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

with my father’s crowd, but resented their drunken parties.
    One of Rosa’s rules was that we had to ask permission for snacks. We could not, for instance, grab a wafer cookie without first clearing it with her. We couldn’t ask Noi because she would say yes to any food we wanted and would bring us fruit twice a day anyway. Nor could we ask our father, who had been used to indulging us with candy and chips. “But Dad said I could” didn’t fly with her. Invoking the price of groceries, she would deny my requests about half the time, depending on whether or not she believed I was truly hungry, or if I had finished my last meal. She continually invoked taxes and bills, words that echoed throughout my childhood.
    So I began stealing food.
    I would bring a book with me, pretending to be on my way to the basement to do some reading. If Rosa was in the living room she couldn’t see the kitchen but could hear everything, so I had to move silently. More often than not she would be working at the dining table, in full view of the kitchen. I would wait for her to go to the bathroom or become otherwise distracted, then hoist myself up onto the counter, open the cupboard, reach for the cookies—I knew exactly where they were, of course—and take away a handful, hiding them behind my book. All done in a matter of seconds. In the summer, I tucked popsicles into the waistband of my shorts, shielding the evidence with another book. I honed my method over the years so that I could slide in and out of the kitchen with nearly entire meals carried between my shorts and T-shirt. I brought my spoils up to my bunk bed, where they could be hidden under the sheets if necessary. If Crissy and Anh were there and in a tattletale mood I would retreat to Noi’s closet. I sat there often, peaceful among her ao dai s, hand-knitted sweaters, and sensible shoes, reading, writing notes to myself, and eating my contraband.
    Ice cream was the one thing nearly impossible to steal, though I could swipe spoonfuls at a time, but luckily my uncles swooped in to provide. They gave Anh and me plenty of change so we could chase down the ice cream trucks that crawled through the neighborhood. Even from far away I could discern their carousel tunes, and perked up like a dog detecting its master’s whistle. Depending on my mood I would choose a Drumstick, coated in chocolate and nuts, or a red, white, and blue Bomb Pop that had a gumball suspended at its tip. Anh usually selected an orange Push-Up or a Creamsicle. We would ride away on our bicycles, steering with one hand and eating ice cream with the other, feeling victorious. Crissy was usually too busy with her friends to bother with the ice cream truck, but she never missed out on the Dairy Cone, our beacon on 28th Street between the Witmark Merchandise Store and the Saigon Market.
    The Dairy Cone had a plastic sky-blue awning and walls covered in faded photographs of delectable desserts that instantly replaced the love I had nursed for the Purple Cow. The words parfait, turtle sundae, upside-down banana split made my heart thrill. On the rare times that Rosa took us to the Dairy Cone she only let us order the standard soft-serves—chocolate, vanilla, or twist, thirty-nine cents each. Duly the blond teenage girl behind the counter would hold the plain cone to the machine and pull the lever, extracting a steady flow of ice cream in rhythmic swirls. I had no complaints about the soft-serve, but the bigger items on the menu beckoned. All along the counter sat buckets of cherries and sprinkles, and vats of chocolate, caramel, and strawberry sauce.
    Chu Cuong and Chu Dai took us to the Dairy Cone once or twice a week all summer long, and urged us to order anything we wanted. Crissy and Anh favored banana splits, mainly for the sheer excess and the fuchsia-colored maraschino cherries. I alternated between sundaes and parfaits, contemplating the different interplays of ice