I didn't tell anyone about the things I saw, not even my mother. Most people didn't know I was half Chinese, maybe because my last name was St. Clair. When people first saw me, they thought I looked like my father, English-Irish, big-boned and delicate at the same time. But if they looked really close, if they knew that they were there, they could see the Chinese parts. Instead of having cheeks like my father's sharp-edged points, mine were smooth as beach pebbles. I didn't have his straw-yellow hair or his white skin, yet my coloring looked too pale, like something that was once darker and had faded in the sun (Tan, 104).
And my eyes, my mother gave me my eyes, no eyelids, as if they were carved on a jack-o'-lantern with two swift cuts of a short knife (Tan, 104).
"Don't look at her,'" said my mother as we walked through Chinatown in Oakland. She had grabbed my hand and pulled me close to her body. And of course I looked. I saw a woman sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a building. She was old and young at the same time, with dull eye as though she had not slept for many years. And her feet and her hands-the tips were as black as if she had dipped them in India ink. But I knew they were rotted. "'What did she do to herself?'" I whispered to my mother. "'She met a bad man,'" said my mother. "'She had a baby she didn't want'"(Tan, 105).
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 1-288.
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