The Joy Luck Club

little sister?'

The dripping man bent down and looked at me. 'Oh, a little girl. Not a fish!'

'Not a fish! Not a fish!' murmured the others, chuckling.

I began to shiver, too scared to cry. The air smelled dangerous, the sharp odors of gunpowder and fish.

'Do not pay any attention to them,' said the woman. 'Are you from another fishing boat? Which one? Do not be afraid. Point.'

Out on the water I saw rowboats and pedal boats and sailboats, and fishing boats like this one, with a long bow and small house in the middle. I looked hard, my heart beating fast.

'There!' I said, and pointed to a floating pavilion filled with laughing people and lanterns. 'There! There!' And I began to cry, desperate to reach my family and be comforted. The fishing boat glided swiftly over, toward the good cooking smells.

'E!' called the woman up to the boat. 'Have you lost a little girl, a girl who fell in the water?'

There were some shouts from the floating pavilion, and I strained to see faces of Amah, Baba, Mama. People were crowded on one side of the pavilion, leaning over, pointing, looking into our boat. All strangers, laughing red faces, loud voices. Where was Amah? Why did my mother not come? A little girl pushed her way through some legs.

'That's not me!' she cried. 'I'm here. I didn't fall in the water.' The people in the boat roared with laughter and turned away.

'Little sister, you were mistaken,' said the woman as the fishing boat glided away. I said nothing. I began to shiver again. I had seen nobody who cared that I was missing. I looked out over the water at the hundreds of dancing lanterns. Firecrackers were exploding and I could hear more people laughing. The farther we glided, the bigger the world became. And I now felt I was lost forever.

The woman continued to stare at me. My braid was unfurled. My undergarments were wet and gray. I had lost my slippers and was barefoot.

'What shall we do?' said one of the men quietly. 'Nobody to claim her.'

'Maybe she is a beggar girl,' said one of the men. 'Look at her clothes. She is one of those children who ride the flimsy rafts to beg for money.'

I was filled with terror. Maybe this was true. I had turned into a beggar girl, lost without my family.

'Anh! Don't you have eyes?' said the woman crossly. 'Look at her skin, too pale. And her feet, the bottoms are soft.'

'Put her on the shore, then,' said the man. 'If she truly has a family, they will look for her there.'

'Such a night!' sighed another man. 'Always someone falling in on holiday nights. Drunken poets and little children. Lucky she didn't drown.' They chatted like this, back and forth, moving slowly toward shore. One man pushed the boat with a long bamboo pole and we glided between other boats. When we reached the dock, the man who had fished me out of the water lifted me out of the boat with his fishy-smelling hands.

'Be careful next time, little sister,' called the woman as their boat glided away.

On the dock, with the bright moon behind me, I once again saw my shadow. It was shorter this time, shrunken and wild-looking. We ran together over to some bushes along a walkway and hid. In this hiding place I could hear people talking as they walked by. I could hear frogs and crickets. And then-flutes and tinkling cymbals, a sounding gong and drums!

I looked through the branches of the bushes and in front I could see a crowd of people and, above them, a stage holding up the moon. A young man burst out from the side of a stage and told the crowd, 'And now the Moon Lady will come and tell her sad tale to you, in a shadow play, classically sung.'

The Moon Lady! I thought, and the very sound of those magic words made me forget my troubles. I heard more cymbals and gongs and then a shadow of a woman appeared against the moon. Her hair was undone and she was combing it. She began to speak. Such a sweet, wailing voice!

'My fate and my penance,' she began to lament, pulling her long fingers through her hair, 'to live here on the moon, while my husband lives on the sun. So that each day and each night, we pass each other, never seeing one another, except this one evening, the night of the mid-autumn moon.'

The crowd moved closer. The Moon Lady plucked her lute and began her singing tale.

On the other side of the moon I saw the silhouette of a man appear. The Moon Lady held her arms out to embrace him-'O! Hou Yi, my husband, Master Archer of the Skies!' she sang. But her husband did not seem to notice her. He was gazing at the sky. And as the sky grew brighter, his mouth began to open wide-in horror or delight, I could not tell.

The Moon Lady clutched her throat and fell into a heap, crying, 'The drought of ten suns in the eastern sky!' And just as she sang this, the Master Archer pointed his magic arrows and shot down nine suns which burst open with blood. 'Sinking into a simmering sea!' she sang happily, and I could hear these suns sizzling and crackling in death.

And now a fairy-the Queen Mother of the Western Skies!-was flying toward the Master Archer. She opened a box and held up a glowing ball-no, not a baby sun but a magic peach, the peach of everlasting life! I could see the Moon Lady pretending to be busy with her embroidery, but she was watching her husband. She saw him hide the peach in a box. And then the Master Archer raised his bow and vowed to fast for one year to show he had the patience to live forever. And after he ran off, the Moon Lady wasted not one moment to find the peach and eat it!

As soon as she tasted it, she began to rise, then fly-not like the Queen Mother- but like a dragonfly with broken wings. 'Flung from this earth by my own wantonness!' she cried just as her husband dashed back home, shouting, 'Thief! Life-stealing wife!' He picked up his bow, aimed an arrow at his wife and-with the rumblings of a gong, the sky went black.

Wyah! Wyah! The sad lute music began again as the sky on the stage lightened. And there stood the poor lady against a moon as bright as the sun. Her hair was now so long it swept the floor, wiping up her tears. An eternity had passed since she last saw her husband, for this was her fate: to stay lost on the moon, forever seeking her own selfish wishes.

'For woman is yin,' she cried sadly, 'the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.'

At the end of her singing tale, I was crying, shaking with despair. Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief. In one small moment, we had both lost the world, and there was no way to get it back.

A gong sounded, and the Moon Lady bowed her head and looked serenely to the side. The crowd clapped vigorously. And now the same young man as before came out on the stage and announced, 'Wait, everybody! The Moon Lady has consented to grant one secret wish to each person here…' The crowd stirred with excitement, people murmuring in high voices. 'For a small monetary donation…' continued the young man. And the crowd laughed and groaned, then began to disperse. The young man shouted, 'A once-a-year opportunity!' But nobody was listening to him, except my shadow and me in the bushes.

'I have a wish! I have one!' I shouted as I ran forward in my bare feet. But the young man paid no attention to me and walked off the stage. I kept running toward the moon to tell the Moon Lady what I wanted, because now I knew what my wish was. I darted fast as a lizard behind the stage, to the other side of the moon.

I saw her, standing still for just a moment. She was beautiful, ablaze with the light from a dozen kerosene lamps. And then she shook her long shadowy tresses and began to walk down the steps.

'I have a wish,' I said in a whisper, and still she did not hear me. So I walked closer yet, until I could see the face of the Moon Lady: shrunken cheeks, a broad oily nose, large glaring teeth, and