Wednesday, April 3,
2002.
Number of weeks until I'M A DADDY! ... SIX ! !
CHASING GIRLS
This past weekend I set up my K-pop Aerobic Exercise Station.
I tried to save myself $30 and bought one of the the cheaper TVs at Best Buy. The very next day, after losing the receipt, I ended up having to spend fifty dollars more for an adaptor and connector cables just so it would work with our DVD player. The Best Buy guy was helpful with the adaptor thing but said, "You really should buy a better TV."
The basement set up is awesome. I can now do one of my favorite things, watch my favorite k-pop videos every day, while doing the thing I like the least, that is, running. I might just run twice a day now! ( ... I don't think so though).
I had actually just finished running, when I heard unfamiliar footsteps coming down the stairway.
My Korean-Brazilian cousin, Long Round, had made an unexpected visit.
I haven't talked about my cousins since I met them because there has just been too much family drama.
VERTIGO and DRAMA, MINE
Basically, my mom and my older cousin, Long Round (23), have not been getting along. At. All.
For several weeks, I had been hearing stories from my mom about how awful and mean and disrespectful the oldest cousin always was to her. My heart sank each time she told me of some new insult, in action or word. I wanted to like them. They were my only cousins. My only blood-related family outside of my mom and my brother. But hearing how bad he turned out to be, and how he had betrayed me by mistreating my mother ... well, that made me quite mad.
Eventually I went to her house to talk with the oldest cousin. He didn't know I was mad at him, and he was happy to see me. I listened to him pour his heart out for the first time about all this. He was young, independent, and he spoke up for himself. There were frequent misunderstandings between him and my mom. His English is not good. And my mom's Korean is lacking after barely speaking it for decades. But still, maybe he was tricking me.
The turning point came when my mom came home. She immediately went into a rage. Not at my cousins, for "they had been good that day." But at me. For "interfereing." For just talking to my cousin. She went absolutely nuts. She was yelling about family history and adoptions and God knows what until my ears were hurting.
At one point, she pointed at my oldest cousin, and said, "SEE! He's looking at me like I'm crazy! Like I'm a beggar! Right now!"
I was looking at him the whole time and asked if THAT look was the look she meant. She said yes! Right now!
The world turned upside down in that moment. It was like in a movie when you suddenly realize that the point of view of the narrator had fooled you until the very end.
That look on my cousin's face was his everyday look.
The look on my mom's face showed me the true face of the situation though. I'd seen that face before, when I was a teen.
She kept ranting and I just collapsed into a chair then. It all hit me at that point. Her stories, her paranoia, her feelings of being poor, her insecurity of being a "short Oriental woman that people were always taking advantage of in this country," as she always said when we were small ourselves, her THEM against US talks. I never knew who "THEM" were. But I realized now that everyone was "THEM" to my mom.
I recalled how much my mom distrusted Amy the first several years I was with her. Crazy paranoid things. For instance, Amy gave my mom a scarf as a birthday present once. My mom thought it was a veiled threat to her to "go on a trip and not come back" or "to choke herself." Amy never got her a birthday gift again.
When we were in high school, my brother and I were always verbally fighting with our mom. It would never stop. Once high school ended, I was so glad to move out of there for good. My brother was too.
But now, it all came back in one giant spinning vortex around me. Everything she said about my cousins, she had said about us in one rage or another, when we were younger. And here I was, believing things from my mom's skewed point of view the whole time. Ready to crucify my cousin on the basis of my mom's paranoid delusions.
I've never been nicer to my mom as I was that night. I've never spoken so softly or patiently in the face of all of her fury. But I realized I couldn't connect with her anymore while she was like that. There was no point in fighting or talking anymore. I left.
NO MORE CHOCOPIES
Long Round pointed to the treadmill I was standing on,
"Is this new? Why?"
"Yeah," I said, "I just got it. My cholesterol. It's too high, like my dad. No more chocopies."
I hadn't seen him in over a month or two, it seemed like a really long time. Ever since the problems at home, I'd been avoiding my cousins. I wanted to do more for them, but I couldn't because of my mom. I didn't want to take sides. Even though I truly believed they were the innocent ones in this scenario.
"Is that FinKL, haha?" he asked pointing to the TV.
"Yeah, that's Yuri of FinKL. I'm alternating them with BabyVOX," I said.
We went upstairs.
I asked how things were at home with my mom. The same, he said as he shook his head.
We talked like we did the first few times he was over a couple months ago. About video games, and movies, and American expressions, and girls.
"What does 'foxy' mean?" he asked out of the blue.
I laughed, "Well, it means sexy, at least in the '70s it did."
"Ah. In Brazil, we say 'that girl is CAT' if she is sexy," Long Round shared.
"Cat? Really? That's pretty neat."
"And if it's a guy that all the girls go after, we say 'that guy is TIGER' in Brazil," he added.
One of the Brazilian fighters in the video game Tekken is named "Tiger" as well. He's the one character that Long Round can consistently beat my ass with when we play against each other.
Long Round started talking about Brazil again. How he had his own place. His own car. His own job. Friends. He's made some new friends here, he told me. Some from church, some from the gym. All different nationalities actually.
He told me about his one Korean friend here. How his friend made $50,000 by selling some illegal Diablo 2 items on ebay for a couple months. How he has bought, copied, and returned over fifty games from the same computer store.
"I could never copy and return games like that. That's just embarrassing," I replied.
"He has all these different gaming systems, like you," Long Round continued,
"Oh! And he likes Korean music, but he doesn't like to download it. He likes to have CDs instead. Like you again. Hahha!" he laughed.
He sounds like a funny guy, I told Long Round. Sounds like the chaotic version of lawful me, that is.
Two months ago, I would have been quite jealous hearing about his new friends. Really. But now, I am glad he has his own friends. Since I can't be the friend I would want to be, because of the whole situation with my mom.
Sometimes there has to be rules. And loyalty. Even if it just feels wrong.
FINAL ROUND
"Let's play," he said pointing to my Tekken game on Playstation 2.
I hadn't touched that game since the last time he was over, back then. (I've been playing Virtua Fighter 4 instead.)
I put in my Lee Jung Hyun CD then.
"This is my favorite Ee Jung Hyun song, Pan," I said. Pan means "half" in Korean.
"She's freaky. Hahaha! This song is very popular in Korea too," Long Round laughed.
"I know."
The game wasn't quite the same as before. Both of us weren't trying too hard, and I had forgotten a lot of the moves and timing.
He wasn't trying fancy tricks or being cocky like last time. I didn't mercilessly combo-kick his cockiness across the screen like I would have last time.
He paused after the first round, and turned,
"We are leaving this month ... in twenty days."
We talked about their plans. The whole disaster living with my mom gave both cousins heartaches and headaches. I told him how I really couldn't help or let him stay with us because of my mom, and he said he knew that already. I wanted to, though.
"Have you ever been to Brazil?" he asked.
"No ... but it sounds fun. I bet the weather is better than here. Michigan sucks."
"When we go back to California, you should visit us there," he offered.
"Okay!"
"One more match, then I have to go," Long Round said.
"... okay."
I had recalled the moves and reflexes I forgot in our short time playing. Just like in the college arcades, I took it easy on him. Making "big mistakes" and leaving openings in my defense intentionally in order to keep the matches even and last longer.
In the middle of the match, he stopped and asked me when am I going to Korea again.
"I don't know. Not for awhile, I guess. With work and the baby and all. That's okay though. I'm only on Chapter 6 of my language book anyways," I told him. I haven't been drawing or studying Korean for months practically.
Why bother, I've been asking myself.
He had found some Korean-teaching classes at his church for me, he said. The classes only had 3 or 4 people in them. And children at that.
"Fine by me," I said and laughed.
"What do you like about Korea?" he asked.
"I ... I don't know. It's exciting. Relaxing. Different. I like seeing the people there. The way the city is a combination of new tech and old temples. The traditions. The costumes and music ...." I said awkwardly as if trying to describe a dream I had purposely tried to forget.
"You feel like you belong?" he said pointing to the Korean decorations in my room.
"I know ... I know I can never really fit in there --" I said framing my very non-Korean face with my hands.
"But you feel it in your heart," he stated as fact while pointing to his own.
"Yeah," I smiled as he understood me despite me. We started our half-hearted fighting match again.
Then my dancing fingers got carried away on the attack buttons with the rhythm of the game and I finished him off reflexively with a sweeping kick. Ending the final match early before realizing what I had done.
He got up and wrote down our home and cell phone numbers. Said he'd call before they left.
He hesitated outside the doorway. I could've hugged him. I wanted to help. At 23, he shouldn't have to be so lost, and put out by people who are supposed to be his family.
I said, "Make sure you call me!"
He nodded and smiled, "Thank you for talking with me" and ran off to his car.
I shut the door and realized then that he had never used his favorite and best character while playing that night - the Brazilian fighter named "TIGER" with the breakdance-like capoeira routines. The one he could beat me with easily most times. I thought I was taking it easy on him. But he was doing the same to me.
The computer fighters on the screen continued to fight each other in demo mode. But I'd had enough.
I turned the game off.
And picked up my Korean language book.
"Just trust me halfway,
Just come after me halfway."- lyrics from "Half" by Lee Jung Hyun (above).
