The new apartment is a case in point. In an ironic comment, St. Clair announces that his family is "moving up in the world." He imagines this move to be "a move up" in a figurative and literal sense. His new job commands a greater salary, thus enabling him to afford a better home for his family. The family moves up the socioeconomic ladder, and the new apartment is literally perched on the top of a steep hill. The family lives higher up than they were before, but Mrs. St. Clair dislikes the apartment from the start. It is positioned badly, against Chinese nature. "This house was built too steep," she says, "and a bad wind from the top blows all your strength back down the hill." The wind imagery, central to the previous section, recurs here. In "Rules of the Game," the wind symbolized something that could be harnessed to fuel great power. Here, it represents a loss of power. Mrs. St. Clair cannot marshall "invisible strength"; it was taken from her along with her identity. In a vain attempt to realign the family's luck, she rearranges the furniture. Her attempt is a failure, and soon afterward, she loses the baby.
Note Mrs. St. Clair's obsession with rape, birth, and death. In the beginning of the section, she cautions Lena that the bad man in the basement will "plant five babies in her" and then devour her. Later, as she and Lena walk down the street, she cautions Lena to avoid strangers, who will snatch her and "make [her] have a baby." "And then," she adds, "when they find this baby in a garbage can, then what can be done?" The drunken Chinese man who nearly assaults Mrs. St. Clair whispers salaciously of sex. When she loses her baby son, she moans, "I had given no thought to killing my other son!" This utterance tells us that there is a great deal more behind her madness. Something happened in China — something that she cannot express, something which lies hidden behind her agony.
