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Lin with her mock exasperated voice. “Every year we save our mah jong winnings for big banquet at fancy restaurant. Most times your mother win, so most is her money. We add just a little, so you can go Hong Kong, take a train to Shanghai, see your sisters. Besides, we all getting too rich, too fat.” she pats her stomach for proof.
    â€œSee my sisters,” I say numbly. I am awed by this prospect, trying to imagine what I would see. And I am embarrassed by the end-of-the-year-banquet lie my aunties have told to mask their generosity. I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother.
    â€œYou must see your sisters and tell them about your mother’s death,” says Auntie Ying. “But most important, you must tell them about her life. The mother they did not know, they must now know.”
    â€œSee my sisters, tell them about my mother,” I say, nodding. “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything. She was my mother.”
    The aunties are looking at me as if I had become crazy right before their eyes.
    â€œNot know your own mother?” cries Auntie An-mei with disbelief. “How can you say? Your mother is in your bones!”
    â€œTell them stories of your family here. How she became success,” offers Auntie Lin.
    â€œTell them stories she told you, lessons she taught, what you know about her mind that has become your mind,” says Auntie Ying. “You mother very smart lady.”
    I hear more choruses of “Tell them, tell them” as each Auntie frantically tries to think what should be passed on.
    â€œHer kindness.”
    â€œHer smartness.”
    â€œHer dutiful nature to family.”
    â€œHer hopes, things that matter to her.”
    â€œThe excellent dishes she cooked.”
    â€œImagine, a daughter not knowing her own mother!”
    And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.
    â€œI will tell them everything,” I say simply, and the aunties look at me with doubtful faces.
    â€œI will remember everything about her and tell them,” I say more firmly. And gradually, one by one, they smile and pat my hand. They still look troubled, as if something were out of balance. But they also look hopeful that what I say will become true. What more can they ask? What more can I promise?
    They go back to eating their soft boiled peanuts, saying stories among themselves. They are young girls again, dreaming of good times in the past and good times yet to come. A brother from Ningbo who makes his sister cry with joy when he returns nine thousand dollars plus interest. A youngest son whose stereo and TV repair business is so good he sends leftovers to China. A daughter whose babies are able to swim like fish in a fancy pool in Woodside. Such good stories. The best. They are the lucky ones.
    And I am sitting at my mother’s place at the mah jong table, on the East, where things begin.

AN-MEI HSU
    Scar
    When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost. This did not mean my mother was dead. In those days, a ghost was anything we were forbidden to talk about. So I knew Popo wanted me to forget my mother on purpose, and this is how I came to remember nothing of her. The life that I knew began in the large house in Ningpo with the cold hallways and tall stairs. This was my