Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
ger dowry. No wonder the son took on a concubine as soon as he
could.
Of course, Sweet Ma reported things differently: “Your mother,”
she said, “was the daughter of a concubine to a family of only mid­
dle status. The concubine had given birth to ten healthy babies, all
boys except one. That one girl, while weedy in looks at age sixteen,
held promise for being as baby-prolific as her mother. I suggested her
to your father, and he said I was wife enough. But I insisted that a
stallion must have mares, and mares produce broods, so he mustn’t
be a mule.”
According to Sweet Ma, the relationship my father had with my
mother was “very polite, as one should be toward strangers.” In fact,
my father was much too kind, and my mother learned to take ad­
vantage of this. The way Sweet Ma described it: “She was a schemer.
She’d put on her rose-colored dress, twirl her favorite flower hairpin,
and with eyes dishonestly lowered, she would raise that simpering
smile of hers toward your father. Oh, I knew what she was up to. She
was always begging money to pay off the gambling debts of her nine
brothers. I learned too late that her entire family was a nest of snake
spawn. Don’t you grow up to be like them, or I’ll let the rats in to
chew you up at night.”
According to Sweet Ma, my mother proved true to her breeding
and excelled at becoming pregnant every year. “She gave birth to your
eldest brother,” Sweet Ma said, counting on her fingers. “Then there
was your second brother. After that, three blue babies, drowned in the
womb, which was a shame but not so tragic, since they were girls.”
I came along in 1937, and Sweet Ma was there to witness my dra­
matic arrival. “You should have seen your mother when she was nine
months pregnant with you. She looked like a melon balanced on
chopsticks, teetering this way and that....Early in the morning,
that’s when her water broke, after making us wait all night. The win­
ter sky was the color of spent coal, and so was your mother’s
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