Free The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Page B

Taitai pried open my mouth and gasped upon seeing the open spot in the back of my mouth where a rotted tooth fell out four years ago.
    â€œAnd finally, I saw him plant a seed in a servant girl’s womb. He said this girl only pretends to come from a bad family. But she is really from imperial blood, and . . . ”
    I lay my head down on the pillow as if too tired to go on. Huang Taitai pushed my shoulder, “What does he say?”
    â€œHe said the servant girl is Tyan-yu’s true spiritual wife. And the seed he has planted will grow into Tyan-yu’s child.”
    By mid-morning they had dragged the matchmaker’s servant over to our house and extracted her terrible confession.
    And after much searching they found the servant girl I liked so much, the one I had watched from my window every day. I had seen her eyes grow bigger and her teasing voice become smaller whenever the handsome delivery man arrived. And later, I had watched her stomach grow rounder and her face become longer with fear and worry.
    So you can imagine how happy she was when they forced her to tell the truth about her imperial ancestry. I heard later she was so struck with this miracle of marrying Tyan-yu she became a very religious person who ordered servants to sweep the ancestors’ graves not just once a year, but once a day.

    There’s no more to the story. They didn’t blame me so much. Huang Taitai got her grandson. I got my clothes, a rail ticket to Peking, and enough money to go to America. The Huangs asked only that I never tell anybody of any importance about the story of my doomed marriage.
    It’s a true story, how I kept my promise, how I sacrificed my life. See the gold metal I can now wear. I gave birth to your brothers and then your father gave me these two bracelets. Then I had you. And every few years, when I have a little extra money, I buy another bracelet. I know what I’m worth. They’re always twenty-four carats, all genuine.
    But I’ll never forget. On the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness, I take off all my bracelets. I remember the day when I finally knew a genuine thought and could follow where it went. That was the day I was a young girl with my face under a red marriage scarf. I promised not to forget myself.
    How nice it is to be that girl again, to take off my scarf, to see what is underneath and feel the lightness come back into my body!

YING-YING ST. CLAIR
    The Moon Lady
    For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid.
    All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me. She sees a list of things to buy, her checkbook out of balance, her ashtray sitting crooked on a straight table.
    And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
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    I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
    Yet today I can remember a time when I ran and shouted, when I could not stand still. It is my earliest recollection: telling the Moon Lady my secret wish. And because I forgot what I wished for, that memory remained hidden from me all these many years.
    But now I remember the wish, and I can recall the details of that entire day, as clearly as I see my daughter and the foolishness of her life.
    In 1918, the year that I was four, the Moon Festival arrived during an autumn in Wushi that was unusually hot, terribly hot. When I awoke that morning, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, the straw mat covering my bed was already sticky.