The Joy Luck Club: Queen Mother of the Western Skies

And this misfortune led First Wife to begin a trek to Buddhist temples, to offer alms and tailored silk gowns in honor of Buddha’s image, to burn incense and pray to Buddha to lengthen her daughter’s leg.

I did not like to play with Third Wife’s daughters, who were as docile and dull as their mother. Those girls were content looking out the window all day, watching the sun come up and go down.

And she had unusual skin, a lustrous pink color.

She wore funeral clothes far richer than those she had worn in life. Silk undergarments to keep her warm without the heavy burden of a fur coat. A silk gown, sewn with gold thread. A headdress of gold and lapis and jade. And two delicate slippers with the softest leather soles and two giant pearls on each toe, to light her way to nirvana.

“His mother will treat you like a servant...” chided one half-sister upon hearing the other’s choice.

“Not too short, not too long. Our longevity will be adequate, not cut off too soon, not so long we become a burden.”

And next to the word OCCUPATION, I wrote student of theology.

“Don’t be silly. Our nose isn’t so bad,” she says. “It makes us look devious.”

I wear no makeup; in Hong Kong my mascara had melted into dark circles and everything else had felt like layers of grease. So today my face is plain, unadorned except for a thin mist of shiny sweat on my forehead and nose.

My father had wisely sent pictures when he wrote and said we were coming. See how smart she was, she seems to intone as she compares the picture to my father.

Now Aiyi is crooning to me: "Jandale." So big already.

I feel as if I were in the United Nations and the translators had run amok.

I quickly pull out our itinerary, travel tickets, and reservations.

But when I step up to the reservation desk, ready to haggle over this booking mistake, it is confirmed.

The hotel has provided little packets of shampoo which, upon opening, I discover is the consistency and color of hoisin sauce.