Happy Birthday or Whatever (7 page)

Since our family didn't live near a lake and I hadn't gotten my period, my fantasy of connecting with my mother over plastic applicators dissipated. I sighed and walked into the kitchen. She
was rinsing rice, and I watched her pour out the white, cloudy water into the sink.

“Mom, I'm not a woman yet.”

“What?”

“I haven't gotten my period yet.”

“Anne, you worry too much. Why you want period?”

“Everyone else has it. I should have it, too.”

“I tell you, when you get period, you not want it.”

“But I want it. And I don't have it. There must be something wrong with me. Like I'm missing a tube or I have no eggs or something. Maybe I should see a doctor.”

“You know Mommy got period late so you get late too. Anne, you normal, only crazy. Maybe you can see acupuncture.”

“No, no needles, I can't do it. OK, fine, can I at least buy a bra?”

“Why you want bra? You have no breast!”

I must've looked wounded because an hour later we arrived at the Promenade Mall. We walked into Robinson's “intimates” department, where I spied an eleven-year-old woman picking bras off the B-cup rack. She held up a white lacy one and showed her mother, who seemed to approve. I wished the entire store were empty so I could be alone in my embarrassment; there were hundreds of bras in every shape and color and I was sure none of them would fit me.

“Excuse me! Excuse me! Hello!”

I whipped my head around and saw my mother shuffling up to a store clerk.

“Yes, how may I help you?”

“Where I can find bra—very small? For my daughter…Anne, where you are? Anne!”

I ducked down behind a rack of nightgowns and robes and hoped the entire world would go boom. Nuclear fallout was a more merciful way to die than embarrassment.

“Jockey makes a nice set of training bras. All cotton and very plain.”

“Oh good, good, my daughter like plain. But has to be small.”

I buried my face in a robe and wondered if I could hang myself with the sash.

“Yes, we have them and they're on sale. You can look over there.”

I poked my head out from the rack and saw the clerk point. I followed the direction of her finger and saw gigantic red sign that said “PRICE BLOWOUT! AAA-AA CUPS ON SALE! EXTRA 10% TAKEN OFF AT REGISTER.” All it needed was sirens and a flashing neon arrow. I gasped and my mother spotted me and dragged me to the rack. I looked around nervously, hoping I wouldn't see anyone from school. She held up a pink cotton bra.

“How about this?”

“OK-sure-looks-good-I'll-try-it-on-bye!” I grabbed the bra and sprinted to the dressing room.

My mother passed me a hundred bras underneath the dressing room door and I refused to show her how they fit. Because they didn't. I cursed my ovaries and then pleaded with them:
I hate you, you're ruining my life, no wait, I don't mean that, please wake up, please don't do this to me.

“Anne, you take too long. How about this?” She passed over another bra.

“No it doesn't fit. Give me the size down.”

“OK Mommy go look.“

In the dressing room mirror, I stared at the baggy, white bra. The elastic around my chest was loose and the straps kept sliding off my shoulders. There was no underwire and lace, unlike the bras my mother or girls at school wore.

“Anne, it smallest. Maybe I ask lady if they have more in back.”

I winced. I pictured my mother talking to the clerk. They'd talk about how inadequate my boobs were and laugh. Then the lady would go into the backroom, which was filled to the ceiling with a million bras, and discover that they didn't carry bras that small, but that maybe I should check out Toys “R” Us because she heard Playskool made My First Bra.

“No, no, no, Mom, it's OK. This one fits.”

I grabbed one, hoping that one day I could fill it out, and threw it at my mother. I escaped to the cosmetics counter and sniffed perfumes while my mother paid at the counter.

My first bra was made of white cotton and because the straps were too long, I had to tie knots in them so they wouldn't slip off my narrow shoulders. The clasp was in front and it rubbed against the skin on my sternum, making me bleed. As uncomfortable as my bra was, it was still a bra. It made me feel like half of a woman, which was better than being just a girl. My bra's cups, which were really more like tablespoons, remained unfilled for the next three years.

Puberty finally hit me at Karen Crocker's house. We had just started our last semester of high school and we were studying together. I went to the bathroom and discovered dark spots on my underwear. At first I was suspicious, as if somehow I was wearing someone else's underwear. Then, after I realized that the underwear and the blood were both actually mine, I felt surprised. I'd imagined that I'd know when I was about to get my period—that for four to five days before I'd retain water, have painful cramps, get easily fatigued and irritable, and feel tenderness in the breasts (which I didn't have)—that was what the Midol commercials had promised me. But I felt pretty good that day, not even a backache. Then, my surprise turned quickly into annoyance. I had ruined a perfectly good pair of underpants and even though I had been
waiting for my period for the last four or five years, I was completely unprepared. Still sitting on the toilet, I reached over to open the medicine cabinet and the drawers under the sink. Nothing. I groaned. I yelled for Karen through the bathroom door.

“What's up? Is there no toilet paper? Did you check under the sink?”

“No, I need something else.”

“What?”

“You know, something
else
.” I heard her laugh through the bathroom door.

“Come on, Karen.”

“OK, it's not a big deal, which kind do you need?”

“A pad.”

A minute later I heard a knock on the door.

“OK I got one. Open the door.”

“I can't open the door. I'm on the toilet.” I heard a stifled laugh. Then I saw a small pink package being shoved underneath the door.

I had expected to feel overwhelming relief after getting my first period, but I didn't. If anything I felt a little embarrassed, but for the most part, I felt exactly the same as before. Except now I was wearing something that felt like a diaper. So much for being a woman.

I drove home later that evening and walked into my mother's bedroom. She was watching the Korean news.

“Hi, how you are? You hungry?” She said this to the TV, where a very stern man was delivering some very stern news.

“I got my period. Cool, right?”

Her eyes remained locked on the TV.

“Mom, pay attention, I got my period.”

Nothing.

“MOM!”

“OK, OK I just kidding Anne! It joke! Of course it cool. You worry so much, but Mommy knew you get soon. But now you think ‘Why I want period? I get cramp and fat and I feel terrible.'” She puffed out her cheeks and rubbed her belly. I laughed; it was the same motions she used to make fun of my overweight brother.

“But it's a good thing.”

“Good, yes, tomorrow Mommy go to Costco and buy pad. Maybe I get chocolate, too.” She smiled, turned back to the TV, and waved me away. I guess this was the closest to flowing white dresses and ducks we would get, which was fine with me.

The next day I told my coach I couldn't run because I had “cramps,” which was not only a code word for bleeding, but also a lie many girls used to get out of practice. He looked wary.

“Really? You've never skipped practice because of cramps.”

“But they've never been this bad before.”

I went back to the locker room and packed up my gym bag. A teammate asked why I was leaving. I explained that I was riding the crimson wave and my Aunt Flo had come to town, and wasn't that just a bloody shame?

“A
nne? Come here, help Mommy!”

“I'm in the bathroom!”

“NO, come now!”

“I said, I'm in the bathroom. Let me just finish.”

“What you do in bathroom?”

“I'm throwing a big party. What do you think I'm doing?”

“You
hurry
! Come quick!”

I threw aside my book and grumbled. My mother has an uncanny ability to interrupt my father, brother, and me during our
most private moments. I can imagine her waiting until we get settled on the toilet before bellowing orders through the bathroom door: Take out the trash. Wash the car. Put the dishes away. And no matter how mundane the task, it always sounds like an emergency, as if the fate of modern civilization rests on my separating the darks from the whites. I must admit, it's a very clever strategy—we're literally caught with our pants down and willing to say yes to anything just to stop her hollering through the bathroom door.

“
Ayoo,
what take so long?”

“Can you just hold on for a minute?”

“Why you not help Mommy? Why you not love you mommy? How I raise such daughter?”

I flushed the toilet, quickly washed my hands, and scurried into the kitchen.

“You spend so much time in bathroom! Maybe I move you bed there!” She laughed and I rolled my eyes. My mother pointed to the wet spots on my jeans where I had dried my hands. She sighed. “Why you not use towel?”

“Because you told me to hurry! What do you want? What's up?” I tapped my foot impatiently.

My mother pointed to a box neatly wrapped in brown butcher paper. It was large and flat—the kind of box used to ship framed paintings. We only had one painting hanging in the house and I think it was there when we moved in. It was probably a mirror. My mother liked mirrors, and we certainly didn't need another one.

“Help me open.”

“You got me out of the bathroom to help you open this? You couldn't wait for another five minutes?”

“Just help you mommy. It surprise.”

“Surprise for me?”

I raised one eyebrow suspiciously. She had given me a surprise a few weeks earlier—a set of SAT preparation books and a weighty pack of vocabulary flash cards. I had explained rather irately that a car was a more suitable surprise for a fifteen-year-old.

“No, this surprise for everyone.”

Together we ripped the brown paper off and opened the box. Inside there was an unruly mound of bubble wrap, and I immediately pulled some out and marched on top of it. The snap of fire-crackers echoed off the kitchen walls.

“ANNE!”

“Oh come on, it's fun, try it.” I threw some at her feet, which she kicked aside.

“Why you always bother Mommy?”

I spied a corner of a wooden picture frame inside the box. “What is it?”

“A picture.”

“Well, duh, but of what?”

“Someone special.”

“Of me?”

My mother scoffed and we lifted the frame out of the box. The picture was rolled up in white bandages like a mummy. I started unwinding it carefully. Maybe it was a picture of our family, though we never took a group portrait. Maybe it was a painting by a family friend. Finally I just ripped the bandages off.

I gasped. I stared. And the face of Pope John Paul II stared back at me.

“OH. MY. GOD.”

The Pope wore gleaming white floor-length robes with a short cape tied around his shoulders. A gold chain with a cross shone on his chest, and covering the top of his balding head was
a small white disk of cloth. Facing the camera, he stretched out his arms with palms turned up, as if he were waiting for a hug. The Pope seemed ghostly, a pale figure standing in front of a dark and empty background. His sunken eyes gazed steadily ahead and he looked eerily peaceful and solemn, as if he were waiting for good news that he already knew about. But the most noticeable characteristic about the Pope was the size. The picture was three feet wide and over three feet tall—a massive, monolithic, full-body shot of the pontiff that floated in a sea of bubble wrap on our kitchen floor.

“Oh no, what have you done? Where did you get this?”

“From church.”

“You have to give it back. I can't believe this. It's so big. I mean, look how big this is.” I stood next to it so my mother could see that the top of the picture came up to my waist.

“Anne, I tell you, it not big, you short.”

“No way. It's like a hundred feet tall.”

“It POPE. Be nice.”

“But why does it have to be so
big
?”

“Shh, Anne, shhhh.”

“What, you think he hears me?”

The glossy Pope was framed with a matte border that, upon closer inspection, was not matte at all, but white silk with a faint floral pattern. The frame itself was dark, polished wood, about five inches thick, and a plate of heavy glass protected the photograph. It was a nice frame, of solid construction. Immediately I thought of other pictures that could replace John Paul II, maybe Kurt Cobain or even a pleasant landscape. I examined the back and sadly discovered that the photograph was sealed inside the frame, a transparent vault that captured one man in one pose for the rest of my life. My mother pulled out a tape measure and noted the dimen
sions. She looked up from the photograph and scanned the empty walls in the kitchen.

“NOT EVEN. You CANNOT put this thing up. It's horrible. And it's heavy. It's gonna tear the wall down.”

“No, no, we can put up.”

“But it's gonna scare everyone.”

“Anne, stop.”

“Jesus Christ, just look at it!”

“
Anne!
You mouth!”

My mother's eyes burned right through me. She walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, scanning walls and assessing lighting options. I followed closely behind. She stopped and gazed at an empty space between two windows.

“No, you can't put it there, there's not enough space.”

She brushed me aside and pulled out a tape measure. Luckily, I was right. The picture was too wide.

“How about in the closet?”

“Anne, stop, I get very mad.”

“Ok, fine, how about behind the door in the closet?”

She ignored me and walked into the den. She looked curiously at a large photograph of Mike and me when we were little; we were standing in front of a waterfall on Jeju, an island off the Korean peninsula. I was wearing a white ruffled blouse with puffy sleeves and pants so pink they looked like I had gone wading in a pool of Pepto-Bismol. My brother's green collared shirt hung on for dear life around his protruding belly and his striped tube socks were pulled up to his pudgy knees. We were both grinning at my father behind the camera; I had small white nubs for front teeth.

“Wait, you're going to take down that picture for HIM? You don't even KNOW him.”

“Anne, I think you talk too much.”

“You are not allowed to touch that picture.”

“Anne, go away.”

“MOM, YOU CAN'T PUT IT THERE!”

“OK. OK,
ayoo.
”

She growled and walked toward the front door. She stood pensively in front of a large, empty wall.

“Oh no way. Not here.”

“No, it good, Mommy like here. Shh, why you not be quiet, Anne?”

“But it's too close to the front door!”

“So?”

“So? So people will SEE IT.”

She reached for her tape measure. I plastered myself against the wall and stretched out my arms so she couldn't measure.

“Anne, you move, NOW.”

“No, this isn't right! I can't let you do this. You're gonna have to kill me first.”

My mother stormed away and yelled for my father. He promptly showed up with a toolbox and a stepstool. My heart sank but I stood steadfast against the wall.

“Dad, please don't do this to us.”

“Annie, you have to move.”

“Why don't you put it in your bedroom?”

“Because Mommy want put picture here.”

“I'm sure it'd be OK if you hung it in your bedroom.”

“I don't want it in the bedroom.”

“Well I don't want it next to the front door.”

“Annie, move out of the way. I'm sorry, but you lose.”

“We all lose.”

He peeled me off the wall, set down the step stool, and plugged in his drill. Using museum-grade wall anchors and four-inch nails,
my father hung up the picture. I stared at him in disbelief; he was aiding and abetting poor taste, a sin really.

“But don't you think it's a little too big, like maybe just a little over the top?”

My father sighed and looked down at me from the step stool. “I think it fine. Be nice to you mommy. You both yell and scream, I get such headache, you know? I'm an old man and you make me older.”

A few hours later I heard the front door open, followed by a gurgling, choking noise and a deep-throated laugh. My brother had discovered the pale-faced stranger staring at him. I joined Mike in the foyer.

“Dude, is this some kind of joke?”

“I know, I know.” I shook my head.

“What the hell? It's so
huge
. She's totally lost her shit
.
”

We stood in front of the photograph, dumbfounded and oddly absorbed. The picture had a peculiar magnetism to it, like a piece of eye-torturing art or pornography. I wondered what kind of shoes John Paul II was wearing under those robes. What footwear possibly goes with papal garb? Dainty, soft-soled slippers? Italian leather dress shoes?

“Dude, why did you let her do this next to the front door?”

“How is this my fault? I tried to stop her. And, you know, it could be worse. It could be in your bedroom.”

He shuddered. “It doesn't even go with the house.”

The picture hung near a long scroll of traditional Korean calligraphy and a blue vase painted with a scene from a fifteenth-century Korean countryside.

“Nothing goes with this. Except a church.”

“Well, can we take it down?”

We weighed the possibilities: my mother's wrath (and, perhaps, God's) for deposing the Pope or the constant abuse from friends for this jumbo JP2.

“I doubt it. Dad anchored it to the house. It's never coming down.”

My friends' reactions, upon seeing the Pope greet them at the door like a restaurant host, ranged from poorly stifled surprise
(
“WHOA, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”
)
to complete shock (dropped jaws, followed by awkward silence). One friend with a highly developed sense of irony was impressed (“Holy shit, where can I buy one?”). Since most of my mother's friends were from her church, they fawned over the photograph, complimenting its beautiful frame and saying what a wonderful Pope he was and oh don't you know he speaks eight languages and likes experimental theater and poetry and thank God he wasn't assassinated, what a tragedy that could've been. My mother seemed quite pleased with herself and the oversized display of her faith.

For a long time, church was mostly a social outlet for my parents, especially my mother. They opened up their house for bible study groups and fund-raising meetings, during which they gossiped about other church members and their children (drugs, marriage, Harvard) instead of discussing the bible. My mother sang in the choir along with her three closest friends and chaired committees that organized picnics and holiday parties. When my brother and I were in elementary school, our parents dragged us to church even though the services were done in Korean, which we tried our best not to understand. My mother's elbows kept jabbing us in the ribs to keep us awake in the pews and after Mass, we waited impatiently in the car for our parents to stop chatting with their friends. We honked the horn and blasted the radio while our parents tried to ignore us. Eventually the church added services in English, but Mike and I remained uninterested. Who cares about turning water into wine? At thirteen and ten years old, we were too old for magic; we wanted Nintendo. Mike and I usually left in the middle
of Mass to go across the street to eat at Tommy's Hamburgers. But even seasoned french fries weren't enough motivation to leave the house on Sundays. Every Sunday morning my brother and I fought a two-front war; I would refuse to get into my church clothes and Mike would take sanctuary in the bathroom. Eventually our parents gave up on us. We'd have to find salvation on our own.

Before the Pope came to live in our house, we had a cross here and there, but the photograph took religion in our home to a whole new level. It showed me that, to my parents, being Catholic was no longer just about socializing and finding a community of Korean immigrants, but about having a relationship with God. As a fifteen-year-old, I wasn't pleased about this. Being religious was uncool—I knew this from watching the Church Lady on
Saturday Night Live
—and I had my own opinions about abortion and contraception. I thought my parents had been doing just fine as laissez-faire Catholics, but now they were announcing their beliefs to the world, or at least to anyone who visited us. We didn't need organized religion and we didn't need John Paul II upsetting what was once a pleasant-looking foyer. But the picture was just the beginning.

Gold crosses started to appear on the kitchen and living room walls, and colorful rosaries emerged on every lamp in the house. Jesus candles and dishes painted with biblical scenes materialized on the mantle. A wooden manger, complete with lambs and a baby Jesus, became the centerpiece of the living room table. Little statuettes of Jesus (on the cross and off) and pewter figurines of saints convened on sidetables. A picture of The Last Supper on petrified wood hung near the bathroom, not in the kitchen or dining room where one might have supper. A two-foot-tall ceramic Virgin Mary sprung up in the garden; she looked serene among the flowers and the jackrabbits that ate them. On top of the piano, my mother
placed a framed prayer and a bust of Jesus, which I always turned toward the wall when I messed with the timer so I'd only practice for fifty minutes instead of an hour as my mother had instructed. Korean Catholic books, with covers picturing clouds and rays of sunshine or praying hands, sat next to her romance novels on the shelves, and they were all squeezed between matching Jesus and Virgin Mary bookends. An enormous three-foot-long rosary, with beads the size of baseballs, hung on the wall over the television. Our house was getting out of hand. There was nothing that could be done short of lighting it on fire.