Quote 7
I had truly expected my mother to come soon. I imagined her seeing my soiled clothes, the little flowers she had worked so hard to make. I thought she would come to the back of the boat and scold me in her gentle way. But she did not come. Oh, once I heard some footsteps, but I saw only the faces of my half-sisters pressed to the door window. They looked at me wide-eyes, pointed to me, and then laughed and scampered off. (I.4.73)
Ying-ying feels abandoned when her mother doesn’t come to scold her.
Quote 8
But my mother sighed. "Yesterday, you not finish rice either." I thought of those unfinished mouthfuls of rice, and then the grains that lined my bowl the day before, and the day before that. By the minute, my eight-year-old heart grew more and more terror-stricken over the growing possibility that my future husband was fated to be this mean boy Arnold. (III.1.21)
A mother’s words can have a lot of power. In this case, Lena takes her mom too seriously and it eventually leads to unintended consequences.
Quote 9
"Lena cannot eat ice cream," says my mother.
"So it seems. She’s always on a diet."
"No, she never eat it. She doesn’t like."
"And now Harold smiles and looks at me puzzled, expecting me tot translate what my mother has said.
"It’s true," I say evenly. "I’ve hated ice cream almost all my life."
Harold looks at me, as if I too, were speaking Chinese and he could not understand. I guess I assumed you were just trying to lose weight…oh well."
"She become so thin now you cannot see her," says my mother. "She like a ghost, disappear."
That’s right! Christ, that’s great," exclaims Harold, laughing, relieved in thinking my mother is graciously trying to rescue him. (III.1.90)
Ying-ying knows her daughter far better than her daughter’s husband does. Lena can’t hide from her mom the deterioration of her spirit as a result of the bad marriage. In the marriage, Ying-ying also sees her own influence on her daughter: Ying-ying became a ghost in her marriage and has passed that bad example on to her daughter.