When Heaven Fell
Authors: Carolyn Marsden
Glossary and Pronunciation Guide
B
inh’s fruit stand was sheltered by corrugated tin on three sides and by a large umbrella overhead. The canvas of the umbrella had rotted away long ago.
“Mr. Thang! Come for your soda!” Binh called.
Old Mr. Thang crossed the street.
“My pleasure, Granduncle,” said Binh, handing over the can of Orange Crush.
Although Mr. Thang hadn’t paid cash for the drink, later he would bring a load of charcoal to the house.
Trucks and motorcycles passed back and forth on the highway, four lanes of black asphalt. Gray exhaust colored the concrete buildings, the speeding vehicles, and even the face of Mrs. Tran across the highway, selling her flat baskets of bok choy and ginger.
Every vehicle honked — either a series of quick beeps or a steady blast.
Binh took off the cotton mask she wore for protection against the fumes. She wiped her forehead with it. The day had been long and hot.
Binh’s cousin Cuc rode up on her old bicycle, wearing a dress with red flowers. Cuc was a year older than Binh and half a head taller. Her black hair was cut in a short bowl, while Binh’s fell to her shoulders.
“Did I get bicycle grease on my dress, Binh?” Cuc lifted the fabric to examine the hem.
“I don’t see any. Or maybe just a little spot right there . . .”
Cuc gave Binh the clothes she outgrew. Binh couldn’t wait until the pretty red dress — now dirtied with a dab of oil — would be hers.
Cuc not only had the red dress and a bicycle, but often wore colorful bracelets from her mother’s tourist shop. The shop made enough that Third Aunt, unlike Binh’s mother, wasn’t always complaining about money.
Just then, three boys and two girls came down the highway in their blue and white elementary-school uniforms — white shirts with round collars, dark blue pants for the boys, skirts for the girls. Each carried an armload of books.
The boys went on while the girls stopped by the stand.
Binh pulled her cone-shaped hat low over her face.
“How much are the fruit cups?” one girl asked.
“A thousand
dong,
” Binh answered, studying the ground.
As each girl handed over a bill and helped herself to the yellow fruit, Binh kept her hat pulled down.
Watching the girls catch up with the boys, Cuc said, “They think they’re better than us!”
Binh jumped up and imitated the girls’ walk — stiff-legged, nose in the air. Then she picked up a small pebble and tossed it after them.
Cuc laughed, the streamers on her handlebars jiggling. Yet in spite of the way they poked fun at the schoolchildren, whenever those children came close, both Binh and Cuc lowered their eyes.
Instead of going to school, Binh worked at the fruit stand and Cuc helped her mother in the tourist shop.
Binh had heard that at school one learned not only about America, but about other places as well. School sounded like a huge doorway to the world, a doorway through which Binh longed to walk.
But Binh didn’t like to think about school since her family couldn’t afford to send her. School was for the sons and daughters of families who had large businesses in town and for paid members of the Communist Party. School wasn’t for her.
“Let me have that last cup of fruit,” Cuc demanded.
Binh shook her head.
“Please. Look. It has flies on it. You can’t sell that.”
“I
will
sell it.” Binh slapped at Cuc’s reaching hand.
Across the highway, two high-school girls bicycled past, the tunics and loose trousers of their white
ao dai
fluttering.
Cuc gazed after them. Neither she nor Binh mocked the older girls.
Binh turned to the box tied to Cuc’s bicycle. “What’s in that package?”
“Paper fans. The bus dropped them off this morning.”
“Are they pretty?” Binh asked.
Cuc shrugged. “I haven’t opened them yet. But Ma is eager to sell them. I’d better get going.” She pedaled off, her bicycle entering the throng of motorcycles and small cars on the highway.
The sun rode low in the sky, and Binh still had one cup of fruit left.
Binh’s father, Ba, and her older brother, Anh Hai, would come soon.
If she sold enough, Ba might reward her with a small bill.
“Mr. Nguyen!” she called to a man walking toward the stand. “Come for your pineapple.”
Mr. Nguyen, who owned the hardware store, approached. “Is it nice and fresh?”
“I’ve just cut it,” Binh lied. The pineapple had sat in the sun all day, flies feasting on the yellow juice.
“Good.” He handed her the money, helped himself to a toothpick from the small jar, and strolled away, spearing a chunk of fruit.
It wasn’t a bad thing to sell old fruit to Mr. Nguyen, Binh thought. He had enough money to go often to Ho Chi Minh City. He’d ride off on his motorcycle, and then a day or so later, a truck would come with rolls of wire or boxes of parts for his hardware store. If he wasted a little money at her cart, the loss wouldn’t hurt Mr. Nguyen.
A Buddhist nun came by, with her shaved head and brown robe.
Binh pressed her palms together and gave a little bow. On Sunday, she would light incense at the temple to make up for cheating Mr. Nguyen.
Binh wiped the metal surface of the cart with a cloth. She put away the unsold bottles of soda. Finished, she scanned the highway for a sight of Ba and Anh Hai. The highway was lined with the red and yellow satin banners of the Communist government. Some banners had a yellow star, others a hammer and sickle.
She looked down the road toward the motorcycle repair shop where Ba and Anh Hai worked, but couldn’t make out their motorcycle in the stream of others.
Then she looked up the road as far as the large kiln where the Mai family manufactured bricks, a black cloud hanging above the chimney. Someday, she hoped to see more of what lay beyond that kiln.
Once she’d traveled the highway on the back of a motorcycle with Anh Hai. He’d stepped hard on the pedal and they’d zoomed out of the village, until the spaces between the villages grew greater and neat rows of tea plants covered the hillsides.
She’d held on to Anh Hai’s waist tight, filling her lungs with air from the huge blue sky and filling her head with memories of all she saw.
The sun slid toward the horizon. Binh felt tired and wished she could walk home. But if she did, someone might steal the cart.
Just as the vehicles turned on their lights, Ba and Anh Hai finally arrived. It wasn’t Ba’s motorcycle they rode, but one he’d borrowed from the repair shop.
“How was business?” Ba asked, idling the motor.
Anh Hai sat on the back, his fingers drumming the rhythm of his favorite new song.
“I sold six cups of pineapple and twelve sodas,” Binh answered.
“Good. That’ll buy some rice.”
Binh was proud of the way she’d sold all of the fruit. She handed Ba the
dong
notes from her earnings.
“Thank you,
con cung,
” he said, and shoved the bills deep into the pocket of his pants. Even though Binh had turned nine at Lunar New Year and tended her own cart, Ba still called her “my spoiled little girl.”
As Ba revved the motorcycle engine, Binh climbed into the space in front of Anh Hai, holding Ba around the waist.
Anh Hai reached one hand behind him and took hold of the cart. Then they rode off down the road as traffic fumes billowed around them. Ba edged the motorcycle in and out of the traffic, the cart following after them like a duckling following its mother.
