Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the World of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco. "Libby-ah," she'll say to me. "Guess who I see yesterday, you guess." And I don't have to guess that she's talking about someone dead.

My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club. I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.

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.

Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies.

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.

I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.

After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.

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

I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.