Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
“They’re going to eat her?” Esmé whispered to her mother. Mar­
lena shook her head.
“Good God!” Bennie said. “We shouldn’t be here if they’re in
mourning.”
“No, no, is okay,” Lulu assured him. “She was very old, over one
hundred and four years and sick for long, long time.”
“A hundred and four?” Dwight interjected. “That’s impossible.”
“And why is that?” Vera said.
He shrugged. He should have let this one go, but he couldn’t.
“Look at the conditions here.”
“I see them,” Vera persisted. “It looks simple but peaceful, free of
corporate stress and traffic jams.”
“Traffic would be the least of their problems,” Dwight said.
“There’s no sanitation, no heating. Half the people here don’t have a
tooth left in their skull. I doubt they have a stock of antibiotics on
hand. And look at those kids. One has a cleft palate, the other has a
lazy eye—”
“It’s called amblyopia,” Vera corrected. She knew about such
things; her organization funded a Well Baby Clinic for inner-city
mothers.
Dwight gave her a funny look. “It’s also known as lazy eye.”
“‘Lazy’ is a pejorative term.”
Dwight laughed and shook his head. He had had “lazy eye” as a kid.
Lulu felt an argument brewing. “Come, come. Let’s visit this fam­
ily. It is good luck for you to come in. If you are in household where
someone has died, this dead person will carry away all your bad luck
when she goes to the next world.” Had I also taken a load of bad
luck with me? “This deed,” Lulu said, “brings a household much
good karma. So everyone is happy. Come, let us receive happiness.”
All at once, Dwight looked stricken. A peculiar queasiness hit him
and his stomach began to bloat, growing larger and larger by the sec­
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