Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
their backs propped against a mossy, decaying log, termites teeming
under its flaking bark. The youngsters were playing a pantomime
game in which they took turns acting out a category of things they
missed. Esmé made licking motions with a fisted hand.
“Dog licking your face!” Rupert yelled.
Esmé giggled and shook her head. “I have that,” she said, and
scratched Pup-pup’s belly.
“Guy licking a girl!”
She shrieked and covered her face, then socked his arm.
He smiled. “I know. Ice cream in a cone.”
She smiled. Next she weakly drew a circle in the air, then used her
finger to dissect it into wobbly sections.
“Pizza!” Rupert guessed, and a second later: “Foods you miss
eating!”
Esmé nodded and gleamed with happiness.
Marlena glanced up at the kids, dazed by what had just happened
to Bennie. How innocent they were, enjoying each other’s company,
unworried about the future. Only two weeks before, they would have
nothing to do with each other. But when Rupert had recovered some­
what, he saw that Esmé was lying nearby, delirious, and he found
himself encouraging her to pull through, just as he had. “Hey there,”
he’d call to her. “Hey there.” And now he showed a brotherly warmth
toward the younger girl, feeling he was the main reason she had
been saved, while Esmé, to judge by her giggles and watchful eyes,
thought so, too.
A first crush, Marlena thought. She was both sad and glad that
Esmé had a boy who filled her heart with hope, a boy who might
keep her yearning for a future, a will to go on, when their lives were
now so uncertain.
The malaria had frightened them badly. At least here in this camp
they had shelter, clean water, and in a manner of speaking, food.
Their hosts were kind and tried their best to make them comfortable,
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