Tea Eggs

Teaching Yiyun Li's "Love in the Marketplace,"

whose struggle with integrity ought to speak

to the college set, I explain the Casablanca reference

and serve four dozen tea eggs—what the vendor

in the story sells, spending more than she has to

on ingredients. I too have spent more than I have to,

seeking out eggs raised with integrity

and using my home spices, which I special-order

or cart home from a city. I've cooked the eggs

with the care with which I make them for my kids;

as it turns out, they're headed for my kids

anyway. Most of the class won't try them.

"It's a hard-boiled egg, with soy sauce, salt,

black tea, star anise," I say. Only star anise

ought to be alien. "Yes, they know those things,"

a colleague says later, "but they don't know those things

together." The few who eat say nothing: my students are polite.

As my kids inch toward this age, I see the students' fragility,

their growing kindness. Later I put the eggs on the department

lunch counter. Some professors eat, but these aren't doughnuts:

at day's end, I'm taking home more non-doughnuts

than we can use before they spoil. The kids' eyes pop.

It's a windfall, but they're miffed. "It's Literature and Food!

They signed up. Aren't they interested in food?"

The future has become too much like the recent past:

college is a grade-school cafeteria, except the kids are past

making faces, remarks. You might as well let your true love

fly away with someone else. The day I brought potato chips

was more popular and less work. But what do potato chips

have to do with integrity? It's a classroom, not a marketplace.