Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
of girls who had pounded the rice with me since the days we wore
our littlest white smocks. Now they were pounding the white water
to keep their heads afloat.
Those old girls and I saw the green soldiers running along the
banks of the river. Oh, they were mad that we had escaped. We had
jumped into the river and ruined their fun. They’d have to wait an­
other day, wouldn’t they? The old girls and I had a fine laugh about
that. Their eyes were crinkled into smiles, and over each old face was
a beautiful shiny veil of water, poured from the top of her head, run­
ning over her eyes, then falling into the cup of her happy mouth.
With these bright veils, my old sisters wore young faces again, like
the first time we wore our singing shawls. It was for an old-old elder’s
funeral. We walked ’round and ’round the body, pretending to mourn,
and shook the shawl fringes to sound the bells. And the young men
went ’round and ’round the other way, to catch our smiles and count
how many they caught. How glad we were that the old-old elder fi­
nally had the good sense to die.
And quick as that, the years swam by, and there we were in the
crazy water, over fifty years old, the age of our dead elder. And the
young men were now running along the banks in their ugly green
uniforms. We saw them tip the noses of their rifles at us. Why were
they doing that? And each nose made a little sneeze, like this, up and
down, up and down, but no sounds. No crack, no hiss, just one wa­
tery veil turning red, then the other, and me wondering, Why no
sounds? No boof-boof. My sisters were shuddering, trying to keep
their spirits in their bodies, and I was trying to grab them to hang on,
but then with one great heave, they went limp, just like that.
When my senses came back, I saw that the twins and their pallet
were gone. I pushed my poor old sisters away to see if Loot and
Bootie were underneath. The soldiers still had their rifles aimed
toward us. All around me, the villagers were pounding the water, but
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