The Joy Luck Club

" Lena, could you see who it is? " called my father from the kitchen. He was doing the dishes. My mother was lying in bed. My mother was now always "resting" and it was as if she had died and become a living ghost.

I opened the door cautiously, then swung it wide open with surprise. It was the girl from next door. I stared at her with undisguised amazement. She was smiling back at me, and she looked ruffled, as if she had fallen out of bed with her clothes on.

"Who is it? " called my father.

"It's next door! " I shouted to my father. "It's…"

"Teresa, " she offered quickly.

"It's Teresa! " I yelled back to my father.

"Invite her in, " my father said at almost the same moment that Teresa squeezed past me and into our apartment. Without being invited, she started walking toward my bedroom. I closed the front door and followed her two brown braids that were bouncing like whips beating the back of a horse.

She walked right over to my window and began to open it. "What are you doing? " I cried. She sat on the window ledge, looked out on the street. And then she looked at me and started to giggle. I sat down on my bed watching her, waiting for her to stop, feeling the cold air blow in from the dark opening.

"What's so funny? " I finally said. It occurred to me that perhaps she was laughing at me, at my life. Maybe she had listened through the wall and heard nothing, the stagnant silence of our unhappy house.

"Why are you laughing? " I demanded.

"My mother kicked me out, " she finally said. She talked with a swagger, seeming to be proud of this fact. And then she snickered a little and said, "We had this fight and she pushed me out the door and locked it. So now she thinks I'm going to wait outside the door until I'm sorry enough to apologize. But I'm not going to. "

"Then what are you going to do? " I asked breathlessly, certain that her mother would kill her for good this time.

"I'm going to use your fire escape to climb back into my bedroom, " she whispered back. "And she's going to wait. And when she gets worried, she'll open the front door. Only I won't be there! I'll be in my bedroom, in bed. " She giggled again.

"Won't she be mad when she finds you? "

"Nah, she'll just be glad I'm not dead or something. Oh, she'll pretend to be mad, sort of. We do this kind of stuff all the time. " And then she slipped through my window and soundlessly made her way back home.

I stared at the open window for a long time, wondering about her. How could she go back? Didn't she see how terrible her life was? Didn't she recognize it would never stop?

I lay down on my bed waiting to hear the screams and shouts. And late at night I was still awake when I heard the loud voices next door. Mrs. Sorci was shouting and crying, You stupida girl. You almost gave me a heart attack. And Teresa was yelling back, I coulda been killed. I almost fell and broke my neck. And then I heard them laughing and crying, crying and laughing, shouting with love.

I was stunned. I could almost see them hugging and kissing one another. I was crying for joy with them, because I had been wrong.

And in my memory I can still feel the hope that beat in me that night. I clung to this hope, day after day, night after night, year after year. I would watch my mother lying in her bed, babbling to herself as she sat on the sofa. And yet I knew that this, the worst possible thing, would one day stop. I still saw bad things in my mind, but now I found ways to change them. I still heard Mrs. Sorci and Teresa having terrible fights, but I saw something else.

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable. I saw the mother lying in bed in her long flowing robes. Then the girl pulled out a sharp sword and told her mother, "Then you must die the death of a thousand cuts. It is the only way to save you. "

The mother accepted this and closed her eyes. The sword came down and sliced back and forth, up and down, whish! whish! whish! And the mother screamed and shouted, cried out in terror and pain. But when she opened her eyes, she saw no blood, no shredded flesh.

The girl said, "Do you see now? "

The mother nodded: "Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worst possible thing. "

And the daughter said, "Now you must come back, to the other side. Then you can see why you were wrong. "

And the girl grabbed her mother's hand and pulled her through the wall.