“You’re ganging up on us,” Mr. Wang joked with a deep chuckle. “Is the secret that you’re working together but your mother refuses to help me?” He turned to his wife. “Come on, Lǎo Pó, help me out here.”

I knew that Chinese husbands sometimes called their wives “old woman” in Mandarin in the same way someone might say in English “ball and chain” or “little woman” or even “honey” (as I’d heard one man claim, “It’s endearing!”), but it still jarred me when I heard it. (And I could tell Jing-Jing didn’t like it but was more used to it.)

Mr. Wang tapped the table in front of his old woman. “Drop something tasty for me to eat, hmm?” he joked, referencing how he could only “chī” or “eat” a tile to form a run from the player before him, a.k.a. his wife.

“Tiles are about as tasty as anything else around here,” Jing-Jing whispered to herself, but I heard and laughed. Her eyes widened in surprise, but then she joined in, loud and hearty.

I winked at her and she graced me with a cheek-to-cheek smile.

Mrs. Wang used her clear plastic tile holder to push her latest losing hand facedown on the table. “Okay, I’ve had enough. Andrew, you certainly are reckless, but I guess you know enough to use it to your advantage.”

Jing-Jing pulled her face down in shock, then mouthed miracle to me as she tipped her head and thumb in her mother’s direction, exaggerating so her mother would see.

Mrs. Wang swatted her daughter’s hand down. “I’m a very nice person,” she said gruffly, on purpose, before letting out a short, one-syllable “Ha!” Then, to my shock, she asked, “Are leftovers okay for dinner, Andrew?”

She strode to the kitchen and I hurried after her, calling out, “Yes, of course! Let me come help.”

Was my victory not limited to mahjong? Fifty mooncake points!

Chloe

Had Andrew just won my mother over a smidge, and through mahjong? How many mooncake points did that impossible feat equal?

Dinner was a strange meal of Thanksgiving sides plus a turkey soup my mother had made from the otherwise useless bones. But the strangest part was how Andrew stole the show and became the center of the family.

As he filled the otherwise silence with stories about playing basketball with his father, moon-gazing with his mother, and indulging in Sichuan food at the holidays—all fake, I presumed—my parents ate up his charm along with the leftovers.

When he discussed his family’s deep involvement in their church and mentioned bringing me with him to Sunday services, my mother’s eyes bugged out of her head.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she gushed. “Aiyah, what good news!”

I couldn’t stop beaming as I dreamed of a life without the Kuo family sniffing around my twenty-four-karat vagina.