The Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan

Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.

But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. How much can 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 can you see in your mind arms and legs hanging from telephone wires and starving dogs running down the streets with half-chewed hands dangling from their jaws? What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?

And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.”

“You can’t have luck when someone else has skill.

The elements were from my mother’s own version of organic chemistry. Each person is made of five elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper.

Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people’s ideas, unable to stand on your own.

Too much water and you flowed in too many directions,

The East is where things begin, my mother once told me, the direction from which the sun rises, where the wind comes from.

They are frightened. In me, they 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 Chinese, 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 American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist.

That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.

I wiped my eyes and looked in the mirror. I was surprised at what I saw. I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.

I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.

And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.

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.”

Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else’s joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.’”

She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.