Size / / /

My mother always calls at three a.m. From over the ocean I can feel her gearing up for the call, pacing in her seaside apartment with huge windows and a half-working washer (the drying is supplied by sun and pigeons). She doesn't know what time it is in America, she doesn't know my husband's name; she wants to buy me a set of dishes. Say thank you!

Perhaps I really am ungrateful, that is, not grateful for gifts: the three bent spoons, the piece of local newspaper, a bunch of dried herbs. I don't bathe in the tincture of herbs or read the newspaper—and so she paces, and cockroaches the size of toy airplanes smash into her windows. She hexes them without a glance, continues pacing as they topple to the ground.

I sit in the kitchen, waiting for her to call. My fingers knead the kifli dough, caress the living firmness of it. The plum jam is bubbling on the gas stove, smelling of that village, that little plump woman I would have become, had I not moved across the ocean. Both the village-me and the city-me agree on the making of kifli, crescents of dough with the heart of crimson jam.

The phone rings.

"Dishes! You will say no! But I know!"

She knows; I am weak in spirit. Late at night, rubbing dough residue from my palms, I dream of a set with painted lilacs—and my guests, drunk on the smell of fresh pastry, tracing the petals with slightly oily fingers.

"In restaurants, the dishes are always white!"

But I don't cook restaurant food. I make kifli and deep-fried Georgian chebureki and stuffed cabbage drowning in sour cream. I make bread shameless with brie and walnuts. My mother orders pizza. But of course, kifli and walnuts and even pizza would look better on white.

In my mother's apartment, another bug smashes into the window and slides off, defeated. The taste of my mother's hex transfers through the telephone, and I know the plum jam will turn out slightly bitter. My mother has everything—a profession, money—while I am only a housewife with odd hobbies and a plum tree. And dishless—we use paper when guests come over.

I wipe the vision of the lilac plates away. "Order something on Amazon."

"How can I buy something I've never seen?" she says. "What if I don't like it?"

I am suddenly tired, and even the dough under my hands feels droopy. It feels like screeching sandpaper over my heart. Why doesn't it matter what I like? "Whatever. I'm going to sleep, mom."

She calls the next night, triumphant. "I was passing in the neighborhood. . . ." Breath. "You don't love me." Sigh. "You hate me!" Then: "I bought you a set of dishes! Six dining plates, six salad plates, and no cups. They didn't have any cups."

She's meaning to mail them. Airmail, which costs more than the dishes themselves.

"Mom, listen . . ."

No, she doesn't.

The next night my phone rings again. I am in the kitchen, licking bitter jam from the bent spoon and sipping raspberry tea.

"I bought you another set. Six is not enough. You have people over!" She never comes over, she means. It's her fault and mine that I feed strangers while my mother subsists on leftover pizza. "I blessed the dishes," she says.

My phone rings again the next night, and the next. She bought serving pieces, saucers. She bought soup dishes, a tureen, and a salt shaker.

I don't remember my mother's face.

The dishes are traveling over the seas. My husband chucks the bitter jam and buys me a "fun dessert"—he thought it was ice cream, bless him. It tastes like soap and candles. He disconnects the phone and talks to me about the evolutionary advantages of peanut butter.

A week later, I hear clanking. There is another pot of jam going on the stove, and my hands are full of flour from the rolling pin. I unlatch the window and peek out.

The golem is made of dishes. Its arms are pieces of bowls. Its belly is humongous dinner plates. Its legs are ceramic slivers—there's no telling what those used to be. Its face is made of serving platters, flat and white and simple like the ones you get at Target. Its salt-shaker nose is leaking salt, and the golem sneezes, swaying tentatively towards me.

Nobody's watching us. My husband is at work. I open the door and usher it in; the golem jiggles as it sits down at the table. Behind the dishes, inside its torso, there's the scroll that animates it—a piece of checkered paper, her letter. It's warm here, she writes. The sand wind blew the other day. The city is on strike again, and garbage fills the streets. My mother's truth—concealed from view behind these words, inside her dish golem.

I love you, she means. I miss you terribly.

I spoon the jam onto the warm circles of dough and form the crescents. The golem sways, sighing patiently while the kifli mature in the oven.




R.B. Lemberg is a queer, nonbinary immigrant from Eastern Europe to the US. R.B.'s novella The Four Profound Weaves (Tachyon Press, 2020) was a finalist for the Nebula, Ignyte, Locus, World Fantasy, and other awards. Their first novel, The Unbalancing (Tachyon), and short story collection, Geometries of Belonging (Fairwood Press), were published in 2022. Their poetry memoir, Everything Thaws, will be published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2023. You can find R.B. on twitter at rb_lemberg, Patreon at http://patreon.com/rblemberg, and their website http://rblemberg.net.
Current Issue
29 May 2023

We are touched and encouraged to see an overwhelming response from writers from the Sino diaspora as well as BIPOC creators in various parts of the world. And such diverse and daring takes of wuxia and xianxia, from contemporary to the far reaches of space!
By: L Chan
The air was redolent with machine oil; rich and unctuous, and synthesised alcohol, sharper than a knife on the tongue.
“Leaping Crane don’t want me to tell you this,” Poppy continued, “but I’m the most dangerous thing in the West. We’ll get you to your brother safe before you know it.”
Many eons ago, when the first dawn broke over the newborn mortal world, the children of the Heavenly Realm assembled at the Golden Sky Palace.
Winter storm: lightning flashes old ghosts on my blade.
transplanted from your temple and missing the persimmons in bloom
immigrant daughters dodge sharp barbs thrown in ambush 十面埋伏 from all directions
Many trans and marginalised people in our world can do the exact same things that everyone else has done to overcome challenges and find happiness, only for others to come in and do what they want as Ren Woxing did, and probably, when asked why, they would simply say Xiang Wentian: to ask the heavens. And perhaps we the readers, who are told this story from Linghu Chong’s point of view, should do more to question the actions of people before blindly following along to cause harm.
Before the Occupation, righteousness might have meant taking overt stands against the distant invaders of their ancestral homelands through donating money, labour, or expertise to Chinese wartime efforts. Yet during the Occupation, such behaviour would get one killed or suspected of treason; one might find it better to remain discreet and fade into the background, or leave for safer shores. Could one uphold justice and righteousness quietly, subtly, and effectively within such a world of harshness and deprivation?
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