When Heaven Fell (9 page)

Binh set down the
ganh hang
and followed Di into the ancestral house.

When Binh’s eyes had grown used to the dark interior, she lit a stick of incense. She removed the wilting purple lilies from the vase. The tiny bananas and star fruit, once offered, had been eaten by the living.

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.

T
hree 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.”

O
ne 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.