Stealing Buddha's Dinner

In the spring of 1997, Bich receives a travel grant from her graduate school program, and she, Noi, and Chu Anh go to Vietnam. They arrive in May, and it is humid and balmy. They are suddenly overwhelmed by relatives, and Bich struggles to keep up with their Vietnamese. The first afternoon, a cat dies while she is looking at it, which shakes her. The next days they stay in their relative Co Nga’s two-story home and spend their time visiting Buddhist temples and old friends and relatives. In the morning, Co Nga serves them pho and plates of mangosteen, lychee, longan fruit, and sliced watermelon. In the evening, she serves them head-on shrimp and stewed fish, and sautéed slices of beef. In case Bich only likes American food, Co Nga also makes a plate of french fries each night.

One day, they visit the house they lived in before they left Vietnam, and the memory of their old life affects Chu Anh: “‘I can’t believe we lived like this,’ he said” (243). The following day, Bich goes to meet her maternal grandmother, who lives with her daughter across the river in Saigon. They cannot communicate well, as Bich’s grandmother and aunt do not speak English, and Bich’s Vietnamese is limited.

Bich recalls that she had felt prepared for the trip, but now realizes that she could never have been ready. Bich looks back on her childhood and sees contrasting images. She reminisces about the seasons in Grand Rapids, ice cream, Noi pulling toadstools, and MTV. Her memory lands on Noi making cha gio: pounding the shrimp, grating the carrots, shaping the dumplings.

Bich’s father and Rosa remarry fifteen years after their first wedding, in the same courthouse. Every year, they renovate a new part of their house, and Bich recalls fondly a time when her father installed cedar roofing in the pool house, serenely balanced on scaffolding. The last foster brothers the family have are two boys from Cambodia, who love the pool. After a few months with the family, one boy runs away, then the other.

When they gather for the holidays now, they eat cha gio, shrimp a la plancha, and goi cuon. Noi now lives with Chu Cuong, his wife, and their ten-year-old son, helping them raise him as she did Bich and her siblings. Bich thinks about the drive into town tomorrow, watching white people in the Vietnamese markets eating bean curd and banh bao. She thinks about her family and her life, “the magic of a piece of fruit,” (251) and the decision her father made to leave their mother and Vietnam behind. She is “grateful for his unimaginable choice” (251).

In Hanoi, on a hill in a cemetery, Bich watches her grandmother stand with her sisters at the spot where their parents’ ashes are buried. They laugh and shout about how old Noi has gotten all the way back to the house, where a feast is waiting: vegetable crepes, fish heads and herbs, beef stewed with eggs, chicken tossed with cellophane noodles, and, always, a plate of french fries.

Bich thinks about riding a train to the coast of Nha Trang, thinking that she could look at the moonlight on the rice paddies forever. In Hanoi, she stands near Hoan Kiem Lake and presses a blossom from a phuong vy tree into her journal. An old woman approaches and offers a few petals she had collected. Bich thanks her in Vietnamese and watches her walk away, recalling a legend of the lake that tells of a turtle who reclaimed a magic sword from an emperor and that whoever sees him will find good luck. She thinks of the people who come every morning to wait for a glimpse.