The Joy Luck Club: American Translation

Their faces were covered with every kind of misery I could imagine: pits and pustules, cracks and bumps, and fissures that I was sure erupted with the same vehemence as snails writhing in a bed of salt.

I began to leave more rice in my bowl. And then I extended my prodigal ways beyond Chinese food. I did not finish my creamed corn, broccoli, Rice Krispies, or peanut butter sandwiches.

Problems this year were first noticed when the boy developed motor coordination problems and mental lethargy which increased until he fell into a coma.

I told him how he should do more avant-garde thematic restaurant design, to differentiate himself from the other firms.

At Livotny & Associates, I procure the theme elements.

And so I watched her, seeing her reaction to the changes in my apartment—from the pristine habitat I maintained after the divorce, when all of a sudden I had too much time to keep my life in order—to this present chaos, a home full of life and love.

And even if I recognized her strategy, her sneak attack, I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.

My feelings for Marvin never reached the level of hate. No, it was worse in a way. It went from disappointment to contempt to apathetic boredom.

From the very moment she flung her fist away from her mouth to cry, I knew my feelings for her were inviolable.

Because I knew my feelings for him were vulnerable to being felled by my mother’s suspicions, passing remarks, and innuendos.

I’d never known love so pure, and I was afraid that it would become sullied by my mother.

I had wished her out of my life, and she had acquiesced, floating out of her body to escape my terrible hatred.

It’s as though we were all sworn to the same secret covenant, so secret we don’t even know what we belong to.

Two years ago, she had tried to evict them on the pretext that relatives from China were coming to live there.

I waited for her to chastise me.