Pushcart 2026 L: Kathy Chao, “One Of You Will Betray Me” from The Georgia Review, Spring 2024

It was Chang-ma who corralled the women of the First Mandarin Baptist Church of Praise into their midweek meetings. “Mother of Prayers group (MOP),” she explained in her first e-mail summons, “will be a place we can share our struggles and support each other spiritually, where we discuss our role in church as mothers and in Chinese community as Christians.” … They’d talked of matters high and low, traded anxieties and dispensed advice. They’d prescribed each other Bible verses and herbal extractions. They’d only wanted to help. They’d only meant the best. Not once did they speak of K-Shop until Cherish Law brought it up. I didn’t realize how complex this story is until I tried to write about it. The elements play off one another, mingling cause and effect; humor blends with the pathos inherent in the immigrant experience and the challenges of raising an adolescent. Lovely paragraphs bubble up out of nowhere, revealing ideas one after the other. And I’m pretty sure I’m missing an…