Stealing Buddha's Dinner

Chrissy is always in charge: she has reign over the bedroom, bathroom, and television. Anh and Bich look up to her. One day, they join her and her friends in trampling the gardens of their neighbors. Chrissy snaps off some rhubarb in one of the gardens, pulls out a bag of sugar, and they sit around to eat it. Bich doesn’t like the bitterness or the texture. Later, Chrissy shows them how to ball up bread in their hands and eat it with honey, but Bich doesn’t like that either and refuses.

That summer, Rosa is finishing her master's degree in education at Grand Valley State and takes the children with her to campus. They're each given $2 to spend at the University Bookstore, and Bich selects a blue covered notepad, a red pen, and M&Ms. Chrissy picks up a copy of Playgirl, and Bich sees her first naked man. An employee sees them, and the shared moment between the sisters is lost.

That fall, Chris's father reappears, a white man whom Rosa had dated “just long enough to get pregnant” (137). Like Bich’s mother, they had never really spoken of his existence. Chrissy goes to meet her grandparents and stays there overnight. When she returns, she barely talks about what happened but does indulge that she ate stuffed green peppers. Chrissy also tells the girls that her father said Bich was homely, which bothers Bich, who sees herself as a “sad spectacled spectacle, a sorry excuse for a stepsister” (139). It also bothers Bich that she isn’t at the same level of girlhood as Anh and Chrissy, and so is shut out of their activities, like painting nails and braiding hair.

Two years later, Chrissy is fourteen. Two boys, Bobby and Kenny, start hanging around in their front yard, vying for her attention. They buy the younger girls Gobstoppers and Skittles. Chrissy starts dating Kenny. When her parents find out, they forbid it, but she rebels against them. Chrissy takes money from Rosa’s purse often and can find any of Bich's hiding spots where she stores cash from holidays and birthdays. Anh tells Bich that Chrissy is shoplifting from the mall.

Bich joins the Girl Scouts, and one day her troop go to walk around some nature trails that wind behind the school. There are a group of teenagers gathered in the parking lot, and Bich’s troop leader remarks that they don’t need to be scared, that God will protect them (she singles out Bich as not believing in God.) Bich notices that one of the girls smoking and laughing in the parking lot is Chrissy. At a ceremony where they receive Brownie badges, one of the other girls, who is a little older, brings shepherd’s pie. When Bich asks about it, the girl tells her that Chrissy loves it. Bich realizes that there is much she doesn’t know about her stepsister, and, further, that it must be lonely to be the first to approach adulthood.