When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden Read Free Book Online Page A

to unpack her suitcase. Now that everyone else was gone, maybe Di would bring out the real gifts, the gifts for Binh and her close family alone to see.
    Binh smiled, thinking again of dangly earrings, or maybe a ring with a pretty stone.
    Di pulled her suitcase close. The top banged open against the yellow floor and Di lifted out a small reddish book. “I have something to show you,” she announced, settling down on the sleeping mat.
    Binh’s heart danced up and down. What could it be?
    Ba Ngoai sat close on Di’s one side, Binh on the other. Anh Hai, Ba, and Ma crossed their legs and sat directly in front.
    “These are photos.” Di placed the book on one knee and tapped it with her fingertip.
    Binh’s heart danced faster. Photos were even better than stories.
    Di slipped the photographs out of the plastic holders and passed them around.
    “These are my American parents,” Di explained.
    Binh found herself staring into the eyes of a man and a woman with hair the color of Ma’s cone-shaped hats.
    Ba Ngoai held each photo for a long time — examining the woman standing alone in a gray dress, the man with his arm around Di’s shoulders, the three of them posed together by a fountain. Ba Ngoai looked and looked.
    As Ba Ngoai watched Di put away the faces of her American parents, she asked, “Are you happy, Daughter?”
    Di looked surprised, but said, “Very happy, Ma.”
    “Really happy?” Ba Ngoai persisted.
    “Really. And now, dear family, good night,” Di said. She lay down, turned herself over twice, and slept.
    After a breakfast of rice porridge flavored with green onions and small bits of pork, Di opened the photo album again.
    Everyone moved close and the room grew hushed.
    This time, Di opened to a photograph of a white building. Dark green bushes grew on either side of a long path to the door.
    “This is my house in Kentucky,” Di said.
    Binh looked up to see if Di was joking. The building was huge!
    “Your house is almost as large as the Buddhist temple,” Ba said, his eyes wide.
    Anh Hai leaned over, looking at the photo upside down, his forehead lined with furrows.
    Di flipped through the pictures. “My sleeping room, the room for people who visit me, the room for living, the eating room, kitchen, and toilet.”
    The room for guests had a high bed. Binh imagined climbing into that bed. No ghost would reach her up there. She laid a fingertip on the glossy plastic, wishing she could touch the lacy fabric covering the bed.
    “That toilet chair looks very easy, very nice,” Binh said. “I would like to try it one day,” she reminded Di.
    “Who else lives there?” Ma asked, squinting, as though trying to see people in the rooms.
    Di shrugged. “There’s only me.”
    Binh knew what everyone had to be thinking — this house in America had plenty of space for her whole family. In fact, it could hold several Vietnamese families.
    “Aren’t you lonely?” Ba Ngoai asked. She sat so close to Di that loose strands of her hair brushed Di’s cheek.
    “I’m never lonely. I see lots of people at the school where I teach.”
    “But you have no children, no husband,” said Ba.
    “I like living alone.”
    Alone?
Binh looked at Di to see if she was serious. If she liked living alone, what would she do with all of them?
    “And here,” Di said, turning to another page, “are my Vietnamese friends. The ones I learn Vietnamese from.”
    Three women posed in front of a bush of yellow flowers, wearing Western clothes.
    “This one is a teacher at my school,” Di said, tapping the face of the woman on the left. “I met the others through her. This one is an eye doctor. And this one has her own beauty salon. She does fingernails. But not mine.” Di laughed and held out her hands, showing the plain nails.
    Binh ran her thumb over her own short ones, glad suddenly that hers were just like Di’s.
    “These are pictures of my school,” she said.
    This place was even bigger than Di’s house — two