Guest author, published with author’s permission.

Harmogu’s blog - original story
Энд “Арван тавны сар” монголоор

The Moon of the Fifteenth

Author B. Ganchimeg. Translator Ryan Womack.

I look forward to one single day in the year. What day is it? Not a birthday! Not even New Year’s day. Well then. I’ll tell you soon!

I have a lone sister on this earth. My sister is fifteen, but I am twelve years old. My sister is very pretty. And also an excellent student. I always wanted to be like my sister, but usually couldn’t manage it. How could I be the same when I was always playing soccer with the boys in my class, or hanging out all the time and fighting in the computer game arcade! And the words they said, “She’s practically changed into a guy” rang in my ears. But since I’m a girl, I didn’t think that way about things myself.

In my first grade year, I can never forget the friend who sat at my desk, Tulgaa, teasing me a lot, saying, “You’ve got a really ugly mug.” That time I was really offended, but I had almost forgotten the day my sister’s teacher came to meet my teacher. When she looked at me, she said, “Hey, is this guy Ankhtsetseg’s younger sister? What an ugly face! The sister being so good looking, it’s completely different,” her voice had boomed then. That’s how I started thinking myself that I had an ugly face.

My mother works abroad, so since we were little we had both grown up with our grandparents. One evening on the television I saw a commercial for face cream and thought I could be as pretty as my sister. So I said right out to my grandparents, “Buy this cream for me.” Grandpa asked, “What that my girl?” “My classmate said I had an ugly face. I want to apply this cream and look beautiful,” I said in all sincerity. At home they laughed. To buy the cream, I had to go through teasing.

But one evening my grandfather led me by the hand and took me outside. Then he pointed to the moon rising so bright and big in the sky. “This moon is called the Full Moon. The full moon rising in the sky on this day of the year is so enchanted! My daughter would fill her palm with water and hold it in the shining moonlight. Then she would whisper, “Oh Moon, please make me as beautiful as others,” and wash her face with the water, you know, saying “My ugly mug, I will be a beautiful girl!” I was so thankful that I straightaway asked the moon, as my grandfather had taught me. That evening was the fifteenth day of the first month of spring.

Three years have passed. I continue to await the evening of the fifteenth. I stopped calling myself ugly. Because people say to me “she’s getting more and more pretty.” But for these three years, my grandfather was not beside me. I miss grandfather’s presence so much, but on that night remembering him holding hands and standing looking at the moon is just like meeting with him. So on the fifteenth of the the first month of next spring, I can hardly wait to go back to talk to my grandfather again like when I was little … Grandfather, your girl will be so beautiful!