Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
our servants, I noted—were already making plans to become power­
ful proletarians under the new regime, and in trying their hand at be­
ing blowhards, they let it be known to our faces that they were eager
to be rid of us, “the bourgeois parasites of China,” as they called us.
A rather nasty farewell.
But the one servant I most vividly remember that night was the
gatekeeper, Luo. He, his father, and his grandfather had all been
with our family.
Tradition or not, Luo was a disagreeable sort who liked to gamble
and sleep and visit certain teahouses, pastimes that led to his dis­
appearance at regular intervals. My stepmother also said he was
disrespectful to her, but then again, she said that of nearly every­
one, especially me.
During those last hours, we were confused, every one of us. My fa­
ther was mumbling to himself, unable to decide which of his books
to take, and in the end he took none of them. My brothers acted
bored to mask their terror. My stepmother, as I have already told,
had a tantrum. As for myself, well, it is hard to be objective about
oneself, but I would say that I moved as if in a trance, without emo­
tions. Only the gatekeeper seemed to keep his wits about him. You
can imagine our surprise when in those frantic hours of our leaving,
this gatekeeper worked kindly and efficiently to get us packed and
supplied with foodstuffs for our perilous journey. In what appeared
to be a last-minute fit of loyalty, he had comforting words for every­
one, expressions of concern, assurances that the gods would protect
us, and so on and so forth. Oh, how we had misjudged him! He was
also the only one who cleverly thought to take our family’s jewels,
gold, and foreign monies from the inadequate sacks that we had se­
creted in our luggage, and to sew the valuables into my dolls, the lin­
ings of our jackets, and the hems of our skirts and trousers so they
would not be found. In my coat lining I had my mother’s jade hair­
pin, which I had stolen from Sweet Ma’s dresser.
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