Grandma Chen - A Tall Tale

This is a tall tale that I wrote for a writing class that I took this summer. Hope you enjoy!


Grandma Chen and the Military Recruiters


Grandma Chen was an unassuming Chinese grandmother living in Elmhurst, Queens. She had come to the United States with her husband and small children to escape the chaos of Chiang Kai Shek’s clashes with Mao Tse Tung. They had ended up in New York the way so many people did: other villagers coming back from the markets in the city had brought stories of a big city in a far away land. So, when the Nationalists and the Communists approached the little village, Shiu Lau Chen took her children and followed her husband.
Many many years had passed since that journey, and Grandma Chen’s children had now grown and had children of their own. China was no longer the poorest country in the world: it was now a military and economic powerhouse. How different from Grandma Chen’s days when the Japanese were invading.
One thing that somehow connected that part of her past life with the present, though, was war. Grandma Chen’s adopted country was fighting a seemingly meaningless war in the Middle East, and the strain of that was once again touching her and her family. Now, though, instead of seeing the soldiers wading through rice paddies near her house, there were soldiers in her grandchildren’s school, luring the youngsters into the service with promises of travel and future job opportunities. Of course, they didn’t mention the possibility of dying or losing a limb. This time around, though, Grandma Chen was not going to run away. She was going to take action to get those recruiters out of the school.
Being a spry old lady, Grandma Chen did what she had seen people doing back in the 60s: she sat in front of the school’s door with a sign saying: “Recruiters Out of School.” Most people, though, took her more as a curiosity than as anything serious. The students looked down at her (literally) as they filed into school.
“Hey Grandma, aren’t you a little old for this?” The kids would ask, laughing.
“Come on. What’s the big deal?”
“This must be some nut case” said the young Asian man who was pushing into the school building with his friends. He was wearing those typical low-crotch pants and a baggy shirt. He could have been her grandson. Maybe that was why his comment hurt the most.
When the police politely asked her to move because she was creating a fire hazard, Grandma Chen politely said “no.”
Well, the police tried to get her out of there without causing a disturbance, but eventually they carried her out as a group of teenagers looked on, fascinated by the spectacle of this little, gray haired Chinese woman standing up to the police.
Later, back at her apartment, Shiu Lau realized that desperate situations called for desperate measures. In her kitchen, with the herbs on her counter, Shiu Lau looked out the window and saw an enormous moon. It’s beams were filling the kitchen with light. Shiu Lau saw the sign: it was time to make moon cakes.
She went into the living room and hoisted the window and then stuck her upper body through it and out onto the fire escape. “Young people make this look so easy!” Shiu Lau thought as she struggled to get her knee through the window and to turn herself around.
The iron rods that made up the floor were uncomfortable to Shiu Lau’s bare feet. But as she soaked up the moonbeams with her arms held out to her sides, an amazing thing happened: Shiu Lau began to levitate. Her nightgown took on a silvery sheen, and her arms seemed like wings in their drapey sleeves.
Grandma Chen approached the Moon, moving away from the rooftops of Queens. When she got close enough for the moon to take up almost the entire sky, the Moon turned towards her. The face painted on her surface focused on this woman in the air, and the moon’s eyes fixed Shiu Lau’s.
“What do you want, Shiu Lau?” The moon asked Grandma Chen (in Cantonese, of course) as she hovered like a silver bird amidst the clouds and stars.
“I need your help, O Moon. The army is trying to seduce my grandchildren into leaving home and fighting, and I must do something to stop this.”
“Hmmm. I see.” Replied the Moon. If she had been attached to a body, the Moon would have moved her head backwards to consider the petitioner with greater clarity. Instead, her eyes rounded a bit, and she raised her eyebrows as she asked: “And how can I help you?”
“Well, great Moon, you could give me some of your light to mix into my moon cakes. That would surely give anyone who ate one the ability to wax and wane, as you have, and, as a result, to avoid the conflicts that arise for them.”
“Hmmmm. You are very wise, Shiu Lau, but you realize that no one can avoid conflict forever, don’t you?”
“Yes, O Moon. That is why I came to you. I tried to solve this problem by facing it directly, but it didn’t work. The people just laughed at me and carted me away. I think that if I give other people the ability to step aside, they will be able to avoid the thing that I can’t stop.”
“Well, Shiu Lau, I don’t know if this will solve the real problem, but I am willing to help you to try. Here” said the moon, shaking herself in the silvery woman’s direction, “take some of my beams for your moon cakes. And good luck.”
Grandma Chen opened her Ball canning jar that she had tucked into her robe for just this purpose, and scooped up all the moonbeams that would fit into her jar. When it was full, she resealed it, bowed deeply to the Moon, and turned back towards her apartment in Elmhurst.
When she returned to her fire escape, the neighborhood was quiet, and no one, not even the cats, saw her wedge her body through her window again and back into her dark apartment. No sooner was Shiu Lau in her kitchen than she set about to preparing the moon cakes with the magical moon beams.

“Hong Li,” Grandma Chen addressed her granddaughter. “These for your bake sale. They special. I made last night.”
“Oh, thank you Grandma. You’re the best.” Hong Li, like the responsible grandchild that she was, took the cakes and stowed them in her backpack to take to school. Little did she know that it would be these moon cakes, disseminated amongst the students at Newtown High School, that would lead to a hip-hop festival there with music focusing on alternatives to violence.