Rose walks in the garden, a once-immaculate assortment of flowers and herbs, now gone wild from neglect. She then goes to bed and stays there for three days. On the fourth day, she has a nightmare about Old Mr. Chou and awakens when her mother calls her on the telephone. Ted phones and presents his demands. Anxious to remarry, he wants the divorce papers signed immediately, and he also wants the house as part of the settlement. Rose breaks into gales of laughter when she realizes that Ted has been having an affair. She invites him to come over that night, with no idea about what she is going to say.
She ends up showing him the overgrown garden. As they walk through the plants, she hands him the unsigned divorce papers and announces that she will not move out of the house. That night, she dreams of her mother and of Old Mr. Chou and his garden. In the garden, she discovers her mother tending a wild sea of weeds that, she boasts, she herself planted.
Vividly, this section describes how Rose finally finds her "voice," her identity, and the ability to trust herself. From early childhood, Mrs. Hsu attempted to teach her daughter to listen to her and, thus, to learn how to listen to herself. But Rose was a timid child, unsure of where to find the truth, and she grew into a timid woman, uncertain of herself and unwilling to make decisions. Eventually, her indecision frustrated her husband, and the couple grew apart. In her mother's words, Rose was "without wood," lacking both strength and substance. She rejected her mother's wisdom and looked to Americans' opinions of her.
