When Heaven Fell (2 page)

B
a drove the motorcycle to the yard, where Anh Hai dropped the cart. Then he eased the motorcycle into the house, exhaust still pluming from the tailpipe. A motorcycle was safe inside.

Mist rose from the river, which slipped along like a sleepy blue dragon. Misty wisps concealed the bamboo, then drifted aside to reveal the shapes of long stalks and sharp leaves.

Ghosts lived in the thin fog. Binh’s grandmother, Ba Ngoai, told the story of how soldiers had shot their neighbors during the war. Ever since, the neighbors’ ghosts had wandered in the mist. Binh hurried across the yard to the house.

As she drew closer, she noticed Ma and Ba Ngoai whispering together.

When they saw her, they stopped their conversation. Ba Ngoai, barely taller than the motorcycle handlebars, folded her hands in front of her.

“Dinner is ready, Daughter,” Ma said.

Binh kicked off her sandals and went inside. She heard murmuring behind her as Ma and Ba Ngoai followed.

Ba and Anh Hai entered too, dressed in their greasy work clothes, but with the sleeves rolled up and their hands freshly washed. They sat down on the floor mat, a steaming pot of noodles smelling of salty fish sauce in front of them.

Binh waited until Ba Ngoai had taken her place on the high cushion, and until Ma had sat down, before sitting cross-legged herself.

Ba and Anh Hai helped themselves to the food first, then handed the ladle to Ma, who spooned out a bowl of soup for Binh.

Binh brought the fragrant, warm noodles close to her face. She drank deeply of the warm broth.

When Ma reached across and dropped a bit of pork into Binh’s bowl, Binh ate it up quickly.

After they’d finished and set the bowls and spoons in a large woven basket, Binh poured green tea into tiny porcelain cups.

Ma passed a plate of sliced papaya.

Normally after dinner, Ba and Anh Hai would go outside to sit under the arch of pink and white bougainvillea, smoking and watching the traffic. But tonight they stayed seated, even though dinner was over. Anh Hai unfolded the blades of his pocketknife and wiped each clean with the hem of his shirt.

Binh noticed a gecko on the wall: frozen, its toes spread wide, its head cocked.

The dying cooking fire popped.

Instead of rising to tinker with the kitchen fire, making sure that it was safe yet would burn until morning, Ba Ngoai remained seated. She smoothed loose strands of her graying hair toward the bun at the back of her head.

Binh shifted her legs. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, the air warm from the lingering heat of the day and the evening cooking fire. What was everyone waiting for?

Suddenly, Ba Ngoai folded her hands in her lap, chaining them together, fingers locked. “I have important news. My daughter is coming to see me.” She pulled herself up very tall.

Binh looked around the room. Daughter? Ma was right here. Whoever could Ba Ngoai be talking about? Was Ba Ngoai getting old and forgetful?

Ma stared into the basket of dirty dishes. Shimmers of feelings Binh couldn’t name crossed Ma’s face.

Ba let his black hair fall over his eyes.

Anh Hai folded up the knife blades, snapping them in one by one.

Binh realized that it was she Ba Ngoai was telling. Ba Ngoai had already shared this news with everyone else. “But Ba Ngoai”— Binh hesitated —“Ma is already here.”

“Binh”— Ba Ngoai’s voice dropped —“I have another daughter.”

The room was silent.

“Another daughter?” Binh asked, sensing a good story. “Tell me about her, please, Ba Ngoai.”

Ba Ngoai shifted on her cushion. “During the war, I was in love with an American soldier named William. He was very young, and so was I. We had a child together. I called her Thao.” Ba Ngoai closed her eyes and seemed to shrink.

Binh had heard such stories. In the war against the North Vietnamese Communists — or as others would say, against the Americans — many South Vietnamese women had had children with American GIs. But
Ba Ngoai
? This
was
a story.

Ba Ngoai opened her eyes. “William was transferred to Saigon. Maybe he died — I don’t know. I lost contact with him. But Thao stayed with me.”

Like the gecko, no one in the room so much as blinked.

“Things were very hard after the Americans lost and the Communists took power,” Ba Ngoai continued. “The country had been through decades of war. We had nothing to eat but grass and insects. The American government offered to take all children who had American blood. They offered adoption by good families. I gave Thao away.”

Ba Ngoai’s head dropped to her chest. A tear ran down her cheek. “If I hadn’t sent my daughter, she might have died. News came that all babies who were part American would be killed by the Communists. The Communists hated the Americans. And Thao had such light hair. . . .”

Outside, the traffic flowed as though nothing important was happening inside the house.

Inside, Ba Ngoai talked of things Binh had never heard of. She leaned forward, not missing a word.

Ba Ngoai cleared her throat. “I’ve tried not to think too much about Thao. She was five years old when she left. Thirty years have passed. Now, somehow she has found me. She wants to visit me.” Ba Ngoai looked up and smiled, her face wet with tears.

Binh had never seen Ba Ngoai cry. She leaned closer. “When is your daughter coming?”

“Next week. She is a teacher.” Again, Ba Ngoai sat taller. “Her two-week holiday begins next week. That is when she will come.”

“What great news, Ba Ngoai.” Binh smiled up at the gecko. The outside world was coming to her. Things were changing. She imagined that even the solid land between the flowing highway and the flowing river had shifted.

She placed both palms flat on the floor.

For Binh, the best part of Lunar New Year in February was the letters that came from the American relatives. After the American War, when life had been hard under the new Communist government, relatives had escaped in fishing boats. Many had ended up in America.

Now they wrote letters home.

Binh always looked forward to hearing the news. Some news made sense: a wedding, a new baby, a death. Other news was strange: a job working with computers, a move to a different city, travel to countries outside America (but never to Vietnam).

From the movies Binh watched at Café Video, she knew that Americans lived in sparkling new houses that never needed fixing. Americans wore beautiful new clothes that never needed mending. And all Americans went to school and learned all they wanted.

Except when they were shooting each other. Some movies were full of gunfire and stabbings and men driving fast cars.

Which was the real America? Binh always studied the relatives’ letters, looking for clues.

She loved the feel of the thin blue paper, the envelope and letter one piece. She always ran her fingertip over the tiny American-flag stamp.

Sometimes money dropped out of the envelopes: crisp green bills with faces of American men on them.

Ba Ngoai always let Binh hold the money before she put it in her wooden box.

Photos dropped out, too.

Each year, Binh examined the faces of these strangers. None wore a cone-shaped hat. Their clothes were never missing buttons, nor were they torn. The men and boys had on suits like Mr. Luong, the town mayor; the women and girls wore pale-colored, ironed dresses. These relatives didn’t look like family. Nor did they look like anyone in the movies.

No family member who’d left had ever returned home.

Now one was on her way. Coming soon. Binh placed her hand over her heart, feeling the dull thump under her blouse.

After a while, Ma led Ba Ngoai to the corner of the room and unrolled Ba Ngoai’s sleeping mat.

Ba Ngoai lay down, pillowed her head on an open hand, and closed her eyes.

Binh lifted the basket of dirty dishes, which clinked against each other as she carried them out of the house, across the yard, to the river to wash.

The mist hid the river under its damp veil, so Binh felt her way down the slope with her feet. Usually, she shivered at the thought of ghosts. But tonight she bubbled with such excitement that there was no room for fear. She squatted and set down the basket.

As she dipped the first cup in the water, she held on to it tightly so she wouldn’t drop it. There was nothing steady in her tonight. She felt just as fluid as the water.

Ba Ngoai had talked of Di Hai, her auntie, her mother’s older sister. Someone who could tell her many things about the world outside this little village.

“Di Hai,” Binh whispered to the dark blue silk of the river, “please bring lots of stories when you come!”

W
ord spread quickly among the relatives. Soon, Ba Ngoai’s remaining brother and three of her five sisters, Ba’s three brothers and two sisters, and all of their families, including Binh’s many cousins, gathered under the arch of bougainvillea and under the shade of the huge spreading tree.

The white dogs and ducks wandered in and out of the conversations.

Binh and Cuc sat on the low bench and listened. When Cuc wasn’t looking, Binh touched the sleeve of Cuc’s red dress.

Ba’s elder brother, Second Uncle, who had a long, narrow beard, said, “Americans make more
dong
in an hour than we make in a whole year.”

“You mean
dollars,
” said Fourth Aunt from her perch on a small plastic stool. “Thao is sure to bring dollars.”

“Maybe she’ll bring money for all of us,” said Third Aunt, Cuc’s mother. “We’ll eat meat every night now.” The waistbands of her skirts always looked tight. Second Aunt had died in the war, but Third Aunt had never become Second Aunt.

“Stand up a minute,” Binh said to Cuc. Cuc stood while Binh scooted the bench closer to the conversation. She wanted to hear more about money.

The dog underneath the bench came out on sleepy legs, yawned once, and lay back down.

“She may not be rich. Teachers don’t make much,” Ba Ngoai said quietly from the chair where she was shelling lima beans. “Not all Americans are rich.”

“Oh, but they are.” Third Aunt leaned over and squeezed Ba Ngoai’s forearm. “Compared to us, they are.”

Ma, her back against the tree trunk, said, “Maybe she’s rich enough to pay our rent.”

That would be nice,
Binh thought.

But Cuc, keeping her voice low so that only Binh could hear, scoffed, “Rent money! Visitors from America always bring gifts.”

“Gifts would be nice. But I want to hear stories about America,” said Binh. “And,” she added, “maybe Di Hai will talk about the war.”

“Anyone can talk about the war,” Cuc said, gesturing toward the relatives. “I’m tired of the war. You don’t have a bicycle. Maybe she’ll bring you one.”

Binh imagined herself on a bicycle, not rusty like Cuc’s, but new and maybe yellow. On a bicycle, she could travel far from home.

The next day, Binh didn’t tend the fruit cart and Anh Hai didn’t go with Ba to repair the motorcycles. With a rich auntie coming, who needed to work?

Ma was making a
non la,
a cone-shaped hat of young palm leaves, while she chatted with the visitors. She took long strips of bamboo and placed them in the notches of her triangular wooden frame. Soon the bamboo strips outlined the shape of a cone. When Ma leaned forward to talk to Third Aunt and her fingers relaxed, the last strip came undone, but she didn’t seem to notice.