The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club[1]

(Excerpts)

Jing--Mei Woo[2]

Two Kinds

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America.You could open a restaurant.You could work for the government and get good retirement.You could buy a house with almost no money down.You could become rich.You could become instantly famous.

“Of course you can be prodigy, too,” my mother told me when I was nine.“You can be best anything.What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky.”

America was where all my mother’s hopes lay.She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.But she never looked back with regret.There were so many ways for things to get better.

We didn’t immediately pick the right kind of prodigy.At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple.We’d watch Shirley’s old movies on TV as though they were training films.My mother would poke my arm and say."Ni kan”—You watch.And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying, “Oh my goodness.”

“Ni kan,” said my mother as Shirley’s eyes flooded with tears.“You already know how.Don’t need talent for crying!”

Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple， she took me to a beauty training school in the Mission district[3] and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking.Instead of getting big fat curls， I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz.My mother dragged me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair.

“You look like Negro Chinese,” she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose.

The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again.“Peter Pan[4] is very popular these days，” the instructor assured my mother.I now had hair the length of a boy’s， with straight-across bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows.I liked the haircut and it made me actually look forward to my future fame.

In fact， in the beginning， I was just as excited as my mother， maybe even more so.I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images，trying each one on for size.I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtains， waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes.I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger，[5] crying with holy indignity.I was Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air.

In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect.My mother and father would adore me.I would be beyond reproach.I would never feel the need to sulk for anything.

But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient.“If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good,” it warned.“And then you’ll always be nothing.”

Every night after dinner， my mother and I would sit at the Formica kitchen table.She would present new tests， taking her examples from stories of amazing children she had read in Ripley’s Believe It or Not，[6] or Good Housekeeping，[7] Reader’s Digest，[8] and a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our bathroom.My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned.And since she cleaned many houses each week， we had a great assortment.She would look through them all，searching for stories about remarkable children.

The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the states and even most of the European countries.A teacher was quoted as saying the little boy could also pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly.

“What’s the capital of Finland?” my mother asked me, looking at the magazine story.

All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in Chinatown.“Nairobi!” I guessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of.She checked to see if that was possibly one way to pronounce “Helsinki” before showing me the answer.

The tests got harder—multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London.

One night I had to look at a page from the Bible for three minutes and then report everything 1 could remember.“Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundance and ...that’s all 1 remember， Ma，”[9] I said.

And after seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again,something inside of me began to die.I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations.Before going to bed that night, I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink and when I saw only my face staring back—and that it would always be this ordinary face—I began to cry.Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.

And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me— because I had never seen that face before.I looked at my reflection, blinking so I could see more clearly.The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful.This girl and I were the same.I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’ts.I won’t let her change me, I promised myself.I won’t be what I’m not.

So now on nights when my mother presented her tests， I performed listlessly， my head propped on one arm.I pretended to be bored.And I was.I got so bored I started counting the bellows of the foghorns out on the bay while my mother drilled me in other areas.The sound was comforting and reminded me of the cow jumping over the moon.[10] And the next day， I played a game with myself， seeing if my mother would give up on me before eight bellows.After a while I usually counted only one， maybe two bellows at most.At last she was beginning to give up hope.

Two or three months had gone by without any mention of my being a prodigy again.And then one day my mother was watching The Ed Sullivan Show[11] on TV.The TV was old and the sound kept shorting out.Every time my mother got halfway up from the sofa to adjust the set， the sound would go back on and Ed would be talking.As soon as she sat down， Ed would go silent again.She got up， the TV broke into loud piano music.She sat down.Silence.Up and down， back and forth， quiet and loud.It was like a stiff embraceless dance between her and the TV set.Finally she stood by the set with her hand on the sound dial.

She seemed entranced by the music, a little frenzied piano piece with this mesmerizing quality, sort of quick passages and then teasing lilting ones before it returned to the quick playful parts.

“Ni kan,” my mother said, calling me over with hurried hand gestures,“Look here.”

I could see why my mother was fascinated by the music.It was being pounded out by a little Chinese girl, about nine years old, with a Peter Pan haircut.The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple.She was proudly modest like a proper Chinese child.And she also did this fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy skirt of her white dress cascaded slowly to the floor like the petals of a large carnation.

In spite of these warning signs, I wasn’t worried.Our family had no piano and we couldn’t afford to buy one, let alone reams of sheet music and piano lessons.So I could be generous in my comments when my mother bad-mouthed the little girl on TV.

“Play note right, but doesn’t sound good! No singing sound,”complained my mother.

“What are you picking on her for?” I said carelessly.“She’s pretty good.Maybe she’s not the best, but she’s trying hard.” I knew almost immediately I would be sorry I said that.

“Just like you,” she said.“Not the best.Because you not trying.” She gave a little huff as she let go of the sound dial and sat down on the sofa.

The little Chinese girl sat down also to play an encore of “Anitra’s Dance”[12] by Grieg.I remember the song， because later on I had to learn how to play it.

Three days after watching The Ed Sullivan Show, my mother told me what my schedule would be for piano lessons and piano practice.She had talked to Mr.Chong, who lived on the first floor of our apartment building.Mr.Chong was a retired piano teacher and my mother had traded housecleaning services for weekly lessons and a piano for me to practice on every day, two hours a day, from four until six.

When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell.I whined and then kicked my foot a little when 1 couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Why don’t you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano.And even if I could, I wouldn’t go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!” I cried.

My mother slapped me.“Who ask you be genius?” she shouted.“Only ask you be your best.For you sake.You think I want you be genius?Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!”

“So ungrateful,” I heard her mutter in Chinese.“If she had as much talent as she has temper, she would be famous now.”

Mr.Chong, whom I secretly nicknamed Old Chong, was very strange,always tapping his fingers to the silent music of an invisible orchestra.He looked ancient in my eyes.He had lost most of the hair on top of his head and he wore thick glasses and had eyes that always looked tired and sleepy.But he must have been younger than I thought, since he lived with his mother and was not yet married.

I met Old Lady Chong once and that was enough.She had this peculiar smell like a baby that had done something in its pants.And her fingers felt like a dead person’s, like an old peach I once found in the back of the refrigerator; the skin just slid off the meat when I picked it up.

I soon found out why Old Chong had retired from teaching piano.He was deaf.　“Like Beethoven！”[13] he shouted to me.“We’re both listening only in our head！” And he would start to conduct his frantic silent sonatas.

Our lessons went like this.He would open the book and point to different things， explaining their purpose： “Key！ Treble！ Bass！ No sharps or flats！ So this is C major！[14] Listen now and play after me！”

And then he would play the C scale a few times, a simple chord, and then, as if inspired by an old, unreachable itch, he gradually added more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the music was really something quite grand.

I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord, and then I just played some nonsense that sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage cans.Old Chong smiled and applauded and then said, “Very good! But now you must learn to keep time!”

So that’s how I discovered that Old Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I was playing.He went through the motions in half-time.To help me keep rhythm, he stood behind me, pushing down on my right shoulder for every beat.He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so I would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios.He had me curve my hand around an apple and keep that shape when playing chords.He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato like an obedient little soldier.

He taught me all these things, and that was how I also learned I could be lazy and get away with mistakes, lots of mistakes.If I hit the wrong notes because I hadn’t practiced enough, I never corrected myself.I just kept playing in rhythm.And Old Chong kept conducting his own private reverie.

So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance.I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have become a good pianist at that young age.But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

Over the next year, I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way.And then one day I heard my mother and her friend Lindo Jong both talking in a loud bragging tone of voice so others could hear.It was after church, and I was leaning against the brick wall wearing a dress with stiff white petticoats.Auntie Lindo’s daughter, Waverly, who was about my age, was standing farther down the wall about five feet away.We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters squabbling over crayons and dolls.In other words, for the most part, we hated each other.I thought she was snotty.Waverly Jong had gained a certain amount of fame as “Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess Champion.”

“She bring home too many trophy,” lamented Auntie Lindo that Sunday.“All day she play chess.All day I have no time do nothing but dust off her winnings.” She threw a scolding look at Waverly, who pretended not to see her.

“You lucky you don’t have this problem,” said Auntie Lindo with a sigh to my mother.

And my mother squared her shoulders and bragged: “Our problem worser than yours.If we ask Jing-mei wash dish, she hear nothing but music.It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.”

And right then, I was determined to put a stop to her foolish pride.

A few weeks later， Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show which would be held in the church hall.By then， my parents had saved up enough to buy me a secondhand piano， a black Wurlitzer spinet [15]with a scarred bench.It was the showpiece of our living room.

For the talent show， I was to play a piece called “Pleading Child”from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood.[16] It was a simple， moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was.I was supposed to memorize the whole thing， playing the repeat parts twice to make the piece sound longer.But I dawdled over it， playing a few bars and then cheating， looking up to see what notes followed.I never really listened to what I was playing.I daydreamed about being somewhere else， about being someone else.

The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out,touch the rose on the carpet with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, left leg bends, look up and smile.

My parents invited all the couples from the Joy Luck Club to witness my debut.Auntie Lindo and Uncle Tin were there.Waverly and her two older brothers had also come.The first two rows were filled with children both younger and older than I was.The littlest ones got to go first.They recited simple nursery rhymes, squawked out tunes on miniature violins,twirled Hula Hoops, pranced in pink ballet tutus, and when they bowed or curtsied, the audience would sigh in unison, “Awww,” and then clap enthusiastically.

When my turn came, I was very confident.I remember my childish excitement.It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist.I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness.I remember thinking to myself.This is it! This is it! I looked out over the audience, at my mother’s blank face, my father’s yawn, Auntie Lindo’s stiff-lipped smile, Waverly’s sulky expression.I had on a white dress layered with sheets of lace, and a pink bow in my Peter Pan haircut.As I sat down I envisioned people jumping to their feet and Ed Sullivan rushing up to introduce me to everyone on TV.

And I started to play.It was so beautiful.I was so caught up in how lovely I looked that at first I didn’t worry how I would sound.So it was a surprise to me when I hit the first wrong note and I realized something didn’t sound quite right.And then I hit another and another followed that.A chill started at the top of my head and began to trickle down.Yet I couldn’t stop playing, as though my hands were bewitched.I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back, like a train switching to the right track.I played this strange jumble through two repeats, the sour notes staying with me all the way to the end.

When I stood up, I discovered my legs were shaking.Maybe I had just been nervous and the audience, like Old Chong, had seen me go through the right motions and had not heard anything wrong at all.I swept my right foot out, went down on my knee, looked up and smiled.The room was quiet, except for Old Chong, who was beaming and shouting.“Bravo! Bravo! Well done!” But then I saw my mother’s face, her stricken face.The audience clapped weakly, and as I walked back to my chair, with my whole face quivering as I tried not to cry, I heard a little boy whisper loudly to his mother, “That was awful,” and the mother whispered back,“Well, she certainly tried.”

And now I realized how many people were in the audience, the whole world it seemed.I was aware of eyes burning into my back.I felt the shame of my mother and father as they sat stiffly throughout the rest of the show.

We could have escaped during intermission.Pride and some strange sense of honor must have anchored my parents to their chairs.And so we watched it all： the eighteen-year-old boy with a fake mustache who did a magic show and juggled flaming hoops while riding a unicycle.The breasted girl with white makeup who sang from Madama Butterfly and got honorable mention.[17] And the eleven-year-old boy who won first prize playing a tricky violin song that sounded like a busy bee.

After the show, the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St.Clairs from the Joy Luck Club came up to my mother and father.

“Lots of talented kids,” Auntie Lindo said vaguely, smiling broadly.

“That was somethin’ else,” said my father, and I wondered if he was referring to me in a humorous way, or whether he even remembered what I had done.

Waverly looked at me and shrugged her shoulders.“You aren’t a genius like me,” she said matter-of-factly.And if I hadn’t felt so bad, I would have pulled her braids and punched her stomach.

But my mother’s expression was what devastated me: a quiet, blank look that said she had lost everything.I felt the same way, and it seemed as i f everybody were now coming up, like gawkers at the scene of an accident, to see what parts were actually missing.When we got on the bus to go home, my father was humming the busy-bee tune and my mother was silent.I kept thinking she wanted to wait until we got home before shouting at me.But when my father unlocked the door to our apartment,my mother walked in and then went to the back, into the bedroom.No accusations.No blame.And in a way, I felt disappointed.I had been waiting for her to start shouting, so I could shout back and cry and blame her for all my misery.

I assumed my talent-show fiasco meant I never had to play the piano again.But two days later, after school, my mother came out of the kitchen and saw me watching TV.

“Four clock,” she reminded me as if it were any other day.I was stunned, as though she were asking me to go through the talent-show torture again.I wedged myself more tightly in front of the TV.

“Turn off TV,” she called from the kitchen five minutes later.

I didn’t budge.And then I decided.I didn’t have to do what my mother said anymore.I wasn’t her slave.This wasn’t China.I had listened to her before and look what happened.She was the stupid one.

She came out from the kitchen and stood in the arched entryway of the living room.“Four clock,” she said once again, louder.

“I’m not going to play anymore,” I said nonchalantly.“Why should I?I’m not a genius.”

She walked over and stood in front of the TV.I saw her chest was heaving up and down in an angry way.

“No!” I said, and I now felt stronger, as if my true self had finally emerged.So this was what had been inside me all along.

“No! I won’t!” I screamed.

She yanked me by the arm, pulled me off the floor, snapped off the TV.She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me toward the piano as I kicked the throw rugs under my feet.She lifted me up and onto the hard bench.I was sobbing by now, looking at her bitterly.Her chest was heaving even more and her mouth was open, smiling crazily as if she were pleased I was crying.

“You want me to be someone that I’m not!” I sobbed.“I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!”

“Only two kinds of daughters,” she shouted in Chinese.“Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house.Obedient daughter!”

“Then I wish I wasn’t your daughter.I wish you weren’t my mother,”I shouted.As I said these things I got scared.It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, as if this awful side of me had surfaced, at last.

“Too late change this,” said my mother shrilly.

And I could sense her anger rising to its breaking point.I wanted to see it spill over.And that’s when I remembered the babies she had lost in China， the ones we never talked about.[18] “Then I wish I’d never been born！” I shouted.“I wish I were dead！ Like them.”

It was as if I had said the magic words.Alakazam！[19]—and her face went blank， her mouth closed， her arms went slack， and she backed out of the room， stunned， as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf，thin， brittle， lifeless.

It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me.In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will,my right to fall short of expectations.I didn’t get straight As.I didn’t become class president.I didn’t get into Stanford.I dropped out of college.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be.I could only be me.

And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench.All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unspeakable.So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable.

And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?

For after our struggle at the piano, she never mentioned my playing again.The lessons stopped.The lid to the piano was closed, shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dreams.

So she surprised me.A few years ago, she offered to give me the piano, for my thirtieth birthday.I had not played in all those years.I saw the offer as a sign of forgiveness, a tremendous burden removed.

“Are you sure?” I asked shyly.“I mean, won’t you and Dad miss it?”

“No, this your piano,” she said firmly.“Always your piano.You only one can play.”

“Well.I probably can’t play anymore,” I said.“It’s been years.”

“You pick up fast,” said my mother, as if she knew this was certain.“You have natural talent.You could been genius if you want to.”

“No I couldn’t.”

“You just not trying,” said my mother.And she was neither angry nor sad.She said it as if to announce a fact that could never be disproved.“Take it,” she said.

But I didn’t at first.It was enough that she had offered it to me.And after that, every time I saw it in my parents’ living room, standing in front of the bay windows, it made me feel proud, as if it were a shiny trophy I had won back.

Last week I sent a tuner over to my parents’ apartment and had the piano reconditioned, for purely sentimental reasons.My mother had died a few months before and I had been getting things in order for my father, a little bit at a time.I put the jewelry in special silk pouches.The sweaters she had knitted in yellow, pink, bright orange—all the colors I hated—I put those in moth-proof boxes.I found some old Chinese silk dresses, the kind with little slits up the sides.I rubbed the old silk against my skin, then wrapped them in tissue and decided to take them home with me.

After I had the piano tuned, I opened the lid and touched the keys.It sounded even richer than I remembered.Really, it was a very good piano.Inside the bench were the same exercise notes with handwritten scales, the same secondhand music books with their covers held together with yellow tape.

I opened up the Schumann book to the dark little piece I had played at the recital.It was on the left-hand side of the page, “Pleading Child.” It looked more difficult than I remembered.I played a few bars, surprised at how easily the notes came back to me.

And for the first time， or so it seemed， I noticed the piece on the right-hand side.It was called “Perfectly Contented.” I tried to play this one as well.It had a lighter melody but the same flowing rhythm and turned out to be quite easy.“Pleading Child” was shorter but slower； “Perfectly Contented”[20] was longer but faster.And after I played them both a few times， I realized they were two halves of the same song.

Best Quality

Five months ago， after a crab dinner celebrating Chinese New Year，my mother gave me my “life’s importance，”[21] a jade pendant on a gold chain.The pendant was not a piece of jewelry I would have chosen for myself.It was almost the size of my little finger， a mottled green and white color， intricately carved.To me， the whole effect looked wrong： too large，too green， too garishly ornate.I stuffed the necklace in my lacquer box and forgot about it.

But these days, I think about my life’s importance.I wonder what it means, because my mother died three months ago, six days before my thirty-sixth birthday.And she’s the only person I could have asked, to tell me about life’s importance, to help me understand my grief.

I now wear that pendant every day.I think the carvings mean something， because shapes and details， which I never seem to notice until after they’re pointed out to me， always mean something to Chinese people.I know I could ask Auntie Lindo， Auntie An-mei， or other Chinese friends，but I also know they would tell me a meaning that is different from what my mother intended.What if they tell me this curving line branching into three oval shapes is a pomegranate[22] and that my mother was wishing me fertility and posterity？ What if my mother really meant the carvings were a branch of pears to give me purity and honesty？ Or ten-thousand-year droplets from the magic mountain， giving me my life’s direction and a thousand years of fame and immortality？

And because I think about this all the time, I always notice other people wearing these same jade pendants—not the flat rectangular medallions or the round white ones with holes in the middle but ones like mine, a two-inch oblong of bright apple green.It’s as though we were all sworn to the same secret covenant, so secret we don’t even know what we belong to.Last weekend, for example, I saw a bartender wearing one.As I fingered mine, I asked him, “Where’d you get yours?”

“My mother gave it to me,” he said.

I asked him why, which is a nosy question that only one Chinese person can ask another; in a crowd of Caucasians, two Chinese people are already like family.

“She gave it to me after I got divorced.I guess my mother’s telling me I’m still worth something.”

And I knew by the wonder in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant.

At last year’s Chinese New Year dinner, my mother had cooked eleven crabs, one crab for each person, plus an extra.She and I had bought them on Stockton Street in Chinatown.We had walked down the steep hill from my parents’ flat, which was actually the first floor of a six-unit building they owned on Leavenworth near California.Their place was only six blocks from where I worked as a copywriter for a small ad agency,so two or three times a week I would drop by after work.My mother always had enough food to insist that I stay for dinner.

That year, Chinese New Year fell on a Thursday, so I got off work early to help my mother shop.My mother was seventy-one, but she still walked briskly along, her small body straight and purposeful, carrying a colorful flowery plastic bag.I dragged the metal shopping cart behind.

Every time I went with her to Chinatown, she pointed out other Chinese women her age.“Hong Kong ladies,” she said, eyeing two finely dressed women in long, dark mink coats and perfect black hairdos.“Cantonese, village people,” she whispered as we passed women in knitted caps, bent over in layers of padded tops and men’s vests.And my mother—wearing light-blue polyester pants, a red sweater, and a child’s green down jacket—she didn’t look like anybody else.She had come here in 1949, at the end of a long journey that started in Kweilin in 1944; she had gone north to Chungking, where she met my father, and then they went southeast to Shanghai and fled farther south to Hong Kong, where the boat departed for San Francisco.My mother came from many different directions.

And now she was huffing complaints in rhythm to her walk downhill.“Even you don’t want them， you stuck，” she said.She was fuming again about the tenants who lived on the second floor.Two years ago， she had tried to evict them on the pretext that relatives from China were coming to live there.But the couple saw through her ruse to get around rent control.[23]They said they wouldn’t budge until she produced the relatives.And after that I had to listen to her recount every new injustice this couple inflicted on her.

My mother said the gray-haired man put too many bags in the garbage cans: “Cost me extra.”

And the woman, a very elegant artist type with blond hair, had supposedly painted the apartment in terrible red and green colors.“Awful,”moaned my mother.“And they take bath, two three times every day.Running the water, running, running, running, never stop!”

“Last week,” she said, growing angrier at each step, “the waigoren accuse me.” She referred to all Caucasians as waigoren, foreigners.“They say I put poison in a fish, kill that cat.”

“What cat?” I asked, even though I knew exactly which one she was talking about.I had seen that cat many times.It was a big one-eared tom with gray stripes who had learned to jump on the outside sill of my mother’s kitchen window.My mother would stand on her tiptoes and bang the kitchen window to scare the cat away.And the cat would stand his ground, hissing back in response to her shouts.

“That cat always raising his tail to put a stink on my door,”complained my mother.

I once saw her chase him from her stairwell with a pot of boiling water.I was tempted to ask if she really had put poison in a fish, but I had learned never to take sides against my mother.

“So what happened to that cat?” I asked.

“That cat gone！ Disappear！” She threw her hands in the air and smiled， looking pleased for a moment before the scowl came back.“And that man， he raise his hand like this， show me his ugly fist and call me worst Fukien[24] landlady.I not from Fukien.Hunh！ He know nothing！” she said， satisfied she had put him in his place.

On Stockton Street, we wandered from one fish store to another,looking for the liveliest crabs.

“Don’t get a dead one,” warned my mother in Chinese.“Even a beggar won’t eat a dead one.”

I poked the crabs with a pencil to see how feisty they were.If a crab grabbed on, I lifted it out and into a plastic sack.I lifted one crab this way,only to find one of its legs had been clamped onto by another crab.In the brief tug-of-war, my crab lost a limb.

“Put it back,” whispered my mother.“A missing leg is a bad sign on Chinese New Year.”

But a man in a white smock came up to us.He started talking loudly to my mother in Cantonese, and my mother, who spoke Cantonese so poorly it sounded just like her Mandarin, was talking loudly back, pointing to the crab and its missing leg.And after more sharp words, that crab and its leg were put into our sack.

“Doesn’t matter,” said my mother.“This number eleven, extra one.”

Back home, my mother unwrapped the crabs from their newspaper liners and then dumped them into a sinkful of cold water.She brought out her old wooden board and cleaver, then chopped the ginger and scallions,and poured soy sauce and sesame oil into a shallow dish.The kitchen smelled of wet newspapers and Chinese fragrances.

Then, one by one, she grabbed the crabs by their back, hoisted them out of the sink and shook them dry and awake.The crabs flexed their legs in midair between sink and stove.She stacked the crabs in a multileveled steamer that sat over two burners on the stove, put a lid on top, and lit the burners.I couldn’t bear to watch so I went into the dining room.

When I was eight, I had played with a crab my mother had brought home for my birthday dinner.I had poked it, and jumped back every time its claws reached out.And I determined that the crab and I had come to a great understanding when it finally heaved itself up and walked clear across the counter.But before I could even decide what to name my new pet, my mother had dropped it into a pot of cold water and placed it on the tall stove.I had watched with growing dread, as the water heated up and the pot began to clatter with this crab trying to tap his way out of his own hot soup.To this day, I remember that crab screaming as he thrust one bright red claw out over the side of the bubbling pot.It must have been my own voice, because now I know, of course, that crabs have no vocal cords.And I also try to convince myself that they don’t have enough brains to know the difference between a hot bath and a slow death.

For our New Year celebration， my mother had invited her longtime friends Lindo and Tin Jong.Without even asking， my mother knew that meant including the Jongs’ children： their son Vincent， who was thirty-eight years old and still living at home， and their daughter， Waverly，who was around my age.Vincent called to see if he could also bring his girlfriend， Lisa Lum.Waverly said she would bring her new fiancé， Rich Schields， who， like Waverly， was a tax attorney at Price Waterhouse.[25]And she added that Shoshana， her four-year-old daughter from a previous marriage， wanted to know if my parents had a VCR so she could watch Pinocchio，[26] just in case she got bored.My mother also reminded me to invite Mr.Chong， my old piano teacher， who still lived three blocks away at our old apartment.

Including my mother, father, and me, that made eleven people.But my mother had counted only ten, because to her way of thinking Shoshana was just a child and didn’t count, at least not as far as crabs were concerned.She hadn’t considered that Waverly might not think the same way.

When the platter of steaming crabs was passed around, Waverly was first and she picked the best crab, the brightest, the plumpest, and put it on her daughter’s plate.And then she picked the next best for Rich and another good one for herself.And because she had learned this skill, of choosing the best, from her mother, it was only natural that her mother knew how to pick the next-best ones for her husband, her son, his girlfriend, and herself.And my mother, of course, considered the four remaining crabs and gave the one that looked the best to Old Chong,because he was nearly ninety and deserved that kind of respect, and then she picked another good one for my father.That left two on the platter: a large crab with a faded orange color, and number eleven, which had the torn-off leg.

My mother shook the platter in front of me.“Take it, already cold,”said my mother.

I was not too fond of crab, ever since I saw my birthday crab boiled alive, but I knew I could not refuse.That’s the way Chinese mothers show they love their children, not through hugs and kisses but with stern offerings of steamed dumplings, duck’s gizzards, and crab.

I thought 1 was doing the right thing, taking the crab with the missing leg.But my mother cried, “No! No! Big one, you eat it.I cannot finish.”

I remember the hungry sounds everybody else was making—cracking the shells, sucking the crab meat out.scraping out tidbits with the ends of chopsticks—and my mother’s quiet plate.I was the only one who noticed her prying open the shell, sniffing the crab’s body and then getting up to go to the kitchen, plate in hand.She returned, without the crab, but with more bowls of soy sauce, ginger, and scallions.

And then as stomachs filled, everybody started talking at once.

“Suyuan[27]！” called Auntie Lindo to my mother.“Why you wear that color？” Auntie Lindo gestured with a crab leg to my mother’s red sweater.

“How can you wear this color anymore? Too young!” she scolded.

My mother acted as though this were a compliment.“Emporium Capwell，”[28] she said.“Nineteen dollar.Cheaper than knit it myself.”

Auntie Lindo nodded her head, as if the color were worth this price.And then she pointed her crab leg toward her future son-in-law, Rich, and said, “See how this one doesn’t know how to eat Chinese food.”

“Crab isn’t Chinese,” said Waverly in her complaining voice.It was amazing how Waverly still sounded the way she did twenty-five years ago,when we were ten and she had announced to me in that same voice, “You aren’t a genius like me.”

Auntie Lindo looked at her daughter with exasperation.“How do you know what is Chinese, what is not Chinese?” And then she turned to Rich and said with much authority, “Why you are not eating the best part?”

And I saw Rich smiling back, with amusement, and not humility,showing in his face.He had the same coloring as the crab on his plate:reddish hair, pale cream skin, and large dots of orange freckles.While he smirked, Auntie Lindo demonstrated the proper technique, poking her chopstick into the orange spongy-part: “You have to dig in here, get this out.The brain is most tastiest, you try.”

Waverly and Rich grimaced at each other, united in disgust.I heard Vincent and Lisa whisper to each other, “Gross,” and then they snickered too.

Uncle Tin started laughing to himself, to let us know he also had a private joke.Judging by his preamble of snorts and leg slaps, I figured he must have practiced this joke many times: “I tell my daughter, Hey, why be poor? Marry rich!” He laughed loudly and then nudged Lisa, who was sitting next to him, “Hey, don’t you get it? Look what happen.She gonna marry this guy here.Rich.‘Cause I tell her to, marry Rich.”

“When are you guys getting married?” asked Vincent.

“I should ask you the same thing,” said Waverly.Lisa looked embarrassed when Vincent ignored the question.

“Mom, I don’t like crab!” whined Shoshana.

“Nice haircut,” Waverly said to me from across the table.

“Thanks, David always does a great job.”

“You mean you still go to that guy on Howard Street?” Waverly asked,arching one eyebrow.“Aren’t you afraid?”

I could sense the danger, but I said it anyway: “What do you mean,afraid? He’s always very good.”

“I mean, he is gay,” Waverly said.“He could have AIDS.And he is cutting your hair, which is like cutting a living tissue.Maybe I’m being paranoid, being a mother, but you just can’t be too safe these days....”

And I sat there feeling as if my hair were coated with disease.

“You should go see my guy,” said Waverly.“Mr.Rory.He does fabulous work, although he probably charges more than you’re used to.”

1 felt like screaming.She could be so sneaky with her insults.Every time I asked her the simplest of tax questions, for example, she could turn the conversation around and make it seem as if I were too cheap to pay for her legal advice.

She’d say things like, “I really don’t like to talk about important tax matters except in my office.I mean, what if you say something casual over lunch and I give you some casual advice.And then you follow it, and it’s wrong because you didn’t give me the full information.I’d feel terrible.And you would too, wouldn’t you?”

At that crab dinner, I was so mad about what she said about my hair that I wanted to embarrass her, to reveal in front of everybody how petty she was.So I decided to confront her about the free-lance work I’d done for her firm, eight pages of brochure copy on its tax services.The firm was now more than thirty days late in paying my invoice.

“Maybe I could afford Mr.Rory’s prices if someone’s firm paid me on time,” I said with a teasing grin.And I was pleased to see Waverly’s reaction.She was genuinely flustered, speechless.

I couldn’t resist rubbing it in: “I think it’s pretty ironic that a big accounting firm can’t even pay its own bills on time.　I mean, really.Waverly, what kind of place are you working for?”

Her face was dark and quiet.

“Hey, hey, you girls, no more fighting!” said my father, as if Waverly and I were still children arguing over tricycles and crayon colors.

“That’s right, we don’t want to talk about this now,” said Waverly quietly.

“So how do you think the Giants[29] are going to do？” said Vincent，trying to be funny.Nobody laughed.

I wasn’t about to let her slip away this time.“Well, every time I call you on the phone, you can’t talk about it then either,” I said.

Waverly looked at Rich, who shrugged his shoulders.She turned back to me and sighed.

“Listen, June, I don’t know how to tell you this.That stuff you wrote,well, the firm decided it was unacceptable.”

“You’re lying.You said it was great.”

Waverly sighed again.“I know I did.I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.I was trying to see if we could fix it somehow.But it won’t work.”

And just like that, I was starting to flail, tossed without warning into deep water, drowning and desperate.“Most copy needs fine-tuning,” I said.“It’s ...normal not to be perfect the first time.I should have explained the process better.”

“June, I really don’t think ...”

“Rewrites are free.I’m just as concerned about making it perfect as you are.”

Waverly acted as if she didn’t even hear me.“I’m trying to convince them to at least pay you for some of your time.I know you put a lot of work into it....I owe you at least that for even suggesting you do it.”

“Just tell me what they want changed.I’ll call you next week so we can go over it, line by line.”

“June—I can’t,” Waverly said with cool finality, “It’s just not ...sophisticated.I’m sure what you write for your other clients is wonderful.But we’re a big firm.We need somebody who understands that ...our style.” She said this touching her hand to her chest, as if she were referring to her style.

Then she laughed in a lighthearted way.“I mean, really, June.” And then she started speaking in a deep television-announcer voice: “Three benefits, three needs, three reasons to buy ...Satisfaction guaranteed ...for today’s and tomorrow’s tax needs ...”

She said this in such a funny way that everybody thought it was a good joke and laughed.And then, to make matters worse, I heard my mother saying to Waverly: “True, cannot teach style.June not sophisticate like you.Must be born this way.”

I was surprised at myself, how humiliated I felt.I had been outsmarted by Waverly once again, and now betrayed by my own mother.I was smiling so hard my lower lip was twitching from the strain.I tried to find something else to concentrate on, and I remember picking up my plate,and then Mr.Chong’s, as if I were clearing the table, and seeing so sharply through my tears the chips on the edges of these old plates, wondering why my mother didn’t use the new set I had bought her five years ago.

The table was littered with crab carcasses.Waverly and Rich lit cigarettes and put a crab shell between them for an ashtray.Shoshana had wandered over to the piano and was banging notes out with a crab claw in each hand.Mr.Chong, who had grown totally deaf over the years, watched Shoshana and applauded: “Bravo! Bravo!” And except for his strange shouts, nobody said a word.My mother went to the kitchen and returned with a plate of oranges sliced into wedges.My father poked at the remnants of his crab.Vincent cleared his throat, twice, and then patted Lisa’s hand.

It was Auntie Lindo who finally spoke: “Waverly, you let her try again.You make her do too fast first time.Of course she cannot get it right.”

I could hear my mother eating an orange slice.She was the only person I knew who crunched oranges, making it sound as if she were eating crisp apples instead.The sound of it was worse than gnashing teeth.

“Good one take time,” continued Auntie Lindo, nodding her head in agreement with herself.

“Put in lotta action,” advised Uncle Tin.“Lotta action, boy, that’s what I like.Hey.that’s all you need, make it right.”

“Probably not,” I said, and smiled before carrying the plates to the sink.

That was the night， in the kitchen， that I realized I was no better than who I was.I was a copywriter.I worked for a small ad agency.I promised every new client， “We can provide the sizzle for the meat.”[30] The sizzle always boiled down to “Three Benefits， Three Needs， Three Reasons to Buy.” The meat was always coaxial cable，[31] T-l multiplexers，[32] protocol converters，[33] and the like.I was very good at what I did， succeeding at something small like that.

I turned on the water to wash the dishes.And I no longer felt angry at Waverly.I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no one there.

I picked up my mother’s plate, the one she had carried into the kitchen at the start of the dinner.The crab was untouched.I lifted the shell and smelled the crab.Maybe it was because I didn’t like crab in the first place.I couldn’t tell what was wrong with it.

After everybody left, my mother joined me in the kitchen.I was putting dishes away.She put water on for more tea and sat down at the small kitchen table.I waited for her to chastise me.

“Good dinner, Ma,” I said politely.

“Not so good,” she said, jabbing at her mouth with a toothpick.

“What happened to your crab? Why’d you throw it away?”

“Not so good,” she said again.“That crab die.Even a beggar don’t want it.”

“How could you tell? I didn’t smell anything wrong.”

“Can tell even before cook!” She was standing now, looking out the kitchen window into the night.“I shake that crab before cook.His legs—droopy.His mouth—wide open, already like a dead person.”

“Why’d you cook it if you knew it was already dead?” “I thought ...maybe only just die.Maybe taste not too bad.But I can smell, dead taste,not firm.”

“What if someone else had picked chat crab?”

My mother looked at me and smiled.“Only you pick that crab.Nobody else take it.I already know this.Everybody else want best quality.You thinking different.”

She said it in a way as if this were proof—proof of something good.She always said things that didn’t make any sense, that sounded both good and bad at the same time.

I was putting away the last of the chipped plates and then I remembered something else.“Ma, why don’t you ever use those new dishes I bought you? If you didn’t like them, you should have told me.I could have changed the pattern.”

“Of course, I like,” she said, irritated.“Sometime I think something is so good, I want to save it.Then I forget I save it.”

And then, as if she had just now remembered, she unhooked the clasp of her gold necklace and took it off, wadding the chain and the jade pendant in her palm.She grabbed my hand and put the necklace in my palm, then shut my fingers around it.

“No, Ma,” I protested.“I can’t take this.”

“Nala, nala”—Take it, take it—she said, as if she were scolding me.And then she continued in Chinese.“For a long time, I wanted to give you this necklace.See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin,then you know my meaning.This is your life’s importance.”

I looked at the necklace, the pendant with the light green jade.I wanted to give it back.I didn’t want to accept it.And yet I also felt as if I had already swallowed it.

“You’re giving this to me only because of what happened tonight,” I finally said.“What happen?”

“What Waverly said.What everybody said.”

“Tss! Why you listen to her? Why you want to follow behind her,chasing her words? She is like this crab.” My mother poked a shell in the garbage can.“Always walking sideways, moving crooked.You can make your legs go the other way.”

I put the necklace on.It felt cool.

“Not so good, this jade,” she said matter-of-factly, touching the pendant, and then she added in Chinese: “This is young jade.It is a very light color now, but if you wear it every day it will become more green.”

My father hasn’t eaten well since my mother died.So I am here, in the kitchen, to cook him dinner.I’m slicing tofu.I’ve decided to make him a spicy bean-curd dish.My mother used to tell me how hot things restore the spirit and health.But I’m making this mostly because I know my father loves this dish and I know how to cook it.I like the smell of it: ginger,scallions, and a red chili sauce that tickles my nose the minute I open the jar.

Above me, I hear the old pipes shake into action with a thunk! and then the water running in my sink dwindles to a trickle.One of the tenants upstairs must be taking a shower.I remember my mother complaining:“Even you don’t want them, you stuck.” And now I know what she meant.

As I rinse the tofu in the sink, I am startled by a dark mass that appears suddenly at the window.It’s the one-eared tomcat from upstairs.He’s balancing on the sill, rubbing his flank against the window.

My mother didn’t kill that damn cat after all, and I’m relieved.And then I see this cat rubbing more vigorously on the window and he starts to raise his tail.

“Get away from there!” I shout, and slap my hand on the window three times.But the cat just narrows his eyes, flattens his one ear, and hisses back at me.

A Pair of Tickets

The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different.I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain.And I think, My mother was right.I am becoming Chinese.

“Cannot be helped,” my mother said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin.I was a sophomore at Galileo High in San Francisco, and all my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they were.But my mother had studied at a famous nursing school in Shanghai, and she said she knew all about genetics.So there was no doubt in her mind, whether I agreed or not:Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese.

“Someday you will see,” said my mother.“It is in your blood, waiting to be let go.”

And when she said this, I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass me— haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter clothes.

But today I realize I’ve never really known what it means to be Chinese.I am 36 years old.My mother is dead and I am on a train,carrying with me her dreams of coming home.I am going to China.

We are first going to Guangzhou, my seventy-two-year-old father,Canning Woo, and I, where we will visit his aunt, whom he has not seen since he was ten years old.And I don’t know whether it’s the prospect of seeing his aunt or if it’s because he’s back in China, but now he looks like he’s a young boy, so innocent and happy I want to button his sweater and pat his head.We are sitting across from each other, separated by a little table with two cold cups of tea.For the first time I can ever remember, my father has tears in his eyes, and all he is seeing out the train window is a sectioned field of yellow, green, and brown, a narrow canal flanking the tracks, low rising hills, and three people in blue jackets riding an ox-driven cart on this early October morning.And I can’t help myself.I also have misty eyes, as if I had seen this a long, long time ago, and had almost forgotten.

In less than three hours, we will be in Guangzhou, which my guidebook tells me is how one properly refers to Canton these days.It seems all the cities I have heard of, except Shanghai, have changed their spellings.I think they are saying China has changed in other ways as well.Chungking is Chongqing.And Kweilin is Guilin.I have looked these names up, because after we see my father’s aunt in Guangzhou, we will catch a plane to Shanghai, where I will meet my two half-sisters for the first time.

They are my mother’s twin daughters from her first marriage, little babies she was forced to abandon on a road as she was fleeing Kweilin for Chungking in 1944.That was all my mother had told me about these daughters, so they had remained babies in my mind, all these years, sitting on the side of a road, listening to bombs whistling in the distance while sucking their patient red thumbs.

And it was only this year that someone found them and wrote with this joyful news.A letter came from Shanghai, addressed to my mother.When I first heard about this, that they were alive, I imagined my identical sisters transforming from little babies into six-year-old girls.In my mind,they were seated next to each other at a table, taking turns with the fountain pen.One would write a neat row of characters: Dearest Mama.We are alive.She would brush back her wispy bangs and hand the other sister the pen, and she would write: Come get us.Please hurry.

Of course they could not know that my mother had died three months before, suddenly, when a blood vessel in her brain burst.One minute she was talking to my father, complaining about the tenants upstairs, scheming how to evict them under the pretense that relatives from China were moving in.The next minute she was holding her head, her eyes squeezed shut, groping for the sofa, and then crumpling softly to the floor with fluttering hands.

So my father had been the first one to open the letter, a long letter it turned out.And they did call her Mama.They said they always revered her as their true mother.They kept a framed picture of her.They told her about their life, from the time my mother last saw them on the road leaving Kweilin to when they were finally found.

And the letter had broken my father’s heart so much—these daughters calling my mother from another life he never knew— that he gave the letter to my mother’s old friend Auntie Lindo and asked her to write back and tell my sisters, in the gentlest way possible, that my mother was dead.

But instead Auntie Lindo took the letter to the Joy Luck Club and discussed with Auntie Ying and Auntie An-mei what should be done,because they had known for many years about my mother’s search for her twin daughters, her endless hope.Auntie Lindo and the others cried over this double tragedy, of losing my mother three months before, and now again.And so they couldn’t help but think of some miracle, some possible way of reviving her from the dead, so my mother could fulfill her dream.

So this is what they wrote to my sisters in Shanghai: “Dearest Daughters, I too have never forgotten you in my memory or in my heart.I never gave up hope that we would see each other again in a joyous reunion.I am only sorry it has been too long.I want to tell you everything about my life since I last saw you.I want to tell you this when our family comes to see you in China ...” They signed it with my mother’s name.

It wasn’t until all this had been done that they first told me about my sisters, the letter they received, the one they wrote back.

“They’ll think she’s coming, then,” I murmured.And I had imagined my sisters now being ten or eleven, jumping up and down, holding hands,their pigtails bouncing, excited that their mother—their mother—was coming, whereas my mother was dead.

“How can you say she is not coming in a letter?” said Auntie Lindo.“She is their mother.She is your mother.You must be the one to tell them.All these years, they have been dreaming of her.” And I thought she was right.

But then I started dreaming, too, of my mother and my sisters and how it would be if I arrived in Shanghai.All these years, while they waited to be found, I had lived with my mother and then had lost her.I imagined seeing my sisters at the airport.They would be standing on their tiptoes,looking anxiously, scanning from one dark head to another as we got off the plane.And I would recognize them instantly, their faces with the identical worried look.

“Jyejye, Jyejye.Sister, Sister.We are here,” I saw myself saying in my poor version of Chinese.

“Where is Mama?” they would say, and look around, still smiling,two flushed and eager faces.“Is she hiding?” And this would have been like my mother, to stand behind just a bit, to tease a little and make people’s patience pull a little on their hearts.I would shake my head and tell my sisters she was not hiding.

“Oh， that must be Mama， no？” one of my sisters would whisper excitedly， pointing to another small woman completely engulfed in a tower of presents.And that， too， would have been like my mother， to bring mountains of gifts， food， and toys for children—all bought on sale—shunning thanks， saying the gifts were nothing， and later turning the labels over to show my sisters， “Calvin Klein，[34] 100％ wool.”

I imagined myself starting to say, “Sisters, I am sorry, I have come alone ...” and before I could tell them—they could see it in my face—they were wailing, pulling their hair, their lips twisted in pain, as they ran away from me.And then I saw myself getting back on the plane and coming home.

After I had dreamed this scene many times—watching their despair turn from horror into anger—I begged Auntie Lindo to write another letter.And at first she refused.

“How can I say she is dead? I cannot write this,” said Auntie Lindo with a stubborn look.

“But it’s cruel to have them believe she’s coming on the plane,” I said.“When they see it’s just me, they’ll hate me.”

“Hate you? Cannot be.” She was scowling.“You are their own sister,their only family.”

“You don’t understand,” I protested.

“What I don’t understand?” she said.

And I whispered, “They’ll think I’m responsible, that she died because I didn’t appreciate her.”

And Auntie Lindo looked satisfied and sad at the same time, as if this were true and I had finally realized it.She sat down for an hour, and when she stood up she handed me a two-page letter.She had tears in her eyes.I realized that the very thing I had feared, she had done.So even if she had written the news of my mother’s death in English, I wouldn’t have had the heart to read it.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

…….

The plane takes off.I close my eyes.How can I describe to them in my broken Chinese about our mother’s life? Where should I begin?

“Wake up, we’re here,” says my father.And I awake with my heart pounding in my throat.I look out the window and we’re already on the runway.It’s gray outside.

And now I’m walking down the steps of the plane, onto the tarmac and toward the building.If only, I think, if only my mother had lived long enough to be the one walking toward them.I am so nervous I cannot even feel my feet.I am just moving somehow.

Somebody shouts, “She’s arrived!” And then I see her.Her short hair.Her small body.And that same look on her face.She has the back of her hand pressed hard against her mouth.She is crying as though she had gone through a terrible ordeal and were happy it is over.

And I know it’s not my mother, yet it is the same look she had when I was five and had disappeared all afternoon, for such a long time, that she was convinced I was dead.And when I miraculously appeared,sleepy-eyed, crawling from underneath my bed, she wept and laughed,biting the back of her hand to make sure it was true.

And now I see her again, two of her, waving, and in one hand there is a photo, the Polaroid I sent them.As soon as I get beyond the gate, we run toward each other, all three of us embracing, all hesitations and expectations forgotten.

“Mama, Mama,” we all murmur, as if she is among us.

My sisters look at me, proudly.“Meimei jandale,” says one sister proudly to the other.“Little Sister has grown up.” I look at their faces again and I see no trace of my mother in them.Yet they still look, familiar.And now I also see what part of me is Chinese.It is so obvious.It is my family.It is in our blood.After all these years, it can finally be let go.

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughing and wiping the tears from each other’s eyes.The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my father hands me the snapshot.My sisters and I watch quietly together,eager to see what develops.

The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once.And although we don’t speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother.Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.