Happy Birthday or Whatever (13 page)

“Your house is so…nice. Everyone in Korea lives in apartment buildings, so this is special.” I smiled weakly and looked around the house, trying not to stare at the puckered linoleum and a piece of long yellow tape that hang from the ceiling to trap flies and mosquitoes.

“Anne, wouldn't it be nice to live in a house like this?” My mother reached over and put some more bean sprouts on my plate.

“Give her some fish.”

“Oh no, I'm very full. I can't eat anymore. Please.” I shook my head and put down my chopsticks.

“You're too skinny. I thought everyone in America was fat.”

My mother laughed lightly.

“I said, give her some fish.”

I looked at the fish in despair. It's side had been split open to reveal white and gray flesh and part of its spine. One of its gills had
been yanked open to get to the meat underneath. It looked greasy. My stomach churned.

“I've already had some, and I'm very full.” I rubbed my stomach and looked at my mother in a panic.

“Don't lie to me, you didn't eat any. I've been watching. Eat some fish.”

“Oh, but there's only a little left. We've been eating it. It's very good. The fish in Korea is so fresh.” My mother helped herself to more fish.

“Why isn't she eating the fish? Does she think my cooking is bad? Does she think her mother's is better? Is that why?”

“No, no…I'm so full…but I can eat more.” I reached over and tore off a piece of fish and popped it in my mouth.

My grandmother's fish was saltier than salt. I chewed carefully, trying not to involve my tongue, whose taste buds were wilting and dying. The texture was squishy and slimy and I felt as though I was eating a leech. As a vegetarian, I was accustomed to fibrous plant matter, foods that only took a few chomps and a swallow. But the fish was like gum; no matter how long I chewed, the salty morsel in my mouth seemed to stay the same size. I wasn't sure if and when I should swallow. My mother looked at me, trying not to look too surprised.

“Look how much Annie likes your fish.”

“It's so delicious.” Chomp, chomp, chomp. I reached over for more, but my mother beat me. She tore off a gigantic piece and moved it to her rice bowl.

“You're taking all the fish, Mom. Leave me some.” I picked at the carcass and found a small sliver of flesh.

“I can make more.” My grandmother looked satisfied, finally.

“Oh no, you don't have to do that. We have plenty here.” My mother shook her head.

“Please, no you've done enough, Grandmother. I can't possibly eat anymore. Now I'll be fat like an American.” I couldn't tell if she smiled or not. I wasn't even sure she could smile.

When my mother and I finally left my grandmother's house, we searched the block frantically for a store—we both needed to use the restroom. We found a convenience store and my mother bought me a grape Fanta to justify using the facilities. When I visited Seoul as a kid, grape Fanta was my favorite; it was a soda not widely available in America. But as I took a sip, I realized it was much too sweet for me. Still, I took big gulps to get rid of the fishy, sour taste of respect in my mouth.

“A
nne, wake up.”

I felt a poke in my side but refused to acknowledge it. There was no light coming through the window. Therefore, it was not an appropriate time to wake up.

“Anne, I say, wake up.”

I whimpered and turned onto my side, which was particularly painful because I was sleeping on the floor. I've heard that doctors recommend sleeping on the floor because it's good for the back,
but I have yet to hear about a doctor who actually does it. In the middle of the night, half my vertebrae had fallen out. My mother shook me vigorously.

“Go away!”

“Wake up! I pinch if you not wake up.” She tugged on my hair and stuck her finger in my ear, a tactic I used on her when I was little and wanted her to wake up and take me to Disneyland. I also used to pry her eyelids open, pinch her nose so she couldn't breathe, and begin dressing her while she was still in bed. I swatted her hand away.

“Please, woman, go away. What time is it?”

“You uncle wait for you! Wake up!”

“What time is it?”

“Don't worry about time. Time for wake up.” She threw the covers off of me and jerked away my pillow.

“MOM!”

“Shhh, you wake up you aunt.”

“Why does she get to sleep? What time is it?”

“Hurry up and get clothes.”

“Why?” Without my glasses, I squinted to see the clock. It was 4:15. In the morning. “What the hell? It's four!”

“No, it five!”

“No, it's not, it's four. Four-fifteen.”

“See? Almost five, time to wake up!”

“No it's closer to four and since when is five a time to wake up?” I grabbed the covers and put them over me again. I curled into a tight ball and wrapped my arms around my head, the position I learned to take during earthquake drills in elementary school. It was only my third day of a two-week trip to Korea with my mother and I was already plotting to push her into the Han River.

“Why you so grump?”

“Because it's
four o'clock in the morning.
”

“We have to go!” My mother threw off the covers again and then yanked up a corner of the blanket I was sleeping on. I rolled off.

“
Moooommmm!
” I grumbled and stood up. “Where are we going?

“We go Soraksan. We leave now.”

I groaned. Soraksan is a mountain and a national park. I remember going there when I was five and crying because my legs were tired. Even then I knew that hiking is the devil's work. “You didn't tell me we were going there.”

“I tell you we go.”

“No you didn't.”

“Yes I do. Remember yesterday I say, ‘Anne, tomorrow we wake up early go Soraksan.'”

I thought about it for a second. No, she most definitely didn't tell me. I think she has a lot of conversations with me in her head, in a fantasy world where she talks and I listen and nod my head silently. I would never agree to wake up early to do anything except for sleep. “You never told me that. Where is it?”

“You don't remember?” She threw a pair of pants at me. “Anne if you not get ready now Mommy get very annoy.”

“You're already annoy.” I started to put on my pants but stopped to rub my ass; my left cheek was asleep, just like the rest of me should've been. My mother had told me that eventually I'd get used to sleeping on the floor and develop a Korean's backside, with the ability to sleep on the hardest of floors, even on a slab of frozen granite. My ass ached; I guess it was still American. I yawned and felt a shirt hit my face. “Look, I'm getting ready. Where is Soraksan?”

“Near Sokcho.” She threw a pair of socks at me.

“These are dirty.” I threw them aside. “Where is Sokcho?”

“Why you not know Soraksan and Sokcho?” She threw another pair of socks.

“Because I'm not from here. Where is it? These are your socks.”

“North and east, near ocean. We go mountain and you see temple for Buddha. Wear my sock.”

“Why do I have to go see a temple? I don't want to wear your socks, that's gross.”

“You see tree too. Many, many tree. Why gross? They clean! We have to leave.”

“Because you might have fungus or something.”

“Anne!”

“OK, OK I'll put them on. Why do we have to leave now?”

“Because it far away. Five hour.”

“Are you kidding me? Just to see a temple and some trees? There are closer temples—they're all the same—and there are trees outside. I can see them from here.”

She pushed me into the bathroom and I stepped in a puddle. I groaned. My mother's fungus-socks became completely soaked. Korean bathrooms tend to get very wet. There's usually no curtain or glass door that separates the shower/bathtub from the toilet and sink—everything just sits together in a tiled room with a drain in the middle so one can make a watery mess or hose down the entire floor. I always find Korean bathrooms a little unnerving. I'm used to bathing in a smaller space and I worry that I'll get my towel wet. I peeled off the wet socks and hung them on the towel bar, which was also wet.

My mother knocked on the bathroom door. “Anne! Everyone wait!”

I wrenched the toothbrush out of my mouth and met my mother in the kitchen.

“What happen to you sock?”

“I can't wear them. They're wet.”

“Anne I tell you, no fungus.” She scowled and handed me a piece of heavily buttered toast.

“This is breakfast? What about Korean food?” For the most part, people in Korea eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My stomach and I find this very pleasing. “I'm in Korea; I want Korean food.”

“It Korean toast.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“We get Korean food later. No time, everyone wait.”

“Who's everyone?” I looked around the kitchen. “There's no one here.”

On cue, my uncle walked in with a gigantic smile; he is a morning person, just like my mother. “Good morning, Annie.” My mother's brother-in-law is a short, pear-shaped bald man with moles in awkward places and crooked, dingy teeth, but he has a boyish, cherub-like quality to his face. He makes a lot of silly jokes and always wards off relatives whenever they give me a hard time. I gave him the customary bow and morning greeting. I lightened up; going on a five-hour trip with my uncle could actually be fun.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked me in Korean.

“I'd like to sleep more,” I answered in Korean.

My uncle laughed. “Aren't you excited for the trip?”

“Sure. Are you?”

“No, no, I'm not going.”

“You're not? But you have to come!”

“Your aunt and I have to work, sorry, my little Annie. I'm dropping you off at your mother's friends' apartment. They're taking you to Soraksan.”

“Which friends?” I like some, not all, of my mother's friends. I looked at my mother suspiciously.

“Eat, Anne.” She pushed the toast toward me. “Hurry up and we go.” She dug around in her gigantic leather purse and pulled out a pair of socks.

“You carry socks with you? I have socks in my suitcase, I can get socks.” My mother ignored me and stooped down to jam the socks on my feet. “Are they clean at least?”

“Anne…”

“If you had woken up earlier you could've eaten Korean food with me,” my uncle nodded apologetically. My mother looked up at me, smug. I rolled my eyes and ate my toast. It wasn't buttered; it was margarined. My family, like the rest of Korea, loves margarine and always refers to it as butter, even though I've explained that it's not.

December in Korea is cold and windy and as we walked outside my aunt and uncle's apartment building, the late night/early-morning gale whipped through my jeans and froze my underwear to my sore ass. I shivered.

“Where you scarf?”

“I left it inside.”

My mother scoffed and tried to give me her scarf.

“I don't want your scarf.” I grit my teeth against the cold. “I'll be OK.”

“Don't be stupy.” She dug in her bag and brought out another scarf.

“What do you have in there?”

“You want hat? I have hat.”

“No, I'm fine.”

She wrapped her scarf around my head and laughed. Her scarf was warm and smelled like her perfume, Eternity by Calvin Klein.

“You look like Grandma.”

“Thanks.”

In Seoul, most people live in clusters of high-rise apartment buildings. The residents park their cars in tight rows between the buildings and leave their cars in neutral. An attendant pushes the
cars around so that people can drive out or park. When I was young I thought that being a parking attendant was tough work, but then I figured out that everyone drove Hyundais, which have bodies made of soda cans and engines fueled by hamsters that run around in wheels. With a burning cigarette dangling from his mouth, the attendant pushed away the cars around my uncle's champagne Hyundai. My mother took shotgun.

“We go with Gi-sook and her husband. You remember Gi-sook?”

“No.”

My mother paused to think. “Hmm, maybe you too young. Mommy friend. Old, old friend, from before you born. She and her husband is farmer.”

“Farmers? What do they grow? Rice?”

“No, no, pharm-ah-, you know they give out medicine.”

“Oh, you mean pharmacist.”

My uncle nodded and repeated after me, “Fah-ma-seet-uh.”

“Close enough.”

“When was the last time you went to Soraksan?” my uncle asked me in Korean.

I shrugged. My mother answered for me. “She must've been six or seven years old. So about fifteen years!”

“I don't remember much.”

“You go see Buddha over summer, remember?”

“All I remember is taking piano lessons.”

I spent most of the summers in Seoul taking piano lessons. My mother hoped that I would become a classical pianist like my cousin even though I displayed no real talent or interest. She thought that if there was anyone who could squeeze Beethoven out of my tiny stiff fingers, it was a Korean piano teacher—my American teacher certainly wasn't doing an adequate job. My Korean teacher swatted at my hands and gave me daunting sheet music with black dots
splattered all over the page. She even sent me to an herbalist to get a special tea designed to strengthen my hands and fingers. I remember the tea smelled exactly like garbage so it was very counterintuitive to swallow. Still, I drank it everyday and my fingers remained limp and lifeless. Ever since then I've been wary of Eastern medicine.

“Such waste, you piano.” My mother shook her head.

“I wasn't
that
bad. I just wasn't good.”

“Same thing, Anne.”

We arrived at a pharmacy, at the bottom of an apartment high-rise. A big green plus sign hung in the storefront. A black Hyundai waiting outside honked twice. My mother and I dashed out into the cold and scrambled into the backseat. A man and a woman, both around my mother's age, sat in front. My mother grabbed each of their shoulders and squealed happily. It was the first time I had ever heard my mother squeal. I've heard her grunt, scoff, growl, groan, moan, yelp, and even snarl, but I have never heard her squeal. I winced. It was much too early to squeal.

“It's been too long! How have you been?” My mother poked her head between the front seats so she could get a better look at her friends. “You're so old! What happened?” The last time my mother saw her friends was when she visited Korea a year ago.

The woman smacked my mother playfully on the arm. “Hello! Hello!Oh-you-must-be-so-cold-t's-so-cold-outside I'm-pretty-sure-it-doesn't-get-colder-than-this-the-numbers don't-go-low-enough-how-could-this-little-country of-ours-get-so-cold-you-know-every-year-I-forget how-cold-it-gets-and-then-winter-comes-and-I'm-always so-surprised-really-it's-so-silly….” She looked at me, smiled, and took a deep breath. “Wow-this-is-Annie? I-haven't-seen-
you-in-oh-I-don't-know-how-long-too-long-you-don't-remember-me-do-you? You-were-this-high-up-to-my-knee-or-maybe-even-smaller-though-you-look-pretty-small-now.”

I noticed that the ajuma liked to repeat things twice, which improved my comprehension, but her words whirled around my head like a swarm of locusts that devour everything in its path. I put on my seatbelt and bowed awkwardly and desperately tried not to stare at her face. Something was a little off, a little unsettling.

She had no eyebrows.

Her eyes, nose, and lips all seemed very far apart from each other, each floating in a vast landscape of pale, flawless skin. The only things that separated her eyes from her wide forehead were two thin, curved lines she had drawn with a brown pencil. She looked perpetually surprised. I smiled uncomfortably.

The woman's husband turned his head and looked at me. “Annie doesn't remember us, does she?” Koreans like to address children in the third person right to their faces.

I shook my head. “No, I don't,
Ajeoshi.
” Koreans address anyone older as auntie (ajuma) or uncle (ajeoshi), even if they aren't related. It's nice because you never have to remember names.

“When you were little all you did was cry. It was the cutest thing. You were made of tears and snot.” The Korean word for
snot
translates literally to “nose water,” which sounds a lot nicer than snot. “You cried all day and all night, forever and ever, for all eternity.” The ajeoshi looked at my mother. “Does she still like pickles? I remember that was all she ate. Salty, spicy, pickled food.”

“I still like pickled food, and I finally stopped crying last year,” I said in Korean. The adults laughed. My mother winked at me. She liked when I charmed her friends.

While the car slowly made its way through morning rush hour traffic, the adults in the car chatted noisily in Korean and I struggled
to keep up. Once I get tripped up on one word, I miss everything that comes after it and then I hopelessly try to piece bits and pieces of the conversation together again: Something about a pig or an actor, or maybe a pig-faced actor, who opened up a store or restaurant, maybe a bank or zoo, with bad service or maybe someone went on strike, and then something about oil or was that gasoline? They talked so fast that it was impossible to figure out when they moved on to a different topic. Occasionally I'd hear my name pop up: Korean, Korean, Korean, “Annie,” Korean, Korean.