• • •
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Anaïs as happy as she was at dinner. She couldn’t contain her smile. Her foster mother was telling her how she was as a baby. I leaned over to her and told her that my sister was an incredibly talented fashion designer, knowing Anaïs would never brag about herself. I wanted and hoped that Anaïs would be that happy for the rest of her life. I loved seeing her like that.
Despite our protests, Anaïs’s foster mother insisted on paying for dinner, and that was that. We walked outside to the bus stop after she refused to take a cab. “Please,” we kept saying. “You took such good care of Anaïs as a baby, and it’s our turn to take care of you now.” She wouldn’t have it. No way—her Korean pride took over. She hugged my sister and literally bolted down the street, full speed, running as fast as she could toward the bus, all the while shaking her hand good-bye in the air. The crew and I were in such shock. We all stared at each other in awe. Then I looked over at my sister, and she was in a complete fit of laughter. Pure joy.
Back inside the Holt building, Anaïs and I wanted to see the little babies upstairs in the nursery. They were incredibly cute. We were allowed to hold them and play with them. For the first time, I was so happy to hold a baby. I wanted to take care of them all and never let one go. My sister, too, was cradling a baby in her arms. I could tell that one day, she will be an amazing mother.
When we got back to our hotel room later that day, Anaïs and I finally shared a moment alone. She very quietly turned to me and thanked me.
“For what?” I asked her.
“For bringing me here and making me meet my foster mother,” she replied. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it, and I’m glad you pushed me to.”
I was so relieved. I had wanted her to have an amazing experience in Korea. When I had visited the previous year, for the first time I felt so proud to say that I was Korean, and my reunion with my foster mother had been an exceptional experience, knowing I was taken care of since the day I was born. My sister was even willing to be interviewed for the documentary, and for the first time, she really opened up, expressing how she truly felt. It was one of the first times that she revealed the sadness of her adoption as a baby. Even though I had never felt this kind of profound remorse, at least now we had each other.
The next day, we visited the N Seoul Tower, the highest point in the city. It was beautiful up there, and from the glass observation deck, you had a 360-degree view of Seoul and beyond. The tower was next to a centuries-old traditional pagoda with ornate, colorful wood, stone, and tile work, so side by side, the modern tower and the ancient shrine. It reminded me of my sister and me. We were in Korea discovering the old, where we had come from, yet we were here celebrating the new, our brand-new relationship. Such metaphor!
Etched in the top of the glass in the windows of the observation deck were the names and distances of world cities and other points of interest that were in that direction. So, gazing out over Seoul, I could look past the horizon and dream of being in those cities while seeing how far I’d come. Anaïs and I walked around the room looking at the view from every different angle, as Anaïs snapped pictures of the “Paris” and “London” directions, and I was taking mine toward “New York” and “Los Angeles.” Another tradition of the tower was the locks and keys. With permanent marker, you write your name on a lock and hang it on a railing, then throw away the key. It was so corny and really for lovers, but I wanted to do it with my sister. I loved the idea of a love locked until eternity, never able to be broken.
As the last nights of our visit approached, my sister and I began to primp ourselves. I imagined that is what it would have been like in high school getting ready for all the parties, if we had been raised together in the States. We were attending a very formal gala hosted by Samsung. As we were putting on our outfits, my sister started to get really frustrated. The joy of meeting her foster mother was beginning to fade, and her anxiety was creeping back. Perhaps, it was anticipating the end of the trip and when we would likely see each other next. But she was wildly uncomfortable, she hated the hotel room, and she couldn’t get her dress zipped up all the way. She kept saying that she was fat and ugly. It made me incredibly sad to see her like that. I kept telling her she looked pretty, but I couldn’t get her out of that headspace. She was deeply convinced at that very moment that her appearance was appalling, and I didn’t want to point out that calling herself fat and ugly was, umm, inadvertently calling me the same—rude.
We arrived at the gala a bit on the later side, which meant we missed a couple of speeches, but not the entertainment. One act featured traditional Korean dancers, and another was a K-pop group. It was so cheesy, but necessary. No Korea visit would be complete without seeing a K-pop performance. K-pop is such a strange phenomenon, so tacky, with the men wearing a ton of makeup, and the girls going wild for them. Go figure.
The gala was great, with amazing food and wine. Anaïs seemed really happy to finally be eating European-style food again. She even turned to me with a big smile and said, “This is the perfect amount of silverware,” which made us all laugh. I loved that she was enjoying herself. I was beginning to acknowledge just how invested I was in her happiness, and I didn’t want her self-image to get in the way of her joy.
The next night we were attending a “black-and-white” concert, followed by the late-night dance party at Hybrid Club Vera. Anaïs and I had bought matching dresses—hers white, mine black. There was some downtime before the epic show at the Hybrid Club Vera, so Anaïs and I went there early to meet up with Dan Matthews. He had invited me to join Bobby Choi, his guitarist, and him for one song, which was such an honor. Singing, however, was something that had always been a little touchy for me. As a young performer, I hadn’t been the best singer. For some reason, I wouldn’t be able to hear the notes right, so every time I started singing, the wrong tones would come out. It was incredibly embarrassing, and the other kids would snicker and giggle, but I didn’t let it get to me. I worked as hard as I could to improve, often practicing two hours a day in my room, until my brothers and parents were . . . ready to kill me. Eventually, I became decent, but that didn’t mean I still didn’t get nervous, especially in front of my friends. It wasn’t as frightening, but I always get a little bit shy right before I sing my first note.
I practiced with Bobby first, as Dan hadn’t arrived yet. After a little bit, Dan came in, and guess who was with him? His twin brother! It was such a trip. I knew Anaïs and I looked exactly alike and had been through this entire thing just a few months prior, but it was so crazy to see them together. They had the exact same mannerisms, and the exact same face. Their sister was with them as well. I was staring—rude! I was thinking, Holy shit, this is the craziest thing! Anaïs was standing right next to me at the same exact time they walked in, and for the first time, I was observing what everyone else had been seeing when they had been looking at her and me for the past three months.
I loved knowing there was someone else in the world who had also just found his identical twin. It was comforting to know that Anaïs and I were not alone. I just couldn’t imagine how Dan felt. I never had the courage to ask him about it, as it was probably painful.
The rehearsal went well. While I was onstage practicing, Anaïs left to have coffee with a friend from Paris who lived in Korea. When she got back, she was all stressed out, almost in a panic. She was trying to get her microphone pack on, but the leg strap was bothering her, and she felt nauseous and hot and wanted to lie down. But it wasn’t just that. I could see her stress building, like atoms multiplying about to spontaneously combust.
Soon, the show started, and the club was getting crowded. I was backstage with Dan and Bobby, getting ready for our turn, when Ryan told me that Anaïs was freaking out and throwing up in the bathroom. I found her there kneeling over the toilet, crying. She said she was overwhelmed—everything was becoming super-real, we were leaving Ko
rea tomorrow, and she didn’t know the next time she would see me. I tried to console her, but I didn’t know what to do. And, to be honest, it was the first time that I couldn’t understand what she was feeling. I never had anxiety to this extent. I just held her, because I was afraid if I said anything, it would make it worse, and all I wanted to do was to make her feel better.
It was time to get onstage, so I asked Anaïs if she wanted to join me, but she said she would watch from backstage. Part of me feared that I had forced her into this trip that she hadn’t wanted to make. I had told her so many times that I cared more about her than the documentary and everything else. What if she was just going along for the ride because she didn’t want to disappoint me, but that she was getting overwhelmed with anxiety?
The performance went extremely well, although I wasn’t really present onstage. I didn’t care about anything but my sister, and if she was okay. I ran off to find her immediately after we finished, and when she said she was feeling better, we went out into the audience and grabbed a drink. As the music and night escalated, we started dancing, releasing all sorts of pent-up anxiety. Thankfully, Anaïs was beginning to feel more alive. Soon enough, after a few cocktails and time together, we were both laughing and jumping around like little girls. It was fun to de-stress together. There was no question that the comfort we offered each other made hard situations far more bearable. The next morning, I opened my eyes to see my sister lying next to me—always a joy. Anaïs was going home today, so after we got up, we headed toward the metro station, where she was catching the train to the airport. Time was slowing as we were saying our good-byes. I felt like I was in a scene from Love in the Afternoon, with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper at the train station in the final seconds before the train departs. We just stood staring at each other for what seemed like forever. We had already spent so many years apart, and this was the first time we didn’t have an exact date to see each other again. I gave her the tightest hug I could, trying to transmit how much I cared about her through my embrace. Eventually, she took the elevator into the station. I knew she had a massive flight ahead of her, and she was probably stressed out about it. I hoped she would be okay on the flight. I didn’t know if her anxiety would come on the plane or not. But I thought she was more than relieved to be going back home, where she could speak her own language, be with her friends, and feel like herself without a camera in her face. She was heading back to her life in France, something I still hadn’t experienced. I imagined her going back to eating croissants for breakfast and riding a bicycle past the Eiffel Tower. It’s funny—she was my sister, but we were still strangers in so many ways.
15
ANAÏS
korea
I wasn’t absolutely certain I wanted to go to the International Korean Adoptees Association convention in Seoul. Sam had mentioned it after she met Dan Matthews, but I had never been a huge fan of adoptee gatherings. I had attended a few in France with my parents when I was younger, but as an adult, I had been to only one program, a screening of a Korean documentary hosted by Racines Coréennes (Korean Roots), which I attended with my Korean friend Anaïs. The documentary was incredibly happy and sad, as the girl in the film meets with her birth family at the airport in Seoul (how could I control my tears when I saw that?) but then she does not get all the answers she was looking for (how could I not feel her frustration?). I enjoyed the prescreening gathering and we met other Korean adoptees, some of whom were a bit older than I, but it felt good to be with people who understood my experience and seemed very happy in their lives. Ultimately, though, I was scared to go to those gatherings too many times, as I feared they might turn into something like AA meetings, and the people were just here to sort out their problems.
As for going to Korea with Sam, I still had the same fears as I had always had. I was scared to have questions I had not yet been able to even ask myself, and then not find enough answers. I also feared getting either frustrated by the lack of information or discovering information that I did not want to have. Basically, I was scared. I had found Sam, and that was satisfying enough for me. I didn’t need anything else.
We finally agreed to do the trip. The networking angle was appealing: “The vision of the IKAA Gathering 2013 is for the leading global network of adult Korean adoptees to reach out to adult adoptees worldwide, and to provide comprehensive social, professional, and cultural networking opportunities to the international adoptee community, including interactions with Korean society,” the brochure said. The weeklong program had a lot of fun-looking things going on. I remember being in Sam’s flat, and her being all stressed out and tearing out her hair (in French, s’arracher les cheveux). She was saying Korea would be great for the documentary, but in the meantime I mostly wanted her to feel happy and ready to enjoy herself rather than being all neurotic and stressed. Knowing we’d be together for the experience was a comfort, because with Sam, I have no fear. I was just worried about the balance between stress and joy.
Even though I would have Sam, I wished my parents were coming with me. My sister had made her first trip to Korea with her mother, and I would have loved to do the same thing with my mum and dad. I had been to Korea as a seven-year-old, but not as an adult. I am not scared of traveling alone—on the contrary—but this time, I would be living the film Lost in Translation, a complete stranger in a country that, on some level, I thought I should understand. That is the worst, when you are so far from your own attachments that you feel like you are drifting away and apart from any group and that you don’t belong anywhere. There was great importance in meeting my foster mother and visiting the adoption agency, and I would have loved to share those things with one or both of my parents. I had checked with them before I booked the trip to be sure they didn’t mind me going without them, and they had given me their approval, although they thought it was a little rushed. Even being with Marie or Kelsang would have helped. Sam would have people she already knew, as she was very close to the documentary crew. But I had only her.
I knew two people going on the trip, although they were only acquaintances. I had met them briefly at the Racines Coréennes documentary screening. Hélène was the president of the club, and Charles was the treasurer. The entire roster of the more than five hundred people going to the IKAA Seoul event had about a dozen French adoptees, including Hélène, Charles, and me. It was nice to know some Frenchness would be part of the party. I don’t know how weird it might sound to say that we would all be back where we had come from, but I did feel community with other French-Korean adoptees, and home for me was the small French team that would be at the gathering.
The weeks leading to the trip went amazingly well. The week of July 14, I had my interview at Gerard Darel. The head of leather goods liked me enough to ask me to draw a project for her and send it the following week. My graduation ceremony for Central Saint Martins was July 17, and I sent the project a few days after. The day before leaving for Korea, I noticed a missed call and a voice mail from a human resources person at Gerard Darel. It was unfortunately too late to call back.
The day I left for Seoul was also the day I was officially giving up my share of the flat on Stroud Green Road in Finsbury Park, so I had to pack everything and clean my room in the morning. When that was done, I packed the rest of my suitcase and opened my voice mail one last time, where I heard the message from Gerard Darel telling me I had been hired. Even though I was now running late, I was jumping with joy as I raced to Heathrow to get my flight to my birth country. When I arrived at the airport, the lady at the British Airways check-in desk told me I had been upgraded, and that I was now flying business class. I hadn’t been this lucky since Kelsang discovered Sam. I still deplore the fact that I could not find a single place to buy a lottery ticket in the whole airport!
It didn’t matter. I looked forward to meeting Sam in Korea. It was funny—I quite enjoyed the feeling of arriving in a distant city somewhere on earth, and with a prepl
anned meeting point, I would find my sister. It felt like I could go anywhere, and we would always find a way toward each other. I love flying, my favorite parts being when you start going into the sky and when you see the ground and you are about to land at the other end of the planet. This time was to meet my twin sister again, and there was nothing more exciting than this. All throughout getting ready and during the flight, I was thinking of what she might be doing at the same time—packing, being late, running to the airport, etc. The excitement of traveling took away my fears. I felt really emotional as the pilot made his announcement soon after touching down in Korea. “We wish you a pleasant stay, and for those who are coming back, welcome home.” Home, he said. Wow. I was both modes of passenger—the one coming for a visit, and the one coming home.
I was fortunate to have Oliver, a second-year student at Central Saint Martins and a friend of friends, pick me up at the airport. He was Korean, and he was back in Korea for a visit with his family and was kind enough to collect me in his mum’s car. It was a good thing, too. I had the wrong hotel name, and my sister had given me the wrong address, so with his help, we could figure it all out.
Right near our hotel was the Myeong-dong market, which was a fascinating collection of stores, stalls, street food, restaurants, touristy stuff, and everyday goods along blocks and blocks of the city. I was fascinated by the nail polish stands, with so many colors. The market was a girl’s paradise, and I could now understand how Korean girls could be so girly compared to me. Seaweed, my favorite, was everywhere, too! I wanted to eat all the time, as the seductive smell of greasy street food got more and more irresistible every time we passed a stand without getting something.
Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited Page 19
