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bomb.
    Now it is Auntie Ying who wins this hand of mah jong, so we count points and begin again.
    â€œDid you know Lena move to Woodside?” asks Auntie Ying with obvious pride, looking down at the tiles, talking to no one in particular. She quickly erases her smile and tries for some modesty. “Of course, it’s not best house in neighborhood, not million-dollar house, not yet. But it’s good investment. Better than paying rent. Better than somebody putting you under their thumb to rub you out.”
    So now I know Auntie Ying’s daughter, Lena, told her about my being evicted from my apartment on lower Russian Hill. Even though Lena and I are still friends, we have grown naturally cautious about telling each other too much. Still, what little we say to one another often comes back in another guise. It’s the same old game, everybody talking in circles.
    â€œIt’s getting late,” I say after we finish the round. I start to stand up, but Auntie Lin pushes me back down into the chair.
    â€œStay, stay. We talk awhile, get to know you again,” she says. “Been a long time.”
    I know this is a polite gesture on the Joy Luck aunties’ part—a protest when actually they are just as eager to see me go as I am to leave. “No, I really must go now, thank you, thank you,” I say, glad I remembered how the pretense goes.
    â€œBut you must stay! We have something important to tell you, from your mother,” Auntie Ying blurts out in her too-loud voice. The others look uncomfortable, as if this were not how they intended to break some sort of bad news to me.
    I sit down. Auntie An-mei leaves the room quickly and returns with a bowl of peanuts, then quietly shuts the door. Everybody is quiet, as if nobody knew where to begin.
    It is Auntie Ying who finally speaks. “I think your mother die with an important thought on her mind,” she says in halting English. And then she begins to speak in Chinese, calmly, softly.
    â€œYour mother was a very strong woman, a good mother. She loved you very much, more than her own life. And that’s why you can understand why a mother like this could never forget her other daughters. She knew they were alive, and before she died she wanted to find her daughters in China.”
    The babies in Kweilin, I think. I was not those babies. The babies in a sling on her shoulder. Her other daughters. And now I feel as if I were in Kweilin amidst the bombing and I can see these babies lying on the side of the road, their red thumbs popped out of their mouths, screaming to be reclaimed. Somebody took them away. They’re safe. And now my mother’s left me forever, gone back to China to get these babies. I can barely hear Auntie Ying’s voice.
    â€œShe had searched for years, written letters back and forth,” says Auntie Ying. “And last year she got an address. She was going to tell your father soon. Aii-ya, what a shame. A lifetime of waiting.”
    Auntie An-mei interrupts with an excited voice: “So your aunties and I, we wrote to this address,” she says. “We say that a certain party, your mother, want to meet another certain party. And this party write back to us. They are your sisters, Jing-mei.”
    My sisters, I repeat to myself, saying these two words together for the first time.
    Auntie An-mei is holding a sheet of paper as thin as wrapping tissue. In perfectly straight vertical rows I see Chinese characters written in blue fountain-pen ink. A word is smudged. A tear? I take the letter with shaking hands, marveling at how smart my sisters must be to be able to read and write Chinese.
    The aunties are all smiling at me, as though I had been a dying person who has now miraculously recovered. Auntie Ying is handing me another envelope. Inside is a check made out to June Woo for $1,200. I can’t believe it.
    â€œMy sisters are sending me money?” I ask.
    â€œNo, no,” says Auntie