Happy Birthday or Whatever (18 page)

She slowly looked at me up and down. One side of her lip curled up in displeasure.

“Mom, come on, I look fine. Leave me alone.”

“Why you not wear skirt?”

“Because I didn't bring a skirt. It's cold in New York.”

“Why you always wear pants?”

“What are you talking about? You're wearing pants. Dad's wearing pants. Hopefully.”

“Can you wear Mommy blouse? I have white one, very pretty.”

I realized that I had spent most of the New Year bickering over clothes. I was exhausted and we hadn't even left the house yet.

“Mom, I don't want to. Can we please just go? Please?”

“OK, OK, when you see everyone, make sure you say thank you to Tina Mommy.”

“For what?'

“She give you Christmas gift!”

My mother pointed to the kitchen table. There sat the largest jar of peanuts (in the shell) I have ever seen in my life. I couldn't believe I had missed them before. Our ancient kitchen table was struggling to support the weight.

“You've got to be kidding me. What is that, three gallons? Five? What am I supposed to do with this?”

“I know. Who give peanut? How you can eat all?”

“What do you mean how can
I
eat it all? There's no way I'm taking seven tons of peanuts back with me. We'll crash.”

“Maybe you share with everyone on plane.”

“Mom, I can share this with everyone in New York City and we still couldn't finish it. I don't even like peanuts. Why not pistachios? Almonds?”

“Peanut cheap.”

The jar's label had Korean writing on it. Its original contents were for kim chee
.
My aunt had purchased a gigantic bag of peanuts, probably from a circus supplies store, and filled jars she had around the house. I opened the jar—it smelled like peanuts and cabbage. I gagged.

“
Ayoo,
Anne, just say thank you.”

I grumbled at my aunt's thriftiness, though I didn't get her a gift. My father walked down to the kitchen. He had found some pants. He had also changed into a blue shirt. I was going to comment, but decided against it. Our family could use a little more self-censorship.

“All my pants at dry cleaner. So I have to wear old pants,” he said, tugging at the waist, “I think maybe they a little tight.”

My mother rolled her eyes. Everyone reached for keys off the hook near the garage door.

“Who drive?” my mother asked.

“I'll drive,” my father replied.

“I'll drive, too,” I added. Silence. My parents raised their eyebrows at each other. My brother always insisted that our family take two cars to my uncle's house so when the moment is right, we could both escape the party together. He used the excuse of working early the next morning, and that was the end of the conversation. But now, I was on “vacation.” Plus, it was Saturday. I was trapped.

“I'm going to a friend's house tonight,” I began. I looked at their stern faces. “
After
the party, of course.”

“You stay for whole party, Anne,” my mother warned.

“Until the end,” my father added, tugging at his pants.

“Fine, fine, I'll stay until I die, let's just GO.”

My uncle's house is a half-hour drive from my parent's house, in a pleasant but flavorless part of the San Fernando Valley. My father's little brother and his family immigrated to the States in 1991, when I was fourteen. They lived with us the first few months they were here—nine people in one house with two bathrooms. It was a nightmare. Once my aunt graciously packed me and my brother lunches for school—peanut butter and ham sandwiches. She didn't quite understand the concept of peanut butter. As I pulled up behind my parents' car at my uncle's house, I realized I should've gotten coffee beforehand. I can be quite cantankerous without caffeine and my aunt probably wouldn't brew anything until after dinner was finished. I couldn't even rely on the presence of soothing booze. For some reason, the Choi clan doesn't drink much at family gatherings, which makes alcohol hard to come by at a time when I need it the most. To toast the New Year, there is usually one bottle of wine for seventeen people. Inexplicably, this wine is usually Manischewitz. My brother and I always joke about it, complaining about how hard life in Israel was for us Korean Jews and asking whether the wontons are kosher. No one else ever appreciates the humor, not even Tina and Andy, who immigrated here when they were young.

My aunt and a heat wave of garlic and fried food overwhelmed us at the door.

“Annie, Annie, you are here! Our Annie has come! Have you gained weight?” my aunt said in Korean, looking me over. She gazed intently at my face.

“No, no, I'm the same. Happy New Year.”

I gave her the customary bow. My aunt nodded and shot my mother a grave look.

“I think her breasts have gotten bigger. What's wrong with her skin?”

“I know, it's so dry. You think her breasts are too big?”

“No, no, it's just that she's little, but her breasts are big.”

Since my Korean comprehension outshines my verbal skills, I can listen, but I can't react. It's incredibly debilitating and infuriating. But this is probably for the best. Otherwise, I'm sure I'd say something I'd regret.

“I'm the
same,
” I hissed.

I see my aunt once a year, but she seemed comfortable enough to talk about my chest. If given the chance, I'm sure she'd feel comfortable discussing the state of my vagina too. I forced a smile and a dry laugh and pinched my mother lightly. She smirked at me and ushered me into the living room.

My brother wasn't the only person who couldn't make it. Jae-young had returned to Seoul to find a job and Andy had dropped a computer monitor on his toe and broke both.

“Where's Tina?” I asked, looking around the room.

“She be here. She not come, but she hear you come so she drive here now.”

Everyone in the family has a reputation. Yoon-chong's the artistic one, my aunt is the dry cleaner, my brother is the fat one, my father is the chemist and the one who moved to the States first, my mother is the loud one and also the one who had cancer, and I'm the one who lives in New York and apparently has the largest breasts in the world. Tina is considered the sweetest member of the family. We are opposites in personality, but she's pleasant and innocuous and speaks English and Korean fluently.

“ANNIE! OH, OUR ANNIE HAS ARRIVED!”

I whipped my head around. It was Tina and Andy's mother, my father's youngest sister, also known as the spoiled one and the one that gave me peanuts for Christmas.

“Hello!” I greeted and bowed to her. “Happy New Year!”

“You look different.”

“No, I'm the same.”

“You sure? You look…bigger.” My aunt looked at my mother for confirmation.

“No, I'm the same, Aunt. You're the one who looks different.”

There was something about my aunt that didn't look right. Through her blue-tinted glasses, I could see something unusual about her eyes, the shape maybe.

“She got plastic surgery,” my mother whispered quickly to me. “Say thank you.”

“Thank you for the peanuts,” I said in Korean, “They are very…they are…” my mother nudged me “…there're so many of them….” another nudge. “You are too generous. I love peanuts, they're so…” nudge “healthy.”

My aunt smiled and reached over to tousle my hair but stopped in mid-air. She let out a squawk.

“What happened to your hair?”

“Nothing.”

“She got it cut. It's too short, doesn't it look horrible?” my mother said, exasperated. I glared at her. Woman
,
I thought, you're supposed to be on my side.

“It'll grow out, don't worry,” my aunt consoled me.

“I
like
my hair.”

“Shh, it's OK, it'll grow out.”

My father's oldest brother is in his sixties, but he seems much older. He sat in a chair and waved to me and grinned. He has a lot of gold caps on his teeth, and they gleamed under the unflattering
halogen lighting. I bowed. He nodded and returned his attention to the TV. A Korean bank heist movie.

My father's youngest brother, the host of the party, approached me but stopped four feet away. He stared at me, his shiny black eyes looking me over slowly. I greeted and bowed to him. He didn't even blink.

“Is that Annie? Our Annie. Look at our Annie,” he said to no one in particular.

“Happy New Year, Uncle.”

“How's New York? Cold?”

“Yes. Very cold.”

“Snow?”

“Not yet, but it's coming.”

“You look…”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I'm the same.”

I heard the voices of my cousins in the kitchen and I managed to escape the living room. I always thought Yoon-chong—the artistic one—was the coolest in the entire family. When we were growing up, she drew caricatures of our family members. Naturally, my favorite was the one of my mother, done in colored pencil. She is wearing one of her favorite black dresses and her chest, rear, and hips are exaggerated. One of her hands is placed at her waist, and the other is waving an index finger in the air, as if she's scolding someone. Her mouth is opened extra-wide, with spit flying out, and her eyes are bulging red in anger. To this day, I've never shown the picture to my mother; Yoon-chong had made me promise. Yoon-chong's little sister Yoonmi is a former classically trained dancer. When she talks, she sounds just like a little girl. Her voice always rises at the end of sentences, making her statements sound more like questions. She got married a few years ago and has a three-year-old daughter whose American name is Stella. She and her husband
had wanted to name her Soma because they wanted a name associated with the heavens, but I quickly squashed that idea. “Soma,” I explained, “is a sleeping pill.” I suggested Stella instead. Woo-jay, the youngest in their family, is a mystery to me. We have very little in common, even though we're three years apart. From what I understand, Woo-jay likes cars and girls and that's pretty much it.

The kids sat in the kitchen, away from the adults, and entertained little Stella while we waited for dinner. She is adorable, with gigantic pigtails and a winning smile. Several relatives told me that Stella reminded them of me when I was her age. Like Stella, I was chatty and affectionate, and like Stella, I was spoiled. She is currently the only grandchild in the entire Choi family and for twenty-five years, I was the youngest. We both get a lot of attention.

When Tina arrived, I gave her a hug and she sat next to me, as she always does for New Year's dinner. Over the gigantic Korean feast, my cousins and I stuck to idle chitchat, talking about the weather and our jobs at the most superficial level, often combining both Korean and English into sentences so the other person could understand. Each year, their English gets a little better, but my Korean stays the same. Tina stepped in with translations from time to time. My aunt passed me a plate of vegetarian wontons she prepared just for me. I thought of Mike and wondered if he'd eat vegetarian wontons. He doesn't consider vegetables food.

My aunt poured everyone a few tablespoons of the finest kosher wine this side of the Dead Sea and we raised our glasses to the New Year. The hosts wished us all good luck, prosperity, and some other stuff I didn't quite understand. I drained my glass and longed for more. From my spot in the kitchen, my eyes settled on my mother's full wine glass on the dining room table. Then, something else caught my eye. I noticed my father slowly unbuckle his belt and unbutton his pants. They were too tight and his belly
was quickly filling up with Korean food. I nearly had a heart attack. I imagined a horrific scene where he stood up and his pants fell down to reveal his underwear with built-in ventilation, all at the dinner table. A preemptive strike was necessary. I walked over to him and stared at him hard. Then I stared at his pants. He was busted. He grinned sheepishly.

“Don't even think about it. Keep your pants on,” I whispered.

During dinner my father had everyone gather around. I raised my eyebrows at my mother. She shrugged. She didn't know. My father can be spontaneous.

“I have a riddle for everyone,” he announced.

Half the relatives groaned. The other half perked up at the challenge.

“There once was a man, and he wanted to go to the store. So he did. He went to the corner store. You know, the corner store? A little store? They have candy and chocolate. Cigarettes, stuff like that, not a lot of stuff. It's not like a grocery store or a supermarket. Not like in America. This was in Seoul, near where we all—well, most of us—grew up. And there was another man in the store. He was behind the counter. An old man, sitting there, or maybe he was standing. And the first man he wanted to buy some cigarettes. Maybe some milk. Or juice. He was thirsty because he was working all day in the fields. He's a farmer. The farmer wanted some cigarettes, maybe some Marlboros…”

I looked around and saw the faces of my relatives glaze over with a brutal combination of Korean food coma and the longest preamble to a riddle in modern history.

“…and the cigarettes cost…how much are cigarettes now, one thousand won?”

Woo-jay, the smoker, shook his head. “Two thousand won.”

“Wow, two thousand? I remember when they were cheaper. They were practically free and everyone smoked. People still
smoke anyway, but two thousand won? That's too much. Woo-jay, you should really stop smoking…”

“The riddle, get to the riddle,” someone said.

“So the man, the farmer, he wants a pack of cigarettes and some milk, or juice. Maybe some orange juice. Or some fruit, maybe some persimmons. The man behind the counter, he owns the store, he bought it from another man several years ago…”