Candy, Sally Spratt [early reader books .txt] 📗

I am sorry to bother you, my name is Monica Nguyen.” She dropped her hand when Candy did not accept her offer. “No thank you, I am not interested in whatever you are selling” she said as she began to shut the door. “I am not selling anything; I have a gift from your father.” Candy’s eyes flew open; she didn’t know what to say. She regained her composure and invited them in. “Please, please come in, sit. May I get you anything?” she asked the woman. The girls kept their heads bowed and remained huddled close to each other. Candy sat down and gestured for the woman and the girls to sit across from her.

“My name is Monica Nguyen. And I am correct in assuming that you are Candy Turner?” Candy nodded eager to hear what this woman had to say. “You said you had a gift from my father? How did you know my father?” she asked.

“I will answer all of your questions but let me explain a few things first. I have been your father’s attorney and good friend for the last 20 years. I am sorry to say that there are quite a few things you don’t know about your father. I wasn’t able to come and see you earlier, I had promised I wouldn’t come and see you until I had the girls. There is no easy way for me to say this so I will just say it; these two girls are your nieces.” The corner of Candy’s mouth began to twitch, “I don’t understand. I am an only child, and these girls are Vietnamese. How could they be my nieces?” Monica went on, “Your father had a wife when he was stationed in Vietnam during the war. It was a marriage that was not recognized by the Vietnamese nor the United States government. Your father was injured during combat and he was sent back to the states. He spent many, many months in the hospital, unconscious. He finally regained his mental capacities and was able to talk, it was too late. The village his wife and family lived in was destroyed, the refugees had moved on. The Vietnamese government was not much help; there were no records of who had survived and where they had relocated to. Your father never knew what happened to his wife or to the baby that she was expecting. He’d received many rumors about the family, but nothing ever panned out. Many years he searched for her and was not able to find her. He tried to get on with his life here, marrying your mother and having you were a great blessing to him, but he always longed for his first wife and child. He never gave up looking for them. His hope was that some day he would find them and take care of them. “


Candy sat fell back in her chair, tears spilling out of her eyes. She got up and went to the kitchen; she leaned against the counter for support, hung her head down and took in several deep breaths trying to compose herself. Obviously the two girls needed her, and her father had wanted her to take care of them. Her heart ached knowing that her father had suffered for so many years, alone. If only he had shared his secret, maybe she would have understood and life would have made sense to her. She tried to compose herself, blew her nose and wiped her eyes dry.

She returned to the living room and apologized for her rudeness, and asked Monica to continue with her story. “When your father got so sick about six months ago, that is when we finally found the girls.” She pointed to the older girl, “this is Phuong; she is 12 and this Anh she is 10. Both girls have lived in the orphanage since they were very young. Both of them barely remember barely remember their parents. How they ended up in an orphanage is very confusing, but their mother and father are both dead, as well as their grandparents. So you see you are all they have. It was your father’s wish that they be raised by you and your husband. I am so sorry that he did not live to see these girls. I think him knowing about the girls is what kept him going those last six months, he just couldn’t hold on any longer.” She dabbed a little tear from her eye, and then said something to the girls in Vietnamese. Both girls stood up and bowed their heads, putting their hands out timidly for Candy to shake. Instead Candy took both girls and wrapped her arms around them, gently kissing each girl on the top of the head.

The girls nodded and smiled as Candy showed them around the house, peeking into the bedrooms, they giggled in the bathrooms and their eyes grew wide when they saw the stainless steel double door refrigerator in the kitchen. Candy motioned for them to sit down and turned the big screen TV on for them to watch. The kids would be home from school soon. How would she explain these girls? This is what she had been asking for, her father wanted her to have these girls, and she would have to make it work. This was the connection she had been trying to make with her father ever since she was a little girl.

Brianna and Bethany got home, talking excitedly to each other about a new boy in school. They both stopped and stared at Phuong and Anh, and then looking at their mother for an explanation. They had both noticed the change in their mother and they didn’t really like having her home when they got home from school, and now there were two strange girls watching TV in their family room. Candy put her finger up to her lips to shush them before they said anything, ushering them into the kitchen where she told them the same story that Monica had told her a few hours earlier. “Well, I am not sharing my room or any of my clothes.” Brianna said. “Me neither” Bethany echoed. “I hoped that you would want to share with your family. These girls have nothing, they have lost everything. So you think about what you could do for these girls, they are your cousins.” They walked off, whispering to each other, looking back into the family room as they passed. Candy went through the same routine two more times, once with Niles and then again with Frank. Niles was uninterested; his only comment was that they better stay out of his room and not touch any of his stuff, especially his CDs. Frank thought the girls should be sent to live with a local Vietnamese family where they’d fit in better.


Candy was unable to convince her daughters to give up a spot in their room or any clothing; she made her nieces comfortable in the family room. Fixing them each a bed up on the sofas, she arranged several big fluffy pillows and gave each girl a pile of warm blankets. Her daughters had donated pajamas, the pairs they had gotten for Christmas the year before, and didn’t like. Phuong and Anh again nodded and smiled as Candy arranged their beds. Candy tucked them both in and turned out the lights, leaving a small light glowing in the hallway, in case they were afraid of the dark.

Brianna and Bethany got up in the middle of the night. They had planned to play a prank on their cousins, hopefully, make them want to leave. Their plans quickly changed when they found the Phuong and Anh had created pallets on the hard floor with their blankets, the fluffy pillows remaining on the sofa and their thin dresses, folded neatly, lay at the end with their worn out shoes resting on top. Phuong and Anh weren’t in their beds; they were in the kitchen on their hands and knees. With their pajamas bottoms rolled up and each with a scrub-brush and a pail of hot soapy water – they were scrubbing the tile floor. Bethany and Brianna didn’t say a word, instead they knowingly glanced at each other and silently crept back up to their rooms, ashamed of what they were planning, not comprehending their cousin’s acts of selflessness.

They didn’t tell anyone what they had seen; they kept the secret between themselves. When Candy got up she found that her daughters had made a large breakfast and were serving their cousins. The four of them sat around the kitchen table, looking at each other and giggling back and forth. Phuong and Anh wearing new clothing that had once belonged to her daughters.

A miracle was happening before her eyes; Bethany and Brianna were sharing, and spending less time in their rooms and on their phones. Candy got rid of the dog walker and housekeeper and began splitting up the chores between the girls. Niles and Frank though, were tougher. Niles noticed the changes in his sisters, he couldn’t figure out what they saw in Phuong and Anh. They were awkward, had stringy hair, and they didn’t speak English. When they tried to say his name but it always sounded like they had rocks in their mouths. He just ignored them, figured it was some phase the women in the house were going through. He began a small quiet change on his own. It began the day he stood on the landing, looking down as he tried to adjust his iPod he noticed his cousins sitting in front of the TV staring up at the blank screen. He realized in that brief moment, that they didn’t know how to turn it on, they probably never had TV where they lived. He picked through the DVD’s and found one that had been a favorite of his sister’s, he turned on the player, inserted the DVD. Phuong and Anh just sat and watched, they kept looking at Niles, nodding their heads at him and smiling. Although they couldn’t understand the language, they understood the story; they laughed when they were supposed to and got angry when they were supposed to. Again, Candy watched the scene as it unfolded, careful not to interrupt.


At first the changes were small, Candy began to buy less expensive clothes, shop at the discount stores. She spent less money every month on herself and her children. She stopped the cable service in their rooms and removed their TVs (without complaint). The girls began to follow in their mother’s footsteps and shared with their cousins; clothes, shoes and helped them with English. Niles began to teach them about music, how to play catch and toss a football.

Frank was caught up in his own world, almost an outsider. He didn’t see what was happening to his family until he came home one night to what appeared to him to be a brand new family and he liked what he saw. He saw his children sitting in the living room with their friends and cousins playing video games, his wife in the kitchen cooking and singing. Was she really wearing pink sweat pants? Her pinched