Jing-Mei Woo
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My father has asked me to be the fourth er at the Joy Luck Club. I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has beey since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts."She had a new idea inside her head," said my father. "But before it could e out of her mouth, the thought grew too big and burst. It must have been a very bad idea."
The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm. And her friends at the Joy Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit: quickly and with unfinished business left behind. My mother was supposed to host the meeting of the Joy Luck Club.
The week before she died, she called me, full of pride, full of life: "Auntie Lin cooked red bean soup for Joy Luck. Im going to cook black sesame-seed soup."
"Dont show off," I said.
"Its not showoff." She said the two soups were almost the same, chabudwo. Or maybe she said butong, not the same thing at all. It was one of those ese expressions that means the better half of mixed iions. I ever remember things I didnt uand in the first place.
My mother started the San Francisco version of the Joy Luck Club in 1949, two years before I was born. This was the year my mother and father left a with oiff leather trunk filled only with fancy silk dresses. There was no time to paything else, my mother had explaio my father after they boarded the boat. Still his hands swam frantically between the slippery silks, looking for his cotton shirts and wool pants.
When they arrived in San Frany father made her hide those shiny clothes. She wore the same brown-checked ese dress until the Refugee Wele Society gave her two hand-me-down dresses, all toe in sizes for Ameri women. The society was posed of a group of white-haired Ameri missionary ladies from the First ese Baptist Church. And because of their gifts, my parents could not refuse their invitation to join the churor could they ighe old ladies practical adviprove their English through Bible study class on Wednesday nights and, later, through choir practi Saturday ms. This was how my parents met the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs. My mother could sehat the women of these families also had unspeakable tragedies they had left behind in a and hopes they couldnt begin to express in their fragile English. Or at least, my mother reized the numbness in these womens faces. And she saw how quickly their eyes moved wheold them her idea for the Joy Luck Club.
Joy Luck was an idea my mother remembered from the days of her first marriage in Kweilin, before the Japanese came. Thats why I think of Joy Luck as her Kweilin story. It was the story she would always tell me when she was bored, when there was nothing to do, when every bowl had been washed and the Formica table had been wiped down twice, when my father sat reading the neer and smoking one Pall Mall cigarette after another, a warning not to disturb him. This is when my mother would take out a box of old ski sweaters sent to us by unseeives from Vancouver. She would snip the bottom of a sweater and pull out a kinky thread of yarn, anch it to a piece of cardboard. And as she began to roll with one sweeping rhythm, she would start her story. Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, aually into mine.
"I dreamed about Kweilin before I ever saw it," my man, speaking ese. "I dreamed of jagged peaks lining a curving river, with magic moss greening the banks. At the tops of these peaks were white mists. And if you could float down this river ahe moss for food, you would be strong enough to climb the peak. If you slipped, you would only fall into a bed of soft moss and laugh. And once you reached the top, you would be able to see everything and feel such happiness it would be enough to never have worries in your life ever again.
"In a, everybody dreamed about Kweilin. And when I arrived, I realized how shabby my dreams were, how poor my thoughts. When I saw the hills, I laughed and shuddered at the same time. The peaks looked like giant fried fish heads trying to jump out of a vat of oil. Behind each hill, I could see shadows of another fish, and then another and another. And then the clouds would move just a little and the hills would suddenly beonstrous elephants marg slowly toward me! you see this? And at the root of the hill were secret caves. Inside grew hanging rock gardens in the shapes and colors of cabbage, winter melons, turnips, and onions. These were things se aiful you t ever imagihem.
"But I didnt e to Kweilin to see how beautiful it was. The man who was my husband brought me and our two babies to Kweilin because he thought we would be safe. He was an officer with the Kuomintang, and after he put us down in a small room in a two-story house, he went off to the northwest, to gking.
"We khe Japanese were winning, evehe neers said they were not. Every day, every hour, thousands of people poured into the city, crowding the sidewalks, looking for places to live. They came from the East, West, North, and South. They were rid poor, Shanghainese, tonese, northerners, and not just ese, but fners and missionaries of every religion. And there was, of course, the Kuomintang and their army officers who thought they were top level to everyone else.
"We were a city of leftovers mixed together. If it hadnt been for the Japahere would have beey of reason fhting to break out among these different people. you see it? Shanghai people with north-water peasants, bankers with barbers, rickshaw pullers with Burma refugees. Everybody looked down on someone else. It didnt matter that everybody shared the same sidewalk to spit on and suffered the same fast-moving diarrhea. We all had the same stink, but everybody plained someone else smelled the worst. Me? Oh, I hated the Ameri air force officers who said habba-habba sounds to make my face turn red. But the worst were the northern peasants who emptied their noses into their hands and pushed people around and gave everybody their dirty diseases.
"So you see how quickly Kweilin lost its beauty for me. I no longer climbed the peaks to say, How lovely are these hills! I only wondered which hills the Japanese had reached. I sat in the dark ers of my house with a baby under each arm, waiting with nervous feet. When the sirens cried out to warn us of bombers, my neighbors and I jumped to our feet and scurried to the deep caves to hide like wild animals. But you t stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you bee like a starving person, crazy-hungry fht. Outside I could hear the bombing. Boom! Boom! And then the sound of raining rocks. And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an a hill that might collapse on top of me. you imagine how it is, to want to be her inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?
"So when the bombing sounds grew farther away, we would e back out like newborn kittens scratg our way back to the city. And always, I would be amazed to find the hills against the burning sky had not been torn apart.
"I thought up Joy Lu a summer night that was so hot evehs faio th藏书网e ground, their wings were so heavy with the damp heat. Every place was so crowded there was no room for fresh air. Unbearable smells from the sewers rose up to my sed-story window and the stink had nowhere else to go but into my all hours of the night and day, I heard screaming sounds. I didnt know if it easant slitting the throat of a runaig or an officer beating a half-dead peasant for lying in his way on the sidewalk. I didnt go to the window to find out. What use would it have been? And thats when I thought I needed something to do to help me move.
"My idea was to have a gathering of four women, one for each er of my mah jong table. I knew whien I wao ask. They were all young like me, with wishful faces. One was an army officers wife, like myself. Another was a girl with very fine manners from a rich family in Shanghai. She had escaped with only a little money. And there was a girl from Nanking who had the blackest hair I have ever seen. She came from a low-class family, but she retty and pleasant and had married well, to an old man who died a her with a better life.
"Each week one of us would host a party to raise money and to raise our spirits. The hostess had to serve special dyansyin foods t good fortune of all kinds—dumplings shaped like silver money ingots, long rioodles for long life, boiled peanuts for ceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck es for a plentiful, sweet life.
"What fine food we treated ourselves to with our meager allowances! We didnt notice that the dumplings were stuffed mostly with stringy squash and that the es were spotted with wormy holes. We ate sparingly, not as if we didnt have enough, but to protest how we could another bite, we had already bloated ourselves from earlier in the day. We knew we had luxuries few people could afford. We were the lucky ones.
"After filling our stomachs, we would then fill a bowl with money and put it where everyone could see. Then we would sit down at the mah jong table. My table was from my family and was of a very fragrant red wood, not what you call rosewood, but hong mu, which is so fiheres no English word for it. The table had a very thick pad, so that when the mah jong pai were spilled onto the table the only sound was of ivory tiles washing against one another.
"Once we started to play, nobody could speak, except to say Pung! or Chr! when taking a tile. We had to play with seriousness and think of nothing else but adding to our happihrough winning. But after sixteen rounds, we would agai, this time to celebrate ood fortune. And then we would talk into the night until the m, saying stories about good times in the past and good times yet to e.
"Oh, what good stories! Stories spilling out all over the place! We almost laughed to death. A rooster that ran into the house screeg on top of dinner bowls, the same bowls that held him quietly in pieces the day! And one about a girl who wrote love letters for two friends who loved the same man. And a silly fn lady who fainted on a toilet when firecrackers went off o her.
"People thought we were wrong to serve bas every week while many people iy were starviing rats and, later, the garbage that the poorest rats used to feed on. Others thought we were possessed by demons—to celebrate when even within our own families we had lost geions, had lost homes and fortunes, and were separated, husband from wife, brother from sister, daughter from mother. Hnnnh! How could we laugh, people asked.
"Its not that we had or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. How much you wish for a favorite warm coat that hangs in the closet of a house that burned down with your mother and father inside of it? How long you see in your mind arms and legs hanging from telephone wires and starving dogs running dowreets with half-chewed hands dangling from their jaws? What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our owhs with proper somber faces? Or to choose our oiness?
"So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had bee the new year. Each week we could fet past wrongs doo us. We werent allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, w<s>?</s>e laughed, we played games, lost and woold the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And thats how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck."
My mother used to end the story on a happy note, bragging about her skill at the game. "I won many times and was so lucky the others teased that I had learhe trick of a clever thief," she said. "I won tens of thousands of yuan. But I wasnt rio. By then paper money had bee worthless. Even toilet paper was worth more. And that made us laugh harder, to think a thousand-yuan note wasnt even good enough to rub on our bottoms."
I hought my mothers Kweilin story was anything but a ese fairy tale. The endings always ged. Sometimes she said she used that worthless thousand-yuan o buy a half-cup of rice. She turhat rito a pot of pe. She traded that gruel for two feet from a pig. Those two feet became six eggs, those eggs six chis. The story always grew and grew.
And then one evening, after I had begged her to buy me a transistor radio, after she refused and I had sulked in silence for an hour, she said, "Why do you think you are missing something you never had?" And theold me a pletely different ending to the story.
"An army officer came to my house early one m," she said, "and told me to go quickly to my husband in gking. And I knew he was tellio run away from Kweilin. I knew what happeo officers and their families when the Japanese arrived. How could I go? There were no trains leaving Kweilin. My friend from Nanking, she was so good to me. She bribed a man to steal a wheelbarrow used to haul coal. She promised to warn our other friends.
"I packed my things and my two babies into this wheelbarrow and began pushing to gking four days before the Japanese marched into Kweilin. On the road I heard news of the slaughter from people running past me. It was terrible. Up to the last day, the Kuomintang insisted that Kweilin was safe, protected by the ese army. But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with neers rep great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people—men, women, and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead. When I heard this news, I walked faster and faster, asking myself at each step, Were they foolish? Were they brave?
"I pushed toward gking, until my wheel broke. I abandoned my beautiful mah jong table of hong mu. By then I didnt have enough feeli in my body to cry. I tied scarves into slings and put a baby on each side of my shoulder. I carried a bag in each hand, oh clothes, the other with food. I carried these things until deep grooves grew in my hands. And I finally dropped one bag after the other when my hands began to bleed and became too slippery to hold onto anything.
"Along the way, I saw others had dohe same, gradually given up hope. It was like a pathway inlaid with treasures that grew in value along the way. Bolts of fine fabrid books. Paintings of aors and carpeools. Until one could see cages of dugs now quiet with thirst and, later still, silver urns lying in the road, where people had been too tired to carry them for any kind of future hope. By the time I arrived in gking I had lost everything except for three fancy silk dresses which I wore one on top of the other."
"What do you mean by everything?" I gasped at the end. I was stuo realize the story had been true all along. "What happeo the babies?"
She didnt even pause to think. She simply said in a way that made it clear there was no more to the story: "Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies."
When I arrive at the Hsus house, where the Joy Luck Club is meeting tonight, the first person I see is my father. "There she is! Never on time!" he announces. And its true. Everybodys already here, seven family friends in their sixties aies. They look up and laugh at me, always tardy, a child still at thirty-six.
Im shaking, trying to hold something ihe last time I saw them, at the funeral, I had broken down and cried big gulping sobs. They must wonder now how someone like me take my mothers place. A friend oold me that my mother and I were alike, that we had the same wispy haures, the same girlish laugh and sideways look. When I shyly told my mother this, she seemed insulted and said, "You dont even know little pert of me! How you be me?" And shes right. How I be my mother at Joy Luck?
"Auntie, Uncle," I say repeatedly, nodding to each person there. I have always called these old family friends Auntie and Uncle. And then I walk over and stao my father.
Hes looking at the Jongs pictures from their ret a trip. "Look at that," he says politely, pointing to a photo of the Jongs troup standing on wide slab steps. There is nothing in this picture that shows it was taken in a rather than San Francisco, or any other city for that matter. But my father doeso be looking at the picture anyway. Its as though everythihe same to him, nothing stands out. He has always been politely indifferent. But whats the ese word that means indifferent because you t see any differehats how troubled I think he is by my mothers death.
"Will you look at that," he says, pointing to another nondescript picture.
The Hsus house feels heavy with greasy odors. Too many ese meals cooked in a too small kit, too many once fragrant smells pressed onto a thin layer of invisible grease. I remember how my mother used to go into other peoples houses aaurants and wrinkle her hen whisper very loudly: "I see ahe stiess with my nose."
I have not been to the Hsus house in many years, but the living room is exactly the same as I remember it. When Auntie An-mei and Uncle Gee moved to the Su district from atowy-five years ago, they bought new furniture. Its all there, still looking mostly new under yellowed plastic. The same turquoise couch shaped in a semicircle of nubby tweed. The ial end tables made out of heavy maple. A lamp of fake cracked porcelain. Only the scroll-length dar, free from the Bank of ton, ges every year.
I remember this stuff, because when we were children, Auntie An-mei did us touy of her new furniture except through the clear plastic cs. On Joy Luights, my parents brought me to the Hsus. Since I was the guest, I had to take care of all the younger children, so many children it seemed as if there were always one baby who was g from having bumped its head on a table leg.
"You are responsible," said my mother, which meant I was in trouble if anything illed, burned, lost, broken, or dirty. I was responsible, no matter who did it. She and Auntie An-mei were dressed up in funny ese dresses with stiff stand-up collars and blooming branches of embroidered silk sewheir breasts. These clothes were too fancy for real ese people, I thought, and toe for Ameri parties. In those days, before my mother told me her Kweilin story, I imagined Joy Luck was a shameful ese , like the secret gathering of the Ku Klux Klan or the tom-tom dances of TV Indians preparing for war.
But tonight, theres no mystery. The Joy Luck aunties are all wearing slacks, bright print blouses, and different versions of sturdy walking shoes. We are all seated around the dining room table under a lamp that looks like a Spanish delabra. Uncle Gee puts on his bifocals and starts the meeting by reading the minutes:
"Our capital at is $24,825, or about $6,206 a couple, $3,103 per person. We sold Subaru for a loss at six and three-quarters. We bought a hundred shares of Smith Iional at seven. Our thanks to Lindo and Tin Jong for the goodies. The red bean soup was especially delicious. The March meeting had to be celed until further notice. We were sorry to have to bid a fond farewell to our dear friend Suyuan aended our sympathy to the ing Woo family. Respectfully submitted, Gee Hsu, president aary."
Thats it. I keep thinking the others will start talking about my mother, the wonderful friendship they shared, and why I am here in her spirit, to be the fourth er and carry on the idea my mother came up with on a hot day in Kweilin.
But everybody just nods to approve the minutes. Even my fathers head bobs up and down routinely. And it seems to me my mothers life has been shelved for new business.
Auntie An-mei heaves herself up from the table and moves slowly to the kit to prepare the food. And Auntie Lin, my mothers best friend, moves to the turquoise sofa, crosses her arms, and watches the men still seated at the table. Auntie Ying, who seems to shrink even more every time I see her, reaches into her knitting bag and pulls out the start of a tiny blue sweater.
The Joy Lucles begin to talk about stocks they are ied in buying. Uncle Jack, who is Auntie Yings younger brother, is very keen on a pany that mines gold in ada.
"Its a great hedge on inflation," he says with authority. He speaks the best English, almost atless. I think my mothers English was the worst, but she always thought her ese was the best. She spoke Mandarin slightly blurred with a Shanghai dialect.
"Werent we going to play mah jong tonight?" I whisper loudly to Auntie Ying, whos slightly deaf.
"Later," she says, "after midnight."
"Ladies, are you at this meeting or not?" says Uncle Gee. After everybody votes unanimously for the ada gold stock, I go into the kit to ask Auntie An-mei why the Joy Luck Club started iing in stocks.
"We used to play mah jong, wiake all. But the same people were always winning, the same people always losing," she says. She is stuffing wonton, one chopstick jab of gingery meat dabbed onto a thin skin and then a single fluid turn with her hand that seals the skin into the shape of a tiny nurses cap. "You t have luck when someone else has skill. So long time ago, we decided to i iock market. Theres no skill in that. Even your mreed."
Auntie Aakes t of the tray in front of her. Shes already made five rows of eight wonton each. "Forty wonto people, ten each, five row more," she says aloud to herself, and then tiuffing. "We got smart. Now we all win and lose equally. We have stock market luck. And lay mah jong for fun, just for a few dollars, wiake all. Losers take home leftovers! So everyone have some joy. Smart-hanh?"
I watch Auntie An-mei make more wonton. She has quick, expert fingers. She doesnt have to think about what she is doing. Thats what my mother used to plain about, that Auntie An-mei hought about what she was doing.
"Shes not stupid," said my mother on one occasion, "but she has no spine. Last week, I had a good idea for her. I said to her, Lets go to the sulate and ask for papers for your brother. And she almost wao drop her things and ght then. But later she talked to someone. Who knows who? And that person told her she get her brother in bad trouble in a. That person said FBI will put her on a list and give her trouble in the U.S. the rest of her life. That person said, You ask for a house loan and they say no loan, because your brother is a unist. I said, You already have a house! But still she was scared.
"Aunti An-mei runs this way and that," said my mother, "and she doesnt know why."
As I watch Auntie An-mei, I see a short bent woman in her seventies, with a heavy bosom and thin, shapeless legs. She has the flattened soft fiips of an old woman. I wonder what Auntie An-mei did to inspire a lifelong stream of criticism from my mother. Then again, it seemed my mother was always displeased with all her friends, with me, and even with my father. Something was always missing. Something always needed improving. Something was not in balahis one or that had too much of one element, not enough of another.
The elements were from my mothers own version anic chemistry. Each person is made of five elements, she told me.
Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always criticized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should keep her thoughts to herself. I think he now feels guilty that he did my mother speak her mind.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other peoples ideas, uo stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei.
Too much water and you flowed in too many dires, like myself, for having started half a degree in biology, then half a degree in art, and then finishiher when I went off to work for a small ad agency as a secretary, later being a copywriter.
I used to dismiss her criticisms as just more of her ese superstitions, beliefs that vely fit the circumstances. In my twenties, while taking Introdu to Psychology, I tried to tell her why she shouldnt criticize so much, why it dido a healthy learning enviro.
"Theres a school of thought," I said, "that parents shouldnt criticize children. They should ence instead. You know, people rise to other peoples expectations. And when you criticize, it just means youre expeg failure."
"Thats the trouble," my mother said. "You never rise. Lazy to get up. Lazy to rise to expectations."
"Time to eat," Auntie An-mei happily announces, bringing out a steaming pot of the wonton she was just ing. There are piles of food oable, served buffet style, just like at the Kweilis. My father is digging into the ein, which still sits in an oversize aluminum pan surrounded by little plastic packets of soy sauce. Auntie An-mei must have bought this o Street. The wonton soup smells wonderful with delicate sprigs of tro floating on top. Im drawn first to a large platter of chaswei, sweet barbecued pork cut into -sized slices, and then to a whole assortment of what Ive always called finger goodies—thin-skinned pastries filled with chopped pork, beef, shrimp, and unknown stuffings that my mother used to describe as "nutritious things."
Eating is not a gracious event here. Its as though everybody had been starving. They push large forkfuls into their mouths, jab at more pieces of pork, ht after the other. They are not like the ladies of Kweilin, who I always imagined savored their food with a certaiached delicacy.
And then, almost as quickly as they started, the me up and leave the table. As if ohe women peck at last morsels and then carry plates and bowls to the kit and dump them in the sink. The women take turns washing their hands, scrubbing them vigorously. Who started this ritual? I too put my plate in the sink and wash my hands. The womealking about the Jongs a trip, then they move toward a room in the back of the apartment. We pass another room, what used to be the bedroom shared by the four Hsu sons. The bunk beds with their scuffed, splintery ladders are still there. The Joy Lucles are already seated at the card table. Uncle Gee is dealing out cards, fast, as though he learhis teique in a o. My father is passing out Pall Mall cigarettes, with one already dangling from his lips.
And the to the room in the back, which was once shared by the three Hsu girls. We were all childhood friends. And now theyve all grown and married and Im here to play in their room again. Except for the smell of camphor, it feels the same—as if Rose, Ruth, and Janice might soon walk in with their hair rolled up in big e-juice s and plop down on their identiarrow beds. The white ille bedspreads are so worn they are almost translut. Rose and I used to pluck the nubs out while talking about our boy problems. Everything is the same, except now a mahogany-colored mah jong table sits in the ter. Ao it is a floor lamp, a long black pole with three oval spotlights attached like the broad leaves of a rubber plant.
Nobody says to me, "Sit here, this is where your mother used to sit." But I tell even before everyos down. The chair closest to the door has aio it. But the feeling doesnt really have to do with the chair. Its her pla the table. Without having aell me, I know her er oable was the East.
The East is where things begin, my mother oold me, the dire from which the sun rises, where the wind es from.
Auntie An-mei, who is sitting on my left, spills the tiles onto the greeabletop and then says to me, "Noash tiles." We swirl them with our hands in a circular motion. They make a cool swishing sound as they bump into one another.
"Do you win like your mother?" asks Auntie Lin across from me. She is not smiling.
"I only played a little in college with some Jewish friends."
"Annh! Jewish mah jong," she says in disgusted tones. "Not the same thing." This is what my mother used to say, although she could never explaily why.
"Maybe I shouldnt play tonight. Ill just watch," I offer.
Auntie Lin looks exasperated, as though I were a simple child: "How we play with just three people? Like a table with three legs, no balance. When Auntie Yings husband died, she asked her brother to join. Your father asked you. So its decided."
"Whats the differeween Jewish and ese mah jong?" I once asked my mother. I couldnt tell by her answer if the games were different or just her attitude toward ese and Jewish people.
"Entirely different kind of playing," she said in her English explanation voice. "Jewish mah jong, they watly for their own tile, play only with their eyes."
Then she switched to ese: "ese mah jong, you must play using your head, very tricky. You must watch what everybody else throws away ahat in your head as well. And if nobody plays well, then the game bees like Jewish mah jong. Why play? Theres ny. Youre just watg people make mistakes."
These kinds of explanations made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered ba ese.
"So whats the differeween ese and Jewish mah jong?" I ask Auntie Lin.
"Aii-ya," she exclaims in a mock scolding voice. "Your mother did not teach you anything?"
Auntie Ying pats my hand. "You a smart girl. You watch us, do the same. Help us stack the tiles and make four walls."
I follow Auntie Ying, but mostly I watch Auntie Lin. She is the fastest, which means I almost keep up with the others by watg what she does first. Auntie Ying throws the did Im told that Auntie Lin has bee the East wind. Ive bee the North wind, the last hand to play. Auntie Ying is the South and Auntie An-mei is the West. And theart taking tiles, throwing the dice, ting ba the wall to the right number of spots where our chosen tiles lie. I rearrange my tiles, sequences of bamboo and balls, doubles of colored iles, odd tiles that do not fit anywhere.
"Your mother was the best, like a pro," says Auntie An-mei while slowly s her tiles, sidering each piece carefully.
Now we begin to play, looking at our hands, casting tiles, pig up others at an easy, fortable pace. The Joy Luck aunties begin to make small talk, not really listening to each other. They speak in their special language, half in broken English, half in their own ese dialect. Auntie Yiions she bought yarn at half price, somewhere out in the avenues. Auntie An-mei brags about a sweater she made for her daughter Ruths new baby. "She thought it was store-bought," she says proudly.
Auntie Lin explains how mad she got at a store clerk who refused to let her return a skirt with a broken zipper. "I was chiszle," she says, still fuming, "mad to death."
"But Lindo, you are still with us. You didnt die," teases Auntie Ying, and then as she laughs Auntie Lin says Pung! and Mah jong! and then spreads her tiles out, laughing back at Auntie Ying while ting up her points. We start washing tiles again and it grows quiet. Im getting bored and sleepy.
"Oh, I have a story," says Auntie Ying loudly, startling everybody. Auntie Ying has always been the weird auntie, someone lost in her own world. My mother used to say, "Auntie Ying is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening."
"Police arrested Mrs. Emersons son last weekend," Auntie Ying says in a way that sounds as if she were proud to be the first with this big news. "Mrs. told me at church. Too many TV set found in his car."
Auntie Lin quickly says, "Aii-ya, Mrs. Emerson good lady," meaning Mrs. Emerson didnt deserve such a terrible son. But now I see this is also said for the be of Auntie An-mei, whose own you son was arrested two years ago for selling stolen car stereos. Auntie An-mei is rubbiile carefully before discarding it. She looks pained.
"Everybody has TVs in a now," says Auntie Lin, ging the subject. "Our family there all has TV sets—not just blad-white, but color ae! They have everything. So when we asked them what we should buy them, they said nothing, it was enough that we would e to visit them. But we bought them different things anyway, Vd Sony Walkman for the kids. They said, No, dont give it to us, but I think they liked it."
Poor Auntie An-mei rubs her tiles ever harder. I remember my mother telling me about the Hsus trip to a three years ago. Auntie An-mei had saved two thousand dollars, all to spend on her brothers family. She had shown my mother the insides of her heavy suitcases. One was crammed with Sees Nuts & Chews, M & Ms, dy-coated cashews, instant hot chocolate with miniature marshmallows. My mother told me the taihe most ridiculous clothes, all new: bright California-style beachwear, baseball caps, cotton pants with elastic waists, bomber jackets, Stanford sweatshirts, crew socks.
My mother had told her, "Who wants those useless things? They just want money." But Auntie An-mei said her brother was so poor and they were so rich by parison. So she ignored my mothers advid took the heavy bags and their two thousand dollars to a. And when their a tour finally arrived in Hangzhou, the whole family from Ningbo was there to meet them. It wasnt just Auntie An-meis little brother, but also his wifes stepbrothers and stepsisters, and a distant cousin, and that cousins husband and that husbands uhey had all brought their mothers-in-law and children, and even their village friends who were not lucky enough to have overseas ese relatives to show off.
As my mother told it, "Auntie An-mei had cried before she left for a, thinking she would make her brother very rid happy by unist standards. But whe home, she cried to me that everyone had a palm out and she was the only one who left with ay hand."
My mother firmed her suspis. Nobody wahe sweatshirts, those useless clothes. The M & Ms were thrown in the air, gone. And when the suitcases were emptied, the relatives asked what else the Hsus had brought.
Auntie An-mei and Uncle Gee were shaken down, not just for two thousand dollars worth of TVs and refrigerators but also for a nights lodging for twenty-six people in the Overlooking the Lake Hotel, for three baables at a restaurant that catered to rich fners, for three special gifts for each relative, and finally, for a loan of five thousand yuan in fn exge to a cousins so-called uncle who wao buy a motorcycle but who later disappeared food along with t<s>..</s>he money. Wherain pulled out of Hangzhou the day, the Hsus found themselves depleted of some housand dollars worth of goodwill. Months later, after an inspiring Christmastime service at the First ese Baptist Church, Auntie Aried to recoup her loss by saying it truly was more blessed to give than to receive, and my mreed, her longtime friend had blessings for at least several lifetimes.
Listening now to Auntie Lin bragging about the virtues of her family in a, I realize that Auntie Lin is oblivious to Auntie An-meis pain. Is Auntie Lin being mean, or is it that my mother old anybody but me the shameful story of Auntie An-meis greedy family?
"So, Jing-mei, you go to school now?" says Auntie Lin.
"Her name is Juhey all go by their Ameriames," says Auntie Ying.
"Thats okay," I say, and I really mean it. In fact, its even being fashionable for Ameri-born ese to use their ese names.
"Im not in school anymore, though," I say. "That was more than ten years ago."
Auntie Lins eyebrows arch. "Maybe Im thinking of someone else daughter," she says, but I knht away shes lying. I know my mother probably told her I was going back to school to finish my degree, because somewhere back, maybe just six months ago, we were again having this argument about my being a failure, a "college drop-off," about my going back to finish.
On<u></u>ce again I had told my mother what she wao hear: "Youre right. Ill look into it."
I had always assumed we had an unspoken uanding about these things: that she didnt really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once again: My mother and I never really uood one another. We translated each others meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate.
Auntie Lin and my mother were both best friends and aremies who spent a lifetime paring their children. I was one month older than Waverly Jong, Auntie Lins prized daughter. From the time we were babies, our mothers pared the creases in our belly buttons, hoely our earlobes were, how fast we healed when we scraped our knees, how thid dark our hair, how many shoes we wore out in one year, and later, how smart Waverly laying chess, how many trophies she had won last month, how many neers had printed her name, how many cities she had visited.
I know my mother resented listening to Auntie Lin talk about Waverly when she had nothing to e back with. At first my mother tried to cultivate some hidden genius in me. She did housework for an old retired piano teacher down the hall who gave me lessons and free use of a piano to practi in exge. When I failed to bee a cert pianist, or even an apanist for the church youth choir, she finally explaihat I was late-blooming, like Einstein, who everyohought was retarded until he discovered a bomb.
Now it is Auntie Ying who wins this hand of mah jong, so we t points and begin again.
"Did you know Lena move to Woodside?" asks Auntie Ying with obvious pride, looking down at the tiles, talking to no one in particular. She quickly erases her smile and tries for some modesty. "Of course, its not best house in neighborhood, not million-dollar house, not yet. But its good iment. Better than payi. Better than somebody putting you uheir thumb to rub you out."
So now I know Auntie Yings daughter, Lena, told her about my beied from my apartment on lower Russian Hill. Even though Lena and I are still friends, we have grown naturally cautious about telling each other too much. Still, what little we say to one another often es ba anuise. Its the same old game, everybody talking in circles.
"Its getting late," I say after we finish the round. I start to stand up, but Auntie Lin pushes me back down into the chair.
"Stay, stay. We talk awhile, get to know you again," she says. "Been a long time."
I know this is a polite gesture on the Joy Luck aunties part—a protest when actually they are just as eager to see me go as I am to leave. "No, I really must go now, thank you, thank you," I say, glad I remembered how the pretense goes.
"But you must stay! We have something important to tell you, from your mother," Auntie Ying blurts out ioo-loud voice. The others look unfortable, as if this were not how they inteo break some sort of bad o me.
I sit down. Auntie An-mei leaves the room quickly aurns with a bowl of peanuts, then quietly shuts the door. Everybody is quiet, as if nobody knew where to begin.
It is Auntie Ying who finally speaks. "I think your mother die with an important thought on her mind," she says in halting English. And then she begins to speak in ese, calmly, softly.
"Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother. She loved you very much, more than her own life. And thats why you uand why a mother like this could never fet her other daughters. She khey were alive, and before she died she wao find her daughters in a."
The babies in Kweilin, I think. I was not those babies. The babies in a sling on her shoulder. Her other daughters. And now I feel as if I were in Kweilin amidst the bombing and I see these babies lying on the side of the road, their red thumbs popped out of their mouths, screaming to be reclaimed. Somebody took them away. Theyre safe. And now my mothers left me forever, gone back to a to get these babies. I barely hear Auntie Yings voice.
"She had searched for years, writteers bad forth," says Auntie Ying. "And last year she got an address. She was going to tell your father soon. Aii-ya, what a shame. A lifetime of waiting."
Auntie An-mei interrupts with aed voice: "So your aunties and I, we wrote to this address," she says. "We say that a certain party, your mother, want to meet another certain party. And this party write back to us. They are your sisters, Jing-mei."
My sisters, I repeat to myself, saying these two words together for the first time.
Auntie An-mei is holding a sheet of paper as thin as ing tissue. In perfectly straight vertical rows I see ese characters written in blue fountain-pen ink. A word is smudged. A tear? I take the letter with shaking hands, marveling at how smart my sisters must be to be able to read and write ese.
The aunties are all smiling at me, as though I had been a dying person who has now miraculously recovered. Auntie Ying is handing me another envelope. Inside is a check made out to June Woo for $1,200. I t believe it.
"My sisters are sending me money?" I ask.
"No, no," says Auntie Lin with her mock exasperated voice. "Every year we save our mah jong winnings f ba fancy restaurant. Most times your mother win, so most is her money. We add just a little, so you go Hong Kong, take a train to Shanghai, see your sisters. Besides, we all getting too rich, too fat." she pats her stomach for proof.
"See my sisters," I say numbly. I am awed by this prospect, trying to imagine what I would see. And I am embarrassed by the end-of-the-year-ba lie my aunties have told to mask their generosity. I am g now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not uanding this loyalty to my mother.
"You must see your sisters ahem about your mothers death," says Auntie Ying. "But most important, you must tell them about her life. The mother they did not know, they must now know."
"See my sisters, tell them about my mother," I say, nodding. "What will I say? What I tell them about my mother? I dont know anything. She was my mother."
The aunties are looking at me as if I had bee crazy right before their eyes.
"Not know your own mother?" cries Auntie An-mei with disbelief. "How you say? Your mother is in your bones!"
"Tell them stories of your family here. How she became success," offers Auntie Lin.
"Tell them stories she told you, lessons she taught, what you know about her mind that has bee your mind," says Auntie Ying. "You mother very smart lady."
I hear more choruses of "Tell them, tell them" as each Auntie frantically tries to think what should be passed on.
"Her kindness."
"Her smartness."
"Her dutiful nature to family."
"Her hopes, things that matter to her."
"The excellent dishes she cooked."
"Imagine, a daughter not knowing her own mother!"
And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. Ihey see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in ese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed Ameri-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does . They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any eg hope passed from geion to geion.
"I will tell them everything," I say simply, and the aunties look at me with doubtful faces.
"I will remember everything about her ahem," I say more firmly. And gradually, one by ohey smile and pat my hand. They still look troubled, as if something were out of balance. But they also look hopeful that what I say will bee true. What more they ask? What more I promise?
They go back to eating their soft boiled peanuts, saying stories among themselves. They are young girls again, dreaming of good times in the past and good times yet to e. A brother from Ningbo who makes his sister cry with joy wheurns housand dollars plus i. A you son whose stereo and TV repair business is so good he sends leftovers to a. A daughter whose babies are able to swim like fish in a fancy pool in Woodside. Such good stories. The best. They are the lucky ones.
And I am sitting at my mothers place at the mah jong table, on the East, where things begin.
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