Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen Read Free Book Online

“Vietmanese.” Nonetheless, Anh and I looked up to Crissy. She had dark silky hair with natural waves, and to us everything she did, wore, and said was the coolest. Whatever she liked, we liked: Madonna, puffy lettering, Dr. Scholl’s. When she wanted a dog we wanted one, too, and rejoiced when my father and Rosa relented. Crissy picked her out from the pound: a dirty-white Lhasa apso mix she named Mimi.
    To celebrate Vinh’s birth my father and Rosa threw a big party. Noi spent days in the kitchen, preparing piles of cha gio that she cooked in an electric fryer set up in the garage; shrimp cakes; platters heaped with goi cuon, fresh shrimp and vegetable spring rolls; banh xeo, delicate pancakes stuffed with meats, herbs, and bean sprouts; beef satay marinated in fish sauce, sugar, and lemongrass; mounds of vermicelli and rice for stewed shrimp; saucers filled with chilies swimming in nuoc mam. There were pasty dough balls stuffed with spiced pork and Chinese sausage; shrimp chips dyed in pastel colors, salty styrofoam that vanished on the tongue; pickled radishes, carrots, and cauliflower; heaps of dried coconut curls; dried persimmons, flat brown, each resembling a giant eye; nubs of sugared pineapple and papaya; green bean cakes; red bean cakes. And always, the teardrop crunchy-tart pickled shallots that came in small cans labeled “pickled leeks.” I would eat them even after my tongue burned from the brine. Noi never minded when I sneaked into the kitchen to grab the first shrimp chips, fresh from the deep fryer, a few cha gio cooling in a towel-lined colander, and extra pieces of the rich, salty-sweet Chinese sausage, blood red and shot through with white speckles of fat.
    Anh and I were waitresses for the party, roles we would have for as long as parties lasted in that household. We fetched drinks and napkins while my father’s friends beckoned to us, snapping their fingers. We were not the indulged little girls on Baldwin Street anymore, holding out our arms for a new toy or stick of gum. Now we were old enough to be useful, to wash dishes and do what we were told. Someone might want an extra beer or bean cake; another might need a dirty plate whisked away. Our heads were patted, cheeks pinched, shoulders grabbed while my father’s friends assessed us out loud as good, thin, delicate, or clumsy.
    The long hair we’d had on Baldwin Street had been clipped into the same bowl-shaped haircuts, later amended to Dorothy Hamill style, and for the party we wore identical patchwork dresses trimmed with rickrack. Anh and I liked to pretend we were twins. We had the same habit of finding hilarity at random moments— a stumble on the sidewalk, a glimpse of gaping-mouthed tennis shoes. But our similarities seemed to end there. She was lively and I was shy. She charmed everyone with her quick smile and perfect vision, while I had to wear horn-rimmed glasses too big for my face. Rosa had been the one to notice my poor eyesight, and these first glasses she’d chosen would set the precedent for the rest of my childhood—bulky plastic frames from the sale rack at the eye doctor’s. I looked like a sorry version of my sister, and Rosa introduced us to the guests as “the pretty one and the smart one.”
    In the living room, people passed baby Vinh around as if he were an objet d’art, and in a way he was—multiracial, a child for the next century. When they finished admiring him they praised Anh and Crissy’s pretty faces. I didn’t mind slipping into the background. I was perpetually worried about breaking my glasses or being teased. I had discovered that adults liked to ask children questions only to laugh at their answers, and I hated being the butt of a joke, having to stand there and take it as a proper child should. You’re too shy, how are you going to get a husband? someone might ask, setting the room into laughter.
    Stealing a bowl of pickled leeks