My grandmother ran a cigarette shop
For over thirty years.
By shop, I mean a cardboard box
On top
of a rolling cart.
In the dark before dawn, she
Positioned herself between two dim sum restaurants
And waited for the morning rush of coolies,
Lowly laborers,
Done with their tea
Ready to grab their daily dose of smokes and
Cotton gloves
Before heading to work.
They unloaded their nickels and pence into her waiting palm (she always prided herself on the beauty of her hands:
the long, pale fingers; the shapely fingernails.
She would dispense change with firecracker audacity|
Confident in her mathematical prowess
The men often asked, “Mrs. Fong, how do you do math so fast?”
My grandmother’s mind is sharp as a sewing needle.
For not having finished high school, for
Barely knowing how to read when she came to Hong Kong.
But she could look at a lady’s sweater on the subway
And know immediately how to knit it
The intricate over-unders of the yarn,
The number of rows for each arm.
She…
