When Heaven Fell

by Carolyn Marsden

  Binh nodded. Oh, yes. Yes.

  Others stepped forward to meet Di. Each wanted to shake her hand, to have Di repeat his or her name.

  Di took many pictures, and people crowded close to see the screen of the camera, the small children pushing through the grown-ups. People began to whisper her American name: Sharon. Sharon Hughes.

  Binh turned the unfamiliar syllables in her mouth.

  She thought suddenly of Di Thao’s gifts. In the excitement of seeing her, she’d forgotten all about the wonders that Di had carried from America.

  She made her way to the red truck. The bed was large enough to hold everything her family owned. Binh could hardly wait to see what Di had brought. In her hurry, she bumped into a man and half tripped over a rock.

  When she got to the truck, she peered over the edge. She stared. The back was empty except for a small suitcase. There was nothing else in it. Nothing at all.

  Others also glanced into the truck, sidling over and peeking in. Checking it out, trying not to look interested.

  Cuc said, “Maybe she brought small precious things like diamonds or gold rings.”

  “Maybe,” said Binh. She imagined herself in pretty, dangly earrings. “I wish she would open that suitcase.”

  Someone had shepherded Di to the table under the tree. Fourth Aunt was filling Di’s glass with ice and something cool to drink.

  “How old are you?” Binh overheard Third Aunt ask.

  Di laughed and the ice in her glass tinkled. “In America, women don’t reveal their ages.”

  “But we need to know,” Third Aunt persisted.

  “Okay, okay . . . thirty-five,” Di said, pausing before the words thirty-five, as though unsure of how to say the numbers.

  “She talks so slowly,” said Cuc.

  “Like a little kid,” Binh said, picturing Di as a five-year-old leaving Vietnam.

  Binh strained to hear Di’s answers over the soft chatter of the relatives. She wondered why the last question, and its answer, made Di’s face redden. This was the first question asked in any Vietnamese conversation. Without knowing people’s ages, it was impossible to address them. One word was used for those one’s own age, one for those the age of one’s parents, and another for older people.

  “And how many children do you have?” asked another.

  “None.” Di reddened even more.

  Binh placed her hand on the trunk of the tree, supporting herself. Having many children was considered good luck. “She’s blushing — embarrassed about not having children,” she said to Cuc.

  “Or maybe she’s hot.”

  Stroking his long goatee, Second Uncle whispered, “With the wealth of America — she could have many children.”

  “Your husband must be sad. No sons,” said Fourth Aunt.

  “I have no husband,” Di replied.

  “No husband?” asked Third Aunt, shaking open a purple fan.

  Di shook her head.

  The crowd murmured: Thirty-five years old and no husband, no children. What is the matter?

  “We’ve heard you are a teacher. What do you teach? Mathematics? Economics?”

  “I teach art,” Di answered.

  “People go to school to learn art? Why?”

  “The same reason as here — to bring beauty into the world and to help people express themselves.”

  In the movies, Binh had seen art — pictures in frames — hanging in American houses.

  “But do people make money with such skills?” asked Third Aunt, fanning herself.

  Di spread her hands wide. “Sometimes money isn’t everything.”

  “Only someone rich would say that,” Cuc whispered.

  Binh had never been so close to a real teacher. She wondered if, like the teachers in the village, Di wore a beautiful, silky outfit when she taught. And then, remembering school, she dropped her gaze.

  Third Aunt handed the purple fan to Di. “Cool yourself down, dear.”

  Di moved the fan slowly back and forth, as though to wave away the questions.

  For Binh, there was something even worse than Di having no husband and no children, or being a teacher of a useless subject. “There’s nothing in the truck but her suitcase,” she whispered to Anh Hai.

  “I know. She didn’t bring anything else. Ba and I kept standing by the place where the luggage comes out of the airplane. Finally, she asked us what we were waiting for. We were embarrassed.”

  “With only that little suitcase, there was plenty of room in the truck for me. I could have gone with you.” Binh scuffed the dirt with the toe of her sandal.

  Anh Hai was about to answer when Ba gestured to him. He pointed to the truck and moved his arm as though he was lifting something.

  “She must want her things now,” Anh Hai said.

  Word spread through the crowd. The children pushed to get close to the table where Di Thao sat. Even the dogs stopped scrounging.

  Anh Hai carried the suitcase to Di and laid it flat on the chair beside her.

  Everyone hushed, listening to the sound of the zipper as Di opened the side pocket.

  Binh inched closer.

  Di took out a small cloth bag, reached inside and brought out something wrapped in thin paper. The object fit in the palm of her hand. She handed the package across the table to Ba Ngoai. “For you, Ma.”

  Binh had been right. Di had brought tiny, important gifts.

  Ba Ngoai loosened the paper and held up a pink stone shaped like a heart.

  Everyone stared.

  Binh narrowed her eyes to see better.

  As though trying to make out something written on the stone, Ba Ngoai leaned close.

  Di laid her hand over Ba Ngoai’s. “I’m sorry it’s in English. It says Love.”

  “Thank you, con.” Ba Ngoai pinched her eyebrows close together as she studied her gift.

  Di handed another pink heart to Ma. “For you, Van. This one says Imagination.”

  Ma turned the stone over and over.

  Binh smiled. How had Di Thao known that they’d all been imagining many things for the last week?

  Then Di glanced around. “I am looking for my little niece.”

  Binh stepped forward.

  “This one is for you.” She took Binh’s hand, uncurled the fingers, and placed a small blue heart in her open palm. “This word says Wonder.”

  Small light veins ran through the blue stone, slippery as water in Binh’s hand.

  As she looked down at the rock, her lower lip pushed forward. A stone wasn’t something she’d been expecting or wanting.

  Di reached into the suitcase again and brought out two large items, wrapped not in newspaper, but in a cloud of green. “For my brother-in-law and for my nephew,” she said, standing up, balancing one object in each hand.

  Binh peeked sideways. Maybe Di Thao had brought good gifts only for the men.

  Ba and Anh Hai stepped forward.

  The relatives leaned in.

  Ba slowly unwrapped his present, and Anh Hai tore the pretty green paper off his. They each held up identical pink dragons carved from the same pink stone as the hearts.

  “Like what my mom sells in her shop,” Binh heard Cuc say behind her.

  “Because dragons are a symbol of Vietnam, I thought you’d like them,” Di said. “They’re bookends. For your books.”

  Ba examined his dragon, running a fingertip along the flat side.

  Anh Hai just held his, his thin mustache quivering.

  “You put one at one end of your books, the other at the other end,” Di explained.

  Books. Binh frowned. Her family had no books. They had no shelf to even put books on. What would they do with these dragons?

  Certainly, there was no motorcycle for Anh Hai.

  She could feel everyone waiting for more from Di’s suitcase. But Di zipped up the pocket and began to drink from her glass.

  Binh clutched her blue heart in a sweaty hand. Wasn’t this gift, after all, better than nothing? Di ha
d brought it all the way from America.

  Around her, she heard murmurs. Very low. Very polite. Binh knew that later they would say that these gifts had no value. And no use.

  Binh said to Ma, “Shall we give Di Thao her presents now?”

  Ma nodded, and Binh got the three gifts from the shelf by the back door. After Di Hai’s special paper, the newspaper wrapping looked shabby. As she walked back to Di, Binh forced herself to smile.

  After she handed Di the small packages, Binh pressed her palms together and bowed.

  Di smiled. “Thank you.”

  When Di opened the water buffalo, she held it up and said, “Oh, how handsome! My students will enjoy this,” then set it on the table in front of her.

  When she lifted the gold silk from its wrapping paper, she exclaimed over it —“Oh, what a color!”— and touched it to her cheek.

  Binh was suddenly aware of Cuc beside her. Cuc had sacrificed her bit of silk, but Di had brought her nothing. Binh glanced at Cuc’s red dress, the flowers a lighter shade than they once had been.

  Finally, Di opened the packet with the bracelet inside. She slid it on her wrist, the rainbows flashing in the sunlight.

  Everyone except Cuc laughed and clapped.

  The women began to bring the feast to the table: appetizers of sweet lotus seeds and winter melon strips, lemongrass beef, chicken wings in spicy sauce, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, tiny dishes of fish sauce and chilies.

  “Help us, girls,” Ma called.

  Binh and Cuc carried stringy green vegetables with garlic, yam fritters, sticky rice cooked in sweet coconut milk, the fish that had swum in the pan, now cooked, its eyes glaring.

  Instead of eating, people urged the food on Di, even after her plate was piled high. Di had to keep saying no, sometimes a little loudly. Binh noticed that she set the uncooked vegetables aside and didn’t touch them.

  “The Viet-kieu are so picky about what they eat and drink,” Binh heard Fourth Aunt say.

  An argument broke out between Third Uncle, a northerner and a Communist, and Third Aunt, who’d always lived in the south and hated Communists.

  “I refuse to call that place Ho Chi Minh City. That’s its Communist name,” said Third Aunt. “For me, it will always be Saigon.”

  “That’s treason. The city was named for Uncle Ho, who helped us win the war against the occupying French and the invading Americans.”

  “I don’t want to pay any respect to this Uncle Ho of yours. Look at what the country is now because of him — a big mess, everyone poor.”

  The early afternoon sun shone hot, and Binh felt clammy all over. She struggled with a small headache and ate only fruit. She fingered her hair and wondered if Cuc could help her cut it short like Di Hai’s.

  Cuc swung by herself in the hammock.

  Fourth Aunt was picking at her food, and Third Uncle gazed off toward the river as though looking toward America, his cup of sweet coffee cooling. They all had more to digest than food.

  When the feast had been eaten, Binh sat on the bench as the relatives drifted off, their motorcycles leaving behind a film of black smoke. She called to the ducks until they emerged from their box, quacking and searching the ground for food.

  As soon as the yard was clear, Ba backed the red truck out onto the highway while Anh Hai watched the traffic, beckoning when it was clear and jumping into the passenger seat at the last minute.

  Cuc waved from the bed of the truck.

  Looping her arm through Di Thao’s, Ba Ngoai led her into the house.

  Binh scooted ahead of them, reaching the doorway first. “This is our home,” she said, gesturing toward the big room.

  Di’s eyes darted around as though she expected to see more. Her gaze lingered on the motorcycle parked in the corner, a small pool of oil underneath.

  “Here is the kitchen,” Binh said, pointing toward the side room. The cooking fire flickered, lighting the walls black with wood smoke. A cat lay curled, sleeping near the fire.

  Di squinted. “Is that where you cooked the delicious food?”

  “Some of it,” Ba Ngoai answered. “Our relatives brought many dishes.”

  Her eyebrows drawn together, Di studied the ancestral altar with its photographs of the ancestors, the pyramid of tangerines, the bananas and guavas, the wavering flames of the candles. Then she set down her suitcase. “Could you please show me where the bathroom is, Binh?”

  Binh led Di outside and across the yard to the small outbuilding. She swung the door open to reveal a porcelain toilet set into the floor. Ma was proud of it: a real toilet instead of a cement trough.

  As proof of how special the toilet was, Di took a picture, brightening the room with the flash.

  While Binh leaned close to see the tiny toilet in Di’s camera, Di Thao stared at the real toilet. “I think I need a lesson on how to use that.”

  “You put your feet on either side, like this.” Binh lifted her dress and demonstrated. “Then you squat down. Afterward, you dip the ladle in the bucket to wash the toilet.”

  “I don’t remember using this before. When I lived here, we just had a hole in the ground.”

  “Many people have holes, Di. This is a modern toilet.”

  Di laughed. “In America, we have toilets you sit on like a chair.”

  “I’ve seen those in movies. I would love to see the toilets in America.”

  Di laughed.

  Binh leaned close to whisper, “I would love to use the toilets in America.”

  Di laughed again. “There’s more interesting things than toilets.”

  “I would love to see those other things too.”

  Di didn’t respond, but looked around, saying, “How do I wash myself?”

  Binh opened the door to a small closet. Inside were a barrel of water and a bucket. “Here’s water to splash over you.”

  Di dipped her hand in the barrel. “It’s cold, Binh.”

  “Yes.” Of course it was cold.

  Di shivered. “I guess I’ll wait until morning for a shower.” She looked at the toilet again.

  “I’ll be right outside,” Binh said, shutting the door behind her.

  When Di came out, she said, “And now, if it’s okay, I’d like to go to bed. I feel like I’ve come to the edge of the world.”

  Binh laughed. Di was right. This was the edge of the world, not the center. Binh always felt she lived outside the place where real life happened.

  “I’m exhausted,” Di said, passing a hand across her forehead.

  “You look very beautiful anyway.”

  Di reached out and mussed Binh’s hair. “You know how to say nice things to people, don’t you?”

  Binh smoothed her hair and led the way across the yard. After the talk about toilets, she and Di were on intimate terms. Things were going well.

  When she pushed open the door, Ma and Ba Ngoai sat huddled together, whispering. They grew silent when Di entered the house.

  Binh walked across the room. “You’ll sleep right here between me and Ma.” She touched the yellow linoleum floor with her toe.

  Di glanced around as though afraid of ghosts.

  “Don’t worry — you’ll be close to all of us,” Binh reassured her, unrolling Di’s sleeping mat.

  Just then, Ba and Anh Hai came back from returning the truck. Instead of feeding the dogs or organizing the motorcycle repair tools, they sat down next to Ma and Ba Ngoai.

  They were all waiting, Binh realized. Waiting for Di Thao to unpack her suitcase. Now that everyone else was gone, maybe Di would bring out the real gifts, the gifts for Binh and her close family alone to see.

  Binh smiled, thinking again of dangly earrings, or maybe a ring with a pretty stone.

  Di pulled her suitcase close. The top banged open against the yellow floor and Di lifted out a small reddish book. “I have something to show you,” she announced, settling down on the sleeping mat.

  Binh’s heart danced up and down. What could it be?

  Ba N
goai sat close on Di’s one side, Binh on the other. Anh Hai, Ba, and Ma crossed their legs and sat directly in front.

  “These are photos.” Di placed the book on one knee and tapped it with her fingertip.

  Binh’s heart danced faster. Photos were even better than stories.

  Di slipped the photographs out of the plastic holders and passed them around.

  “These are my American parents,” Di explained.

  Binh found herself staring into the eyes of a man and a woman with hair the color of Ma’s cone-shaped hats.

  Ba Ngoai held each photo for a long time — examining the woman standing alone in a gray dress, the man with his arm around Di’s shoulders, the three of them posed together by a fountain. Ba Ngoai looked and looked.

  As Ba Ngoai watched Di put away the faces of her American parents, she asked, “Are you happy, Daughter?”

  Di looked surprised, but said, “Very happy, Ma.”

  “Really happy?” Ba Ngoai persisted.

  “Really. And now, dear family, good night,” Di said. She lay down, turned herself over twice, and slept.

  After a breakfast of rice porridge flavored with green onions and small bits of pork, Di opened the photo album again.

  Everyone moved close and the room grew hushed.

  This time, Di opened to a photograph of a white building. Dark green bushes grew on either side of a long path to the door.

  “This is my house in Kentucky,” Di said.

  Binh looked up to see if Di was joking. The building was huge!

  “Your house is almost as large as the Buddhist temple,” Ba said, his eyes wide.

  Anh Hai leaned over, looking at the photo upside down, his forehead lined with furrows.

  Di flipped through the pictures. “My sleeping room, the room for people who visit me, the room for living, the eating room, kitchen, and toilet.”

  The room for guests had a high bed. Binh imagined climbing into that bed. No ghost would reach her up there. She laid a fingertip on the glossy plastic, wishing she could touch the lacy fabric covering the bed.

  “That toilet chair looks very easy, very nice,” Binh said. “I would like to try it one day,” she reminded Di.

  “Who else lives there?” Ma asked, squinting, as though trying to see people in the rooms.