Happy Birthday or Whatever (5 page)

“OK, ok you not like it. How about this, you like?” She held up another skirt.

“Mom, that's tweed too.
Stop it.
You're totally embarrassing me!”

By twelve years old, I had developed my own sense of style, which was to lack it. I wore nothing that would call attention to myself. I refused to follow any trends—I was afraid I would follow them incorrectly or at the wrong time. I had spent enough time under the scrutiny of my peers, and I just wanted to remain under the radar. No more confusing translations displayed proudly on sweatshirts, no more anachronistic clothing, no more jumpsuits.

“Anne you look so boring. You wear same thing every day, shirt and pants and tennis shoe. I fall sleepy when I look at you.”

“What are you talking about? How about this?” I picked a shirt off the sales rack.

“Anne that has no style.”

“Sure it does, it's black and has a collar. Pretty stylish right?”

“Oh, my only daughter look like boy! I think maybe I die!”

Shopping had become an exhausting, exasperating routine for us. She wanted me to dress with finesse, to be a fashion-minded daughter of a fashion-minded mother. It was important that I looked good now that I was older, partly because it reflected on her parenting skills. Daughters who are stylish are organized, obedient, and Ivy League-bound. Daughters who look like boys are indolent, rude, and start fires at school.

“Anne, why you not wear dress?” She held up a yellow dress with a lace skirt.

“Because I don't want to wear an ugly dress.”

“What you mean? Dress is pretty!”

“No it isn't. It looks like a tablecloth. There are so many dresses here, and they are all like totally ugly.”

She held up a flower-print dress, which I deemed childish. She held up a black dress, which I called depressing. She held up a white lace dress.

“You're kidding, right? Am I getting married?”

“Anne, I think no one marry you. You have so much excuse! You make Mommy life very hard.” She held up a simple, blue T-shirt.

“Oh nice, I like the pocket.”

She rolled her eyes and took out her wallet. Even if she bought me a tweed suit or a wedding dress, there was no way I would wear it to school, or anywhere else for that matter. I was too old
for her to dress me, and she was too tired to argue with me about clothes.

In high school, a petite button-nosed girl named Alyson Spilker introduced me to vintage stores. Alyson had blue hair, a nose ring, and a quirky sense of style that I admired. She wore outlandish pants, colorful hats, and big silver boots. She made her own shirts out of tights and created her own jewelry from wires and beads. Alyson was charismatic and charming, and as we became closer, Aardvark's Odd Ark and Hidden Treasures replaced my mother's cavernous, cloned department stores. I discovered that shopping could actually be pleasant, and I realized that used clothing from other people—as long as they weren't my cousins—could actually look good. Alyson and I would paw through dusty clothes, and she would always find the most misshapen dress or the most chaotic sweater in the store and laugh.

“Oh my God, can you even imagine wearing this?” She held up a purple sweater-dress. “It's like someone was knitting a sweater and said, hey, I wonder what'll happen if I just keep going?”

“I've worn worse things.”

Through Alyson, I developed a style of my own—sequined sweaters from the fifties, geometric scarves from the sixties, coats from the seventies, and select pieces from the eighties. Hiding in plain shirts, pants, and tennis shoes wasn't necessary as I gained more confidence. I never wore anything too eccentric, only clothes with just enough inventiveness to make me feel comfortable and noticed without feeling out of place. The clothes were unique and affordable—sophistication at a sensible price. I guess I did learn a little from my mother.

“Anne, why you always wear old clothes? Why not buy new?”

“Because the old stuff is cool.”

“But it old, you look like homeless!”

“No, I don't. Homeless people wear trash bags.”

I foraged in my mother's deep closets for her old clothes, finding blazers with patches on the elbows, macramé belts, and printed blouses with long sleeves that I had my grandmother shorten so they'd fit better. I found daring mini-skirts, fuzzy cardigans, and even a leather trench coat with a faux fur collar.

“I don't like you clothes, Anne. We go shopping more. You look so silly.”

“But these are
your
clothes. So are you saying that
you
look silly?”

“Anne, I tell you, I wear those many, many year ago. Before you born and give me headache.”

“Then why did you keep them around?”

“I don't know. I should have throw away but I think so much waste.”

“OK, so now I'm not wasting them, what's the big deal.”

“Big deal? You look silly—that big deal. People think ‘Oh Annie mommy not dress her only daughter so Annie have to find old clothes.'”

“They so totally do not think that. They think, ‘Oh Annie's so cool. Look at her awesome clothes. I wish I was wearing that.'”

My mother couldn't help smiling. It is a strange compliment, that someone could appreciate the sense of style you had decades past instead of the one you had at the moment. But fashion changes, and as trite as it may sound, people change, too. And people's fashions change. And sometimes this leads to crimes of fashion.

When I started college, my mother started golfing. With no kids in the house to obsess over, she quickly settled into a routine. Every morning, she practiced at the range with friends from church, and got lessons from a pro every Thursday. At least three times a week she played eighteen holes, sometimes thirty-six if she
could squeeze it into her day. Within three months, she bought a set of titanium clubs and high-end golf balls designed to fly to the moon. Then she enrolled in a country club. She would call me on the phone each week to talk about the newest trends in putters or the latest improvements to golf cleats, and I'd sigh loudly hoping she'd realize she was boring me. Like fashion, golfing was something that put her in a special group, but to this I just couldn't relate. I thought golfing was for people who were so wealthy that they had nothing better to do than chase a little white ball over some hills. Golfing was for the rich and white. My mother was neither. Her golf clubs were on layaway and her first country club was right next to the 101-freeway—large nets prevented balls from smashing through windshields. To my mother, golfing was the next step up. Her stylish clothes made her look sophisticated and wealthy, but being good at golf was a way to act sophisticated and wealthy. Plus, many of her church friends golfed. She needed to keep up.

The first Thanksgiving after starting college, I returned home and noticed a few awards on the shelves. In just a few months, my mother had become quite a decorated golfer—there were a certificate of participation for a church golf tournament, a Booby prize for the worst but most spirited player, and an award for Longest Drive. Her awards were next to me and my brother's high school diplomas, a trophy Mike got in Boy Scouts, and a plaque awarded to my father by his company for his dedication and commitment to excellence.

“What did you do with my fourth-grade photo?”

“Oh I put away to make room for Mommy trophy.” She waved her hands casually.

“What? Why would you do that—whoa, what happened to your hand?”

One of my mother's hands was golden brown. The other was pasty white.

“I wear my golf glove on this hand.”

“It looks like you're still wearing the glove. It's freaky.”

“What mean freaky?”

“You know, like scary.”

“You scare? I scare too. I scare that my only daughter look like homeless.” She looked over my outfit and recoiled. I was wearing a vintage leather blazer, a light blue tuxedo shirt, and jeans.

“Whatever. Why don't you wear sunblock?”

My mother grinned and proudly showed me her shirt tan. A perfect line circled each bicep, marking a border between her bronze arms and her pale shoulders. It was the most shocking farmer's tan I had ever seen, but there was something much more shocking—her outfit. She was wearing blue and green plaid Bermuda shorts with a red and yellow plaid collared shirt. On her tousled head was a terrycloth visor with plaid trim, also clashing. She was a confusing map of horizontal and vertical lines, in more colors that should be worn on one person. Her thick white socks had gigantic pom-poms on the back, which prevented the socks from slipping into her golf cleats. Her feet looked like she had stepped inside two cottontail bunnies. Her outfit was worse than
The Little House on the Prairie
throwback dress and more ridiculous than the Paul Revere ensemble. But not worse than the “Fun of Soup Bring Spring.”

“Did you golf today?”

“No, not today.”

“You didn't? Then why are you wearing the visor?”

“Because it part of set.”

“That's a set? But you said you didn't golf today.”

“So?”

“So, why are you wearing golf clothes? Why aren't you wearing normal clothes?”

“This normal clothes, Anne.”

My mother, the one who used to scrutinize Korea's version of
Vogue
, the one who taught me the difference between Kenneth Cole and Cole Haan, now looked like she shopped exclusively at Golfsmith and singlehandedly exhausted all the plaid in Scotland.

“Mom, are you going to change before we go out to lunch?”

“I did change.”

“Well don't you think you should put on a dress? Something pretty? You can't go out like that.”

My mother exploded with laughter. She grabbed my arm and clutched it to her chest, shaking me. The plaid on her clothes quivered, giving me mild vertigo.

“What? What's so funny?”

And then it occurred to me that I sounded like my mother.

My face turned into a gigantic eggplant, for what child wants to sound like a parent? I was even holding back. I had nearly asked my mother to clear her crap off the kitchen table, which was cluttered with old mail, church newsletters, phone books, and a pile of muddy golf tees.

I rolled my eyes and left my mother chortling in the kitchen. I walked into the master bedroom and took a peek into my mother's closet. I was aghast. I saw what seemed like hundreds of collared shirts, in plaids and stripes and even animal prints—tiger and zebra. I wondered if my mother ever mixed prints, so predator and prey could meet on the lush green hills of Los Robles Golf Course. Her drawers exploded with overly pleated shorts in a dizzying array of oranges, greens, purples, and puce. Her stylish dresses and skirts were pushed aside and crumpled to make way for windbreakers, golf slickers, and sweater vests. I shook my head. My mother has
always been fashion-savvy, so what if hers were the best threads on the links? What exactly were the badly dressed golfers wearing? I shuddered.

I picked up a shopping bag from a pro shop off the floor. It contained an extremely chunky green wool sweater with a giant appliqué of golf clubs and a ball. The price tag was still attached. I sprinted back to the kitchen.

“MOM! HOW COULD THIS COST ONE HUNDED AND TEN DOLLARS?”

“Anne, it on sale!”

“Are you out of your mind? No one should pay for a sweater like that. It should be free.”

“It style! It Callaway, very famous. Make golf club and clothes.”

“Well there's the problem. Companies that make golf clubs have no business making clothes.”

When did my mother forego sensible, silk blouses for wallet-gouging, wooly mammoth sweaters? What happened to that elegant lady? And, more importantly, why was she wearing a visor indoors? Golfing had ruined her fashion sensibilities and my eyesight.

“Anne, you ready to go lunch?”

I flinched at her outfit. I had a choice here: I could force my mother to wear something civilized, or let her be her and let me be me, which in this case would be an accomplice to the worst fashion felony since 1982, when my mother forced me to wear a puffy barber-pole-striped dress that had matching pants attached underneath. This outfit, meant to offer the femininity of a dress with the safety and comfort of pants, put me in tears because I couldn't figure out how to take it off to go to the bathroom. The surly hag of a recess aid—the one everyone feared—had to help when she saw me jogging in place with my hands cupped around my crotch.

“Yeah I'm ready, but can you take off the visor?”

“No, I tell you, it part of set.”

“Take it off.”

“No, Anne, I say no.”

“You can't wear it. I won't let you. I can't eat with you if you're wearing a visor.”

“Anne, why you make Mommy angry?”

“Why are you wearing all that plaid?”

“Why you get you clothes from trash can?”

“This jacket is yours.”

“No I think you wrong. I never see this jacket.”

“OK fine I bought it at a store, but come on, take off the visor. Do that.”

“Anne, NO.”

We ate at California Pizza Kitchen and my mother babbled loudly about golf—she had just volunteered to organize the next church tournament. I hunkered in the corner of our booth, hoping the power would go out.

A
lthough my brother and I were born in America, Korean was our first language. My parents never taught us English because they only had a small working knowledge of the language—hello, excuse me, thank you, how do I get to the 101-freeway? By the time I was born, my parents had been living in the States for five years, and they had found ways to work around their limited English. As a chemist, my father spoke and wrote in the international language of elements, compounds,
and formulas. My mother had taken English classes at a community college, but she didn't practice her skills much because she sought out other Korean immigrants. She didn't need English to buy groceries or drop off dry cleaning or get a haircut—merchants in Los Angeles's growing Korean community offered goods and services at prices lower than their English-speaking counterparts with none of the embarrassing hassle of staring blankly at labels and faces. Though their English has improved considerably since immigrating thirty-five years ago, my parents still struggle with the language today. Whenever I watch a movie with my mother, she tugs on my sleeve every ten minutes and asks me to translate, not into Korean, since I'm incapable of that, but into a simpler version of English.

“What happen?”

“Leonardo DiCaprio is in love with the girl, and other guy doesn't like it.”

“Which one Leno Decrap?”

“The short, blond one—yellow hair—with the big head.”

“Why that man tie Big Head to table? Why they fight?”

“Because he's in love with the girl, too.”

“I not understand—why they fight
now
? Boat sink, who care? Everyone drown and they fight? This movie so silly.”

“Mom, shh, there's still another hour.”

“Hour? Oh my gosh, how? Boat sink in ten, fifteen minute!”

Befuddled by the rules of English and all of its illogical exceptions, my parents figured that English should be something that my brother and I learned in elementary school from trained professionals. The rest of the family shared this sentiment as well. My cousins, who knew only a mouthful of English words when they immigrated, were dropped into the American school system, and they figured it all out eventually,

My mother tells me that as I child I was shy at first, but after I warmed up I was quite chatty. I talked to my relatives in Korean, played Korean games, and sang Korean songs. Even my stuffed animals spoke Korean to each other. My first word was
ohm-ma,
or “mommy.” Korean was what I knew. But then I entered elementary school and suddenly what I knew was not what everyone else knew.

On the first day of kindergarten, my mother took me to my classroom and handed me my lunch. I sat down, ate it, and in five minutes I was ready to go home. When Mrs. Smith began talking, I realized that not only was my mother nowhere to be found, but also I had no idea what this stranger was saying. Just like a few other children, I started wailing, “Where's my mommy?” but I cried it in Korean. Of course, no one understood, but Mrs. Smith figured out quickly that I didn't want to be there. I wept, sputtered, and sniffed and I kept on looking at the door, expecting my mother to rescue me like she always did whenever I had a major freak-out. When Mrs. Smith bent over and put her arm around me, I screamed. Mrs. Smith was shaped like a pear and had tight dark curls that set off her pale, ghostly face. She wore a large silver stopwatch around her neck and had long purple fingernails that curled menacingly. This was not someone I wanted comfort from; I wanted someone who smelled like garlic and sesame oil and had delicate, thin fingers with trimmed nails.

Mrs. Smith took me to a room with long tables where young children squirmed on one side and adults sat patiently on the other. There were pictures, blocks, and spiral notebooks littered between them. The school administrators gave an IQ test to every incoming kindergartener—in English. Even though it was clear that I didn't understand the language, I still had to take the test to prove that I didn't understand the language. I don't remember many specifics of the test, but I do remember one particular question the tester asked me.

“Which picture is a steeple?”

He held up three pictures and motioned for me to point, repeating the word
steeple
rather loudly, the way some people do when they talk to a non-English speaker, as if increasing volume will somehow increase comprehension. My choices were an American flag, a group of stars, the top of a church, and a tree. I chose the flag. Even if they had asked the question in Korean, I'm pretty sure I would've gotten it wrong. I wasn't going to church yet and I had never seen a steeple before, at least not the kind white people put on their IQ tests.

If one could fail an IQ test, I suppose I did. School administrators labeled me “special,” and every morning my mother sent me to Mrs. Smith, who then ushered me into a “special” class just for kids who didn't know what a steeple was. I was in a remedial learning class because the school didn't have an English as a Second Language specialist. My brother and I were the only two non-English speakers in the school. We were also the only two “Orientals.” (Actually, I'm wrong, there was also Otto Ho, but he was fluent in American things like Mexican food and
Three's Company
, so he didn't count.) I joined the remedial learning class half of each day, along with a mentally challenged girl with enormous glasses that made her eyes look like gigantic russet potatoes. We didn't really belong together, since she spoke English and I didn't, and I could button my own clothes and she couldn't, but this is where I learned how to speak, read, and write.

Despite the language barrier, I still managed to make friends. The nice thing about kindergarten is that you can play with other kids and don't really have to talk. You can just jump rope, swing, and get sand in your pockets. Occasionally you throw a fit or whine when you want something. But no kindergartner ever asks if you have a gong or came over in a boat or eat dog—all of that
comes later. But as I made friends, my mouth began shaping English words into mostly coherent phrases. And that was the beginning of the end, as it were.

Children learn languages quickly, and English began replacing my Korean. By first grade, I spoke in Korean and any word I didn't know, I just replaced it with the English word. Whenever my mother asked me, in Korean, what I did in school, I would answer something like this: Korean, Korean, merry-go-round, Korean, slide, Korean, Korean, fingerpaint, Korean, Korean, sandcastle. My parents would teach me the Korean word, but I ignored it. There was no sense in learning the same word in two languages, right? I figured as long as my family knew what I was talking about, it didn't really matter which words I used from what language.

My brother and I attended a mostly white school in a mostly white suburb far removed from Los Angeles's Korean community, which was downtown and afflicted with downtown problems like crime, homelessness, and substance abuse. Our neighborhood had parks, crossing guards, and mountain trails afflicted with mountain problems like cacti, ticks, and poison oak. Everything around me was in English—classes, books, television programs, menus, signs, labels, voices. By second grade, I had absorbed all that English and spoke mostly in English to my family. I did, however, sprinkle sentences with a few Korean words. When my mother asked me what I did in school, I would answer something like this: I sang a
noleh,
played handball with my
chingoo,
and drew a
geleem
of our house
.
I had a lot of
jehmee.

My parents still spoke to me in Korean, and I understood them perfectly, but I answered in English because it was easier. English, not Korean, was the language in which I now thought and dreamed. At seven years old, I was exploring language like my classmates. I enjoyed English tongue twisters, puns, jokes, and tall tales. I liked
listening to poems where English words created rhythms and patterns I hadn't heard in the language of our home. The Korean versions didn't interest me because I had no one to share them with except my family, and what was the fun in that?

My parents recognized my waning Korean as a problem. First, my mother showed me videos of Korea's answer to
Sesame Street,
which I thought was boring because what I really wanted was
Sesame Street
. Then, she gave me Korean picture books, which also failed to keep my attention. My brother, whose Korean had also degenerated, rejected all of his Korean books and preferred his
Hardy Boys
and
Star Wars
serials. Eventually my parents realized it was time for more formal measures to make us read, write, and speak Korean like Korean people. They enrolled Mike and me into a Korean school held on Saturdays, and really, that is what all children really want—more than a trip to Disneyland or a Golden Retriever puppy—a sixth day of school.

The Korean classes were held at a junior high school about forty minutes away from where we lived. I felt odd sitting in such a foreign classroom, one without colorful banners, watercolor artwork, and an aquarium with caterpillars. Instead, there were D.A.R.E posters, large maps, and diagrams of the human body (on which many students, including me, pointed to the crotch and giggled). Though I was in second grade, my parents enrolled me into the first grade of Korean school. I had to start from the beginning, they explained to me. My brother, being three years older, was in a class designed to teach Korean to older students—the pace was much faster and the homework load much heavier. Most of my classmates were my age, in the same situation—they too had become more inclined toward English than Korean. My teacher was a middle-aged woman who pointed to students with a ruler and occasionally slapped it on a desk when we answered incorrectly. She was
short, had greasy skin, and her hair was a gigantic, frizzy mess. She looked like a Korean troll and for a while I was convinced she lived under a bridge, or perhaps one of the freeway overpasses. She passed out large sheets of paper and had us copy the Korean alphabet over and over and over again. And then over again.

The Korean alphabet doesn't have an l or r sound as Americans know it. The closest sound is somewhere between l and r. Oddly enough, it is similar to the t/d sound in the word
water
(when it is not pronounced in the ennunciated Martha Stewart way—“wat-ter”—or in the garbled Philadelphian way—“werddur”). The sound of this Korean letter is subtle. As air moves out from the throat, the tongue gently flicks the roof of the mouth, behind the front teeth. It's like a quiet purr or a gently rolling r. However, the letter, called
lee-ul
(maybe
ree-ul?
), looks nothing like the sound. It looks like a backward s, but instead of a curving, serpentine shape, the Korean letter is written with horizontal and vertical lines. It's like the 2 on a digital alarm clock, the kind with the red numbers that burn into your retinas when you can't fall asleep.

When I first learned how to read Korean, this letter deceived me. I pronounced it like an s
,
as in
strenuous
, not like the t as in
daughter.
It was confusing and part of the reason why I got held back in Korean school. At the end of my first year, my Korean teacher told my mother I was reading at a kindergarten level. I didn't even know kindergarteners could even read—apparently they could in Korean school. So, I was forced to take the Korean first grade twice.

“Anne, you make Mommy so mad,
weh gongboo ahn heh?
”

“I do too study! I
gongboo
everyday! It's my
sonsengneem.
She's so mean. She doesn't like me.”

“Always excuse. You fail and now you take
eelhanyong
again.
Ayoo,
Mommy
hanadda!
So shame!”

“I hate
hangook hagyuh!
I don't want to go—
ahn ga shipoh!”

“No, you say wrong. Say
ahn gagoo shipoh,
not
ahn ga shipoh.”

“I don't care. I'm not going!”

“Anne. You. Have. To. Go.”

Somehow my mother and I understood what the other was saying, though we didn't really listen to each other. Because my mother's English and my Korean had large gaps in vocabulary, we developed an awkward Koreanglish. We pulled words and phrases from both languages and transitioned so seamlessly that I often had no idea what language we were speaking, or yelling. Sometimes, in arguments where my mother yelled at me completely in Korean, I responded completely in English. It was a power struggle, a battle for turf. She felt more comfortable in Korean, and wanted me to argue in Korean, where I would have a distinct disadvantage. I, of course, wanted it all in English for the same reason.

The second time around in the Korean first grade, I got a teacher who focused on “having fun.” She drew silly pictures to teach words and gave us word searches and comic strips, but no matter how enthusiastic she got about vowels and consonants, I hated learning Korean. It was infuriating enough having to go to “regular” school Monday through Fridays, learning the increasingly complex rules by which numbers and English words operate, but on Saturdays, I had to learn a whole new set of rules for a whole new alphabet, while my “regular” friends went to birthday parties and sleepovers and played Atari. Then on Sundays, I had to go to Bible school. I went to school seven days a week. I also attended dance classes and piano lessons, practiced piano everyday, and had to choose between
swam
and
swimmed
on my Mommy homework.

The intensity of my schedule caused my grades in “regular” school to slip, and I received B's and B+'s on my tests, which horrified my mother. Though learning Korean was important, my
American education was the priority. Despite my protests, my mother cut my dance classes to give me more time to study—I had preferred to cut piano instead. Still, by the time I got around to my Korean school homework, I was just too exhausted to read and write sentences and memorize vocabulary. And when it came time to read a book where Jesus appeared as a cartoon figure and write a paragraph about why I was blessed, I fell asleep. Fortunately, Bible classes didn't have grades, but my teacher told my mother I couldn't even name all the commandments, which was true but, really, my mother didn't need to know that.