“Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (pg. 21).
In Kweilin, Jing-mei's mother created the Joy Luck Club, composed of four female members whose husbands/brothers/male companions were involved in the war. Each time her mother told the story, it would usually stop at the point when the Joy Luck Club would cook feasts, play mahjong, and trade stories into the night to escape the fear and uncertainty of the war. Her mother would tag on some fantastic ending that made the story seem like a “Chinese fairy tale”, according to Jing-mei. She never went on to tell the real ending of the story until one evening. I'm not sure why she always changed the ending – maybe she wanted to keep her daughter guessing, or maybe she just wasn't comfortable with telling the story so soon.
One day an army officer suggested to Jing-mei's mother that she travel to Chungking to be with her husband. She knew the message meant that the Japanese would soon arrive in her town, and that the families of men like her husband would be the first to die. She packed her children and some belongings into a wheelbarrow walked Chungking, since there were no running trains. Her hands began to bleed from carrying her bags for so long. She was eventually forced to begin lightening her load by leaving items behind. By the time she arrived in Chungking, she had only three silk dresses. She told Jing-mei that she was not one of those babies, not being her first daughter.
Jing-mei never really knew why her mother told her about Kweilin until one evening at a game of mahjong. Her aunts revealed to her that her mother wanted to get back in touch with her daughters, but she died before she did so.
I think Jing-mei's mother eventually told her the real ending to the story, so that when this came up, it would not come up as a surprise. Maybe she knew she would waste a lifetime trying to reach her two daughters in Hong-Kong, and hoped that Jing-mei would do the duty for her.
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