Fresh Ink: An Anthology

Yasman, or “Yasi,” an Iranian American teen whose father and grandmother grew up in Iran, is the story’s narrator. Her girlfriend, Hannah, pushes to meet Yasi’s grandmother. Yasi goes to her grandmother’s each week for dinner but has yet to take Hannah. Yasi admits that it’s partly because she hasn’t yet told her grandmother that she’s bisexual and partly because she thinks it would be “weird” to talk about romantic partners with her grandmother.

That week, Hannah goes to her grandmother’s house to eat with her and her friend. Her grandmother explains that her father came to the US first and then got a green card for her when his father died. When Hannah texts Yasi during dinner, Yasi decides that she wants to learn how to cook for her and asks her grandmother for help.

On Sunday, Yasi and her grandmother go shopping. When her grandmother struggles in line to use her card’s chip to pay, the cashier becomes rude, as does the woman in line behind them. Yasi apologizes. In the car, however, her grandmother scolds her, telling her that she “exist[s] and [she] shouldn’t have to be sorry for that,” telling Yasi that “as a woman, you have to know that.