The Joy Luck Club

And even though her head is bowed, humble in defeat, her eyes are staring up past the camera, wide open.

"Why does she look scared? " I asked my father.

And my father explained: It was only because he said "Cheese, " and my mother was struggling to keep her eyes open until the flash went off, ten seconds later.

My mother often looked this way, waiting for something to happen, wearing this scared look. Only later she lost the struggle to keep her eyes open.

"Don't look at her, " said my mother as we walked through Chinatown in Oakland. She had grabbed my hand and pulled me close to her body. And of course I looked. I saw a woman sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a building. She was old and young at the same time, with dull eyes as though she had not slept for many years. And her feet and her hands-the tips were as black as if she had dipped them in India ink. But I knew they were rotted.

"What did she do to herself? " I whispered to my mother.

"She met a bad man, " said my mother. "She had a baby she didn't want. "

And I knew that was not true. I knew my mother made up anything to warn me, to help me avoid some unknown danger. My mother saw danger in everything, even in other Chinese people. Where we lived and shopped, everyone spoke Cantonese or English. My mother was from Wushi, near Shanghai. So she spoke Mandarin and a little bit of English. My father, who spoke only a few canned Chinese expressions, insisted my mother learn English. So with him, she spoke in moods and gestures, looks and silences, and sometimes a combination of English punctuated by hesitations and Chinese frustration: "Shwo buchulai"-Words cannot come out. So my father would put words in her mouth.

"I think Mom is trying to say she's tired, " he would whisper when my mother became moody.

"I think she's saying we're the best darn family in the country! " he'd exclaim when she had cooked a wonderfully fragrant meal.

But with me, when we were alone, my mother would speak in Chinese, saying things my father could not possibly imagine. I could understand the words perfectly, but not the meanings. One thought led to another without connection.

"You must not walk in any direction but to school and back home, " warned my mother when she decided I was old enough to walk by myself.

"Why? " I asked.

"You can't understand these things, " she said.

"Why not? "

"Because I haven't put it in your mind yet. "

"Why not? "

"Aii-ya! Such questions! Because it is too terrible to consider. A man can grab you off the streets, sell you to someone else, make you have a baby. Then you'll kill the baby. And when they find this baby in a garbage can, then what can be done? You'll go to jail, die there. "

I knew this was not a true answer. But I also made up lies to prevent bad things from happening in the future. I often lied when I had to translate for her, the endless forms, instructions, notices from school, telephone calls. "Shemma yisz? "-What meaning? -she asked me when a man at a grocery store yelled at her for opening up jars to smell the insides. I was so embarrassed I told her that Chinese people were not allowed to shop there. When the school sent a notice home about a polio vaccination, I told her the time and place, and added that all students were now required to use metal lunch boxes, since they had discovered old paper bags can carry polio germs.

"We're moving up in the world, " my father proudly announced, this being the occasion of his promotion to sales supervisor of a clothing manufacturer. "Your mother is thrilled. "

And we did move up, across the bay to San Francisco and up a hill in North Beach, to an Italian neighborhood, where the sidewalk was so steep I had to lean into the slant to get home from school each day. I was ten and I was hopeful that we might be able to leave all the old fears behind in Oakland.

The apartment building was three stories high, two apartments per floor. It had a renovated fa