Happy Birthday or Whatever (3 page)

As we were leaving for the airport, I saw a flash of white and brown and an unmistakable baseball hat in Eun-hee's arms. Somewhere, in my luggage, there was a koala-shaped hole. My mother had to drag my thrashing body into the car. She promised to buy me another koala in a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey. The same exact one, the kind you can only buy at Dodger Stadium, about a one-hour drive from our house, not including traffic. To this day, that woman still owes me a koala.

The koala kidnapping sparked a wave of animal abductions. I think my mother realized that the only way to force me to grow up was to give away what I loved the most. It was also a mental health issue. I spent a lot of time worrying about my animals and my mother figured if I didn't have any animals, then I wouldn't worry
anymore. My parents often opened their house to friends they met at church or at my Korean Saturday school. Some were old college classmates who had recently moved to the United States. All these Koreans had kids who “really liked” my animals. I guess there is something irresistible about a white seal bundled up in a flowery handkerchief that once held the contents of my aunt's nose.

“Anne, Yoon like doll. You give to her.”

“NOOOOOO!”

I loved that white seal. So did all the other animals. I couldn't part with it. Yoon couldn't possibly care for the white seal. She couldn't love it like me. Plus, she had dirty hands. I yelled, I pouted, I wept. I caused an ungracious stink right on the living room floor, in front of Yoon and all of my parents' guests. I acted like a brat, but try taking a cub away from its mother. She will not say, “Hey, that's cool, I have three more.”

My conniption proved my mother's failure to raise a polite and selfless child, or at least one who refused to pretend to be polite and selfless in front of guests. On stage in the living room, in front of her friends and Yoon's mother, my mother had to demonstrate her child-rearing skills.

“Anne, give Yoon doll. Now.”

“NO!”

“Don't make Mommy mad.”

“
NO. I DON'T WANT TO. IT'S MINE.”

“Yoon have no doll. You have too many. You give her one.”

“NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!”

“Anne, I get very angry. Upstair,
now.
”

Going upstairs meant a very serious lecture about The Right Thing. A few tissues and a smack on the rear later, I gave Yoon the seal.

“Please have my doll. I am sorry for being rude.”

My mother ignored all my emotional explosions and continued to give away my animals. If a little girl liked an animal, it was gone. If a young boy acted extra cute or extra smart, my animal would be the reward. My mother became everyone's favorite auntie. Children knew her for her generosity; their parents knew me for my beastly, territorial nature. My animals and I sensed doom whenever we smelled fancy Korean food, the kind made only for guests. As a safety measure, I began hiding the animals under the bed. My mother, seeing the conspicuous exodus from my bed, did not appreciate this.

“Anne why you not share? You so spoil!”

“I do too share, I give my animals away all the time!”

Though I did hide quite a few animals, the kids were smart. They had all heard about my animals available for take-out. They went on searches in my room; it was like burglars coming and overturning furniture to find hidden booty. I watched anxiously as they compared my bear with my kitten, deciding which one they would tell my mother they “really liked.” I tried to stop them, to divert their attention to something else, like the piano or the swing set in the backyard, things I could live without. It was useless; the kids zeroed in on the animals. Each party ended with me pouting in my room, my remaining animals and I tearfully comforting each other.

When my family and I visited other families, I would introduce myself to their animals and ask them about their history. Where did they come from? What was their favorite food? What grade were they in? It never occurred to me to “really like” someone else's animal when I went to a party with my parents. It seemed so evil to tear one away from its family, and I knew that even if I took one home, it would never truly be mine.

Sometimes after a party at our house, I'd go back to my room and sense things were horribly wrong—maybe an animal was in
the wrong place or the line was shorter than usual—and it would take a moment to take animal attendance. When owners give away puppies or kittens, the mother keeps searching for them, restlessly looking under furniture and sniffing corners. She calls out to them and whines. Then slowly she spends less time searching. And then one day, she just stops. That's what I did. I looked everywhere, and then one day I finally gave up.

 

By the time I was in high school, I still slept with my animals on the bed, though there were noticeably fewer. Years of parties had reduced the animal population to near extinction. A few even moved to the floor to make room for my cat—a real cat, not a stuffed animal. I gave a few animals to cute toddlers that visited our house, and donated some to a toy drive. There were a few I couldn't part with. When I left for college, I brought along Sushi, a small red lobster who hid comfortably under a pillow. A few years ago, my parents packed up their house to move to a smaller one. My mother mentioned that she had thrown all my animals out.

“WHAT? You threw them ALL away?”

“You not here, what I do?”

“All of them? You didn't give them to anyone?”

“So dirty Annie! Who want old doll? Who? Not Mommy!”

My animals were too dingy to donate to charity. No kid wanted them; they didn't have electronic voices or walk on their own or have kung-fu grip. No one “really liked” them anymore. My animals were outdated. I felt guilty. I had failed my animals, failed to protect them from my mother. Now they were in the trash, probably very cold and disoriented, with rats nesting in their fur.

It wasn't until recently that friends and boyfriends started buying stuffed animals for me. Buford the dog and Milkshake the cow,
both gifts from my best friend, sit on my bed. When a hippo came to me on my birthday five years ago, I named him Hep Zepi the Hippie-Hating Hip-Hop Hippo. Hep Zepi is the name of a hiphop clothing store in Boston. The hippie-hating part originates from angst leftover from my stint at Berkeley. On Valentine's Day in 1998, a guy I was dating gave me Bümpé, an exotic red bull designed by a Swedish artist. The seams on his ample backside are weakening and I get nervous that too many hugs will cause his polyester/cotton fill to explode. And then there is Arnold, the pig I bought at Dongdaemun with my mother.

“I think maybe bear. No Annie, it dirty. Look it have stain on face!”

“Mom, come on, those are rosy cheeks.”

She was not convinced. She cringed. “
Ayoo,
I think dirt. You not baby now. You not need bear.”

The ajuma
,
wanting to please my mother and make a sale, showed me a knock-off Hello Kitty and a puce tiger that lacked the imperfections to give it personality. My mother was unimpressed. So was I.

“How much?” I asked.

“Nine thousand won.”

Numbers in Korean are hard for me. I had to count off my fingers to translate her offer. Nine dollars. It was a bargain, but only a fool accepts the first offer at Dongdaemun. “No, no too much. How about…”
one, two, three, four, five…“
six thousand won.”

“Annie, you can't buy. You waste you money.”

The ajuma
,
sensing danger to a sale of a stuffed animal that clearly no one else would want, closed the deal. She scooped up Arnold and put him in a plastic bag. I pulled out my wallet and counted out the money carefully, making sure I didn't mistake the one thousand note for a ten thousand bill.

“Oh Annie, you too old. This bear so ugly.”

“Mom, it's a PIG.”

“Pig, bear, Mommy not care.”

“Well then maybe you won't give this one away.” I stuck my tongue out at my mother and she tried to grab it between her fingers.

When I packed my luggage to return home alone—my mother stayed in Korea longer—I decided to put Arnold in my carry-on. It just didn't seem right to stuff him in a suitcase. I walked around the shops at Kimpo Airport, buying duty-free liquor and sniffing cosmetics, while Arnold's head poked out of my backpack. Other customers smiled at me—a twenty-three-year-old with a slightly deformed, yet completely loveable pig/bear. I like to think he enjoyed the view.

M
y mother let out one long sigh that seemed to last forever. She pursed her lips into a thin pink line and shook her head slowly.

“
Ayoo,
Anne, what I tell you over and over?”

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to answer. I looked at her ruefully and sank down into my seat, hoping that the vinyl cushion on my kitchen chair would swallow me whole. Then I could live the rest of my days lounging in the soft cotton stuffing.

“You make Mommy so tire!” She rubbed her shoulders and the back of her neck. She turned her head from side to side and the
loud cracking and crunching made me shudder. I imagined there were no bones inside her neck, only potato chips—salt and vinegar.

“Why you do this to Mommy and Daddy?”

I slumped farther down and scrunched my shoulders together, trying to make it easier for the cushion to swallow me. My mother knitted her dark eyebrows together. The wrinkles on her forehead were deep enough to hide quarters, maybe even dinner plates.

“How you get such bad grade?”

I studied my bowl of oxtail soup—clear broth with small chunks of beef and blobs of fat floating on top. I stirred slowly and watched a lonely onion snake around my spoon. A turnip bobbed up and down. My mother dropped her chopsticks to the table; they clattered and rolled toward me. She reviewed my spelling quiz again in disbelief. Her eyes shifted from left to right as she scrutinized every item. When she saw a big red X next to a misspelled word, she narrowed her eyes and grumbled.

“How you go through life with grade like this?” She waved my quiz in the air. The gigantic B+ my third-grade teacher had scrawled in atomic red ink irradiated our drab kitchen. “Anne, what I say all time? I feel like doll with string. You pull and it say same thing over and over. You have to study and do homework!”

I felt a familiar combination of shame and anger. Heat rose in the back of my throat and behind my eyes. “I
do
study, I
do
do my homework.”

“Then you not study enough! You get B on test. If you study, you get A!”

“It's not a B
,
it's a B
-plus.
I studied and got a B-plus!”

“Anne, B is not A, only A is A.”

“But it's a B
-plus
!”

“When you get B, no one happy. You have to study, get A
,
go Harvard, and be doctor. Or lawyer. Maybe dentist like Dr. Kim.
Then you take care of Mommy and Daddy when you older. Then everybody happy.”

It was my duty to go to the most prestigious university in America: “Me and Daddy job to take care of you and Mike. You and Mike job to go Harvard.” As far as my parents were concerned, there was no other university worth attending. My parents left Korea in search of better opportunities, and that included Harvard. Even Yale and Princeton were just imitations. I was ten years away from college, but my parents acted as if the admissions board would review all my elementary school quizzes and deny me their crimson glory because I spelled
decide
with an
s
.

“Anne, I tell you now, B-plus not A.

“It's close to an A.”

“Close not good enough.” She cleared a spot on the kitchen table and handed me a pencil and a pad of paper. “Write every word you get wrong ten time.”

“Ten times? That's too many.”

“ANNE! Don't make Mommy mad!”

My oxtail soup got cold as I copied each word. My mother scooted her chair beside me and watched over my shoulder. I felt the heat of her breath as she sighed.

“Why you handwrite so bad? You have to write slow and clear.”

“I
am
going slow.”

“No, you rush. You go too fast and make mistake. Just like when you play piano!”

I stewed in my seat. I hated piano. I hated spelling. I hated my teacher for giving me a B-plus. I hated my mother for thinking it wasn't good enough—that I wasn't good enough. And the only thing worse than oxtail soup was cold oxtail soup. I pressed down on my pencil hard.

“Anne, you do good in math and science. You teacher say you read good. But why you bad in spelling? I not understand.”

“Mom, I'm not bad at spelling!”

Spelling was difficult for me, but I knew I wasn't a bad speller. I was a better-than-average, B-plus speller, which is very close to being a fairly outstanding, A-minus speller. I thought this was quite an accomplishment considering that English wasn't my first language.

“Anne, I worry. Maybe you fail spelling. From now on you copy every word ten time before test.”

“But that's going to take forever! All night!”

“No complain! Can you spell
complain
?” She made me write it down. I wasn't sure if I spelled it correctly. Neither was she.

My mother instituted her new studying regimen. Every Thursday night she sat with me while I copied every word from my spelling list ten times. My third-grade teacher grouped the words by themes: “What's New at the Zoo?” (
lion, cage, feed
); “What's for Breakfast?” (
milk, banana, cereal
); or “Crazy for Clothes” (
dress, suit, sweater
). Occasionally, there were words she couldn't pronounce or understand.

“What this word?”

“It's
cul-de-sac
.”

“What that?”

“It's when the street ends and there are just houses there and everyone can play in the street because there are no cars.”

“Why this word have so many dash? Seem so silly!”

“I don't know. Why does
sign
have a
g
in it? See? Spelling is hard, right?”

“Anne, life is hard! But you right, spelling very hard. I feel lucky that you take test and not Mommy! I think I get B on test!”

“Maybe you'd get a C.”

“No, no, I get B. No one get C! Who get C?”

“There are kids who get C's.”

“I think they mommy and daddy be very disappoint. Can you spell
disappoint
?”

After I copied each word ten times, my mother gave me a “test for practice.” She read every word from the list aloud and had me write them down. If I spelled a word incorrectly, I had to copy it another ten times. Then she tested me again.

“You practice until you spell everything right!”

“But my hand hurts from writing.”

“Don't be baby! You not wear diaper no more. You have to practice so you get A
.
”

The nights before my spelling tests, I started having nightmares where I showed up to class unprepared and received a B. I'd wake up relieved and terrified, with my bangs plastered to my clammy forehead. Then I'd reach for my word list and notepad to make sure I had studied. On the mornings of my quizzes, my mother drilled me while I brushed my hair, put on my clothes, ate breakfast, tied my shoelaces, and rode in the car to school. After I slammed the car door, my mother rolled down the window and yelled, “Get A and make Mommy and Daddy proud!” During the spelling tests my heart pounded so violently I could barely hear my teacher call out the words. My head swirled with consonants and vowels—e's switched places with i's, and g's could be noisy or silent. Does
hammer
have two m's or one? Is it
nickel
or
nickle?
I wrote the more difficult words in light, tiny print, hoping my teacher wouldn't be able to read my handwriting but would somehow mark them correct.

Despite my mental anguish, my mother's studying methods proved successful. I received perfect scores. Bright red A's with stars and smiley faces decorated the top of my tests.

“My daughter so good at spelling. I so proud. Can you spell
proud
?”

“P-r-o-u-d. That word's easy—e-a-s-y.”

“Very good! How you get so smart?”

“S-m-a-r-t!”

My mother chuckled and tried to find other words to challenge me. She thought I could spell anything. So did I. I settled into a Thursday evening routine and set the autopilot for Cambridge. Around the same time I was mastering my word lists, my brother managed to do the impossible and brought home a B on a math test (“OH MY GOD HOW YOU GET B? I THINK I DIE!”). My mother, confident that I could study spelling without supervision, diverted all her resources to her troubled son. Getting a B in sixth grade, so late in his academic career, could mean a life of illiteracy at Yale, or even a state school—what my parents called a “no-name school” or a “junk school.”

As the school year continued, the words on my spelling list got longer and harder. Words such as
horse
and
street
were replaced by
raccoon
and
healthy,
or in my case,
racoon
and
helthy.
I discovered that copying a word ten times wasn't enough to get an A. It wasn't even enough to get a B
+
. When I scored a B on a spelling test, I knew my mother would be disappointed. I could see the ivied gates of Harvard close and the neon “No Vacancy” sign switch on. I realized there was only one thing I could do—lie. I couldn't lose my mother's love and pride, not after all that work, all those hours of sitting at the kitchen table with a cramped hand. My carpool dropped me off and I entered nervously into the house. My mother was in the kitchen cleaning a whole fish.

“Hi, Anne, how school?” She looked up from the cutting board and smiled. I hated fish—the gummy, cloudy eyes of dead fish heads grossed me out. Sometimes my mother chased me around the kitchen with a fish head and taunted me.

“Fine.”

“How you do on spelling test?”

“Good…I got an
A
.” I forced a ridiculously wide grin. I knew I wasn't good at lying; I didn't practice enough. I shoved my hands in my pockets so their shaking wouldn't betray me. “I got nothing wrong!”

“One hundred percent again! My only daughter such genius! You spell better than dictionary!”

Suddenly it occurred to me that she might want to see my quiz. I panicked and thought of excuses: I lost it; I left it at school; I gave it to a friend; the teacher put it up on the bulletin board because it was perfect. I clenched my jaw to prevent my heart from leaping out of my mouth. Why didn't they teach lying at school? It was more useful than spelling. I searched my mother's face for suspicion. She smiled and returned to the cutting board.

“You want practice piano before or after dinner?” She hacked away the fish tail.

Relief washed over me and I nearly melted to the floor in a p-u-d-d-l-e. Getting perfect scores had become such a routine that my mother didn't bother to check my test. She trusted me.

“I'll practice before.” I felt piano was my punishment for lying. Sometimes I thought that piano was my punishment for living. I had to practice an hour every day. I picked up my backpack and shuffled to my room, the weight of a B pressing on my shoulders. I took out the quiz from the bottom of my bag and cringed
.
I folded it into a tiny square and slipped it in a folder pocket. No, no she'd find it there. I buried it in my dresser drawer. No, no sometimes she likes to pick out my school clothes. I hid it in my stuffed polar bear's overalls. Then I hid the bear under my sheets. At night I felt Snowball judging me, his black, beady eyes gazing steadily at me as I tried to sleep. I promised myself and the bear that I'd do better on the next quiz.

The words continued getting harder and though I copied each ten times, I received a B–on the next spelling test. It was the lowest grade I had ever received in any subject. I thought I was flunking out of elementary school. I would wind up in the streets alone, living out of a shopping cart and holding a cup and a sign just like the men and women I saw in downtown L.A., except my sign would say “Will Werk for Food.” My heart sank into my Reebok high-tops. My throat tightened and tears pooled in my eyes. My misspelled words dripped in blood-red ink:
thunnder, tornadoe, lightening.
I couldn't show my mother a B–. It would ruin her and destroy me. I hid the test beneath a large bottle of ant spray in a cabinet. I couldn't stand to have it in my bedroom. Besides, Snowball's overalls couldn't hold another test. I didn't think of throwing it in the trashcan outside. Under the insecticide, the test would remain out of sight and mind. And it did for just a few hours.

“OH, NO, NO, ANNIE! COME HERE NOW!”

In the kitchen, my mother was holding the ant spray in one hand and a spelling test in the other. On the kitchen table there was a half-eaten apple covered in pulsating black specks. The worst part was that it was
my
apple. I had forgotten to throw it away, even though I knew that our house had a problem with ants. I started weeping. Extra bile ate away at my eight-year-old stomach; it was just a matter of time before all my organs liquefied.

“OH MY GOD, ANNIE. WHY YOU HIDE TEST?”

“I don't know.” My knees started shaking. I wanted to lie down and curl into a ball.

“Why you do this? Why hide bad grade?”

“I don't know. Because I knew you'd get mad.” I stared at my feet through my tears. I was wearing white socks with purple ribbons.

“You think Mommy mad? You right, I very mad. You get C and lie—make me very angry!”

“It's a B
-
minus…”

“No, Annie, it not B-minus, it C! How you get C?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? You get C and you don't know? No wonder you got C—you don't know! So bad, Annie, this very bad.”

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

“Oh Mommy can't believe. You get A before, now you fail. I so confuse. Why you lie to Mommy?”

My mother shook my quiz at me. The red letter swung back and forth, crying out deception and shame. I knew what came next. My heart quickened, and sweat and tears streamed down my hot, swollen face. I wondered where she was going to spank me, how hard, and with what. I stood there, my collar soaked with tears, waiting for her to grab a bamboo sushi mat or a rice spoon. She quietly spritzed my half-eaten apple with ant spray. Then she added a cruel twist.