Quail

The Mandarin in Aunty Li’s new American neighborhood came in a disordered mélange of dialects. Though she’d learned to find comfort in it, she hadn’t heard a quick tongue carry her childhood town’s flavor of northern China in a while. So the little girl in the Chinese supermarket spoke home, and Aunty Li turned, and for a moment she was back in the wide-open markets of Shenyang, sweet-sour pear juice dribbling down her wrist, pink pleated skirt swaying around her ankles. Stepping over upturned crates of summer fruit. The country’s wealth spilled onto its sidewalks. Every street had its own voice, and this was the language of the boy in the linen button-down who brought her pears every autumn weekend, of her late mother who had sliced and arranged them in bowls. 

At the suddenness of Aunty Li’s pivot, the little girl looked up, phone separating from her ear, her mouth a little red o. She had on leggings and a sports bra. The little girl was not so little after all. In Aunty Li’s ear her voice had sounded so young, but she must’ve already reached her late teens, early twenties. 

Had Aunty Li been expecting to see someone? The girl with the phone was too young to be her daughter, studying away on the other coast. She had said tenth birthday, roast quail. For whom, a little sister? A little cousin? Aunty Li cleared her throat. The girl smiled neutrally at her, wedged her phone back into the crook of her neck, and pushed her metal cart along under the high ceilings, into the neat aisles.  

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Vicki Xu (@vicku___) grew up in California and currently studies at Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in The Harvard Advocate. She is a finalist for the 2022 Passages North Waasnode Short Fiction Prize.