The Joy Luck Club

A mother and her adult daughter argue about the mirrored armoire at the foot of the daughter’s bed. The mother claims that the mirror will reflect away marital happiness. The daughter is irritated by her mother’s tendency to see bad omens everywhere. The mother places another mirror above the bed, to multiply the couple’s “peach blossom luck.” The mother sees a new grandchild in the reflected mirror. The daughter sees herself.

Lena maintains that her mother can predict things before they happened, but only bad things. Ying-ying saw signs and now laments that she didn’t prevent these occurrences, like Clifford’s death.

Ying-ying visits Lena and her husband Harold in their new house. Lena and Harold are having marital problems and Lena fears that her mother will see bad signs.

Lena remembers when she was eight and her mother predicted that Lena would marry a bad man, whose face would have as many pock-marks as the grains of rice Lena left uneaten. Lena feared that would be Arnold, a mean boy at school, so she began to leave more rice uneaten. She reasoned that he would die and she wouldn’t have to marry him, and years later, Arnold died of measles.

Lena feels guilty and now thinks that she married Harold as penance.