When Heaven Fell

by Carolyn Marsden

  As the incense unwound into a sweet cloud, Binh knelt and bowed. She sensed Di mimicking her, her forehead greeting the dusty floor.

  Outside again, Binh emptied the two buckets of water onto the jasmine bush.

  Di picked off a few loose, dried blossoms.

  “And now,” Binh said, shaking the last drops from the second bucket, “we need to look along the base of the wall for bits of the dragon. Pieces keep falling off.” She held up a blue and white shard.

  “Why, that looks like a dinner plate,” Di exclaimed.

  “It is. Look here.” Binh pointed to the dragon’s mane, made entirely out of broken ceramic soup spoons.

  “How clever,” Di said. “I wouldn’t have noticed from far away. But up close . . .”

  They hunted for the fallen bits and matched their findings with the bare spots on the wall.

  “Tell me more about America,” Binh said, squeezing the glue bottle with both hands while Di held the bit of plate. “Do people wear fancy clothes there, or do they wear old jeans?”

  “People wear everything in America: ball gowns, cowboy boots, Indian saris,” Di said, pressing the piece, dripping with glue, to the wall. “There are all kinds of people.”

  “Do you ever wear fancy clothes?”

  “Not if I can help it!”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “Don’t want to. Can’t afford to.”

  “But in America, isn’t everyone rich?”

  Di laughed. “Oh my, no! You’ve been watching too many movies!”

  Binh picked up a very large shard and didn’t answer.

  This time, Di applied the glue. “And now let me ask you a question,” she said when the piece was coated white. “Your family has very little space. You’re almost sleeping on top of each other. Yet there’s this whole empty house. Couldn’t the ancestors share?” Di reached to her full height to press the piece onto the wall.

  Binh sucked in her breath and glanced toward the dark doorway. Had the ancestors heard Di? Were they murmuring among themselves? Were they saying that Di had a huge house with no room for them, yet had suggested that they share?

  “Without ancestors, we wouldn’t be alive,” Binh said. “They deserve a place of their own.”

  Di shook her head as though she still didn’t understand. The fragment dropped and Di recovered it. She stood tall, pushing it firmly.

  And yet it was hard to blame Di for not having a connection to her ancestors, Binh thought. By going to America, she’d been cut off from them. Her new American parents wouldn’t have known who they were. Maybe the parents didn’t even care.

  And then Binh had a troubling thought. If she went to America, her ancestors would be, like Di’s, left behind here in Vietnam. She would lose her connection to them, their protection.

  If she went away, it would be like cutting herself off from a living, growing, green vine. The small branch that she was would wilt, like the lilies she’d thrown out onto the ground.

  If she went to America, someone else would water the ancestors’ jasmine bush. Someone else would repair the dragon.

  Slowly, Di released her fingers. The piece stuck.

  Three days went by.

  Cuc brought Di a frog — eyes popping — made of shells. When Binh examined the frog, she found a small chip on one of the shells. The knickknack was probably a reject from the shop.

  Ba and Anh Hai used their dragons as doorstops.

  Binh, Ma, and Ba Ngoai laid their stone hearts on the ancestral altar.

  Di took photos of the pink dragons, the tree, the river, the inside and outside of the house from every angle, every relative who came by.

  Sometimes she let Binh use the camera, showing her how to look through the tiny window and telling her when to push the button. Binh photographed mostly the ducks and dogs.

  In the morning, Di brought out her paper and colored pencils. Binh watched, fascinated at the way stands of bamboo, the swirling river, Fourth Aunt, and a duck taking a bath came alive on Di’s paper.

  As they sat by the river, Di said, “None of my greens are bright enough for this jungle.” She motioned toward the banana trees and bamboo, and the tangle of vines connecting them.

  Sometimes Di drew pictures of things that Binh was unfamiliar with: a box that carried people up and down inside a building, a house with wheels pulled behind a car.

  Once when Di was putting away her paper and colored pencils, she glanced toward Binh’s fruit cart, parked against the side of the house. “That’s cute. What’s it for?”

  Binh pretended to peer at the cart. “I don’t know. Maybe it belongs to Ba’s cousin.” Why did Di have to notice the cart? She must never know that Binh sold fruit and sodas instead of going to school. Tonight, Binh promised herself, she would cover up the cart so that Di wouldn’t be reminded of it.

  When Vuong delivered the water, Di Thao chatted with him. She took his picture and invited him to drink tea with her under the big tree.

  Maybe Di Thao would marry Vuong and take him to America.

  “Vuong is my lai,” Binh said to Di once after Vuong had brought the water.

  “Less than dust. What an awful thing to say! Why don’t the Vietnamese like people with American fathers?”

  “Because those people don’t really belong to Vietnam. They can’t be buried properly here. They will never be honored by their ancestors.”

  Di looked puzzled. “Why is that, Binh?”

  “Because their American ancestors were those of the invaders. How can anyone trust an invader?”

  “That’s nonsense,” said Di. “Vuong is not an invader. And I am not either.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean . . .” Binh began.

  Di interrupted. “On my first day of school in Kentucky, I didn’t speak English. I couldn’t understand anything the teacher or other kids were saying.”

  Sometimes at Café Video, Binh closed her eyes to the subtitles and just listened to the English. She quickly grew frustrated and opened her eyes again. How would it be to listen to those nonsense sounds all day?

  “Yet I wasn’t Vietnamese anymore either,” Di went on. “I had new American parents. I had nothing left of Vietnam. That felt very bad. And Vuong’s life is like that. Not one thing, not another.”

  Binh stared at the ground. She thought of the way some women shouted at Vuong when he brought water.

  Every afternoon, the other relatives came by the house, wanting to see Di Thao, to sit close to her, to be favored by her.

  Di listened to the conversations, her forehead wrinkled as she tried to understand. “What are they saying?” she often asked Binh.

  And Binh would explain. Instead of telling stories, Di kept asking questions.

  The older women sat around the big table, rolling a white paste into green areca palm leaves. When they chewed the little package, their mouths and teeth turned dark red.

  “Their teeth are almost black,” Di said.

  “Don’t old women in America want beautiful teeth?”

  “Are dark red teeth beautiful?”

  “Of course.”

  Di laughed. “A lot of Americans have teeth made of plastic.”

  It was Binh’s turn to laugh. She’d never heard of such a thing as plastic teeth. Better to have no teeth at all!

  Some of the men played tam cuc, a kind of poker game, while the smoke of their cigarettes rose into the air above them. Some read newspapers from Ho Chi Minh City.

  In the afternoons, everyone laid out sleeping mats under the tree and napped.

  Ba and Anh Hai returned to work. After all, Di Hai was one more mouth to feed.

  Third Aunt returned to her tourist shop, taking Cuc with her, commenting, “Even though she’s American, that woman doesn’t know how to be a good guest.”

  And Ba said, “Binh, your auntie hasn’t made us rich, after all. Soon you need to return to the fruit cart.”

  One morning, Di lifted the blue plastic off the fruit cart. “Oh,” she said,
“I was hoping to use this tarp, but I see it’s protecting this.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Binh. “That old cart will be okay.”

  “Then take one end, please.”

  Binh held the plastic — what was Auntie up to now? — while Di stretched it out and tied it to the base of the tree.

  “Now up here,” Di said, yanking the rope on the other end until it reached the bathroom roof. She tied the corners of the tarp onto the nails that stuck out.

  Di stepped inside the new enclosure. Although she had to crouch because of the low ceiling, she said, “This makes a good sleeping room.”

  “A sleeping room?” Binh asked as a breeze rippled the blue ceiling. This didn’t look like the rooms that Di had shown in her photographs.

  “I need privacy. I’m not used to sleeping with so many people.”

  Binh thought of the mats laid side by side. She’d never thought it strange to sleep in the same room as her family. She liked feeling everyone around her. Family kept the ghosts at bay.

  Now Di was moving away from them, to live outside like the ducks and dogs. There would be no more whispered late-night stories.

  “Do you want me to go away, then?” Binh’s voice trembled.

  “Don’t be upset.” Di put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m still close by.”

  “You won’t be afraid of the ghosts?” Binh asked.

  Di threw back her head and laughed.

  “Isn’t our house good enough for her?” Ma asked after Di had retired to her little hut, her leu.

  “Doesn’t she like us?” asked Anh Hai.

  “In the photographs, you can see she has a lot more rooms in America,” said Ba Ngoai.

  “Enough for all of us,” said Ma.

  “Enough for the whole village,” said Ba.

  The four voices wound in and out of each other.

  “She thinks she is too good for us.”

  “But she is sleeping on the dirt.”

  “She doesn’t like us.” Ma pulled the non la frame close to her and prepared to work.

  “Let me sew a little, Ma,” Binh said.

  Ma made room for Binh. As Binh plunged the sharp needle over and over into the soft straw, she thought of the morning when she’d first laid out Di Thao’s sleeping mat next to her own. She thought of how now, instead of being closer to her auntie, she was farther away.

  Why didn’t Di Hai want to be close to them? Binh poked the needle hard and accidentally pricked her finger.

  Binh was sweeping the yard, raising small clouds of dust, scooting aside the ducks with the broom.

  Anh Hai sat on a bench, digging out the white meat from a coconut shell. “Aren’t you and Cuc close anymore?” he asked.

  Binh shrugged and kept on sweeping.

  “You’re always chasing her away from Di Hai.”

  Binh sent a flurry of dust in Anh Hai’s direction.

  “It’s not like there’s much to be jealous of,” Anh Hai continued, ignoring the dust, scooping deeper into the coconut. “If only she’d take us to America. There’s nicer motorcycles there.”

  “She still might,” Binh protested. How could Anh Hai give up so easily?

  “Don’t count on it. Our auntie didn’t give us much of anything.”

  “She still might,” Binh repeated.

  “She won’t. She doesn’t understand us.”

  Binh leaned on the handle of the broom. “Maybe she’s saving something for later. In her suitcase. That’s why she moved to the leu. So we wouldn’t see.”

  “I dare you to look then,” Anh Hai said. He tossed a bite of coconut to a duck.

  “In her suitcase?”

  “If that’s where you think the treasure lies.”

  “But that’s . . .”

  “You’re not brave enough.”

  “Fine,” said Binh, flicking the tail of a duck with the broom. She glanced toward the kitchen. The smell of pho bo, traditional Vietnamese noodle soup, drifted from the doorway. Ba Ngoai and Di were cooking together, chopping and talking of the past. Right now, nothing else existed for them.

  With Anh Hai on the bench keeping watch, Binh crawled into the leu. The light inside was blue and dim. She knelt in front of the suitcase and lifted the lid.

  She heard a noise and listened, her heart hammering. But the sound was that of Anh Hai whistling to himself. There were no footsteps.

  She found clothes, a bag. She touched the bag and discovered the outline of a pair of shoes.

  She stuck her hand in the side pockets. A comb. A book. Di’s photo book. Four pairs of socks.

  Binh sat back on her heels. Was this all there was to her auntie? Was she really so simple? Was she nothing like what Binh had seen in the movies?

  Where was the jewelry? The small, precious items? Was Anh Hai right?

  Binh closed the suitcase.

  Finding nothing was like watching the morning mist disappear when the sun rose.

  As Binh crawled out, Anh Hai called, “I see your pockets are heavy with treasure.”

  Binh picked up the broom and swatted him on the shins.

  “Ouch,” Anh Hai cried, throwing down the empty coconut.

  Binh swatted him again, this time pretending he was Di Hai.

  Then she dropped the broom and walked out of the yard. She marched down the highway along its narrow shoulder, as cars and trucks honked.

  It took her an hour to reach Third Aunt’s tourist shop.

  The shop was a small hut where the highway intersected the road to the beach. Each day, a few cars stopped with customers. If Third Aunt was lucky, a tour bus would pull in, leaving the engine roaring, the fumes filling the shop.

  Binh found Cuc kneeling to unpack a small box.

  As she stepped close, Cuc’s hands grew still, but she didn’t look up. “Your auntie go home?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Binh squatted down, the box with its loose newspaper between them. She glimpsed ashtrays made of coconut shells in the wrapping. “I searched Di Hai’s suitcase.”

  Cuc let her hands rest on the edge of the box. “And?” she asked.

  “There was nothing in it except her clothes and a few other things.”

  “Isn’t that what you expected?”

  Binh straightened a piece of newspaper. What had she expected? The ink from the newsprint smudged her fingers. She’d searched a guest’s suitcase all for nothing. Now she felt smudged inside, too.

  “I’m not sure,” she finally said.

  Cuc continued the unpacking, setting the ashtrays on a low shelf behind her.

  “Do you want help?” Binh asked.

  “I can do it,” Cuc replied. Then, a round ashtray in her hands, she said casually, “Even though Di Hai isn’t such a close relative to me as she is to you, I think she means to take me to America.”

  Binh crumpled the bit of newspaper, fingernails biting into her palm. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m a year older than you. It would be easier for her to take just me.” She pulled herself up. “I’m old enough to go without my family.”

  Binh threw the wad of paper back into the box. She’d never imagined . . . This couldn’t be! “Has Di Hai said anything?”

  Cuc cocked her head to the side. “Not in words. But I can tell.”

  Binh ran all the way home from Third Aunt’s shop, stopping only once to splash her face with river water.

  She found Di in the yard, washing her hair. She stood with her feet wide over a red basin, her head a mass of white foam.

  That red basin was for washing vegetables, not hair. Di should be using the green one. If Ma came along, she’d be upset.

  Binh pretended not to see the color of the basin. “Di, Di Hai.” She sank down, breathless from her run.

  Di scooped water with a cup, rinsing out the soap.

  It wasn’t a good moment to bring up anything important, but Binh couldn’t wait. She had to act before Di and Cuc made plan
s. “We would like to go to America with you, Di Hai,” she said loudly so that Di could hear over the washing. “Just my close family. Just four of us. Ba Ngoai doesn’t want to go.” Or Cuc, either, she felt like adding.

  Di kept rinsing.

  Binh leaned down, trying to see the expression on Di’s face.

  “Oh, darn, now I have soap in my eyes,” Di said. “Binh, do me a favor and throw out this soapy water. Get me some fresh.”

  Binh threw the soapy water across the yard. In the bathroom, she dipped clean water into the red basin. Why wouldn’t Di answer her?

  Di finished rinsing her hair and wrapped it up in a towel. With the cone of towel on top of her head, she looked taller than ever. “Now, what’s this you’re asking?”

  “We’d like to go with you to America,” Binh repeated.

  “What?” Di asked again. Water ran down the sides of her face.

  “We want to live with you.”

  Di slapped her hand to her forehead. “You’ve been thinking about that all this time? That I’d wave a wand and you’d all be in Kentucky?”

  “Oh, no. You would make arrangements,” Binh said, remembering Ba Ngoai’s explanation.

  “You must think I’m magic.” The towel came loose and fell around Di’s shoulders. “I am a small, unimportant person. I have not much money, no power . . . I never dreamed you expected such a thing.”

  Once Binh had been running and had fallen onto her chest, knocking the breath out of her. Now, too, she could scarcely breathe.

  “You don’t understand what it would mean to go to America,” Di went on. “You don’t know what you’d be leaving behind.” She rubbed her red eyes — irritated by the soap — with the corner of the towel.

  “But you said it was a good thing to go,” Binh persisted. “That your new mother gave you a better life.”

  Di squeezed her eyes shut. “That soap was so strong.” She sat down on the bench.

  Binh felt as though she’d gotten soap in her own eyes.

  After a while, Di said, “Binh . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t know. . . . Sit here.” She patted a spot beside her on the bench.