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enough for me.
    The waiter said, “Hey,
fan toong
.” Rice garbage can.
    Chinese food was a tonic to my ills. When Edna called Christine names, I wanted to scream to the heavens and jump up and down; but I couldn’t, so I ran to the basement and punched wood in crossing combinations with bare knuckles until the pain went away.
    “Able Student,” Uncle Shim said, smiling, “you have asked a
very
excellent question. Maintaining positive
gahng
and
lun
, bonds and relationships, is the essence of the moral and superior man. You have no existence outside the network of your
gahng
, the constellation of your duties. I am very happy with your question.” He showed me his teeth. I smiled back, chewing industriously.
    He cleared his thin throat, adjusting a perfectly knotted jade bow tie. He looked about through his thick-lensed apothecaryspectacles that brightly reflected light like Archimedes’ mirror. The cafe was awash in the bubbling talk of the high-tea lunch crowd as patrons argued, yelled, chewed, sucked soup and tea, and filled the air with lush, fourteen-toned Cantonese dialects. No one cared what we said, or could hear us if they tried.
    Uncle Shim hid his teeth, frowned, pain in his eyes, distaste in his mouth. He looked down and said, in his soft, spare voice, “You know,
I
am in bad relationships.”
    This was like Mrs. Marshall saying she loathed Shakespeare’s effete writing, or President Johnson saying he disliked Texas.
    “Yes!” he cried against my disbelief. “I tell you the truth!” He sucked in breath. “Young Ting, I failed in my relationship to my parents, to my son, to my wife, and to my daughters, to the
entire clan.
I could not stop their deaths. Is this not the most awful thing that an elder can tell a youth? Someday I will tell you the story of my failure.” He brought his face up. “All my learning, and my parents’ efforts, to no avail.
Wo ts’o liao!
I am to blame!”
    “Uncle—”
    “So,” he sighed. “Please believe me. Our learning in this mystery of
gahng
and
lun
is never done. This is why we must be students of the Master, for all our days. And as regrettable a man as I am, I have not ceased in my effort to be a good student.”
    He adjusted the alignment of his unused
kwaidz
, chopsticks. His thick, graying eyebrows were skewed, his thin cheeks hollowing, his eyes large and liquid, burning brightly with oils of pain and remorse. Now he spoke to himself, again the uncle of my early childhood, the reciter of Ming poetry, the cantor of sad rhymes from another age, speaking to graves.
    “My heart is a cold stove, my life the cup filled with dust.”
    “I don’t remember that one,
Dababa
,” I said. My uncle avoided saying new things. He liked to review the fundamentals.
    “Words just came; I made them up. Now they are gone.” He sipped his tea and looked at me. “Why do you ask this essential question about
gahng
and
lun?
” he asked softly.
    “
Dababa
—the war wasn’t your fault. If China had an army—”
    “Why do you ask this essential question about
gahng
and
lun?
”
    I wanted to say: if China had had a West Point, it could’veresisted the foreign powers, saved the slain from death, and kept my uncle from savoring his failures. The foreign destruction of China’s spirit could have been avoided. One must fight evil.
    “It’s my mother,” I said, closing my eyes in primitive fear. “I have a bad relationship with her.” I sucked in breath. I was violating
ji hui
, speaking inauspiciously and disturbing the geomancy, causing bad words to come to life. It was unfair that negatives waited in muscular ambush to pounce on our stupid words, while the good was hidden in the secret, hidden folds of life.
    “I’m supposed to love her. I don’t even know how. I want to yell at her.” I omitted the part about beating up the house.
    He sucked his breath. “Shouting is for men without brains. This is indeed a failing, to raise your voice against your mother.”