Rebellious Daughters (17 page)

Not surprisingly, my mother's suffering, which was mitigated by the belief that she was doing the right thing for the sake of family and children, made me angry instead of making me appreciate the great gesture of her sacrifice. I felt I was being forced, against my will, to be co-opted into her suffering, and I refused to take on this role. I resented the burden of being witness to my mother's sacrifices. And I resented the unspoken assumption that I would stay by her side throughout her life and devote myself to easing her difficult existence. Particularly as the eldest child, I was expected to shoulder some of the responsibilities of keeping the family unit going, keeping it from falling apart under the pressures of not only my father's moods, but the struggle of settling in a new country where my parents found it
difficult to communicate with the outside world in an effective way.

As a girl growing up in Perth, in a Western education system, these ideas of female destiny and identity were so incongruous and almost absurd to me that I never considered them seriously, though I knew of Korean girls who, in a similar situation, managed to keep these dual worlds apart and intact and followed Korean customs without being tempted by the freedoms offered by the world beyond their families. Many stayed near their parents, helping them, even buying a house together, then married Korean men and continued to live near their families.

My parents were both children during the Korean War, which killed many members of their families. The loss of lives and homes had left them scarred and the way to forget these terrible memories was to create happy new ones by doing what everyone else was doing, and what was expected of them. To get married and have children. There was never a thought of another option.

As a woman who had lost all the male figureheads in her family, including her father. the war left my mother particularly vulnerable. And there could be no social or economic advancement without men in the family. The official channels simply did not recognise women as legitimate heirs to what had been theirs before the
war. Hence the arranged marriage by a distant relative – who was, of course, a male. But my parents were not only totally unsuitable for each other, they were both burdened by married life. My father was just as trapped as my mother by his role as breadwinner and father in the family unit. He enjoyed neither of these responsibilities and my independent, feisty and adventurous mother was never comfortable being defined by her role as the secondary person in the marriage. So watching the two of them struggle to live up to the expectations imposed on them was painful, and I vowed to only marry, if I was to marry, for love.

Or to secure a residence visa for my boyfriend. I returned to Australia from Scotland alone a few months later and promptly announced that I was getting married. My parents, relieved to have me home, gave in, but they were embarrassed by the wedding. None of their Korean friends were invited and it was only much later that any of them found out about my marriage. At least I won't be living in sin, I told them.

They had problems having a Western son-in-law. Even though we had been in Australia for over ten years, they had yet to make local friends, so having a family member who spoke only English was a challenge. Besides, they protested, I was too young to get married and had not finished university as I should have. They had expected me to complete my education to the highest level, and
although I had been accepted into university, not having had any idea of what I wanted to do, I had mistakenly enrolled in a business course that a couple of my friends were doing. My parents had been, at first, pleased that I had chosen such a practical course but that was shortlived, since I dropped out after six months to go to Scotland.

After I was married, I initially moved a couple of suburbs away from my parents, then eventually to the other side of the city. I deliberately did not return their calls when I knew these were about some trivial matter with a bank or local council. I had for years been dragged reluctantly to act as my parents' translator and now I decided to stop being that. I knew my mother thought ill of me, but I refused to continue in my role as their bureaucratic caretaker. As my mother saw that she could no longer depend on me, she began to improve her English, taking delight when she realised she could look after personal matters without my help. She would later boast to me about how she had been able to persuade some official to accept her request. And now, there is very little of the outside world that intimidates her.

When my marriage was in trouble, I did not hesitate to accept that it was over. The Scottish guy's heart was always torn between Scotland and Australia, and when I went back to university and devoted myself to
full-time study, the relationship began to fall apart and we separated.

I was in my mid-twenties, childless, and had just finished a degree, majoring in something I was passionate about – Art History. I felt my life was only starting. Although my husband had wanted a reconciliation a few months after we broke up, I had no trouble walking away for good, unwilling to be the devoted wife when I felt that we no longer had a future together. Upon the end of my marriage, my mother had expected me to move back home, but I chose instead to live alone – gasp – as a single woman. This was one of the most profound experiences of my life and to this day, as a married woman with a young child, I look back at that period with great relish. It was an experience that changed me irrevocably. Spending time alone helped me to find the courage to leave Perth and my parents for good. Despite all my acts of rebellion, there'd been a part of me that was still worried about them.

As I grow older, I am aware more than ever that my parents could not have done things differently. Yet what I have never been able to do was pretend that there wasn't a cost for me of their suffering, particularly my mother's. I resisted their expectation that I should be grateful for the sacrifices, and was not afraid to point out the difficult behaviour of my father and the failures
of our family as a unit. Although my mother is aware of my views, her response has always been, ‘Who doesn't suffer in life?' From her perspective, mine is simply not an acceptable attitude for a Korean child, no matter what age.

I'd like to think that had we stayed in Korea I could have been a trailblazer, but I am not sure, because the social pressures there should never be underestimated. I have doubts whether I could have so easily found an apartment in Korea as a single woman, and with no social welfare system for the elderly, my parents would have been their children's responsibility.

The interesting thing that happened after all of us children eventually left home was that my mother then finally worked up the courage to divorce my father. She, too, began to embrace the personal freedom that Australia offered. Until then, the idea of making conscious choices or walking away from unacceptable situations had been an alien concept to her. Yet, seeing her children making decisions based on personal wants rather than obligations pushed her into her own uncharted waters and she began to open herself up to different ideas of how to live that had nothing to do with her family. She took up a couple of hobbies, mah-jong and cycling, and enthusiastically joined various clubs catering to her new interests. She gained a large group of Australian friends of varying ages. She began to travel, with her cycling group and
on her own, overseas – things I had never imagined my mother capable of.

Today, I don't have to rebel so much anymore or strive towards redefining my identity as a Korean female in Australia. In the end, our years in Australia, and my move away from Perth, have helped both of us, my mother and I, to gain a new understanding of womanhood. Looking back, what I can say confidently is that if I had stayed in Perth, near my mother, we would have ended up leading insular, circumscribed lives. She would not have left my father, and she would not have been forced to confront the wider Australian society on her own. Of course, when I made my move, I had none of this in mind.

R E B E L L I N G T O C O N F O R M

JO CASE

When I was 15 years old, a security guard stopped me as I was leaving Woolworths, carrying four chocolate bars I hadn't paid for. She said she was phoning my parents, then the police. But after the first call, which my mother answered, she let me go. ‘You seem like somebody takes good care of you,' she said.

It was a long bus ride home. Mum greeted me from her bedroom doorway, her eyes small in a face swollen with crying. I stood in the grey light of that curtained room as she railed at me: that she was humiliated, that I was ungrateful, that she had never been so ashamed. It
was as if she was the one who had been caught stealing. What had I even been doing in town? she asked. What other kinds of lies was I telling her? I remember feeling like I'd be trapped in that room for the rest of my life.

I'd expected her to be angry, but was shocked by her distress. As a parent now, I understand how your children's actions can reflect on you as much, if not more, than your own. But then, I had no idea why she would take my transgression as her own moral failure.

These are the stories my mother tells about being a teenager. She got drunk once, when someone spiked her orange juice with vodka, and she was sick in the toilet all night and never got drunk again. She loved maths (‘It's puzzles!'). She was one mark off being the dux at her all-girls' Catholic high school. She had the marks for medicine, which she wanted to do, but she didn't feel confident about her abilities, so she did an Arts degree at the University of Adelaide instead, graduating with Honours. Her first boyfriend grew up to drive a sports car, become a doctor and live in the eastern suburbs. Her second boyfriend was my dad. When she took him home to meet her parents, he was wearing a blanket as a coat and drove a van with ‘Vietnam wants Ewe' and a picture of a sheep painted on it. I've asked my mother's five younger brothers and sisters for incriminating stories about her, but they tell me she was a hard act to live up
to. ‘Miss Perfect,' said one of them, only half-joking.

So perhaps it wasn't surprising that I arrived at high school, aged 12, as the
nerd
, the
teacher's pet
, the
square
. Like my mother, I was smart, liked to do well and genuinely relished learning – particularly reading and writing. Both my parents were English teachers and I had learned to read aged three. Mum likes to tell how I loved the BBC TV version of
The Secret Garden
when I was five. When I found out there was a book, I begged her to buy it for me. In Myer, she argued with the saleswoman who tried to give us the picture-book version instead of the novel I wanted; I was forced to read a page aloud before the saleswoman would relent. ‘She thought I was a stage mother!' Mum beams now, when she tells the story. ‘But you were the one who wanted it!'

For the first 11 years of my life, I didn't think much about how I presented myself to the world, or how the world outside my family saw me. I did what I felt like, what my parents told me to do, or somewhere in between. Rebellion was usually about raiding the kitchen with my brothers and sisters when my parents were out and eating as many chips, lollies or bowls of ice cream as we could. I spent hours playing at the creek across the road from my house with brothers, sisters or cousins, coming home when my dad dog-whistled us from the porch. When I was up a tree and a group of teenagers sat under it with cigarettes and a whisky bottle, I was
shocked enough to write up a report for the neighbourhood spy group I had founded.

The first six months of my high school diary catalogues dances made up with my cousins and performed on my front lawn (soundtracks included
I Should Be So Lucky
); swimming in my neighbour's pool; negotiations with my parents (‘I was so nervous I wouldn't be allowed to go to the shops by myself that I washed all the dishes without asking! They said yes!').

In the second half of the year, this is eclipsed by a meticulous chart of shifting alliances, as the girls in my class become friends, then enemies, then sort-of-friends. Pairs form into quadrants, then split and recombine as new pairs. Girls feel ignored, then hounded, then baffled by one another. I am part of the dance, but always a step behind, never in the lead, often performing the wrong steps.

I was on the bottom rung of middle popularity. Not reviled, but not included in the rounds of parties and Friday nights at Skateline either. I wouldn't have been allowed to go anyway, which my friend Kirsty kindly offered as the probable reason why I was regularly left out. Mum believed that parties at 13 were only appropriate for someone's birthday and that Friday nights should be parent-supervised. Mum was also responsible for my regulation pale-blue socks, black lace-up school shoes and knee-length summer uniform at an
outer-suburban public school where many of my classmates got away with jeans and sneakers with their school jumpers every day.

‘Life is not a fashion parade,' Mum liked to say, often when she was telling me I couldn't have a pair of skin-tight ribbed denim bubble-gum jeans, or wear eye make-up to school, or have black clothes, which she said didn't suit me. But I knew part of the code to fitting in was looking right, which I didn't. I stashed contraband in my schoolbag – my chunky white fish-erman's-knit jumper, white socks and sneakers – and changed into them in the school toilets. I don't know that this made any difference to how people saw me, but it made me less self-conscious. For a while, Mum taught at my school, making the whole enterprise trickier. I not only had to sneak my clothes out of the house; I also had to avoid her in the schoolyard. More than once, she'd bellow across the asphalt, ‘JOANNE CASE! Change into your proper uniform now!' Now, I think this was more exposing than just doing as I was told. But it felt worth the risk.