Stealing Buddha's Dinner (6 page)

When
Flashdance
came out (which we weren't allowed to see) my sisters and I fell in love with Irene Cara's “What a Feelin'.” The lyrics seemed innocuous enough.
Take your passion and make it happen!
But I misheard the words and one day Rosa caught me singing,
Take your pants off, and make it happen!
She rushed over to the radio and snapped it off, saying that song was banned from then on. When I asked why, she said, “None of your business.”

For the most part, though, she and my father weren't consistent in enforcing their rules. It kept us kids off-kilter, a little paranoid, which was maybe their goal. Rosa herself loved to sing along to Rita Coolidge, proclaiming
your love is lifting me higher,
though the lyrics veered toward the obscene with
quench my desire.
And she couldn't resist the lilting tempo of the Pointer Sisters'
I want a man with a slow hand.
It was years before I understood what the song meant.

On our own, out of earshot, my sisters and I had learned all the words to Olivia Newton-John's “Physical” and Air Supply's “Making Love out of Nothing at All.” Anh and Crissy would play Chu Cuong's Eagles records and sing right along to “Hotel California.” We learned what to watch and listen to in private, under cover, whenever our parents weren't around. Such silence and secrecy became a natural part of our family, circling our household like an electric fence.

If their equal sense of strength and will had brought my father and Rosa together, it also became a source of complication. They were two people struggling against the wall of the conservative norm that defined Grand Rapids, and sometimes they turned on each other. My father might appreciate Rosa's posted list of household chores, divided up by person and day, but that same list could also send him into inexplicable fury. Rosa wanted to fit in 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 cream, hot fudge, and nuts. I especially loved the airy whiteness of whipped cream billowing out of a can, a sophisticated leap from the Cool Whip we had with pumpkin pie on holidays. Sitting at the Dairy Cone's picnic table under the fluorescence of 28th Street, I would carve out each mouthful of
ca lem
with a pink plastic spoon. I could never eat fast enough to avoid the puddles of melted cream at the bottom of the dish. But my uncles didn't mind or call me greedy. They didn't worry about things like that. They ate what they liked and however much suited them, and no one could tell them otherwise. In the basement they had set up leather recliners and a stereo system and they had all kinds of records and tapes, from Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones to Lionel Richie and ABBA. (I especially admired how regally the ABBA ladies stood in their slinky white clothes, spotlit, defying the dark crowding close on the
Super Trouper
album.) Chu Cuong and Chu Dai bought what they desired, dined when they chose, and came and left at any hour. Theirs was a freewheeling, independent life, or so it seemed, and I couldn't wait to be grown up so I could be like them, eating whatever I wanted and doing whatever I wanted, without permission.

THE VIETNAMESE COMMUNITY IN GRAND RAPIDS CAME
together around the Saigon Market on 28th Street. Sandwiched between an auto body shop and the Waterbed Gallery, the store's tiny space was crammed with dried fish, fruit, canisters of tea, and giant sacks of rice that doubled as beanbags. The air, redolent with something musty and musky—old sandalwood layered with mung bean noodles—seeped into our hair and clothes. To keep us occupied my father would buy my sister and me sweet-and -sour plums, Botan rice candy, and bags of dried squid, telling us to go look at waterbeds and cars. Anh and I wanted waterbeds very badly. We imagined floating rather than sleeping, rafts permanently moored. We never had enough nerve to go into the store and jump on the beds, make waves. So we stood in the parking lot, where broken glass made a trail to the overflowing dumpsters in the back, and shared the dried squid, untangling the long ochre-colored strands and curling them into our mouths. Later, at home, the squid's pungent odor on our hands would send Crissy running away, screaming, “NASTY!”

Inside the Saigon Market, my father and his friends hung out at the checkout counter, surrounded by displays of jade and gold jewelry and mini Buddhas. They could spend hours laughing and talking to the owner, Thanh, who laughed loudest of all. Thanh gave away free scroll calendars to every customer, and he had a big new house in a cul-de-sac subdivision in Kentwood. The more money he made, the more family members he was able to sponsor. They trickled in monthly and soon he bought the house across the street for his in-laws. Thanh wanted to be the don of the community. Balding, shaped like a white man, he wore Hawaiian print shirts and flip-flops year-round. His protruding belly was the physical symbol of his success. He was the first to throw Saturday night parties that went on forever, where the men played Vietnamese poker for increasingly high stakes, worked their way through bottles of Courvoisier and Hennessy VSOP, and told raucous, bawdy st ories about their boyhoods in Vietnam. The women were relegated to the kitchen to gossip and compare information like which brand of makeup to buy (Lancôme was the favorite). Noi always took over the cooking. Like the other grandmothers, she supervised the kitchen and served as principal to us kids. Three or more generations in one house-hold—that was the Vietnamese way. It meant built-in child care and cooking, and a consistent, tidy home. Noi was the person I saw when I woke up, when I came home from school, and before I went to bed.

The combination of Vietnam's ancient matrilineal roots, Confucianism, and Western influences made for a modern-day balance of control and deference in every household. As the oldest in our family, Noi was the nominal head. She sat at the head of the table, always got the first serving at dinner, and rode in the front seat of the car. At the same time, she was in charge of raising the children and taking care of the home. My father was supposed to be the breadwinner, the disciplinarian. He need ask no one for guidance, tell no one his plans; whatever he said or did had to be accommodated by the rest of the family. Rosa, the wife and mother, hovered somewhere in between. In other households I saw that the role could be nervous, anxious with watching, jumping in, smoothing things over. Or it could be contentious, filled with clashes with husband and mother-in-law—that age-old battle for domestic sovereignty. The mothers worked, too, all of them seamstresses or detail workers at factories. While the women had social lives mostly bound by family, the men had poker games nearly every Saturday night. Rosa, who had campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, could only take so much of this arrangement. She was the breadwinner, too, and she had every intention of running the household. She was astonished by my father's claim to freedom, and their fights about how he spent money or time escalated into middle-of-the-night shouts. I don't remember what they said, what words they flung, but none of it stopped the poker games or drinking parties.

My stepmother stood apart from the women in the kitchen. She didn't know how to speak Vietnamese or cook Vietnamese food. She didn't wear
ao dai
s or jade bracelets. Her expansive chest and curly hair made the thin, straight-haired women seem even thinner. They smiled at her, spoke a little English—
How are you?
—then went back to their own conversations. Rosa spent these parties washing dishes, cleaning up, trying to be useful. She often sat alone in the living room, holding Vinh while he slept.

Anh and I hung out with the other kids in the basement, playing Atari and ping-pong and watching TV. The commercials held our interest as much as any show, for they let us know what we should be eating, playing, and wearing. They let us know how we should be. After a commercial for Lite-Brite a girl with shiny pink barrettes might triumph, “
My
ma and ba me bought that.” Another kid would boast about going to McDonald's three times in one week.

Almost all these kids were way ahead of me and Anh. Their parents were anxious for them to fit into Grand Rapids and found the three quickest avenues: food, money, and names. Food meant American burgers and fries. Money meant Jordache jeans and Izod shirts. Names meant a whole new self. Overnight, Thanh's children, Truoc and Doan, became Tiffany and David, and other families followed. Huong to Heather, Quoc to Kevin, Lien to Lynette. Most of the kids chose their own names and I listened while they debated the merits of Jennifer versus Michelle, Stephanie versus Crystal. They created two lives for themselves: the American one and the Vietnamese one—
Oriental,
as we all said back then. Out in the world they were Tiffany and David; at home they were Truoc and Doan. The mothers cooked two meals—
pho
and sautés for the elders, Campbell's soup and Chef Boyardee for the kids.

Rosa would have none of it. She hadn't changed her own name when she married, after all, and had named my brother Vinh—not some white name, she scoffed. She told Anh and me that we needed to be proud of who we were. Still, my sister tried out Ann for a little while, until laziness prevailed and she went back to Anh. It was an easy name anyway, and caused her little stress. Not like my name: Bich. In Vietnamese it meant jade, which was all well and fine in Vietnam but meant nothing in Michigan. It was pronounced with an accent tilting up, the tone leading almost toward a question, with a silent h.
Bic!
I hated the sound—too harsh, too hard, and the
c
so slight that it evaporated in the air. I preferred to hear it as
Bit.
The sound seemed tidier, quieter. So that's what I made my name over to be, and it was fine until my classmates learned to read and swear. By second grade I was being regularly informed that I was a bitch. I started fantasizing then about being Beth, or maybe Vanessa or Polly. I longed to be Jenny Adams with the perfect simple name to match her perfect honeyed curls. But I knew I could never make it stick. Who would listen to me? Who would allow me to change? Not Rosa, nor anyone at school. I could not tell my stepmother, my father, my sister—I could tell no one—what I suffered each day during roll call. The shame layered upon embarrassment equaled silence. I felt I could judge the nature and compassion of teachers, especially substitutes, by the way they read my name. The good ones hesitated and gently spelled it, avoiding a phonetic pronunciation. The evil ones simply called out,
Bitch? Bitch Nuguy -in?