Happy Birthday or Whatever (16 page)

“Come on, let's go.” The ajeoshi called the waitress over for the check.

“But I don't know any Korean songs.”

“They-have-American-songs-in-those-machines-now-don'tyou-know-they-have-every-song-in-there. It's-magic-it's-from-the-future. What-would-Korea-do-without-karaoke? Read?”

I groaned. I am not a big fan of karaoke. The few times I had done it, I drank enough liquor to dull any sense of self-consciousness. My mother doesn't drink, though she could probably benefit from one or five.

Ten minutes later, we were in a private karaoke room where my mother and her friends perused a heavy book of song titles, all in Korean. They ordered tea, queued up a few songs, and let it rip. The background video footage featured young couples in peg-legged acid-wash jeans and frilly blouses. And that was on the men. Each video was more or less the same, a couple walking hand-in-hand on a beach, bridge, or a dock, while lyrics scrolled over their smiling, lovestruck, or pensive faces. I tried to follow along with the lyrics, but couldn't read them before they disappeared off the screen.

“ANNE, SING! SING!” My mother yelled over a pop tune that sounded just like an ice cream truck colliding with a guitar.

“I DON'T KNOW THE SONG!”

“IT NOT MATTER. YOU WORRY TOO MUCH!”

“I can't even read the words!”

“WHAT?”

“I SAID, IT'S TOO FAST. I CAN'T READ THE WORDS.”

“JUST MAKE UP WORD.”

The ajuma handed the microphone to me and I mumbled a few words. I'm pretty sure I sang something about eggs. The ajeoshi and ajuma laughed hysterically. My mother waved her arms wildly. “YOU HAVE TO SING WITH FEELING!”

“But I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling!” I passed the microphone to the ajeoshi who belted out the chorus and swayed his head from side to side.

My mother pushed the songbook toward me. She flipped to the American section and pointed, all while singing loudly into another microphone.

“I don't want to sing.”

“Anne, why not?” She talked into the microphone so her friends could hear.

“Because I can't sing. I suck.”

“So who care? It karaoke. It better if you suck.”

“Annie-you've-got-to-sing-something-you-can't-just-sit-thereyou-have-to-have-fun.”

“But I really don't like to sing.”

“You're in Korea. And in Korea people go to karaoke. And when people go to karaoke, people sing,” the ajeoshi replied into his microphone. I notice that when people have microphones they use every opportunity to speak into it.

“Anne, just try, go find song. Make Mommy happy for one time.
Ayoo!
”

I grudgingly took the book. The choices available were a massacre of good taste. Most of the popular artists were absent from the book; they probably didn't allow their songs to be butchered into karaoke instrumentals. I tried to find a song everyone would know, which was a major challenge given the selection. Bay City Rollers? Styx? The Captain and Tenille? I shuffled to the P section to look for Elvis. Nothing. What kind of karaoke establishment has Mr. Mister but not the King? I thumbed to the B section to look for the Beatles, the common denominator of music of everyone on Earth. I hear that plants even like the Beatles. The karaoke joint had only one song, “Hey Jude,” which is out of my vocal range. Actually all songs are out of my vocal range. I pointed to it and my mother queued it up.

When my song came on, the ajuma passed the microphones to my mother and me for a duet. My mother stood up and straightened her blouse. I remained seated.

“Get up.”

“Why? No one else got up when they sang.”

“We sing better if we stand. Like at church.”

“Nothing can help me sing better except not singing.”

“Get up.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me up. “You make life very difficult for youself.”

A couple on the background video started walking along the beach, and we started singing. I sang softly, allowing my mother's booming vibrato voice take the lead.

“LOUDER! LOUDER!” My mother's friends chanted and laughed.

By the second line of the song, my mother and I were already out of sync, creating an awkward, off-tune echo.

“Second part for you Anne, go!”

I held the microphone limply to my mouth for an awkward solo. I sang a few lines and then stopped. “You know now that I'm reading the lyrics, I don't really get it.” I too fell into the trap of taking advantage of the microphone.

“Third part for Mommy. Hey, Jude, don't carry world shoulder, well don't you know fool who play cool….” She swayed her head back and forth just like Stevie Wonder.

Now I realized why we had been out of sync. I started laughing. “OK close enough.”

We finished off another verse together and then the ajuma and ajeoshi joined us for the rest of the song.

“You know when I was young, I loved the Beatles so much. I liked Paul the best. I wished he was my boyfriend, but instead I got Annie's father.”

“You-did-I-really-liked-John-but-then-he-got-Yoko-so-it-wastoo-late-for-me-well-at-least-we-know-he-liked-Asian-women.”

The ajeoshi laughed and then looked at me. “Which Beatle do you like?”

To be frank, I am not a Beatles fan. I think they are mostly over-rated but when I say that publicly, people think I'm a baby-eating fascist. “George. I like George.”

“Really,” he replied. “I didn't know girls liked George. He wrote ‘Here Comes the Sun.' He's vegetarian, just like you.”

“I thought Paul is vegetarian.”

The ajeoshi shrugged and turned his attention to the next song. I tried to follow along for a few more Korean songs with little success. My mother and her friends picked “easy” songs so I could sing with them, but I still couldn't keep up with the lyrics. After our hour and a half was up in the room, it was time to hit the road again.

As we walked out to the car, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains and the temperature had dropped significantly. My mother dug in her purse and brought out a bag of roasted chestnuts left over from this morning. They were cold but everyone took a chestnut anyway.

“You carry so much crap with you.”

“It not called crap if you use.”

In an unprecedented move, the ajeoshi announced that we would go the rest of the way—nearly two hours—without stopping. It was midnight, time to get home. The ajeoshi cranked up the heat and the conversation became slower and quieter inside the warm comforting womb of the car. The ajuma was the first to drift off to sleep, followed by my mother. I considered sticking my finger in her ear and poking her in the ribs, but for the first time that day, it was quiet. I peeled a chestnut, leaned my head back, and chewed in silence.

I
was drifting off to sleep. My father's car pulsed slowly in traffic and I found the gentle stop and go soothing.

“You want more air con?” My father waved his hand in front of the vents. “I can make more cool.”

“No, I'm fine.” I leaned my head back and looked out the window. In true L.A. fashion, one driver was closing a deal on his headset while creeping his SUV into the small space in front of us. My eyes struggled under the weight of a late night and a bright
morning sun. My father reached over and put the sun visor down for me.

“You can put seat back.”

“I'm fine.”

“But you be more comfortable.”

“No, no, I'm fine.”

“There so much traffic. So much.” He shook his head.

I looked at the clock. “We have plenty of time.” I yawned. Morning flights back to New York are always rough.

“I guess everyone go LAX.” He chuckled. Whenever we're stuck in gridlock, my parents joke that everyone is headed to the same place as us. If we're on our way home, my mother says that everyone is going to pile into our house and expect food and beverages. I shifted in my seat and closed my eyes.

“Very hot today, Anne, very hot. You can see how hot! Look!”

I kept my eyes closed. “Yeah, I know, I can see it. It's all very hot.”

“But it so
hot.
”

“It's summer.”

“You want more air con?”

“I'm fine, Dad, really. Now it's sleepytime for Annie.” I turned toward my window and curled up for a nap on the 405. Kenny G. came on the radio, but I was too tired to stick a fork in my ear or change the station. My father likes easy listening, the easier the better. His favorite American song is “Lady in Red” by Chris de Burgh. I once found a yellow notepad with the lyrics printed in his neat chemist's handwriting. He was preparing to woo the pants off everyone at karaoke. I dozed off to the soprano sax mastery that is “Songbird.” For about five seconds.

“Anne?”

“Mmm?”

“You sleep?”

“Yes.”

“You tire?”

“Yes.”

“Hot?”

“No.”

“Tire?”

“You already asked me. Yes. Tired. Sleepy.”

“Anne?”

I sighed and turned toward him. “What?”

“I'm an old man.”

I groaned. My father, like many fathers, is bad at starting conversations. He always starts with something nonsensical and as he fumbles toward a point, I have to piece it all together. It's like figuring out what happens in a story by reading every other page. He also has bad timing and will wait for the worst moment to have a serious talk: right before I'm rushing out the door, in the middle of Best Buy the day before Christmas, as I'm falling asleep. Most of the time, our conversations are about things I already know, like the importance of a good education and a stable job. Sometimes, he doesn't have the conversations we're supposed to have, say when someone in our family has cancer.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm old, you know?”

He was sixty-three, but his face only looked fifty-five except for his mouth, which until recently looked about one hundred years old. Over the last few years, my father lost most of his teeth because, according to him, he had bad teeth. I tried to explain that they were bad because he never flossed, but he explained that it was genetic because his parents also had bad teeth (I'm pretty sure my grandparents never flossed either). Last year he took out a fat personal loan and got jawbone grafts and titanium implants. I told
him that he better not die before paying off the debt or else I'd rip his fancy teeth right out of his corpse and use them when I started losing my teeth because, you know, it's genetic.

Traffic on the 405 had come to a complete standstill and hundreds of brake lights dotted the freeway in front of us. I abandoned all hope for a nap and sighed. “Why are you an old man?”

“Because I'm not young.”

“Most people aren't young.”

“You right. You not young.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Not young.”

“No, I'm not.”

“You old. Not as old as Daddy, but you old.”

I rolled my eyes. “What's your point?”

“Soon you be thirty-seven.”

“What?” I was twenty-eight.

“You be thirty-seven.”

“In like ten years.”

“Nine year.”

“Whatever.”

“You going to marry?”

“Are you kidding me? We're not talking about this. Again.”

Until I finished college, my parents had never taken an interest in my love life. In fact, it was quite the opposite. “Anne,” they'd tell me, “school not for fun, only for study to be doctor.” In high school, between the track-and-field practice, flute and piano lessons, SAT classes, and tutoring sessions, there was no time for boys, not that any boy would even desire four feet, ten inches of me. In college, when I grew four inches and a rack and was finally able to pursue the elusive male, my parents made me promise to concentrate on my studies, and I told them not to worry—that if there was one thing Berkeley had, it was a lot of things to study
(for example, physics, the major with most guys, and architecture, the major with the best-looking guys). When my mother asked with raised eyebrows if I “see boy at school,” I said of course not, because that was actually the truth. It turned out that all the eligible guys at Berkeley had found other things to study. Shortly after I graduated college, when it was finally acceptable for me to date, my parents began asking why I hadn't found a husband, and they haven't stopped since. Each year they get more desperate. I'm pretty sure they've mounted my biological clock on the wall, next to the picture of The Last Supper on petrified wood.

“Annie, why you not marry? You have to marry now.”

“Now? Right this second?”

“I'm an old man. I get sick.”

“What are you talking about? You're not sick.”

“But I get sick someday. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in five years, who know?”

“You're not sick. You're insane.”

“Annie, you have to marry before I get sick.”

“I'm not getting married just because you might get sick someday. That is stupid.”

“You know, man who is thirty-seven look for twenty-four year old.”

“What are you talking about? Everyone's looking for a twenty-four year old. Who's
not
looking for a twenty-four year old?”

“But you not twenty-four. Everyone who thirty-seven not look for you.”

“What is your obsession with thirty-seven?”

“When you thirty-seven, no man want to marry you because they want younger.”

“
Dad,
I'm only twenty-eight! I'm not old! I'm closer to twenty-four than I am to thirty-seven.” I looked desperately at the free
way. It was still packed with cars, bumper to bumper. I considered getting out and walking, but my father was right—it was very hot out there. Waves of heat were rising from the asphalt, as if Hades were bubbling just underneath the San Diego Freeway.

“You think that now, but you get old very fast. Women get old very fast.”

“You know what else is getting old very fast? This conversation. Yoon-chong isn't married. Andy isn't either. Or Mike. Or Woo-jay or Tina. And they're older.”

“They in big trouble, Annie. Big trouble. They not find husband or wife now, they never will.”

“That's ridiculous. How do you know they haven't found someone already? I'm sure they're all dating someone serious; we just don't know it.”

 

My cousins and I try to maintain a separation between family and people who are important to us. Whenever we get together during the holidays, my cousins ask me if I'm dating anyone, and I always answer no. Then I ask them the same question so that they can give the same answer, and that's the end of that conversation. We do this not because we aren't interested in keeping up with one another but because in a family as large as ours someone is always listening. And in a family as loud as ours, someone is always talking. And if someone is talking, they're probably talking trash. Though we hate to admit it, we care what our family thinks; we've been brainwashed to seek approval and obey, just like the rest of Korea's children. As a result, the unspoken rule among the cousins is that we only discuss our significant others when it's absolutely necessary. The first time many of us learned about Yoonmi's boyfriend was when they were engaged. When she brought her fiancé
to a big family dinner, all the cousins observed closely because she was forging new territory, setting a precedent for what would happen when an outsider infiltrated family lines. The cousins watched with fascination, fear, and pain as Yoonmi's fiancé answered tough interview questions: Where did you go to school in Korea? (Yonsei University, which is the Yale, not Harvard, of Korea.) What do you do for a living in the states? (lawyer) How will you provide for “our Yoonmi?” (The best he could—by working hard, making sure she was happy.) How many children do you want? (Two or more, depending on how Yoonmi felt.) Where do you want to raise the family? (In Los Angeles, close to Yoonmi's family.) Where do you want your children to go to college, and what kind of professions should they have? (Harvard, lawyer or doctor of course.) Would you consider raising the family in Korea? Why or why not? (Yes, but his practice is here and he'd have to check with Yoonmi.) He was smooth—accommodating but not obsequious, eloquent yet warm and friendly. In the end, everyone liked him because he looked smart, had nice hair, and was a well-educated lawyer from Korea who obviously worked well under duress. Actually he is pretty perfect now that I think about it; fluent in Korean and English, but definitely more Korean than American, and the owner of a luxury German sedan. Still, the whole ordeal was so stressful that the cousins only wanted to go through it once. It didn't matter how serious our boyfriends and girlfriends were; there was no need to bring home or even mention anyone except for a fiancé. But there was one cousin who ignored the memo. Twice.

Four years my senior, Andy works in Los Angeles as a physical therapist. He's a good-looking mild-mannered guy with a lucrative career, and we all figured he'd be next to marry. In 2001, he brought a girl named Eunice to our family's New Year's dinner. They had been dating for four years, so marriage was a definite possibility,
but they weren't engaged. I wasn't at the dinner, but from what my mother said I gathered that Eunice was very smart, very nice, and very Filipina. Since English was a challenge for most of our relatives, Andy answered most of the questions and translated for his girlfriend. The family wasn't thrilled with Filipina Eunice, but there wasn't much they could do. At least she was smart and nice. They got over their disappointment, or at least pretended to anyway. Andy and Eunice didn't work out, and in 2003 he brought another girl to the family's New Year's dinner. This time her name was Julie, and she was an elementary school teacher, and she was Chinese. Throughout most of the night, my relatives left her alone. There was a feeble Q&A session, but most decided it wasn't worth getting to know her, not if Andy was going to bring another girl the next year anyway.

“I can't believe. Why Andy bring new girl?” My mother threw her hands up in frustration. My mother, father, and I were driving home after New Year's dinner. My brother had gone off in his own car, back to his apartment on the other side of the San Fernando Valley. Lucky him.

“What are you talking about? I liked Julie. She was really sweet.”

“He bring different girl every year.” My father shook his head. “Very bad. Why he do that? Why his mom not say anything?” Andy's mother is my father's youngest sister.

“He does
not
bring a different girl every year. He's only brought two in his entire life.”

“Two is too many.” My mother turned her head to look at me in the backseat. “Only need one. Two make people confuse.”

“What's so confusing? There are two girls: he dated one; they broke up; and now he's dating another. It's actually all very easy if you pay attention.”

“He act like a fool.” My father gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on the road. “Andy should only bring most important girl. He should know that.”

“Well he thought Eunice was the most important girl.”

“Filipino.” My mother added.

“Yes, he thought Filipina Eunice was the most important girl. And now he thinks Julie is the most important girl.”

“Chinese.”

“Whatever. I heard that in other families, everyone meets boyfriends and girlfriends all the time.” I wasn't sure why I was defending Andy—I didn't really want to expose every boyfriend I'd ever have—but I think I was defending reason and common sense, two things my family could use, along with patience and a volume button. “Andy and Julie have been together for over two years. Maybe they'll marry.”

“Maybe they not marry,” my mother contended, “Who know? That why so confuse.”

“But it's not confusing!”

“Anne, you not understand.” My father shook his head.

“We only interest in one you marry,” my mother added.

“Most important one,” my father echoed.

“I know. I get it, but it's not fair for you to get mad at Andy just because he brought a girlfriend to dinner. Don't you care who he's dating? Because you're supposed to care.”

“No, we care…. We just don't want to know.” My mother adjusted her seatbelt so she could turn around even more and look me squarely in the eyes. “When you find husband, you tell us. Don't bring home everyone you meet. Only bring one.”

“Don't be like Andy,” my father warned me.

Throughout my life, my parents urged my brother and me to be more like Andy: be more studious like Andy; be better at sports
like Andy; speak and write Korean and go to church every week like Andy. Now they were saying, just kidding, forget Andy. Don't be like him.