Stealing Buddha's Dinner

by Bich Minh Nguyen

  Crissy’s hair was getting bigger, curlier, bangs poufier. She fought with our parents, defiantly raising the boom box volume to Def Leppard singing, F-f-f-foolin’. To Anh and me she’d drop blithe references to “the mall” and produce an astonishing array of bold new earrings, clothes, and makeup in hues of fuchsia and peacock blue. When I asked her how much it all cost she smiled without answering.

  That summer I joined a Brownie troop with my friends from Ken-O-Sha. Even though the other girls were straight-up Grand Rapidian—proper and Dutch, from good clean homes—I knew at least this was an easier club to get into. So I looked forward to the meetings with Debora, the pretty blond troop leader who had a little boy named Cameron. I thought his name grand, high-class sounding, and was impressed by Debora’s two-bedroom apartment with its white carpet and queenlike wicker chair in the living room. That’s where Debora sat during the meetings, which I recall nothing about except the Grasshopper cookies and punch that we took turns bringing. Cameron’s father wasn’t around, and the circumstances of his absence were as murky to me as that of Crissy’s father.

  We met once a month to cross-stitch, or go on walks, and once we took a tour of Debora’s workplace. She prepped frozen meals for Gordon Food Services, and had a stash of paper toques to wear. Her work uniform was all white. She explained how the meals she made would end up in hotels and restaurants all over the state. On our brief visit to the Gordon Foods kitchen I marveled at the stainless steel shelves stacked with cans and boxes. The environment was both sterile and chaotic—part hospital, part factory, part grocery store. I wondered how it was possible to make everything exactly the same for every tray of lasagna or turkey tetrazzini.

  On one of our meetings we went to Ken-O-Sha to explore the nature trails that wound around Plaster Creek behind the school. Later, in sixth grade, we would learn how to identify trees, and what the different layers of soil were called, and take the lower grades on guided tours. It was late summer, and the air was just starting to carry a note of autumn’s approach as Debora led us toward the entrance of the trail. In the near distance we saw a group of kids—older kids, junior high or maybe even high school—sitting on hoods of cars in the parking lot. Everyone knew that kids who hung out in the parking lot on weekends and after school were bad. They probably smoked and did drugs out there, and they would beat you up, or worse, if you got in their way. A nervous pall fell over the group as we walked beyond the kids’ line of vision. “Don’t worry, girls,” Debora said. “God will protect us. That is,” she added, “if you believe. If you don’t believe, well . . .” Her voice faded meaningfully. I knew—everyone must have known—that the words were meant for me. Brownie troop had its prayers every meeting, and I never participated. I didn’t refuse or say a word against them—I simply abstained. As much as I longed to fit in, I just couldn’t bring myself to fake prayer.

  I said nothing, though my heart beat a little faster—with anger, but also fear at being isolated. Then I saw a familiar face in that group of kids in the parking lot. Crissy. We were far away from the group now, but I knew her hair, her stance, her smile. She was laughing at something, lifting a cigarette to her lips. A jolt of humiliation rushed through me and I wondered if the other girls had recognized her. Would they kick me out of the troop? Who would want to be friends with a heathen girl whose sister smoked and did drugs with bad boys in the parking lot?

  It was Anh who finally let me know how Crissy got such stylish clothes and jewelry. “Duh,” she said. “She steals them.” She would bring a whole bunch of outfits into a dressing room to try on, Anh explained, and leave wearing as much as she could fit under her regular clothes. Earrings and makeup she slipped into her pockets. She did this all over Woodland and Eastbrook malls. “She showed me how,” Anh boasted, admiring Crissy’s ingenuity.

  Part of me admired it, too—the illicit spoils, the brazenness, the fact that Crissy always got what she wanted. But my overriding thought was trouble. Police, getting arrested, going to jail, her permanent record. I blamed my parents. Why couldn’t they lay off her case? She wouldn’t have to steal if they gave her more money, I reasoned. I would have given her my own money gladly, forgetting any past thievery, if it would mean keeping her safe. Anh was confident in Crissy’s shoplifting skills, but I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling I had. It was new, this worrying about her, since all my life I had feared Crissy’s judgment and ridicule. I didn’t know what to do but try to stay close to her, lingering when she sang along to “Sister Christian” and “Borderline” and sitting so near when we watched Fame on TV that she’d shove me away. “Quit it,” she’d say.

  Just after the school year started, Debora presented Brownie badges at a mother-daughter lunch in a courtyard at Ken-O-Sha school. I didn’t know what we had earned or learned, and half of us didn’t even have Brownie uniforms to pin any badges on. I was bored with the whole idea of the troop by then, and dreaded the lunch as much as Rosa probably did. Debora had asked us each to bring a dish to share and our own plates, utensils, and drinks. Rosa and I brought corned beef and Colby cheese sandwiches and cans of Squirt. Others brought macaroni salad, Jell-O squares, bologna sandwiches, and juice boxes. As we sat on stone benches, Debora led the group in a prayer. I glanced at my stepmother, who bowed her head just slightly and said nothing when the others said, “Amen.” I knew she thought of Brownie troop as an indulgence, a peer pressure thing. She must have been worried that I would immerse myself in such a group, perhaps become religious, too.

  I noticed that Emily Voss had brought something in a round deep-dish pie pan. Her mother pulled back the tinfoil to reveal a blanket of mashed potatoes. “Shepherd’s pie,” Rosa exclaimed. I looked at her in surprise and she said, “Crissy loves shepherd’s pie.” This was news to me and I almost said, Are you sure? There was so much, it seemed, I didn’t know about her. I had forgotten to bring forks, so I could only watch the others dig into the mashed potatoes. Underneath, like cake beneath frosting, a layer of ground beef revealed itself, and drops of gravy spotted Emily’s plate. I watched the fork travel from her plate to her mouth, thinking that my corned beef sandwich tasted like construction paper.

  All at once I felt exhausted with Brownie troop and the useless badges—something about being tidy and polite, and knowing how to use a compass—and the day seemed late in the sky, nearly over. It was weird to sit in this school courtyard on a Saturday, with the empty halls behind us. It was weird to be sitting here playing mother and daughter. Somewhere out in the teachers’ parking lot, I imagined, Crissy was leaning against someone’s car. She was smoking a cigarette, her stolen bracelets flashing on her arms. Debora had wanted me to be afraid, I realized, just as she had wanted me to believe what I could not believe. I was supposed to fear teenagers, boys, the wreck of adolescence. The thought of Crissy out there struck me as terribly lonesome. Oh, she had no shortage of friends, but she would always be the oldest sister, the one in charge. She would have to lead the way through growing up. She would always have to go first.

  In my hand I balled up half a sandwich. The bread gave way easily, as it had in Crissy’s hands when she had shown me how to eat rhubarb, bread, and honey. It melted into itself, returning to its pasty origins, the meat and cheese folding inside as easily as a tongue. In my mind I saw Crissy pushing off on her bicycle, riding fast around the corner.

  I hated to acknowledge the end of summer, those suspended hours of drawing pictures with Jennifer while Anh hung out with a new girl down the street. Crissy talked on the phone, broke up with Kenny, brought home more clothes, more makeup. She stared in the mirror for hours. Vinh built Lincoln Log cabins with Jennifer’s brother, the two of them blissfully exempt from the rules and travails of girlhood in Grand Rapids. Noi worked in the garden, shifting around her sprinklers that fanned to and fro in slow arcs. Our uncles came home from work and cranked up old Santana or the Guess Who. A golden haze settled over the neighborhood and I longed to keep it, to prevent the night from falling. Then our
parents came home. They shut down the day, their very appearance signaling tension. A fight could erupt any second, aimed at any one of us. A sulk, a smart remark. Wipe off that eye shadow. Be quiet. Don’t talk back to me.

  Gone were the days of bread and honey, of following Crissy down the backyard hill to see where she would lead us. I was old enough to disobey her orders, and look at her with disquiet, and consider what kind of girls Anh, Crissy, and I might turn out to be. I was old enough to refuse without fear a stick of rhubarb, sanded with sugar and still warm from someone else’s garden. But I was never offered it again.

  11

  Salt Pork

  LIVING WITH THREE SIBLINGS, TWO UNCLES, A GRANDMOTHER, and nosy parents meant that privacy was as impossible as having my own refrigerator stocked with cheesecake, Otter Pops, and pudding snacks. Even the bathroom, the only room with a lock, provided little solace, since someone was always knocking on the door and shouting, “Hurry up!” As the youngest ones, my brother Vinh and I were entitled to the least amount of space. We roamed the house looking for hideouts, building forts out of cardboard and towels. We were powerless against Anh and Crissy, who had control over dresser drawers, radio stations, and which games we might play.

  Deep in the heart of the 1980s, my sisters spent hours choreographing dance moves to Pat Benatar and Scandal. Shootin’ at the walls of heartache, bang bang! I am the warrior. I tried to copy them, afraid of missing out on the knowledge they held, but they usually jeered me out of the room. I was left to admire from a distance their moussed hair, their pouty, bored expressions, the way they let their shirts dangle off one shoulder. They both had the natural athletic grace I lacked, and earned first-place blue ribbons on Field Day while I took home white ribbons marked “Participant.” They could mimic Madonna’s “Lucky Star” video right down to her deliberate blinks and serious, sexy frowns. They were experts at recording songs off the radio and every Sunday listened to Casey Kasem’s weekly Top 40 countdown and long-distance dedications. In the mornings they daubed their eyelids with stripes of color and produced a magical supply of cool earrings—lightning bolts, gigantic plastic hoops. My ears refused to stay pierced, though I had gone twice to the gum-chewing girl with the piercing gun at Claire’s in the mall. I shuddered at the crusty aftermath and the chore of rotating the studs each day. My earlobes rebelled, and both times I let the holes close up.

  I had only one thing to call my own: I read. Reading was my privacy. I would beg Rosa to take me to the nearby public library branch, where the one coveted copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret always had a long wait list. After snapping up whatever Judy Blume books I could find—Deenie, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing—I’d collect an armful of titles from the rest of the kids’ section, sometimes so many that I couldn’t carry them all. Rosa clicked her tongue at my greed and said that I’d better get through every last one before they were due. At least the books were free, I pointed out. I could spend whole weekends reading on my top bunk bed, with Jell-O Pops, Nutter Butters, and Chicken in a Biskit crackers swiped from the kitchen. I carried books with me everywhere, even to the Dairy Cone. They were a safety, a just-in-case. Some people have imaginary friends; I had characters in books.

  Twice a year at Ken-O-Sha Elementary, each student got to pick out two free books from RIF, Reading Is Fundamental. Outside the principal’s office, the row of white-clothed tables laden with paperbacks would make my heart jump. Running my hands over the shiny covers, I would take too long to make up my mind. I had nightmares about being sick at home and missing the RIF days. A few times a year we could also order books and magazines through Scholastic catalogs that the teachers handed out. Rarely did Rosa let me order a book, or allow me to use some of my Christmas and Tet money to buy them. She said that libraries existed for a reason and that buying books, things that were only to be read once, was a waste even though I had a habit of rereading them. Rosa also had a thing about books lying around—she thought it was tacky, that books should be kept out of sight, especially if company was coming over. Unable to stay organized, I ended up losing books under the bed and behind dressers, racking up late fees at the library, until my father built a small white bookshelf for the hallway.

  I liked to pile my books around me in bed, moatlike, and sleep among the narratives. Ramona Quimby, Encyclopedia Brown, The Great Brain, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Choose Your Own Adventure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte’s Web, The Cay, The Secret Garden, The Chronicles of Narnia. Then writers like Cynthia Voigt, Richard Peck, Norma Fox Mazer. I lingered over my favorite food parts—descriptions of Turkish Delight, fried chicken, hamburgers with onions, thick hot chocolate, even the beef tongue the Quimby family once had for dinner. I liked stories of kids on the outside, on the margins, overlooked. The Pinballs. The Home-coming. Jacob Have I Loved. A Girl Called Al. And then on to the shelf called Literature. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, A Tale of Two Cities. Old-fashioned language, and reading it felt like a wriggling down into some tunnel of words. I was determined to fit in, to learn how to see in that dark.

  I read to be alone. I read so as not to be alone.

  When I stepped into the brown-tiled entryway of the Kentwood Public Library, the sunlight flowing down on me from the high windows, I felt a sense of importance. It gratified me to be in a place devoted to books and quiet; I was filled with a sense of hope. Reading to me was fundamental, as fundamental as food. And nothing could be more satisfying than reading a good book while eating a good meal of mi soup, french fries, and a thin cut of steak. I plowed through books as fast as possible in order to read them again.

  I loved the opening of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, when the March girls give away their Christmas breakfast to a poor German family and Mr. Laurence sends over a surprise bounty of bon bons, ice cream, cake, and hothouse flowers. Then Jo makes friends with Laurie, bringing him a bowl of beautiful blancmange. A few chapters later, she struggles over wilted lobster salad and accidentally salts rather than sugars a dish of plump strawberries drowning in cream. The Marches were a romantic ideal with their white gloves and snug evenings, their plays and art and moral lessons from Marmee. I felt inspired to be like Jo, with her pluck and ingenuity; whether up in the garret or among the family circle, she was like a mythical heroine to me.

  More down to earth was Beverly Cleary’s heroine Ramona Quimby, one of my closest fictional friends. I understood her dread of having the same dull after-school snack of juice and rye crisp the same way I understood her resentment toward pretty, blond-curled Willa Jean next door. My favorite Quimby meal takes place at the Whopperburger, when a nice old gentleman secretly pays for their dinner. I appreciated the realism of how the Quimbys worried about money. Mr. Quimby loses his job, takes up smoking, goes back to school, then works as a grocery store cashier. When the cat eats half of their family jack-o’-lantern, Mrs. Quimby converts the leftover pumpkin into soups and breads. The family makes ends meet. In spite of such tensions I never doubted the Quimbys’ love for one another. I would gladly have traded my life with Ramona’s, to live on Klickitat Street in Oregon, with the hump of Mount Hood just visible in the distance on a clear day. I would have liked a mother like Mrs. Quimby, who could be stern but never mean, and who always seemed to understand the small and big anxieties that make up the life of a girl.

  All of my fictional friends liked to eat, but perhaps no one did more than Laura Ingalls Wilder. For the Ingalls family out on the plains and prairies, every harvest means a year of leanness or a year of fullness. The long days of sowing and haying and threshing could be distilled into a single sourdough biscuit fresh from Ma’s oven. The days provide slices of salt pork, purchased in town then parboiled, dipped in flour, and fried in their own fat. The days mean fighting against blackbirds that ravaged the corn and oats. Once, Ma gathers the blackbirds to make a pie. “The meat was so tender that it slipped from the bones,” writes Wilder. “There’s no great loss without some small gain,” says Ma.

>   The first book in the series, Little House in the Big Woods, was given to me by Jennifer Vander Wal on my ninth birthday. My first reaction to it was disdain; I was beyond illustrations and stories that began with the words “Once upon a time.” I had, too, an automatic suspicion of any book endorsed by the Vander Wals. So I set it aside, unread, for months. But then the boredom of winter got to me, and one Saturday afternoon I read the book from beginning to end, caught up in the butter and bacon, and how every mealtime depended on the success of Pa’s hunting or Ma’s gardening. I felt a stab of regret at having gone so long without knowing about hog-butchering, maple-sugar-making, cheese-making, and sausage-making; I had lost years of pork cracklings, hulled corn, and hot johnnycakes. When Pa butchers his hog, he blows up its bladder into a ball so Mary and Laura can play with it. Then Ma lets them roast the pig’s tail. They hold it before a blazing fire, watching the curlicue get crackly and greasy, then nibble at the bits of meat that Ma sprinkles with salt. In the winter Pa shoots a bear in the woods and keeps the meat frozen in the attic. Then there’s the sugaring-off dance at Grandma and Grandpa’s, to celebrate making the year’s supply of maple sugar. Laura and Mary pour hot syrup onto plates of fresh snow, making squiggle shapes that “hardened at once and were candy. . . . They could eat all they wanted, for maple candy never hurt anybody.”