Happy Birthday or Whatever (14 page)

“What?”

“Nothing.” Chuckle.

“What'd you say about me?”

“Nothing.” Laughter. Korean, Korean, “Annie,” Korean.

“What? Tell me.”

“No, we not say anything.”

“Liar,” I said in Korean. Everyone laughed. “Don't listen to her; she's full of lies.”

“That's no way to talk to your mother,” my mother answered me in Korean.

“Yes, listen to your mother,” echoed the ajeoshi, “Everyone should listen to your mother, even if she's a liar.” The ladies giggled.

“Oh-she's-so-cute-and-how-funny-and-how-adorable-just-adorable-and-what-a-beautiful-coat.” She reached over to pet my coat.

“You like it? It's Stefanel. I picked it out,” My mother smiled proudly. On our first day in Seoul, my mother dragged me shopping to buy a proper coat, “the kind that real people wear.” It was long, grey, and had one button and a sash. It looked like a bathrobe. My mother explained that it wasn't a bathrobe; it was Italian. “Annie doesn't like it.”

“I didn't say I didn't like it,” I started to protest but decided to just leave it. We still had four and a half more hours to go.

“It's-beautiful-I-guess-this-is-what-the-young-kids-are-wearing-these-days-you-know-my-daughter-goes-shopping-allthe-time-I-think-she-lives-at-the-mall-and-she-has-tonsof-clothes-mountains-of-clothes-but-she-always-wears-the-same-thing-I-think-she-buys-the-same-thing-over-and-over.”

My mother laughed. “My daughter wears the same thing as homeless people, except she pays for them, and she wears her pants until there are holes in the crotch and the rear. How do you get holes there? It's a mystery.”

“MOM!”

Whenever I spend time with my mother and her friends, she always recounts every single thing I ever did wrong and discusses every embarrassing detail about me and then her friends describe all of their children's shortcomings and the whole conversation degrades into a contest to see who has the world's most lazy, disrespectful, loud, or defiant kid. Normally Korean mothers talk up their children, but when they don't have to impress anyone, they swing the other way.

“My-daughter-talks-on-the-phone-every-night-for-hours-and-hours-and-she-talks-to-friends-she-just-saw-all-day-what-couldshe-possibly-have-to-talk-about-nothing-has-happened-since-shesaw-them-last-the-phone-is-like-a-drug-she-can't-stop.”

“Well, you're a pharmacist, so you should be able to find a cure. But at least your daughter is
yamjonheh
, my Annie could be more yamjonheh.”

In Korean, the word
yamjonheh
describes someone who is obedient and modest—someone who is courteous and docile, and maybe a little bookish and shy. Girls who are yamjonheh cover their mouths when they laugh. Korean parents would like their kids to be yamjonheh. This doesn't always work out. When I laugh, my mouth becomes a gaping hole in my face and rice comes flying out.

“Kids are horrible.” The ajeoshi shook his head. “Too bad you can't give birth to adults.” He laughed and slapped the steering wheel.

“We were never this bad when we were young,” my mother declared. I rolled my eyes. I've heard her mother say the same thing.

As we sped along the highway, the concrete and glass of Seoul melted away into a rural landscape. Small homes popped up in the middle of large muddy fields and I could see fog-topped mountains in the distance. Seoul is like Los Angeles; it's easy to forget that there are mountains outside of the city. When my mother was in high school and college, she liked to camp, hike, and rock climb. It's hard for me to imagine my mother rough it in the wilderness, sleeping next to the insects, snakes, tigers, and whatever else lives in the Korean bush. I guess she's more rugged than she seems. I happen to hate camping; nature is best viewed from indoors in a safe, allergen-free, and climate-controlled environment with wireless Internet.

Jet lag plus an early start to a morning is a troublesome combination. Though I tried to keep up with the conversation in the car, I eventually drifted off into my own thoughts and then drifted off to sleep.

I woke up with my mother's finger poking my ribs.

“Wake up.”

“Huh?” Déjà vu. I looked at my watch. Only one hour had passed.

“Break time. Food.”

We were at a roadside food court that struck me as very American. There were plastic tables and chairs in the middle of a large cafeteria that was lined with different fast-food vendors, who urged customers to their counters. I settled on watery noodles and sat down. My mother got small greasy pancakes, sticky rice cakes,
a bag of kettle corn, roasted chestnuts, dried cuttlefish, and a baked yam. Normally she eats healthier, especially after she got cancer, and nearly everything that enters her belly is low in saturated fat and made from whole grains, but she was on vacation.

“You're eating that? You can't eat that. Your food has no theme. It's all over the place.”

“No I eat.” She offered me a pancake. I took it gingerly with my thumb and index finger and kept it a foot away from me, careful not to stain my new Italian bathrobe with grease. I took a bite. It was filled with sugary red bean. I could actually taste the crystals of refined sugar melt my molars.

“Oh man, this is too sweet. It tastes like a donut. I can't eat this.”

Every Saturday at Korean school, the students were served Winchell's donuts and Sunny Delight, a healthy start to a day filled with grammar, vocabulary, and boredom. The mere thought of deep-fried rings of fat or neon-orange citrus punch makes me gag.

She offered me a bite of her yam. “You know, when I was young, I eat this all the time. Mommy favorite. Everyday after school I walk home and I see ajeoshi who sell yam in little cart. I eat two, maybe three.” She took a gigantic bite of her yam.

“They have yams in America, too.”

“Mmmf mmmf mmmf.”

“What?”

My mother swallowed. “No, Korean yam is special. Better.” She looked at her tray eagerly, uncertain which to eat next. “Mommy so happy! I eat this all when I grow up in Seoul. I eat and eat and eat and never get fat. Not like now.” She patted the spare tire around her middle.

“Oh-you-got-chestnuts-I-got-chestnuts-too-do-you-eat-chest-nuts-in-America-I-hear-Americans-don't-like-red-bean-Annie-do-
you-like-red-bean?” The ajuma and ajeoshi sat down at our table with their trays.

“It's OK. Too sweet for me.” I looked down at my noodles. They seemed so boring compared to what everyone else was eating. The ajeoshi was eating a very adorable lunch set with a tiny bowl of steaming rice and tiny dishes filled with tiny pickled vegetables. There was a tiny napkin and a tiny cup of tea too. My mother, in the middle of her snack attack, took little bites of everything in front of her.

“Noodles?” I offered them to my mother. She shook her head, her mouth full of cuttlefish.

My mother stuffed the rest of her snacks into her purse and we scampered back into the car and hit the road again. Then, to my horror, the adults started the singing portion of the roadtrip: Korean traditional music with yodeling vocalists, Korean pop stars, Korean oldies, and then more traditional vocalists. My mother sang along in her exaggerated church choir vibrato. Whenever my mother sings, she sings with gusto, even if she doesn't know the words. Sometimes she makes up words or mumbles and then throws in a few extra
oh
's and
ah
's at the chorus. My mother doesn't have a bad voice, but she sings with the confidence of someone who has a great one. My mother sang along and bobbed her head to a rousing boy-band number.

“How do you know these songs?”

“Korean radio. MTV Korea.”

“You watch MTV? Dude, who are you?”

The adults continued chatting and singing and occasionally asked me questions. What did I study in school? What did I do for a living? Did I want to live in Korea?

“I couldn't find a job here,” I answered in Korean.

“You could teach English.” The ajeoshi fumbled with the CD player.

“Yes, you should teach English,” my mother agreed.

“A-lot-of-Americans-teach-English-here-I-think-they-make-good-money-you-can-live-here-and-teach-English-how-funwouldn't-that-be-fun?”

“I don't want to teach English.”

“Why-not? You-speak-English-you-speak-better-English-than-Koreans.”

“But I don't want to teach it.”

“You so silly, Anne, why you not want teach?” my mother asked in English.

“Then why don't you teach Korean in America? You speak Korean,” I answered in Korean.

“Oh, she got you there. Your daughter's very smart. She must take after you.” The ajeoshi smiled at my mother.

“She-can-teach-English-here-and-then-you-can-live-with-herfun-right?”

My mother and I both winced at the thought.

“Break time. Let's get some snacks.” The ajeoshi pulled the car off to another roadside food court.

“Again? We just had a snack,” I answered in Korean. “I'm full. I can't possibly eat anymore.”

“We'll-just-have-a-small-snack-maybe-some-ice-cream-do-you-want-some-ice-cream?”

“It's freezing!”

My mother and her friends got soft-serve and coffee. Everyone in Korea seems to love soft-serve, which is pretty much the margarine of the ice cream world. When we were young, we used to drive through McDonald's and my father would holler into the metal speakerbox and order three soft-serve cones and a milkshake for my brother. My mother lapped up her cone as she walked around another food court with me.

“What you want to eat, Anne? Mommy can buy you ice cream.”

“It'll make me sick. It'll make you sick, too.”

“But Mommy don't care. How about Polapo?”

I perked up. Polapo was my favorite as a kid in Korea. It was more or less frozen grape juice in a long paper cone that you squeeze into your mouth. “Do they still make it?” It stains viciously and my mother used to hate buying it for me.

We opened freezers and looked through the treats. She handed me something frozen. “I can't find Polapo, but you like this remember?” I looked at the label; it was a red bean popsicle.

“No,
you
liked this. You always got this and I always got Polapo.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and Mike got the chocolate ice cream that comes in a big cup with the wooden spoon on the side, and he'd use that to flick stuff at me. And Dad would get coffee ice cream.”

“Then what you get now?”

“It's too early for ice cream. It's like eight o'clock.”

“Why you no fun?”

We drove onto the highway again and an hour later we took yet another break, this time for gas and more cuttlefish and soda.

“We're stopping every hour. We're never going to get there! How much longer do we have to go?”

“On roadtrips in Korea, people stop every hour,” the ajeoshi informed me.

“Really? But then it takes a long time to get anywhere.”

“That's the point.”

“That's so Buddhist,” I whispered to my mother in English.

“Good because we go Buddhist temple.”

“It's-such-a-small-country-this-little-country-of-ours-maybewe-stop-every-hour-to-make-it-seem-bigger-but-you-know-not-asbig-as-America.”

In Korean school I learned that South Korea is approximately the size of Indiana. When I moved to the east coast, I drove through Indiana in a day, at ninety-five miles per hour, stopping only for Taco Bell.

An hour later, our car pulled into a small, bustling town on the coast.

“Are we here?” I looked out the window. People were milling around carrying large parcels and Styrofoam ice chests. Vendors were sitting on low chairs with their wares spread in front of them on a blanket. We were in the middle of a flea market. “This doesn't look like a mountain.”

“This is Sokcho.”

“How far to Soraksan?”

“Why you worry about how far? We in Sokcho now. You think about Sokcho.”

“It's-time-for-lunch-I'm-so-hungry! What-should-we-eat-let's-walk-over-to-the-fish-market-doesn't-that-sound-like-fun-to-walk-over-to-the-fish-market-and-eat-some-fish-you-know-Sokcho-is-famous-for-its-fish.”

“It's lunch time?” I looked at my watch, almost noon. “I can't possibly eat anymore.”

“You find room, Anne. You know what everyone say, ‘There always room for food.'”

“No, you mean, ‘There's always room for dessert.'”

“You want dessert?”

“No, no I don't want dessert. I don't want anything. I can't eat anymore. I never want to eat again.”

“You grump. Like crab.”

“No, I'm full. Like a refrigerator.”

We walked along the beach, watching the waves crash and shivering in the cold. We stopped at a street vendor to get some
tea, which tasted fishy. In fact, everything in Sokcho seemed fishy. Stores and street vendors sold every form of fish imaginable: fish fillets, fish stew, fish sticks, fish balls, fish cakes, and shredded dried fish snacks. The heavy scent of fried fish wafted out of every restaurant, which showcased their fish in large aquariums, and gulls picked at random fish guts strewn in the streets. We walked to a lively fish market where fishmongers plucked sea life out of their nets and into large plastic tubs of water on the floor. The varieties were endless: small, big, short, long, flat, chubby, scrawny, or stubby with fins, feelers, tentacles, shells, or spikes in brown, pink, spotted, striped, and iridescent colors. All were alive, writhing in their bright orange tubs, waiting for their doom. Customers peered into the tubs, pointing to the exact specimen they wanted and asking the best way to prepare it at home. The answer was always the same: fry it.

I watched as my mother examined different tubs and discussed its contents with her friends. Whatever they pointed to, an old woman in a fish-smeared rubber apron scooped it up and put it in a separate tub with no water. Fish and shrimp flopped around, gasping for water, and mussels and clams slid around the bottom of the tub. Squid entwined their tentacles together, hugging for dear life in the final minutes before their dry, parched death.