Honor and Duty (5 page)

“Deal,” I said, edging closer, offering my hand, without spit.

We shook, her pale eyes and pallid features eloquently accusing me; I was a hood who had tried to knuckle his own mom. I was the cause of her ills, her poor animation, her industry in correcting and guiding me through a ceaseless process of examination and criticism. I felt bad, and tried, and old. The strength of her handshake made me wonder. In time, overcome by the small events of life, I forgot the photo.

Edna’s postal concern was not related to Howdy Doody flexi-straws or Davy Crockett coonskin hats; it was worse than my frowning face, my trouble with the gymnastics of English, or my Chinese habit of eating noisily. I had looked at Sears bra ads.

“Girls distract boys and diminish your woeful native capacity for schoolwork. Girls are cruel, you are far from handsome, and they will hurt you terribly. Rely on us for affection. Animals are kinder than people. You are so frail and emotionally stunted … the slightest comment drives you into a frenzy. You can’t even speak without my help. Change that expression
this instant!
I can’t
stand
that ugly, despicable scowl. Don’t you
dare
defy me with your horrid face. You are
sick
and vile for looking at these—these
pictures.
Your interest is unnatural! Other boys do not look at women in their underwear! If only you could see yourself as others see you. You’re despicable! Just because you’re now larger in frame does
not
mean that you do not have to mind me.”

She was in rhythm now, chanting ills in synchronicity with
ho
, the greater harmony, flurrying verbal Sunday punches with no jabs and all right crosses, hooks, and uppercuts. All I felt was hurt, pinned to the ropes, without a ref, a bell, or a god to intervene. I leaked blood from my brain and regretted my life. Her voice knifed into my brain, where it vibrated and keened painfully, and I prayed for the emptiness that comes to those with patience.

“I should’ve called Juvenile Hall and had you arrested! You’re
terrible
, ungodly, disgusting, with fat lips and small, frowning, squinty eyes. No girl could like you! You’re going to West Point and don’t even see it is
I
who made this possible and now you’re going as if
you
earned it! You are so ungrateful and full of venomous, stupid,
teenaged
nonsense! Oh, yes,
show me that bland, ugly, stupid, expressionless face. It will hurt you more than me.”

3

Chinatown, May 20, 1964

“
Dababa
, Uncle, you ever have a bad relationship with anyone?” Uncle Shim was not my true blood uncle, but he was my Old World elder in all of life.

“Ding hao!”
—highest best! He liked my question. We were in the On-On Cafe on Grant Avenue after my Saturday shift at the Y. He sipped long-steeped, thick, oily black tea while I ate the house specialty of
hoy yaw ngauyuhk fan
, succulent, aromatic oyster beef over steamed, fluffy white rice, along with
do see dofu hom nyeuw
, the sharply salted, tender fish with soft bean curd in thick black bean sauce that Chinese had used for centuries to build muscles, and
gai chowfun
, chicken with wide, flat, richly seasoned rice noodles. It was a meal for four or five and barely 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 apothecary
spectacles 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’ve
resisted 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.” He shook his gray head and I could no longer enjoy the wafting cafe aromas. “Think of Cheng Han-cheng’s disrespectful wife.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Do you not remember her? She struck her mother-in-law and was stripped of her skin, sliced and burned? Truly, to have a mind with no gripping at all—a brain made of hard rocks.”

I grimaced for Mrs. Cheng and smiled at his description of me.

“And now you smile! Ayyy—yes, thank you,” he said to our red-jacketed waiter, who delivered hot tea, nodding blandly at the ritual of elders chastising the young, trying to pour their life lessons into the empty and nonabsorbent vessels of youth.

“See here, young Ting. The love of parents is not a Sung canticle of romance, for the lute or mandolin, for poets who yearn for the moon and shed tears for the mystery of the tides. It has nothing to do with
gan ch’ing
—human emotion.

“
Hausheng
, Able Student, it is
duty.
Do not worry about feelings. Think of your
obligations.
It is such a mistake to call this relationship a matter of love. This is Western silliness and foreign nonsense, which do not cover the truth of duty.

“There is no dreamy softness inside the heavy burden of
shiao
, of piety to parents. It is a huge rock. You can try all your life and never encircle this rock with your arms or with your life.

“It is the mountain of obligation you can never carry and never drop, for you are bound by duty to your father and all fathers before.
This
is what it means to honor your birthright.

“You must create in your father a sense of harmony, of
ho
, in his heart! This is the unending duty of sons! To place his thoughts before yours, his needs before all others.” He sighed deeply, attempting to calm the exclamations my statement about Edna had excited from him. The vein in his temple darkened to a deep blue. He sipped tea loudly, trying to drown the bitter air at the table. I did not give my parents a sense of harmony. I had raised my fists to Edna. I wanted to yell at her. It did not matter what she did to me; I had to honor her. Yet, deep down, I knew truly that I hated her, breaching
shiao
and failing in duty. I was without honor or value. I lowered my face in hot, red shame and put down my
kwaidz
, unworthy of human respect, undeserving of good or plentiful food.

“Bonds and relationships,” he said softly, “
gahng
and
lun
, tie you to others and give you the purpose of life. Duty,
dzeren
, filial piety,
shiao
, bind you to those you must honor. In serving
gahng
and
lun
, you honor the life your parents gave you. Without this, you are dishonored. It cannot be simpler. Do you see?”

“Yes,
Dababa
,” I said, looking at my old shoes.

“So whose fault is this lack of
ho
, this absence of harmony with your living mother?” he asked. I looked up.

“Mine,
Dababa
,” I said. The dark blue vein in his head pulsed.

“And how can you rectify this failing?” he asked.

“I will leave,” I said firmly.

He smiled wanly. “The worst, perhaps, of all thoughtful choices.” It was a mild day, but Uncle Shim held the teacup in both hands, taking its warmth. He looked at me as if seeing me from afar.

“Are there not others whom you
will
miss,” he said slowly, “when you leave for the moon, for the outer stars?” He could not bear to say the name of my actual destination, that “military school”—two words that produced an immediate contradiction. This place in distant New York that could not be an academy of thought and scholarship if it also had guns and taught killing. “Good emperors with armies are more evil,” he had said, “than bad scholars with poor brushes.”

“I’ll miss Christine Carlson,” I said.

“Who is this?” he said, for perhaps the tenth time.

“Christine.” I flourished her photo, as always.

“She does not remind one of Hsi Shih, the famous beauty who sat watching the quiet river in ancient times, does she,” he
said, not even expending a
shihma
, a question mark. “She is not Chinese,” he said, and I stiffened. He sucked the tea loudly, offering the most powerful punctuation available. “You have romantic fondness for her? Affection which she does not return to you?” he asked.

“Yes, Uncle. No, Uncle,” I said.

“Ah ha,” he said. “You are quite smart in these matters. You have given all your affection to a white-haired girl without family, who detests you.” He looked at his impeccable nails and found dust on a cuticle. He looked up. “She does not know the
San-gahng
, the Three Bonds, the
Wu-ch’ang
, Five Constant Virtues, the Three Followings, and the Four Female Virtues?”

“Americans don’t know that,” I said. Edna was independent with my father. She was not a Chinese wife with small feet and small voice and five steps back. My father was American.

“All the more important, then, young Ting, to select a woman who
does
know them. Is she willing to learn?”

Christine submitting herself to her dad, then to her husband, and then, in widowhood, to her son. Cultivating obedience, appropriateness, seemliness, and the home? I didn’t think so.

“Ha!” cried my uncle, startling me. “Is she of a free spirit—an unconventional thinker? Different than most girls you know?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s her.”

He nodded. “Your Mah-mee was the same.” He beamed until he realized he was smiling. He furrowed his brows.

I poured him tea. I placed the empty pot with its lid canted near the edge of the table and waved to the waiter.