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unripe persimmon. The cook has added sugar to this dish, but no sweetness can dull the bitter taste that lingers on the tongue, tainting everything else you eat. Because it’s Mom’s favorite, she collects a giant heap and deposits it on my plate. It lands with a small thump, like a pile of manure.
    “Mom, why don’t you keep the bitter melon for yourself?” I say. “After all, it’s your favorite.”
    “You’re rejecting the best dish. Stop fussing. Just eat.”
    “It’s really bitter.”
    “If you eat bitterness all the time, you will get used to it. Then you will like it.”
    “But I don’t want to. I don’t like
fu gwa.”
    Mom’s face becomes dark and stormy. I’ve figured out too late that I’ve said the wrong thing.
    “I’ve been up since three thirty this morning, and I worked twelve hours—
twelve hours
—to earn the money that bought this food,” Mom says. “You think I
like
to go to work? I work for you.” Her eyes are red, tears welling in them, as her voice escalates to a shriek. “You don’t realize how lucky you are to have education and food anytime you want. When you bathe, you use so much shampoo and soap, twice as much as I do. When you eat chicken, you leave little traces of chicken and cartilage on the bone. And now you’re wasting a whole container of good food. I could support another child with all that you waste.”
    And now I am wasting her money for my education.
    “This weekend I’m working too. So now I’m working seven days a week. You know why?”
    I assume that her question is rhetorical, so I don’t answer.
    “You know why?” She is interpreting my silence as disrespect.
    “To pay for my tuition,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
    “That’s not all. I also have to pay for Princeton Review, because your SAT scores are so bad. Theresa got 1350. How could you only get 1050? Auntie Nellie said that Theresa took Princeton Review. She guaranteed that it will help you. Seven hundred dollars just to help you. Because you can’t help yourself.”
    Reluctantly, I lift a clump of bitter melon with my chopsticks and force it into my mouth. I chew it just enough so Ican swallow it. The chewing unleashes more bitterness, which bleeds and lodges itself into every taste bud. I continue until the pile of bitter melon on my plate is gone.
    But my efforts are not enough to placate her. Mom flings her chopsticks onto her plate. “Now look what you’ve done,” she says. “You’ve upset me so much that my stomach hurts even more, and now I can’t eat.” Mom takes her lunch container and starts piling the rest of the bitter melon into it. “Because you don’t like it, I guess I will have to finish it.”
    Now I am left with tender stalks and barbecued pork ends for the rest of my dinner. But I’ve lost my hunger for them. Mom puts on her apron and rubber gloves.
    “I can wash the dishes,” I say.
    “Go study and do your homework,” Mom snaps, keeping her back to me. She turns on the hot water and begins scrubbing the dishes in angry, jerky movements.
    I quietly open Mom’s container and scoop the remainder of my dinner into it. Then I turn around to make sure she isn’t watching. Her back looks twisted and hunched over, as if chewed up and spat out by the hardness of life. I wonder what her life would have been like had I never been born. Maybe she could have moved back to Hong Kong, where her family and friends are. Maybe she could have pursued a college education, so she wouldn’t have had to slave away at her current job. Maybe she could have found another husband, a nice man, a rich man who could have given her all the nice things she deserves. But she gave up all those opportunities. For me.
    Shortly after the dishes are done, Mom retires to the bedroom, and I am left alone in the living area. I open my
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
, my source of inspiration when I write essays, and look up quotes from Confucius. Twenty minutes later, I’ve come up