Talking to You. Fiction by Jessica Zhu | by Jessica Zhu | Nov, 2023 | Arcturus

B eneath the baking sun, dried grains blanket the stone of the courtyard. Summer means harvest time, and I can see you hunched among the wheat fields, your braids swinging beneath your chin. Just because you’ve gone off to college doesn’t mean you don’t need to help. It wasn’t books that fed your grandparents in the famine. When the sun mercifully sets, you’ll take the cassette player you bought from all of the money you saved last year and sit atop the roof where your little brothers won’t bother you. Even without hearing them, I can tell you’re listening to English tapes from the way you’re mouthing the words, silently, teaching yourself to mimic the sounds so foreign around your tongue. Here, you are still more flame than girl. This is all yours, the wheat fields and corn stalks and apricot trees dripping with sugar. But you’re thinking about the city. Or Hong Kong, with its streets flooded with cabs and vendors hawking fish balls and teenagers playing cantopop in their Walkmans. Or

B eneath the baking sun, dried grains blanket the stone of the courtyard. Summer means harvest time, and I can see you hunched among the wheat fields, your braids swinging beneath your chin. Just because you’ve gone off to college doesn’t mean you don’t need to help. It wasn’t books that fed your grandparents in the famine. When the sun mercifully sets, you’ll take the cassette player you bought from all of the money you saved last year and sit atop the roof where your little brothers won’t bother you. Even without hearing them, I can tell you’re listening to English tapes from the way you’re