When Heaven Fell

by Carolyn Marsden

  Binh sat, but not as close as Di indicated.

  Di sighed. “My situation wasn’t the same as yours. When I left, this country was at war. Children like me were being killed. You’re not in danger.” She began to dry her hair, rubbing it with quick, circular movements.

  Suddenly, Binh stood up. “You shouldn’t have used that red basin. You should put it back on the shelf.”

  Di paused, one hand holding the towel to her head.

  Binh picked up the basin and waved it, startling the ducks. “We can never use this to wash vegetables again.”

  The towel dropped onto Di’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll buy you another. Don’t worry. I’ll . . . I’ll buy you several.”

  Binh slapped the empty basin against the side of the big table. The table creaked and the last suds flew out. “You didn’t come here to buy us plastic basins. That’s not what we expected of you.”

  Di started to stand, then sat back down.

  Binh put her hands on her hips and asked, “Are you going to take Cuc to America?”

  Di sighed again and laid the towel on the bench. “Of course not.”

  Just then, Binh saw Ma standing under the arch of pink and white bougainvillea, Ba Ngoai behind her like a small shadow. They’d overheard everything.

  Binh didn’t know whether to hold the red basin out to Ma as evidence, or whether to hide it behind her back. She threw it onto the ground behind her, where it rolled under the table.

  Di’s eyes followed Binh’s gaze to the archway. She managed to stand. “It takes a lot of money to bring relatives to America.” She held out her empty hands. “I’m not rich.” She closed her hands, hiding her lack.

  Ma and Ba Ngoai just stared, their faces unchanged.

  When Binh looked at the two framed by the arch, she couldn’t imagine them anyplace but there, poised between the bustle of the highway and the sleepy flow of the river.

  Ba Ngoai didn’t want to go to America anyway, Binh recalled. And Ma? Ma only wanted money for this and that.

  Binh took a step backward. Had she been the only one with such hopes?

  “My little niece,” Di continued, “has many distorted ideas about the United States. It is not a place where everyone is rich and happy. Not at all. Binh is better off here.”

  Ba Ngoai stepped in front of Ma. A bougainvillea flower dropped onto her shoulder as she left the safety of the arch. She crossed the yard quickly and laid a hand on Di’s arm. “You, my daughter, are here as our guest. We expect nothing of you.”

  Ma leaned against the frame of the arch, just watching, her eyes narrowed.

  Binh strode toward Ma, on her way out of the yard for the second time that day.

  But when she drew close, Ma took her by the arm. “Binh! How could you have spoken to Di Hai like that?”

  Binh looked at the ground and sighed. Ma just didn’t understand.

  “You have been watching too many American movies, con. You have lost your gentle Vietnamese manners.”

  Ma let go, yet Binh still felt the pressure of Ma’s strong fingers against her flesh. She went out of the yard and off down the highway, rubbing her arm. This time, there was nowhere to run to but the motorcycle repair shop.

  “Nev-er. Nev-er. Nev-er,” she chanted in time with her footsteps. Never again would she ask Di Hai for anything. And, no matter what Ma said, Di didn’t deserve to be treated with nice manners.

  Now she would not sit, even in the back row, of Di Hai’s classroom. She wouldn’t sleep in Di’s lacy guest bed or zip along the ocean in a fast car. She wouldn’t ever eat her fill of French fries and milk shakes. Worst of all, she’d never see the world beyond this tiny village.

  A bus honked, startling her. Binh shook her fist at the driver.

  A layer of grease, uneven and black, spread over the floor of the repair shop. Binh glimpsed Anh Hai inside, siphoning gas from an engine into soda cans. Ba sat with two other men smoking in the back.

  Binh realized that if Ba saw her out in the street with nothing to do, he’d remember the fruit cart.

  She walked home slowly, scuffing at the dirt with her sandals.

  School was over for the day and as Binh passed the school gate, she stopped and looked through the bars.

  A woman wearing a white ao dai crossed the courtyard with a stack of books. She glanced in Binh’s direction and for a moment — could it be? — Binh fancied that the woman smiled at her.

  Early the next morning, Binh found Ba Ngoai outside in the leu. Kneeling beside Di, she sponged her face with a damp cloth.

  “She’s feverish,” Ba Ngoai whispered.

  “Oh, no,” Binh whispered back. Had Di gotten sick from eating a raw vegetable? Had she drunk water without purifying it?

  “Binh,” said Ba Ngoai, “please get me another cool wet cloth. Send Hai to the village for herbs. Tell Ba to light incense at the ancestral house.”

  “What about a doctor?” Di asked, her voice as pale as her face.

  “There is no doctor in this village. Van can bring a monk from the temple.”

  Binh went inside with the news: “Di Hai is very sick with a bad stomach.”

  Anh Hai and Ba rode off on the borrowed motorcycle, Ma sandwiched between them.

  Over and over, Ba Ngoai dipped the cloth in a basin of water, wrung it out, and placed it on Di’s burning forehead.

  Suddenly, Di cried out, “Ma! Ma!” and clung to Ba Ngoai. “I was outside with other children. We were playing war, each of us carrying a large stick of bamboo, shooting each other. One boy wouldn’t play dead. We heard a sound in the sky. You came running out of the house shouting at us to get inside.”

  Di pulled the blanket around her and trembled.

  The fever had reawakened Di’s war memories. Binh listened, her hand pressed to her heart.

  Outside, a bird gave a long, wild cry.

  Di gazed at the blue plastic sky of the leu as though looking into the sky of long ago. “We ran inside when heaven fell. The earth shook. When all quieted, we went out. The neighbor’s water buffalo was dead . . . And old Mr. Trinh . . . And the little boy I’d shot dead during our game. He hadn’t run fast enough.” Di began to sob.

  Ba Ngoai pulled both Di and Binh close to her, trying to encircle them with her tiny arms. “Shhh . . .” she said.

  Binh found her cheek against Di’s shoulder.

  “Sometimes,” Di said, her voice like dried leaves underfoot, “I wonder if instead of running as he should have, that boy was playing dead for me.”

  A tear ran down the side of Binh’s face. Nothing in her own life had ever been that sad.

  When Di lay back down, Binh took the cooling cloth from Ba Ngoai and sponged Di Hai’s forehead herself.

  That afternoon, two Buddhist nuns came to the house to perform a ceremony for the sick, burning incense and chanting: “May your heart’s garden bloom with a thousand lotus flowers. . . .”

  The air smelled of the bitter herbs brewing over the cooking fire.

  Ba Ngoai gave Di a healing massage, rubbing oil into her back with the flat side of a spoon. She pressed so hard that Di cried out.

  When Anh Hai started to crack open a coconut, Ma said, “That sound is too loud for your auntie,” and Anh Hai set his big knife aside.

  Cuc brought a cold can of artichoke soda.

  “You should stay away from my auntie,” Binh said, dipping the cloth. “You might catch what she has.”

  Just after sunrise, Binh took Di a steaming bowl of pho bo.

  Di sat up, swallowed a spoonful, and smiled. “I can feel the soup landing in my stomach. I think it’ll stay there this time.”

  Binh settled down, her back against the suitcase.

  Di ate until the bowl was empty. Then, setting the bowl aside, said, “While I was sick, I thought about what you asked about. I feel terrible about getting your hopes up.”

  Binh bit the inside of her cheek.

  Di leaned forward. “I’m so sorry.”

&nb
sp; Binh shook her head slightly, not trusting herself to speak.

  “I can’t take you to America, but how about a short trip away from here?” Di said. “We could go somewhere nice.”

  Binh gave Di a little smile.

  “In the suitcase behind you, there’s a book. Why don’t you get it out.”

  Binh opened the suitcase as though unfamiliar with it. She knew right where Di kept the book, but pretended to search. “This one?” The cover read Vietnam.

  Di held out her hand. “I’m not doing the touristy things I thought I’d be doing.”

  As Di flipped through the pages, Binh saw Vietnamese women in traditional dress wearing flowers in their hair, monks and nuns holding alms bowls, a pond of pink lotus blooms. Finally, Di turned to a picture of the ocean, turquoise and glittering under the sun.

  “Oh!” Binh exclaimed.

  “Haven’t you seen the ocean?”

  Binh shook her head. “Only in movies.”

  “Have you never traveled beyond your village, Binh?” Di asked gently.

  Binh set down the guidebook. “Once Anh Hai took me on a motorcycle, up the highway to the tea plantations.”

  “Well, it’s time you saw more than tea. Let’s go to the beach,” Di said. “We could take a bus.”

  Binh gripped the book with both hands. “Could we really go? Could we go in the ocean?” She didn’t know how to swim, but loved to kneel down in the river, the water up to her shoulders.

  “Of course we’ll swim. Let’s see, it says here that the closest beach is about a three-hour drive. There are several hotels and restaurants.”

  “I’ll ask Ma if we can go.” Binh scrambled to her feet.

  “Ask if we can go tomorrow!” Di called after her.

  Binh hesitated. Suddenly, she wanted to ask if Cuc could come too. Like Binh, Cuc had never been to the ocean. But then Binh recalled the way Cuc had shown off her bracelets. What else would Cuc show off to Auntie? Saying nothing, Binh left the leu.

  The next morning, as stars still shone in the sky, half the village turned out to watch Di Thao and Binh board the early bus for the beach town of Mui Ne. The bus picked up passengers from the side of the highway. It was bigger than Binh’s house, and as it waited for the new passengers, it rumbled like an angry dragon.

  Ma pressed two baguette sandwiches into Binh’s hands. “You may find only very bad food.”

  Ba and Anh Hai wore their best shirts in honor of this special good-bye. The white cotton glowed in the dim light.

  This time, Binh thought, it was she and not Anh Hai who was leaving.

  Ba Ngoai held Di’s hand. “You’ll be gone so long, dear daughter.”

  “Only a day.”

  “But I will miss you terribly.”

  Binh put Ma’s food in the plastic bag with the two towels and a small woven mat. She and Di each carried one of Ma’s non las as protection from the sun.

  The morning was lit with the flash from Di’s camera.

  For a moment there in the morning dark, on the known stretch of highway, surrounded by familiar faces, including those of the street mongrels, Binh shivered with a sudden sadness. Maybe she didn’t want to go to the ocean, after all. She’d left her village only once before, and then had been on the back of the motorcycle, snuggled against Anh Hai for protection.

  “It’s time,” Di said, taking Binh by the elbow.

  Binh waved good-bye to Cuc. Even now it wasn’t too late to ask Di. But Binh turned away, her face wooden and set, like the carved animals in Third Aunt’s shop.

  Two birds began to sing as Binh, aware of the many eyes watching her, climbed the silver steps into the bus. The interior hummed and vibrated. She steadied herself by holding the rail that ran close to the ceiling.

  “Sit here,” said Di, stopping by two seats. “Close to the front, we won’t smell that awful smoke.”

  As the bus chugged off, the driver leaning out his window to yell at a man on a large tricycle, Binh pulled aside the curtain and waved to her family standing in a neat line. Their faces looked small and blurry on the other side of the window glass.

  When they turned at the road to the beach, Binh saw Third Aunt’s tourist shop, closed and dark in this early hour. Later on, instead of playing in the ocean, Cuc would set the coconut ashtrays to one side, dust the shelf, and move the ashtrays back.

  The bus ascended into the hills. In the pale silver light, Binh made out the tea plants Anh Hai had once shown her, their rows curving over the folds of the earth.

  As the sky lightened, they drove through one village after another. Each flew the same red and yellow banners of the Communist party, while the Buddhist flags waved from the pagodas.

  When the hillsides flattened out, the villages grew larger. Huge balconies protruded from the second stories of the houses. On some balconies stood statues of the Virgin Mary holding out her arms to the world. Binh had never seen such large statues — only the tiny ones in Third Aunt’s shop.

  Binh held the plastic bag with Ma’s food close to her. She had wanted to see the world. But Di was taking her so far away. Maybe Di had been right about America. By going, she would leave too much behind.

  As in her village, Binh saw piles of burning trash, the smoke thickening the air. Men and women squatted by the side of the road next to huge piles of fruits and vegetables, stacked baskets, turquoise sacks of rice, and tall stalks of bright flowers.

  Midmorning, the bus stopped at a roadside restaurant with one wall open to the highway. When the bus door opened, a gang of children holding bundles of postcards pressed close.

  They began to call out to Di: “Madame! Madame!”

  Di examined a display of cards carried by a small boy with a dirty bandanna around his head.

  The boy winked at his friend and gave a thumbs-up sign.

  “I’ll take three, please,” Di finally said in Vietnamese, giving the boy a bill. She lifted her camera and snapped a picture of him.

  He held out his hand.

  “He wants more money because you took his picture,” Binh explained.

  “For just that?” Di protested, while laying another bill in the boy’s open palm.

  The other children moved in. “Madame! Madame!” They posed with big smiles and the girls flirted.

  “You’re so pretty. You’re so handsome,” Di exclaimed as she photographed them.

  But to Binh, they looked dirty and greedy. Worse, they pretended to like Di Thao, when all they wanted was her money.

  Di took pictures of every one of them, then showed them the pictures on the camera screen. She handed out many small bills.

  Binh pulled Di into the restaurant, calling out to the children, “Don’t follow us!”

  As she and Di sat down at a table, Binh said, “Those kids are overcharging you.”

  Di raised her eyebrows so high they rose over the top of her sunglasses.

  Inside the open air restaurant, the driver and passengers bent over bowls of pho bo.

  Di and Binh ate the baguettes Ma had sent — French bread stuffed with bean curd and greens — while the children watched from the edge of the restaurant.

  “Madame, Madame,” they called in soft voices.

  Di bought flat round sheets of sesame candy and a box of candied ginger.

  As they made their way back to the bus, the children once again crowded around, shoving postcards toward Di Hai.

  Di gave them the ginger, and the boy with the bandanna made a face.

  “Go away,” Binh said to the boy. “You’ve gotten enough out of her already.”

  Once back in the bus, Di waved at the children, then looked at the postcards. “My students will love seeing these.” She took out her sketchbook and did quick drawings of the children until the bus pulled away.

  Binh leaned close, even though she wished Di would draw something else.

  Di put away her pencil and unwrapped the sesame candy. “I remember this candy from when I was a child. I’d forgotten it. I loved the way
it stuck in my teeth, the tiny seeds . . .”

  The towns came to an end and the bus passed into the jungle of bamboo, vines, and big-leafed trees.

  The air whistling through the crack in the window smelled salty.

  After they passed a gigantic Buddha perched serenely on a boulder, the bus climbed over one last rise and the ocean lay at the base of the hills.

  Binh pressed her face against the window. As the bus drew closer, she drew herself up, straining to comprehend the blue line of the horizon.

  The bus stopped. The doors fanned open to let Binh and Di Thao climb out into the salty, damp air.

  There were no buildings, no street vendors — not even children selling postcards — in this deserted spot.

  A small, dusty road lined with palm trees led to the ocean. As they walked, Di took many pictures and Binh heard an unfamiliar, restless roar. “What’s that noise?”

  Di stopped and listened. “It’s the ocean.”

  The ocean sounded like the breathing of a giant monster, yet Di didn’t seem worried.

  They walked on down the road, the waves growing louder.

  “Let’s take off our sandals,” Di said when the road ended at a mound of white sand.

  Binh wiggled her feet as she walked, the sand warm and slippery between her toes. The sun shone like a huge, bare bulb in the sky. How nice it would be to plunge into the water!

  Yet when she saw the ocean, it moved not in one direction like the river, but every which way. It pulled back in on itself and lunged forward. This was the huge, gobbling monster she’d imagined down the road, worse than any ghost.

  Binh wasn’t sure she wanted to go in after all. She might get lost in so much water.

  Di took her dress off, revealing a red bathing suit underneath.

  Binh didn’t have on a suit. When she bathed in the river and no one was around, she wore her underwear. She hadn’t thought of needing a bathing suit. If she didn’t have one, would she not be able to swim? She poked her big toe into the hard, wet sand.

  She pretended to be interested in the boys and older women who pulled nets through the shallow water, collecting tiny butterfly shells.