Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
Sweet Ma said that my father did not need to inflate her worth, be­
cause they had a complete understanding. “Superfluous words are
not necessary when the marriage is balanced, in perfect harmony,”
she told me. “And that is because our union was fated to be.”
At the time, it did not occur to me to question what she said, and
my brothers had no opinions on love, or if they did, they would not
share them with me. I was thus left to assume that a good marriage
was one in which the husband respected the wife’s privacy. He did
not intrude in her life, visit her rooms, or bother her with questions.
There was no need to speak to each other, since they were of the
same mind.
But one day my uncle and his family came for a visit several
months long. My cousin Yuhang and I kept each other company
morning to night. We were like sisters, although we saw each other
only once a year. On that particular visit, she told me that she had
overheard her parents and their friends gossiping—which, at the
time, was the only way anyone learned the truth. The gossip had to
do with the union between Sweet Ma and my father. It had been
agreed to before their births. In 1909, two comrades from different
life circumstances vowed that if the revolution to end the Ching
dynasty succeeded and they were still alive to see it, their families
should be united by marriage. Well, the Ching was overthrown in
1911, and the comrade with a son had a reputation so high it was
said to have reached the heavens. That would be my father’s family.
The other had a daughter, and his household clung to earth like the
rotted roots of a tree about to tilt over with the next small gust. That
would be Sweet Ma’s household. When the poor comrade with the
daughter ran into the rich one with the son, he mentioned their ear­
lier vow, incompatible in status though their lives were. It was widely
known, the servants said, that my grandfather was a man of high
morals for forcing his eldest son to marry a girl so plain, so lacking
in any charms that would compensate for her embarrassingly mea­
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