Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
dolls, and there was this: my mother’s hairpin. I had stolen it from
Sweet Ma’s dresser and had sewn it into my coat lining.
Gatekeeper Luo urged us to hurry, and Sweet Ma was still staging
threats not to go. We were all supposed to plead for her to change her
mind. My mind went in a new direction. What would happen if
Sweet Ma did stay behind? How would my life change?
Pondering such thoughts made my chest ticklish and weak. I felt
my knees and spine growing soft. This always happened when I an­
ticipated anything good or bad, whenever I came close to allowing
myself to feel the extremes of emotion. Since my mother had been
the same way, I feared that I, too, would one day lose control and fall
into a heap and die of excess. I had thus learned to push down my
feelings, to force myself to not care, to do nothing and let things hap­
pen, come what may.
Silence would now decide my fate. “Speak,” Father coaxed.
“Apologize.”
I waited in silence. “Hurry now!” he scolded. A minute must have
passed. My legs were growing weak again. Push it down, I told my­
self, push down your wish.
Father finally broke in and repeated to Sweet Ma: “Of course
you’re coming,” but Sweet Ma beat her chest, shouting, “It’s fin­
ished! I would rather have the Communists run a bayonet through
me than be forced to go with that wicked child!” And she lurched out
of the room.
When we boarded the boat to Haiphong, I reflected in terror over
what I had done. I stood on the deck as the boat pulled away, the
black sky clotted with stars and galaxies, and I imagined what bright
life awaited us in a new land just over the horizon. We were going to
America, where joy was so abundant you did not have to consider
it luck.
I pictured Sweet Ma alone in our family house on Rue Massenet,
the rooms still richly furnished, but ghostly, empty of life. Soon the
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