. Rachel had only said it to wound her. Because how could she have been miserable when Qiuyue had twisted herself like a rag to pour out every drop of love she had for her daughter? How could she say she was miserable when her mother had cut up fruit for her every night so there would never be any danger of her accidentally slicing her perfect skin or shedding a single drop of her precious blood? She had always been so beautiful. Qiuyue knew it from the moment the doctors placed her in her arms. She had kissed every toe and finger twice, marveling at how such a small baby could fill up so much space in her heart. So how could Rachel say she was miserable?
Her daughter’s mouth pinched. Qiuyue knew she was trying not to cry, because she knew everything about her daughter, or so she thought. With one last look at everywhere except her mother, Rachel walked out of the room. It is this last rejection that unspools Qiuyue. She ran after her, shouting:
“She’s going to get shot! Or get addicted to drugs! Or get pregnant and drop out of school! America will be a mistake. Mark my words. You’ll regret it!”
The only response she got was the slamming of the metal gate. Qiuyue walked back into her daughter’s room and looked around at all that Rachel had chosen not to take with her into her new life, finishing with her own reflection in the mirror.
Juice spurted onto her fingers. It washed the back of her hand and trailed down her arm. Qiuyue pulled her fingers out of the orange she accidentally gouged.
“Paiseh,” she said to the woman managing the fruit stand.
Sitting at the register, Chen Yonglei watched Yang Dajie pick among the oranges. She did not know the woman well. There was a daughter who had moved abroad and a husband who was not easy. But beyond these rough outlines, they were strangers who saw each other almost every week. Two months ago, when Yang Dajie had stopped coming, Yonglei assumed that they had moved away. But now, seeing her with her shoulders drawn up to her earlobes like the grasshoppers she used to catch with her sisters in Taichung, Yonglei wondered if some hardship had kept the older woman away.
“Special promo today. Buy five, get two free.”
Qiuyue squinted at Chen Taitai. “What’s this nonsense? You’ve never done a promo before.” “Aiya, stop talking rubbish. Today only. Do you want it or not?”
Qiuyue hesitated. Her elbow unlatched from her body.
“Go on. You look like you’ve had a long week. Do yourself a little good.”
The arm snapped back to her side. Qiuyue swept exactly four oranges into her bag with a sniff and tossed the coins onto the counter. “I see. A special promotion? Well, you can keep your charity. I have everything I need.”
She walked away from the fruit stand, ignoring Chen Taitai’s shouts behind her. The sighing of a market winding down soon gave way to the tired silence of employees locking up their storefronts for the night. In front of the bakery where she used to buy Abby’s birthday cakes, Qiuyue’s phone rang.
Zhang Yulong saw the old woman with the Eslite shopping bag suddenly stop in the middle of the walkway. She reminded him of the river rocks he saw in Hualien, forcing the water to part and flow around them rather than yielding to the tide. She lifted her phone to her ear. Her eyes darted here and there. Then, she swayed. Her phone slid out of her hands and shattered on the ground. He lurched forward, grabbing her before she shattered as well.
“Ay, Ama! Are you alright?”
Qiuyue found herself supported by a college boy. Her right hand was digging into his arm, and her left held onto his shoulder. She staggered to her feet and pushed him away.
“Don’t mind me, Xiaodi. I must have slipped.”
“Are you sure? Do you need me to call someone for you?”
But the old woman was already walking away, her back curling forward as if she wanted to put as much distance between herself and him. He watched her turn into the Yongchun MRT station and descend into the bowels of the city. Only then did he remember her phone, broken and unresponsive on the ground by his feet.
Qiuyue entered the MRT car without a destination in mind. All she had was a mad desire to somehow move fast enough to shed her own self behind. She was sick of her aching body, sick of her life of toil and care and the sudden purposelessness that had caught her unawares. But as soon as the car pulled away from the station, she felt only shame. Rachel was sitting at home
alone with a dead body. That should have been her place. She had broken her promise. If her husband could have spoken, she was sure he would have gone to the grave complaining about her.
When she stepped onto the platform at Taipei Main Station, the clock on the display said 10:28. The text scrolling beneath the time announced that trains going back to Yungchun were suspended for the time being due to maintenance. Qiuyue reached into her pocket to call Rachel, only to dig her fingers into her own flesh.
Stupid! She was so stupid! How could she have been so careless? Not only had she lost her phone, but she had also misplaced the oranges for which she had deserted her husband. What a waste of money. What a waste of a night! She should make herself walk home on these creaky old legs instead of calling a cab, as penance. She wanted to scream. Instead, she counted the people she passed, bodies with breath still in their lungs. She imagined seizing them by the arms, sucking out their life-force like durian, and trapping it in her mouth until she could bring it home. She would spit it into her husband’s mouth. Let him suck on that instead of oranges. But as soon as she emerged from the station, the cool night air blew the fantasy away. She would go home empty-handed. And when she got home, she would wake up to an empty tomorrow.
Her knees shook, but she did not allow herself to stop and rest. On and on she walked, searching for a something that would justify breaking her promise. But wasn’t that the Songshan park up ahead? Yes, there was the curved New Horizon building peeking out over the treetops. And here was that same wooden bridge that led into the park, miraculously unchanged after all these years. Had it only been two summers since Abby had insisted on biking here? Qiuyue had told her it would be much faster and easier to take the MRT. But Abby, blathering about experiencing the city, was insistent. Of course, Qiuyue went with her. She did not trust Abby to know how to operate the UBikes or to not get lost on the way there. In the end, the bike ride had
not been as taxing as she had feared. But this bridge, with its many turns and uneven planks, had worried her. Ever since she fell off her moped five years earlier, her left knee had not felt like her own. Qiuyue called out for Abby, but her granddaughter, at least two bends ahead, did not hear.
“Never mind the bikes,” her husband said. Oh, yes, he had come too! She had nearly forgotten. “We’ll walk it together.”
That warm summer day, sunlight had filtered through the gaps of the trees the way the moonlight did now. The bridge had creaked in the same way. Was that a leaf or a phantom brushing his knuckles against the back of her hand? Qiuyue did not believe in ghosts, but she did believe in echoes. Alone now in this quiet place filled with shadows and memories, she let herself pretend that her granddaughter was just around the corner and her husband of fifty-seven years was still walking beside her within arms reach.
The teahouse in the park was lit up tonight. Lanterns twinkled from the trees in the patio. Inside, a ring of young people whooped while a man in a black suit dipped a woman dressed in white. Qiuyue lingered, watching them kiss.
The morning of her wedding, she dressed herself alone. The girl in the mirror, wearing a dress she had not chosen and sporting a hairstyle she did not like, was a stranger. The bride of a much older man who was also a stranger. An ungainly in-between creature about to transform from Xiaojie to Taitai. When you feel like you can’t breathe, a teacher had once told her, grab on to something and count backwards from ten. Qiuyue balled up the bottom of her dress and exhaled.
She was genuinely shocked when the dress ripped. Her mother did not believe her when she said it was an accident.
“You horrid girl! Do you know how lucky you are to marry a man with such an income? Veterans with engineering degrees aren’t like xiansuji, for sale on every corner. Your father and I worked hard to find you a good match so you can have a good future, and now you do this? In the future, why don’t you save yourself some time and just stab me in the heart.”
Qiuyue bit her lower lip. Crying would only anger her mother more. She pulled the veil in front of her face. When the stranger who took her from her father drew it over her head at the altar, a school friend of Qiuyue’s whispered to her neighbor: Look at how her eyes are shining with joy!
That night, when her new husband sat down next to her on the edge of the bed, he touched the mended rip of her dress with one long finger. She flinched, and he drew his hand back. The silence was as delicate and foreboding as a veil.
He spoke first. “When I was a boy, whenever I was upset, I would sit outside and stare at the moon. Knowing that it was there always made me feel better.”
She did not answer. Would she have to share a bed with him? Would he watch her while she changed?
He stood. “Will you come look at the moon with me, Xiao Yueliang?”
The nickname startled her. Her eyes darted up to his face as she nodded. He carried two dining chairs out onto the balcony and then went back inside to get a jacket for her. They spent the first night of their marriage in a wordless vigil that only ended when they both fell asleep. He did not touch her until two weeks later.
So there had been affection in the beginning, alongside fear and uncertainty. Like the encounter on the bridge, she had almost forgotten. When had it curdled into spite? When did that tall husband with the gentle fingers turn into a worn out salaryman who came home only to eat and sleep?
The Songshan moon tonight was a sliver of light, just like it had been the night Rachel called to say “your granddaughter has killed herself.” She said it in English; she did not know the Chinese word for suicide. After she hung up, Qiuyue stayed in her bed with her legs pulled up to her chest. If she held herself tightly enough, maybe she could bind her granddaughter’s spirit to her. If she did not unclench her body, maybe Abby’s spirit would never be able to slip away from this world.
At three in the morning, her husband came into her bedroom. They had not shared a bed since she moved into Rachel’s old room a few years earlier. When he could not unknot her, he lifted her like a bride and carried her to the back patio of their apartment, where yesterday’s laundry hung like ghosts from the clotheslines. He placed her in the only chair and sat down on the ground.
“We have an eyebrow moon tonight, but look how bright it is.”
That was when she began to cry. Her husband looked to the moon for light in the dark but what light could she have now with both her girls gone? She had given them all the love that she possessed, filled herself with hopes for them like a pot boiling over. And yet it was not enough to keep Rachel from moving to America or Abby from walking into that lake. The two people that meant the most to her in the world both decided to leave, and now she was left with nothing but echoes.
Goodbyes and congratulations rang out from the other side of the teahouse. Inside, the caterers were folding up dirty tablecloths. Above her, leaves stirred. Swaying lanterns sent shadows skipping across the patio. Qiuyue closed her eyes and let the moonlight wash her tears.
The hospital was only a fifteen minute walk from the park. When she got off the elevator on the eighth floor, the clock on the wall read 11:51. Inside her husband’s former room, Liu Jiahuei sat on a bench with her back against the wall. Her husband slept in the bed across from her. The bed Qiuyue’s husband used to occupy was empty.
“Yang Dajie? What are you doing here? Is your husband—”
“Gone.” Qiuyue sat down next to her. “He left a few hours ago.”
The other woman took her hands. “Oh I am sorry.”
They sat in silence, hands clasped.
“I am glad you came by though.” Jiahuei opened her purse and drew out an envelope. “This is for you. It’s from your husband.”
Qiuyue slid a finger beneath the flap. When she saw what was inside, her eyes snapped to her friend. “Liu Jiahuei, don’t lie to me. Where did this come from?”
“Your husband, I swear. About two weeks ago, he asked me to write to his brother in Kaohsiung about some money he was owed. We never heard back, so he said to not mention it to you. This morning, I got this in the mail, but no one at the hospital would give me your address. I was going to go to the police for help tomorrow. But here you are!”
Qiuyue thumbed through the bills. They added up to about half a years’ worth of pension checks.
“He loved you very much. He wanted to make sure you were taken care of.”
The breeze from the cracked window rustled the envelope. Qiuyue felt another echo, this one of a finger tracing a line on her thigh. She looked at the empty bed and saw him again, asking her to take him home.
What was she thinking? Would she really give up all this money if she could somehow go home to him again? Yes, she would. But how had this happened? He had always been a sack of
endless needs she needed to drag through the decades of her life. When had love grown out of care? She remembered what Ah-Bing had said earlier tonight. To be loved is to be a burden. And so it was. We did not inconvenience our acquaintances. We would not bear our hearts to strangers. But we allowed ourselves to ask our families for help and we showed our love when we accepted the burdens they placed on us. When we put the juiciest piece of fish on their plate, when we took English lessons so we could understand our granddaughters, when we bought oranges our husband couldn’t eat just so he could suck the juice, this was how we loved.
The night she tried to hold her granddaughter’s spirit to this earth, she had prayed to the universe for just one more night. One last bedtime story. One last sleep under the same moon. Even then, she knew that one would never be enough. Only forever would be sufficient. But that was the curse of families. We all had to learn to love each other on borrowed time.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Qiuyue stood up to close the door only to find her daughter throwing her arms around her.
“Ma! There you are! Where have you been? I’ve been calling you and looking for you everywhere!”
Rachel had broad shoulders and big ears like her father. She loved to watch baseball. She once ate so many oranges, she vomited. Lit up by hospital fluorescents, Qiuyue curled her fingers into the back of her daughter’s t-shirt and counted her breaths.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Rachel hailed them a cab. The driver did not want to take them. He was going home for the day, and Zhong Xiao Dong Lu wasn’t on the way. But Rachel hoisted Qiuyue into the car and dared him in her loud American voice to kick her elderly mother out. The driver scowled but turned on the meter. As they rode home, Qiuyue studied the woman beside her and realized she did not know the person her daughter had become.
The clock on the screen mounted to the cab’s dashboard read 12:46. Below the time, the meter ticked on. Qiuyue reached for her daughter’s hand and squeezed it as tightly as she could. Their borrowed time had not yet run out.
Esther Fung is a writer based out of Virginia but born in Taipei, Taiwan. When she is not writing, she is working as the Director of Marketing for PangoBooks or sharing book recommendations online at @estherfungreads. She has been featured in BuzzFeed, Oprah Magazine, and once on Lana Condor’s Instagram story.
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