Thanks for meeting me here.
[Eleanor eyes the other two women at the mahjong table]
Don't worry about them. They're half-deaf and they only speak Hokkien.
[Long pause as Eleanor reluctantly settles into her seat]
My mom taught me how to play. She told me mahjong would teach me important life skills: Negotiation. Strategy. Cooperation.
You asked me here, I assume it's not for a Mahjong lesson. [Shows her tiles] Pong. My mother taught me too.
I know Nick told you the truth about my mom, but you didn't like me the second I got here. Why is that?
There is a Hokkien phrase 'kaki lang'. It means: our own kind of people, and you're not our own kind.
Because I'm not rich? Because I didn't go to a British boarding school, or wasn't born into a wealthy family?
You're a foreigner. American – and all Americans think about is their own happiness.
Don't you want Nick to be happy?
It's an illusion. We understand how to build things that last. Something you know nothing about.
You don't know me.
I know you're not what Nick needs.
[pauses]
Well he proposed to me yesterday. [pauses] He said he'd walk away from his family and from you for good. [pauses] Don't worry, I turned him down.
Mm no. There's no winning. You made sure of that. 'Cause if Nick chose me, he would lose his family. And if he chose his family, he might spend the rest of his life resenting you.
I'm not leaving because I'm scared, or because I think I'm not enough – because maybe for the first time in my life, I know I am. [Choking back tears] I just love Nick so much, I don't want him to lose his mom again. So I just wanted you to know: that one day – when he marries another lucky girl who is enough for you, and you're playing with your grandkids while the Tan Hua's are blooming, and the birds are chirping – that it was because of me: a poor, raised by a single mother, low class, immigrant nobody.
