The Joan Luck Club

My mother, Joan, was a professional housewife.  It was a status symbol of sorts, but it was also a tough job.  Personally, I would be unable to find happiness from a life that centered on dirty clothes, dirty toilets, and having to make meals that catered to my father’s particular tastes.  But my mother thrived on being a domestic goddess, thanks in large part to a few choice diversions.  For one thing, she was a slave to that mid-century throwback—the beauty parlor.  For as far back as I can remember my mother had a standing Friday morning hair appointment where she was rolled, dried and teased into a perfect pouf.  By noon, she was suitably coifed for whatever the weekend held. 

Her other diversion was a weekly game of Mah Jongg.  A tile game with origins in China, Mah Jongg played an important role in Jewish communities in the US, bringing women out of their homes into midday social gatherings.  The National Mah Jongg League was established in 1937—the year of my mother’s birth.  Paid members receive an annual card that specifies the legal hands for the year, which also handicapps the hands for betting according to statistical difficulty.  My mother learned to play at the age of 5 in the shadows of her own mother’s weekly game.  She and the other kids would interrupt the adults as they played, pointing out the dragons or chrysanthemums on the pretty bakelite tiles, thus destroying the competitive advantage of their mothers.  As a self-defense mechanism of sorts, one of the mothers brought an old Mah Jongg set, engaging the children in their own game.  My mother has been rattling May Jongg tiles since.

During my youth, my mother was always part of a regular “game,” which included four other women in addition to her.    Seats at their table were highly coveted.  The game rotated among the homes giving each woman an equal chance to host.  They played every Wednesday for as far back as I can remember, beginning mid-morning and playing until after school got out—around 3 or 4 o’clock.  There was a bit of excitement every five weeks when the game came to our house.  I do not think the women ever stopped for a lunch break per se.  There was a buffet of food where one simply noshed during the rounds when they were “out.”  I remember helping my mother make cute little sandwiches from canned date-and-nut-bread.   I loved removing both ends of the can and pressing out the bread, then making an even number of thin slices and spreading them with Philadelphia cream cheese.  This was also an occasion for a bowl of peanut M & Ms, or those wonderful Hershey’s miniatures.  If I was lucky, when I got home from school I would be able to choose from the leftovers before helping to clean up.

The best part of Mah Jongg for me was the sound.  There was a particularly glorious sound when the tiles clicked against each other while being mixed on the quilted cover of the old card table.  I always tried to do my homework as close to the action as possible just to indulge in that sound.  If my mother set up for her games the night before, I begged to be able to help mix the tiles around and around on the table.  It was fun to dump the tiles out of the fancy felt-lined case and then race to turn them all face down.  After mixing, it was important to set up properly, building a two-story wall of tiles, two rows thick, against each player’s tray. 

It was rare to be able to watch the women play; they were fiercely cutthroat and did not suffer intruders or spectators.  But it was mesmerizing to tune into the rhythm of the game as each player called their tile and discarded, depleting the stacked wall tile by tile as if unraveling stitches on a knitted sweater.  As the last tile was snatched from one wall, another player would instantly push her tray out to introduce a new wall, always going in a clockwise direction.  This was professional quality play without so much as a sip of coffee to contemplate the next move.  If a woman could not keep up with their pace, she was unceremoniously replaced by someone else.  There was always a waiting list.

The closest I get to Mah Jongg today is the solitaire game on my Kindle.  It uses the familiar tiles but bears little resemblance to the actual game.  I regret never learning to play Mah Jongg, if only to keep this tradition of my mother’s and her “Wednesday ladies’” alive.  It is something that my mother continues to do to this day, after 70 years, with sanguineous greed.  But ladies beware.  She is a shark with a bun and readers, ready to take the money of anyone who will dare sit at her Mah Jongg table.