Allison Zhang

Winner – Editors’ Spotlight Award in Prose

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Grass Mirror

When I was eight, my uncle told us there was a mirror buried behind his house—out past the trellis of beans, beyond the tamarind tree that oozed sap like sweat. He said it had been there longer than the soil remembered, and that if you spoke something untrue while standing near it, the roots would tighten, and the earth would shift to catch your breath.

He told us this while peeling an orange in one long, unbroken strip. Juice gathered at his knuckles. We watched him drag the skin through his teeth.

My cousin said he was making it up. That grown-ups invented fables to keep children from digging holes, stealing green fruit, or stepping into the irrigation trenches. But I wanted it to be real.

That summer, we played a game: One of us would say something not quite true, and the other would watch the ground.

My cousin was bolder. She claimed she’d flown in a dream and not fallen once. That her mother had forgotten her name. That the neighbor’s dog spoke Cantonese if you listened closely. But nothing happened. The weeds grew, the ground held, and we kicked clods of clay across the path.

Until one day, when the clouds lowered and the air turned thick, I said something I didn’t mean to say.

I didn’t take it.

I didn’t leave the latch undone.

I didn’t wish anything bad.

I spoke the words like matchsticks—quick, harmless. But as soon as I finished, something shifted. Not around me. Beneath.

The field hushed. The wind paused. A chill crept through my knees where they pressed into the loam.

My cousin’s face changed. She stepped back, then bolted—barefoot, fast enough to leave her shadow behind.

I stayed. I wasn’t sure why.

The dirt thinned, just for a second, like something parted aside. And there it was—something silver, warped and veined, lying flat beneath the surface. It reflected a girl with my hair, my shape, but not my eyes. Hers were still. Familiar in a way that unsettled me.

Later, at the house, Uncle rinsed our hands in the chipped basin behind the shed. The water was warm and tinged with rust and pomelo peel. He didn’t ask what we’d done. Just held my wrists longer than usual, his fingers pressing faint circles into the skin, as if measuring something beneath it.

That night, I lay on a foam mat in the guest room, watching shadows on the ceiling realign with every passing car. I kept hearing something—faint, rhythmic. As if something underground was working its way up.

For years, I didn’t talk about it. Not because I believed in curses, but because I wasn’t ready to know whether or not it was true.

When I was fourteen, I got caught in a lie at school. I don’t even remember what it was—a missing homework sheet, a forged signature, something forgettable. But the teacher’s look made my face burn in that same, familiar way. Not shame. Not fear. More like recognition.

That evening, I walked home past the vacant lot on Fifth Street, where weeds cracked through broken pavement. The windows glowed gold. I couldn’t stop thinking: If I knelt there and said something false, would the ground remember me?

When I was sixteen, I came home late with dried blood behind one ear and a folded note in my back pocket I would never let anyone read. My mother was washing dishes, elbows deep in soap and citrus rind. I stood in the doorway, waiting.

She didn’t turn. But later, I found a basin in the laundry room—empty, facing out, as if it had just been used.

I think about that sometimes. How my uncle said the mirror would reflect the truth whether or not you asked. How he said the soil keeps what it’s given.

Now, when I lie, I feel something tighten in my chest. A tension—like stepping into a house I used to live in and forgetting how the floorboards creak.

I wonder how many mirrors I carry inside me—polished by years of saying what was easier than honesty.

I wonder if my mother has them too. Hidden in kitchen drawers. Tucked into Tupperware lids. Waiting under the bed.

I wonder what they’ve seen.

And if, late at night, something ever digs its way toward her, the way it did for me—quietly, patiently, without hurry.

Looking for the girl who knelt.

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How to Survive a Nosebleed in a Costco

When I was ten, my mother taught me how to pinch the bridge of my nose and tilt forward so the blood wouldn’t slide down my throat.

“Swallowing blood makes you vomit,” she said. “And vomiting makes you look weak. And looking weak—”

She didn’t have to finish. I remembered.

***

Under Costco’s vault-high fluorescents, my nose ruptures near the dried mango. Blood leaks onto my NASA hoodie. A child gawks from a shopping cart, clutching a five-pound tub of cheese balls like a life raft.

My mother is halfway down the aisle, muttering about inflation. She doesn’t notice until I tap her shoulder and whisper, “I think I’m dying.”

She glances at my face. “Not here,” she says.

We hurry toward the paper goods. She tears an open roll from the shelf and slaps it to my face.

“Hold it,” she snaps. “Don’t embarrass me.”

Blood blossoms through the towel—pink first, then maroon. Spring, accelerated.

***

When I was six, she slapped me in the produce aisle for dropping cilantro.

“You have to hold on tight,” she said. “Things disappear if you don’t hold on.”

I cried so hard I nearly threw up into the bitter melons. She wiped my face with a tissue from her purse, then leaned close.

“Don’t cry where people can see. They’ll think we’re weak.”

***

Now, in Costco, she takes my wrist. Her hands smell like lemon soap and decades of scalding water.

“You’re fine,” she says. “It’s just blood. Everyone has blood.”

A man steps closer. “She okay?”

My mother turns. Her glare could flay skin.

“She’s fine,” she says.

Blood slithers down my arm. A worker appears with a mop. The handle squeaks against concrete.

“Ma’am, do you need medical—?”

“No,” my mother says, smiling. “We’re done.”

She pushes our cart forward. I trail behind her, a ruptured balloon.

***

When I was nine, she taught me how to fold plastic bags into tight triangles that fit under the sink. 

“A mess is dangerous,” she said. “Someone will always blame you for it.”

***

At checkout, she waves off concern.

“They’re giving shrimp wonton samples,” she says. “Don’t waste it.”

I’m still holding the bloody towel to my face. The sample lady freezes, tongs midair.

The cashier glances at the mess in my hands.

My mother smiles, too brightly. “Good deal on sesame oil. Limit three.”

In the parking lot, she finally looks at me.

“So much blood,” she murmurs. “You eat too much hot pot. Too much heat in the body.”

I open my mouth to argue, but blood bubbles up again.

She sighs. “American girls are soft. No stamina.”

***

At home, she drops cinnamon bark and ginger into boiling water.

“Chinese medicine,” she says. “It balances your chi.”

It tastes like burnt wood and things older than forgiveness. 

Later, she calls my aunt in Guangzhou. Laughs.

“She bled like a pig in Costco,” she says. “But she didn’t faint. She’ll survive America.”

***

In the shower, I watch red ribbon down the drain. I think of that towel pressed to my face. Her voice in my ear: Don’t embarrass me.

I wonder how much of my life has been learning how to bleed discreetly.

***

I got my first period in algebra. Blood soaked through my jeans, onto the plastic seat.

My mother picked me up. We didn’t speak until the freeway. 

“Don’t walk like you’re ashamed,” she said. “No one can smell it unless you act guilty.”

That night, she gave me black vinegar tea.

“It makes your blood smarter.”

I asked if blood could be smart.

“Of course,” she said. “Blood remembers.”

***

At Costco, the cashier folds the receipt into thirds. My mother tucks it into her wallet, beside a photo of me as a baby. My cheeks round, my eyes still unafraid.

She hands me the sesame oil.

“It’s heavy,” she says. “You carry it.”

At the trunk, she glances at my hoodie, now stiff with dried blood.

“Next time,” she says softly, “warn me before you bleed in public. People will think something’s wrong with us.”

We sit in the car for a long time. Her hands on the wheel. The ghost of a scar peeks from her wrist—sewing machine accident, age sixteen.

“Why does everything have to look perfect?” I ask.

She doesn’t look at me.

“Because no one gives people like us a second chance.”

***

That night, she soaks the hoodie in hot water and detergent. She doesn’t speak—just scrubs and scrubs until the water turns pink, then clear.

She calls me to the kitchen and sets down congee, warm and glutinous, with preserved egg floating like a half-moon.

“Eat,” she says. “It’ll keep your blood from running away.”

***

When I was seven, I asked if she’d ever been scared. She was peeling an apple in one long spiral.

“No,” she said. “Only angry.”

***

Sometimes I wonder if the stain is still there on the Costco floor—faint, rust-colored, waiting. Proof that someone bled and kept moving before anyone could see she was hurt.

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Banner Art:
Photo by Chase Kennedy, Unsplash, 2023