Read Online When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden - Free Book Online

ancestors expected it of her.
    As Binh walked, the water slapped the sides of the buckets.
    At the top of the hill, faced with the yellow house and with the quiet spreading around them, they paused.
    Binh wondered if the ancestors were confused by Di. Did they almost know who she was, but not quite? Were they scratching their heads?
    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