Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
soldiers with bayonets would come into the house and smash its cap­
italist symbols, and all the while, Sweet Ma would sit in her usual
chair, telling the revolutionaries she didn’t want to be a burden. Per­
haps they would punish her anyway for her bourgeois life. They
might slap her browless face—I could picture it so clearly—the cruel
men shouting for her to use her hair and tears to mop the floor. They
would kick her thighs to hurry her up, aim a boot at her bottom. As
I relished this scenario, playing it over and over in my mind, I became
weak-limbed with fear and exhilaration, a strange combination that
made me feel truly malevolent. I sensed I would be punished in my
next life. I would become a cow and she the crow who would peck
my flanks. And with that image in my mind, I suddenly felt bony fin­
gers pluck my cheek, pinching until I tasted blood.
It was Sweet Ma. Father had gone back and insisted three more
times that she come. Though her dignity was shaken, she had al­
lowed herself to be pulled from her chair and carried screaming to
the waiting car that whisked them both to the wharf. Thus, Sweet
Ma returned, more determined than ever to put some sense into my
brain by beating the evil out of my body. How lucky was I that she
continued as my dim guiding light.
Sweet Ma tried to shape my mind, pounding it like dumpling
dough. And the more she tried, the more I became like my mother, so
she said. I was greedy, she warned, and could not fill my heart with
enough pleasure, my stomach with enough contentment, my body
with enough sleep. I was like a rice basket with a rat hole at the bot­
tom, and thus could not be satisfied and overflow, nor could I be
filled. I would never know the full depth and breadth of love, beauty,
or happiness. She said it like a curse.
Because of her criticism, I acted as if I were even more deficient in
feeling, particularly toward her. I found that a blank face and a bland
heart were the very things that made Sweet Ma’s eyebrows bulge to
bursting. My reasoning was this: How could I be wounded when I
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