2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Grand Prize Winner, College Category
一份蔥油餅。謝謝。
The girl at the stand regards Natalie with a flattened expression. She would be pretty were her eyes not so artificially narrowed, her lips not pressed so thin, Natalie thinks. Or, rather, this is probably what Natalie’s mother would think. Every day, Natalie is coming to realize more and
more that what she has always thought was the little voice in her head is actually the ghost of her mother, who is still very much alive. Her mother, who the man Natalie has been talking to every other week describes as “a mirror of unhealthy patterns.” Natalie thinks it is not fair to reduce the woman who shaped her life into a pane of glass, but her insurance is paying two hundred dollars
an hour for him to drill these platitudes into her brain so she assumes that he knows what he is doing.
Her mother the ghost, because Natalie has mostly kicked her out of the part of her mind that she can control. Her mother, who stays in the dreams and in the inner voice and occasionally on long airplane flights because the in between is where the ghosts live.
Which is strange because in here, the in between does not matter; instead of you are not the same people here say 你不一樣—you not same—and yet her mother the ghost is the loudest she has ever been. Even ghosts do not need to follow the rules when they return home.
There are two ways of saying “home” in Chinese. Natalie’s mother tells her on one of their monthly phone calls post Natalie-leaving-for-college that 家 is the one you come back to, and 家 鄉 is the one you leave behind.
台灣 is my 家鄉, you are my 家, Natalie’s mother says, in that bitter-sad tone of voice that always makes Natalie feel guilty. Soon, I will be your 家鄉 and you will create your own 家. When Natalie asks her mother what Taiwan should be to her, her mother tells her nothing.
Taiwan. You already say it like it does not belong to you. Like the white people say it.
Natalie—Natalie thinks the girl is beautiful. In the way that crunched brown leaves are beautiful against freshly fallen snow; in the way that Samuel Barber’s third Excursion is beautiful. Hair pulled back into a sagging ponytail, pieces slipping out and hanging down and dripping with sweat or oil or maybe both. Black tank top, crinkled around the waist, two stripes of white down each side. Sharp—all snappy voice and square shoulders and arms shaped like the tips of the branches of a willow tree.
加蛋嗎？
好。謝謝。
Her mother the ghost says that Natalie should not have gotten the egg because it is money and more calories and why would you pay more for something you do not want?
稍等一下。馬上好了。
沒問題。謝謝。
Half the table is a griddle and the girl slaps a disk of dough onto the surface and twists her fingers until it detaches from her hand completely and then dips a ladle into a metal bucket and pulls it out dripping strings of gooey yellow. When the egg drops onto the glistening surface it spits oil and water vapor but the girl does not flinch. If anything she opens her eyes wider and blinks slower. Natalie finds this brave.
The girl flips the pancake twice and then stabs at it with two metal spatulas until the edges flake up in broken scales before she presses it on top of the egg and pushes down. Then, she flips the whole thing over and over before folding it into thirds and slipping it into a paper sleeve.
As Natalie watches this her head begins to spin in a way that reminds her not unpleasantly of being drunk. She gives in to the dizzy euphoria and lets the heat sway her a little, reaches out a hand to press against the cold metal surface of the stand. This is a choice I am making, she thinks, as the neon lights blur at the edges, peppered with spots of black. I will stand up straight in a moment. Tongue bulbous in her mouth; the sharp saltiness of blood.
小姐！沒事吧？ The voice comes from behind. Not from the girl.
Breath fluttering to head; she reaches for words, but the heartbeat in her throat stops her from finding the right language.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” The words come out thickly through her lips, yogurt with all the whey strained out of it. She is not sure if her voice is loud enough to carry from the faraway place that her mind has decided to retreat to.
小姐！
“I’m fine,” she says again, aware that the words are wrong, not aware enough to know why. Now is the time, she is thinking to herself. Now is the time to come back. But maybe it is too late; the golden window of rest has passed and now it is all she can do to stay awake. Vaguely, she feels
something wet dribbling down her chin, but the rest of her mouth is so dry she wonders if she is hallucinating.
講英文的。他坑定聽不懂。Another voice, from another direction.
“No,” Natalie tries, but even the protest is in the wrong language. “I understand. I’m fine.” 誰會說英文？The first voice again.
The words are floating there—just close enough—but Natalie cannot reach.
“Hey. You okay?” A hand around her arm; nails so short she can barely see the half-moon strip of white at the tip of every finger.
“Fine,” she whispers. “Just need to…sit down. And water. Maybe.”
One step, and then another, and then another, and then she is sitting. Tin against her lips. “Drink.”
Obediently, Natalie inhales through her mouth and coolness floods into her body, chasing away the fogginess in her vision. She clears her throat and almost chokes.
“You okay?” The figure holding the cup is standing over her. Natalie takes it from the hands and finishes the water.
“Yeah,” she says, blinking away the last of the haze. She finds herself sitting on a red square stool behind the stand. The stool is so short that she is completely hidden by the stovetop-table at the front. The girl is there, arms crossed over her chest, and there are too many things to think about that Natalie can’t figure out what to say next for at least a whole thirty seconds.
“You speak English?” is what she decides on.
“You’re lucky I do,” the girl says. Natalie’s head is clear enough to notice that the English is not perfect; there is a halt between the “you” and the “re” as if the two words haven’t entirely decided whether they want to be contracted, and the “oo” sound in “do” is fuller than she might expect. But it is close enough for Natalie to wonder where the girl has learned to speak in this way.
“You’re fluent,” Natalie says stupidly.
“So are you.” The girl’s mouth is still a straight line but Natalie wonders if she is poking fun at her.
“I guess.” Natalie laughs carefully, just in case.
“Anyways, I have to get back to work. Rest here as long as you need. Call an ambulance if you think you’re going to pass out again.” The girl takes the cup from Natalie’s hands, refills it with water from a large water bottle made of clear blue plastic, and hands it back to her. “It’s 119. The American one, but flipped.”
“I know that,” Natalie says, and she notices in a detached sort of way that there is a slight annoyance bubbling in her stomach. Too American, her mother the ghost is saying. The girl does not need a justification but Natalie finds herself needing to give one anyway. “I was born here, actually.”
“Cool.” The girl turns back to the stove.
“I’m Natalie, by the way. 張美玲.” She hopes that the girl will hear the perfect way Natalie says her own name in the language she is trying to wear as her own. 家. 故鄉. There must be one more beyond that. A home that is far away but means more than nothing.
“Okay.” The girl does not say anything for a long time after that, but Natalie does not stop waiting; she would like to tell herself that it is because she sees something about the girl—that she knows there is something held between the two of them—but the truth is less beautiful. The truth is that Natalie cannot stop waiting because she has never been able to stop hoping. Her friends, the new ones she has made at college, call her Negative Natalie. Like Negative Nancy, which was something that her pretty blue-eyed roommate had to explain to her. Someone who sees things half-empty. Someone who would rather throw away a broken thing than pay to see if it can be fixed.
What Natalie’s roommate does not know is that the “Negative” in Negative Natalie is a shell. That Natalie cannot help but dream and so speaking the opposite into existence is the way she can soften the hurt when the dream melts into dust and then air. This is what her mother taught her, back when her mother was not a ghost. 適可而止. Enough is enough. Soy sauce is salty; we only need a few drops.
Same goes for the dreams that fill your empty head.
“I’m Anna,” the girl says, and then her voice shifts back into Chinese.
不好意思喔！下一位。
***
Natalie knows she should leave but she does not. She stays until the line of people has dissolved into the night and the lit-up pictures and flashing lights of the other stands have started to turn off. She stays, so quietly that when Anna turns off the heat and turns around and sees Natalie she jumps and the spatula in her hand goes flying into the air.
“Why are you still here?”
Natalie is prepared for this line.
“I wanted my scallion pancake. I did pay for one, you know.”
Natalie sees a bit of a smile when Anna rolls her eyes.
“You’re making me fire up the stove again.”
A fact, not a question.
“I can help.”
“You, who can’t even stand in line without fainting? Forget it.”
***
The first bite Natalie’s teeth close on her tongue instead of the pancake and on the second the egg burns the skin off the roof of her mouth but the layers flake apart in her mouth and coat it with the greasy savory scent of green onion and the egg is soft and fluffy and dissolves as she chews and it is the best thing ever so she asks Anna how she made it and Anna sits down cross-legged on the ground next to her and tells her that her family mass-orders them from a factory in Kaohsiung and the way her lips part to laugh at Natalie’s reaction makes Natalie want to kiss her mouth closed but she can’t and so she just lowers herself off the stool and next to Anna and moves closer until she can feel the warmth of her body so strongly that she is unsure if there is still any space between skin.
***
“I was born in the States. Lived there until I was nine. And then, one day, someone somewhere waved a magic wand, my dad lost his job, and we had to move back. He and my mom sell steamed buns at the morning market now. And I help out with my uncle’s stand.”
Anna pauses and her eyes on Natalie are sharp, as if daring her to react.
“That’s really cool. That you’re able to support your family like that.”
“Cool? No. It sucks. I wanted to go to medical school there, you know? But now, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go to college. It’s barely enough, you know. What my parents make.”
“You don’t have to let them define you, though. You can be your own person, and break free of every—”
“No. You think because I have a pretty face, and speak your language that I am something special.”
Natalie watches lips purse, eyelashes flutter. Pretty face is not wrong.
“I know your type, American Girl. You want to save me because I’m beautiful.”
Anna extends her legs, sinew drawing delicate lines in skin. Beautiful, yes, like a magnolia flower; like a Renaissance sculpture, washed bronze by the moonlight.
***
Natalie tells Anna about her mother, the one who is not a ghost in her head, and 家, and 家鄉.
“There is another word,” Anna says. “故鄉. Somewhere far away. Somewhere that you can barely remember, but that you still visit in your dreams. Somewhere you can hope to return to one day.”
***
The night air. Cool but still humid and falling like a sheet against Natalie’s skin. She is thinking about the girl sitting next to her. She is thinking about her mother the ghost. She is thinking about her mother the human.
She is thinking about a 家. Pasty pink polka-dot sheets and a pale green stuffed dinosaur that was a birthday gift from a person she no longer talks to and a shelf of textbooks she really shouldn’t
have bought because they have been opened maybe once on average and a roommate standing in the doorway with arms outstretched screaming welcome home, welcome home, like there will never be a time when this is not the place she returns to.
She is thinking about a 家鄉. Screaming matches and I’m-going-to-quit-piano and I’ll-never-do-math-again and then the fine-don’t-then-and-watch-your-future-disappear and tearing of paper and tears down cheeks and sorry-sorry-sorry-I-shouldn’t-have bounced between two like an echo and dinners in the car driving between tennis lesson and piano practice and hand-painted Mother’s Day cards and origami flowers tucked into an old lychee jelly container and steamed fish, crispy skin peeled back with a gelatinous stretch—fleshy white meat traced with oily patches of brown—and spaghetti and meatballs but with five-spiced beef and I-love-you-my-心肝寶貝 and I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you.
She is thinking about a 故鄉.
Pinky hooked in pinky. 打勾勾. Skin against skin. Heartbeat.
Summers and waves that laugh and tousle sand between toes and spongy steamed bread stained bronze with brown sugar and papery skin cupped against cheek and quietly, quietly 孫-á the voice of a grandmother in a language that is half Chinese and all of 台灣 and faces that shift into each other in a way that is comfortable.
Head tipped onto shoulder.
The weight of a pomelo, of a two-liter bottle of soda. Sweat-stained air.
Heartbeat.
The weight of a bag of soymilk tied with a pink plastic ribbon, of a honeydew melon. In between, and here, and here, and here.
Ba̍ k-tsiu. 眼睛. Eyes finding eyes.
Heartbeat.
媽，我回故鄉了。
Susan Hong (she/her) is a Taiwanese American writer with a penchant for penning stories about people on messy, emotional journeys to discover who they are and where their places are in the world. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where she studies how humans and machines think, practices piano at odd hours, and takes late-night walks along the Charles River. You can find her on Instagram at @sshwrites_.
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