Ten Thousand Sorrows
by
Elizabeth Kym


TEN THOUSAND SORROWS

by Elizabeth Kim

A DOUBLEDAY BOOK

First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2000 by Doubleday

First published by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc."  New
York, in 2000

Copyright 2000 by Elizabeth Kim

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transnitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in Publication Entry

Kim, Elizabeth.

Ten thousand sorrows.

ISBN 1 86471046 2.

1. Kim, Elizabeth.  2. Korean American women--Biography.  5. Korean
Americans--Biography.  4. Racially mixed people--United
States--Biography.

5. Racially mixed children--Korea--Biography.  6. Orphans
Korea--Biography.

7. Women--Abuse of--Korea.  8. Fundamentalism--Biography.  9. Seoul
(Korea) Biography.  10.  California, Southern--Biography.  I. Title.

975.0049570092

Transworld Publishers, a division of Random House Australia Pty Ltd 20
Alfred Street, Milsons Point, NSW 2061

Random House New Zealand Limited 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland

Translation of "Arirang" from I-4m the Clay, by Chaim Potok.

Copyright 1992 by Chaim Potok.

Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House,
Inc.

"Song of the Nations" by Edna St.  Vincent Millay.  From Collected
Poems, HarperCollins.  Copyright 1956, 1984 by Norma Millay Ellis.  All
rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, Literary Executor.

The names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals in
this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

Book design by Dana Leigh Treglia Printed and bound by Griffin Press,
Netley, South Australia I kiss your face a thousand times Again, again,
again.

I close your eyelids, smooth your hair And fold your gentle hands.

Butterfly wings that beat Against the domed ceiling of this life
Flutter free now in the open air.

And I will whisper this truth Into the viewless winds:

I love you.  I love you.  I love you.

My heartfelt thanks to Gary Klien for the integrity of his fine
writer's mind and the constancy of his support; to Catherine Hedgecock,
Lawr Michaels, Paul Cannon, Gracie Doyle, and Stephen Calnan for their
encouragement and loving counsel to my agent, Patti Breitman, who
believed in this book long before I did; to my editor at Doubleday, Amy
Scheibe, for her insight and thoughtfulness; and to Dr, tloberta
Seifert, for her wisdom and calm guidance on my journey through the
darkness.

There is no way to fully express the depths of my love and admiration
for my darling daughter.  She saved my life and gave me a reason to
live.  She is the most brilliant and beautiful woman imaginable.  Omma
would have adored her.

rolo the

I don't know how old I was when I watched my mother's murder, nor do I
know how old I am today.

There is no record of my birth, or of my name.  There is no record of
my mother's brief life.  No certificate records her death at the hands
of her brother and father in an "honor killing."

This memory: the rustle of her gown.

This memory: the incense in her hair.

This memory: she lifts me off the ground holds tight and swings me,
laughing, through the air.

I rage inside the dark and call her name;

I hide inside the dark and close my eyes.

The winter of my life is frozen pain;

the longing for my mother never dies.

On the night Omma died, it seemed as if the Land of Morning Calm held
its breath in disbelief at the horror visited upon its children.  The
gusty December wind stopped blowing and the bitter cold settled down,
unmoving, in our little house.  The air was thin and brittle.

Omma prepared a special dinner of bean curd in chili and garlic with
our usual rice and kimchi, and quince tea.  She was more animated than
usual, and talked to me as if I were a grown woman and an equal, not
her small child.  Her crumpled silk skin looked feverish, and her eyes
darted to and fro as she talked.

Omma told me that somewhere in the world it would be possible for me
to become a person.  She explained her Buddhist belief that life was
made up of ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, and all of them
were stepping-stones to ultimate peace.

She said nothing ever truly ended, not even life.  Everything continued
in a pattern of night to day, dark to light, death to rebirth.

Omma said honor was found in following one's heart, not in other
people's rules.  She talked about power.  It might be possible for a
woman--even a nonperson--to have power, she said.

When dinner had been cleared away and the floor swept, Omma filled the
large, blackened iron pot with water and put it on top of the heating
pit until it was comfortably warm.  She bathed me carefully and quickly
so I wouldn't get cold, then dressed me in a clean hanbo/z, an
ankle-length cotton skirt with a short, wrapped bodice.  She brushed
and braided my long, curly dark hair, which usually was covered with a
white scarf.  She handed me a folded piece of rice paper covered in
fine writing and said that before first light the next day I was to
leave the village by the dirt pathway, carrying the paper, until I
found someone on the main road to show it to.  Bewildered but
accustomed to obedience, I simply nodded.

Omma grabbed me fiercely and crushed me to her body, pouring out a
torrent of love in whispers.  She told me over and over how precious I
was, how beautiful and perfect.  She told me she valued my life more
than her own.  She told me I was her beloved.

Omma released me and pushed me a few inches away, then told me to step
inside the large, woven bamboo basket beside our bed, which we used for
storage space.

"Whatever happens, be absolutely silent, and remain here until just
before first light," she said.  Eyes fixed on her face, I obeyed
silently, crouching down in the basket.  Darkness descended as she
closed the lid.

As the next hour or so wore on I sat cross-legged in the basket,
watching the candle flame flickering through the slats of bamboo and
seeing slivers of Omma as she sat motionless in front of the little
wooden Buddha.  Her sonorous chanting filled the room, the pure sound
rising and failing.  I waited, wide awake, tense and afraid.

The candle had burned low and the room was in twilight darkness when
hurried steps outside sliced through the quiet, and voices filled the
room.  I was aware of a confused tangle of noise and movement and I
pushed my face toward the slats, adjusting my view through the
half-inch-wide gaps so I could better understand what was happening.

I recognized the voice of Omma's stern-faced father, a village elder
who had never once spoken directly to me.  I recognized the voice of
Omma's eider brother, a loud young man who was an important village
leader.

Both had done an unprecedented thing that afternoon: They walked up to
Omma as she was working in the rice field and spoke to her.  We were
working quickly, trying to keep ourselves as warm as possible.  I
straightened up for a moment, aware that someone was coming, and was
amazed to see my grandfather and uncle walking toward us.  Since they
were elders in the village, I knew this was a momentous occasion.  Omma
stood up, rubbed her tired back, then bowed and waited silently for
them.

The men did not bow but began speaking immediately in clipped tones.
All three kept their voices low, so I didn't know what was being said,
but I watched from a distance as they talked.  All looked angry; my
mother looked at the men with contempt.

None of them bowed when the conversation was finished.

And now these men were crowded into our tiny home.  With them was the
young wife of Omma's brother.  She didn't speak, and her head remained
bowed.  The men were wearing the high

6 7 net hats that marked their importance as village leaders.

Omma's father was a swarthy, barrel-chested man with a stern slit of a
mouth and deeply etched lines down his cheeks.  Her brother was taller
and lighter-skinned.  Omma's sister-in-law was wearing a stiffly
starched white hanbok.

Omma's brother did all the talking.  He told her the family had
discussed the matter again since presenting demands to her that
afternoon in the field, and he, his father, and his wife were there to
carry out the plan.  A family had offered to take the honhyol--me--into
their home as a servant.  They had seen me at work in the rice fields
and decided I was now old enough to be useful around the house and also
to be betrothed.  The people making the offer planned to fill two needs
at once: Add a servant to their home and find a future wife for a young
man in their employ.

From the impassioned demands of Omma's brother, it appeared a sum of
money had also been promised.  Though they held respectable positions,
our relatives were poor, as was everyone in the village, and the chance
of reaping a financial windfall and ridding themselves of the family's
shame---all in one move---must have seemed like an incredible piece of
luck.

Omma remained kneeling before the altar.  She didn't move a muscle, but
her voice was steel.

She told the men that her feelings hadn't changed since the
conversation in the fields, and that she would never sell her daughter
into slavery Her brother told her that a female honh2.ol was already
less than a slave, and elevating such a one to the status of a servant
would be a move up in the world.  He told her the family who wanted to
buy the honh)ol was respectable and the opportunity was more than
either Omma or her nonperson child deserved.

Another thing her brother made clear in his didactic tone was that the
people who were making the offer insisted on Omma's approval, or no
bargain would be struck.  They were willing to buy a servant, but they
were not willing to go against the wishes of the mother.  Approving the
transaction would go far in expunging the family's shame and also in
reconciling Omma's family to her.

My mother didn't move from her kneeling position before the Buddha as
she gave her final word.  No matter what the offer might be or how
badly the family wanted her to accept, it couldn't be done for one
simple reason: Her child was gone.  She told them that she had sent her
daughter away to save her from the family's plan and that the child was
in hiding where they'd never find her.

Omma's brother took two steps forward and slapped her with such force
that she fell over and the small wooden Buddha toppled to the floor.
Flecks of spit flew from his mouth as he told her she was filth, beyond
all redemption, and that because of her unrepentance there was only one
recourse left.

He yanked her off the floor by her hair and told his wife to tie Omma's
hands and feet.  Omma didn't resist, and kept her eyes closed, chanting
under her breath to the compassionate Buddha.  Her white hanbok was
smudged with dirt, but the blue sash was still tied in perfect
asymmetrical neatness across her chest.  Her hair had come loose from
its twist and tumbled down her back in a pure, shining stream.

In the bamboo basket, I fought to keep my breathing still, as my teeth
met through my lower lip and the blood poured down my chin.

Over the strong, age-blackened beam in the corner of the room,
grandfather threw a rope.  He said nothing, and kept his lips pressed
tightly together.  The two men worked quickly, fashioning a noose and
slipping it over Omma's bowed head.  As they

pulled the rope taut, my mother rose in the air until all I could see
through the bamboo slats were her bare feet, dangling in midair.  I
watched those milk-white feet twitch, almost with the rhythm of the
Huzaguaan-mu dance, and then grow still.  They seemed to stretch, the
toes pointing straight down to earth as if she was going to pirouette
on their tips.

I didn't realize that I had stepped out of the bamboo basket.

I was unaware of the tears and blood dripping off my face.  I could see
nothing but my beloved Omma suspended between heaven and earth.  I ran
to the white, limp feet and covered them with kisses.  I called for my
mother until I had no breath left.

I remembered the others in the room only when I felt rough hands grab
me and pin me down on the altar.  Her brother cursed and said that even
when facing death, Omma lied to them.  And now, he said, they had to
deal with the evil thing she left behind.

He ordered his wife to hold my arms still, and his father did the same
with my legs.  His father had not spoken at all; his wife spoke for the
first and last time in that place, asking the men to spare my life and
promising she would get rid of me the next day.  Her husband spat
before replying.  He reminded her that I was nothing--not a person, and
not worth any feelings.

He ripped off my clean harzbok, grabbed the matches from the altar, and
lit the first one.  He forced my legs apart and held the flame to my
flesh.

The agony was so intense it blotted out thought and left nothing but
pinwheels of white fire in my view.

In the Confucian village where I lived with Omma, filial piety was the
supreme virtue.  Ancestor worship was a way of life, and obedience to
elders was absolute and unquestioned.  To rebel against the word of an
elder was to invite social censure of enormous magnitude.

Women were at the very bottom of the hierarchy and existed only to
serve men and to give birth to men.

Their voices were supposed to be soft; their eyes downcast; their
spirits quiescent.  Their role was not to think but merely to obey.  To
disobey a male relative--especially an older one--was unthinkable.

iI In that clearly ordered world, I believe, Omma was a prot3.

lem from her childhood on.  She rejected Confucianism, announcing she
had converted to Buddhism.  But she really crossed the line of
disobedience when she told her parents she wanted no part of an
arranged marriage--something most Korean women simply accepted.

The few times she talked about herself to me, Omma made it clear that
she had done nothing for which she was ashamed.

She was a free, creative spirit who struggled for expression.  Her
restless mind must have seemed threatening and dangerous to her family
and neighbors.  Her dreams didn't come true, but she was true to them.
She didn't berate herself for anything in her life, she simply accepted
the way the wheel of fate had turned.

I absorbed my mother's sense of acceptance and spent most of my life
believing that everything that happened simply was the way it was
supposed to be, for good or ill.  To rail against fate was senseless;
the only thing to do was accept what one was given in life.

But as she was growing up she enraged the village elders and shocked
the women with her rebellious ways and heretical ideas.  Her grim-faced
father beat her and her shrill mother screamed at her, but nothing
changed her.  Inside she seethed and schemed and planned her escape.
Her family reminded her again and again of her duties as a daughter,
and threatened her with the most dire of consequences: complete
estrangement from the family and the village.  If she brought dishonor
on the family, she would be considered dead to them--not a daughter any
more, not even a person.  The threat was made daily, and Omma shrugged
her graceful shoulders and continued to work in the rice paddies.

In her gentle way, she was a rebel.  She longed for the city, for
electric lights, for laughter and conversation.  She chafed against the
narrow confines of her life.  And always, lit from within with the glow
of hope, she dreamed of love.

In that strict Confucian culture, girls remained with their mothers
until they were married and then became like slaves to their
mothers-in-law.  Women waited their entire lives for their
mothers-in-law to die and their sons to marry, so they could dominate
someone else and continue that mindless cycle of cruelty.

A woman was irrevocably dishonored if she committed any of the chilgo
chi ak or seven evils:

Disobeying her in-laws Bearing no son Sexual looseness Being jealous
Carrying a hereditary disease Talking too much Stealing

Men had no such rules.

Eventually Omma ran away from her home and went to Seoul.  She wanted
to be a singer.  Her high voice quavered expertly over the Korean
five-note scale, and in her dreams she was a hisaeng of old,
entertaining the nobility and astonishing everyone with her talent and
beauty.  In those dreams she left the village--and its suffocating
patriarchal rules and dull Complacency--far behind.

"When the chance came, she didn't hesitate.  Somehow, perhaps from her
work in the rice fields, she had finally saved enough money for the
train ride.  So long before dawn she packed

her good hanbo/ dress and a few other necessities in a neatly tied
square of cloth and headed down the worn path that led away from the
village.

Seoul was immense.  But Omma was not easily intimidated, and she soon
found work and a small circle of acquaintances.  In the humble noodle
house where she dished up bowls of uaeng rn)on in cold broth, she
became friends with a regular customer.

He was from America, a place that seemed as remote as the moon.  In
broken Korean, supplemented with a dictionary, he told her about his
family, his home, and his duties as a soldier.  He gave her a tiny
American flag and told her it meant that where he lived, everyone was
free.  He played jazz records for her.  And he knew far more about her
land than she did.  He told her about the recent armistice that ended
the Korean War and divided the country.

To Omma, starved for knowledge and conversation, he was without equal.
She was fascinated, and soon she was in love.  Like so many other women
of her age and station, my mother hoped that this soldier would be
different from others: He'd keep her with him, even in America; he'd
never leave her.

But he did leave, and Omma's quick, high-arched step became slow and
shuffling; her lilting voice became hoarse and dull; and soon her body
became unwieldy.  When it was obvious she was with child, she lost her
job and had no prospect of getting another one.  There was only one
thing to do: return to the village, carrying in front of her the
unmistakable badge of her shame.

She was oblivious to everything but the magnitude of her loss, the
inconsolability of abandonment.  Nothing her father or the village
could say or do would hurt her; every fiber of her being was already
unadulterated pain.

She was pregnant, carrying a GI's child.  She was destitute and
desperate.  She had been nothing when she left the village;

she was less than nothing now.  A nonperson carrying a nonperson,
without hope and bowed down with shame.

On the day of Omma's return to the village, most of its inhabitants
were out in the fields.  She walked into a hut she knew to be empty on
the outskirts of the village--no one wanted to live there because it
was remote and cramped--and began cleaning it up.  She was beyond
caring what would happen; all she wanted to do was rest.  When people
returned from the day's work, word spread quickly that the village's
firebrand was back.

But while no one offered hostility at first, no one offered welcome
either.  She was tolerated but not embraced.  Her family wouldn't visit
her.  Whatever friends she may have had couldn't risk the disgrace of
being seen with her.  From that moment on, she remained on the
periphery of village life.  No one said anything when she quietly
returned to her old place in the rice field.

No one spoke to her at all.

I don't know how Omma managed when the time came for my birth.  Perhaps
the village midwife decided to ignore Omma's dishonorable status in
return for payment.  Perhaps Omma was left to her own devices.  At any
rate, I was born healthy.  Omma now had a child and an ally.  Now there
was someone who didn't care about her status or her past sins.  There
was someone who needed her, loved her, and wanted to spend every moment
with her.

Probably within a few days after my birth, Omma was back in the rice
fields.  There was no long period of convalescence, no doting relatives
to pamper her.  She bundled me up in a cotton sling carried against her
chest and went back to work.

I was her constant companion, and when I got old enough I worked by her
side.  We earned just enough rice for us to eat and to trade to take
care of our most basic needs.

14 5 from time to time we stopped our work and stretched our aching
backs, hands on hips, shoulders shrugging and releasing, fingers
flexing.  From the fields we could see the village in the distance,
looking small and insubstantial against the austere beauty of the
mountains.

The village existed for one purpose: to grow rice.  Everyone depended
on each other to get the job done.  The rice field served the whole
village and beyond, and everything centered around it.  It was the
lifeblood of the people there: for food to eat, for food to sell, for
the basic necessities of life such as coal for the heating pits and tea
and medicinal herbs.

The tiny village was breathtaking in its beauty: a verdant, lush valley
on the outskirts of Seoul, surrounded by Korea's mil lion mountains.
Visually, it was the embodiment of Korea's name: Land of Morning
Calm.

Around us were misty mountain peaks; spread out at our feet were
riotous fields of cosmos, azalea, and ginkgo.  Tender shoots of rice
stood like tiny emerald spears in their shimmering beds.

I was a small, dark-haired girl walking hand in hand with my Omma-down
the dusty road from the rice fields back to our small cottage.  The top
of my head came about to her waist, and as we walked along I looked up
repeatedly to catch a glimpse of one of her tiny, brief smiles.  It was
a journey we made every day, after hours of standing barefoot in the
soggy fields where we planted, tended, and harvested the precious
rice.

When we were alone on the road, Omma let me stop to add to my frothy
bouquet of lavender and red

cosmos, which would be arranged in a ceramic kimchi pot and put on our
tiny altar.

At dusk, with the mountains rising ahead of us, we trudged on tired
feet, mine dragging as I tried to keep up with Omma.

She stared straight ahead, her head wrapped in a white scarf, her
hanbok dress muddied.  I was her shadow, staying close beside her,
keeping my face as expressionless as hers.  The air was crisp and
stinging, and I looked forward to the on dol--the small heating
pit--which was used both to keep our cottage warm and to cook the rice
for our meals.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.  Several people stood
outside one of the nearby cottages, raising tea bowls to their lips
after their long day's work.  The cups stopped midway.

The casual chatter was stilled.  There was silence, then I heard the
spitting begin.  I was the first to be hit by a pebble; I felt it sting
me in the back, below my shoulder blade.  I didn't cry, nor did I look
behind me.  Omma did not shield me.  We said nothing.

She squeezed my hand tighter and we walked on, a little more quickly
but still staring straight ahead, without any show of weakness.  The
next pebble hit me on the cheek, then a volley struck us both: back,
arms, legs, and faces.

The catcalls began: "horh)ol," a despicable name that meant nonperson,
mixed race, animal.  After each insult, the rock throwers would spit,
as if to cleanse their mouths of the word.

Once we passed the village proper, the rocks no longer reached us.  We
walked to our one-room home, on the outskirts of the village at the end
of the long dirt road, away from all the others.  The mountains, purple
before the setting sun, loomed ahead.  We kept our eyes on them and our
backs straight, walking without hesitation or misstep, until we were
inside.  Once safe behind our door, Omma caught me up in her arms and
era pulled me against her chest.  She wiped the blood from my cheek and
gently rubbed my bruised back, but said nothing about what had just
happened.

Bundled up, we made our dinner and took it outside, where we sat on the
far side of our tiny house, the rest of the village blocked from our
view.  We sipped scalding tea and ate our hot rice and spicy radish and
cabbage kimchi from ceramic bowls, as we watched the purple mountains
turn to black.

With my mother, a small bowl of rice lasted for many minutes, because
we ate slowly, with ceremony.  Omma ladled out the rice, then placed
the bowl in both hands and bowed to me.  I bowed back and accepted the
bowl, and we sat facing each other, taking slow bites of the rice and
then savoring the fragments of spicy kimchi.  Augmented with sips of
hot barley tea, meals with my mother were emotional banquets.

She would wait courteously for me to take the first bite, and often
she'd pick up an especially crisp morsel of white cabbage from the
kimchi bowl with her chopsticks and pop it in my mouth.  Sometimes I
tried to feed her, but I wasn't as skillful with chopsticks as my
graceful mother.  Nevertheless, she smiled at me and ate whatever I
gave her.

We ran that gauntlet on the dusty road over and over.  My mother never
spoke of it.  She never raised an arm to deflect the rocks, nor did she
shield my small body with her own.  It wouldn't have occurred to me to
ask.  As I look back, I believe she knew her death was approaching. She
knew she wouldn't be there to protect me.  She knew the price she paid
for giving birth to--and then keeping--a child with tainted blood.

And while she thought of herself as a rebel from her culture, in a very
Korean manner she prepared me the only way she knew: She stayed beside
me and shared my pain, but she forced me to face the situation with her
and to do it with my head held high and no tears on my cheeks.

omma never tried to comfort me by saying I was equal to the others. She
never said the problem was everyone else.  In fact, I think she
believed I was not equal to others.  Omma accepted that I was a
nonperson and that we were outcasts, but she loved me anyway.  We were
like two lepers living in a tiny colony of our own--we knew we were
diseased and couldn't mix with the rest of the world, but we created a
tiny haven of peace for ourselves.

In Asian culture, in which bloodline and honor are immensely important,
there has historically been an intolerance for mixed-race children.
National pride is deeply ingrained, and in Korea the intense love for
the country's heritage and traditions has its darker side of hatred for
anything that taints the purity of that heritage.

I don't remember feeling any resentment that Omma didn't shield me from
the rocks, nor do I remember feeling resentment that no one shielded me
from the rocks that came as I got older.

Having known nothing else, I just felt like that was the way it was
supposed to be.

Omma was a serious woman.  Once, I believe, she had been spirited and
mischievous, faint traces of that girl could still be seen from time to
time, but only when we were alone and playing or dancing together.  She
was in her early twenties, but there were lines around her eyes and her
shoulders were bent.

I rarely saw Omma smile, but when we stood together in the rice field
her tight mouth relaxed and her forehead smoothed as she watched me
work beside her.  When we walked through the field, my" feet stuck in
the squelching mud as I struggled to work as quickly and as smoothly as
my agile mother.  Omma stopped from time to time to help me along and
to adjust my scarf and hide my curly hair.  But there was no disguising
my face.  I could see Omma tremble when we were out in daylight
together; I could see the speculative looks of passersby sharpen into
contemptuous recognition as they realized what I was.

Omma was beautiful, at least in my eyes.  She had a waterfall of
straight black hair that grazed her hips and skin like slightly
crumpled silk.  She had a beautiful mouth, with delicately curved lips.
Her forehead was high and her nose small and finely molded.  Omma's
hands were strong and calloused, but she used them with the utmost
gentleness.  She smelled like woodsmoke and the incense she burned in
the evenings.  She was tall in comparison with other women in the
village, and unlike many of them she stood up very straight.  Her
bearing was gallant.

Omma's hair was straight; mine was curly.  My nose was a little bigger
than hers, my eyes a little rounder.  My skin was the same tanned
ochre.

She had great reverence for the natural world, and she taught me about
the magnificent plants that grew wild in our land, the forsythia and
rose of Sharon and the sacred lotus.  We loved them almost as much as
we loved the mountains that watched over us night and day.

In the evenings we sat outside our one-room house and watched the
mountains in silence.  Sometimes we sat side by side, but most often I
nestled between her knees and she held me lightly, rocking back and
forth as we gazed on the mountains.  I learned meditation in her gentle
arms, without a word of teaching being spoken.

I was a fairly quiet, introspective child.  Omma taught me everything
she could, from gardening and cooking to music and storytelling.  When
it was time to cook the rice, Omma measured it in her hand and then let
me measure it in mine.  When she checked to see if it was done, she
tasted a grain and then had me taste one.  When tasting the kimchi to
see if it was seasoned correctly she watched me test it, chewing and
nodding seriously if ] thought it had enough red pepper.

We had a small garden outside, where we raised radishes and green
onions and potatoes and cabbages and cucumbers.

Our tiny home had packed-mud walls, a thatched roof, and a neatly swept
earth floor.  In the corners were strong wooden beams.  It was one
room--a peasant's home, able to stand against the elements, with
nothing superfluous.  There, when the evening rice and kimchi had been
eaten and the bowls cleaned, we knelt before the wooden altar and
chanted to the Buddha of Mercy and Compassion.

The small wooden Buddha was one of the few things Omma brought back
with her from Seoul, and it was precious to her.

Before she began to chant, Omma's preparations were simple:

She took off her shoes and washed her face and hands.

I watched Omma chant and thought that no one in the world could be as
beautiful.  Her satin hair was freed from the scarf that she wore in
the fields, and it flowed down her back.  I loved Omma's hair.  I would
run my fingers through it, looping and playing with it.  I sometimes
came up behind her when she was kneeling at the altar and silently
tucked my head beneath the curtain of her black hair, pressing myself
against her back and feeling her hair tumble down over my own shoulders
and my own back.

Omma never scolded me for interrupting her meditation, but neither did
she leave her place at the altar.  She continued to chant or sit in
silent meditation, sometimes smiling at me and gently shaking her head,
kneeling with her back straight and her tiny feet just visible beneath
the hem of her hanbok.

Omma rarely let her hair fall free; most often she twisted it and put
it up on her head, holding it in place with a deft turn and a single
polished sliver of wood.  Her movements were spare and graceful and
achingly beautiful.  I sat on the bed and watched her as she lifted her
arms, the hanbok sleeves falling away from her fragile wrists, to put
up her hair.  Tendrils escaped first, then the whole heavy mass began
to slide, and she put it up again, over and over.

In the evenings, if she wasn't too tired, Omma sang "-ri rang and the
other folk songs I loved, and we danced together.

She taught me that a true musician relies on hung---her inner
inspiration--rather than on a prescribed formula, so I stood in one
corner of the room and concentrated, my eyes shut tight.  When I felt
the hung stir inside my small body, the bleak room and dirt floor
vanished.  Then in our imaginations we clutched our heavy satin skirts
and twirled across the endless marble floor in Hwagwan-mu, the
Flower-Crown Dance, with our crowns balanced perfectly on our sleek,
perfumed heads.  11 around us, music pulsed and the air was sweet with
night-blooming jasmine.  And finally, breathless, we collapsed in a
tangle on the bed, wearing our threadbare cotton hanboks, back once
again in the room with its dirt floor and bare walls, our hair flying
and the air around us thick with dust.

In her sweet, high warble, Omma sang:

Arirang, Arirang, 0/lrirang, The pass of Arirang is long and arduous,
But you will climb to the hilltop, Where the sun will always shine.

ri rang Arirang, 0 Arirang, The times in which we live are most
trying, To this thousand miles of river and mountains May peace and
prosperity come.

Omma made only a few dishes, but they were delicious.  Her kimchi was a
work of art.  She set cabbage to soak overnight in salt water, then
rinsed it three times the following day.  In massive ceramic pots she
layered the cabbage with slivered scallions, radish, garlic, and
ginger.  Over that she poured salt, water, and a palmful of powerful
red peppers.  To release the air, she poked around in the mixture with
chopsticks, then covered the containers and weighed them down with
rocks.  We buried them in the backyard until the vegetables fermented
and were ready to eat.

The result was glorious.

I don't recall ever eating meat with Omma--and I don't know whether
that was because we were too poor to buy the beef that Koreans love or
whether she chose vegetarianism for her own reasons.

Besides kimchi and rice, Omma sometimes made a spicy cucumber salad
with the requisite red chili peppers, vinegar, garlic, and green
onions, and a soup with bean threads and green onions--and whatever
other vegetables happened to be available at the time: maybe mushrooms
or carrots or green peppers.

In our house there were three pieces of furniture.

The wooden altar, which we polished every day, held a tiny statue of
Buddha and a picture without a frame, propped against a rock.  In the
picture was a young, smiling man wearing a uniform.

I had never seen anyone with clothing like that, or whose hair and eyes
were so light.  We never talked about the picture, but sometimes late
at night I woke up and saw Omma kneeling before the altar, rocking
gently back and forth, cupping the picture in her hands.

Across from the altar was our bed.  She kept me between the wall and
her own body, protecting me as best she could from the cold night air.
At night we slept, snuggled tightly together, nestled in precarious
warmth in our little cocoon, while the cold wind howled outside.

Beside the bed I shared with Omma was the large bamboo basket in which
we kept our treasures: a special hanbok she bought in Seoul before my
birth; a tiny piece of silk with red, white, and blue patterns that she
called "the stars and stripes";

and my precious cardboard village and stick people.

Omma had created an entire world for me with some old boxes and a few
sticks.  The sticks she whittled and polished and decorated with bits
of cloth.  The two primary characters were a mother and daughter, but
there were friends and neighbors, all with permanent, happy smiles
painted on their faces and colorful hanboks and trousers made out of
scrap cotton.  The cardboard buildings were all different: a palace
with large windows, cozy cottages, and a Buddhist temple.  In our
little play town, no one was sad or lonely.  People came every day to
visit our mother and daughter, and the entire village gathered at their
home for meals and dances.

On the ground behind our house Omma made mountains for the toy village:
She covered mounds of dirt with tiny twigs-creating a pine-covered
slope--and tiny petals represented fields of wildflowers.  Sometimes
the stick mother and child went for journeys over the mountain, and
each time the entire stick village gathered for a farewell party. There
was another party when the two returned, and our little creations
entertained their friends and neighbors with wonderful tales of the
magical lands over the mountains.

In that little cardboard world I was queen.  Anything was possible.

The stick people reenacted Ch'uinbyang-ga, in which a girl from the
country finds her Prince Charming in Seoul; and they danced in the dirt
to Salp'uri, freeing their spirits from trouble and anguish.

From Omma I learned folk stories that were handed down I'm sure, from
her parents and their parents before them.  Unlike Western folk
stories, there was never a "moral" to the tale--at least none that Omma
told me.  The only meaning a story had was the one you chose to take
from it.

My favorite was the story of the good brothers:

Two brothers once lived who loved each other dearly.  They took care of
each other and divided everything down the middle.

lJer harvest they put their rice in sacks, and the older brother
thought, "My younger brother just got married, so he has a lot to worry
about.  I'm going to put an extra sack of rice in his storeroom without
telling him, because he probably wouldn't accept it and I'm sure he
needs it more than me."

That night he tiptoed into his brother's storeroom and put the sack
there.

But the next day Older Brother found the same number of sacks of rice
in his house that he'd had before.  He couldn't understand it, but
decided to just take the sack of rice back to his brother's house.  He
did, and the next Morning was amazed to see the same number of sacks in
his house as before.

Now he was really confused, but he decided to try one more time.  It
was a full moon, and as he walked along the path he saw someone coming
toward him, carrying something on his back.  It was Younger Brother,
carrying a sack of rice.  They saw each other and began laughing,
finally understanding why the number of sacks stayed the same.  Younger
Brother had been bringing an extra sack to Older Brother, because he
loved him so much

We were poor, but I never knew it.  Omma's imagination created palaces
to dance in and different dresses of silk and brocade for us to wear
every night.  We had little food, but I didn't know I was hungry.  With
Omma, a bowl of rice Tas a banquet.  We were locked in isolation, but I
wasn't lonely.  In Omma I had mother, storyteller, playmate,
confidante, and defender.

On Mornings that we weren't working we sometimes went to the market to
buy tea and spices and vegetables.  Everyone was out and about on those
Mornings, doing their shopping, gossiping with friends, washing the
laundry.  No one in the village itself spoke to us, but with the gentle
courtesy that never deserted her, Omma continued to bow--and taught me
to do the same-whenever we met someone.  Sometimes, on the narrow dirt
pathway, we came face to face with members of Omma's family.

Without speaking or making eye contact, they pushed by as we left the
path to give them room.  And always, my mother bowed deeply, her body
eloquent with love and grief.  If they ever noticed, they made no sign,
and Omma waited until they were gone before she straightened up and
took my hand again.

Without passing any judgment on their behavior, Omma had told me who
everyone in the village was.  I knew my relationship to each person we
saw in the fields and on the path, and the fact that my
haraboji--grandfather--and my other relatives took no notice of me
concerned me very little.

In the evenings, when the others gossiped together and drank tea after
the day's work in the rice paddies, we stayed on the outskirts of the
village circle, sitting outside our own little home and playing our own
little games.  Omma told stories of a wonderful world beyond the
mountains, where there was always" enough food and it was warm all
winter long and there was, nothing to fear.

"Someday you'll leave this village," Omma told me.

"Someday you'll be a fine lady and everyone will speak to you and smile
at you."

"And you'll be with me, Omma," I answered, looking eagerly into the
beautiful, beloved face.  She didn't reply, but gathered me in her arms
and held me tightly, covering my dusty face with soft butterfly
kisses.

I don't remember much of the night after Omma's death.  It must have
been several hours later before conscious thought reasserted itself,
and I was aware of being huddled in a corner of our house,
whimpering.

My buttocks and vulva were in excruciating pain from the burns.

Omma's body was gone.  My relatives were busy packing up our few
belongings, and none of them spoke to me or even looked in my
direction.

I was dazed with misery, but I knew enough to keep as silent as
possible.

In a while my grandfather and uncle left the house, carrying the
basket and a couple of bundles.  My aunt put me into a wagon and set
off down the dirt pathway, pulling it behind her.  The wagon jostled me
painfully, but I dozed off and on until we arrived at an orphanage on
the outskirts of Seoul.

"She has no name," my aunt told the orphanage official.

"I

don't know her birth date or how old she is.  She's nobody.  She was
left to die by her mother, who committed suicide, and we found her." In
the orphanage I was given some first-aid salve and clean strips of
cloth to cover the burned flesh, but no one spoke of my wounds.

It was an old, familiar story in that post-Korean War society:

A girl brings disgrace on her family by having a child out of wedlock
and by an American soldier, and after a few years she can't bear the
dishonor and isolation of being an outcast and kills herself.
Mixed-blood children were often mistreated by people who hated them
because of their tainted heritage.  Many were abandoned by their
mothers and either entered a life of slavery or lived on the streets,
begging or stealing for food.  The people at the orphanage had seen it
all, and neither my physical condition nor the story told by my aunt
was anything new.

Being nameless was just one factor in my shame.  Names are so important
in Korean culture that the family often consults for time-tellers
before naming a child.  A child's name can shape the future, because it
brings good or bad luck with it.  The Korean family is based on the
male family line, and the family register contains the names of
paternal ancestors for over five hundred years.

Being without a birth date added another level of shame.  A Korean's
fortune depends in large part on saju--the year, month, day, and time
of birth.  An auspicious combination of the four can mean a charmed
life.

In a Korean's view, it would be better to be dead than to be the
embodiment of shame such as I was: a honh)ol, a female, nameless,
without a birth date.

My mother had, in my recollection, only called me Sooni, her own
private pet name for me.  The derivation was the Korean diminutive for
"little girl"--an appellation for a dearly loved, small child.  I
didn't tell the people at the orphanage that, nor did I tell them what
had really happened the night before.  I remained silent, too lost in
despair and too schooled in obedience to speak.

During the long trip from my home to the orphanage, my aunt had not
spoken to me.  She had interceded with her husband the night before to
spare my life, but I don't know why the decision was made to let me go
to an orphanage.  And if the villagers doubted the story my family
told--that a young woman, overcome at last with the magnitude of her
own sins, hanged herself and left her daughter to die--none of them did
anything about it.

A woman's life had little value anyway, so removing it for the greater
good of expunging a family's shame was a long-accepted practice.  Such
deaths were not murder, they were honor killings, and therefore
sanctified by tradition.

The orphanage was run by Christian missionaries, so it was there I was
given my first taste of Western religion.  The children were kept in
slatted cribs, one on top of another, four to a stack.  The cribs
looked much like animal cages at a shelter-four deep and lining three
walls of that large, stark room.  In all, there were probably twenty of
them.  They had latches on the outside that let the outer square of
slats drop down, but they couldn't be opened from inside.

I was accustomed to a great deal of physical freedom--days spent
working outside in the rice paddies or playing in the fields beyond our
house.  The only time I'd been confined to a small space was when I
watched from the bamboo basket as mother was killed.  The crib was
terrifying--not only because it was too small for me to move around
much but mainly because I wasn't able to get in or out of my own free
will.  Another person had control over my movements--a violation of the
human spirit I had never experienced before.

The walls of the room were white and dotted here and there with
pictures of Jesus.  The surfaces were all washable, the linoleum floor
bare.  I sat hunched in my cage--a kindergarten size child much too big
for the baby-size space--in a bewildered haze of misery.  When anguish
overcame me I slammed my head against the slats and screamed and pulled
my hair until someone came by and told me to be quiet.  Except for
accidental contact, I don't remember ever being touched in the
orphanage.

Directly across from my cage was the door.  I sat, hour after hour,
with my eyes focused on the crack around three sides of the door where
the light could be seen.  Sometimes the light dimmed for a moment and
then I knew that someone was about to open the door and come in.  I
held my breath, waiting for the door to swing in and a human being to
stand directly across from me.  I waited desperately for whatever faces
came into my view.

Beside the door was a roll-top desk, its top scarred and dull.

Inside were bundles of papers.  I was fascinated and terrified by that
desk.  From time to time a woman sat down there and pulled out a bundle
of papers, then shuffled through and made marks on them with a pen.
Almost immediately after, one of the children would be gone.  I didn't
know then that the bundles were adoption papers, but I knew they
connected in some way with the children there.  I wondered if I was
contained in that desk also, and if someday my bundle would be marked
on and I'd disappear.

For years, well into my adult life, I had recurring nightmares about
that desk.  I'd be walking past it, barefoot on a cold, hard floor. I'd
hear a sound like wind rushing through a tunnel and feel a magnetic
force sucking me inside.  I'd be pulled, helpless, underneath the
scarred roll-top and into the cubbyholes where the papers were stashed.
I'd find myself in a room with a dirt floor, strapped to a table, and
people would be standing around branding ugly names on my body with hot
irons.

In the orphanage, I watched people walk by and kept a nonstop fantasy
running in my head: I pretended I could reach out through the slats and
grab them and pull them to me and make them open the door and speak to
me and look in my face.

Sitting in the cage, nails dug deep into my skin, I tried to ameliorate
grief by increasing my physical pain.  And just below the awareness of
that misery, breathing rhythmically like a monster waiting to devour
me, was the knowledge that it was because of me Omma died.  My face and
my dishonorable blood had killed the only person I loved and the only
person who loved me.

The orphanage was overcrowded and understaffed, and there was no
comfort to be found there.  Everyone was an island of their own private
misery Every child was given one blanket, and it was supposed to be
kept clean and provide sufficient warmth.

Everyone was cold.  All the blankets were dirty.  The mattress in my
crib was old, cracked plastic that made crunching sounds when I moved.
It was covered in a cotton sheet patterned in faded orange flowers. The
crib was too small for me to stretch out completely, so I either stayed
curled up in a fetal position or sat hunched.

There was a surfeit of suffering, and one person's story was no worse
than another's.  There was the tiny girl, about two, who had been found
tied up by some people who were scavenging in a trash can.  She was
terribly emaciated and cried incessantly.

There was the newborn baby, still with umbilical cord intact.  dumped
on the front porch.  Because the cribs were all filled, he was given
some rudimentary medical care and then placed in the cage with me.  I
was told to watch him.  I was terrified for him, They had wrapped him
in one blanket, but I was afraid it wouldn't be enough to keep a baby
warm, so I put mine over him as well.  Then I just sat, pressed against
the slats, hugging my knees with my arms, and watched him throughout
the night.  I was so afraid that I might hurt him if I moved or fell
asleep.  I felt a huge weight of responsibility and longing for this
tiny life.

The next Morning I realized that despite my intentions, I'd dropped off
to sleep in the night.  I lifted the blanket and touched the baby's
face.  It was bluish and cold.  I unwrapped the blanket and touched his
arms, his feet, his bloated blood encrusted stomach.  I knew even
before the adult came by to check on him that he was dead.

I wept over and over for that baby.  I never knew where he came from,
but I thought of him as mine.  He was unwanted and nameless, like me.
He was completely helpless and at the mercy of others, like me.  I felt
as if saving his life would somehow atone for not being able to save my
mother's life.  And when he died I was sure it was because of something
I did or didn't do.  Maybe putting an extra blanket on him made him too
hot.  Maybe liftin the blanket in the Morning to look at him made him
too cold.

Aside from crying--which could be heard just about all the time coming
from one or more of the cribs--the orphanage was pretty silent. 
People didn't talk to each other; no music played.

There were a few children in the orphanage about my age, but most were
younger; many were babies.  All of us had physical characteristics that
branded us: curly or light hair, hazel irises or round eyes.  Each a
honhyol but taking no comfort from the others.  Despite the fact that
we lived in such close proximity, we never really got to know each
other.  I didn't play with the other children or even talk to them
much.  We were all locked in our own little miserable worlds, and we
sensed the competition between us.  Without really knowing what the
orphanage's purpose was or what adoption was, I knew I was vying with
the others for the approval of whatever adults might visit.  I knew
sometimes visitors liked a child so much that they took her away.

From time to time people walked through and examined the orphans,
either as prospective parents or as go-betweens lining up a child for
someone else to adopt.  Those visits were torture.  I held my breath,
willing visitors to stop at my cage and open the door.  I tried to look
pleasant and docile.  But people walked on past, usually going to a
younger child.  We had visitors every few days.  If you were a
childless couple and you didn't mind having an Asian son or daughter,
Korea was fertile ground at that time.  There were so many forgotten
children, the product of brief liaisons between soldiers on their way
through and women on their way to hell.

The one photo taken of me in the orphanage shows a bleak faced girl
with dank hair, skin swollen and blotched from crying.  y adoptive
mother later said I looked like a drowned rat.  The man who was in
charge told me to smile; otherwise no one would ever adopt me.  Nobody
wants a grumpy little girl.

One couple came in several times and divided their attention et ween me
and another, younger girl.  She was about two, cute and friendly.
Finally one day the couple came in and took the little girl with them,
leaving me behind.  The woman in charge of the orphanage told me they
chose her because she was young, and I was too old; she was pretty, and
I was ugly.

The belief that I was too old and too ugly continued throughout my
life.  I was sure that anyone I dated would leave me in a second for
someone younger, someone more desirable.  I felt inferior to any
younger woman.  It didn't matter that I was more intelligent, wittier,
or whatever: The mere fact that she was younger imbued her with power
that I didn't have.  Ironically, as I got into my thirties the men who
were attracted to me got younger.  Most of my friends have usually been
a decade or two younger, and they never seemed to give it a second
thought, I always worried, though, that they were just being kind to
the older woman in the group.  No matter what age I was, I always felt
too old.

Every day in the orphanage we followed pretty much the same routine. We
were awakened early in the Morning and our blankets were taken out to
be shaken and aired.  The best moment of the day for me was when the
cage door was opened in the Morning.  I climbed out and went to the
communal bathroom, iockeying with all the others to be first in line to
use one of the few toilets.  After that we all had to wash our faces
and hands quickly in basins of cold water.

The orphanage had one large room, which was lined with the cages.  At
mealtimes tables and chairs were brought in and set up down the middle
of the room.  Wee all sat in the same places each mealtime.  Everyone
got a bowl of rice, sometimes with a few vegetables mixed in.

I got more food to eat in the orphanage than I had with Omma, but it
wasn't as satisfying.  No longer were mealtimes gracious rituals in
which my mother chose the best morsels for re and we gazed at each
other while we shared our rice and kimchi.  No longer was my tea handed
to me with a smile and a bow In the orphanage a bowl of rice lasted a
few seconds, because everyone tried to eat as quickly as possible.

We stayed at the tables after breakfast, and after they cleared away
the dishes the missionaries taught us a few Christian songs, like
"Jesus Loves Me," and told us some Bible stories.  The songs and
stories were an odd mix of English and Korean, since the orphanage
workers were American missionaries who had learned the rudiments of my
language.  But since the whole point was to get the children
adopted--and a knowledge of English would make us more desirable--they
taught us English words when we had no idea what they meant.  So I sang
"Jeeza raub me, dees ahno" without having the faintest idea what I was
singing.

Then, depending on the weather, we were sometimes allowed to go outside
for a while.  There was no playground, but there were a few toys
scattered across a large lot.  On the days we went outside I stayed on
the far side of the building, nearest the mountains.  I sat in the dirt
and played with sticks, looking up every few seconds at the bluish-gray
mountains in the distance.

The sight of the mountains was the only comfort I had in that place.
When I felt the panic and anguish well up in my chest, I looked up at
the mountains and felt a slight easing of the pressure under my
breastbone.  On days we stayed inside I sat as close to the window as
possible--everyone else wanted near the window too--because a tiny
sliver of mountain was visible from the inside.

The missionaries never encouraged us to do much; there were no
organized games or crafts.  Except for the religious teachings, the
children were pretty much left to their own devices or shut in their
cribs to be out of the way.

Most of the time, I thought about Omma.  I didn't talk much to the
other children in the orphanage, but I kept up a running conversation
in my mind with my mother.  I made up the kind of stories she made up:
ones where we traveled to the other side of the mountains and found
wonderful worlds there.  In the afternoons we were given a
snack--usually crackers or something else that didn't require
dishes--then put back in the cages for nap time and let out again at
dinner--more rice and vegetables, usually with kimchi added.

At night before bed we had another Bible story and listened to a
prayer.  I liked the story of the Birth of Jesus, because it reminded
me of Omma's story about how the world began:

Hwanung, son of the divine creator, descended from heaven and was
looking over his domain when he heard the prayer of a bear who wanted
to become human.

So Hwanung ave the bear garlic and mug wort and the bear later became
the first human woman.  That woman then prayed for a son and became
pregnant--without the help of a man-giving birth to Tan'gun, Korea's
founder.  Since neither one had earthly fathers and both were
all-powerful, I wondered if Jesus and Tan'gun were perhaps related, But
the missionaries told me that was impossible: Jesus was the real Son of
God and Tan'gun was just a myth.  One was a biblical truth; the other
was heathen ignorance.

All the children there were to become Christians whether we liked it or
not.  it didn't matter to me one way or another.  I was willing to do
anything necessary to keep the peace, to find some measure of kindness
and acceptance.  If Jesus would help get me out of the orphanage, then
I'd believe in Him.

And in time, I grew to find the thought of Jesus very comforting.

He seemed so gentle, for one thing.  The pictures of Him on the
orphanage walls were lovely--tenderly holding a lamb,

spotless white robe gleaming, looking from the painting directly into
my eyes.  When i got older I got in the habit of whispering His name
when I awakened from the horrific nightmares that came every night.  I
pictured Him scooping me up just like the lamb in the picture and
protecting me from all harm.  I said it over and over in the night, as
a talisman against evil and darkness and grief: "Jesus.  Jesus.
Jesus."

One of my torments in the orphanage--and indeed throughout my life--was
that i had absolutely nothing of my mother's.

Omma's sister-in-law had let me take nothing away from our home, and so
1 sat and thought with longing of my wonderful stick people and the
cardboard village Omma had made, the little wooden Buddha and Otnma's
beautiful hanbok, and even the picture of the American man.

I was frantic for something she had touched, something she had
cherished.  And since arriving at the orphanage and being washed with
disinfectant, I couldn't even smell her scent on my skin.

My grief was boundless, but my rage was directed at one person:

me.  There were two things I believed: My life was a terrible mistake,
and I deserved nothing but suffering.  My hatred of myself, born at my
mother's death and nourished in the orphanage, grew with each passing
year.

So I lay curled up in a fetal position in my crib and began a nearly
lifelong pattern of digging my nails into my skin.  I pressed against
the flesh of my upper arms or legs or neck until there was a sharp
explosion of pain and, with it, a small sense of release of my guilt
and anguish.  That was the only way I knew to vent the boiler room of
agony in my heart.

In the orphanage I tried to stay awake as much as possible.  Sleep was
the enemy.  I waited inside my cage for salvation, and I knew that if I
fell asleep and salvation came, it would pass me by.

So I sat in my threadbare maroon cotton trousers and shirt, knees
pulled up to my body and arms wrapped around my knees, and stared
through the bars.  My long curly hair, which Omma had loved, was
cropped short by the large, silent woman who handed us our food every
day and gave us the burning antiseptic baths that were supposed to kill
any lingering parasites.  I sat and hugged my knees and ached and
waited.  Whenever someone walked through to examine the children I
smiled and smiled.

My fear was that I might fall asleep and the someone who was going to
rescue me would walk through the room.  If my eyes were closed, they
wouldn't be able to see me.

Months passed before it was my turn to leave the orphanage, but it
didn't happen the way I'd fantasized.  My new parents, a missionary
couple, had made all the arrangements without ever having seen me.  One
day I was simply led into an office, where a tall Caucasian man--a
representative of the adoption agency-was waiting, and a few minutes
later we were gone.  The actual day of my release was anticlimactic.
For so long I'd waited and waited, watching the door across from my
cage and willing someone to walk in and take me away, and when it
finally happened it was all over within a moment.  I simply felt
numb.

There was no record of my age, so a birth date was chosen by an
official at the orphanage the month and day I entered the orphanage.
Someone looked at my teeth and estimated the year of my birth.  I had
no personal possessions, no family records, no name.  I had no identity
at all except for what my new parents chose to give me.

It was spring in Korea, and the wildflowers were blooming in
intoxicating profusion.  The valley was lush and green; the beloved
purple mountains in the distance were still capped with melting snow.
It was the time of year in which Omma and I would have been outdoors as
much as possible, playing with our make believe village and picking
fresh bouquets every day to place beside Buddha on our little altar.

On the day of my departure I was given a cotton dress, bordered in red
and white checks, and ankle socks.  Those clothes, which like my maroon
trousers and shirt came from castoffs sent to us by American churches,
felt uncomfortable and alien.  The dress was too big.  I wore green
rubber shoes with tiny red flowers painted on them, and I had pictures
of my new parents in my hand.  I had been taught a few words, including
"Mom" and "Dad," and all I knew was that those words connected with the
strange people in the pictures.

The orphanage director told me I was going far away to a wonderful
place called America and would live there forever with a nice family.
She told me to never forget how lucky

I was.

I had lived my life with Omma in the midst of rice paddies and wild
azalea fields and Korea's million mountains on all sides.

I had never seen a car or television; when it got dark we went to sleep
and at first light another day of work began.  Our meals were a shared
bowl of rice and the kimchi we buried in ceramic pots.  It would be
twenty years before I again tasted kimchi.

The entertainment Omma devised for us was our dances and stories and
long periods of quiet, looking at the mountains together.  I had no
concept of what an airplane was, but now I was going to get on one and
fly to some unknown place where no one

would speak my language, where rice and kimchi and quiet were unheard
of.

I had always believed that when I traveled over the mountains to the
magical lands Omma described, she would be there with me.  Without her,
I didn't much care what was to come.

The trip from Korea to America was a pleasant change from the
orphanage.

The man from the adoption agency accompanied me, and for the first time
since my mother's death I was alone with an adult who paid attention to
me and pampered me.

Someone was finally speaking directly to me, breaking the silence I had
lived in and making me feel as though I was no longer invisible.  He
knew the basics: words for hungry, thirsty, bathroom.  I could say
"mul" and he handed me a glass of water.

I could say "p.yonso" and he took me to the toilet.

On the day of my trip to America, we took a taxi to the airport and
boarded the plane.  I was so tired, so bewildered and relieved to be
out of the orphanage that I wasn't afraid of the huge metal bird or the
strange people milling about.

It all had a surreal quality, like a dream.  It was so alien that it
wasn't frightening.  My new friend smiled at me often and carried me
most of the time.  I held on to his coat lapel as if he were my
lifeline.  But although he was kind and considerate, he was to become
the conduit between one life of confusion and loneliness and another.

When we got on the airplane the stewardess tried to put me in the seat
next to him, but I cried and clutched him and the two of them said
something in English to each other.  She smiled and he smiled, and I
got to sit on his lap until I felt brave enough to stretch out in the
next seat.  We got little meals on trays, which I found fascinating. He
gave me his pocket watch and a white linen handkerchief to play with. 
I unscrewed the glass cover and watched the tiny hands click around the
dial, and wrapped the clock up in the handkerchief.  That gold-plated
pocket watch kept me content for a few hours.  He slept part of the
time, and I slept and he read a magazine and I played with the watch,
and thus passed a few hours of limbo between misery and misery

Our flight stopped in Hawaii for a few hours, and he took me to a
little store near the airport.  There, for the first time in my life, I
was given something brand-new, something that had been bought just for
me.

He bought me a small troupe of fuzzy animals: a mother tiger and her
three cubs and a mother and baby penguin.  Each one fit in the palm of
my hand.  The tigers were gold and black, with white velvet throats.
They were linked together with black silk ribbon.  The penguins were
black and white, with red felt mouths in Cupid's bow smiles.  The
flippers of the mother and baby were joined at the tips, as if they
were holding hands.  They were the most amazing and beautiful things
I'd ever seen.  The mothers and their children couldn't be separated
from each other unless they were wrenched apart, which I had no
intention of ever doing.  I tucked the smallest of the tiger cubs into
the curve between the mother tiger's paws, because I knew that nestling
against Omma's chest was the most wonderful place in the world to be.

The weather was clear and warm in Hawaii, and I felt something almost
approaching peace.  Someone other than my mother was treating me
kindly.  It didn't matter that he couldn't speak much of my language;
he was gentle and smiling.  I started to feel safe again.  I had known
him for only a couple of days, but already he was the only familiar
thing in an increasingly unfamiliar landscape.  On the flight from
Hawaii to Los Angeles, I played with the animals.  I had stopped
wondering what would happen next in my life; it was enough just to be
out of the orphanage, out of the cage, with someone I liked.  I
wondered if maybe I could stay with this person, and I was relatively
content.

But then we landed in Los Angeles.  We got off the plane and he walked
across the wide, shiny floor of the airport with me in his arms.  I
watched, amazed and apprehensive, as people rushed around me.  Their
shoes clacked on the tile, their voices swirled in a garbled tongue
that I didn't understand.  Later when I learned the Bible's story of
the Tower of Babel, I thought back on the airport and wondered if it
sounded like that.

Toward us came two people: a man and a woman.  They talked loudly and
smiled and looked at me, and I clutched tighter to his coat, pushing my
face against the stiff white cotton of his shirt.

I was afraid of the woman, because she was wearing two dead animals
around her shoulders.  I saw a bushy-tailed red fox

draped around her with its pretty face gaping lifeless over her bosom
and the tail of a twin fox stuffed into its mouth.  I was especially
horrified by the eyes of the foxes, which were wide open and staring.
The eyes were glass, I learned later.  The woman wore high-heeled shoes
that clacked against the airport floor, and her light-brown hair was
puffed out into a shiny cloud.  She was smiling broadly, shouting
incessantly at me as if I'd understand her language if she were loud
enough.

The man with her was tall and slim, wearing a black suit and white
shirt.  He didn't say much, and after a few minutes I was
unceremoniously shoved into his arms.  My friend walked away without
looking back over his shoulder, while I screamed and tried to wriggle
away so I could follow him.  My new father held me tightly and sat down
on an airport chair until my tantrum subsided.

The person I had started to trust was handing me over to these people,
without explanation or comfort.  I wondered why I was being left
again--why my friend, who seemed to like me, was giving me to
strangers.

In the years that followed, I never forgot him.  Once I let him into my
heart--even in just the few hours it took--he remained there.  I never
saw him again, but when I grew up I began following his career, which
was quite illustrious.  I often thought about writing him, but I
assmned he wouldn't remember me and I was afraid of embarrassing him or
humiliating myself.  I didn't really want to try for a renewal of our
strange friendship, but there were some things I wanted to tell him.  I
wanted to thank him for making me feel alive again.  I wanted to thank
him for looking into my eyes and smiling--he was the first person to do
so since my mother's death.  In his presence I wasn't a nonperson or a
burden or an unadoptable orphan; I was a human being.  I wanted to
thank him for buying me something and trusting me with his pocket watch
and treating me gently.  I wanted to thank him for carrying me in his
arms.  I wanted to tell him.  that the memory of the few hours we spent
together is very precious to me and that his understated, circumspect
kindness had a lasting effect on my life.

I think that any loving act, even if it's only momentary has a
limitless power for good.  A big part of the reason I feel that way is
the memory I have of him.

For many years I wondered why he handed me off in the abrupt way he
did, but now I think it was probably the only thing he knew to do.  And
taking himself out of the picture as quickly as possible was probably
what he was trained to do when bringing an orphan and new parents
together.

As I was sitting in the airport, sobbing, a girl walked over and tried
to give me a piece of chewing gum.  Beyond comfort and rational
thought, I slapped away her hand as she held out the gum.

My new parents were horrified and scolded me loudly.  Just a few
minutes into my life in America I began to feel my first pangs of
regret.  I didn't know what they were saying, but I certainly knew they
were angry.  I felt bad for hurting the little girl's feelings too, and
I couldn't conmunicate that to her.

Those moments in the airport set the stage for my future life with my
parents.  In my mind, Mom was some kind of monster who decorated
herself with dead things.  Dad was quietly disapproving.

I was an ungrateful person who didn't behave properly.

In a few short months I had gone from talking only with Omma to this
noisy place with many people speaking a language I had no hope of
understanding.  I was utterly bewildered.

My new parents couldn't help--they had learned no Korean, not even
"yes" or "no."  They called me by a new name.  They

scolded me for crying.  There was nothing familiar in this new, alien
landscape.

While my parents sat in the front seat of the car, talking with each
other, I cried myself to sleep on the way home from the airport.

I didn't wake until a few hours later when we pulled into the driveway
of my new home.

It's time to die now.

It's time to close the door.

It's time to steel yourself and say goodbye and never cry again.

It's time to die now.

It's time to clean the house.

It's time to bathe yourself and bid farewell to earth and hell
tonight.

It's time to die now.

It's time to give up pain.

It's time to grant your wish for no more tears or dark or fears or
life.

chapter Six

I awoke in the desert, a kind of place I would never have imagined
could exist.  Outside was a vast stretch of dead, sandy ground.  There
were no wild azalea fields or rice paddies.

There were mountains, but they were dry and barren.  Instead of
pine-studded slopes curving up into misty cloud banks, I saw graceless
piles of rock.  There were no ginkgo trees.  There were no sacred
lotuses.  There were grayish manzanita bushes and unforgiving needle
plants called cholla.

The wild creatures in the area had adapted to living in hell.  There
were scorpions that skittered across the burning asphalt driveway.
There were vinegaroons that hid in dark recesses, then gave out a
painful sting and a vinegary smell.  There were coyotes, worn down to
gaunt muscle and bone, that came down from the hills at dusk to eat
somebody's pet or a wild jackrabbit.  Snakes undulated from one bush to
the next.

leaving their curvy imprints all over the sand.  Science fiction-sized
spiders built their enormous webs in the wooden eaves above the kitchen
door.  In the cracks between fenceposts were brown recluse spiders with
bites containing a poison that would eat away inches of soft tissue.

The air felt as though it was pumped out of a giant oven, with
occasional blasts of even hotter wind that picked up the dirt and
created miniature whirlwinds with it, sandblasting whatever was
outside.  There was no grass.  No true green existed in that
wasteland.

In front of the house were wide white steps leading up to the front
door.  Dad carried me to the front door and then put me down, and I
looked in amazement at my feet, which were on something soft and
furry--I learned later it was called "ear pet"--that I was afraid to
step on.  In front of me I saw an enormous black box on three slender
legs.  I had no idea that it was a piano, or that I'd be spending a
good part of my life in front of it in the years to come.  Off to the
side was a red velvet sofa, and beyond that a door that led out to the
dry, tumbleweed-strewn backyard.

That modest house was overwhelming to me, with its stretches of beige
shag carpet and large, important pieces of furniture.

Down the hall from the living room were three bedrooms and a pink-tiled
bathroom.  My new parents took me into my room to show me my new toys
and my bed.  The bed was four poster walnut, covered in a yellow
chenille bedspread with a huge daisy in the center.  I was given a
stuffed tiger, a black cat, and a pink doll with a plastic face.  They
told me later that I showed no appreciation or enthusiasm, and they
were disappointed in my lack of manners.

I'd never slept in a bed before and wasn't sure what to make of this
huge thing.  I didn't realize that the room and the toys were for me.

My fear grew moment by moment.  In Korea I had experienced alienation,
and grief, and loss, and loneliness--but this fear was something new. I
didn't know what was coming next, and no one could explain anything to
me.  Everything I saw and heard and tasted was completely unfamiliar.

I looked at everything and said nothing.  I had learned in the airport
that these two people couldn't understand me, and I couldn't understand
them, so there was no point in trying to communicate.

After a quick tour of the house, my new mother immediately began
molding me into her image of a perfect child.  She took off the green
rubber shoes and the faded cotton dress I was wearing and gave me a
pale-blue dress with two rows of ruffles and a scratchy underskirt. The
Korean Airlines bag that held my little troupe of animals was pried out
of my hands.  Later, when I could understand enough English, she
explained to me that the animals were unhygienic and had to be thrown
away.

But by that time I was too exhausted to cry any more.  I was resigned
to the knowledge that anything I held dear would be summarily
destroyed.

I crawled underneath the piano, taking with me one of the immaculate
new stuffed animals from my immaculate new bedroom, and pressed myself
against the wall.  Even with my budding claustrophobia, that spot
seemed the safest place in a house that was huge and confusing after my
one-room home with Omma and my locked crib at the orphanage.

At dinnertime I was tugged out from under the piano and taken into the
dining room, where fried chicken and mashed potatoes were laid out.  I
knew it was food, but the look and smell were alien and nauseating to
me.  My parents scolded and tried to push bits of food in my mouth,
which I kept resolutely closed.

I wanted some rice.  I wanted tea.  I wanted them to shut up and quit
jabbering incomprehensible words at me.

By that time, I think, they were pretty exhausted themselves, and we
all went to bed.  I don't remember anything more about that night,
except that I woke up several times and stood on my bed and looked over
the headboard, peering into the two-inch space between the wood and the
wall.  I was afraid of that space and what might come out of it during
the night.

On my second day in America I came to a decision: I was going to
understand these people and their strange ways.  By now I connected
them to the photographs I'd been given in the orphanage, and I assumed
that I was going to stay with them until they got tired of me or until
I made them so angry that they returned me to the orphanage.  I lay
awake in bed and looked at my new bedroom, thinking it all over.  I
didn't think this new relationship was permanent, any more than any in
the past had been, and I believed that whether they kept me or threw me
away depended on how I acted and looked.

I had learned, first in Korea and now in America, that I was
unacceptable.  I thought that if I tried very hard, maybe I could
modify the way I looked or sounded enough to please those around me.

At breakfast on day two I tried to eat the egg and bacon on my plate. I
knew what eggs were, but I'd never seen bacon.  The soft-boiled egg was
slimy and gelatinous, and I gagged on the first bite.  The bacon was
the saltiest thing I'd ever tasted, even saltier than kimchi.  My new
parents had definite ideas about

what foods belonged with what meals, and I ate a breakfast of fried
eggs and bacon every Morning while I lived with them.  I Never liked
it. I tried to mimic the way my parents held their forks, which I'd
used a few times at the orphanage.  The best part of breakfast was the
orange juice, which was poured from a big plastic pitcher into a tiny
fluted glass.  It was so fresh and sweet and clean.  I drank it in a
few gulps and looked longingly at the pitcher, wishing I could have
more."  Even if I could have spoken English, I wouldn't have asked for
anything, and I learned later that you ate and drank what you'd been
given.  Nobody at that table ever got more orange juice.

What I had known was lost, and my life became something completely
foreign.

"Mul" became "water."

"Pyonso" became "bathroom."  I became "Elizabeth," a girl I did not yet
know how to be.

"Omma" was never replaced.  All that was left was a void where that
word had been.

My training--to become the Elizabeth they wanted--began immediately and
was relentless.  Every moment was monitored;

every word and action and thought were scrutinized in the light of my
parents' standards and the Bible's dictates, and usually I was found
wanting.

I had already had a little exposure to Christianity during my time at
the orphanage, but what I'd seen was just the tip of the iceberg.  I
knew about blessings before meals, but the interminably long prayers I
heard from Dad were something new.

Mealtime prayers in my new home were an itemized list of everything on
the table, a catalogue and repentance of all the sins of the day up to
that point, a request for health and well being for everyone who was
sick, and a lament about the lax litical and moral climate of the
time.

I was beginning to understand my parents, little by little.  I felt the
least uncomfortable with my new dad, who didn't talk as

incessantly and didn't stare at me.  After breakfast on that second
day I took his hand and pulled him all over the house, pointing to each
item.  He understood pretty quickly what I wanted and said the name of
each thing twice, until I repeated it, nodded, and moved on.  He held
my hand nicely--not too tight, but securely-and I started to like him.
I pointed to myself and to him and to the sky and the grass and
pictures of things in books-everything I could think of.  The naming
process took the greater part of the day.

I fell asleep in midafternoon and napped under the piano, in what was
to become a favorite spot.  From there I could watch my parents' feet
coming and going, and I had a wall at my back, which made me feel a
little more secure.  I listened intently to my parents as they spoke
and began trying out words and inflections, whispering to myself.  They
seemed pleased with me-Mom clapped her hands when I pointed to her and
said "mother."  I was heartened with that small show of approval, and
wondered if maybe I could make my new parents happy.

When I woke up from my nap under the piano, I felt dizzy and sick to my
stomach.  I crawled out, walked over to the red velvet sofa, and
vomited worms all over its cushions.  I hadn't yet been to see a doctor
and I carried parasites in my body--most likely from the unsanitary
conditions at the orphanage.  I don't know why I chose the sofa--I
don't remember having time to

make a conscious choice.  Mom screamed and Dad grabbed my arm and
yanked me away from the sofa.  I knew I had just done something awful,
and I felt ashamed and afraid.  They shouted at me for several minutes
while I stood in the middle of the living room, feeling desperately
sick, crying and shaking.  There were a few words I recognized from my
language lessons with Dad:

"sofa" and "animal."

My parents cleaned up; I continued to stand where I was.  I didn't know
what to do.  Eventually Dad grabbed my shoulder and pushed me into the
bathroom, where Mom was running a hot bath.  The night before I had
gone to bed shortly after dinner, and this was my first experience with
a bathtub.  In Korea I had bathed with Omma by heating water and
pouring it into a small wooden washtub.  Although the orphanage had a
large bathroom with flush toilets, we were bathed simply by being
sponged down from time to time with disinfectant.

What I saw in the bathroom was a huge white bowl, big enough to swallow
me, with steaming water gushing out of a lit de silver mouth.  I looked
up at Dad and said "an)o, anyo, anyo" (no, no, no) over and over.  Mom
pulled off my dress and they pushed me into the tub.  I tried to stay
on my feet, but I fell several times and slipped under the hot water. I
thought I was fighting for my life.  As we struggled my parents and the
bathroom got drenched, and at one point Dad slapped my face.  The water
was terrifyingly hot and deep, and I thought it was punishment for the
worms.

After a few minutes Dad pulled me out of the tub and pushed me to Mom,
who dried me off.  I stood naked and shivering in the bathroom while
they scolded me and mopped up the floor and walls with towels.  Then
Mom put my nightgown on

me and said "bed."

For years after the worm incident, I apologized over and over, each
time Mom talked about it.  She said countless times that I was "just
like an animal" when they first got me, and throwing up worms on a
lovely velvet sofa proved it.  I felt guilty and ashamed about it, and
while Mom never said she blamed me for having worms, she said a person
would have to do something disgusting like sit on the dirt without
underwear to get them.  But what she said most often was that she
couldn't understand why, in a house with a nice bathroom, I had to
throw them up on her sofa.

Mom was obsessed with that event.  She told everyone she knew about it;
she used it as an anecdote when she met someone for the first time.

"So nice to meet you.  This is my daughter, Elizabeth.  She's adopted,
you know.  Oh, we had quite a time with her in the beginning.  She was
just like an animal.  In fact, a few days after we got her she walked
over to my lovely red velvet sofa and threw up worms right on it.  Can
you imagine?  Well, it's never been the same since, of course.  I just
couldn't believe my eyes.  They were wriggling all over the place.  And
the bathroom was only a few steps down the hall.  Why on earth she
chose to leave her worms on the sofa is beyond me.  Have you ever heard
of such a thing?"

The person she was talking to at the time would listen politely,
disconcerted and embarrassed.  They'd glance at me every few minutes
while I stood quietly beside Mom.  I always thought they were looking
at me with loathing and that the disgust I saw on their faces was
because of me.  But now, as I look back, I think most people were
disgusted with her.  I think the glances they gave me were
compassionate and that if they felt any horror at hearing the story, it
was that she chose to recount it.  I do remember everyone changing the
subject as quickly as they could.

Mom's implication was always that my own mother and my Korean culture
had been so barbaric that I was infested with parasites.

But my mother, my Omma, hadn't let that happen to me.

It wasn't the lack of Western culture that made me sick but the
American orphanage and its filthy conditions.  The white Christian
missionaries, who had supposedly saved me, were to blame for my
illness.  It was their ill-treatment I was purging.

That event--and Mom's endless retelling of it--was a major factor in
setting my selfloathing in stone.  I believed that whatever was inside
me, whether spiritual or corporeal, was disgusting.  recently my
daughter told me how often Mom--her grandmother--told that story as she
was growing up.  Each time, Leigh said, she watched me carefully.

"Your face changed," she said.

"You looked desolate.  Then you got very quiet and remote."

In the house where we lived, the wails were covered with pictures.

The living room had prints of well-known religious paintings:

Jesus standing before a garden gate, knocking; a reproduction of
Diirer's "Praying Hands"; and one of an old man bowing his head in
prayer before eating his meager slice of bread.  As you left the living
room and walked down the hallway, the pictures got more sinister: Jesus
standing before Pilate just before His crucifixion; His walk to
Golgotha carrying the cross.

Right outside my bedroom door was a picture that showed Christ's eyes
turned up in agony as the crown of thorns pressed on His forehead.  The
eyes followed you as you passed by.

On the wall above my bed was a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, an artist
who lived in the late Middle Ages.  It depicted the Last Judgment.  In
the left-hand panel was paradise, where a few people walked in a green
valley.  Even in paradise, though, an angel was in the background,
waving a sword at someone who evidently didn't belong there.  In the
middle panel was the judgment itself, with Christ on His throne
surrounded by saints and angels.  On the ground were all sorts of
horrors: a half-duck, half man creature carried someone hog-tied to a
post, skewered through the chest with a long sword.  A man's head
floated in a barrel, while a green dragon stood ready to eat it.  A fat
man sat

at a table, as red demons poured something down his throat frown a
large cask.  Bodies disappeared into spike-studded grinders.

Disembodied heads moved around on wheels.  In the right-hand panel of
the triptych, hell was depicted.  Spurts of flames rose from craters in
the ground.  Naked women were fondled by gargoyles;

the unholy had daggers thrust into their genitals.

Creatures pecked away at the bodies of the damned.

Bosch and my parents had a lot in common.  They were moralists who
believed humans are inherently evil and if left to their own devices
will end up in hell.

The house was dark, because Mom didn't want the sun to fade the massive
old pieces of mahogany furniture.  The double thick drapes were kept
closed, day and night.  The house was crammed full of
objects--religious pictures and books, china ornaments, Dresden dolls,
and hundreds of other tiny, breakable things that had to be handled
gently and dusted weekly.

The piano was draped in a silk fringed shawl.  On the piano, and on
just about every other flat surface, was a bouquet of plastic roses.
There were crystal candy dishes scattered throughout the house, but
none of them contained any candy.  The house was sterile in its
perfection, and I was afraid to touch anything.

On day three Dad began my piano lessons.  By that time I could
understand their language pretty well, and I knew what the piano was
because Dad played it every day.  He came home that night with what I
called "piano book" for me.  There were pieces in it like "Kitten on
the Keys" and "Indian Brave."  I was ambivalent about the piano, but I
wanted to please Dad.  The first lesson was the C scale.  I watched Dad
tuck his thumb under his third finger as he played the scale and tried
to imitate his move, but my hands were half the size of his and my
fingering was fumbled.  Dad, who was trained as a professional pianist,
was impatient with me, and each lesson was misery.  I had an hour of
lessons in the Morning, before he went to work, and usually they ended
with him storming out of the room, angry over my ineptitude.

"Why can't you play a simple scale?  I've shown you over and over."

I told him my fingers wouldn't reach.

"That's ridiculous.  Just stretch your hand.  You're not trying.

Why are you so bad?"

I had a hard time understanding classical music.  I was fascinated with
the grand piano and its ivory keys, but I was confused by Western
music.  My ears were attuned to Omma's five-note Korean scale and this
new scale was intimidating.  I was afraid to admit just how little I
understood, so I faked a lot of it by watching Dad and imitating what
he did at the piano.  Once in a while I told him I didn't understand
the music theory he was trying to teach me.

"Of course you understand it.  You're not trying.  You're just a bad
girl."

I was told that music was for the glory of God.  So when I failed I
disappointed not only Dad but God as well.

I showed an aptitude for music that helped me sometimes avoid Dad's
anger by mastering what he taught without understanding it.  I could
mimic without understanding a music, a language, and a life that was
not my own.  If I felt a sense of loss of the self I had known, I
wasn't aware of it.  I didn't want to remain the old Korean me.  All I
wanted was to fit in, to be accepted in this new world.

One evening during my first week in America a woman came to the front
door of my parents' house carrying a box with two kittens inside.  She
said they were for me, because I must be lonely and she thought they'd
cheer me up.  She was a member of my parents' church, a round, jolly
woman who laughed a lot.  Mom and Dad smiled at her and thanked her,
and I sat on the floor in front of the box.  The kittens were gray and
white, a little on the serious side, just like me.  I scooped them into
my lap where they sniffed around and purred and cried a little bit.  I
was entranced by them.  I stroked them and cuddled them and whispered
to them.

"Be very, very gentle with them," the woman told me.

"They're just babies."

I nodded my head.  I knew about being gentle.  I knew I wouldn't hurt
them.  The woman laughed and said we should take a picture of me with
my new pets, so we all trooped outside.

I gathered the kittens up in the skirt of the cotton dress I was
wearing and followed the adults onto the patio.  Dad brought out the
camera and I squatted on the ground, my hands cupped around the
kittens, with their paws on my legs.

They were so cute and so soft, and I stayed out in the backyard with
them until the woman left.  She came outside and stroked them, then
gave me a big hug and told me to have fun with them.  Once she left,
things changed.  Mon told me kittens were unsanitary and a lot of work.
She said she didn't know if I was responsible enough to take care of
them.  Then she looked at my hand.  The kittens had scratched me while
we were playing, and Mom took me inside where she dabbed iodine on my
hand and lectured me about diseases that cats carry.  I hadn't noticed
the scratches at all, but the tincture burned enough to make me cry.  I
asked her if I could go back outside with the kittens, but she said I'd
played enough with them for one day and it was high time I went to bed.
She and Dad began talking in low voices.

In the Morning I ran outside to see the kittens, but they were gone,
along with their box.  I asked my parents where they were and they told
me they sent them away.

"Your hand got scratched.

We might have to take you to a doctor now.  No kittens for you."

Once again the lesson was clear: Anything I loved was taken away
without my consent or understanding, just like Omma, just like my
little troupe of toy animals.  There was no warning given before and no
comfort after.

In my new household, it was not only a shameful thing to cry or to feel
fear, it was an absolute sin.  Those emotions are of the devil, my
parents said, because they show a lack of faith in God.

Apparently any kind of emotion other than the Joy of the Lord was
tantamount to blasphemy.  When I was punished for something bad--giving
mother an "ugly" look, using a "snotty tone of voice," not doing my
chores properly--my primary concern was to keep the tears away.
Sometimes I couldn't quite make it, and my lips began trembling.

"Don't you make that face at me!"

my parents said, and my quivering mouth got slapped.

After a while it got easier.  I learned to swallow hard, until the
tears and rage and grief formed a tight ball in the base of my throat.
At some point it became impossible to cry.  I simply couldn't do it. On
the few occasions over the years when a tear or two escaped, the
physical pain was frightening.

My parents were always devising ways to help me overcome my fears and
learn to trust in God.  For example, they had a little exercise for me
to conquer my uncontrollable fear of the dark.  At the end of the long
hallway was my room.  On the floor they placed my stuffed tiger.  The
hallway was dark; my parents and I were standing in the living room.

"Now go down the hall and get your tiger," they told me, "and stop this
foolishness."  I needed

tiger, but I was afraid of the dark hallway and what might be waiting
in my dark room.  They refused to turn on the light or walk with me,
because, as they told me, they were trying to teach me something for my
own good.  Finally) after a long period of tears and pleading, I
steeled myself to walk down the hallway, be cause I couldn't stand to
think of tiger alone in the dark.

The house where we lived felt malignant to me.  The light switch for
the dark stairwell was at the foot of the basement stairs, for some
reason, and often in the evenings Mom sent me down there to get soap or
toilet paper or just check to make sure everything was locked up.  I
hated going down in the dark, but the return trip was worse.  I stood
at the foot of the stairs, my finger on the light switch, and
coordinated my movements so I could dash up the stairs as soon as the
light was off.

"Slow down and walk up the stairs properly," Mother told me.

"You're acting like some wild banshee.  Now go back down there and come
up like a lady."

So I walked back down the stairs with measured steps and a blank face.
I stopped at the bottom, turned the light on and off;

and walked back up.

"That was too fast.  And you're shaking.

This kind of fear is absolutely sinful.  What must the Lord think?

Now you go down there and do it again.  And this time smile as you're
walking up the stairs.  Remember, every little thing we do, even if
it's just fetching soap from the basement, must be done to the glory of
God."

One afternoon shortly after my arrival in America, I walked out of my
new home and wandered across the street.  I wanted to take a better
look at the scraggly wildflowers and weeds growing in a vacant lot
there, and I picked a few to make a bouquet, for Mom .  She was taking
a nap and Dad was at work, and I was bored and lonely.  So I just
opened the door and left.  I thought it would make her like me more;
Omma, after all, had loved the bouquets I picked for her in the fields
around our home, and they stood next to Buddha himself on our little
altar.

I was only gone a few minutes, at least by my reckoning.  But when I
walked in the front door Mom was on the phone to Dad, and I heard her
say "Well, finally.  Here she is."  She put down the phone and stood
with her hands on her hips.

It was quiet where we stood in the front hallway, with just the
grandfather clock ticking.  Mom's white dress was sprinkled with red
poppies, her back was straight, her hair smooth.  I was hot and dirty,
with dust on my black patent-leather shoes and lace-trimmed socks.  She
looked at me for a moment, while I stood just inside the door, the
glaring sun hitting my back and the wilting bouquet starting to shake
in my hand.

"And just where do you think you've been, young lady?  Your father is
having to leave work early because of you.  I'll let you tell him what
a bad girl you are when he gets home."

I didn't offer her the flowers, and she yanked them out of my hand and
threw them away.

"Don't bring weeds in the house.

I'm allergic to these things.  Are you trying to make me sick?"

When Dad got home we all sat down in the living room and my parents
catalogued my sins: stealing plants from somebody else's property,
going outside without permission, worrying Mom.

Why are you such a bad girl?  What are we going to do with you?"  I got
a severe spanking--the first one of my life.  Dad held my upper body in
a headlock, facing away from him, then slapped my bottom and legs with
a wooden board.  Worse than the physical pain was the fear of this new,
unknown punishment.  I didn't know spankings cane to an end after
twelve or so strikes; I didn't know what would come next.

Nevertheless, I decided it was nothing more than I deserved.

I knew I was bad; I believed the adults around me.  My life in Korea
had taught me abject humility.  And since I didn't under stand yet what
was bad and what wasn't, I was terrified.

That night, after I was put to bed, I crept out of my room and down the
hall, just to sit outside my parents' bedroom door.  I was still scared
of the dark, and I felt afraid and alone.  I wondered if they were
going to send me back to the orphanage.  I knew I wasn't supposed to
call out for them in the night, but I thought I'd sit very quietly and
just listen to their voices.  I wanted to know there was someone else
in the world with me.  I heard Dad speaking: "I think adopting her was
a big mistake."  I tiptoed back to bed and stared at the ceiling,
digging my nails into my skin.

Digging my nails into my flesh was the one way I found to distract
myself from the anguish of my emotions, and I kept it up for many
years.  I never was comforted by the sensation of physical pain and the
warm trickle of blood, but it gave me something else to think about. It
also gave me a sense of expiation for the unbearable burden of guilt
and shame I felt.  Hurting myself somehow satisfied my desire for
justice.

As I got older I often dug my nails into my neck until I created a red,
scabbed welt around the entire circumference of my throat.  I dug my
nails into the soft hollows around my eyes.  I often awoke in the night
to find myself curled up in bed, in a fetal position, with tears
streaming from my closed eyes and my nails embedded in some vulnerable
spot.  I would awaken and realize I'd been digging my nails into my
vagina.  Sometimes in those awakenings I'd whisper, "It's time to die
now.  It's time to die now."  Nearly every Morning there was blood on
the sheets and dried blood on my skin.

My parents never seemed to notice; or if they did they were

too embarrassed to say anything.  And within a few months after my
arrival I began doing all the laundry, so I was the only one who had to
deal with the bloodied sheets.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how adaptable and eager to please I was.  I
learned fairly fluent English in less than a week;

how to play the piano in less than a month; and how to behave like the
proper Christian daughter they wanted almost overnight.

I was willing to do anything to win their approval.  I desperately
wanted to deserve their love.

immediately.  And my smile had to be big enough and sunny enough to
make Mom say "Oh, there's a nice little girl.  I think we'll let her
stay."

I was invisible if I didn't do exactly as they wanted.  I began to
believe that if I didn't become the perfect child, I'd disappear.

I wanted desperately to fit in, to be the same as the people around me.
When Dad stood in front of the mirror, adjusting his tie or fixing his
hat before going off to work, I stood beside him and compared our
faces.

"I look just like you," I said, as my ochre skin and dark curly hair
and almond eyes were reflected beside his tall, all-American
fairness.

I hated the way I looked.  Whether in Korea or America, I thought my
face was wrong.  In Korea my eyes were too American; in America they
were too Asian.

After a few days in America I learned to smile.  I smiled so much it
hurt.  And if I forgot, Mom looked blankly around the room and said,
"Hmmm.  I hear a voice but I can't see anyone.  I imagine that if some
little girl would smile, I'd be able to see her."  So I'd stretch my
lips wide and beam madly at her, and then she'd acknowledge my
presence.

That little game was symbolic of life in that household: If I didn't
look and act the way my parents wanted, I didn't exist.  If I wasn't
smiling, Mom said that "Big Chief Storm Cloud" had managed to sneak in
the room and must leave

Living where I live today, in the eclectic society I love, it's hard to
believe that my Amerasian face was so disconcerting.  I was the town's
only minority, and a pretty meager specimen I was.  I can't imagine
what people would have said to a black person or full blooded Asian
person.  As it was, my face was ridiculed all the time.  And at home I
was never allowed to forget how different I looked.  ("Elizabeth, don't
pull your hair back like that.  You look much more American when it's
fluffed around your face.  Don't stay out in the sun.  You look like a
red Indian or something, not a pretty little American girl.")

My adoptive mother was tall and slender, with light-brown hair that
showed no signs of gray well into old age.  She always dressed as if
she were expecting company.  On any day of the week you could come by
the house at 7:00 A.M. and find her Wearing stockings, a girdle, two
inch pumps, and a dress.  She

prided herself on never wearing makeup--other than rouge, lipstick,
and powder.  She got her hair per med once a month.

By this time Dad was pastor of a small fundamentalist church.  He
always wore a suit, even on Saturdays.  Generally it was dark, with a
white shirt and a dark tie.  He was friendly to the outside world and
genuinely interested in other people.  His greatest charm was his
ability to make everyone believe that seeing them had made his day,
that their presence was all that was needed to make his happiness
complete.  And he was sincere.

He spent most of his time taking care of everyone else's needs.  He
visited the sick.  He was at church whenever he was needed.  He led
services at local rest homes.  He arranged for food vouchers when
people had no money, and he took them to the store to get their
groceries.  But he was hardly ever home.  Apart from my daily piano
lessons and religious lectures, I was last on his list of priorities.

Dad was a study in contrasts.  On one hand, his religion had left him
with a very narrow view of right and wrong and the belief in absolute
sin and absolute damnation.  And yet he was an innately kind and loving
man who could punish me harshly for a sinful thought and then spend the
night on his knees, in tears, praying for my soul.

I desperately wanted to please him.  And, for some reason, I felt
responsible for his happiness.  That feeling began after I'd been
living with them just a couple of days.  We were all in the kitchen and
Mom handed me the last cookie from the cookie jar--a kind gesture that
was out of character for her.  I took it, then looked at Dad's face and
immediately put the cookie in his mouth.  He smiled and ate it, and I
was overjoyed--I had done something to make him happy with me.

I continued to put cookies in his mouth over the years.

Whenever we played a game--Monopoly sometimes, or Aggravation--I
cheated so that Dad would win.  I cried whenever he appeared less than
perfect or when he didn't get his way.

At church camp one summer the kids sneaked his pajamas out of our cabin
and hoisted them up on the flagpole, and I became hysterical and tried
to lower the mechanism so no one could have a laugh at Dad's expense.

For some reason I became obsessed with protecting him.  He seemed very
vulnerable to me, despite the harshness with which he often treated me,
and I thought it was my responsibility to keep him safe and happy.

Nevertheless, I made him angry a great deal of the time, and he
continued to think my behavior was deliberate sinfulness.

One December night about a year after my adoption, we had finished our
evening Bible study, and it was my turn to pray.  But as soon as I said
"Dear Lord Jesus," I burst into tears.  I had been feeling
progressively more uneasy and desolate, without knowing why.

All of a sudden I knew.

"I feel like my mommy's dying," I told my shocked parents.

"I feel like I'm going to die too.  I want her back.  Can't Jesus bring
her back?"  I was wracked with sobs and I couldn't articulate the depth
of my anguish.

Dad was furious.

"Stop crying immediately," he told me.

"I

mean it.  Stop it this instant."

I tried my hardest, but I was too consumed by grief to shut it off,
even though I knew he'd punish me--since my parents berated me for even
having a sad look on my face, they viewed uncontrollable sobs as an
outrage.

Dad slapped my face, back and forth, and the sobs diminished, turning
into coughs, then gagging hiccups.  The pain of forcing them down into
my chest was excruciating.

"She is not your mother!"  he yelled at me.

"She was a sinful woman who

didn't love you at all.  She's in hell.  Do you think you know more
than God?  Are you criticizing His decisions?  Do you know what happens
to people who do that?"

And he proceeded to tell me, by reading me instance after instance in
the Bible where someone had the temerity to second guess God.  In every
case, the punishment was terrible.

"God is a God of wrath!"  Dad told me.

"How dare you question His laws."

Mom sat quietly, watching the scene, shaking her head in disbelief at
my sinfulness.

"I'm just so, so sorry that you could be such a bad little girl," she
told me.

"I thought we had the Lord's own special child.  He led us to choose
you out of all the children in that orphanage, and I never thought
you'd act this way."

I stood in front of them, my chest heaving painfully as I stared at the
floor.  I felt an increasingly familiar jumble of emotions: fear,
anger, loneliness--but mostly shame.

Before too long, I learned to push Omma from my thoughts.  My parents
told me she was something very bad and sinful called a prostitute.  She
didn't love me, they said; it didn't matter to her whether I lived or
died.

They had a stock phrase that was repeated ad nauseum throughout my
growing up years: "Your mother left you to die in a rice paddy."  It
was included in nearly every lecture or scolding or instruction: "Be
more respectful to your Mom.  She loves you much more than your birth
mother, who left you to die in a rice paddy.  Be obedient and do all
your chores to the glory of

God.  Remember how lucky you are to be in America, since your birth
mother left you to die in a rice paddy.  How can you displease God by
crying over your birth mother?  She didn't love you at all.  Remember,
she didn't want you.  She left you to die in a rice paddy."

A few years ago I pinned my parents down about that phrase.

Why had they said it?  What made them think it?  Mom said she was sure
someone had told them that at some point.  Dad, however, admitted that
they just made it up.  He said they thought it would be easier for me
to believe that story.  Easier than what, he didn't say.  We never went
arty further into the issue.  I said it was okay, that I was sure they
acted for the best.  I still didn't want to upset them.

My parents said that Omma didn't accept Jesus as her Savior, and so now
she's in hell, where she'll burn for all eternity.  I was tormented
constantly with thoughts of death and hell and eternal damnation.  I
always found it ironic that in fundamentalist Christianity, the thought
of the afterlife is touted as something comforting, and yet the whole
concept is so terrifying.  My parents said we were always surrounded by
legions of demons who were waiting to clutch our souls and carry us off
to hell.  In my mind, the demons were very real.  I saw them in my
imagination, bending over me, waiting.  They were tall, scaly creatures
with huge hands that ended in jagged claws.  They had gaping mouths
with razor-sharp teeth.  As nighttime approached, they seemed more
menacing.  While I brushed my teeth and washed my face and put on my
pajamas, my fear grew.

The only protection was prayer.  I knelt on the threadbare rug in my
bedroom reciting my litany of sins from the day: "I had an angry
thought today.  I talked back to Dad today.  I felt envy today."  I
cleansed my soul for fifteen or twenty minutes because one unconfessed
sin meant the demons could get me.  My eyes were closed, but every few
seconds I cracked one eyelid a tiny bit to peep out.  My parents said
that angels and demons could be

74 7 seen only with spiritual eyes, not with physical ones.  And they
said that during prayer, our spiritual eyes were opened.  So I was on
the watch for demons during prayer time.

After praying I climbed into bed and turned out the light.  I tried to
trick the demons I knew were hiding from me by pretending to be asleep
and then opening my eyes very quickly, scanning the corners of the
room.  Sometimes I almost saw them.

Sometimes I thought the demons in the Bosch triptych moved around, and
maybe they were the ones lurking in the dark.

Hell was as real to me as the nightmares that besieged me every night.
Both had more reality than my waking life.  I didn't feel real at all.
When I looked in the mirror I was sometimes caught by surprise to see a
face looking back at me.  I thought I was probably someone's bad dream,
and I felt sorry for them.  But eventually, I assumed, the dreamer
would awaken into a sunlit world and I would vanish like the last dark
tendril of candle smoke.

In the pink brick house I lay curled in my Early American bed wearing
my flannel nightie.  I read the Bible and said my prayer, and as the
image inched closer I drew my knees up tight and whispered "Jesus,
Jesus" over and over.  But He never came.

There, see it gathering?  In the corner of my room, forming itself into
a woman's body, suspended between heaven and earth.

I can't see her face, but her bare feet are elongated and limp, the
toes pointing straight down to my braided rag rug, which has somehow
become a neatly swept earth floor.  She's wearing a white dress,
trimmed in blue and crossed with a sash at the bodice.  Now she's
starting to move slightly in the breeze from my open window.  I have to
open my eyes before her face turns toward me.  Jesus.  Jesus.  I push
myself up to the ceiling.  If I can touch the ceiling I'll wake up.
Jesus.  Omma.

In the darkest hour of night I lay panting in bed, my heart

pounding so loud it hurt my ears, my head drenched in sweat, and my
fingernails clogged with my skin and blood.

I was told over and over how blessed I was to have been adopted by my
parents and taken into a Christian family, out of Korea and the
orphanage.

"All those other children died, and God chose you to live," my parents
told me.

"Of all the orphans there, He led us to adopt you.  God has a very
special plan for your life, and you must always obey and honor Him."  I
trembled when I thought of how I was letting God down every minute.  He
should have chosen someone else.

I had terrible feelings of guilt about those other children.  My
parents shook their heads and looked solemn as they recounted the
atrocities committed against the forgotten children of the Korean War.
I thought about the ones I had known personally-the little girl in the
trash can, the little boy without hands--and I couldn't imagine why I
was worth saving and they weren't.

My parents reminded me daily of all the children sleeping in back
alleys in Seoul and scrambling for a few bites of food, and they
contrasted that world with the comfortable home I'd been given.  I was
haunted by the suffering of those children.  I was angry over the
injustice that left them there and brought me to America.  I prayed for
them--because I didn't know what else to do--but it felt like wasted
effort.  I was angry with God for the choice He made: I wasn't worth
saving, and maybe they were.

I wondered if there was a quota of children who could be rescued, and
after it was filled all the rest were tossed out like so much cosmic
garbage.  I was also afraid of having thoughts like that; I was afraid
of God's wrath and retribution.

During family Bible time we talked about the doctrine of

"predestination."  Dad explained it by saying predestination means
that God chose certain people--the Bible says "even before the
foundation of the world"--to be saved.  A few people got lucky; the
rest will spend eternity in hell.  It sounded like the work of a
sadistic lunatic to me, but my parents explained that because we think
with earthly minds, we aren't wise enough to understand why God does
what He does.  In the Book of Isaiah God says "For My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways."

And to start screaming and beating my fists against my face because God
didn't choose my Omma to be saved was just plain sinful, my parents
said.  If she's in hell it's because of her own evil nature, and what I
better do is accept the will of God.

Fear ruled my life.  I was afraid of my parents.  I was afraid of God
and of hell.  I was afraid of the kids at school who whispered about me
and giggled.  I was afraid I'd get sent back to the orphanage.  I was
afraid of going to sleep.  I was afraid of the glow in-the-dark head of
Christ wearing the crown of thorns hanging in the hallway.

My parents tape-recorded many hours of my childhood on a big
reel-to-reel machine that sat in the corner of the living room.

Many of the vignettes were of punishment.  The story would
unfold--usually centered around my fear of something--and would
progress through the reasoning, the pleading, the tears, and the
denouement of my punishment and contrition.

The tape recorder was always at the ready.  When a crisis happened--for
example, I hadn't memorized a Bible verse properly, or I was afraid to
go down in the basement--Dad would get up and turn on the tape
recorder.  He'd pace back and forth,

preaching at me while I tried not to cry.  I was always aware that the
tape recorder was running, but it was so routine that I didn't think it
was anything odd.

Quite often he'd spank me while the machine was recording.

Listening to the tapes later, every slap would come through clearly,
along with my sobs.  In the background Mom could be heard saying
something like "Now, aren't you sorry you were such a bad little girl?
Don't you want to ask Jesus to forgive you?"

The tape recordings went on until I was about ten.  They got played
over and over as I was growing up, and we sat in the living room and
listened.  My parents loved them.  The tape recordings formed the
nucleus of our family entertainment.  We sat in the living room after
dinner, and Mom would say "Oh, let's hear one of those cute tapes of
Elizabeth."

During the scenes where I was screaming or begging, my parents would
chuckle and shake their heads at me.  It was all supposed to be amusing
and also an object lesson in the wages of sin.  I tried to smile along
with them, and as I got older I learned to laugh aloud at any tape
recorded misery.

I also began commenting on the despicable child in those tapes.

"Listen to me," I'd tell my parents.

"I was really bad, wasn't I?  How could you put up with me?  I really
deserved a spanking for that one."

A few years ago Dad had all the reel-to-reels transferred to cassettes
and gave me a leather-bound portfolio with copies of all the tapes as a
Christmas present.  Stunned, I thanked him and then shoved them in the
back of a drawer.  I never listened to them and never took them out of
the drawer until a couple of years ago, when I gathered them up in a
cathartic flurry of housecleaning and threw them away.

This is one of the abnormalities of my parents' household that I simply
accepted as the norm.  It surprises me how inc red

lous people are about it, even though now I realize how bizarre it
was.  But the tape recordings were, for me, as routine a part of
everyday life as washing the breakfast dishes.  People acting out of
over-the-top religious fanaticism do things that are incomprehensible
to others.  The tape recordings were just part and parcel of that
punitive, harshly fundamentalist household.

The little circle of Mom, Dad, and church was suddenly and
uncomfortably expanded when I was enrolled in school.  I had learned
enough of the rules at home and church to get by, but school was yet
another strange and uncongenial world.

On my first day at school, my teacher introduced me to the class, then
told me to say something about myself.  I stood there, silent,
fidgeting with the satin sash on my too dressy dress.  I didn't know
what to say.  My parents didn't like me to talk about Korea, so I
couldn't tell the kids where I was from.  I didn't

have any friends or hobbies to talk about.  I had no pets to
describe.

There was nothing I could think of that anyone would be even remotely
interested in.  I bowed slightly when the teacher introduced me, and
the kids snickered.  The teacher waited for a few seconds, then
brusquely told me to sit down.

By this time I'd been in ktnerica a little more than a year, and I was
presumed to be about seven.  I had already gone through the American
naturalization process, and my knowledge of American history and the
fine points of the English language was more comprehensive than most of
my classmates.  On that first day I drew a picture in my notebook while
the teacher talked.  She asked if she was boring me and I answered
truth fully: "Yes."  So I spent the next hour in the corner, not quite
sure how I got there or what I was supposed to do.

My adoptive parents taught me how to read before I started school, and
they did such a good job that my second grade teacher amended her
opinion of me after a few days and decided I was a prodigy, i had to
read aloud to the sixth grade students out of their English textbook.
The teacher told them they should be ashamed that a second-grader who
had known English for only a short tine could read so much better than
they did.

That, of course, sealed my fate at school.  The students, especially
the older ones, were merciless.  They made fun of my curly;

tempestuous hair.  They made fun of my mildly slanted eyes and blunt
nose.  They made fun of the precise way I articulated my words and my
occasional Korean accent.  And since everyone in our tiny town knew my
parents, the kids also knew I was adopted, so they naturally made fun
of that.

Throughout elementary school things were pretty much the same: I was
smart but I was miserable.  I had no friends and I was the constant
butt of the playground jokes.  I ate lunch alone; I sat at the far end
of the playground during recess, reading Charles Dickens.

I loved Dickens.  When I read him I felt as if he were talking just to
me, and that he understood exactly how sad and lonely I felt.  I was
searching for an emotional road map that I could follow to help get me
through the years of alienation.  No one in real life had taught me how
to deal with loss and abandonment, but I discovered that literature
could connect me with something larger than my own life, and I was
transported.

In fifth grade I did a book report on David Copperfield.  I decided
this would be the best book report in history and my classmates would
finally accept me because the story of David Copperfield's misery would
move them to open their hearts.  I made two family trees: one to show
David's biological family and another one to show his true, emotional
family.  I told about how unloved and neglected he was.  I recited the
final, embarrassingly ornate passage about Agnes "pointing upward."

In front of me the students fidgeted and whispered.  I saw kids
yawning, giving each other half-smiles, doodling in their notebooks.

When I finished and sat down at my desk the boy behind me leaned
forward and said, "That was the stupidest book report ever, weirdo."

The one instance in which I had some measure of camaraderie with other
kids during that period was when one of my few short-lived pets--a
rescued greyhound given me by a church member--watched me get on the
bus and then chased it twelve miles from our house to the school.

The other kids on the school bus first called my attention to the
chase.

"Look at your dog.  He's chasing the bus.  He doesn't want you to
leave."  I felt a welling up of love for the dog; of awe

and gratitude that another creature thought enough of me to run on hot
asphalt and sand desert back roads just to be near me.  My chest got
tight and my throat burned as I watched him through the bus's wide rear
window.

As he loped steadily along behind the bus, his tongue hanging out and
his slender legs sending up clouds of dirt, the kids on the bus cheered
him on.

"All right!  Good boy!  Wow, your dog is really cool."  I felt almost
accepted by the kids in those moments.

Because they admired my dog--and my dog obviously loved me--they were
actually speaking to me.  We were united in watching my cool dog chase
the bus.

Once we got to school I gave him some water while the kids gathered
around, patted his head and stroked his sleek flanks, and asked me
questions about him.  He wagged politely at them but saved his licks
and nuzzles for me.  I called my parents to come to school and pick him
up.

They did, but that afternoon when I got home from school the dog was
gone.

"We can't be running all over creation picking up that dog," they
said.

"He was supposed to stay put.  He's too much trouble."

I found out that my parents took that beautiful dog to the pound, and I
agonized over his fate--discarded again, locked in a cage, probably
dying unwanted and afraid.  I promised myself that one day I would give
a child of mine a pet that would never get taken away.

My parents were the teachers; their home was the classroom.

Every moment of every day the lessons were hammered home:

The Bible is the literal word of God; Christ is the only atonement for
sins; fear or grief or anger or curiosity or desire

is of Satan; obedience must be imediate, unquestioning, and absolute.

It frustrated them that I was so afraid of so many things.

During interminable sessions in the living room after the evening
family "devotions," or Bible and prayer time, they explained to me why
my fear was so sinful.  They had me memorize Matthew 10:28: "And do not
fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but
rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

And what if God did decide The was going to end my life?

The Bible has an answer to that as well: "Though He slay me, yet will I
trust Him."

I was acutely aware of my many flaws, in Korea I was subhuman.

Now I was sub-Christlike.  I knew I wasn't good enough for anyone, and
I felt complete despair.  I couldn't measure up to anyone's standards.
My parents told me I was saved from Korea to be re-created into God's
image, but I wasn't a malleable enough piece of clay.

As repetitive as all this sounds, it's impossible to do justice to the
stultifying monotony of my life in that household.  I was trapped on a
wheel that turned endlessly on the same theme.

More and more, books were my salvation.  I began devouring whatever was
available on the shelves in our house.  Dad's office was lined with
books, floor-to-ceiling shelves holding collected sermons and
theological treatises and about two dozen Bibles-family Bibles,
heirloom Bibles, gift Bibles, New American Standard, King James,
Hebrew, and Greek.  But there were a few gems scattered in there as
well: Shakespeare and Austen and Dickens, to name a few.  Reading
became the way I escaped the gray confines of life in this
fundamentalist Christian home in a tiny town in a lonely, vast
desert.

When I was about ten, I went with my parents to visit a woman in our
church.  I hated those visits to "shut-ins," where I had to sit
perfectly still and smile and listen to banal adult conversation and
pretend to be interested.  But this time something amazing happened.

The woman we visited lived in a trailer, every surface littered with
knickknacks: china kittens with plaid bows around their necks and
decorative plates on stands.  In the jumble was a slender book of poems
with stiff covers, and pages that looked as if they'd never been
opened.  I asked if I could read it, and the woman said I could as long
as I didn't get it dirty Or tear it.  I took the book to her kitchen
table and laid it carefully on a plastic place mat that was shaped like
a butterfly.

That afternoon changed my life.  Sitting in that cluttered room, with
the motes of dust dancing in the sunlight, I found out I wasn't
alone.

The poem I read was written by someone who had just lost a dearly loved
companion, and it haunted me for years.

"What is my life to me?  And what am I to life?/A ship whose star has
guttered out.  A fear that in the deep night starts awake".."  were the
only two lines I could remember.  I didn't know who the author was.  It
got to the point where I almost believed I dreamed up the lines
myself.

When I entered my teens I started searching for that poem, for that
author.  But in our little town library there were only a few books of
poetry, and none of them was what I wanted.

Nevertheless, I kept looking.

After my first encounter with poetry, I began trying to write it
myself.  It was pretty bad, but my teachers liked it and it usually got
thumbtacked to the bulletin board at my elementary

school.  I tried haiku and limericks, and wrote about the topics that
teachers gave A grades for, rain and sunsets and peace on earth.  The
real poetry of raw emotions was private, and no one but me read the
things I wrote in my diary:

You say that I'm ugly

You say that I'm strange.

I've swallowed every word Each searing drop of pain.

Life has shoved the facts down my constricted throat Life, you can
force-feed me on anguish till I choke.

So I cry cause life's unfair?

Sorry, bitch, that's tough.

I am not worth the joys of earth I am not meant for love.

God is Good, they say.

I'm not so sure.

I think God may be a mad scientist in a white lab coat experimenting on
cages of people.

Maybe He laughs when we run around screaming and screaming.

Maybe He takes notes on us under little headings:

"control group"

"test group"

as He watches us weep silently in corners gnawing on our fingers

Or maybe He's asleep in His bedroom upstairs underneath His silken
canopy,

while we howl in anguish down in the basement rotting in our rusty
cages completely forgotten by God the Mad Scientist.

l/He have no idea of another's suffering.

I judge you.  you judge me; we look askance at hair or clothes or skin
or smiles or the lack of smiles.

I think you laugh too loudly and I hate your taste in music.

You think I talk too much and you hate the boots I wear.

And all the while inside we weep and weep and weep.

life peek out, terrified, on a world that doesn't know us, and long for
someone to see how lovable we are.

ICe pass each other by, faces careful masks of unconcern.

Your anguish cries to minel my heart aches just like yours.

My parents found my diary once, when I was in sixth grade, and there
was hell to pay.  It was the kind that had a little lock on its clasp,
and I naively assumed it would open only with the key I kept under my
mattress.

But the lock opened with just a little twiddling of the dial, and when
I got home from school I found my parents waiting, stony-faced.  Dad
had opened the diary, and not only had they read it, but they had also
made an appointment with my school principal to share with him what
they'd found and make sure I was punished for the things I wrote about
my teachers and classmates.

I wrote about practicing "French kissing" on my pillow so I'd be good
at it someday.  I wrote about my sixth-grade teacher, who was cool
because she said "dammit."  I wrote about a girl who called me an "ugly
Chink" and how i hoped she went to hell and burned for all eternity.

After what seemed like hours of listening to my parents rant

and rave about my evil nature, I was sent to my room to read the Bible.
I wasn't spanked for what had happened, but a much worse punishment was
devised.  The next day my parents and I trooped into the school
principal's office, where I had to read him what I'd written.  We sat
in front of his desk and I read the entries, my voice and hands
shaking.  Several times he tried to interrupt, but my parents said I
wasn't quite finished.  I think he was nonplussed by the whole
thing--he seemed somewhat sympathetic to me and a bit brusque with my
parents.  Nevertheless, at my parents' urging, I got detention for a
week.

My parents didn't comment on the poetry I had written in my diary, even
though it had "bad language" and blasphemous references to God.  I
don't think they read it, since it was in verse.

Poetry didn't interest them at all--I don't know if they even
recognized it.

For me there was a real, earthy comfort to be found in etry, whether it
was my own fumbling verses or exquisite Shakespearean sonnets such as:
"Farewell!  thou art too dear for my possessing."  I learned that the
theme of loss was universal, and that made me feel less alone.  I
learned that any pain in my life had been felt by countless others in
countless past lifetimes and would be felt by people in lifetimes yet
to come.

Poetry first introduced me to the concept that pain could, perhaps, be
viewed as "the pain" and not "my pain."  That sorrow and loneliness and
abandonment were the human condition, not my sole possession.

Meanwhile, I kept trying to fit in.  I watched the way Americans moved,
talked, used their hands; and I became a master at imitation, i had a
better understanding of the language than the American born children I
went to school with.  So why couldn't my face change too?  Why couldn't
those Asian eyes become round and blue?  Why didn't my despised hair
lighten to

blond?  Why couldn't my blunt, abbreviated nose develop a more angular
line?

At school events, I stood on stage--either singing or reciting
something or getting an award--and looked out at the small, smug
gathering of homogeneous Anglo children, hating every one of them.
Always, looking back at me, were a few with their fingers held at the
corners of their eyes, pulling up and out, mocking the outcast before
them.

Hidden in the back of my bedroom closet, behind the box of quilt-square
scraps I hemmed each week for the Women's Missionary Society at church,
was my secret.

I had fashioned a blond wig by cutting strips of paper carefully, all
the same width and length, and coloring them on both sides with the
yellow crayon from my box.  They were sewn together at one end, and I
draped the blond fall over my head when I was alone in my room.

Then I became an American-born girl, and my face was my birthright to
acceptance.  My name was Cindy.  I was on the cheerleading squad.  I
had some freckles across my nose, and my eyes were as blue as
forget-me-nots.  I was tall and slender, and on my bedroom walls were
my cheerleading pom-poms, a school pennant, and pictures of cute boys
cut from magazines.  There was a pink Princess-style telephone on my
bedside table, along with a vinyl-covered address and phone book that
was full of numbers--I was the most popular girl in school.  My closet
was chaotic, stuffed with culottes and miniskirts and matching outfits
and shoes.

In reality, my bedroom walls had nothing but religious pic on them. The
bedside table held a Bible and a lamp.  No azines were allowed, even if
I had somehow found money to them.  I made my own dresses out of fabric
from a discount where Mom shopped, and I wore them over and over.

cause of the rules about Christian clothing laid down by my the dresses
were dowdy and plain.  It was the late 1960s, and fashion dictated
miniskirts, knee-high boots, hip-hugger leans, and halter tops.  My
dresses hit at mid-calf.  They had puffy sleeves and round collars.

At school, those dresses were good for lots of laughs.

I had learned to sew at church, at the Saturday afternoon Women's
Missionary Society meetings.  We made quilts, baby clothes, and basic
things like A-line skirts to be sent off to missionaries.

Under the tutelage of the church women I learned how to make darts,
install flat zippers, whipstitch buttonholes,

put in facings.  By seventh grade I made all my own clothes, except for
underwear.

I told my parents that the kids at school made fun of me and how
ostracized I was.  I thought one reason was the way I dressed,

so I asked if I could baby-sit for someone in the church and earn extra
money for clothes.  I wanted culottes and blue jeans and sweatshirts
like everyone else wore, instead of floral-patterned dresses made out
of no-iron polyester.  Dad thought the request was ridiculous and
treated it crisply.

"Why are you so concerned with worldly desires?

"For man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looketh on the
heart."  You make sure your heart is pure.  What others think of you
doesn't matter.

"God draws near to the humble, but the proud He knoweth afar off."  And
besides, your work is here in your home and at the church.  You don't
have time to work in other people's homes."

My parents decided that since I obviously had an unholy session with
clothes, a lesson in humility was needed.  At dinner that night, Mom
laid down the new rule.

"Your father and I have been praying about how to break you of your
worldly attitude about clothing.  From now on you can wear one dress a
week.  You can rotate the dress from week to week, but you'll wear the
same one Monday through Friday.  On Sundays you can wear your good
dress."

I was horrified.  It hadn't occurred to me that they might suggest such
a thing.  I realized I'd made a huge tactical mistake, and I began
backpedaling in panic.

"Please don't make me do that.  I won't have a worldly attitude anymore
about clothes, I promise.  I won't ask for anything more.  Please,
please, please.  The kids will make so much fun of me.  I'll die if you
make me do this."

"See?  This is exactly what we mean about your worldly attitude.

You should be happy that you have a nice dress to wear at all. Children
in Korea don't even have a nice dress like you have.

They'd be so grateful for it.  We brought you out of the orphanage and
gave you everything you need, and still you want more.

If other kids make fun of you, you should consider it a blessing.

You're being crucified with Christ so that you can share in his eternal
glory."

I had skipped two grades, so I was already a couple of years younger
than most of my classmates, and they seemed light years ahead of me in
sophistication.  I knew I'd never fit in with them.  And after a while,
the kids didn't make fun of my dress anymore.  They just ignored me.

So from then through junior high school, I wore the same dress five
days a week.  Once I got to high school, my parents relented and I was
allowed to make five outfits, one for each day of the school week. They
were still dowdy dresses, but at least there were five of them.

As I got older, I became increasingly afraid of God and of His list of
demands.  The Bible says, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven
is perfect."  This seemed impossible.  I had to ask forgiveness all the
time, since even our thoughts are judged.  It was a no-win situation.
If I got angry but I managed to bite back the 'words, I still had to
ask forgiveness for the angry thought.  And if "I felt proud of myself
for not speaking angrily, I had to ask 'forgiveness for pride.  If I
had a sexual thought, I had to ask forgiveness for that.  But asking
forgiveness reminded me of the thought, so I couldn't purge it
completely from my mind.  It was an unending circle with no way out.

My biggest fear was that I'd die unexpectedly before I had a chance to
ask forgiveness for the latest sinful thought, and I'd go 'to hell.

In our church the subject of hell got lots of attention.  In hell, I
was told, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the damned are
cast into the lake of fire, which burns hotter than anything
imaginable, for all eternity.  The people there can see what it's like
in heaven, so their anguish is intensified by looking upon unattainable
bliss.  I could understand that feeling; I'd looked upon unattainable
bliss most of my life.

My parents said everyone in hell knew they could have been in heaven
with Jesus, if only they'd accepted Him.  But if they had never heard
about Him in the first place, that seemed outrageously unfair to me, no
matter what my parents said about predestination.

Sometimes I wondered if God was just laughing away somewhere as we
frantically tried to follow His impossible rules.  I tried to squelch
that thought, though, because my fear of God's over thought.

when I felt rebellious, I tried to debate the issue logically, with
my parents: I told them I thought predestination was just another word
for prejudice; obviously the same God who made the Korean rule that
children with mixed blood are less than human made the American rule
that only born-again Christians can go to heaven.  They told me I was
guilty of blasphemy.

It was getting so that I was guilty of something nearly all the
time--sins of commission or omission--but I still looked for ways to
please my unpleasable parents.  One way I knew I could placate them was
to study the piano.  They had big goals for me musically--I think they
wanted me to be a wandering musical missionary, spreading the gospel of
Christ and the culture of classical music all at the same time.

I was still taking daily piano lessons from Dad, and began playing in
church by the time I was ten.  Nevertheless, the piano was a constant
source of anxiety for me, whether I was practicing at home in front of
my parents or performing in public.  I didn't mind playing the hymns at
church, because any reasonably competent pianist can do that, but I
hated recitals.

Dad volunteered me quite often for recitals, either at the church or at
the community center.  When I was twelve I played Beethoven's
Pathtique--all three of the sonata's movements from memory--and shook
uncontrollably the entire time.  My execution was adequate until the
third movement, when I missed the fingering on an arpeggio.  Out of the
corner of my eye I saw Dad shake his head and switch his gaze from me
to the floor, and my heart sank.  When the recital ended he wouldn't
speak to me, and the familiar wave of loneliness and nausea swept over
me.

Before I knew it, I was the household's full-time housekeeper and cook.
I was living a life of more civilized slavery than the one Omma had
protected me from, but all the daily chores-from scrubbing the toilets
to cooking each meal--were mine.

The contrast between the two mothers in my life was great:

Omma worked so hard day after day and still kept things tidy and found
time to pamper her child.  Mom did pretty much nothing except lie on
the sofa and dress up for church functions.

I was aware that other kids didn't have the same chores I had--I heard
kids talk at school about what their Moms made for dinner the previous
night, for example--and I was consumed with jealousy.

Of course, since jealousy was a sin, I was also consumed with guilt.



Chapter Nine

Just when I thought I had the rhythms of the house figured out and
under control, Mom's mother came to live with us.  I was in fifth grade
and believed she embodied the worst characteristics of my parents.

Everything about them that gave me pain was magnified in her.  And in
her view, it was obvious that adopting me was the biggest mistake my
parents ever made.  One day after a sex education class in school I was
filled with childish curiosity and asked Mom if she and Dad had
intercourse.

Grandmother turned to Mom in triumph.

"See?  She's completely degenerate.  That's what you get."

Grandmother didn't want them to adopt a Korean child.

She thought that anyone nonwhite was barbaric, and she was very proud
of the blond hair and blue eyes that ran in her family.

She referred to my eyes as "mud-colored."  Her insular arrogance
affected everything she did.  Before she moved in with us she had a
house nearby, where she employed a black gardener.  He was not allowed
in the house, although she conceded that he was "a good worker."  On
Friday afternoons, before he went home, she handed him a bottle of
7-Up, and he drank it on the back porch.  He got the bottle because
Grandmother said she didn't want a colored dirtying up her good
cut-glass tumblers.

I decided I wanted to be just like him: He had a wry wit and the same
respect for growing things that Omma had.

To me he was a nice, funny person who treated me like an equal.  To my
grandmother he was there simply for her use.  He never said anything
when Grandmother handed him his 7Up bottle, but he looked deadpan at me
and raised one eyebrow, and I burst out laughing.  We would talk about
how funny people are, and about flowers.

I decided I wanted to drink my 7 Up out of a bottle too and wear
overalls and learn how to prune roses.  Grandmother was horrified and
told my parents, who explained that certain proprieties must be
maintained in a nice society.

Although I didn't understand what those proprieties were, I began to
see that even in America I was not the only one isolated and hated
simply because I didn't look the same as people around me.

Grandmother was a short, sturdy woman.  She was less than five feet
tall, and wore support hose and lace-up orthopedic shoes.

She had her hair done every week at the one beauty parlor in town, and
she wore a freshly ironed dress every day.  She didn't like colored
folks, Orientals, Jews, or hippies.  She often said the world was
headed toward destruction.

She smiled only at church, where she had a special seat in the second
pew from the front, Her sacred cushion stayed on that seat and woe to
any hapless stranger who sat there by mistake.

After she had a mild stroke, Grandmother decided to move in with us.
Her husband, whom I never met, had already been dead for many years.
She ruled the house with her withered iron fist" and both my parents
obeyed her.  I learned later that she had loaned them the money to buy
their house, with the proviso that she would live there with them.  The
one television set in the house was in her room, as was an upholstered
armchair and ottoman.

With Grandmother's arrival my already massive list of daily chores
expanded to include all of her needs.  Though there was nothing to stop
her from taking care of herself, she viewed everyone around
her--especially those who weren't of pure Aryan stock--as her
servants.

I had to help her bathe and dress and clean her dentures.

Being that close to her made me gag.  I hated her musty smell and her
clacking teeth and her supercilious ways.  She walked with a cane, and
if I didn't do what she wanted quickly enough or if I was in her way
she whacked me across the legs with it.  She berated me constantly. She
said I was slow, rebellious, clumsy.

Grandmother often told me that people should "stick to their own kind,"
and that mixing the races never worked.  She said it was too bad that
I'd never be as pretty as an American child.

Once after she said that I got up in the night and went into the
bathroom I shared with her and moved her dentures from the fizzy glass
of Polident by the sink to the top row of the medicine chest.  After a
long, frantic search the next day, Mom found them.

"Well, Grandmother," I said, "sometimes when people get old they start
to lose their minds and they begin putting things in strange places.  I
guess that's what happening to you.  It's too bad that you'll never be
young and smart again."

Grandmother's bedroom was next to mine, and we shared the bathroom that
was connected to her room.  Her room was large and sunny, but she kept
the curtains closed because she had cataracts on her eyes and the light
bothered her.  She sat in the easy chair throughout the day, watching
As the world Turns and General Hospital.  From time to time she
hollered at me to bring her something: a glass of water, a hankie, or
the IF Guide and her magnifying glass.

My room had one window, but I was supposed to keep the curtain closed
because the sunlight would fade the furniture.

Since the furniture was a walnut four poster bed and a dresser from
Sears, I didn't quite understand such concern.  Nevertheless, I did
what I was told.

Our shared bathroom had been built as a master bathroom, and it had two
sinks side by side.  Grandmother's medicines, her denture glass, her
eye drops, and her Epsom salts took up most of the counter space.  I
hated using the same toilet she used or drying my hands on the same
towel.

Around this time I began to indulge myself with small acts of
rebellion.  My attitude toward my family was slowly changing--no longer
was I completely focused on pleasing them.

Instead I was starting to look at ways to please myself.  I was also
starting to feel a healthy contempt for much of what I had once simply
accepted.  And I was beginning to develop a sense of humor, even though
I was the only one laughing at my jokes I sometimes played pranks on
Grandmother that made me laugh hysterically but also got me into
trouble.

For example, Grandmother was extremely possessive about the

easy chair in front of her television set.  No one else was allowed
to sit there, because she said the cushions were arranged "just so" and
she didn't want them disturbed.  I had a doll that was almost as tall
as I was.  It had been a Christmas present and was supposed to walk
alongside you if you held its hand.  The walking mechanism never
worked, and the doll was too big and unwieldy to play with, so it
usually was shoved in the back of my closet.

One day, while Grandmother was in the bathroom, I put the doll in her
easy chair.  I put a fuzzy black hat of Mom's on the doll's head.  I
turned the chair so just part of the doll was visible from the bedroom
doorway.  With Grandmother's cataracts, I figured, she'd mistake the
doll for me and think I was sitting in her chair.  I hid in her closet
and waited.

I heard the bathroom door open and Grandmother's cane thudding on the
floor.  She opened her bedroom door and stopped, and I watched her from
the four-inch opening in the closet door.

"Elizabeth!  You get out of my chair this instant, young lady!  You
know perfectly good and well you're not allowed there.  Now you've
ruined the cushions.  Do you hear me?  I said get out.  I have never
seen such an evil child.  You're going to get punishment like you've
never had before, Miss Disobedient."

Grandmother was enraged.  Her dentures slipped and clacked as she
yelled at the doll.  I clamped my hand over my mouth so I wouldn't
laugh out loud.  She hobbled forward and lifted her cane, then whacked
the doll across the arm, scolding all the while.  The doll teetered for
a couple of seconds, then tilted.  The black fuzzy hat fell to the
floor and the doll toppled over onto its head.  Grandmother screamed
and dropped her cane.  I fell out of the closet, laughing.

My parents came running in, and when they figured out what happened I
got what Grandmother called "a thrashing to

TOO

drive out Satan."  But even though I was sore for a couple of days, the
joke was worth it.

Since Grandmother's world revolved around her television set, most of
my practical jokes did as well.  I did small, spiteful things: I
sneaked into her room whenever she got up to go to the bathroom--as she
did quite often--and changed the channel.  So when she got back she'd
mutter to herself, then heave herself back up and hobble to the
television to change it back.

"What in the world?  This crazy TV keeps going away from the right
channel.

I'm going to call a repairman one of these days."

At church Grandmother was gracious and sweet, in a somewhat acidulated
way, and people commented to me about her.

"Oh, your grandma is just the cutest thing!  She sits in her special
place like a little queen.  I bet you just love your grandma, don't
you?"  I usually didn't even bother to nod--I'd just look incredulously
at whoever was speaking.  How could anyone love that withered,
malevolent old hag?

In Mom's interaction with Grandmother, I saw the same drama of
dominance and shame played out a generation once removed.

Years later I recalled the degrading and insulting way Grandmother
spoke to Mom and realized that so much of what Mom did to me was an
echo of her own childhood.  It was when my own daughter was born that I
had to confront what I knew of being a mother.  Although Omma gave me
love and acceptance, she also left me after too short a time.  It was
that brief period of pure love that served as my model for motherhood.
But it was incomplete.  There were only fragments of warmth to cling
to, and the rest of the process had to be learned.

Once a week Grandmother got a full bath.  On Saturday evenings she
went in the bathroom and took off all her clothes, leaving them in a
pile on the floor for me to pick up.  Then I held her arm while she
stepped into the tub and sat on a plastic stool.  I used a pitcher to
rinse her off and then lathered up her washcloth with the bar of
Palmolive soap.  I washed her, starting at her neck and working down.
She lifted her arms so I could wash her armpits and stood up slightly,
leaning heavily on my shoulders, so I could wash her buttocks.  Her
smell was nauseating.  I held my breath and averted my eyes, and turned
my head away every few seconds to gulp lungsful of air.

She talked to me throughout the bath: "Make sure you scrub my back
thoroughly.  You missed a spot last time.  Stand still while I lean on
you.  You're going to make me fall if you're not careful.  My bottom's
sore.  Make sure you rinse it carefully.  Don't be so clumsy."

After her bath, she leaned on me again as she stepped out.

Every time she leaned on me, whether at bath time or when she was
getting in and out of the car, she dug her fingernails into the hollows
around my shoulders and collarbones.  Grandmother was a bony woman
whose leathery skin hung in pouches from her body.  She was a small
woman, but when she leaned on me it felt like she weighed a ton.

In the bathroom I dried her off, trying to keep a couple of layers of
toweling between my hand and her body.  I tried my best not to touch
her withered skin, and sometimes the revulsion I felt would show in my
face and she'd snap at me.

"What's the matter with you?  You look like you swallowed a lemon."

She put on her nightgown and clean underwear and stood at the bathroom
sink, cleaning her dentures.  I picked up her dirty clothes by their
edges and put them in the bathroom hamper, only to have to touch them
again when I did the laundry.

I had mixed feelings about bodies.  I felt revulsion toward
Grandmother's naked body, which I was forced to see on a regular basis.
I was ashamed of my own body and budding woman.

hood.  I knew my body was supposed to be the temple of God, so

I felt no ownership over it.  During communion we ate the body and
blood of the Lord, which added another layer to my stack of body
issues.

My first experience with discovering my body and what it could do and
how it could feel ended grotesquely.  I was about ten.

At that age I knew nothing about sex.  My parents, of course,
disapproved of anything that involved physical pleasure.  Sex was
discussed only in the context of the evils of fornication and adultery
and the horrible fate that awaited anyone who did those things.  I was
in bed one Morning, just awakened, and drowsily started touching
myself. I didn't know enough about sex to know that it might be wrong. 
I had never heard the word "masturbation."

I had never heard the word "clitoris."  All I knew was that it was a
new sensation and I wanted to explore it further.  Mom came in to get
me out of bed and saw what I was doing.  She was horrified and I
realized immediately, of course, that I had done something terrible,
but I didn't yet know just how terrible it was.

She and Grandmother took me into the bathroom and made me take off my
clothes and get into the tub.

The entire time they both berated me, saying I was filthy and
disgusting.  Mom kept saying, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

How could you do something like that?  I thought you were a good
Christian girl."  Mom held me down in the tub, with my legs pulled
apart so I couldn't clamp my knees together, and Grandmother turned on
the hot water tap full force.

The water was scalding and terribly painful.  After a few minutes they
let me up, and I promised fervently never to do anything so evil
again.

Another incident took place around that same age.  I'd taken my evening
bath and put on talcum powder.  I was clean and wearing warm flannel
pajamas.  I reveled in the sensuality of being clean and soft with the
cotton flannel next to my skin, my hair damp and curly from the steam
in the bathroom.  I got into bed and my parents came in to hear me say
my prayer.  After I did that, as I was saying good night, I blurted out
what I was feeling at the moment.

"I love feeling like this.  I love being clean and warm.  I like the
way I smell.  I wish I was married so my husband could enjoy me too." I
remember feeling gratitude for the ability to feel that way, to really
enjoy my skin and hair and scent and softness.  I knew that marriage
was a "holy estate, ordained of God," that it was okay to want to be
married.  In fact, my parents said a godly young woman's goal was to be
married.  So it seemed to me that I was thanking God for that in my
future.

Dad, however, was immediately censorious and indignant.

Was I feeling lustful?  Was I harboring evil desires?

I didn't even know what lustful feelings were, but I felt guilty and
confused.  I was bewildered that something that felt so pure and sweet
could make my parents so angry.  I said, "No, Daddy, I'm not feeling
lustful.  I just wish I was married."  Dad launched into a
extemporaneous sermon: Why would I wish I was married when I was still
a little girl?  And why would I even think of things like that?  And
why was I focused on my body?  I shouldn't even give that a second
thought.  I shouldn't be so attached to pleasures of the flesh.

So I knew, once again, I had said the wrong thing, done the wrong
thing, and not only that, but felt the wrong thing.  Even my very
feelings were wrong.

Growing up in that household, my feelings came in for daily scrutiny.
Because, as Dad pointed out, it was what was in our hearts that
counted.  God knew our hearts and thoughts, and we'd be judged
accordingly.  It wasn't enough to do the right thing or keep yourself
completely sinless in your actions and words.  Your thoughts were
judged as well; therefore there was no escaping sin.  So even to feel
that moment of bliss because of the warmth and the smell and softness
of my skin was wrong.

After a long, angry tirade, Dad made me get out of bed and get on my
knees and ask God to forgive me for my lustful thoughts and for my
preoccupation with the physical world.

Today, I would rather be intimate with someone than do just about
anything.  It isn't just the bliss of sex.  It's physical closeness
that I love; the sensuality and comfort and gloriousness of body
touching body is something I never get enough of.  And even as a child
I found it incomprehensible when my parents would talk about the evils
of the flesh and of desire.  Both of them told me quite often as I was
growing up that sex was not something they had any interest in, and it
was something I shouldn't have any interest in.

What amazes me is that as an adult, I'm enthralled by sex.  I love
everything about it; I'm extremely aware of the physical world and its
attendant pleasures and pains, and I'm acutely grateful for every
nuance of physical feeling.

Grandmother had a couple more strokes as the years went by, and her
health deteriorated.  Finally she was bedridden, able only to nod or
shake her head.  The day she died was the one and only time I saw Mom
cry.  I was amazed, first of all, that she was pable of tears.  Second,
I was amazed that she would shed them over someone so poisonous.
Grandmother and I never had a moment of closeness; I couldn't remember
one instance in which I felt loved or even accepted by her.

I was in junior high when Grandmother died, and I felt a moment of
pure, unadulterated joy that was almost immediately mixed with guilt. I
assuaged my guilt feelings by telling myself that Grandmother was in
heaven with Jesus now, so it was okay to feel happy.  In fact, I told
myself, I feel happy on her behalf.

My parents said Grandmother was sharing in the fellowship of the
saints.  They said she was experiencing eternal bliss.  So I figured it
was probably okay for me to dance around in the cemetery after her
burial.

Chapter Ten

When I was about thirteen I started having dreams about flying.  They
always started out the same way: I dreamed that I was suddenly awake
and it was the middle of the night in my bedroom.  There I was in my
cotton flannel nightgown, standing at my open window.  The stars were
bright; the night clear and warm.  I rose up off my feet and floated
out through the window, and then higher and higher.  Up I floated, past
the roof of our house, past the telephone wires , high into the
sparkling night sky.  I was exultant and completely happy.  I swooped
down, arms spread wide like wings, and began soaring over the tiny
desert town and then over the western hills.  My hair floated out
behind me, the cool breeze in my face was exhilarating.  I could go
anywhere; I could do anything.

I flew past the town, past the wide stretches of desert, past Los
Angeles and the coastal communities, to the Pacific Ocean.  On the way
I swooped down to brush the tops of trees with my hands as I flew past,
and sometimes I flew close to the ground so I could look in the windows
of city houses.  Over the ocean I soared on the currents, sometimes
turning over on my back so I could look up at the moon as I flew.

From there I visited different countries, and they were al ways so
real, so intricate with detail.  I stopped at special places and landed
on the ground so I could get a better look.  Whenever I saw a little
girl I landed to see if I could talk to her, but usually she spoke some
language I didn't understand.

The flying dreams returned, off and on, throughout the years, and in
the periods where they didn't come I felt a deep sense of loss.  Many
times I prayed for them: "Please, dear God, let me have a flying dream
tonight."  They truly were the most wonderful things I ever
experienced, whether in my waking or sleeping life, and I still yearn
for them.  Quite often I thought I was starting to have a flying dream
but then I'd hit a ceiling or get tangled up in a tree and not be able
to rise any farther.

I felt no fear in flying dreams, and they were the only time at night
when fear was gone.  I was still terrified of the dark.  My parents,
however, kept repeating that fear showed a lack of trust in God, so
they didn't let me have a night-light or keep a lamp burning. According
to them, I was supposed to glorify God by overcoming my fears. 
Sometimes I awakened screaming from a nightmare and they came into my
room to ask what was wrong.

Teeth chattering, head drenched in sweat, I could only say two words
over and over: "Man coming.  Man coming."  They didn't like that.

"There is no man coming.  There's no man here but your dad.  Stop
acting up, and go to sleep."

It annoyed them that when I had nightmares my head perspired, drenching
my pillow.  I had to change the pillowcase every Morning.

The only time in my life I can remember feeling truly safe was when I
was nestled on Omma's lap, outside our little house in Korea.  She was
cross-legged on the ground, leaning back against the wall.  I sat in
the hollow of her lap, resting my head back against her chest, and her
arms were wrapped around me.

Her hanbok was old, well-worn cotton, shiny in some places, soft and
enveloping.  The sleeves were large, and she tucked her hands inside
the opposite sleeve as she wrapped her arms around me so that it was an
unbroken circle of soft fabric with her strong arms inside around my
body.  My knees were drawn up, and she tucked the fabric from the ends
of her sleeves underneath ray bare toes to keep me warm.

Wrapped that way I was like a little chrysalis in a tight fitting
cotton cocoon of safety and love.  I could feel the rise and fall of
her chest with her breathing.  I knew that over the top of my head she
was looking at the mountains.  I focused on them as well, for a while,
until my eyes grew heavy.  Infused with a delicious sense of safety and
peace and contentment, I fell asleep in her arms.  And as I drifted off
I could feel the soft butterfly kisses she pressed from time to time on
the top of my head.

I have friends who can recall going to church as children, but none of
them quite understand why religion looms so menacingly over all my
memories.  Of course, my parents were not like any others I have known;
our household was not like any other Christian household I've
encountered.

They were steely-eyed, fixed-smile zealots, of the mold that turns out
martyrs and Crusaders.  Satan was the enemy, followed closely by
humanism.  Personal rights were nonexistent.  Horrible things could be
done in the name of the Lord.

My parents were also automatons.  They didn't speak, or apparently even
think, anything that wasn't out of the Bible.

Thinking independently was wrong, they said, because we were supposed
to fill our minds and hearts so full of God's word that there wasn't
room for any other thoughts, an idea I found profoundly
claustrophobic.

"But, Dad, why do we believe everything in the Bible?"  I would
challenge, "What if things got written down wrong?

What if people made stuff up?"

"The men who wrote the Bible were inspired by God, so everything in it
is transferred directly from the mind of God to the hands of the men
writing.  We believe it in its entirety"

"Because God says to do so."

"But how do we know God really said that.)"

"Because the Bible says He did."

Sometimes I got so frustrated by those senseless answers that I thought
I'd scream.  But since I wasn't allowed to even cry, let alone scream,
I swallowed my anger and kept my face expressionless.

There we sat in the living room, three Bible-programmed robots.

My parents sat in their chairs, and I sat curled up in the corner of
the sofa, clenching the tassels of the throw pillows.

Sometimes I imagined what would happen if I stood up and gave to my
thoughts: "Why can't I think for myself?  Why do you you know
everything?  Maybe you don't know anything!"

And while I pondered how cataclysmic such a scene would Dad prayed
aloud while Mom provided the background

"Dear Lord, forgive us for having any doubts about your holy

"Yes, dear Lord"

"And cleanse our minds and hearts of all worldly thoughts so that we
can be holy, even as you are holy"

"Make it so, Jesus."

"And keep us from letting Satan get a foothold into our lives."

"Oh, we beg you, Lord."

"For you and you alone can save us.  And we want to share in suffering
and in your shame so that we can someday share in your glory, and sit
at your right hand."

we do, Lord.  Yes indeed"

"And create in Elizabeth a clean heart, and renew a right within
her."

"Oh mold her into a Christlike image, Lord."

Then it was my turn to pray, and the prayer had to be a cer length,
with a definite fervor, and enough penitence and verbal
self-flagellation to satisfy my parents so they'd let me go to bed.

"Dear Lord, please forgive me for questioning your holy word.  Please
forgive me for letting Satan give me any doubts i; bout the Bible.
Please forgive me for talking back to Dad and Mom and for being grumpy
this Morning.  Help make me a better girl.  For Jesus' sake, amen."

When I finally got in bed, away from my parents and away from the
Bible, I felt an enormous sense of relief.  In the darkness of my
bedroom I could think my own thoughts--even if I was afraid they were
blasphemous enough to send me to hell-and I could imagine and dream and
retreat into my make believe world.

In my make believe world, the fantasies echoed the ones Omma and I
shared: I escaped somehow and lived in a place that was green and
hilly, where I had lots of friends and lots of love.

In my favorite fantasy, a man came to the door and announced that my
adoption was all a big misunderstanding: He was actually my real father
and he'd been unable before now to come get me.  He took me with him to
England, where he had an estate in the countryside.  He taught me how
to ride horses, and there was a big garden.  He had a cook and
housekeeper who adored me.

Every day I took afternoon tea in the garden with him, and eventually I
grew up to become a famous Shakespearean actress.

Unfortunately, I would always wake up from these dreams, and if I was
very unlucky, I'd wake up on Sunday.

On Sundays I got up at seven.  Sunday school was at nine thirty, and by
the time I was in junior high I taught a Sunday school class.  After
breakfast and doing the dishes, I got ready for church and scanned my
Sunday school lesson--I never spent the time preparing it that Dad
thought I did, and by now his approval meant less and less to me.

I played piano for the "opening exercises," where all the Sunday school
classes gathered together for fifteen minutes to sing songs and pray
before going to their separate classrooms.

Then [ took my little class of first- and second-graders into our room,
where we played games for a while.  I usually told them a story using
felt cut-out figures on a felt background, and then I let them tell
stories themselves and play with the felt people.

Discipline was nonexistent, and I tried to keep the religious part of
Sunday school to a bare minimum.

At ten-thirty Sunday school was over.  Then I had to get into my choir
robe, arrange the Morning's music on the piano, and get ready for the
church service.  Every week I played a different prelude, usually
something by Bach or Chopin, as people were gathering in the sanctuary.
It always annoyed me that nobody paid any attention to something I'd
worked on pretty hard throughout the week.  During the service I sat at
the piano, in full view of the congregation.  That meant I had to look
sweet and Christlike and interested in the sermon for the entire
hour.

As I got older I let the perfect facade drop every now and then, and
sometimes I didn't bother about stifling my yawns or hiding my
boredom.

After church there was usually "cookie hour," where I helped pour tea
or coffee.  I was always in the kitchen afterward, helping clean up.
Somehow, Mom never managed to wash one dish.

It amazed me how much free labor the church got out of its members,
especially its female members.  A coterie of about ten women in our
church worked like dogs, cooking and baking for church socials, washing
dishes, arranging flowers, cutting and sewing quilts for missionaries,
Nobody ever seemed too appreciative either.  If you were a godly woman
that kind of devotion was expected,

I snickered to myself over the competition between the women in the
church for their pathetic crumbs of glory.  Which cake the minister
took seconds of, which casserole dish was scraped clean, which stack of
sandwiches got placed in front of the others--all those things were
life and death to the Women's Missionary Society.

Many of the women were very sweet, and some were nice to me.  One of
them, a widow named Helen, treated me with a kindness I never received
in my own home.  In fact, I used to daydream that Mom died--maybe
killed by a migraine or some thing--and Dad married Helen.  We'd bake
cookies together and she'd take me shopping, and she wouldn't punish me
if the bed wasn't made with perfectly squared sheet corners.

I always wondered what Helen was doing in that church.  She laughed
loudly and often, and sometimes winked at me when the other women
started arguing over whose flower arrangement to put on the pulpit.
From time to time I heard the others whisper about Helen: She yeas a
"loose" woman--I assume cause she went on weekend jaunts with friends
and wore slacks and red lipstick to church and smoked cigarettes in the
parking lot.

Once a year, on mother's Day, the service was devoted to the women in
the church.  That meant the Bible reading was out of Proverbs: "A
virtuous woman, who can find?  For her price is far above rubies.  The
heart of her husband trusteth in her, and she does him good, and not
ill..."  Being a virtuous woman meant you worked hard, never
complained, obeyed God and the men in your life, and kept yourself pure
in body and mind.

For that you were rewarded with one service a year in your honor, where
you could wear a white carnation and maybe get a bouquet of roses if
you had given birth to more children than any of your sisters in the
congregation.  Then you served lunch and cleaned up afterwards.

I was told that being a godly woman began by being a godly child, and
that meant saving souls as soon as possible.

According to my parents, if anyone I knew went to hell, I

would be held accountable.  It was my duty to bring my friends to the
Lord, and I knew that if I failed, they would suffer for eternity.
Every evening after family Bible time, the same question was asked:
"Have you brought your little friends to the Lord Jesus Christ? Because
if they die without the Lord they will spend eternity in hell, and it
will be your fault."

Talk about pressure: Now not only was it my job to make everyone around
me happy and to make the Lord Jesus Christ proud of me and to please
God and to please my parents, but the eternal salvation of everyone I
knew rested on my shoulders.

One of the few kids who would have anything to do with me was a
red-haired girl named Brenda.  When I entered sixth grade the middle
school was only a couple of miles away, so I started walking instead of
riding the elementary school bus.  We were in the same sixth-grade
class and she lived two blocks away, so every day we walked to and from
school together.  I liked Brenda and I didn't want her to burn in the
fires of hell for eternity, so I tried to save her soul.

One day after school I went to her house and we took glasses of
Kool-Aid into her room.  We sat on the bed and talked about various
things, and I finally worked up my courage enough to blurt out:
"Brenda, you're going to go to hell unless you accept Jesus Christ as
your personal savior.  Would you like to ask Jesus into your heart?"

Brenda sat on the bed in her culottes and sweater and stared at me. She
told me her family was Jewish.  She told me she wasn't interested.

I told her that her eternal soul was at stake.

I left a few minutes later--Brenda still unsaved--and went home.  Our
relationship was never the same.  She avoided me after that and I
walked to school by myself.  My parents told me I should have tried
harder.  They said that at the Last Judgment, when "the last trumpet
shall sound and the dead in Christ will rise first," I was going to
have to go before God and explain to Him why Brenda was in hell and why
I didn't bring her to the Lord.  They took my guilt a step further,
saying "her blood will be on your head."

Losing the one friend I had was heartbreaking.  And trying to justify
myself to my parents was impossible.  They didn't care that she was
Jewish--in fact, since she was one of "God's Chosen People" who had
rejected the Messiah, saving her soul would have been considered even
more of a coup.

Somehow I was supposed to have the power to bring everyone I knew to
salvation.  But how that belief dovetailed with the belief of
predestination, I didn't know.  And I never quite understood how it was
my fault, if they were already predestined for hell anyway.

From time to time I asked tentatively about Buddhism, trying to find a
shred of comfort over my mother.

"Buddhism's a nice religion, don't you think?  It's peaceful.  It
believes in being kind, just like Jesus.  Don't you think it's possible
that Buddhists might go to heaven?"  Dad was always firm.

"Buddhists will burn in hell for all eternity, just like everyone else
who hasn't accepted Christ as their personal savior.  Being nice or
kind doesn't matter.

The nicest and kindest of people are going to hell without Christ."

The contrast between my mother's Buddhism and my parents'
fundamentalist Christianity was immeasurable.  There was nothing you
need do in one and endless work in the other.

Omma never told me to believe anything; I could chant with her if I
wanted or just play, I could meditate with her or just go to sleep. She
simply was, and she let me simply be.  If she believed in anything I
think it was in the inherent rightness of life.  I don't know if she
believed in reincarnation; I don't know if she believed in God.  She
had her own little rituals that were for no one's comfort but her
own.

My parents' faith required twenty-four hours a day vigilance.

They read I Peter 5:8 to me: "Be on the alert.  Your adversary, the
devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

Vigilance was required not only for our own souls but for those around
us.  The work was endless, and even your best efforts might not be
enough.

"Many are called," the Bible says, "but few are chosen."

On Saturdays I had to do "house-to-house visitation."  Instead of
staying home watching cartoons, I got up early and dressed as if I were
going to church.  A few diehard evangelical types met at the church at
8:00 A.M. for coffee and strategy.  Dad, who was by this time the
church's minister, led the attack.

With the street plan map laid out on the table, we gathered around and
planned how to divide our small town and conquer.

Then we held hands and prayed, asking God to touch people's hearts and
prepare fertile soil for our eventual sowing of "the seed of the Lord's
word."  When I was a teenager I started changing the prayer to "the
seed of the Lord" just to amuse myself.

Nobody ever seemed to find anything odd about my phraseology.

Then we fanned out.  My dad and I always went together, driving in the
dilapidated yellow church van.  To me, a successful Morning of
house-to-house visitation was when no one answered their doors.  I held
my breath as we walked up to each house, silently chanting my
Saturday-Morning mantra: "pleasedon'tbehomepleasedon'tbehome."

It was awful when the door was opened.  It was beyond awful when
another kid opened the door.

Holding my Bible in my sweaty hands, I said my lines: "Hi there.  How
are you today?  I'm here to invite you to attend a service at our
church."  We were trained in exactly how to respond to whatever the
person said.

"I'm already a member of a church."

"Great!  Which one?  Because it's important that your church teach the
Word of God in its entirety and that it teaches redemption through
Jesus Christ."

"I'm not interested."

"Really?  Are you interested in being able to choose between eternal
damnation and eternal glory at the right hand of God?

Because without Christ, you're doomed for eternity."

"Get the hell off my property."

"Harden not your heart against the Lord, my friend."

If my dad wasn't within earshot I simply invited them to church,
apologized for bothering them, and got away as quickly as possible.

Maybe one visit a month would actually "bear fruit," as the little band
of soul savers called it.  Occasionally someone would actually accept
the invitation and come to church the next Sunday.

The big problem I had all my life with fundamentalist Christianity is
that it contradicts itself.  It makes no sense.  Even at that age I
couldn't reconcile the conflicting teachings: "The heart is deceitful
and, above all things, desperately wicked," on one hand, and "Man was
made in the image of God," on the other.  So I wondered: Did that mean
that the heart of God is deceitful and above all things desperately
wicked?  Maybe so.

And there was the theory of predestination coming in direct conflict
with evangelical fervor.  Also, the things in the Bible that we took
literally and lived by were, it seemed to me, so arbitrarily chosen,
especially with regard to the Old Testament.  There were so many rules
laid down there, and we obviously didn't live by all of them.

For example, when women were menstruating they weren't forced to leave
the confines of the city, as they were in biblical times.  But there
were certain things in the Old Testament, especially about
homosexuality, that fundamentalist Christians absolutely embraced.  So
who decided which things in the Old Testament were valid and which were
nullified by the death of Jesus Christ?  My parents told me that blood
sacrifices no longer had to be made as they were in the Old Testament
because when Christ came He was the once and forever sacrifice for
sins.  Okay, I thought, great.  But there were other things in the Old
Testament that we still followed, and many we didn't.  Who made the
rules?

Another thing that really bothered me was the teaching of Paul in the
New Testament.  I disliked him when I was a child, and the feeling grew
as I got into my teens.  Paul, I thought, was a :' misogynistic,
hateful, judgmental lunatic.  I could never understand my parents'
reverence for Paul.  And my parents would rationalize some of the
things he said, such as his rule that women were to keep silent.  Well,
the women in our church certainly didn't keep

' silent, least of all Mom.  So even though I thought Paul's entire
philosophy was nonsensical, I couldn't understand why--if we followed
the New Testament in toto--we didn't follow that.

My parents said that Paul was talking to a certain kind of woman at a
particular time in which there were big problems.

But the same could be said of any of the teachings from the Bible.  No
matter how you sliced it, it didn't make sense.  It never flowed in a
logical manner.  Whenever I'd get to that point in the argument, Dad
would say we had to accept it by faith.

And so I did.  Even though fundamentalist Christianity was

1I9

the absolute epitome to me of illogical, muddled thinking, I accepted
everything on faith.  The fear factor was so intense that even though I
couldn't embrace it wholeheartedly, I did the best I could so that I
wouldn't spend eternity in a lake of fire being tormented by legions of
Satan's demons.

There was no escape from the watchful eye of God.  Religion permeated
absolutely every area of our lives.  Even something as simple as going
out to McDonald's became a trial by fire.

I hated going out to meals with my parents because we always had to
pray before we ate.  It made no difference whether we were out in
public or at home, Dad talked just as loudly, prayed just as
eloquently, and we held hands and my face burned with embarrassment.
Everyone in the restaurant stared.  We lived in a tiny town, so
wherever we went I always saw someone I knew.  And of course they
snickered, and I was mortified, and my parents said it was an honor to
be shamed because of Christ.

That was another quandary for me.  Why was wearing a badge of shame
something to be so proud of?

"Praise God," my parents said, "if people ridicule or revile you for
the Lord's sake."

For example, the clothing and hairstyle I was forced to wear were so
out of style.  But when I said anything, my parents said I should be
proud to be ashamed for Christ and share in His suffering.

Although how Christ was glorified by me having to wear an ugly dress
was never explained.

Not only was I terrified of God, I was terrified of His house as
well.

I hated church buildings, and was ashamed of feeling that way--after
all, it was the temple of God.  Our sanctuary was laid out in a simple
pattern: two sections of pews, the altar at the front, then behind that
the platform and the baptistery.  The '; sanctuary smelled dank and
dusty.  The woodwork was shiny : from being rubbed by so many hands
over so many years, and the burgundy pew cushions were frayed and
lumpy.

Every Sunday, after the Morning worship service, it was my job to go
down the aisles and collect trash people left behind,

: straighten up the hymn books, and make everything spic and span.  If
it was communion Sunday, there were about a hundred tiny communion
glasses, with their residue of grape juice, to be washed and dried. The
cracker wafers and grape juice represented the body and blood of the
Lord.

Sometimes, if no one was looking, I'd take a swig of Welch's grape
juice right out of the bottle.  I felt about as bad as could be,

but exhilarated and dangerous too.  I told my one friend: "Hey, you
know what I did today?  I chugged the blood of the Lord, man."

The one part of church I liked was hymn singing.  Many of them were
profoundly comforting to me, and I sang them over and over to myself:

When peace, like a river

Attendeth my way;

14 Zhen sorrows like sea billows roll:

I/Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say "It is well, it is well,
with my soul"

Fundamentalist Christians "wrestle in prayer," which means they pray
and pray and pray until they feel they have an answer.

I did that a lot: on my knees, pounding at the door of heaven.  I
wanted the peace everybody said the Lord could give.  I wanted to know
I was saved.  I wanted to feel the Holy Ghost filling me up.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay

Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.

Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care

-and fit us for heaven to live with Thee there.

I never understood how Jesus--so gentle, so compassionate--could allow
such suffering of the children in His tender care.  The only
explanation I could come up with was that God the Father was the one
who really called the shots, and Jesus, while the Son of God, actually
had very little power.  All the love, but little of the power.

Evidence of the severity of Almighty God was constantly before me.  The
Heavenly Father I knew was a God of wrath.  He was the one who turned
Lot's wife into a pillar of salt simply because she looked back over
her shoulder at her city.  He was the one who forced a father to
sacrifice his daughter simply to teach him a lesson.  He was the one
who destroyed an entire world with a flood and saved only Noah's
family.  He was the one who took Omma from me.

For a child, God's will manifested itself through the rules of the
parents.  As a wife, God's will manifested itself through the wishes of
the husband.  In any case, a female, and especially a female child, had
no rights whatsoever.  In that respect, my American life was no
different from Omma's life in Korea.

I was given no leeway in that household.  In season or out of season,
rain or shine, sick or healthy, there were certainly things was
expected to do.  When I was twelve and had stomach flu I asked Mom if I
could go to bed early that night.  I felt queasy and weak.  She told me
I wasn't going to bed until after the supper dishes had been cleaned
and put away and the kitchen swept, as usual.  I told her I was really
sick and I didn't think I could stand at the sink and do the dishes.

Since my primary goal in life was to please my parents and please God
and thus avoid getting sent back to the orphanage and/or going to hell,
I hoped that Mom would believe me.  I never tried to get out of my
work.  I rarely complained about anything.  I never asked for
anything--it would never have occurred to me to ask.  But she was
unyielding.

So I stood at the sink, doing the dishes, feeling hot and sick the
whole time.  I just managed to get the last dish washed and in the
drainer when I began to throw up.  There was nothing I could do to stop
it.  I threw up all over the sink and the clean dishes and the counter.
Mom was enraged; she saw it as deliberate evil and rebelliousness.

Not only was I spanked severely, but I had to clean up the mess and
rewash all the dishes and scrub down the kitchen with Lysol before I
could go to bed.

There was a piece of musical flotsam called "Sunday School Song" that
my parents loved.  They thought it would "appeal to the young folks." I
was one of the young folks, and I knew it was c rap.  But they wanted
me to perform it at youth group conventions.

They had visions of me traveling all over the country, an inspiring
young Asian American musical evangelist, singing "Sunday School Song"
in front of clean-living Christian teens.  I begged and begged, but
they were implacable.

So I performed it--complete with the peppy movements that illustrated
the verses.  I made an unutterable fool of myself.  I stood on stage,
sweating and trembling, wishing I'd have a heart attack and die or
Armageddon would begin--anything to put an end to my misery.  I hated
my parents for putting me through that torture.

The tune was idiotic; the words were drivel:

Come to the Sunday School and have a lot of fun.

Old folks, young folks everybody come.

And that was just the chorus.  There were several stanzas, each
recounting some story out of the Bible in nauseatingly coy verse.

After the first performance I told my parents how stupid the song was,
how much I hated it, and how humiliated I felt.  Dad was shocked by my
attitude.

"You mean to tell me that Jesus was willing to die for your sins, but
you're not willing to sing a song for him?  And he was mocked and
ridiculed and made to wear a crown of thorns, and you're complaining
about something like this?  You know, the Bible says to make your
salvation sure.  I think you better do some praying about your own
salvation.  You get down on your knees and tell Jesus that you don't
love him enough to sing a little song for him."

Oh, pule eze I thought.

"I'm sorry," I said.

I had to perform in church nearly every week, either singing a solo or
playing something on the piano.  My parents never seemed to like what I
did, but they kept pushing me to do it Sunday after Sunday.  I waited
on the car ride home from church for something approaching a
compliment, but that never came.

Sometimes I asked.  was the solo okay?"  The answer was never what I
wanted.

"Well, your voice sounded thin and you didn't make much eye contact
with the audience.  And why didn't you play the Bach during offertory?
Did you practice those pieces this week?"

I always ended up apologizing.

"I know.  I didn't do a very good job.  I'm sorry."

My parents would glance at each other and shake their heads, and we'd
finish the car ride home in silence.

In our tiny town, I stuck out like a sore thumb.  The kids in junior
high school had a name for what I was:

gook.  I had one friend, Lenore, who was also ostracized, but for a
different reason--she was too smart for a girl.  She liked science and
math; she planned to get a Ph.D. In a town where the ultimate fantasy
of prepubescent girls was to marry the high school quarterback and go
on weekly shopping trips to Sears, she was nothing less than a freak.

I met Lenore in the school lunchroom on the first day of seventh grade.
She was sitting by herself, reading.  I walked past her to get to an
empty seat and she looked up and smiled.

"You smell good," she said.

"And your hair is so wild and cool."  I was thunderstruck-that was the
first time anyone had ever complimented me on my appearance.

I sat down by her and within five minutes we were chatting away, making
acerbic comments about the haughty, witless crowd around us.

To me, Lenore was perfect.  She had blond hair and sky-blue eyes.  She
made fun of her long "stork legs" and her straight hair.  I thought I'd
cut off my right arm for either.  She said I was interesting and funny
and brilliant.  She said I was pretty and "exotic"-looking.  I
worshipped her.

On my first day of junior high school one of the eighth grade boys
announced to the lunchroom: "Hey, did you know gooks have two pussies?
That's because they're all whores and they're all poor, so they can do
two guys at once."  The lunchroom exploded in laughter.

For the rest of my junior-high time, the label stayed with me.

Someone even wrote about it in my eighth-grade yearbook: "To a pretty
cool gook, even if she does have two you-know whats

Lenore dismissed that with one withering comment.

"She's a moron," Lenore said.

"She's not worth worrying about."

I had managed to find a girlfriend, but boys were another story.

In seventh grade, I got a tremendous crush on a boy who was a senior in
high school and was president of our church youth group.  I was
obsessed by books, so I assumed the things that moved me would move
other people as well.  At the time I was reading Little women, and I
was enamored of Jo.  I thought Beth Was a milquetoast and Amy was a
snotty bitch and Margaret was an affected prig, but Jo was perfect. Jo
had kind of a breezy way of talking, and I assumed that because I liked
her so much, anybody I liked would be impressed by how much I resembled
her.

Ironically, the boy I liked was named Joe.  It seemed too perfect.

So one Saturday we all went on an outing to an observatory and I got to
go along even though I wasn't part of the youth group, because Dad was
leading the expedition.  I dressed with special care, and when I saw
him, I adopted my best Jo March voice and used her lingo: "Dear Joe,
what ho?"  He looked blankly at me, turned around and began talking to
a tall, blond sixteen-year-old beauty, and ignored me for the rest of
the day.

In fact, from then on he steered clear of me as much as he possibly
could.

Looking back, I can see why he would, how uncomfortable and embarrassed
he must have been, and how weird he must have thought I was.  But at
the time, it crushed me.  I couldn't understand how he could turn away
from me when I quoted Louisa May Alcott.  How could that be?

In our little desert town, everyone knew everyone else.  I hated
that.

I knew that anything I did at school would be reported to my parents,
and the good minister's daughter role was so tough to keep up.  At
church I did everything that was expected of me.  I taught Sunday
school, I took care of music for the worship services, I typed up the
Sunday morning bulletins.  I smiled and prayed and--when I was in the
midst of it--really did believe what was being said.

When I got into high school, things changed.  I let my grades slip and
I talked to my teachers with bored sarcasm.  I told my English teacher
she was a bitch; I spent lots of time in the principal's office.  But
the kids didn't make fun of me anymore.  Now I was the smart-ass
preacher's kid, not the weird goody-goody gook.  Kids laughed at my
jokes instead of my face.  I had finally found a way to gain
acceptance.

My parents were angry and disappointed with me, even though they didn't
know the half of it.  What they did know was that my report cards
weren't all As anymore, and I got detention slips on a regular basis.

Dad lectured me over and over about it, and about the disrespectful way
I talked to mother.

"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon
this earth," he reminded me.

"She's not my mother," I snapped back.  That earned me a hard slap
across my face and confinement to my room, where at least I could think
my own thoughts and whisper to myself my contempt for their incessant
hypocrisy.

About that time, my feelings about Mom crystallized, moving from fear
to contempt.  I saw her as smug and hypocritical, and I called her "the
Martyr," which sent Dad into a rage.  On the shelf in Dad's library was
a copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs, a book that details the suffering of
various Christians down through the years who died for their beliefs.
One day when Mom told me I had a bad attitude and should read a chapter
from it every day I answered, "Okay.  I'll start with the chapter about
you."

Morn spent most of her time lying on the sofa, wanly complaining of
migraine.  She told me not to be so loud with the vacuuming.

She told Dad to punish me for giving her "hurtful" looks.  She told me
I was lazy and spent too much time reading.

She reminisced about growing up: She was such a popular teenager that
for her sixteenth birthday her parents threw a gala party and hired an
orchestra.

She often compared herself to me: Her legs were long, mine were short;
her hair had golden glints in it, mine was dull; she had lots of beaus
in her teens, I had none; she was a coloratura soprano opera singer in
her twenties, I had an unexciting alto voice.

Mom viewed me as free help; she didn't have to pay me but I did all the
housework--cleaning, cooking, laundry, I gave her neck and back rubs
when she had headaches.  I seethed inside, but I did it.  On weekday
mornings I got up early so I'd have time to wash the breakfast dishes
before leaving for school.

Morn checked to make sure the beds were made perfectly, with squared
corners and top sheets folded back evenly over the blankets.

When I got home I had an hour of practicing on the piano, then dinner
to cook and the kitchen to clean.  After that I finished my homework
and we gathered in the living room for our evening Bible study.

But the day of the week I really began to hate was Sunday.

There were two church services at least, and usually some church
social.  I helped out in the kitchen at church potlucks, washing the
remains of Jell-O salad off greasy plates.  The food at potlucks was
vile.  One woman came up to me and said patronizingly, "Dear, I made
this dish especially for you: It's Oriental casserole.  It's got ground
beef and Chun King crunchy noodles and mushroom soup in it."  You
stupid bitch, I thought, smiling and thanking her, all the while
picturing myself shovilg the nauseating concoction in her face.

Clearly, there were mixed feelings about me in our otherwise pure white
congregation.  I got barbed comments from time to time.

"I hope you thank God every day that your wonderful morn and dad took
you out of that awful country.  Goodness, I

don't know how those Oriental folks eat the awful stuff they do.

Aren't you lucky to get good American food."

Once a black couple came to church on Sunday morning, and the tension
in the sanctuary was palpable as they walked up the center aisle to
find seats in an empty pew.  The church was filling up, but no one sat
in the same pew as the couple--they were in complete isolation on that
long stretch of pine.

Fortunately for the church's sensibilities, the couple was just in town
visiting.  Newcomers to church were always asked to stand at the
beginning of the morning service and "tell us a little something" about
themselves.  The couple stood up, smiled shyly, and said they were from
Indiana and were in the area vacationing.  You could almost hear the
sighs of relief from throughout the congregation.

After church the couple left immediately--ducking out under cover of
the closing hymn--and people began talking.

"Why would a colored couple come here?  Why didn't they find a church
with their own kind?"

Morn said she wasn't racist, but it did seem just a little odd that
they'd choose a church full of white people to visit.  Years later the
church became "integrated."  There were one Hispanic family and one
black family that attended sporadically, but neither was really
involved in church activities.

In the meantime, most people at church were civil but chilly to them.
Many people completely ignored them.  I told my parents that the
attitude of people toward this family was despicable.

Mom was incensed.

"I'm not a bit racist," she said.

"When that colored woman came up to me after church and wanted to give
me a hug I let her."

Morn and I argued quite often about that topic.  I said that she and
pretty much everyone else in the church was racist.  Didn't Jesus love
everyone the same?  What made Morn better than someone with darker
skin?

Her attitude pretty much summed up the rest of the church's: Jesus may
have died for everyone, but that didn't mean we had to mingle with
them.

"Colored folks are different but I've got nothing against them," Morn
said.

"When I was a girl we had the nicest colored lady for years who cleaned
the house.  When she was sick we gave her a pot of soup to take home.
You're just a troublemaker."

My bad attitude finally started to wear so much on my parents that they
took me to a Christian therapist.

"He's a godly man," they said.

"He's not a regular humanist psychiatrist."

He had no credentials, but that didn't matter: His office was in a
church building, he wore a tiny gold cross on his suit lapel, and the
requisite saccharine smile was stamped on his face.

I went to him because, my parents said, I was rebelling against them
and against the Lord.  They were sick and tired of my lack of respect.
They'd had enough of my moods.  Christ Himself was starting to wonder
if I really wanted to be saved.

So on Friday afternoons I sat in a cramped, sweltering office on a
molded plastic chair while this man pontificated about Christ and the
Teen Years.  He was in his mid-fifties, short and paunchy, balding and
smooth-skinned.

There was precious little therapy at work--as soon as he asked me a
question, he answered it himself.

"Now just why is it you feel your parents don't really love you?"  he
asked.

"Well, they always tell me what a disappointment I was, and--"

"Just a doggone minute.  I'm sure they say no such thing.

They just want you to be grateful.  You were a godless little orphan,
and you haven't always acted like a very nice girl.  God has been so
very good to you.  You don't deserve any of the things God has given
you, because you're a sinner in His sight.  But through the mercy of
Jesus Christ you've been given a chance at salvation."

Silence.

"So why do you still cry over your birth mother?"

"what are you, stupid or something?  Why do you think I cry?

Because she's my mother and I--"

"Whoa!  Let's hold it right there, miss.  You don't use that kind of
language in the Lord's house.  Satan has his foothold in you, and you
crucify the Lord Jesus afresh every time you talk like that."

Then he'd lay his sweaty palm on my knee and massage it while he prayed
for me.

When I became an adult and started seeing a real therapist I decided to
tell my parents about it.  During one of our weekly phone conversations
I broached the subject, not quite sure how they'd respond.

Their first question was the same one they asked about everyone I ever
mentioned: "Is she a Christian?"

I told them I had no idea, but I doubted it.

"If you're going to talk to anyone, it should be a Christian," they
told me.

"Remember that wonderful man we took you to in your teens?  He was so
Christlike.  He straightened you out right quick."

They told me prayer, not therapy, was the answer.

And anyway, so what if I was suffering?  We Christ, therefore we can
reign with Christ.

Suffering was the whole point.

suffer with

While I finally gained a precarious measure of acceptance in high
school, I never got asked out on a date.  Being friends with me was one
thing, but anything more than that was off-limits in our town.  I had a
crush on one boy in my drama group, and we spent lots of time together,
talking about life and philosophy and movies.

I wasn't allowed to go to movies, so he described each new release in
great detail, and it was almost as good as seeing it myself.

He only talked to me after drama group, though, when other kids weren't
around.  Finally one day I mustered up all my courage and invited him
to the school's Sadie Hawkins Day dance.  He was visibly embarrassed.

"I'm really sorry, but I can't.  I like you and all, but my parents
would never let me date a gook."

I was devastated.  During our long conversations I had almost forgotten
I was a gook; I had just felt like a normal teenage girl.

We never talked after drama group again.

The only reality that I wanted any part of was found in literature.

The noble suffering of the poets was all that gave me hope.

There had to be something to cling to in this world, if Tennyson could
say:

Let the sweet heavens endure,

Not close and darken above me

Before I am quite quite sure

That there is one to love me;

Then let come what may

To a life that has been so sad,

I shall have had m) da.

I spent most of my spare time with my nose in a book.  I wasn't allowed
to read most novels or magazines, but I preferred early British writers
anyway.  My daydreams weren't of rock stars or actors but of
Fitzwilliam Darcy and lo bert Browning.

I trembled when I read Herrick's paeans of love and lust to Julia, and
a riot of feelings surged within me when I read about the glories of
her naked body in the river, and her hair, and her breasts.  If I had
to be born at all it should have been in a different place and time, I
told myself; I should be walking with a breeches-clad gentleman in
Kentish fields, wearing a tight bodice and full silk skirt.

I wanted to go to college and study English literature, but I didn't
know where the money would come from.  It didn't occur to me to expect
my parents to foot the bill.  Besides, I knew my parents wanted me to
do one of two things: become a missionary or get married and become a
godly wife.

My high school English teacher--who also doubled as the school's drama
coach--had high hopes for me.  She told me I should pursue a career
that took me out of the little town and maybe even set my sights on
writing.  She told me she didn't want me to end up like most of the
other school graduates would--married, settled down in the same town
they'd grown up in, working at some unimaginative job.

"You deserve better than this," she said.

"You've got extraordinary talent and character.

Don't throw it away."

There was part of me that believed her, but it was weak.  If she was
telling me the truth--that I was a brilliant girl, that I could do
something wonderful with my life--then why didn't anyone else see it?

Her belief in me echoed Omma's belief, but it was too frightening to
contemplate that maybe those two women were right, and everyone else
was wrong.  It was easier just to think that she, like Omma, had some
inexplicable affection for me that blinded her to my essential
worthlessness.

I didn't do much planning about my life after high school.  I was so
tired and so discouraged that even my rebelliousness diminished.

My grades were mediocre, except in English and music.  I frittered away
time and energy fantasizing about freedom but didn't know how to take
the steps to achieve it.  I waited for something to intervene, and when
that happened it wasn't at all what I'd dreamed.

In my dying there could be an awakening Or in my dying there could be
just dying.

The problem is I have no way to know And I want to know everything.
Like what's inside the shining center of my soul And whether anyone
loves me And what's beyond the realm of dreams And what small creatures
think about And if I'm worth the pain I cause myself.

This moment passes just like the last And the next is forgotten at its
birth.

But oh, how strong the longing is To step outside this fragile heart
And touch the heart of darkness and light, and end, and beginning.

If love were here, would I want to leave?

I don't have an answer.

I just know that love has never made itself at home with me And all
it's ever been is a mystery Longing, ache.

And life's worn out its welcome.  I still care about the world And care
so deeply That's I'm hanging on the cross of my construction Weeping
with despair That even in death I find No redemption or salvation For
myself or any other.

I got married on a Saturday morning in our church.  Dad walked me down
the aisle and then officiated at the ceremony.  My new husband was a
deacon in our church.  I was seventeen, just graduated from high
school.

My parents had pretty much chosen D. for me late in my senior year.
They invited him to visit a few times and questioned him closely.

He had the same conservative, fundamentalist beliefs they did, and they
wanted me to be married to a "godly man" as soon as possible.  My
parents believed that a Christian marriage--not a career or education
or personal fulfillment--was the highest calling a woman could have.
D. believed everything my parents believed: that the Bible was the word
of God; that husbands were to be dominant over their wives; that I
needed harsh discipline.

I fell in with their wishes and even daydreamed that maybe things would
turn out magically--D, would love me and be kind to me, I'd be a good
and sexy and obedient wife, we'd have a happy family.  I never really
thought I could do anything special, anyway, no matter what my English
teacher and Omma had said.  I felt pretty lucky that anyone even wanted
to marry me.

On the night before the wedding, D. took me out to dinner.

We weren't physically affectionate with each other, but I thought maybe
that would change after we were married.  I thought he was just being
chaste, as a good Christian should.  But I could feel the fear
prickling the edge of my consciousness, warning me: This man never
kisses you; this man's eyes are cold as ice.  So as he was dropping me
off at my parents' house, shortly before 9:00 P.M."  I asked him, "Do
you love me?"  There was silence, then he reached over across me and
opened my car door.

"I'm marrying you tomorrow," he said.

"So don't ask stupid questions."

I went inside and crawled into bed, and the full force of what was
about to happen hit me: I was going into another form of slavery.  I
had escaped being an indentured servant in Korea and being forced into
a loveless marriage, and here it was happening in America.  But was I
being forced?  I thought about going into my parents' room and telling
them I couldn't marry this man, that I was terrified of him, that there
was something inhuman in the icy way he stared at me and the flat tone
of his voice.

Nobody could actually make me get married.

But the thought of what repercussions there would be was overwhelming.
The wedding was set for 10:00 a.M. the next morning.  The church was
decorated and all its members planned to be there.  Could I really
stand up against that kind of pressure?  I'd spent the past several
years bowing to the wishes of my parents and the church.  And now I was
contemplating telling everyone that the foreign orphan who was adopted
by their dearly loved pastor was going to disappoint him yet again.  I
just simply couldn't do it.

I got married in a dress I had made.  It was white satin, with a modest
train.  The bodice had rose-patterned lace overlaid on the satin and
long sleeves.  I cut some roses out of the lace and appliqued them on
the skirt of the dress, and made a veil that gathered at the crown with
a little cluster of roses I made out of the satin and lace.  Nobody
told me I looked beautiful, but I didn't expect it.  Morn only remarked
that the dress seemed awfully low cut for a wedding.

The church was full, but my English teacher wasn't there.

The gift she sent, which arrived a few days after the wedding, was
unusual: not a kitchen gadget or sheets or towels, but a gift
certificate in my name to a bookstore.  The card she sent read simply
"Don't forget how special you are."

I walked down the aisle with Dad, who then turned around and officiated
at the ceremony.  D. didn't look at me.  Dad read from the Bible: "
Wives, obey your husbands, and be subject unto them as unto the Lord,"
and then I repeated the vow: "I take thee to be my lawfully wedded
husband.  a have and to hold, from this day forward.  For better, for
worse; far richer, for poorer;

in sickness and in health; to honor and to obey; till death us do
part."

After the ceremony there was a reception at the church, where we had
punch and cake and everyone told me what a lucky girl I was.  About an
hour later, we went home.  There was no honeymoon.  We rode in silence
to the house he had rented while he was building a new one, and when
we got there I began unpacking my things, which I'd brought over the
day before.

The first time D. struck me was later that day.  We went to bed a
couple of hours after we got home, because D. said that God expected a
couple to "honor him in the marriage bed," even though there'd been no
affection or caresses between us.  But when D. couldn't consummate our
marriage, I was punished.

"This is your fault," he told me.

"It's because of you."  He slapped me as I lay, naked, on the bed, and
while I looked at up him in shock he began punching me rhythmically.  A
few minutes later he was suddenly able to have sex.  I was too stunned
to think clearly, but a strong instinct for self-preservation kept me
quiet and calm.  After he fell asleep I went into the bathroom and
curled up on the floor, pressing the cold tile against my hot face and
my aching ribs.

The next day was Sunday, and we went to church, where D. took his place
at the podium with Dad.  D. read the Bible and said the opening prayer,
and I played the piano for the service, as usual.  People congratulated
us and shook our hands, and I smiled.

We lived in a house D. built, with furniture he picked out.  I kept the
house immaculately clean, and I made food to his specifications.

When I failed, the punishment was swift.  A few days after our marriage
I made a ratatouille--I didn't know at the time that D. hated zucchini.
He took one bite, then picked up the casserole dish and tossed it out
the dining room window.

The patio was covered in food, shards of glass from the window, and
pieces of the stoneware casserole dish.  I spent most of the night on
my hands and knees outside, picking up every sliver, until I was
ribboned with cuts.

I took the ice cubes out of a pitcher of orange juice he was trying to
chill, and he pinned me against the refrigerator, punching my abdomen
and ribs and then choking me until I lost consciousness and slumped
down on the kitchen floor.

Everything I did was wrong.  D. would erupt in rage in a split second,
without warning, and no matter how hard I tried to keep things
peaceful, I never succeeded.  There was a book at the time exiled The
Total Korean, and I decided to give its suggestions a try.  I was as
docile as possible.  I agreed with everything he said.  I shoved my own
desires so far out of the way that I almost forgot what they were.
Nothing helped.

The root problem--and the one I had no control over--was the way I
looked.  He hated it, and he took it as a personal affront.  I could
never figure out why he married me.  Maybe it was so he'd have a
constant focus for his anger.

We watched The Elephant Man one night on television.

During a scene where the character has his face covered in cloth, D.
turned to me and said, "Maybe you should do that."  When I looked in
the mirror for most of my life I saw a face as grotesque and misshapen
as that of the "elephant man."  I saw my wide cheekbones as a slab, my
small nose as a flat blob, my eyes as tiny dark slits.

My body I saw as short and squat and revolting, littered with scars. My
hair was a tangled, frizzy mop.  I could see not one redeeming quality,
nothing but ugliness through and through.  So I ironed my hair, to make
it lie flat.  I dieted, to make my curvy body more bony and angular.

D. wanted a dog, and I was thrilled at the idea of finally getting to
keep a pet.  I didn't show a whole lot of enthusiasm, how ever--I had
learned that the happier I seemed about something, the less inclined D.
was to let me do it.  So I kept quiet, and one day he came home with a
collie puppy.

She was a golden, velvety bundle of uncomplicated love.  She followed
me around the house during the day, wagging and jumping up and sounding
off with insistent little barks every few minutes.  I vacuumed, and she
growled at the light on the base of the vacuum and wrestled with the
cord.  I dusted, and she tried to tug the dust cloth out of my hands. I
cooked and baked, and she ran around in circles in an ecstasy of
anticipation.  I house-trained her, dashing outside with her whenever
the moment looked propitious and praising her lavishly.

When she and I were home alone together she was completely indulged,
but D. was almost as strict with her as he was with me, and I think her
spirits dropped along with mine at the sound of his car in the driveway
at the end of the day.

One cold, windy February night she was cuddled up beside me on the
floor, where I was hemming a pair of D."s work pants.

The house was clean and warm; I'd washed and dried the dinner dishes,
and it was nearing bedtime.

Every night I hated putting her outside in the cold, even though she
had a roomy redwood shingle doghouse with a scrap piece of carpet that
was left over from our living room.  But D. was adamant that the dog
didn't sleep in the house.

On this particular night, however, I was brave enough--or stupid
enough--to argue.

"Can't she stay inside tonight?  It's so cold outside and she's
sleeping so comfortably.  I'll let her out first thing in the morning.
Please?"

He gave me that level stare and didn't answer.  I went back to my
hemming, hands shaking now.  D. turned off the television and sat in
his chair, motionless, just looking at me.

When D. was about to punish me for something, his body got very still
and his voice took on a soft, singsong quality.  I could read the signs
by now, of course, and I knew something terrible was coming.

"You know what?  Doghouses are for dogs to sleep in.

So here's what you'll do: You'll both spend the tight outside in the
doghouse."

He opened the sliding glass door that led onto the porch.  The dog--as
schooled in obedience as I was--reluctantly went out, tail and head
hanging down.  I folded D."s pants ad laid them on the arm of his
chair, put the needle and thread back in my wicker sewing basket and
put it away in the hall closet, and put on my coat.  I didn't say
anything.  There was nothing to say.

The dog and I crawled inside the A-frame redwood shingled doghouse, and
I curled up around her soft, furry body.  She licked my face and
snuggled close against me, and we fell asleep.

The next morning the sliding glass door was unlocked, and I went inside
and fixed D."s breakfast.

Our roles were very clearly defined: D. told me what he wanted, and I
obeyed.  I kept the house clean, I did the cooking and laundry.  I
picked up after him--and it had to be immediately.  I followed him
around the bedroom as he undressed and picked up each sock and shirt as
he tossed it to the floor.

We watched the television shows he chose, but I was allowed to sit down
and watch only if the dinner dishes had been washed and dried and the
kitchen was clean, he didn't like me to read, so I had to sneak moments
here and there with my beloved books when he wasn't looking.

D. insisted that I keep busy.  Whenever he was home he Wanted to see me
vacuuming or scrubbing the floors or dusting.  When he left for work he
checked the house; then checked again upon his return to make sure I'd
actually made things cleaner than they were before.

He made plant holders out of chain that he soldered together;

he put his photography up on the walls.  Everything had to be kept the
way he left it.  Something as simple as moving an ice cube tray would
send him into a rage.

After we had been married about a year, D. was diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia, and he spent some time in the psychiatric ward of a
hospital.  It wasn't the violence at home that led to his
hospitalization but rather problems he was having concentrating at
work.  He wanted to be a success and he often said everyone was against
him, so he agreed to the treatment.  As far as I know, his boss was the
only one who encouraged him to get help--neither his family nor my
parents acknowledged that there was anything wrong.

I drove down to see him every day.  I was the dutiful, supportive wife.
That two-week period was the best time in my marriage, because he
wasn't home at all, and I could leave after visiting with him for an
hour.  But when he came home, it was as if nothing had changed.  He
stopped taking his medication; he said his psychiatrist was out to get
him and he canceled his treatment;

he quit his job and went to work at a business his family owned.  The
respite was over.

We told people at church that he had been out of town helping out
family members, and everyone believed it.  Women at church would tell
me what a wonderful man he was and how good the Lord had been to me.

"Look at you," one choir member told me.

"You have everything you could ever want."

We had a nice new house with wall-to-wall carpeting, two cars, a boat,
and a truck.  We had several bank accounts, although I didn't know what
was in them.  I had no money of my own; D. said I didn't need any.  We
went grocery shopping together and he controlled what was purchased.  I
wasn't allowed to buy anything without his approval.  I didn't write
any of the checks.  If I had to buy something, like gasoline, he gave
me money and I gave him the change.

I'd been married about a year when I got pregnant.  D. was furious.  He
had told me not to get pregnant until he decided it was time, and I was
on birth control pills.  But I stopped taking them without telling him.
It was wrong, I know.  It's wrong to have a child in that way or for
those reasons.  I felt tremendous guilt about the whole thing.

But oh, God, I was so lonely.  I yearned for somebody to love.  I ached
to hold another human being and look at a face that looked back at mine
tenderly, without revulsion.  And I wanted someone who looked like me.
I wanted to give my love to a person who had the same blood, the same
features, as I did.

I didn't need to tell him I was pregnant.  He knew when I missed my
period.  He kept exact track of everything about me.  I wasn't even
allowed to close the door when I used the bathroom.

He kept count of how many tampons I used a month.

When I was pregnant, I tried to protect my stomach as much as possible
from him.  I was in love with the child inside me and immediately began
spinning fantasies about what our lives would be like if we could just
be alone together.

I knew from the first that I was carrying a daughter.  I longed for
that mother-daughter connection.  The women at church said they knew by
the way I was carrying it that the baby was a boy, but I knew
differently.  Mother and daughter: That's the way it had to be.

When D. was at work I talked to my child constantly.  I told her what I
was doing: "Don't be afraid, sweetheart, if you feel all topsy-turvy
right now.  I'm bending over to wash the floor.  But everything's okay.
I'm just taking you for a little roller-coaster ride."  I stroked my
belly and sang to the baby inside: "You are my sunshine, my only
sunshine.  You make me happy when skies are gray."  I sat in the
rocking chair and read poetry to her: "That was Donne, sweetheart.  Now
I'm going to read you Amy Lowell."

When I was about six months pregnant, I suffered from terrible morning
sickness and couldn't get out of bed to fix D."s breakfast.  We had one
of those '70s waterbeds that was placed directly on the floor, inside a
wooden frame.

D. was standing beside the bed in his work boots and khaki pants, and
he didn't say anything when I told him I was too sick to get up.  He
just looked at me.

Then he jumped from the floor onto my stomach and left for work.

During my pregnancy D. went to natural childbirth classes with me, and
people in the church were impressed.  The perfect husband, doing the
perfect thing.  I wanted Leigh to be born without any anesthetic in her
system.  I wanted her as strong and pure as possible.  In the
hospital's labor room I was breathing hard and counting contractions
and D. was watching The Three Stooges on television.

"Shut up," he said as I panted.

"You made me miss the punch line."

After Leigh's birth D. left to go to a party with some friends and told
me he wasn't going to take me home from the hospital.

"My friends only throw this party once a year and I'm not going to miss
it," he said.

"You're a grown-up, aren't you?  Find your own ride home."

Dad was at church at choir rehearsal, and Mom wasn't feeling up to the
drive, so I waited until rehearsal was over and my parents picked us
up.  D. didn't end up coming home until late the next day, so after my
parents dropped us off I got undressed and took Leigh in bed with me. I
nursed her and stroked her silky dark hair, and for the first time
since Omma's death I spoke from the depths of my heart to another human
being without fear or shame.

I told her how beautiful she was, how perfect and unique.  I told her
she was my darling daughter and the most amazing of all God's
creations.  I told her I would love her forever; I would willingly lay
down my life for her.  I thanked her for sharing her life with me.  I
told her that the bottomless void in my heart was filled with her
arrival and that I'd waited all my life for the moment when she was in
my arms.

Most of my talking was done when D. wasn't at home--he didn't want me
to speak unless I was spoken to.  But when Leigh and I were alone I
talked to her constantly, telling her stories, reading her poetry;
repeating over and over how much I loved her.

Leigh was incredibly beautiful to me.  She had huge dark eyes and a
dazzling smile.  I was awed by her brilliance.  At eighteen months her
verbal skills were amazing: She could name just about every item in the
house, and she knew the names of her favorite books and songs.  She
sang along with me when I danced with her around the house during the
day and when I rocked her to sleep before her nap.  By the time she was
two she spoke in complete sentences; she read nearly anything by
three.

I imagined that someday D. would die or leave us and we'd live
together, just the two of us, and do whatever we wanted.  No one would
yell at us for playing too loudly or wasting time or not keeping the
house immaculate.

And she would be the absolute queen of all she surveyed.  I wanted her
never to be sad, never to feel frustrated, never to be lonely.  The
love I felt for her shocked me with its intensity.  I watched her for
hours as she slept in her crib, lost in awe.

Once Leigh and I were home together, it was almost as if the world
contained just the two of us.  D. was gone most of the time.

Morn didn't want to come over and help out because it was too tiring
for her.  I had no friends to come visiting, because D. didn't allow
that.  It was actually better that way.  As far as I was concerned,
that was the way it was supposed to be--mother and daughter creating a
tiny island of peace in the midst of a hostile world.

I never cried during those years.  Even when the terror and physical
pain were intense, I remained outwardly calm.  All the screaming went
on inside and was usually directed at myself:

"You're so ugly!  You should have never been born; you were a huge
mistake.  No one will ever love you."

During my marriage, every slap and punch and kick were accompanied by a
recording inside my head that played over and over: "That's what you
deserve.  That's what you deserve.  That's what you deserve."

D. loved to water-ski, and we took the boat out just about every
weekend.  We were returning to shore one Saturday and I was sitting on
the edge of the boat, leaning out to tie up at the dock.  My left leg
was dangling in the water between the boat and the dock.  D. suddenly
put the boat in reverse, slamming my leg for a split second before he
turned off the engine.

When I felt the impact I was sure my leg had been severed, but I looked
down and saw it was still there, although it had the oddest bend in
it--as if someone had taken a paper doll and folded her leg in half the
wrong way.  Immediately it began turning a deep shade of indigo and
swelling to impossible proportions.  I had to go to the hospital, and
D. was furious at me for ruining the weekend.

On the long walk from the boat dock to the car I alternately hopped and
crawled, while D. walked on ahead.  He never explained why he put the
boat in reverse, and I never asked.

Chapter Thirteen

Shortly after Leigh's birth D. brought home a friend from work for
dinner.  I couldn't leave her alone.  He was charming and sweet and
seductive to her, and I watched it all while I served dinner and
cleaned the kitchen and gave Leigh her bath.  Later, D. took the woman
home.  He didn't come home until the next morning.

We had a boat and a cabin by the river, and in the summer D. wanted to
go there every Saturday.  We had to get back in time for Sunday morning
church, so I ended up driving home at 5:00 .M. while D. slept in the
backseat.

One day he offered a ride to a woman who was hitchhiking.  I tilted
the rearview mirror up so they weren't in view and kept my eyes
straight ahead while I drove home, trying to concentrate on the road
and shut out the sounds of them having sex in the backseat.

I got used to adultery.  I was accustomed to the smell and telltale
signs of it, and it caused me surprisingly little pain.  I picked up
the wineglasses on the bedroom floor and changed the sheets without
saying a word or shedding a tear.

I knew D. loved sex.  He just didn't love it with me.

D. said he could have sex with me only if he fantasized about someone
else.  He found the burn scars on my body revolting.  He told me I was
ugly.  So he kept his eyes on a picture in Penthouse magazine while we
were having sex; he never looked at me during those times.  There was
one other way: If I was in pain he became aroused.

I thought about death a lot--not just my own death, but D."s as well.
Divorce was unthinkable.  It went against the word of God, and I
couldn't imagine disappointing my parents like that and scandalizing
the church.  My only salvation, as far as I could see, was death.

At night, lying awake in bed with D. next to me, I thought of various
scenarios in which I could kill him and get away with it.

But they were always flawed, and I didn't want to get arrested.  I was
looking for a foolproof way.  Only one time did the perfect opportunity
present itself, and I had to let it go.

We were camping at the Grand Canyon, and D. and I had taken a hike to
the rim.  D. was a photographer, and he was standing right on the
precipice, taking pictures.  It was dusk.  We were completely alone;
there were bracken and pebbles underfoot.

The ground was very unstable.  D. had his back to me, and I thought:
One push is all it would take.  Then my marriage would be over, the
misery would be ended, the physical and emotional abuse would stop.
Leigh and I would be free.

Everyone would say how sad it was, but he shouldn't have been taking
pictures so close to the edge.

Just as I was moving forward, I heard Leigh talking to me.  I heard her
wake up in the backpack.  I could feel her feet kicking my ribs.  She
was facing forward.  She would see.  So I froze, and even though she
was just six months old and probably wouldn't remember, I couldn't take
that chance.  I couldn't let my child watch a parent die.

D. turned around and saw the look on my face.  He said, "What the
hell's the matter with you?"

I didn't answer, and we walked down the trail, while Leigh sang her
little baby songs.

With Leigh's birth, my view of death changed, even though my feelings
about myself were the same.  Now there was a reason for me to stay
alive: I didn't want anyone else entrusted with my precious daughter's
care.

I was terrified of the thought that D. might become her only parent,
without me to protect her.  Now that there was an imperative need for
me to survive, the physical abuse took on a whole new dimension of
fear.  What if he didn't stop in time and he killed me?  What would
happen to Leigh?  So I became even more docile and conciliatory, trying
my best to ward off D."s rages.  I walked on eggshells, using whatever
skills I could think of to keep him relatively calm.

I suffered most of my life with intense claustrophobia.  D. knew it,
and he used the knowledge skillfully.  I'd sometimes awaken in the
night to find him sitting heavily on my chest, knees locking my arms
down against my sides, a pillow in his hands hovering a few inches
above my face.  When he saw I was awake he pushed the pillow over my
face, just to the point where I was about to smother.  Then he'd lift
it up and I'd breathe frantically, seeing him smiling above me.  Once I
caught my breath, he'd repeat the game.

Once, when Mom asked me about a bruise on my face, I broached the
subject of D."s violence.  I'd been afraid to bring it up before; I was
ashamed of it and I felt it simply proved what I'd known all along--I
was a failure as a human being and as a woman and I was completely
disgusting.

It was obvious from the way Mom pleated the starched folds in her dress
and looked over my head that she was extremely uncomfortable with the
conversation, and I let it die away.  Finally she cleared her throat
and asked me if I'd asked the Lord for guidance.

"Perhaps you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing," she
said.

"Why don't you pray about it and ask God to help you be a better
wife?"

I should have known.  Prayer, the unfailing panacea for any ill of
flesh or spirit.  There would be no help for me here.

Years after I left D."  friends asked me why on earth I stayed so long.
They were aghast that I didn't walk out after the first beating.  And
even after I explained they looked at me doubtfully, not completely
convinced.  I just laughed and said, "I guess you had to be there."

I wanted to leave, but the concept seemed as impossible as flying to
the moon.  Where would I go?  Who would help me?  I was completely
alone.  Everyone in town knew D.; everyone liked him.  People thought I
was damn lucky to have him--it's not like there were suitors lined up
at the door.  He was good-looking and respected and a community leader.
No one would believe what went on when the door was closed.  No one
would believe me at all.

I couldn't disappoint my parents again.  I couldn't let the church
down.  And here was the crux of the matter: I didn't deserve anything
better.  I was revolting, worth absolutely nothing.

Of course he didn't kiss me or make love with me like normal people
did.  I wasn't normal.  I was subhuman.  I was ugly and disgusting.  Of
course he hurt me.  I shouldn't even be alive.  I was the cause of
untold misery.  I caused Omma's death.  I disappointed my adoptive
parents.  I failed God.

No one would ever gaze into my eyes during sex and say my name and be
flooded with love.  And why should anyone?  If I were a man, would I?
Of course not.  Given a choice, I believed, no one his right mind would
choose me.  I knew I wasn't the kind of woman that men fall in love
with.  And there was no question in my mind about why.  I always
understood.  All I needed to do was look in the mirror.

I avoided mirrors as much as possible, and almost never let myself be
caught in a photograph.  But when I was forced to look at myself I was
flooded with contempt.  I saw a misshapen face, unruly hair, and
ugliness that was beyond pity.  I hated every aspect of my face and
body: my quasi-Asian eyes, my wide cheekbones, and on down through each
layer, to the skull beneath the skin.

When I was a child, I'd been punished for telling Mom and Dad that I
wished I were married because I liked the way I Smelled and felt and
I'd like to share those things with my husband.

This husband didn't want to see me, much less smell or touch me.

D. certainly wouldn't kiss me, and I only tried to kiss him Once.  We
were sitting in front of the television after dinner, and the evening
had been calm.  I felt such relief that D. hadn't erupted into anger
for several hours, and when he laughed aloud at something on the
television I felt a surge of warmth and gratitude, and leaned forward
impulsively and kissed his lips.  He jerked his head back, then slammed
his fist into my jaw "Don't ever do that again," he told me.  I never
did.

For years after my divorce, I flinched when anyone moved unexpectedly
toward my face.  So quite often if I was dating someone and he reached
his hand to my cheek, I'd jerk back and wince.

Depending on how caught unaware I was, I might raise a hand to shield
my face.

It was frustrating for the person I was with.  They would sometimes
become angry, because they saw my reaction as re fleeting poorly on
them, or they interpreted it to mean that I didn't trust them and I
thought they would hurt me.

It was impossible for me to explain to their satisfaction or to mine
why I reacted the way I did: how it was not a conscious act and that it
was so hard for me to think that someone would reach toward my face
lovingly.  My reflexes expected to be slapped.  It was just a response
that built up over the years.  It took my reflexes many years to learn
that a hand moving toward my face now would end in a caress.

Having my face kissed is still to me thrilling beyond description.

To yearn for so many years to be kissed and now to find that people are
willing to kiss me--that it isn't a repugnant thing to them--is
something I never get tired of.  I never take it for granted.  I still
find a kiss the most amazing of gifts.  It's a miracle to me that
someone would intentionally and with desire move his face toward mine
and put his mouth on my skin and ' take pleasure in doing so.

I think the fact that I longed for kisses for so many years made them
so much sweeter when they finally arrived.

The impetus I needed to finally make the break from my marriage was
Leigh.  It was one thing to suffer myself--it seemed perfectly normal
and right--but I couldn't let her suffer too.  She trusted me to
protect her, and she was the most precious thing on earth.

In an instant one night the decision was made.  D."s abuse that : night
took place in Leigh's room.  She was a little over two years old then.
If I made any noise, he said, she would wake and see what was
happening.  That was the only warning I needed to keep me silent.

I don't know why he chose Leigh's room that night--I think he was just
getting bored with the routine abuse and wanted something new to spice
things up.  She was in her crib, wearing her yellow terry-cloth
sleeper, the moonlight casting shadows from the slats across her
beautiful face.  I held on to the slats of her crib and bit my lips to
keep from crying out, willing her to stay asleep.  I was terrified that
she would wake and sit up and look out through the slats and see what
D. was doing.  What if she peeked out between the slats and saw her
mother being killed?

At all costs, I had to keep that from happening.

As soon as he fell asleep I wrapped Leigh up in her blankets and
slipped out the back door with her in my arms.  I had nothing with me,
no money, no clothes.  I had rivulets of dried blood on my body and a
panoply of old yellow bruises and fresh blue Ones.

I walked barefoot through the brightly moonlit desert, carrying Leigh
in my arms.  I felt the most amazing sense of peace in the midst of
danger, and I was in a strange daze, as if another scene from another
time was being reenacted.  I felt calmer and more serene than I had in
years.  There was a stillness that filled me, as if I were protected
with my daughter in some safe place in the center of a maelstrom.

Leigh woke up and I sat down on a rock with her so she could play with
some wildflowers, and we sang an old English madrigal she loved:

All 'round our nest, far as the eye can pass

Are golden kingcupJelds with silver edge;

here the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.

"Tis visible silence; still as the hourglass.

Oh clasp we to our hearts for deathless dower

This close-companioned, inarticulate hour;

When twofold silence was the song:

the Song of Love.

Leigh was accepting and unquestioning, and took pleasure in the walk
and the moonlight and the song and the wildflowers.  I walked through
the night to my parents' house and knocked on the door.  They let me in
and didn't say too much when I told them I wanted a divorce.

I think they were both shocked by my condition, but they were well
schooled in not noticing, so they averted their eyes;

Mom told me to take a shower.  After Leigh fell asleep I told them D.
had abused me since the day we were married and I had decided to leave.
They asked me to pray about it.

"Have asked the Lord's will in this matter?"  Dad said.  I lied and
told them I had.  I said the Lord wanted me to protect Leigh, and this
was the only way to do it.

It wasn't until I told them of D."s infidelity that they stopped
lecturing.  The Bible makes allowances for divorce if there's been
adultery, Dad said, although the woman is not supposed to get married
again.  But that's the only allowance that's made.  So my bruises meant
nothing--I could chalk that up to the joy of being able to suffer with
Christ--but adultery is a sin.

When D. came the next morning they tried to intercede on his behalf,
but I felt--for the first time in my life--equal to anything.

All the obsequiousness that had characterized me was simply gone.  In a
moment, without thought or effort, it was as if I were someone else.  I
was unmoved by D."s pleas and threats and promises.  I was unmoved by
the thought of my parents' embarrassment at church or the disapproval
of the town.

The time had come: my daughter and me, together and strong and safe,
needing no one else.

The trees grow tall in the forest of my dreams.

They whisper and caress, intertwined by quiet streams.

Guide me, gentle light; silver moon on this dark night While the leaves
sing love songs to me.

The rain comes down in the forest of my dreams.

Through the mist I glimpse velvet, verdant green.

Wash away my tears, all the lost and lonely years While the leaves sing
love songs to me.

My heart's desire dwells in the forest of my dreams.

My soul moves with his form through the shadows of the trees.

The spirit of Pan in the body of a man;

And the leaves sing love songs to me.

I took one of the cars, a few pieces of furniture, Leigh's and my
clothes, and some dishes with me when I left that marriage.  D. kept
the house, and the money.  Since I was moving into a tiny place where
we couldn't keep a pet, and D. didn't want her anymore, we had to give
the dog to some neighbors.

From that moment on, Leigh and I built a life that was an American
incarnation of my Korean life with Omma.  We spent as much time as
possible together.  We played whenever we felt like it.  We created a
world for ourselves.  When it got dark we piled books and pillows on
the bed and cuddled up, reading and discussing and spinning
make-believe stories and drinking peppermint sun tea until she fell
asleep.  Then I continued to read through the night, while her tiny
dark head nestled against my shoulder.

Omma, who loved me just as passionately as I love my own daughter,
wasn't able to run away with me, for whatever reason.

"With her death, I was completely abandoned.  On the night I ran away
with my daughter I felt an incredible exultation--we were tasting
freedom, and we were tasting it together.

In a relative sense, my daughter and I were as poor as Omma and I had
been, and we continued the legacy of turning poverty in to a game.  We
went on treasure hunts until we scraped together enough loose change to
buy a bag of rice.  She'd emerge, Shouting and triumphant, from
rummaging behind the sofa Cushions or under the car's floor mats,
clutching some change.

And, like me, it wasn't until she was much older that my daughter
realized just how precarious her childhood's day-to-day existence had
been.

Leigh and I stayed in the same town but moved into a $150 Per-month
apartment that stood in a row of shanties originally built for the
migrant farm workers who labored in nearby date groves.  It had one
room that was partitioned off into a small living sleeping area and an
even smaller kitchen bathroom

It was reminiscent of the hut on the edge of the village Where I lived
with Omma--a squalid place for the very poor.  We shared the apartment
with a platoon of date palm beetles, overgrown specimens that scuttled
round like armor-clad autocrats.  when we pulled back the curtain in
front of the tiny, stucco Walled shower stall they stayed put,
clustered around the drain, and glared at us.  They napped in the one
row of cupboards that lined the living area wall and made their tracks
around the blistered paint that peeled and dropped daily off the
walls.

We had a mattress on the floor and a few pieces of furniture salvaged
from our previous home.  We decorated the place with wildflowers and
long strands of field grasses that grew outside.

Leigh drew pictures and we made frames for them out of colored paper I
filched from work, then hung them on the wall.

I made paper dolls for her out of the same paper, and we used her
crayons to make elaborate and fanciful clothes for them.  Like Omma, I
created a play town for my child and our fantasies became more vivid
than reality.

Despite the fact that I had no college degree and no experience, I had
managed to talk my way into a job as a reporter for a tiny weekly
paper.  The most appealing thing about the job was that I could take
Leigh with me.  She played underneath the desk while I answered the
phone, and she accompanied me on assignment.  I covered the local city
council, the two schools in town, and the police and fire stations.  I
also was the paper's receptionist, ad taker, and typist.  For my hybrid
job I was paid $500 a month.  On payday Leigh and I celebrated: We went
grocery shopping, buying rice, whatever day-old bread was available,
vegetables from the local roadside produce stand, and loose tea.

We also treated ourselves to lemon Popsicles, which we ate outside at
sunset, watching the tumbleweeds wheel across the road and waving to
the Santa Fe train as it rumbled past.

As the month wore on and it neared the next payday, we usually ran out
of money and food.  Then it would be a scramble to find enough change
to buy some rice or flour, out of which I made flat, unappetizing
bread.  But even the scramble was exciting.

We went on "treasure hunts," looking for money.  If we scraped together
seventy-five cents, it was enough.  We could get sufficient rice with
that to see us through.

We were creative cooks, using whatever we could find to cobble a meal
together.  Our concoctions were sometimes surprisingly good; more often
they were disgusting.  But we ate them nevertheless, and made jokes
about the food.  We pretended we were Arctic explorers, down to our
last meal.  Nothing bad overwhelmed us, because everything became a
game.

I had a battered old piano that a neighbor gave me, and often in the
evenings Leigh sat on the bench beside me and we sang together.  She
rested her head on my lap and drifted off to sleep while I played and
sang sweet Van Morrison songs:

She's as sweet as tupelo honey, She's an angel of the first degree.

Leigh and I did pretty much whatever we felt like.  Often that meant
playing hooky from work and school.  Occasionally I decided to leave
work early.  Once, for example, I picked Leigh up from school and told
the school secretary she had a doctor's appointment.  It was an August
day, sunny and clear.  Leigh was excited and eager and we both felt
exhilarated.

I stopped at our apartment on the way to her school and changed into my
bathing suit, then put my skirt and tank top over it.  I brought her
bathing suit along with me.  So in the car, on the coast highway, Leigh
hunkered down under a towel and changed into her bathing suit while we
both giggled.  We played all afternoon in the water until we were
sunburned and sleepy and completely content.  On the way home we
stopped at Baskin-Robbins to get an ice cream cone and ate it in the
car.  Our faces and hands were sticky with ice cream and fudge and we
made silly faces at each other.

When we got home we foraged around in the refrigerator, still scratchy
with sand and still wearing our bathing suits.  We didn't have a whole
lot in it--some mashed potatoes and spaghetti sauce and peas--and none
of it looked very appetizing to either of us.  Leigh said that while it
didn't look very good to eat, it would be lots of fun to finger-paint
with.  So we dragged it out of the refrigerator and dumped it all out
on the kitchen floor.  With our bathing suits on, we finger-painted
with the food all over the clean white Formica floor, sliding around
and laughing until our stomachs ached.

Friday nights were date nights.  There was a drive-in movie theater in
the town, so on Friday nights I piled blankets and pillows in the car
and bundled Leigh up in her pajamas and pink bunny slippers and we
stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken, where we got the small box with
three pieces of chicken, a roll, and some mashed potatoes and cole
slaw.  I brought along a Thermos of sun tea, and we cuddled up under
the blankets and shared our little meal.

It wasn't the rice and kimchi and barley tea of my childhood, but the
mealtime rituals were much the same: We shared the food--one bite for
Leigh, one bite for me--and we saved the best tidbits for each other.
We said the food tasted much better if the other one had taken the
first bite, so we'd giggle and argue over who went first.  We watched
maybe an hour of whatever bad B-movie happened to be showing, before
Leigh fell asleep.  Once she was asleep I sat through the rest of the
movie, or if it was too bad I drove straight home.  I put her in bed,
got in my nightgown and snuggled her into my arms, spooned behind her
and kissed the top of her head.  Like Omma, I made sure I was between
my child and the door.

We went to sleep together and didn't feel poor or lonely at all.
Sometimes we drowsily discussed the merits of the movie; sometimes we
made up silly songs.

Like Omma, I wove stories for my daughter about her future: She'd live
in a beautiful big city where all her dreams would come true.  The
stories were laced with the glorious passages we read together night
after night; Coleridge and Shakespeare and C. S. Lewis and Roald Dahl
all became parts of a lush, intoxicating make-believe tapestry.  We
took everything we read and made it uniquely our own: I recited poems
to her from her infancy on, but incorporated her name into the works.

Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," for example, was reworded to be her own
property: "In Xanadu did Princess Leigh a stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man
down to a sunless sea."

Whether in Korea or in America, the make-believe tapestry made life
bearable.

As she got older, the necessity of togetherness for us continued.

When she should have been playing with friends or pursuing her own
interests, Leigh was with me.  Separation anxiety was strong in us
both.  The only time we felt secure was when we were together.

While Leigh was still a preteen, we decided to become vegetarians.

It was an easy decision for both of us.  We believed strongly in the
sanctity of all life, and in treating every living thing with kindness
and respect.  So when Leigh came home from school one day in tears and
announced that she had seen a film about the horrible conditions inside
slaughterhouses, it was a logical step for us to stop eating meat.

It was also pretty much the same way we'd been eating anyway, out of
financial necessity.  So we became vegans, with occasional lapses into
dairy.  We experimented with tofu and texturized vegetable protein and
egg replacer, but mostly we stuck to the basics: rice, pasta, homemade
bread, vegetables, and fruits.

I think we were the only vegetarians in town, and both of us got very
tired of explaining for the umpteenth time why we didn't eat meat,
poultry, or fish.

Being a vegetarian became, at that point in my life, the closest thing
I had to religion.  I was fervent about it.  I identified with the
animals that were raised solely for human consumption.  I wept over the
plight of chickens crammed in tiny, filthy cages, their beaks sawed off
and their misery unheard.

People said things to me like "They're just animals.  They're here for
our use."  I had a visceral reaction to that phrase, maybe because I
was told countless times during my growing-up years that I was "just
like an animal."  I had suffered much of my life because I was
considered less than human.  Animals were suffering because they were
less than human.

And it seemed to me that humans didn't have much to be proud of, if
they treated other living things with such blind cruelty.

My parents, meanwhile, had accepted the divorce, but we didn't talk
about it much.  Leigh and I went to visit them every weekend, and we
still attended their church--not because I believed, but because I
wanted to keep the peace.  They gave Leigh the same fundamentalist
lectures they had always given me, but unlike me she didn't accept
them.

"That's not nice," she'd pipe up when Dad said everyone without Christ
would end up in hell.  Leigh thought for herself, and never hesitated
in voicing her opinion.  As she got older she got more and more
adamant.  When she was four she took issue with one of Dad's sermons
and told him about it.

"I don't agree," she said.  And when he asked her if she'd prayed about
her attitude, her response was immediate.

"I don't need to pray about it.  I know what I think."

One of our first acts of emancipation was to move out of the desert. I
was starving for green.  I had never ceased to hate the desert, and I
felt that much of my misery could be assuaged if I could simply walk
outside and see a natural blade of grass or leafy tree.

In the desert where I grew up, there were cabins scattered in remote
areas.  You could scream and scream, and no one would hear you.
Horrible things could take place behind those flimsy clapboard walls,
and no rescuers would come.  The cabins were miles from the main roads
and miles from each other.

I still hate the desert.  I never could see the austere beauty in it
that others saw.  To me it's a desolate place where nothing green and
tender can grow.  Any hopeful blade of grass or fragile ':

plant withers in that merciless heat.  Everything is scoured by the
relentless sun and wind.  People's skins grow dark and leathery.  I
think the desert dries out souls just like it does everything else.  '
Every night I heard the coyotes howling and the screams of some poor
creature as they tore it to shreds.  Quite often the victim was
somebody's pet, a cat or dog that happened to be outside when the
coyotes came down from the mountains on their nightly raids.  Every
night I put the pillow over my head, trying not to hear the death cries
outside.

So with each succeeding job Leigh and I moved closer and, II closer to
the Southern California coast.  I attended college and worked my way up
to larger newspapers.  We moved into other apartments--still small, and
still sparse, but without the date palm beetles inside or tumbleweeds
outside.

Our second home was a tiny stone cabin on two dry, desolate acres on
the outskirts of town.  It was a step up from the shanty row, and since
we'd felt claustrophobic being crammed between apartments, we were
excited about our newfound privacy.

I didn't know until later how dangerous privacy can be.

I was working at my second newspaper, covering crime, seeing myself as
some sort of small-town avenger of the innocent.  I began work on a
series of stories about malfeasance in the local sheriff's office,
interviewing everyone I could find, digging for the truth.  In the end,
some of the people I was writing about lost their jobs and others were
demoted.

Even so, I was on good terms with most of the cops in town, who knew
that my coverage was fair and honest and who themselves wanted the bad
apples tossed out of their department.

Quite often a cop would cruise down the winding dirt road to our remote
cabin to see if I wanted to go along on an accident or drug bust.
Everyone knew where I lived.

One night I was awakened by the glare of headlights through the cabin's
window, and my first thought was that perhaps there was a story in the
making.  Leigh was spending the night at a friend's house, and I was
alone.  When I opened the door to peer outside I saw one of the men I'd
been writing about,

and before I could react he was inside.

A half hour later he was gone.

My first call, for some reason, was to my editor.

"I've been raped," I told him.

"I think I'll be late to work in the morning."

In less than an hour, he and his wife were at my door.  I spent the
rest of the night and into the morning at the hospital and the
sheriff's station.

In the short time I'd been a police and court reporter I had covered a
few rape trials, and had been horrified at the way the victims were
treated on the witness stand.  Right or wrong, I didn't want to go that
route.  So after several days of negotiating an agreement was reached:
The man lost his law enforcement job and entered counseling; I
considered the case

/

an end.

A month later I realized I was pregnant.  Abortion was the only option,
but I didn't want anyone to know about it.  I got an advance on my
paycheck from my editor, drove into Los Angeles by myself on Saturday,
had the abortion, and drove shakily back late that night, crying all
the way home on Interstate 15.

I've struggled with a great deal of guilt over the entire sequence of
events.  I've chastised myself repeatedly for doing everything wrong: I
shouldn't have opened the door without seeing clearly who was there; I
shouldn't have lived in such a remote place where no one could hear my
screams for help; I should have been courageous enough to take the case
to court;

was abortion really the only answer?

I've second-guessed myself countless times and I've grieved for the
life that had to be cut short.  But now I've stopped trying to decide
if what I did was right or wrong.

Much of my fear about bringing the rape out in the open was that my
private life would be exposed.  If my life had been spotless by the
standards of that society, perhaps I wouldn't have been so silent about
the rape.  But it wasn't.  I couldn't have taken the witness stand and
presented a virginal persona to the jury.  I was ashamed.

We continued to live in that cabin throughout the next year.

A couple of months later I was outside hanging clothes to dry when I
suddenly slumped to the ground.  It was about noon on a Saturday, Leigh
was at her friend's house, and I had no idea what had happened.  I
wasn't in pain, but it felt as if my spinal column had melted away.  I
couldn't move my legs; I had no control over my lower body.

The clothesline was about a hundred feet from the house, and it took me
the rest of the afternoon to drag myself back inside, using my arms and
head to gain traction.  When Leigh, who was eleven, came home I was
lying on the kitchen floor because I wasn't able to reach the telephone
on the kitchen counter.

She called an ambulance, and a few hours later a neurosurgeon told me I
had to have immediate surgery to remove my fifth lumbar disc, which had
slipped entirely out and was cutting off the nerves to my lower body.
He gave me a litany of warnings: I might be paralyzed after the
surgery, I might never walk again unaided, I might have to undergo a
series of operations later to repair the damage.

I had the surgery and then went home to the little cabin for a long
period of convalescence.  During that time I had to remain either flat
on my back or completely upright.  Leigh did the cooking and cleaning
and provided nearly around-the-clock nursing care for me, in her own
unique style.  She read aloud to me from Tolkien and Roald Dahl and
Shel Silverstein and Shakespeare.

She made tea for us and curled up on a bank of pillows, book in
hand--the same way I had read to her a few years earlier.

Leigh was also my physical therapist.  She led me in "toe aerobics,"
where she pushed against my toes until she could feel some pressure
back.

In a few weeks I was able to stand; several months later I was walking
with a cane.  Morning and evening, Leigh took me through a battery of
exercises printed on a piece of paper that she found in the doctor's
waiting room.

That was a frightening time for Leigh, as she tried her best to take
care of me and make things as comfortable as she could.

For a long while I could only crawl, and she would hear me moving in
the night and get out of bed to check on me, then see me crawling down
the hall toward the bathroom.

By the time a couple of years had passed I was pretty much back to
normal most of the time, except for some loss of feeling in my right
shin.  I never knew what caused the back problems the doctor said it
could have been years of repeated beatings, but he couldn't tell for
sure.

In the meantime, my editor and his wife brought us groceries every
week, and he arranged it so that I got my regular paycheck rather than
having to go on state disability.

The day we finally moved out of the desert we felt as if prison doors
were opening.

We lived within walking distance of the beach and I was back to almost
100 percent mobility.  Now we were in a bigger apartment with two
bedrooms, a little patio, and a strip of grass where we planted
tomatoes and flowers.

Reporters are notoriously low paid, and although I'd moved up to a
larger newspaper I had to augment our income by giving piano lessons. I
taught some of the neighborhood kids and a couple of adults I worked
with, but not Leigh.  I vividly remembered the painful, interminable
piano lessons spent under Dad's tutelage.

If Leigh wanted to learn to play piano or guitar or zither or spoons or
nothing, that was fine with me.

She was, like me, immersed in books.  She also was a budding thespian,
and our playtimes were rich with intricate fantasies and story lines
and dialogue.  Leigh was much the same kind of student I
was--schoolwork was extremely easy for her and she lost interest
quickly.  She had little patience for people whose minds weren't as
quick as hers; several times she got sent home with a detention slip
because she had corrected her teacher's grammar or spelling or
quotation.

The nightmares, which had been constant for me, began increasing in
intensity when I hit my late twenties.  I started walking in my sleep,
something I'd never done before.  I fell asleep usually around midnight
and dreamed that I was locked inside a box, searching for an opening.

As I walked around the inner circumference of the box in my dream, I
physically left my bed and walked around my apartment.  I usually awoke
standing in front of a window, which I had opened in my sleep, leaning
out gulping the cold night air.

Leigh often went looking for me in the night and found me in some
unlikely place, sometimes walking around outside blindly, sometimes
curled in a fetal position on the floor.  Often, she says, I would cry
and speak to her in a mixture of Korean and English as she led me back
to bed.

Since I thought I remembered no Korean other than a few basic words, I
was amazed at what she told me.  I wrote down some of the words, hoping
the entire language eventually would come back to me.

I had never kept secrets from Leigh, and she knew nearly as much about
my past as I did.  She became increasingly insistent that I do two
things: get help to deal with the immediate pain and do research to
find out as much as possible about my childhood.

At around the same time, I entered an abyss of depression that was
almost debilitating.  Often I couldn't manage to get to work, and
called in sick.  On those days I sat in the living room, staring at the
wall.  The laundry piled up; the sink was filled with dirty dishes.  If
I went to work, it took every ounce of my strength and concentration to
get through the day, and my work, of course, was barely acceptable.

I finally asked for help.  The fantasies about suicide, which had
always been present, were becoming my only daydreams and my only
comfort.  I fantasized about suicide in the way that some people
fantasize about lovers.  The thoughts were very explicit and very
tender.

I knew exactly what I was going to wear, what I looked and smelled
like, what the surroundings were.  I would be dressed in white, with my
hair braided and wrapped in a blue silk ribbon.  My feet would be bare.
I would be fresh and clean.  I'd go into a forest and find a beautiful
tree that I felt some spiritual connection with.  I'd ask its
permission, and when I felt the right moment come I'd hang myself from
its holy branches.  I had the suicide fantasy mapped out to the
smallest detail.  I didn't want anyone just to stumble on my body,
especially not a child.  I didn't want to upset anyone who wasn't
prepared for what they were about to see.

I planned to leave signposts to help law-enforcement people find me; I
planned to leave a letter guiding sheriff's deputies and the coroner to
my body.  I planned to put up some warning signs just in case some
unwary hiker happened along.  I didn't want to upset anyone; I didn't
want to traumatize anyone.

I knew exactly how I would dispose of my personal belongings.  I'd
leave my house clean so there would be no work left.  I didn't want to
inconvenience anyone.  I just wanted to leave so badly.  And yet I
didn't want my daughter to lose her mother.  So I was completely torn,
and angry at being torn.  And the one thing that I wanted--the one
dream I had--I couldn't bring to fruition.  I felt I was in a no-win
situation.  I felt there was no hope.

I knew that if I was going to stay alive, it couldn't be under these
conditions.

Many of my nightmares were recurrent.  I often dreamed of wandering
through the house, looking for my mother.  The rooms were empty and
silent, and I ended up in the bathroom, where I opened the medicine
cabinet and found her in a Mason jar, cut in tiny pieces.

I dreamed of a wooden coat tree covered in hats.  I was afraid of the
tree and yet fascinated with the various hats--some new and fancy, some
tattered and greasy--hanging there.  As I turned the hat tree around I
came upon the disembodied head of a man.  I recognized him immediately
as the man I loved.  His was not a face I'd ever seen before or one I
knew from waking life, but I knew instinctively that I loved him dearly
and he was my soul mate.  I was afraid of him too, though.  He asked me
not to look

at him because he felt disgusting and frightening, and I told him that
to me he was the most beautiful and wonderful person in the world.  I
touched his face and kissed him over and over--his eyes, his mouth, his
cheeks and forehead--and we both wept.  I felt a surge of longing and
tenderness and romantic love that I'd never felt in waking life.

Like him, I was afraid to show my face--or my soul--in all its
nakedness.  I was afraid of horrifying people.  I longed to be seen and
touched and kissed, even disembodied as I was.  Like him, I surrounded
myself with different hats and used them as protection.  I was charming
and funny in public, but I always felt lonely.  I was kind and
generous, but I always felt used.  I was sympathetic and understanding,
but I always felt angry.

I often dreamed of wandering through the church where I grew up,
searching for little pink-frosted cupcakes.  I looked in all the church
cupboards and the Sunday school rooms, and finally I saw a plate of
them hidden away in a janitor's closet.  I was dying for one of them,
wanting the sweetness and creaminess of them, but when I picked one up
I saw that it was rotten and the underside was covered with maggots.

I often dreamed of being in my parents' house.  Their toilet would
begin to overflow, and a stream of feces and vile-smelling liquid would
begin streaming out over the toilet seat and onto the floor.  I had to
clean it up, but it was like the Augean stables no matter how hard I
cleaned, it was still dirty.  Even though I realized I'd never be able
to win, I felt compelled to keep cleaning.

Many of my dreams contained animals, bound with chains and injured,
dying slowly and agonizingly.  Foxes, usually, or opossums.  I'd often
dream that I was lying in bed, my eyes shut tight.  In the background I
could hear someone say, "We'll have to sever her head so she can't see
what's happened."

182.

When I started trying to find healing--through therapy, through
meditation, through finally talking about my life and reaching out for
friends--I plodded on despite my firm belief that my soul was
genetically flawed, that any spark of h ope was doomed to
disappointment.  Like Blake, I believed there were some people who
simply were without hope, and I was one of them:

Every night and every morn, some to misery are born.  Every morn and
every night, some are born to sweet delight.  Some are born to sweet
delight; Some are born to   endless night.

I had no doubt that I was born to endless night.  And one of the
reasons I was hesitant for a long time about really changing the way I
looked at myself and the way I embraced the thought of death was
because of an unspoken pact I made with Omma.  Dreams of reuniting with
my mother were accompanied by the belief that I needed to suffer as
badly as she suffered.  If she was willing to die, then I should be
too.

Otherwise, I thought, the suffering of my lifetime had no meaning.  My
therapist relayed a famous quote to me: "Suffering without meaning
equals despair."  The meaning of the suffering, for me, was being
linked with my mother.

As the excruciating process of trying to heal progressed, my recurring
dreams shifted.  I began having flying dreams again and quite often,
and in them I was often searching for a child.  Sometimes I'd find her,
and swoop down and pick her up.  She'd wrap her arms around my neck,
I'd cradle her, and we'd fly off together.  Sometimes she'd pull the
skin over my chest apart and crawl inside, and the pain was intense.

It is from our parents that we learn whom to become; in their eyes we
see reflected our faces.  The constancy of their presence eases us, it
gives us a safe place from which we can observe the world.  My mother
never had that place.  She was not given the luxury of safety, and she
spent years searching for her reflection in someone or something.  I
had her, but she had no one, and so I became her anchor as she began to
walk down the path of self-discovery and realization.  I was her
reflection, a small version of herself, and a living chance to erase
the pain that she had felt in her childhood.  In me, I think, she saw
an opportunity to make right the half-remembered horrors and injustices
that had haunted her all of her life.  When I was very young she spent
every moment worrying about my comfort and happiness, and although she
could not shield me from all horror, she created for me a world that
was safe and insulated.  In spite of that, I can count on one hand the
times in my childhood when I saw her truly laugh.

Through her generosity, her love, her affection, there was always
sadness.  I took it for granted and never thought to question that life
was mostly a somber occasion.  And it was not without struggle that I
ever learned to think otherwise.  There is no part of me that can blame
her for the sadness.  I cannot sit in judgment over a life that has
seen such tragedy and pain.  I could not ask for a more loving, more
devoted mother.  Nonetheless, I felt a tremendous responsibility to
care for her.  To shield her.  And of course, in spite of my best
efforts, I could not save her from the inevitable deluge of memories,
or from the horror of healing.

As I entered my teenage years she began to enter her own period of
awakening and self-discovery.  Although those years are in many ways
only shadows for her, for me every moment is as clear as the one I am
experiencing now.  At times the pain would be so great for her that she
would drift away, taking whatever comfort she could in simply not being
aware of the circumstances.  Many times I asked her if it might be
better to not go through the trauma of recovery.  And many times she
could not give me an answer.

I have begun to realize, looking back, that it was my exit from
childhood that marked the beginning of her journey.  She had always
allowed herself to be swallowed completely by my helplessness, and in
caring for me she forgot herself.  When it was no longer necessary for
her to devote every waking moment to me, her own thoughts and her own
scars began to be insistent, coloring every moment of her life,
including, many times, her interactions with me.

It was not a quick process, but in the scope of a life, it was a short
period of time between my childhood and the remembrance of hers, and
the moment when mine came to an end.

Through it all I was never in the dark about what was happening at a
particular moment.  She would tell me thought to thought what was
emerging in her mind, and although I understood little of it, it was
those glimpses into her heart that saved me from feeling completely
confused.  Sometimes in the night she would talk to me.  I would sit by
her bed, and in a strange mixture of Korean and English, she would give
me, and herself, clues to the things she had been through.  I recall
growing up with the knowledge of the orphanage and of mountains
haunting me.

It is not difficult to see why she remembers most of all from that
period the dreams.  They were so vivid and so constant that they almost
subsumed her waking life.  Then when I was about fifteen, she began to
walk in her sleep.

At first it was nothing to worry about; I would find her in the living
room or in the kitchen in the middle of the night, and when I would
question her she would seem confused and then soon go back to bed.
Before long, the wanderings went farther, became more frequent, became
more dangerous.  As she remembered more and more of her past, her
subconscious took her farther and farther from where I could protect
her.  She would walk into the backyard, or into the street, never
having any conscious idea of what she was doing.  Then I would find
her, confused and crying, outside in the night.  And I would talk to
her, wrapping blankets around her shoulders, and she would come back
inside, not knowing what she was looking for in the dark, but knowing
that she hadn't found it I spent many years working as a newspaper
reporter in Southern California, covering mainly police and courts.  I
loved my beat, and a big part of its appeal was the danger involved.  I
deliberately placed myself in situations that were life-threatening,
without realizing my motivations.

My police scanner was always on, even when I went to bed.  The sound of
the codes and the dispatchers' voices and the static on the airwaves
was comforting to me.  Whenever anything newsworthy came across the
scanner, I was awake immediately.  I co ver ed murders and gang
wars and hostage situations and fires, and tried to get as close as I
could to the action.

One night I went out to cover a gang fight and ended up in the middle
of the melee, notebook in hand.  I think that sometimes my naive tee
saved me--people were often so bemused by my lack of caution that they
shook their heads and took care of me.  That night I got an interview
with one of the gang leaders, who then told me he'd wait five minutes
so I could get to safety.  Another time I covered a hostage situation
and inched my way into the line of fire before being yanked back behind
an angry but protective cop.  The officers loved my boldness, though,
even when they scolded me for it.  I covered vice and was regularly
issued a bulletproof vest when I went on graveyard shift ride-alongs.

All the time, I was zealous about what I believed my role was--a
defender of the public's right to know and a guardian of the truth.  I
chose a profession that tapped into my deepest needs: the need to be
heard, the need to speak the truth and be believed, the need to work
for justice.  I went from learning a new language to making that
language my life's work.  I went from feeling that I had no voice to
writing words for thousands of people to read every day.

As a reporter, I had a fixation with people who were in need especially
if they were children, single mothers, or abused women.

I was light-years away from the woman I had been during my marriage,
but I still remembered vividly how she felt and thought and behaved.
When I would hear people criticize a domestic violence victim--"Why
doesn't she just leave?"---I seethed.  No one who hasn't been there can
completely un dei stand.

On one of my police ride-alongs, I met a woman who had been in an
abusive marriage for nearly thirty years.  A neighbor called the police
because of the screams she heard, but when we got there the woman said
everything was fine and she didn't want to press any charges.  Her
husband had left the house.  The cop was impatient and brusque; the
woman was apologetic and embarrassed.  I stood in the background and
watched her, thinking how easily I could have been in her place.

Before we left I went up to her and held out my hand, feeling helpless
and heartbroken.  My eyes were brimming with, tears and I couldn't
think of anything to say except "I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry."  I gave her
my business card and said, "I don't want to do a story on you or
anything like that.  I've been in the situation you're in now and I
just want to help in any way I can.  Evert if you just want to talk
sometime or you need a ride somewhere or anything, please call me."

About a week later she did call, and we began a phone relationship that
lasted for a couple of months.

She would never meet me anywhere; she said her husband didn't allow her
to leave the house without his permission and she had to call when he
was at work.  I understood that perfectly.  She told me she had never
held a job and had only a high school diploma.  She didn't think she
could support herself, and she didn't even know how to open a checking
account or get utilities turned on.

But above and beyond all the logistics was her core belief that she
deserved nothing better.

"You've seen me," she said.

"I'm not young.  I'm not pretty.  I'm nothing.  I don't blame him for
not loving me.  At least I have a place to live and food to eat.  I'd
probably end up homeless.  It's too late for me."

I listened and listened, and tried to give her ideas where I could--the
number of the abused women's shelter, some people I knew who could help
get a new life started for her--and I marveled at whatever twist of
fate had saved me from ending up like her.  One day, though, she simply
stopped calling.

Some of my choices made Leigh feel neglected and hurt.  I brought
people home from time to time whom I'd met out on a story--a mother and
child who were homeless, an elderly woman who came into the newsroom
with a hard-luck story, two orphans from a fatal car crash in which the
parents were killed.

The two orphans were sisters, one two years old and the other four.
They were Romanian immigrants whose parents had just recently come to
this country.  The two girls were strapped in their safety seats in the
back of the car, and they escaped without injuries.  But they were
forced to see their parents' bodies crumpled in the front seat after a
truck slammed into their compact car.

I became obsessed with those girls.  I visited them in their foster
home every day after the crash.  I took them toys.  I even asked about
the possibility of adopting them.

I gave people whatever money I had if they were in need,

and the upshot was that sometimes I didn't have enough money to pay the
bills or buy the things Leigh and I needed.

Helping others who were in dire straits allowed me to forget how poor
we were, and also allowed me to focus whatever sorrow and compassion I
could muster on someone else instead of myself.

Being a cop reporter meant I saw awful things on an almost daily basis.
But now I was the observer, not the victim.  I could watch and write
and stay above the fray.

Because of the nature of my beat, I came face to face with death quite
often, and I edged myself as close to it as possible.  There was the
time I covered a kidnapping and managed to grab the child who was being
held hostage seconds after a police sharpshooter killed the suspect.  I
wanted to hold on to the child and not let him go.  I wanted somehow to
heal him, to give him some sense of safety or love, but I was powerless
to do anything but write about it.

There was the time I held a prostitute in my arms as she died after
being shot by an enraged client.  I cradled her and looked into her
eyes, thinking that perhaps I could convey something important to her:
that she was of immeasurable value, that she didn't have to leave this
life alone.  I felt as if I had a magical power somehow to save people
in their last few moments--even though I didn' t know from
what--if I just held them tenderly enough or looked deeply enough into
their eyes.

Another time I went out to cover a car wreck and knelt by the dying
woman who was pinned in the driver's seat, wrapping my sweater around
her shoulders and talking to her as she took her last few breaths.  She
was a complete stranger, but in those seconds I felt like I knew her.

"You're so precious," I told her.

"You're not alone.  I love you.  I care about you.  I'm so honored to
be here with you."

I don't know if anything I did had any effect on the people who were
dying, but I needed to try--over and over--to ease someone's final
journey.  I needed to say good-bye in a way I never could with my own
mother.  It broke my heart to think of someone leaving this life
feeling alone and unloved.



All the time I was running headlong into danger in my working life, I
was constantly afraid.

My lifelong claustrophobia, for example, had deepened to such
proportions that for years anything that threatened me with the loss of
freedom was more terrifying than I could even contemplate.

For a long time I carried a steak knife in my car, hidden underneath
the cup holder between the two front bucket seats.  | carried it as a
kind of security blanket--not ever to use on anybody else, but to use
on myself in case I was ever mistakenly arrested for anything.  I
believed that if I was ever handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol
car and taken to jail and locked in a cell, the terror would be so
overwhelming that I would lose my mind.  I would simply go crazy.  I
pictured it all so clearly.  I'd begin to scream and hyperventilate and
thrash and spiral into complete terror.  I would rather die than
experience that again.

To live locked up again was unthinkable.  So I carried the knife--as
unlikely as it was that I'd ever be arrested--because I knew that if I
had to I could choose my moment and, in an instant, take two long,
vertical slices down my forearm and one across my jugular I would die
before they had a chance to handcuff me, before they had a chance to
lock me up again in a cage where I couldn't get out.  I considered it a
huge victory--and a frightening foray into the unknown--when I was
finally able to throw away the knife and drive without it.

The fear for me of being immobilized, of being caged, has always been
so intense and real that it overshadowed most other things in my life.
It manifested itself as claustrophobia that made it impossible for me
to fly in a plane, because those heavy doors are shut and there's no
way out.  I couldn't ride in the back seat of a two-door car.  If I had
access to a door handle, I knew that I could jump or roll out, and I
felt a little more secure.

I couldn't ride in an elevator, because when those doors closed I was
inside a cage again.  So much of my life was tailored to keeping me out
of situations that would trigger that terror.

And I also despised myself for that weakness.  I despised myself for
not being able to fly in a plane.  I despised myself for breaking out
in a sweat and shaking uncontrollably if I had to ride in an
elevator.

One time I was going to a job interview in a secure high-rise newspaper
building.  When I stepped into the lobby, all that was there was a
reception desk and an elevator.  I entered the elevator because I had
no choice; there were no stairs available.  But I didn't know you had
to get a special key from the security guard to make the elevator move
and send it up to the newsroom.  So the elevator doors closed and it
just stayed put.

I panicked.  I was dressed up; I had on a suit and my makeup and hair
were neat.  But immediately I began to cry, so mascara ran down my
cheeks.  I began to perspire and shake.  My heart was pounding
painfully hard.  I began banging on the elevator doors and screaming.
The security guard opened the door and looked at me.  Laconically he
handed me the key and said, "You need this to get to the newsroom."

It seemed like an eternity that I was stuck in the elevator, but when
the guard opened the door and I looked at the clock above the reception
station, I had been in it only about three minutes.

In my early twenties I went to a city bookstore with a friend.  In the
poetry aisle I began leafing through books, as I always did, and I
picked up a book by Edna St.  Vincent Millay.  Letting it fall open, I
read, "What is my life to me?  And what am I to life?"  I burst into
tears right in the middle of Barnes & Noble.  There it was, the poem I
read when I was ten years old, on that magical afternoon.  There were
the words that had stayed in my heart most of my life, the poem I had
longed to find again and looked for repeatedly over the years.  There,
finally, was the poet who said exactly what I felt about death and loss
and remembrance.

I had continued to write--in my daily job, in my private journal, in
poetry--and the written word was of paramount importance to me. leading
about the pain and triumphs of others kept me from sinking into
self-pity.  Interviewing people every day who faced their own instances
of hopelessness and despair kept me compassionate.  And reading poets
like Millay gave me hope.

Over the years my literary tastes evolved, but I still found myself
speaking the lines of the writers I loved, as I had in seventh grade to
Joe, who broke my heart.  I still found the men in my life, on whatever
level and at whatever period, unable to comprehend what I was saying,
why the written word meant so much to me and why I was so disappointed
that it meant nothing to them.

I'd steer the conversation to literature, and then recite, for
instance, a Shakespearean sonnet such as "When, in disgrace with
Fortune and men's eyes," or an Edna St.  Vincent Millay poem.

And usually, even though I wasn't aware of it except maybe on the edge
of my consciousness, it was a test.

I'd decide to speak those lines and see what happened.  I was always
disappointed.  Usually the man would look at me blankly and change the
subject, or say "Oh, what's that?"  and I'd tell him and he'd say "Hmm.
And you memorized it.  Why?"  It never lived up to my fantasy.  What I
wanted was for someone to feel the same way I felt about the lines.

That only happened once.  I recited a snippet from a Michelangelo poem
to a man I was dating, and he perked up and said, "That's right, I had
forgotten Michelangelo wasn't just an artist but a poet as well."  My
heart leaped, and I said, "Yes, he was wonderful.  I have a book of his
poems if you'd like to see it."  I handed him the book and he flipped
through it and said, "Oh, and it has the Italian versions, I'm fluent
in Italian."  That bowled me over, even though I've always felt
inferior around people who speak other languages or are well traveled.
But anyway, I thought, "Maybe this is it.  Maybe this man has the depth
and romance and beauty of spirit that I've been looking for."

So he read the Italian out loud to me and translated it, and I was
entranced.  That was on our second date.

Between the second and third date, I had built up in my mind a complete
fantasy about this man: that finally I had met a kindred spirit.  He
would be deep and romantic and passionate and sensual and faithful and
sexually eager, and still sensitive and brilliant and funny--all the
things I feared couldn't exist in one man.  On our third date, we went
out to dinner and he flirted with the waitress outrageously: commenting
on her legs and on what a babe she was.  He even told me he had picked
his secretary because she was so gorgeous.  So my little dream house of
cards came tumbling down, and I didn't go out with him anymore.

I know that any therapist worth her license could explain why, needing
reassurance so much, I've had relationships with men who hate to
reassure.  All the self-help books and all the good advice about
learning to love myself and finding the reassurance within don't seem
to get to the root of the longing: to be sure that someone in my life
will stay with me.  That if I let myself love another human being and
let myself trust, I won't be abandoned.

That I'll be safe.  And that when I reach out, the person I love will
still be there and will be reaching back toward me.

From time to time I found myself in a relationship of sorts, and each
time I hoped against hope that he would be the one who would provide
what I was searching for.  Each time it failed.

With each experience I groped blindly in the darkness, looking for
shadows that resembled love.  But the real experience, the sum and
substance of love, evaded me.  I yearned for something that I couldn't
even define.  I thought of each man as a shadow, and I longed for the
love in flesh incarnate: tender and passionate, pure and dirty, filled
to the brim and running over.  Unbridled intimacy.

I had the same sense of doomed romance that I think Omma had.  She fell
irrevocably in love, and the result was tragic.  I absorbed that
memory, and added to it with years of reading Shakespeare and Bront and
sad English poets.

A couple of years after my divorce I met a man at work who fell in love
with me.  I can recognize that now, but at the time I thought he had
some serious psychological flaw that made him want me.  Our desks faced
each other in the newsroom, and from time to time I'd look up and see
him watching me.

One night he came over to my house and we sat in the backyard, looking
at the stars and talking.  It was summertime, and I was wearing a low,
square-necked sundress.  The moon was glinting off my skin, and Mike
leaned forward and gently ran his finger along my bare collarbone.

"Your bones are so beautiful," he said.  The words were like an
electric shock--I'd always felt so ugly to my very core, down to the
bone, and for him for see beauty in even my bones was stunning.

For a second I almost believed it.

We dated for about six months, until the day he asked me to marry him.
Mike was a serious man, and he courted me with verve and persistence.
He wrote songs and poems about me lush, romantic things.

He brought me flowers and treated me with tenderness.  He was also
passionate and physical.  I broke his heart.  I was disgusted with him
for loving me.

After Mike, I dated men who treated me more cavalierly.  Anyone who
started to get too serious was immediately suspect--I believed that if
he was sincere about me, he was obviously a twisted freak; otherwise he
was just playing some sadistic sort of game.

 Many of my relationships were with married men.  I never actually
planned them that way, but they just seemed to happen.

Married men didn't usually demand too much of me, and I didn't have to
worry about whether they really loved me.  I didn't fear rejection with
them, because I knew the rules going in.  Those relationships felt safe
and nonthreatening, and they usually just peacefully dissolved without
too much pain on either side.

Sometimes, though, things got complicated.  A couple of times I played
the role of understanding lover so well that the men I was with decided
to leave their wives.  The first time it happened, my lover simply
showed up at my house one night, suitcase in hand, and announced he'd
told his wife about us.  I was stunned.

She began calling me at home and at work, and between my anger at him
for hurting her and my guilt at being a part of it, whatever we'd had
fell apart pretty quickly.

I continued to choose men who would leave eventually, just like my
father left Omma.  I didn't believe real love was possible for the
likes of me, and every time a relationship ended I had another chance
to berate myself.

"See?  Nobody will ever stay with you.  Did you really think this would
be any different?  You're pathetic and revolting."

In dating, of course, my Asian American features always loomed before
me as yet another hurdle to finding love.  A couple of years ago a
neighbor I had chatted with a few times asked me if I'd like to meet
her brother.

"Oh, he'd just love you," she said.

"He loves mixes."

"Mixes?"  I asked.

"You mean cake mixes?  Drink mixes?"

"You know what I mean," she said, patting me on the arm.

"Mixes.  People like you."

Even though I was seething, I smiled back at her because I knew that in
her own middle-America, small-minded way, she meant well.

I didn't date her brother, however.

Men were a kind of salve for me.  Their attentions numbed, momentarily,
the pain I lived with.  But underneath the numbed surface the wound was
growing and festering.  I needed to stop numbing it and let it be out
in the healing air.

All the while I avoided real attachments to avoid pain, and then felt
life was an empty, vicious circle.  I avoided pleasure, and then said
life had none.

I tried to shame myself out of the longing.  I tried berating myself. I
reviled and ridiculed myself.  The longing wouldn't go away.  There's a
line from a Nine Inch Nails song that ran through my head all the time:
"I just want something I can never have."  That, I thought, was the
absolute truth.

Romantic love was such a mystery to me.  I thought about it often: What
did it feel like?  What did it look like, taste like, smell like?  What
thoughts go through your mind when you know somebody is in love with
you and you have that same passion?  I couldn't imagine.  I just knew I
wanted it.  And yet I was afraid of it too: It might be too wonderful
and 'terrifying.  Because everything we get in life, we lose
eventually.  Everything we have vanishes someday.

If love were to arrive, the knowledge that someday it would leave would
be devastating.  Everyone dies.  Life changes us.  Experiences and
circumstances change us.  And love changes from rapture to
revulsion--I'd seen it happen over and over.

I didn't know if anything would be worth that kind of pain and fear. If
someone said "I love you" and I felt the same and I knew I could trust
him, wouldn't I want to hold on to it so much that I'd live every
moment in terror?  I just didn't know, but of course, I knew I'd never
have the chance to find out.

I've never had an easy time sleeping at night.  If I slept three or
four hours a night, I considered myself lucky.  I went through my days
desperately tired, but at night it was impossible for me to relax.  I
was hyper vigilant

every sound woke me up.

I knew that awful things happened at night, and if I relaxed my guard,
something would hurt me.  The problem was that despite all my
vigilance, awful things still happened.

Despite my staying alert in the basket as the twilight deepened, Omma
was killed.  Despite my watching the baby all night in the orphanage,
he was dead the next morning.  Despite trying to stay awake at night
during my marriage, I'd awaken suddenly to find my husband pressing a
pillow over my face.  No matter how vigilant I've tried to be all my
life, it's never been enough.

In those night watches, waiting for the sleep that eluded me and afraid
of the nightmares that were inevitable, my one comfort was found in
poetry, particularly Edna St.  Vincent Millay's "Song of the
Nations":

Out of Night and alarm Out of Darkness and dread, Out of old hate,
Grudge and distrust, Sin and remorse, Passion and blindness;

Shall come Dawn and the birds, Shall come Slacking of greed, Snapping
of fear-Love shall fold warm like a cloak Round the shuddering earth
Till the sound of its woe cease.

After Terrible dreams, After Crying in sleep, Grief beyond thought,
Twisting of hands, Tears from shut lids Wetting the pillow;

Shall come Sun on the wall, Shall come Sounds from the street, Children
at play-Bubbles too big blown, and dreams Filled too heavy with horror
Will burst and in mist fall.

Sing then, You who were dumb, Shout then Into the dark;

Are we not one?

Are not our hearts Hot from one fire, And in one mold cast?

Out of Night and alarm, Out of Terrible dreams, Reach me your hand,
This is the meaning of all that we Suffered in sleep--the white peace
Of the waking.

The process became for me to learn that vigilance, in and of itself, is
no't what saves us from tragedy.  I've learned it wasn't my fault for
^relaxing my guard; I could never have prevented any of it.

202.

I knew that my mother had frequent thoughts of suicide.  In retrospect,
I'm not quite sure that I wouldn't have rather been kept in the dark
about that for a while, but in a truly honest relationship one can't
pick and choose what will be known and what will be kept a secret.  I
think that for my mother secrecy was evil, for in her own life it had
wrought such pain, and the air of secrecy around her early years was
felt in equal measure with shame.  So in raising me she was vigilant to
keep nothing secret.

I believe that children know far more than we realize they do, probably
far more than we would like them to at times; and I was certainly able
to see what was going on in my mother's life from a very young age.
Part of me knew that my mother did not want to be alive.

That is almost as impossible to say as it was to feel.

I was a young teen when she sat me down one night and told me that
there might come a time at which she simply couldn't hold on anymore. I
knew enough of what she was going through to not have to ask what this
meant.  She told me that although she would miss me terribly, she might
have to end her life and leave me someday.  She said that when (because
there really was no "if ") this occurred, I would make it, and that it
would in no way be my fault.

But then we made a pact that she would make it through my childhood, so
that I would never be alone without a mother to care for me.  The
implication was that when I was older and better able to handle it, she
would feel more free and be able to do what it was that she really
wanted.

There is really no way to articulate what I felt at that moment, a
mixture of terror, confusion, and anger that I should be the only link
between my mother and life.  There was really nothing I could do but
say that I would understand and that I would not be angry.

I felt paralyzed but held on, knowing that even if she were to be gone
the next day, I had to hold on to every moment like it was the last.

Although she had no intention of killing herself while I was still
young, I didn't see how adulthood could change my feelings, and I
always wondered if perhaps there were promises and pacts that could be
broken.  I think that I spent the next eight years or so awaiting the
moment when she would no longer be able to cope.

When I was an adult we made a new pact: that she would never take her
own life.  It wasn't until then that I released the breath I had been
holding for so many years.

When I was in my mid-thirties I began meditating.  I knew nothing about
meditation and had a tendency to mock what I thought of as New Age
gibberish.  But I was pretty much at the end of my tether.  For some
reason I was no longer able to ignore the misery of a lifetime, and it
was slamming into me like a tidal wave.

I still thought about suicide all the time.  I couldn't sleep at night,
and when I would I'd sleepwalk.  My best friend talked me into
attending a seminar with her.  I had never heard of the speakers, but I
trusted my friend, so I went.  I had little patience for others in the
audience, though.  I'd whisper my caustic observations to my friend:
"Look at that guy.  Why doesn't he lose the tie-dye?  I bet he's got
those stupid Deadhead teddy bears on his VW van too."  I couldn't
understand why everybody had to talk in that slow, mellow style, and I
seemed to be the only one in the building wearing mascara and
lipstick.

But once the seminar started, the critic within me quieted down  When I
got home I decided to give meditation a try, but on my own terms: I
wasn't going to wear Birkenstocks, I wasn't going to act like a sedated
zombie, and I wasn't going to take it too seriously.

I found out some amazing things.  I had always struggled with intense
panic when I tried to push away whatever feelings were haunting me.  I
found that if I just acknowledged the feelings, the panic abated. Grief
and pain and loneliness were left.  The sorrows of a lifetime. Ten
thousand sorrows.

I tried to cover up those feelings with temporary balms, like
relationships with men.  But I realized the temporary balms eventually
ate away at me and created their own acidic pain.  The permanent balm
seemed to be just letting the pain come to the surface where it could
breathe and heal in its own way and time--not trying to cover it up and
mask it and slather it over with something else.

I was also learning to live alone.  Leigh was in her sophomore year at
college and living away from home.  Adjusting to life without my
daughter, best friend, and anchor was terrifying.  Both of us needed to
find our own lives; we had been emotionally intertwined since her birth
and were just now going through the normal separation adjustments that
should have happened several years earlier.

With her departure, I was forced to face myself squarely and find
another reason for my existence.  I had always predicated any worth I
had on Leigh: She was so brilliant; she was so beautiful; she was witty
and complex and tempestuous--I felt my life was valid only because it
had brought hers into the world.  As she got older, that kind of
adulation was hard for her to take.  She felt enormous pressure not to
disappoint me.  She felt responsible for my happiness, indeed for my
continued existence in this life.

At that point I was also ending a relationship that had marked a
turning point in my life.  For the first time I thought that perhaps I
might be worth loving.

The man was a married colleague, and what started as long talks turned
into a physical relationship.  He was unhappy and dissatisfied, and I
was a way for him to leave his wife and reassess his life.

That failed, benchmark relationship was a catalyst for feeling much
deeper pain, and even while I was in the throes of it I realized that
bigger issues were at stake.  Shorn of all the hyperbole, it was pretty
simple: He chose someone else.  It came down to another rejection.  But
I let myself feel it and thus begin to feel all the years of
accumulated rejection.  I felt their weight and intensity and knew I
was acknowledging, for the first time, a lifetime of pain.

We were together while he was married and while he was going through
his divorce, but once it was final he told me he needed to date other
people.

I was able, at times, to laugh at the irony of it: The only thing that
had kept our shitty relationship going as long as it did was our shitty
relationship.  All we talked about was our relationship and its
problems.  One or the other of us was always in pain; one or the other
of us was always asking why.  One or the other of us was talking about
what was wrong with the relationship.

The fact was that we had precious little else to talk about.  If our
relationship had been normal and satisfying, we'd have had nothing else
to talk about.  And if we'd had nothing else to talk about, it wouldn't
have been normal and satisfying.  We had no shared interests; we had no
shared goals.  We had nothing together except pain.  As soon as his
need for me diminished, he withdrew.  For much of our relationship he
clutched at me like a drowning man, then he finally climbed on top of
me to pull himself out of the water.  And he never looked back to see
if I was going under.

But when I grieved for him, I actually grieved for the first instance
in my life that felt like romantic love.  I wasn't grieving the loss of
a person; I was grieving the loss of a birth.  I had felt like I was
finally in the real world.

By this time I had completely turned my back on Christianity, although
I never told my parents--there was no point in hurting them.  I still
felt loathing toward anything that smacked of organized, fundamentalist
religion, so I loved reading the Dalai Lama's words: "My religion is
loving-kindness."  I realized that meant loving-kindness to everyone in
my life: past, present, and future; and that meant loving-kindness to
myself--in my pain, in my jealousy, in my fear.

When I tentatively recited for the first time the "From Mane Padme
Hung" mantra, the reaction astounded me.  I felt a sharp, cool tingling
in my scalp.  I felt for an instant as if I were going to rise off the
floor--to have a flying dream while fully awake.  Then I burst into
tears.  The reaction was so intense and visceral and spontaneous that I
didn't know what to make of it.  I could let it simply be what it was,
without need to dissect or explain.

I don't know exactly what Omma chanted--I can't remember her words. But
studying Buddhism made me feel closer to her and closer to the core of
my own being.  It was one way for me to reach peace with my past and
discard the false personas that other people in my life had chosen for
me.

I knew, and acknowledged the fact with fear and wonder, that when
chanting or meditating I had flashbacks of moments spent that way in
Omma's presence.  I would sit cross-legged on the floor, close my eyes,
and begin to chant, and suddenly sense my surroundings profoundly
change: The carpet beneath me would turn to dirt, the sounds of traffic
outside would cease, the scent of Omma's incense and the lilt of her
sweet voice would fill the air.

I wanted loving-kindness to become not only my religion but my way of
life.  I realized that breaking up with my lover was the best thing
that could have happened.  Had we stayed together my search for
personal meaning would have been near impossible.  I'd be fighting on a
daily basis those old demons of jealousy, doubt, uncertainty,
dissatisfaction, ennui.  This way I could meet the pain head-on, shake
its hand, and then let it go.  I didn't have to be its roommate.

Nevertheless, I held on to a healthy dose of skepticism.  It occurred
to me that, taken too dogmatically, karma was akin to predestination.
If you could dismiss someone because they weren't predestined--or
chosen by God for salvation--you could also dismiss them because their
suffering was karmic and therefore deserved.

But I believed that my pain over that failed relationship was karma at
its basic level.  I let my immediate emotions lead me to have an affair
with a married man--an act that seriously wounded his wife.  In years
past my behavior had wounded other \ people, including myself.  And now
I was reaping the whirlwind.  But I didn't want to continue my lifelong
pattern of burying I feelings and ignoring the truth.

I didn't know what to do, except just keep being aware of, each moment
of loneliness and loss, longing and sadness, hope and encouragement.  I
tried to accept whatever feeling came 2.08 along without fear or
clinging or panic.  I saw more and more clearly that this is the human
condition.  Loss happens to everyone and will until the end of human
relationships.  What I struggled for was to feel mercy and tenderness
for myself and for everyone else who had ever suffered or ever would do
so.

I considered the possibility, for the first time in my life, that
things could be okay.  I believed that healing was just around the
corner; wholeness was just a breath away, I was becoming dear to
myself.  And things were especially tough then: My job was hanging by a
thread, there was no one in my life, I was lonely and afraid about the
future.

I was in the uncharted territory of healing.

Through it all, I held on to one hope: The road might be rocky as hell,
but I'd get there in the end.  The destination was peace, fulfillment,
love.  That was a first--I'd never known before such things could exist
for me.  I started to believe in my own strength, and I reminded myself
of what I'd survived so far.  I told myself that this latest mess was a
walk in the park by comparison.

My old daydreams of suicide started to be replaced with dreams of
becoming a whole, healed person.  I began to see that anything was
possible.

For the first time in my life, I started to have moments of looking
within myself and being awed and delighted by the possibilities.

I was learning to savor fragments of wonder.  With Leigh's departure
from home I moved into a tiny in-law unit in the basement of a house in
the hills above town.  The house was nestled up against the lovely
mountains, and all around were pine and eucalyptus trees and flowering
plants.

Soon after moving in I went for a ramble in the hills and found myself
lost after about an hour.  There was no real danger, because houses
were scattered around and it was a balmy summer evening, but I felt the
old familiar panic well up.  I was tired .. and very thirsty and scared
because I didn't know the way home.

Wandering down a footpath through some dense foliage, I saw a wild plum
tree tucked in with the evergreens.  I picked one of the dark purple
plums and ate it slowly, savoring every bite and every drop of the
incredibly sweet, fresh juice.  In an instant, my thirst was gone, my
tiredness had evaporated, and I had a stunning moment of clarity.  The
plum was perfect; the moment was perfect.

As I stood there, marveling at the experience and wanting to hold that
kind of appreciation forever in my heart, a deer came out of the woods
and began nuzzling at the plums that had dropped to the ground.  The
deer looked at me but continued to go about her business with the
plums.  I watched for a few minutes and then turned and instinctively
headed in the right direction for home.

Omma s aid life is made up of ten thousand joys and ten!  thousand
sorrows.  I realized the plum, the deer, and the day could be counted
as part of the ten thousand joys--and that!  every moment, if fully
savored, could take its place there as well.

hood.  I asked her forgiveness for my past coldness toward her and for
abandoning her as everyone else had.

At the same time I began looking at pictures of myself as a
child--pictures I'd kept hidden away for many years.  I had always
hated that child and felt contempt for her.  Now I made a conscious
effort to really see her.  I learned to love the serious-faced girl in
those pictures, who had lost her mother, lost the only security she had
ever known, lived as a prisoner in an orphanage, and was then
systematically abused through adultI began studying Buddhism in
earnest, and felt a deep sense of homecoming.  One very powerful
teaching for me was that in all the world, there was no one more
deserving of love than myself.  That was the absolute antithesis of
everything experience had taught me so far.  I had spent all my life
believing that in all the world, there was no one less deserving of
love than myself.  I told myself that I'd try to love myself every step
of the way: through the job glitches; through the sad, scared, lonely
moments; through the birth pains of finding myself.

One night I lit incense, made barley tea, and wrote my mother a
letter:

My Omma.

I want to share with you the changes that are happening in my life.
I've always thought I should suffer like you, because I wanted to be
allied with you.  I wanted to identify with you.  But I see now that
would be dishonoring your memory.  I want you to have your wish.  Your
wish was that I be safe and protected.  Since you're not here anymore
to do that, I'll take over.  I'll do this in honor of you; in loving
memory of the most loving person in the world.  I'll take up where you
had to leave off.  And that way we will always be allied.  We'll truly
be united.  We'll be working for the same goal--the protection and
happiness of the child you loved.

I wanted to be like you.  I wanted to be close to you.

Now I see that this is the only way to do that.  To be like you I have
to treasure the daughter you gave birth to and died to save.  And I
will, my darling Omma.  I will do my best to ensure her happiness, her
freedom, and her wholeness.  That's what you wanted, so that's what
I'll do.

I love you so much.  I miss you so much.  I'm so lonely without you.
But this way I feel your spirit working through me.

I had always felt like I was living inside a bubble.  The outside world
was visible but murky, and I was separated from everything by this
invisible barrier.  I wanted to reach outside it and become part of the
real world, become a real person.  But a black, oily film covered the
bubble, holding it down and keeping me from breaking it open.  When my
view began to change, the world began to look different too--brighter,
clearer, painfully sharp and in focus.  It was both disconcerting and
wonderful.  I felt as if I were experiencing the birth pains of new
physical and emotional feelings.

When I began looking for help, the changes weren't all pleasant.  I
became aware for the first time of the enormity of my anger and grief
and jealousy, and it was frightening.  I was terribly jealous of just
about everyone and felt guilty about feeling so jealous.  I had always
covered up my feelings by seeming gregarious, extroverted, and
confident.  In the end, though, I always felt alone, unknown and
unheard, and fraudulent.

The first step, for me, was simply to feel.  It took a long time and
enormous courage for me finally to be able just to relax into the fear,
the pain, the fathomless abyss of despair.  I pushed away feeling for
so many years, trying to stay numb, trying to float above it all.  But
even to begin the long, tortuous journey of healing, I had to feel
everything that came before.

212.

I was afraid that if I really let myself sink into all those feelings,
they'd engulf me and I'd drown in them.  But that didn't happen.
Amazingly, after the first terror had passed and I was still alive, I
found that not only had I survived, I was finding unexpected comfort in
simply relaxing into the pain.

For most of my adult life, whenever I looked through my adoption
papers, I did so with my eyes emotionally averted.  I read them, yes,
but without letting the words sink in.  Finally one day I pulled them
out of their tattered folder and smoothed out the yellowed sheets and
let myself really, truly read them: Mother: unknown.  Father: unknown.
Date of birth: unknown.  I wrapped my arms around my chest and sobbed
until I thought my heart would burst.  I picked up the paper, with its
coldly clinical description of that nameless, unwanted child, and
kissed it: the line that read Orphan: girl; the line that read Mother:
unknown.

Sometimes at night, drifting off to sleep, I'd whisper, "I love you.  I
love you."  And I was never quite sure if I was saying that to an
imaginary lover, or to the universe, or to myself, or to a dream, but
it didn't really matter.  Sometimes just to say the words aloud and
hear them hanging in the air was enough.

Despite everything, I still hoped.  Hone in bed in the middle of the
night, I whispered aloud the same words of William Morris that I'd been
whispering since my teens:

Love is enough: though the World bea-waning, And the woods have no
voice but the wice of complaining, Though the sky be too dark for dim
tyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, aid the sea a dark wonder, And this
day draw a veil over all deds passed over, Yet their hands shall not
tremble, their feet shall not falter;

The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these
eyes of the loved and the lover.

Like many people, I tend to get frantic when I think I might be
abandoned again.  I do destructive things: I hold on too tightly to
whoever is in my life at the moment; or I offer them a means of escape
over and over again until they think I'm pushing them away.  I'm so
terrified of being left, and my core belief in that eventuality is so
strong.  When I realize how precious someone is to me, I give them
every out I can think of.  The y're going to leave anyway, I reason,
so I might as well feel the pain now instead of holding my breath
waiting for it to strike in the future.

And all the time, I'm longing for them to stay with me, understand and
forgive me, love me in the midst of my fear and despair.  Only someone
who has experienced abandonment can make sense of such senseless
behavior.  And I'm afraid of myself.  I live on the lip of insanity,
and there are times when I feel myself sliding into that dark maw.  I'm
terrified of what I might become and of how I might appear to the
people I love.  Would they recoil from me at the moment I need them the
most?

I hate the word "issues."  Everybody has "issues."  I have abandonment
"issues."  I have a friend who pronounces it is ooze and that makes it
a little easier for me to say the word--it takes the portentousness out
of it and cuts it down to size.  But it still sucks.  So I work over
and over on the damn "isoo"--in my own roiling mind, in meditation, in
therapy.  In looking for the strength to keep going, I wasn't able to
think in terms of "God" or "higher power" anything like that.  I had
come to the place where I didn't believe in anything even approaching a
deity, and I was vitriolic in my hatred of anything that smacked of
religion.

So when my therapist asked me to imagine a force or being that could
confront what I feared, it seemed impossible--until I thought of the
person I became during the flying dreams.  I was strong, powerful,
fearless, swooping at will over the earth.  That image of myself became
the closest thing to a "higher power" that I could imagine.

Letting go of my love affair with smtide was very difficult.  I still
think about suicide, even today, but not with the longing and
romanticism that I once did.  In many ways, losing my lust for suicide
was like losing a lifelong lover.

I had "survivor guilt" as well, and dreaming of killing myself assuaged
my guilt.  The thought of suicide also reassured me that no one would
ever leave me again--I'd be gone first and out of the reach of earthly
pain, abandonment, and heartache.

I am always skeptical when I hear of Americans adopting children from
other countries.  Yes, many of these children are saved from horrific
conditions and placed in loving homes.  But I hope that the new parents
remember their children are strangers in a strange land, and that they
use every ounce of sensitivity and patience they possess.

No one, least of all a traumatized child, can make a culture jump at
hyper speed  They need to have their own cultures brought into their
new homes and honored.  They need to feel there's nothing wrong with
them that must change before they can fit in.  They need to be loved
and respected just the way they are; they need to be heard.

The fear of not being heard has stayed with me my whole life.  One of
my recurring nightmares runs along these lines: I've been in an
accident and I'm completely paralyzed.  My mind is clear; I know
exactly what's going on but I can't speak.  No one looks into my
eyes--in my dream I believe that if they did I'd be able to communicate
somehow that way--but instead they talk about me and jostle me around
and hurt me.  I'm screaming inside, but nothing shows on the outside.

I've also spent my life saying what I think the person I'm with wants
to hear.  My adoptive parents gave me a clear message on that first
day: We won't hear you unless you become like us; you have to talk our
language if you want to communicate.  So I tried to speak the other
person's language.  I picked up their mannerisms and jargon and agreed
with just about anything they said.

Not being heard was so awful that I was willing to take on just about
any persona for the sweetness of communication.  I've been afraid to
disagree with anyone, I've been afraid to speak my own mind.  True,
heart-to-heart communication is so sublime, and I had to learn to be
true to my own heart to experience it.

In recent years I've tried to have even a tiny bit of authentic
communication with my parents.  They had their own evolution as the
years went by, and some of the harshness that characterized them in my
childhood began to relax.  I never told them the depth of the scars I
carry from their actions, nor how far away I've moved from their
religion.  But they have conceded that they made mistakes and that
their interpretation of Christian parenting went perhaps a little too
far.  They love me now.  I know that for a certainty, even though they
don't really know who I am.  They tell me that they're proud of
me--words I would have given anything to have heard in my childhood.

I love them too.  I know they suffered in their own childhoods and they
lived with their own demons.  Given their beliefs and their rigid
upbringings, I think they did the best they knew how.  They simply
didn't want me to go to hell.

During a recent visit with them Dad broke down in tears and told me he
was sorry for many things during my childhood.

"I was immature," he said.

"I didn't know how to be a good father.  I'm ashamed of the way I
treated you."

The changes in Mom are the most remarkable.  As she's gotten older
she's gotten gentler.  Her memory of my childhood is sweet and tender,
and I don't try to challenge that.  She sat at their dining room table
as Leigh and I visited with them, and she pushed around baby carrots on
her place mat.

"Here," she said happily, handing each of us some carrots.

"These are yummy."  Leigh and I marveled about it later: Mom wouldn't
even allow a milk carton on her table when I was growing up-she
insisted milk be put into a pitcher and placed on the table.  And here
she was playing with carrots.

She sits without complaint, waiting for Dad to take care of her. She's
delighted when I telephone and she calls me "darling."  She reminisces
about my adoption and childhood and says I was the best thing that ever
happened to her.  She tells me I was a beautiful child.

Chapter Nineteen

Korean mothers are amazing examples of uncomplaining self-sacrifice.
They work so hard, taking care of their husbands, taking care of their
children, and their patience is limitless.  Omma was the epitome of
that cultural phenomenon.  She gave me the best of herself, and did so
in circumstances that stagger my adult mind.

She had no friends or family.  She received no support or even ordinary
civility from any other adults.  She had been abandoned by the man she
loved, and she was left to care for a child that no one else would
acknowledge.  She performed backbreaking labor, day after day, and she
lived in abject poverty.

She knew nothing would ever get better--there were no dreams to sustain
her, there was no possibility of rescue.

Nevertheless, she made sure my life was as happy as she could make it.
She smiled and sang with me; she stayed up at night and played with me
when I know she must have been bone weary.  She treated me with
unfailing gentleness and affection.

Like the good Korean mother she was, she made sure I got the best of
whatever food there was.  She waited until I had enough rice before she
ate, and the hottest and strongest tea was poured in my cup.  She
wrapped me up in what blankets we had and then used her body as extra
protection for me against the cold.  She humored and indulged me, and
not once do I remember hearing her voice raised in anger.  She never
struck me.  Her love was absolute.

People today ask me about my path to healing, and I'm never quite sure
what to say.

I don't feel "healed."  I feel stronger, certainly; I feel human and
alive.  I don't know if true healing can ever happen in this life.  I
hope it can, but there are many times when I still feel swept away into
desolation and see no hope anywhere.  There are still many times when I
doubt that I'm capable of inspiring love.

And like everyone else, there are many times when I feel utterly alone
and terrified.

Nevertheless, when I look at the world from the viewpoint of another
person's soul, I feel an intense wave of compassion and tenderness and
grief for the pain that they've suffered, and a longing to expunge that
pain and bring them comfort and peace.  I'm not able to do that for
anyone else.  Much of the time I'm not even able to do it for myself.
We all struggle alone through the ten thousand joys and ten thousand
sorrows of our lives.

But because we are ultimately alone, and because life is so hard, every
moment of beauty, every belly laugh, and every kiss are powerful and
precious.  I'm intensely grateful for every fragile instant of
contentment.

For me, the terror of being abandoned began the night my mother died.
Lots of fears were born that night.  But the abandonment
mantra--"everyone I care about will leave me"-has chanted itself in
every moment of my life.  I go back to that night over and over, but
each time I seem to learn something new.

It was a long time before I could acknowledge how angry I was with my
mother for leaving me like that and for letting me I see it.  Why
didn't she send me away?  Why didn't she take me to an orphanage
herself?  Why did she position me in a place where she knew I'd see so
clearly what happened?

I don't have answers, but I believe she did the best she could.

She was a product of a time and place that valued honor and | valor,
and she worked hard to instill both those qualities in her daughter.  I
believe she wanted me to be able to withstand anything.  I believe she
wanted me to accept that both of us were targets for persecution, and
she knew I needed the kind of courage and unflinching strength that
could be refined only in the fires of hell.  I also believe she loved
me more than her own life, and whatever bad decisions she made were
done out of fear and ignorance, but always with love.

If I could talk to her today, face to face, the first thing I'd say
would be "I forgive you."  And then I'd tell her how much I love her. I
love her.  I love her.

Although it is not widely recognized or discussed, honor killing is not
a practice that died with my mother.  Hers was not an isolated
tragedy.

Recently I spoke with a Korean man who expressed no surprise when I
told him of my mother's death.

"Yes," he said, "was it for a sexual shame?"  His attitude was
resigned.

"I'm not saying it's right, but you have to understand.  That's the way
the culture is."

In the newsroom where I work, wire reports of honor killings are not
infrequent.  They occur not only in Korea but in Israel, in China, in
Iran, in India, and in many other countries.  We don't hear much about
them, partly because they happen in places that are far from us and the
limited scope of our thinking, but also because in such cases it is
often reported that the women committed suicide.  And many of the
people in those countries accept honor killings as an unpleasant but
time-honored part of their society.  They simply aren't questioned.

We cannot know the numbers of women who have been murdered for cultural
transgressions, but we can imagine that there have been countless other
children who watched their mothers die and blamed themselves; other
people who grew up feeling faceless, soulless, less than human.

There are countless other women whose lives were savagely cut
short--beautiful, brilliant, simple, wild and timid, ordinary and
spectacular--women you and I will never get to know, and the whole
world is poorer because of it.

Chapter I've always dreamed about the night Omma died, but as I've
gotten older the dreams have changed.  Now there's some comfort to be
found.

I can go into that room and cut the rope and take the noose from around
her neck and cradle her in my arms.  And kiss her poor blue face until
it turns that beautiful blush-tinted porcelain and rock her the way
she rocked me so many times.  And close her wide-open eyes and sing her
to sleep.

Oh God, I miss her so much.

And in that same dream I can step into the room as an adult and pick up
that terrified, bloodied child and press her to my heart until my chest
dissolves and she melts inside  I can tell her she'll never be alone
again.  I can tell her it's not her fault that her Omma is dead.

I can tell her she was worth saving.

That night, and this night, are like tiny tiles in the huge,
multicolored mosaic of life.  They're like fleeting shadows of a dream.
I look out my window and see the reality: This life is like the dense
fog that swirls around my deck in the morning--it looks real and solid,
it takes on forms and shape.  But when the sun warms it enough it
vanishes without a trace.

Maybe this life is like that.  Maybe this pain is like that.  Fears and
hopes and dreams and sorrows all will dissolve like the fog that they
are, and what will be left is the light and warmth of my deepest self
or soul or whatever it might be.

I want true love in this life, and true contentment and peace.  But
maybe the only way I can find those things is to let go of the belief
that this life is my reality.

Exquisite courtesy That you should see me Immeasurable grace For you to
believe That I, the faceless child of darkness Could enter into
hallowed halls of love.

Could touch, and find no shame in touching Could hope, and find hope
not in vain.

A peace beyond my understanding Has fallen on my head like gentle
rain.

Epilogue Not too long ago I went to a Korean restaurant in San
Francisco with a friend.  We ordered a whole bunch of different kinds
of kimchi, and we had rice and tea.  About halfway through our meal, a
Korean family came in: parents, two children, a grandmother.  They'd
obviously come from something fun--the kids were carrying balloons and
had that grubby look of a day spent playing outdoors.  The adults were
laughing and affectionate with the children; the kids were demanding
certain dishes in the supremely confident way children have when they
know they're dearly loved.

I watched them, sitting across the room, and blinked away tears.  I ate
my kimchi and stared as they giggled and shared a feast of different
foods.  I wanted so badly to join them.  I wanted to walk over and see
their smiles include me; I wanted to become a part of that close,
inviolate circle of family.

As we were leaving, three girls walked past us, chatting happily as
they headed toward the restaurant.  They were young friends, probably
no more than sixteen, excited to be out together.  The first two were
talking and swept past me, but the third moved more slowly.  We made
eye contact and I smiled at her, loving her just because she was a
young Korean girl, looking much as I had once looked, and seeming a
little lost.  She smiled back, shyly, then bowed to me.  Startled, I
bowed in return, tears filling my eyes.  It was as if someone had given
me a gift I'd waited for my entire life.  For the first time, a Korean
had looked at me not with scorn or even curiosity, but as someone to
acknowledge and respect.  I was accepted, and it made me want to shout
with joy and press her to my heart.

The girl outside the restaurant had no idea what a profound effect her
simple act of courtesy had on me.  In Korean culture, the bow is
everything.  The person of least importance bows first as a sign of
respect.  The greater the respect, the deeper the bow.  Never in my
life had anyone, except for my mother, bowed to me.  I bowed to her, as
I'd bowed so many times to Omma, and was engulfed in a wave of love and
grief.

Everything is possible, Omma told me.  She believed that someday I'd be
a person, and people would smile at me and bow to me and look in my
eyes.  She believed that someday her child's life would be of value.

Now her child believes it too.