“Maybe you should live with Uncle Tiger,” I offer. “He has eight bedrooms.”

“No, thank you. I have it good here. The government gives me free cheese in November, ham in December, and I have friends next door. They talk to me.”

Over the past fifteen years Grandma Lanh has become quite popular with the older Vietnamese neighbors on Greensboro Drive. Every Friday night the ladies congregate at her apartment and play Mah Jong or dominos. I’ve sat in on these games and for the most part, they are relatively meditative sessions, except for the occasional cursing and slapping of tiles on the Formica table. When it comes to striking the opponent’s pieces, they get pretty passionate, these ladies. Gambling is in their blood, just as it is in their mothers’ and their mothers’ mothers. Ever since Grandpa Toan passed away, that’s all Grandma Lanh does, not because she’s bored or lonely but because she’s making up for lost time. In Vietnam, if there was anything her husband despised more than laziness, it was wasting money on senseless bets. Grandma Lanh used to sneak out of the house during his afternoon naps for a game or two with the neighbors. Then, on the occasion that he’d catch her, the two would be seen running down the streets one right after the other — her paddling through the air with her arms; him waving a broomstick in his hand. All the neighbors knew my grandfather had a temper as hot as cooking oil so when they could, they’d send messengers to warn Grandma Lanh of the impending danger. “Old Toan is coming with a stick,” they’d say, and then off she’d go through the backdoor of her friend’s house.

Grandma Lanh never saw anything wrong with her gambling. “It’s not like I was selfish about it,” she says. “I always donated the winnings to the poor and the temple.”