Happy Birthday or Whatever (17 page)

“OK, so you want me to tell you when I've found a husband, but I shouldn't tell you who I'm dating? That's confusing.”

My mother rolled her eyes. “Why you ask so many question? I thought you say not confusing!
Ayoo
, I give up.” She looked at my father. He shrugged.

“Don't worry,” he told her in Korean, “she'll figure it out. She's smart. Someone will marry her.”

“You think?” my mother asked him in Korean. They laughed.

“I speak Korean, too, you know.”

“You don't speak Korean very good, Anne.” My mother smiled impishly.

“You mean ‘I don't speak Korean very
well.
'”

“
Ayoo,
Anne, you never find husband because you cause so many problem.”

“What did I do? I'm just sitting here. No problems here.”

“No problem?” my mother asked, “So that mean you find husband? Where is he?” She looked around the car.

“Why do I have to find the husband? Why doesn't the husband find me instead?”

“You need help? You know Dr. Kim's son, Daniel, he orthodontist—”

“MOM, STOP!”

The car was silent. Finally.

“I think Daniel engaged already,” my father whispered.

“DAD!”

“See, Anne? You run out of time!”

 

My parents want the impossible. They want me to get married immediately, but to the “perfect” man who apparently is waiting for me to find him. Where do I even begin? Whenever I want to find anything, I consult a map, so I typed in “Annie's husband” into Google Maps and surprisingly it came up with four pages of options, including a bed and breakfast in Springville, California; an outlet store in Lenox, Massachussets; and a nanny referral service in Mountain Village, Colorado. Sadly, none of these places deliver to New York, but it's comforting to know you can find anything on the Internet. The pressure my parents put on me to find a husband makes me a bad girlfriend, but it's not because I feel the need to get married in the next five minutes. In fact, I'm in no rush to get married. Unlike my parents, I can't hear my b-clock ticking away. In fact, my clock could be in its final dark and lonely hour and at this very second, my withering ovaries could be spitting out the last tired egg, but I wouldn't know it. That is not the kind of pressure I feel. Instead, I feel the same pressure I felt when I brought home my first B+. I know that when my parents ask me if I've found a husband, they are referring to a very specific kind, a Korean, Catholic, Harvard-educated doctor/lawyer/orthodontist husband. My last few boyfriends have not fulfilled any of these requirements. The one who came closest was Aaron, who only went to M.I.T., which is down the street from Harvard, but he was white and Jewish. Korean Catholic men from Harvard just don't interest me. The problem is, if I marry a man I like, my parents are in for a big let-down, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don't want to disappoint them. So it seems easier to never fully commit to anyone than to commit to someone and disappoint my parents. This makes me a bad girlfriend.

I dated Aaron for six years and even lived with him at one point, and I never told my parents about him. On the other hand, I
didn't exactly hide Aaron from my parents either. I've known him since I was twelve and we both attended the same junior high, high school, and college, and even moved to New York together. My parents knew him as one of my best friends. Aaron was the brightest kid in high school, but he also dyed his unruly blond hair and his King Tut goatee blue. When we both returned to Los Angeles for the holidays, I always invited him over to my parents' house for a Korean dinner, as I did other friends. He always arrived on time, with fruit (the appropriate Korean dinner gift) or my mother's favorite coffee beans (Swiss Chocolate Raspberry) in hand. He did everything right, with only a little coaching from me. Aaron and my parents, especially my mother, got along well. He was charming at the dinner table—making jokes, complimenting my mother's cooking, and shooing her out of the kitchen so he could do the dishes. Since he was always around, I figured my parents would guess that we were more than friends, and I hoped my mother would be smitten with Aaron and say, “Anne, why you not marry Aaron, he seem like such nice, Jewish boy.” But she never did. Of course, I could have said, “Mom, Aaron is a nice, Jewish boy, I like him. Why don't I marry him?” But I never did because I knew how that conversation would go:

“OH MY GOD. Such shame! Such shame!”

“But he's a nice guy. He's smart and funny and he smells good most of the time.”

“Why you do this to you Mommy?”

“I'm not doing anything to you!”

“Yes you do. You give me cancer. In my heart.” She clutches her chest and weeps, her eyeliner flowing down her face in black rivers. “How I survive this? My only daughter marry JEW!” She shakes her spatula at me and a little hot oil splatters on my clothes. She has been frying scallion pancakes.

“He's not orthodox or anything. He eats pork.”

“Then he bad Jew! You can't even marry good Jew! How he eat kim chee?”

“What are you talking about? He loves kim chee. He'd eat a lobster stuffed with kim chee and bacon if you let him.”

She looks around the room, her eyes spinning wildly in her head, and runs to a window. “I jump. If you marry him, I jump!”

“You're not gonna jump, stop being crazy.”

“Yes, I jump.” She slides the window open. An Arctic gale gusts through the room. It appears that hell has frozen over.

“No, you won't.”

“Yes. When I die you say, ‘Oh I such bad daughter. Waaah!' You come to Mommy funeral but you have to sit in back of church.” She looks at me with tears in her eyes, and looks out the window.

“Don't do it! You're being ridiculous.”

“How come you love Jewish Aaron more than you mommy?” Then, she jumps. I roll my eyes because our kitchen is on the ground floor.

Aaron never pressured me about marriage; he knew about the unspoken family rule. Any motions toward matching jewelry had to come from me. But even after six years of dating, I was still scared to let our relationship go any further. I fooled myself into thinking it was because I didn't love him, but I think knowing that I was going to disappoint my parents prevented me from being fully committed. When Aaron and I broke up, I was sad, but relieved. It was as if I had averted a conflict that was six years in the making.

 

Recently, my cousin Andy came to visit a friend in New York for a weekend, and we met up for brunch. I hadn't seen him since
2003, when he brought Chinese Julie to New Year's dinner. As always, he looked healthy and happy, though his facial hair was a little disturbing.

“What's that strapped to your face? A hamster?”

He stroked his chin. “What, you don't like it?”

“I don't like hamsters. They're like mice that you keep around on purpose.”

He laughed and we walked toward a café in the West Village. His eyes tracked all the trendy New York girls as they strutted down the street carrying shopping bags and towing little dogs wearing sweaters.

“You like what you see? You think they're better looking in New York?”

Andy grinned sheepishly. “Actually, I was looking at the way they walk.”

“Oh sure, I look at the way guys walk all the time.”

“No seriously, it's what I do.” Andy is a physical therapist and he was recently promoted at his clinic. “Half the time I don't even look at them, I'm just looking at how messed up their knees are, and then I think of exercises they could do to fix them.” I laughed, surprised by my cousin's geekiness, normally he is a smooth-talking, slick guy.

“It's the pointy shoes. Those things are deadly. If you opened a practice here you'd make a killing just from pointy shoes.”

“I'm working too much. This is the first vacation I've taken in four years. I never have any time.”

“What about Julie? Are you guys still together?”

“No, we broke up.”

“Sorry.” I could hear my parents wail,
See? So confuse!

“She went off to pharmacy school. Couldn't handle the distance.”

“I liked her, she was cool.” I shrugged. “You dating anyone now?”

He shook his head. “No, too busy. You? You got anyone to bring home to your parents?”

I paused. There were no parents or uncles or aunts around. It was just us. I could tell himabout every guy I've ever dated, but I decided to be cautious. His mother, like mine, talks a lot. Maybe too much. “Well, you know, I can only bring home the guy I'm going to marry, so that's not happening anytime soon.”

He laughed. “It's the same in my family too. Like I never told my parents who I was dating, and then I was talking to my mom one day and she was like, I feel that I don't really know you, like I know nothing about your personal life. So I was like, yeah, you're right, we should be closer and all that stuff. So I started bringing around my girlfriends.”

“And bringing them to family dinners.”

“Yeah, and then one day my mom was like, who are all these girls? Why do you keep bringing all these girls home?”

I started laughing. “Because she told you to!”

“No kidding. She was so confused. So then I was like, I thought you wanted to be close and know more about my personal life. And she said, actually no. Don't bring anymore girls around until you get engaged.”

I laughed; it all made sense to me, why my cousin introduced two girls to the family. But I did have one question. “Why didn't your mom stop you from bringing your girlfriends to meet the whole family? You know, my parents were pretty annoyed. I'm sure the other uncles and aunts were too.”

Andy stopped laughing. “Really?

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “She didn't say anything. I thought that was what my mom wanted.”

“It
was
what she wanted and then it wasn't, I guess.”

Andy shook his head. “I've got to stop listening to my parents.”

“No, just hide everything. It's healthier that way.”

We finished our brunch and walked back to my neighborhood. I pointed out where to get the best pizza in New York (John's on Bleecker Street) and the most overrated cupcakes in the city (Magnolia Bakery), where he could buy expensive “yoga-inspired jewelry” (Satya), and I pointed to a salon that specialized in Scandinavian hair designs, whatever that meant. When we reached my block, I pointed to a store called LeSportsac.

“Contrary to popular belief, they don't sell jockstraps. They sell handbags.”

He grinned. “Would you ever move back to L.A.?”

“Maybe. I don't know. Our family's annoying. But I feel closer to them by being far away. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of.” Andy laughed. “Hey, you know, I think this is the first time we've ever hung out without our families.

“No kidding?” I thought for a second. He was right. In twenty-eight years, I had never spent time with Andy alone, even though we grew up twenty minutes from each other. “You know, you're pretty cool. I'd actually hang out with you even if we weren't related.”

He smiled, took out his digital camera, and took a picture of us in front of the overpriced salty French bistro on my corner.

 

One of the advantages of being the youngest in my family, or at least in my generation, is that I can watch while my older cousins forge new ground and I can learn from their mistakes. Yoonmi and her fiancé taught me that no matter how perfect the guy seems and no matter how happy the guy makes me, he'll still be under a lot of scrutiny from my family, and chances are, if he's dating me,
he'll have a lot of faults. Andy and his girlfriends showed me that I shouldn't expect a warm welcome for someone whose name is Filipina Eunice or Chinese Julie or Jewish Aaron. In the end, I am a coward. I date guys who are good enough for me, but I question whether or not they'll be good enough for my family, and this holds my relationships back—not only my intimate relationships but also my family relationships. I could be like Andy and bring someone important home; someone whom I may or may not marry. But my fear of disapproval is hard to overcome. How can I be truly committed to my boyfriends if they can't meet the people who are important to me? And how can I be truly close to my family if I have to hide someone important from them? Maybe I just have to take a risk and believe that the guy I love will be someone my family will love too.

“S
o, will everyone be around for Christmas this year?”

I cradled the phone to my ear while I searched the Internet for flights to Los Angeles. As usual, my mother was in the car and the radio was blaring in the background. This time a Korean vocalist was singing a traditional folk song; her voice wailed and cracked and made my toes curl. Korean folk singers always sound drunk and clinically depressed.

“Yes, Anne, we be here.”

“You're not going to Las Vegas? You're not going on some golf trip or something?”

Last Christmas, I told my mother I couldn't come home for the holidays because of work. She got so upset that I convinced my boss to let me take a working holiday. This thrilled my mother and she chattered gleefully about cooking an elaborate Christmas dinner for the family—turkey and the trimmings plus a Korean feast. I arrived on Christmas morning and discovered that my mother had gone to Las Vegas with her sister and mother. My brother decided to spend Christmas with his friend in San Diego, and my father was tied up with a big project at his lab. I was infuriated and vowed never to come home again, not until my family had been replaced by a real one.

“Anne, I tell you, we stay here.”

“And for New Year's Day? That's still going on? Everyone will be there for that?”

“Yes, we go you uncle house.”

New Year's Day is an important holiday for Koreans. Our entire extended family gathers together for a party, during which we point out one anothers' weaknesses. I'm too short, my brother is too fat, my aunt is too loud, my older cousin Yoon-chong is too old to be single, etc.

“OK and you
sure
everyone's not gonna take off somewhere without telling me? You're absolutely, positively sure? Like one hundred percent sure?”

“ANNE. YES.”

“So, let me make this clear, EVERYONE will be there?”

“YES, EVERYONE. OK now you stop bother Mommy. You make me such headache and you not even here yet!”

Right after I clicked “Confirm Your Order” on the United Airlines webpage, I felt anxious. Seven days with my family by my
own accord. I must be high on crack. How would I survive? How would we survive each other? Is pepper spraying a loved one legal in California? I scratched my neck until it was bright pink. Family has always made me a little rashy, a physical manifestation of emotional irritation.

The flight from New York to Los Angeles was heinous. I sat next to a chatty obese woman who had to be shoehorned into her seat. Her excess invaded my space and I had to wedge my hand between her folds to find the end of my seatbelt. Her necklace had enormous silver disks that I swear were the size of dinner plates. She kept on asking me questions while I was watching the in-flight movie or reading my book or sleeping. She was getting on my last nerve, which I had been saving for my family. I missed my connecting flight in Denver and was stranded for several hours. When I finally arrived at my parents' house, completely exhausted, I found out Mike wasn't coming home for the holidays. I felt cheated. Apparently, when my mother said “everyone,” she meant “everyone except my brother.”

“Mom, you told me everyone would be here. Why didn't he come? I came. He should come. He has to suffer with the rest of us.”

My mother was getting ready for her church's Christmas party. Just as I did when I was little, I leaned against the bathroom wall and watched her meticulously apply makeup in the mirror. When I was young, I knew exactly which item she needed next and handed it to her—loose powder, a palette of eye shadow, lip liner. She took the mascara brush away from her lashes so she could roll her eyes at me.

“Anne, what you mean ‘suffer'?”

“I mean I'm here, so Mike should be here.”

“He just move. So I tell him not come.”

“What? Why would you do that? Remember last year? I told you I couldn't come and you got all upset. You were like, ‘Ohhh my only daughter not love me waaah.'”

I threw my head back melodramatically and slapped the back of my hand to my forehead, like a dying Shakespearean heroine or a Southern belle with a case of the vapors. Then, remembering the misery of last year's lonesome Christmas, I scrunched up my face and looked cross. My mother laughed.

“Oh, Anne you such comedy! Don't make ugly face, you get wrinkle!”

I grimaced even more, making deep crevasses in my forehead. My mother grinned and handed me a small jar.

“What's this?”

“Wrinkle cream. Put on you face. Why you face so dry?”

“What are you talking about? My face is fine.”

I looked in the mirror and saw patches of white flaky skin on my cheeks. I was molting. I sighed and opened the jar and dipped in my index finger. It looked like whipped cream cheese but smelled like flowers.

“You're not gonna make Mike come out here?”

I rubbed the cream cheese vigorously into my face. My mother watched me and cringed.

“No Anne, make small circle, small circle. Be gent.
Ayoo,
you have so many wrinkle.”

“No I don't.”

“Yes you do.”

“No I don't.”

“Yes you do. You look like Grandma.”

“No, I don't. I look like Annie. What are we, five years old? We're not talking about wrinkles here, we're talking about Mike.”

“Anne, he leave L.A. two week ago and move Chicago. So silly for him come back right away. But I so happy you come back and see you mommy! Who cut you hair? Why so short? Are you boy or girl?”

I groaned and fled the bathroom before my mother could corner me with her curling iron and a gigantic can of hair spray.

I had wanted my family to be together for the holidays, even though they make me grind my teeth into little nubs. In the end, however, we are family and we should spend time together, even if it kills us. But now my brother wasn't coming and I felt the dread of New Year's Day dinner at my uncle's house. I started to regret coming back. Why did I want this?

My brother and I aren't the best of friends, but we are allies. Mike makes New Year's Day dinner with the relatives more palatable. We sneak quiet jokes and exchange knowing glances across the table when relatives start bickering. When we can't understand the conversations in Korean around us, we commiserate over our soul-sucking bosses or discuss how Eddie Murphy's career ended up in the toilet. I didn't want to do New Year's with the family alone.

“Mike, are you
sure
you don't want to come out? It'd be totally awesome!”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“But there'll be wontons. Hot, delicious, savory wontons filled with…stuff I don't eat, something mammal. Think about wontons—you love them. Do it for the wontons.”

My brother loves food and he is shaped like a hippopotamus. I've learned to never stand between Mike and the kitchen. If my brother wouldn't come to L.A. for the company, maybe he'd come for the food.

“Sorry, Anne, but fuck that.”

“Fuck wontons?”

“No, fuck going out there. I just moved here, dude. It'll be a pain in the ass to go back.”

“But there'll be tasty, fried wontons…mmm wontons…extra fried…extra tasty….” I made chomping and slurping noises over the phone.

“Anne, Jesus, what the hell? Stop being such a little shit.”

“Don't make me go there by myself. It'll be horrible.”

“Dude, there's no way I'm finding a plane ticket now. Besides, it won't be that bad. Mom and Dad will be there.” His throaty laugh was tainted with the kind of evil practiced only by big brothers and tobacco companies.

“Oh, so cold, Mike. So cold.”

“Whatever, just keep your shit together and smile. Easy. And hey, merry Christmas and happy New Year, you little bitch. Drop me some e-mail.”

“Same to you, jerkface.”

I hung up the phone. On New Year's Day I would be on my own. All I had to do was keep my shit together. And smile.

 

On the first day of the year, I woke up at three o'clock in the afternoon with a mild hangover and a serious need for coffee. I stumbled into the kitchen, my eyes swollen and crusty and my head in a brutal pre-caffeine haze. I peered at the half-pound bags of coffee beans in disgust. My mother doesn't believe in coffee-flavored coffee. While I deliberated in agony between Supreme Holiday Pumpkin Cinnamon Cardamom Blend or Swiss Chocolate Raspberry Hazelnut Awakening, my father walked into the kitchen. He had on a red collared shirt and a yellow sweater, a gift I gave him last Christmas. He had on no pants. He did, however, have on underwear.

“Jesus Christ, DAD, put on some pants!”

“I can't find any pants. I think they all dirty.”

“How could they all be dirty?”

“No pants, I have no pants.”

“Did you look in the laundry room? Can you at least wear a robe? Seriously, you're killing me here.”

I wrenched my eyes away from his scrawny, pale legs. As he's gotten older, my father has lost weight in his legs, but gained in his belly. When he turns to the side, he looks like the letter P
.
He returned to the kitchen triumphantly, holding up a pair of blue and green plaid pants. They looked familiar.

“Uh, I think those are Mom's pants.”

“Really?”

He looked at the tag and went back to the laundry room, muttering to himself. My mother walked into the kitchen, fully dressed with hair and make-up in place.

“Anne, why you in pajama still?”

“I just woke up.”

“Oh my gosh, it three o'clock! I already went church and come back. How you can sleep all day? Oh look you hair!”

I looked at my reflection in the oven. My dark hair was sticking straight out in a million directions. My head looked like a sea urchin.

“I just woke up, give me a break. Tell me, do we have any normal coffee?”

My father joined us in the kitchen, defeated. No pants.

“
Ayoo,”
my mom groaned in Korean, “Have you no shame? Your daughter is standing here. Where are your pants?”

“He can't find any,” I answered in English, “Do you have any normal coffee? I don't want pumpkin pie coffee; it's disgusting.”

“Anne, you can drink my coffee,” my father said, skittering
across the kitchen. As he reached up to open a cabinet, the bottom of his shirt raised to reveal a hole in the seat of his briefs.

“Oh. My. GOD! MY EYES! MY EYES! They burn!”

“
Ayoo,
shame! Shame!” My mother shut her eyes in horror and stamped her feet.

“What? What?” My father looked at us incredulously. “Everyone so LOUD! Stop scream!”

“Anne,” my mother cried, “now you know what I see everyday. How I live like this?”

“I don't know, but I'm glad I don't live like this. You people are nuts. Dad, you really should wear pants when you come into the kitchen. It's not sanitary.”

My father scowled and handed me a jar of Sanka.

“Anne, you be nice. My coffee taste better than Mommy's.”

“Oh no way. This is instant coffee. I don't do instant. No one should ever be in that much of a hurry.”

“You complain too much,” he told me.

“You're not wearing any pants,” I said flatly.

“Everyone so crazy, how I live?” my mother wailed. She looked up at the ceiling, toward God, “How I live?”

“I bet God drinks regular coffee,” I grumbled.

“Anne!” my mother cried.

“Where's my pants?” my father demanded.

“Where's the normal coffee?” I demanded. I felt a sharp pinching in my temples and a throbbing between my eyes. I started scratching my arms. I dug my nails deep into my forearms.

“OK, everyone, pay attention,” my mother snapped in Korean. She put on her drill sergeant face, the look that once instilled fear in my brother and me throughout our childhood. “We are leaving at five o'clock. Everyone get ready to go. Anne, you can wait until your uncle's house for coffee—STOP SCRATCHING. They'll
have a bathtub full of coffee just for you. And you,” my mother looked warily at my father, “I don't know how you've lost all your pants. How do you lose pants?”

My mother marched out of the kitchen in search of pants. There was a moment of silence as my father and I listened to her slippers shuffle down the hallway.

“And Dad?”

“Yes?”

“You can't wear that sweater with that shirt. They don't match.”

“What you mean? Red and yellow match.”

“No it doesn't. You look like you work for McDonald's.”

My father laughed and looked down at his sweater. “You bought this for me last Christmas. I like it. Yellow is color for emperor.”

“I know, but you aren't an emperor.”

“What you mean? I'm emperor of the house!”

“Well then I guess the emperor works at McDonald's. And yes, I would like fries with that.”

“Anne?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“You give me headache.”

He snickered as he walked out of the kitchen, half naked. Or half dressed, from an optimist's perspective. My bloodshot eyes throbbed. My mother keeps a bottle of Tylenol on the kitchen table, next to the salt and pepper shakers, for easy access. I opened the bottle, only to find it empty. Now I was suffering from severe headache and irony.

I doused my hair with water and three different gels to tame the sea urchin. I threw on some clothes and waited in the kitchen for my parents. I watched the re-run of the Rose Parade. In high
school, I used to decorate floats with my friend Janna. I'd come home covered in glue, petals, and seeds, and leave a sticky, fragrant trail straight to my bedroom. This infuriated my mother, though she liked the flowers I'd bring home for her.

“Anne, why you not ready?”

“What are you talking about? I'm ready. I'm waiting for you guys.”