"Whats so funny?" said Ted angrily.

"I am not telling you to save your marriage," she protested. "I only say you should speak up."

Best Quality

"Eat more," she insisted, and then she nudged me with a little spiral-bound book hand-titled "Cooking the Chinese Way by China Mary Chan." They were selling them at the door, only five dollars each, to raise money for the Refugee Scholarship Fund.

But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they cant be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chous door, then trying to find your way back. But youre so scared you cant open your eyes, so you get on your hands and knees and grope in the dark, listening for voices to tell you which way to go.

I put the necklace on. It felt cool.

But a man in a white smock came up to us. He started talking loudly to my mother in Cantonese, and my mother, who spoke Cantonese so poorly it sounded just like her Mandarin, was talking loudly back, pointing to the crab and its missing leg. And after more sharp words, that crab and its leg were put into our sack.

"But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well.

"Put in lotta action," advised Uncle Tin. "Lotta action, boy, thats what I like. Hey, thats all you need, make it right."

"See," she said, beaming. "I have just planted them this morning, some for you, some for me."

"Youre lying. You said it was great."

"O! O! You say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and over again? You say you are Syi Wang Mu, Queen Mother of the Western Skies, now come back to give me the answer! Good, good, I am listening….

And now she was huffing complaints in rhythm to her walk downhill. "Even you dont want them, you stuck," she said. She was fuming again about the tenants who lived on the second floor. Two years ago, she had tried to evict them on the pretext that relatives from China were coming to live there. But the couple saw through her ruse to get around rent control. They said they wouldnt budge until she produced the relatives. And after that I had to listen to her recount every new injustice this couple inflicted on her.

"Tss! Why you listen to her? Why you want to follow behind her, chasing her words? She is like this crab." My mother poked a shell in the garbage can. "Always walking sideways, moving crooked. You can make your legs go the other way."

I saw what I wanted: his eyes, confused, then scared. He was hulihudu. The power of my words was that strong.

"I like it this way," I said, patting the tops of overgrown carrots, their orange heads pushing through the earth as if about to be born. And then I saw the weeds: Some had sprouted in and out of the cracks in the patio. Others had anchored on the side of the house. And even more had found refuge under loose shingles and were on their way to climbing up to the roof. No way to pull them out once theyve buried themselves in the masonry; youd end up pulling the whole building down.

The organ music stopped and the minister cleared his throat. He was not the regular pastor; I recognized him as Wing, a boy who used to steal baseball cards with my brother Luke. Only later Wing went to divinity school, thanks to China Mary, and Luke went to the county jail for selling stolen car stereos.

I still listened to my mother, but I also learned how to let her words blow through me. And sometimes I filled my mind with other peoples thoughts—all in English—so that when she looked at me inside out, she would be confused by what she saw.

And because I think about this all the time, I always notice other people wearing these same jade pendants—not the flat rectangular medallions or the round white ones with holes in the middle but ones like mine, a two-inch oblong of bright apple green. Its as though we were all sworn to the same secret covenant, so secret we dont even know what we belong to. Last weekend, for example, I saw a bartender wearing one. As I fingered mine, I asked him, "Whered you get yours?"

"Theres nothing to talk about, Rose."

And I knew by the wonder in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant.

But my mother was not singing. She was staring at me. "Why does he send you a check?" I kept looking at the hymnal, singing: "Send-ing rays of sun-shine, full of joy from birth."

"What a mess," I heard him mutter to himself, trying to shake his pant leg loose of a blackberry vine that had meandered onto the walkway. And I knew he was calculating how long it would take to get the place back into order.

I looked out the window and saw the calla lilies had fallen and turned brown, the daisies had been crushed down by their own weight, the lettuce gone to seed. Runner weeds were growing between the flagstone walkways that wound between the planter boxes. The whole thing had grown wild from months of neglect.

"You can?"

"Thats right, we dont want to talk about this now," said Waverly quietly.

Five months ago, after a crab dinner celebrating Chinese New Year, my mother gave me my "lifes importance," a jade pendant on a gold chain. The pendant was not a piece of jewelry I would have chosen for myself. It was almost the size of my little finger, a mottled green and white color, intricately carved. To me, the whole effect looked wrong: too large, too green, too garishly ornate. I stuffed the necklace in my lacquer box and forgot about it.

I handed them to him and he stuffed them in the inside pocket of his jacket. He faced me and I saw his eyes, the look I had once mistaken for kindness and protection. "You dont have to move out right away," he said. "I know youll want at least a month to find a place."

It was Auntie Lindo who finally spoke: "Waverly, you let her try again. You make her do too fast first time. Of course she cannot get it right."

I thought to myself, I love this house. The big oak door that opens into a foyer filled with stained-glass windows. The sunlight in the breakfast room, the south view of the city from the front parlor. The herb and flower garden Ted had planted. He used to work in the garden every weekend, kneeling on a green rubber pad, obsessively inspecting every leaf as if he were manicuring fingernails. He assigned plants to certain planter boxes. Tulips could not be mixed with perennials. A cutting of aloe vera that Lena gave me did not belong anywhere because we had no other succulents.

I quickly walked down to the garden shed, looking for pesticides and weed killer, as if the amount left in the bottle, the expiration date, anything would give me some idea of what was happening in my life. And then I put the bottle down. I had the sense someone was watching me and laughing.

"There she is!" cried my mother. Old Mr. Chou smiled at me and waved. I walked up to my mother and saw that she was hovering over something, as if she were tending a baby.

And seeing the garden in this forgotten condition reminded me of something I once read in a fortune cookie: When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, hes thinking of pulling up roots. When was the last time Ted pruned the rosemary back? When was the last time he squirted Snail B-Gone around the flower beds?

Waverly acted as if she didnt even hear me. "Im trying to convince them to at least pay you for some of your time. I know you put a lot of work into it…I owe you at least that for even suggesting you do it."

And so I didnt know what to think anymore. For the next few weeks, I inventoried my life, going from room to room trying to remember the history of everything in the house: things I had collected before I met Ted (the hand-blown glasses, the macrame wall hangings, and the rocker I had recaned); things we bought together right after we were married (most of the big furniture); things people gave us (the glass-domed clock that no longer worked, three sake sets, four teapots); things he picked out (the signed lithographs, none of them beyond number twenty-five in a series of two hundred fifty, the Steuben crystal strawberries); and things I picked out because I couldnt bear to see them left b九*九*藏*书*网ehind (the mismatched candlestick holders from garage sales, an antique quilt with a hole in it, odd-shaped vials that once contained ointments, spices, and perfumes).

When I was eight, I had played with a crab my mother had brought home for my birthday dinner. I had poked it, and jumped back every time its claws reached out. And I determined that the crab and I had come to a great understanding when it finally heaved itself up and walked clear across the counter. But before I could even decide what to name my new pet, my mother had dropped it into a pot of cold water and placed it on the tall stove. I had watched with growing dread, as the water heated up and the pot began to clatter with this crab trying to tap his way out of his own hot soup. To this day, I remember that crab screaming as he thrust one bright red claw out over the side of the bubbling pot. It must have been my own voice, because now I know, of course, that crabs have no vocal cords. And I also try to convince myself that they dont have enough brains to know the difference between a hot bath and a slow death.

At that crab dinner, I was so mad about what she said about my hair that I wanted to embarrass her, to reveal in front of everybody how petty she was. So I decided to confront her about the free-lance work Id done for her firm, eight pages of brochure copy on its tax services. The firm was now more than thirty days late in paying my invoice.

Queen Mother of the Western Skies

"Too busy for mother?"

But these days, I think about my lifes importance. I wonder what it means, because my mother died three months ago, six days before my thirty-sixth birthday. And shes the only person I could have asked, to tell me about lifes importance, to help me understand my grief.

And then as stomachs filled, everybody started talking at once.

Rose Hsu Jordan

"Of course, I like," she said, irritated. "Sometime I think something is so good, I want to save it. Then I forget I save it."

Waverly and Rich grimaced at each other, united in disgust. I heard Vincent and Lisa whisper to each other, "Gross," and then they snickered too.

"Already cre-mated," my mother whispered matter-of-factly, nodding toward the altar, where a framed color photo of China Mary stood. I held my finger to my lips the way librarians do, but she didnt get it.

"I said Im staying here," I announced again.

Monkey business? Ted? I wanted to laugh—her choice of words, but also the idea! Cool, silent, hairless Ted, whose breathing pattern didnt alter one bit in the height of passion? I could just see him, grunting "Ooh-ooh-ooh" while scratching his armpits, then bouncing and shrieking across the mattress trying to grab a breast.

American Translation Up

Now I felt nothing, no fear, no anger. "I say Im staying, and my lawyer will too, once we serve you the papers," I said.

And then for the first time in months, after being in limbo all that time, everything stopped. All the questions: gone. There were no choices. I had an empty feeling—and I felt free, wild. From high inside my head I could hear someone laughing.

Jing-Mei Woo

"Listen, June, I dont know how to tell you this. That stuff you wrote, well, the firm decided it was unacceptable."

"Mom, I dont like crab!" whined Shoshana.

Back home, I thought about what she said. And it was true. Lately I had been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be "confused" and "dark fog."

The note was clipped to our divorce papers, along with a check for ten thousand dollars, signed in the same fountain-pen blue ink on the note. And instead of being grateful, I was hurt.

"You know its been two weeks," he said with obvious irritation.

It was only later that I discovered there was a serious flaw with the American version. There were too many choices, so it was easy to get confused and pick the wrong thing. Thats how I felt about my situation with Ted. There was so much to think about, so much to decide. Each decision meant a turn in another direction.

I was still gasping when I tried to begin again in a more even voice: "Listen, Ted, sorry…I think the best thing is for you to come over after work." I didnt know why I said that, but I felt right saying it.

"Sorry," I said. "Its just that…" and I was trying hard to stifle my giggles, but one of them escaped through my nose with a snort, which made me laugh more. And then Teds silence made me laugh even harder.

Waverly looked at Rich, who shrugged his shoulders. She turned back to me and sighed.

"Put it back," whispered my mother. "A missing leg is a bad sign on Chinese New Year."

She said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didnt listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

"I know," I said in a voice so calm it surprised even me. "I just want to show you something. And dont worry, youll get your papers. Believe me."

I still remember the look on his face last year when he carefully undid the gold foil wrap, the surprise in his eyes as he slowly examined every angle of the pen by the light of the Christmas tree. He kissed my forehead. "Ill use it only to sign important things," he had promised me.

It was the phone. It must have rung for an hour nonstop. I picked it up.

"You are getting too thin," my mother said in her pained voice when I sat down next to her. "You must eat more."

And when heads lifted, everyone rose to sing hymn number 335, China Marys favorite: "You can be an an-gel, ev-ery day on earth…"

And all these things seemed true to me. The power of her words was that strong.

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

Why had he sent the check with the papers? Why the two different pens? Was the check an afterthought? How long had he sat in his office determining how much money was enough? And why had he chosen to sign it with that pen?

Without Wood Up

Auntie Lindo nodded her head, as if the color were worth this price. And then she pointed her crab leg toward her future son-in-law, Rich, and said, "See how this one doesnt know how to eat Chinese food."

For our New Year celebration, my mother had invited her longtime friends Lindo and Tin Jong. Without even asking, my mother knew that meant including the Jongs children: their son Vincent, who was thirty-eight years old and still living at home, and their daughter, Waverly, who was around my age. Vincent called to see if he could also bring his girlfriend, Lisa Lum. Waverly said she would bring her new fianc? Rich Schields, who, like Waverly, was a tax attorney at Price Waterhouse. And she added that Shoshana, her four-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, wanted to know if my parents had a VCR so she could watch Pinocchio, just in case she got bored. My mother also reminded me to invite Mr. Chong, my old piano teacher, who still lived three blocks away at our old apartment.

Waverly sighed again. "I know I did. I didnt want to hurt your feelings. I was trying to see if we could fix it somehow. But it wont work."

Ted was picking up plums from the ground and tossing them over the fence into the neighbors yard. "Where are the papers?" he finally said.

"Thanks, David always does a great job."

What I ended up showing him was the garden. By the time he arrived, the late-afternoon summer fog had already blown in. I had the divorce papers in the pocket of my windbreaker. Ted was shivering in his sports jacket as he surveyed the damage to the garden.

I went back in the house, this time to call a lawyer. But as I started to dial, I became confused. I put the receiver down. What could I say? What did I want from divorce—when I never knew what I had wanted from marriage?

Then, one by one, she grabbed the crabs by their back, hoisted them out of the sink and shook them dry and awake. The crabs flexed theihｔｔｐ://ｗｗｗ.９9ｌｉｂ•neｔr legs in midair between sink and stove. She stacked the crabs in a multileveled steamer that sat over two burners on the stove, put a lid on top, and lit the burners. I couldnt bear to watch so I went into the dining room.

I remember the hungry sounds everybody else was making—cracking the shells, sucking the crab meat out, scraping out tidbits with the ends of chopsticks—and my mothers quiet plate. I was the only one who noticed her prying open the shell, sniffing the crabs body and then getting up to go to the kitchen, plate in hand. She returned, without the crab, but with more bowls of soy sauce, ginger, and scallions.

Uncle Tin started laughing to himself, to let us know he also had a private joke. Judging by his preamble of snorts and leg slaps, I figured he must have practiced this joke many times: "I tell my daughter, Hey, why be poor? Marry rich!" He laughed loudly and then nudged Lisa, who was sitting next to him, "Hey, dont you get it? Look what happen. She gonna marry this guy here. Rich. Cause I tell her to, marry Rich."

Auntie Lindo looked at her daughter with exasperation. "How do you know what is Chinese, what is not Chinese?" And then she turned to Rich and said with much authority, "Why you are not eating the best part?"

"That cat gone! Disappear!" She threw her hands in the air and smiled, looking pleased for a moment before the scowl came back. "And that man, he raise his hand like this, show me his ugly fist and call me worst Fukien landlady. I not from Fukien. Hunh! He know nothing!" she said, satisfied she had put him in his place.

Old Mr. Chou took my sisters to sleep. They never remembered anything from the night before. But Old Mr. Chou would swing the door wide open for me, and as I tried to walk in, he would slam it fast, hoping to squash me like a fly. Thats why I would always dart back into wakefulness.

The check, for example. I wondered if Ted was really trying to trick me, to get me to admit that I was giving up, that I wouldnt fight the divorce. And if I cashed it, he might later say the amount was the whole settlement. Then I got a little sentimental and imagined, only for a moment, that he had sent meten thousand dollars because he truly loved me; he was telling me in his own way how much I meant to him. Until I realized that ten thousand dollars was nothing to him, that I was nothing to him.

"What Waverly said. What everybody said."

She was quiet for a while. "Why do you not speak up for yourself?" she finally said in her pained voice. "Why can you not talk to your husband?"

I asked him why, which is a nosy question that only one Chinese person can ask another; in a crowd of Caucasians, two Chinese people are already like family.

"Im fine," I said, and I smiled for proof. "And besides, wasnt it you who said my clothes were always too tight?"

And then, as if she had just now remembered, she unhooked the clasp of her gold necklace and took it off, wadding the chain and the jade pendant in her palm. She grabbed my hand and put the necklace in my palm, then shut my fingers around it.

"Doesnt matter," said my mother. "This number eleven, extra one."

"My mother gave it to me," he said.

"June—I cant," Waverly said with cool finality. "Its just not…sophisticated. Im sure what you write for your other clients is wonderful. But were a big firm. We need somebody who understands that…our style." She said this touching her hand to her chest, as if she were referring to her style.

"Youre giving this to me only because of what happened tonight," I finally said.

I now wear that pendant every day. I think the carvings mean something, because shapes and details, which I never seem to notice until after theyre pointed out to me, always mean something to Chinese people. I know I could ask Auntie Lindo, Auntie An-mei, or other Chinese friends, but I also know they would tell me a meaning that is different from what my mother intended. What if they tell me this curving line branching into three oval shapes is a pomegranate and that my mother was wishing me fertility and posterity? What if my mother really meant the carvings were a branch of pears to give me purity and honesty? Or ten-thousand-year droplets from the magic mountain, giving me my lifes direction and a thousand years of fame and immortality?

"Psychiatrist."

Over the years, I learned to choose from the best opinions. Chinese people had Chinese opinions. American people had American opinions. And in almost every case, the American version was much better.

"Now that you are up, I am bringing you leftover dishes," said my mother. She sounded as if she could see me now. But the room was dark, the curtains closed tight.

"So what happened to that cat?" I asked.

Her face was dark and quiet.

"Just tell me what they want changed. Ill call you next week so we can go over it, line by line."

After everybody left, my mother joined me in the kitchen. I was putting dishes away. She put water on for more tea and sat down at the small kitchen table. I waited for her to chastise me.

I wasnt about to let her slip away this time. "Well, every time I call you on the phone, you cant talk about it then either," I said.

Then she laughed in a lighthearted way. "I mean, really, June." And then she started speaking in a deep television-announcer voice: "Three benefits, three needs, three reasons to buy…Satisfaction guaranteed…for todays and tomorrows tax needs…"

"Good dinner, Ma," I said politely.

I could hear my mother eating an orange slice. She was the only person I knew who crunched oranges, making it sound as if she were eating crisp apples instead. The sound of it was worse than gnashing teeth.

My mother once told me why I was so confused all the time. She said I was without wood. Born without wood so that I listened to too many people. She knew this, because once she had almost become this way.

"Ma," I said, feeling drained. "Please. Dont tell me to save my marriage anymore. Its hard enough as it is."

The next morning, I told my mother what happened, and she laughed and said, "Dont pay attention to Old Mr. Chou. He is only a dream. You only have to listen to me."

My father hasnt eaten well since my mother died. So I am here, in the kitchen, to cook him dinner. Im slicing tofu. Ive decided to make him a spicy bean-curd dish. My mother used to tell me how hot things restore the spirit and health. But Im making this mostly because I know my father loves this dish and I know how to cook it. I like the smell of it: ginger, scallions, and a red chili sauce that tickles my nose the minute I open the jar.

"What happened to your crab? Whyd you throw it away?"

Including my mother, father, and me, that made eleven people. But my mother had counted only ten, because to her way of thinking Shoshana was just a child and didnt count, at least not as far as crabs were concerned. She hadnt considered that Waverly might not think the same way.

Every time I went with her to Chinatown, she pointed out other Chinese women her age. "Hong Kong ladies," she said, eyeing two finely dressed women in long, dark mink coats and perfect black hairdos. "Cantonese, village people," she whispered as we passed women in knitted caps, bent over in layers of padded tops and mens vests. And my mother—wearing lightblue polyester pants, a red sweater, and a childs green down jacket—she didnt look like anybody else. She had come here in 1949, at the end of a long journey that started in Kweilin in 1944; she had gone north to Chungking, where she met my father, and then they went southeast to Shanghai and fled farther south to Hong Kong, where the boat departed for San Francisco. My mother came from many different directions.

"What cat?" I asked, even though I knew exactly which one she was talking about. I had seen that cat many times. It was a big one-eared tom with gray stripes who had learned to jump on the outside sill of my mothers kitchen window. My mother would stand on her tiptoes and bang the kitchen window to scare the cat away. And the cat would stand his ground, hissing back in response to her shouts.

"What if someone else had picked that crab?"

And I sat there feeling as if my hai九九藏书网r were coated with disease.

I was surprised at myself, how humiliated I felt. I had been outsmarted by Waverly once again, and now betrayed by my own mother. I was smiling so hard my lower lip was twitching from the strain. I tried to find something else to concentrate on, and I remember picking up my plate, and then Mr. Chongs, as if I were clearing the table, and seeing so sharply through my tears the chips on the edges of these old plates, wondering why my mother didnt use the new set I had bought her five years ago.

When the platter of steaming crabs was passed around, Waverly was first and she picked the best crab, the brightest, the plumpest, and put it on her daughters plate. And then she picked the next best for Rich and another good one for herself. And because she had learned this skill, of choosing the best, from her mother, it was only natural that her mother knew how to pick the next-best ones for her husband, her son, his girlfriend, and herself. And my mother, of course, considered the four remaining crabs and gave the one that looked the best to Old Chong, because he was nearly ninety and deserved that kind of respect, and then she picked another good one for my father. That left two on the platter: a large crab with a faded orange color, and number eleven, which had the torn-off leg.

"Ive been trying to reach you for the last three days. I even called the phone company to check the line."

"How can you wear this color anymore? Too young!" she scolded.

"I thought…maybe only just die. Maybe taste not too bad. But I can smell, dead taste, not firm."

"Why not?"

Back home, my mother unwrapped the crabs from their newspaper liners and then dumped them into a sinkful of cold water. She brought out her old wooden board and cleaver, then chopped the ginger and scallions, and poured soy sauce and sesame oil into a shallow dish. The kitchen smelled of wet newspapers and Chinese fragrances.

I had started to inventory the bookshelves when I got a letter from Ted, a note actually, written hurriedly in ballpoint on his prescription notepad. "Sign 4x where indicated," it read. And then in fountain-pen blue ink, "enc: check, to tide you over until settlement."

At last years Chinese New Year dinner, my mother had cooked eleven crabs, one crab for each person, plus an extra. She and I had bought them on Stockton Street in Chinatown. We had walked down the steep hill from my parents flat, which was actually the first floor of a six-unit building they owned on Leavenworth near California. Their place was only six blocks from where I worked as a copywriter for a small ad agency, so two or three times a week I would drop by after work. My mother always had enough food to insist that I stay for dinner.

Before I could stop myself, I gasped. "You mean you were doing monkey business with someone else?" I was so humiliated I almost started to cry.

"Why can you talk about this with a psyche-atric and not with mother?"

"Yes, Ted sent me a check."

I picked up my mothers plate, the one she had carried into the kitchen at the start of the dinner. The crab was untouched. I lifted the shell and smelled the crab. Maybe it was because I didnt like crab in the first place. I couldnt tell what was wrong with it.

I thought I was doing the right thing, taking the crab with the missing leg. But my mother cried, "No! No! Big one, you eat it. I cannot finish."

I poked the crabs with a pencil to see how feisty they were. If a crab grabbed on, I lifted it out and into a plastic sack. I lifted one crab this way, only to find one of its legs had been clamped onto by another crab. In the brief tug-of-war, my crab lost a limb.

I remember one time I dreamt of falling through a hole in Old Mr. Chous floor. I found myself in a nighttime garden and Old Mr. Chou was shouting, "Whos in my backyard?" I ran away. Soon I found myself stomping on plants with veins of blood, running through fields of snapdragons that changed colors like stoplights, until I came to a giant playground filled with row after row of square sandboxes. In each sandbox was a new doll. And my mother, who was not there but could see me inside out, told Old Mr. Chou she knew which doll I would pick. So I decided to pick one that was entirely different.

But eventually Old Mr. Chou would get tired and leave the door unwatched. The bed would grow heavy at the top and slowly tilt. And I would slide headfirst, in through Old Mr. Chous door, and land in a house without doors or windows.

"June, I really dont think…"

When I hung up, the phone rang again. It was my psychiatrists receptionist. I had missed my appointment that morning, as well as two days ago. Did I want to reschedule? I said I would look at my schedule and call back.

"Your sisters have already gone to see Old Mr. Chou," my mother would whisper in Chinese. According to my mother, Old Mr. Chou was the guardian of a door that opened into dreams. "Are you ready to go see Old Mr. Chou, too?" And every night I would shake my head.

"Maybe I could afford Mr. Rorys prices if someones firm paid me on time," I said with a teasing grin. And I was pleased to see Waverlys reaction. She was genuinely flustered, speechless.

"Whereve you been?" It was Ted.

To my friend Waverly, I said I never knew how much I loved Ted until I saw how much he could hurt me. I felt such pain, literally a physical pain, as if someone had torn off both my arms without anesthesia, without sewing me back up.

"I have an appointment…with my psychiatrist."

I thought about putting an end to this torture and signing the divorce papers. And I was just about to take the papers out of the coupon drawer when I remembered the house.

That was the night, in the kitchen, that I realized I was no better than who I was. I was a copywriter. I worked for a small ad agency. I promised every new client, "We can provide the sizzle for the meat." The sizzle always boiled down to "Three Benefits, Three Needs, Three Reasons to Buy." The meat was always coaxial cable, T-1 multiplexers, protocol converters, and the like. I was very good at what I did, succeeding at something small like that.

Remembering that, holding the check, all I could do was sit on the edge of the couch feeling my head getting heavy at the top. I stared at the xs on the divorce papers, the wording on the prescription notepad, the two colors of ink, the date of the check, the careful way in which he wrote, "Ten thousand only and no cents."

She said this in such a funny way that everybody thought it was a good joke and laughed. And then, to make matters worse, I heard my mother saying to Waverly: "True, cannot teach style. June not sophisticate like you. Must be born this way."

"Ma, I cant…" I said. "I cant see you now. Im busy."

My mother shook the platter in front of me. "Take it, already cold," said my mother.

And I saw Rich smiling back, with amusement, and not humility, showing in his face. He had the same coloring as the crab on his plate: reddish hair, pale cream skin, and large dots of orange freckles. While he smirked, Auntie Lindo demonstrated the proper technique, poking her chopstick into the orange spongy part: "You have to dig in here, get this out. The brain is most tastiest, you try."

"I mean, he is gay," Waverly said. "He could have AIDS. And he is cutting your hair, which is like cutting a living tissue. Maybe Im being paranoid, being a mother, but you just cant be too safe these days…."

"Which was what?" Lena gasped. "You were depressed. You were manipulated into thinking you were nothing next to him. And now you think youre nothing without him. If I were you, Id get the name of a good lawyer and go for everything you can. Get even."

I stayed in bed for three days, getting up only to go to the bathroom or to heat up another can of chicken noodle soup. But mostly I slept. I took the sleeping pills Ted had left behind in the medicine cabinet. And for the first time I can recall, I had no dreams. All I could remember was falling smoothly into a dark space with no feeling of dimension or direction. I was the only person in this blackness. And every time I woke up, I took another pill and went back to this place.

"I should ask you the same thing," 九*九*藏*书*网said Waverly. Lisa looked embarrassed when Vincent ignored the question.

"Stop her! Stop her!" cried my mother. As I tried to run away, old Mr. Chou chased me, shouting, "See what happens when you dont listen to your mother!" And I became paralyzed, too scared to move in any direction.

"You should go see my guy," said Waverly. "Mr. Rory. He does fabulous work, although he probably charges more than youre used to."

"Nala, nala"—Take it, take it—she said, as if she were scolding me. And then she continued in Chinese. "For a long time, I wanted to give you this necklace. See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning. This is your lifes importance."

"How could you tell? I didnt smell anything wrong."

"So how do you think the Giants are going to do?" said Vincent, trying to be funny. Nobody laughed.

More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen. A month after I told her that Ted and I were getting a divorce, I met her at church, at the funeral of China Mary, a wonderful ninety-two-year-old woman who had played godmother to every child who passed through the doors of the First Chinese Baptist Church.

"Get away from there!" I shout, and slap my hand on the window three times. But the cat just narrows his eyes, flattens his one ear, and hisses back at me.

Shed say things like, "I really dont like to talk about important tax matters except in my office. I mean, what if you say something casual over lunch and I give you some casual advice. And then you follow it, and its wrong because you didnt give me the full information. Id feel terrible. And you would too, wouldnt you?"

And then without missing a beat, he proceeded to say what he really wanted, which was more despicable than all the terrible things I had imagined.

To my friend Lena, I said I was better off without Ted. After the initial shock, I realized I didnt miss him at all. I just missed the way I felt when I was with him.

"Good one take time," continued Auntie Lindo, nodding her head in agreement with herself.

He wanted the papers returned, signed. He wanted the house. He wanted the whole thing to be over as soon as possible. Because he wanted to get married again, to someone else.

The words my mother spoke did come from up high. As I recall, I was always looking up at her face as I lay on my pillow. In those days my sisters and I all slept in the same double bed. Janice, my oldest sister, had an allergy that made one nostril sing like a bird at night, so we called her Whistling Nose. Ruth was Ugly Foot because she could spread her toes out in the shape of a witchs claw. I was Scaredy Eyes because I would squeeze shut my eyes so I wouldnt have to see the dark, which Janice and Ruth said was a dumb thing to do. During those early years, I was the last to fall asleep. I clung to the bed, refusing to leave this world for dreams.

"Not so good," she said again. "That crab die. Even a beggar dont want it."

She said it in a way as if this were proof—proof of something good. She always said things that didnt make any sense, that sounded both good and bad at the same time.

And just like that, I was starting to flail, tossed without warning into deep water, drowning and desperate. "Most copy needs fine-tuning," I said. "Its…normal not to be perfect the first time. I should have explained the process better."

"You havent cashed the check or returned the papers. I wanted to be nice about this, Rose. I can get someone to officially serve the papers, you know."

And so she grimly answered her own question: "He is doing monkey business with someone else."

"Have you ever had them torn off with anesthesia? God! Ive never seen you so hysterical," said Waverly. "You want my opinion, youre better off without him. It hurts only because its taken you fifteen years to see what an emotional wimp he is. Listen, I know what it feels like."

"No, I dont think so," I said.

"That one, we bought it." She was pointing to a large spray of yellow chrysanthemums and red roses. "Thirty-four dollars. All artificial, so it will last forever. You can pay me later. Janice and Matthew also chip in some. You have money?"

As I rinse the tofu in the sink, I am startled by a dark mass that appears suddenly at the window. Its the one-eared tomcat from upstairs. Hes balancing on the sill, rubbing his flank against the window.

"Dont get a dead one," warned my mother in Chinese. "Even a beggar wont eat a dead one."

Above me, I hear the old pipes shake into action with a thunk! and then the water running in my sink dwindles to a trickle. One of the tenants upstairs must be taking a shower. I remember my mother complaining: "Even you dont want them, you stuck." And now I know what she meant.

"Not so good, this jade," she said matter-of-factly, touching the pendant, and then she added in Chinese: "This is young jade. It is a very light color now, but if you wear it every day it will become more green."

"Thank you, Little Queen. Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

Then the minister asked everyone to bow in prayer. My mother was quiet at last, dabbing her nose with Kleenex while the minister talked: "I can just see her now, wowing the angels with her Chinese cooking and gung-ho attitude."

My mother said the gray-haired man put too many bags in the garbage cans: "Cost me extra."

I had been talking to too many people, my friends, everybody it seems, except Ted. To each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true, I was certain of it, at least at the moment that I told it.

"Psyche-atricks," she corrected herself.

And I cried, "But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too."

I couldnt resist rubbing it in: "I think its pretty ironic that a big accounting firm cant even pay its own bills on time. I mean, really, Waverly, what kind of place are you working for?"

"Two weeks?"

"Last week," she said, growing angrier at each step, "the waigoren accuse me." She referred to all Caucasians as waigoren, foreigners. "They say I put poison in a fish, kill that cat."

"A mother is best. A mother knows what is inside you," she said above the singing voices. "A psyche-atricks will only make you hulihudu, make you see heimongmong."

And the woman, a very elegant artist type with blond hair, had supposedly painted the apartment in terrible red and green colors. "Awful," moaned my mother. "And they take bath, two three times every day. Running the water, running, running, running, never stop!"

I looked at the necklace, the pendant with the light green jade. I wanted to give it back. I didnt want to accept it. And yet I also felt as if I had already swallowed it.

I once saw her chase him from her stairwell with a pot of boiling water. I was tempted to ask if she really had put poison in a fish, but I had learned never to take sides against my mother.

The next morning, I was still thinking about my marriage: fifteen years of living in Teds shadow. I lay in bed, my eyes squeezed shut, unable to make the simplest decisions.

I used to believe everything my mother said, even when I didnt know what she meant. Once when I was little, she told me she knew it would rain because lost ghosts were circling near our windows, calling "Woo-woo" to be let in. She said doors would unlock themselves in the middle of the night unless we checked twice. She said a mirror could see only my face, but she could see me inside out even when I was not in the room.

I told my psychiatrist I was obsessed with revenge. I dreamt of calling Ted up and inviting him to dinner, to one of those trendy whos-who places, like caf?Majestic or Rosalies. And after he started the first course and was nice and relaxed, I would say, "Its not that easy, Ted." From my purse I would take out a voodoo doll which Lena had already lent me from her props department. I would aim my escargot fork at a strategic spot on the voodoo doll and I would say, out loud, in front of all the fashionable restaurant patrons, "Ted, youre just such an impotent bastard99lib.net and Im going to make sure you stay that way."Wham!

The table was littered with crab carcasses. Waverly and Rich lit cigarettes and put a crab shell between them for an ashtray. Shoshana had wandered over to the piano and was banging notes out with a crab claw in each hand. Mr. Chong, who had grown totally deaf over the years, watched Shoshana and applauded: "Bravo! Bravo!" And except for his strange shouts, nobody said a word. My mother went to the kitchen and returned with a plate of oranges sliced into wedges. My father poked at the remnants of his crab. Vincent cleared his throat, twice, and then patted Lisas hand.

"Who says?" He folded his arms across his chest, squinted his eyes, examining my face as if he knew it would crack at any moment. That expression of his used to terrify me into stammers.

I sat there quietly, trying to listen to my heart, to make the right decision. But then I realized I didnt know what the choices were. And so I put the papers and the check away, in a drawer where I kept store coupons which I never threw away and which I never used either.

"Suyuan!" called Auntie Lindo to my mother. "Why you wear that color?" Auntie Lindo gestured with a crab leg to my mothers red sweater.

I could sense the danger, but I said it anyway: "What do you mean, afraid? Hes always very good."

"Even if I could live forever," she said to the baby, "I still dont know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason.

But on the fourth day, I had a nightmare. In the dark, I couldnt see Old Mr. Chou, but he said he would find me, and when he did, he would squish me into the ground. He was sounding a bell, and the louder the bell rang the closer he was to finding me. I held my breath to keep from screaming, but the bell got louder and louder until I burst awake.

"Old Mr. Chou takes me to bad places," I cried.

"That cat always raising his tail to put a stink on my door," complained my mother.

I began to shake. "Out," I said.

My mother looked at me and smiled. "Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everybody else want best quality. You thinking different."

"Whyd you cook it if you knew it was already dead?"

"Ive already found a place," I said quickly, because right then I knew where I was going to live. His eyebrows raised in surprise and he smiled—for the briefest moment—until I said, "Here."

That year, Chinese New Year fell on a Thursday, so I got off work early to help my mother shop. My mother was seventyone, but she still walked briskly along, her small body straight and purposeful, carrying a colorful flowery plastic bag. I dragged the metal shopping cart behind.

Saying this, I felt I had raced to the top of a big turning point in my life, a new me after just two weeks of psychotherapy. But my psychiatrist just looked bored, his hand still propped under his chin. "It seems youve been experiencing some very powerful feelings," he said, sleepy-eyed. "I think we should think about them more next week."

"I can still hear her voice," Wing said to the mourners. "She said God made me with all the right ingredients, so itd be a shame if I burned in hell."

"Probably not," I said, and smiled before carrying the plates to the sink.

The baby laughed, listening to her grandmothers laments.

But by the time she told me this, it was too late. I had already begun to bend. I had started going to school, where a teacher named Mrs. Berry lined us up and marched us in and out of rooms, up and down hallways while she called out, "Boys and girls, follow me." And if you didnt listen to her, she would make you bend over and whack you with a yardstick ten times.

"Crab isnt Chinese," said Waverly in her complaining voice. It was amazing how Waverly still sounded the way she did twenty-five years ago, when we were ten and she had announced to me in that same voice, "You arent a genius like me."

And I knew he had done that, not out of any concern for me, but because when he wants something, he gets impatient and irrational about people who make him wait.

"You mean you still go to that guy on Howard Street?" Waverly asked, arching one eyebrow. "Arent you afraid?"

"Nice haircut," Waverly said to me from across the table.

"I dont think we should talk about Ted now, not here."

"What happen?"

And five minutes later the phone rang again.

"She gave it to me after I got divorced. I guess my mothers telling me Im still worth something."

Ted pulled out the divorce papers and stared at them. His xs were still there, the blanks were still blank. "What do you think youre doing? Exactly what?" he said.

"Hey, hey, you girls, no more fighting!" said my father, as if Waverly and I were still children arguing over tricycles and crayon colors.

And the answer, the one that was important above everything else, ran through my body and fell from my lips: "You cant just pull me out of your life and throw me away."

I was putting away the last of the chipped plates and then I remembered something else. "Ma, why dont you ever use those new dishes I bought you? If you didnt like them, you should have told me. I could have changed the pattern."

I felt like screaming. She could be so sneaky with her insults. Every time I asked her the simplest of tax questions, for example, she could turn the conversation around and make it seem as if I were too cheap to pay for her legal advice.

"Hwai dungsyi, was this kind of thinking wrong? If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?"

"When are you guys getting married?" asked Vincent.

"Whats that?" he said sharply. His eyebrows were still up, but now there was no smile.

"O! Hwai dungsyi"—You bad little thing—said the woman, teasing her baby granddaughter. "Is Buddha teaching you to laugh for no reason?" As the baby continued to gurgle, the woman felt a deep wish stirring in her heart.

"Not so good," she said, jabbing at her mouth with a toothpick.

"No, Ma," I protested. "I cant take this."

I was not too fond of crab, every since I saw my birthday crab boiled alive, but I knew I could not refuse. Thats the way Chinese mothers show they love their children, not through hugs and kisses but with stern offerings of steamed dumplings, ducks gizzards, and crab.

My mother didnt kill that damn cat after all, and Im relieved. And then I see this cat rubbing more vigorously on the window and he starts to raise his tail.

"Can tell even before cook!" She was standing now, looking out the kitchen window into the night. "I shake that crab before cook. His legs—droopy. His mouth—wide open, already like a dead person."

"Rewrites are free. Im just as concerned about making it perfect as you are."

That night I dreamt I was wandering through the garden. The trees and bushes were covered with mist. And then I spotted Old Mr. Chou and my mother off in the distance, their busy movements swirling the fog around them. They were bending over one of the planter boxes.

I had no plan. I didnt know what I would say to him later. I knew only that I wanted Ted to see me one more time before the divorce.

My mother acted as though this were a compliment. "Emporium Capwell," she said. "Nineteen dollar. Cheaper than knit it myself."

On Stockton Street, we wandered from one fish store to another, looking for the liveliest crabs.

I turned on the water to wash the dishes. And I no longer felt angry at Waverly. I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no one there.

"A girl is like a young tree," she said. "You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away."