by Annie Choi
The words continued getting harder and though I copied each ten times, I received a B–on the next spelling test. It was the lowest grade I had ever received in any subject. I thought I was flunking out of elementary school. I would wind up in the streets alone, living out of a shopping cart and holding a cup and a sign just like the men and women I saw in downtown L.A., except my sign would say “Will Werk for Food.” My heart sank into my Reebok high-tops. My throat tightened and tears pooled in my eyes. My misspelled words dripped in blood-red ink: thunnder, tornadoe, lightening. I couldn’t show my mother a B–. It would ruin her and destroy me. I hid the test beneath a large bottle of ant spray in a cabinet. I couldn’t stand to have it in my bedroom. Besides, Snowball’s overalls couldn’t hold another test. I didn’t think of throwing it in the trashcan outside. Under the insecticide, the test would remain out of sight and mind. And it did for just a few hours.
“OH, NO, NO, ANNIE! COME HERE NOW!”
In the kitchen, my mother was holding the ant spray in one hand and a spelling test in the other. On the kitchen table there was a half-eaten apple covered in pulsating black specks. The worst part was that it was my apple. I had forgotten to throw it away, even though I knew that our house had a problem with ants. I started weeping. Extra bile ate away at my eight-year-old stomach; it was just a matter of time before all my organs liquefied.
“OH MY GOD, ANNIE. WHY YOU HIDE TEST?”
“I don’t know.” My knees started shaking. I wanted to lie down and curl into a ball.
“Why you do this? Why hide bad grade?”
“I don’t know. Because I knew you’d get mad.” I stared at my feet through my tears. I was wearing white socks with purple ribbons.
“You think Mommy mad? You right, I very mad. You get C and lie—make me very angry!”
“It’s a B-minus…”
“No, Annie, it not B-minus, it C! How you get C?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You get C and you don’t know? No wonder you got C—you don’t know! So bad, Annie, this very bad.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh Mommy can’t believe. You get A before, now you fail. I so confuse. Why you lie to Mommy?”
My mother shook my quiz at me. The red letter swung back and forth, crying out deception and shame. I knew what came next. My heart quickened, and sweat and tears streamed down my hot, swollen face. I wondered where she was going to spank me, how hard, and with what. I stood there, my collar soaked with tears, waiting for her to grab a bamboo sushi mat or a rice spoon. She quietly spritzed my half-eaten apple with ant spray. Then she added a cruel twist.
“Go to kitchen. Give me something to spank.”
All the muscles in my neck and arms went stiff. This was a new situation. Normally she would storm directly to the middle drawer under the stove and grab a spoon or a spatula. Or she would dash to the front door and find the long shoehorn. Or she would find my red Snoopy ruler. But this time, it was my choice. I couldn’t make my legs move.
“Get it from kitchen. Now! Go!” She sprayed angrily. Ants scattered from the poison, wiggled around in circles, and then stopped dead.
I walked slowly toward the kitchen, my chest hiccupping from crying. I stalled and looked back at her, pleading with my puffy, pink eyes, trying to convince her that I had learned my lesson and didn’t need a spanking and would never, ever lie again and would study even harder. Copy each word twenty times. A hundred even.
“ANNIE, why you wait? GO!”
I went into the kitchen and looked around. I knew that if I chose something soft, like a towel or basting brush, she’d get even angrier and find something herself—not a good idea. But, I didn’t want it to be too painful. I stood in the kitchen, thinking about my options.
“Why you take so long? What you do?”
I opened a drawer. Barbecue tongs? No, not good. A cheese-grater? No, too dangerous. A rolling pin? Definitely not.
“Come back here now!”
I went with an old rice spoon. I was familiar with its sting. It was made out of dark wood and shaped like an oversized screwdriver. It used to have a long, thin handle, until it broke one day while my mother was spanking my brother and me after we had wrestled and pummeled each other with all the living room cushions. Years of mixing, scooping rice, and spanking children had taken its toll on the spoon, and the handle had snapped in half. Right after it broke, we were all silent. Even my mother was a little shocked; she seemed incredulous that she hit us with enough strength to split wood. Still, she smacked us each once more on the thighs, testing out the more aerodynamic and portable version. It suited her fine and fit better in the drawer, so she kept it around.
I walked back to the living room and nervously gave my mom the broken spoon. She seemed to approve of my choice.
“Annie, do you understand why you get spank?
“Yes…” I gulped and choked. My toes curled as I tried to prepare myself for the sting, but it wasn’t the spanking that would hurt.
“Why?”
“B-b-because I hid the test.”
“And why you hide test?”
“B-b-because I got a b-b-bad grade.”
“You have to study harder. You have to get A. You have to promise never, ever lie to Mommy.”
“I promise, I promise.”
She hit my palms a few times and remembered it wasn’t good for piano, so she moved on to my bottom. Doubled over her lap, I sobbed. My tears and drool collected in a small pool near her bare feet. I went up to my room, where my stuffed animals consoled me, and I slept.
The next day my mother brought home several glossy workbooks, each about an inch thick. She pushed them across the kitchen table. One of the covers pictured a classroom of gap-toothed children and a teacher. One kid reached his hand high in the air with a sense of urgency and excitement. He looked as if he needed to go to the bathroom.
“See, Annie, this for you. You get A in spelling now. Always. You do five page every week. And you do five page English and five page math.”
“But I’m doing good in English and math—”
“ANNE!”
She called my extra worksheets “Mommy homework.” Aside from the homework my teachers assigned in regular school and Korean Saturday school, I now had to complete fifteen pages of math problems, English exercises, and spelling worksheets. I noticed that the math and English workbooks were for the grade level above me, but I didn’t protest. With the spanking still fresh in my mind, I silently completed my Mommy homework. I started receiving perfect scores on my spelling tests again—partly from the spelling workbooks, but mostly because my mother made me copy each word twenty times. She drilled me relentlessly—over every meal, in car rides to my piano lessons, during my baths, while I dried the dishes.
Near the end of the school year, my teacher held a class spelling bee. The top three finishers would compete in a school-wide contest later that month. Twenty-eight of my classmates and I stood in a line that wrapped around the room. Miss Jensen called out a word and if a student misspelled it, he or she had to take a seat. I watched as my classmates sat down one by one. I defeated them easily—picnic, measure, astronaut—they were all words I could spell backward. I was the last person standing, the best speller in class, and I enjoyed the glory for about two seconds. Then I realized that I’d be competing against older students in front of the entire school. There was no way I could win. The prize for winning the class spelling bee was to be humiliated in front of the whole school.
“Spelling bees are stupid. I hate spelling.”
“Not stupid, Anne. It like game.”
“It’s a stupid game.”
“You try. We try together. Maybe you win.”
“I don’t want to win.”
“You have to try, Anne.”
My teacher gave me a list of words I should study—words that appeared on the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade spelling tests. My mother put the math and Englis
h workbooks on hold while we studied the words together: manufacture, extraterrestrial, whimsical, bureau. I had no idea what these words meant, but I learned to spell them all in a month.
On the morning of the school-wide spelling bee, I woke up with terrible stomach cramps. I writhed in the bathroom, wishing I could jump down the sink and end up in the Pacific Ocean, swimming with the dolphins. My mother knocked and slid my spelling list under the door. I whimpered. I never wanted to spell anything ever a-g-a-i-n; I hated words and what they had done to me. I started shaking. I was a quiet, shy kid in school and I preferred to die rather than stand on stage and spell sincerely.
“Anne, you come out now.”
I opened the door so my mother could see my pale sickly face and maybe take pity on me and let me stay home from school for the rest of my life.
“Mom, I don’t want to go.”
“You have to go.”
“I feel sick.”
“No excuse. Go. Now. You be OK, I promise.”
On stage there was a long table where three teachers sat. Each had a clipboard, and one had a dictionary the size of a mattress. There were almost forty contestants, ranging from third to sixth grade. We sat in chairs near the stage, while the rest of the school watched in boredom. Parents were not invited; I couldn’t even imagine competing in front of my mother. When my name was called, I slowly approached the stage. At first, I hoped that I wouldn’t fall. Then I hoped that I would fall, break every bone in my body, be whisked away in an ambulance, and never have to spell again.
“Spell garage.”
I sighed with a combination of relief and dread. Relief because it was an easy word. Dread because I knew I could spell it and would have to spell another word. And possibly another one and another one.
“Garage. G-a-r-a-g-e. Garage.” I whispered into the microphone.
“That is correct.”
I shuffled toward my seat. This continued for nearly two hours. As the words got harder—sculpture, capacity, ingenious—students began misspelling words. I managed to spell everything correctly and I spelled my way to the final five students. In the final round, if a contestant misspelled a word, the next contestant had to spell it correctly and then spell a new word. I looked around at the last five students. I was the youngest; the others were fifth-and sixth-graders. I had beaten all the fourth-graders. I wore a Minnie Mouse sweatshirt while the other girls wore nail polish and lip gloss. I was scared of the boys; they looked like men. One had a moustache. I fidgeted in my seat until it was my turn again. I walked up to the microphone.
“Spell lyre.”
Easy, I thought, I can do this one. If there was one word I could spell, it was this one. I relaxed just the tiniest bit.
“Lyre. L-i-a-r. Lyre,”
“I’m sorry, that is incorrect.”
I was stunned. Liar. I knew how to spell it; they were lying to me. I walked back to my seat in a daze. How else can you spell liar? I fumed. They must’ve made a mistake. A lanky sixth-grade girl stepped to the microphone. She had long straight hair with feathered bangs and wore a jean skirt and ankle boots. She smiled confidently.
“Lyre. L-y-r-e. Lyre.”
“That is correct.”
What? That couldn’t be right. I looked at the teacher with the oversized dictionary. She nodded and gave her approval. What is a lyre? I simmered in my seat. I came in fifth. After all that work, I lost.
My mother picked me up from school. I slammed the car door and jerked on my seat belt.
“Mom, what’s a lyre?”
“Someone who not tell truth.”
“How do you spell it?”
“L-i-a-r.”
“Some girl spelled it l-y-r-e.”
“Well then she spell wrong.”
“No, she got it right. The teachers said so. What’s a lyre?”
“I don’t know. We look up at home.”
We checked in our World Book Encyclopedia.
“Why didn’t they just ask me to spell harp? That was no fair!”
“You supposed to ask for definition, Anne.”
“It was a mean trick! I hate spelling. I should’ve won!”
My teacher approached me the next day, patted me on the back, and handed me a thick booklet. It was full of words—hundreds of words in alphabetical order. Some contained more vowels than any other word I had ever seen. Other words were packed with x’s and q’s, and my tongue couldn’t curl enough to pronounce them. The booklet contained the words most frequently used in the National Spelling Bee. Because I came in fifth place, I was the second alternate contestant for the regional competition. In the case that one of the three finalists and the first alternate couldn’t make regionals, I would go in their place. My mother and I knew that I didn’t have a chance of going. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go anyway because I hated spelling. But just in case, I kept the booklet on my bedside table. Every night before I drifted off to sleep, I opened it to one of the pages in the back to read the most exotic and challenging words. My favorite was ytterbium. I wondered what it meant.
CRIMES OF FASHION
In one of my favorite photographs of my mother, she is standing in front of her college in Seoul with three friends. Her eyes are half closed and her mouth is hanging wide open with her tongue slightly lolling out. Her head is tilted a little backward, allowing a clear view of her nostrils, which, for some reason, look larger than normal. Her elbows jut out at awkward angles as her hands reach up toward her face, in effort to hide it before the photographer clicked the shutter button. It’s quite an unflattering picture of my mother except for one thing: her clothes. She is wearing a striped A-line dress with a high collar and wide cuffs at the end of long, tight sleeves. The hemline floats well above her knee-high boots with stacked heels. Though the photograph is a little blurry and black and white, I can tell her outfit would have turned heads until they twisted right off their necks. Her friends, also caught in various states of graceless surprise, are wearing long, plain skirts and modest blouses. One young lady is wearing a boxy cardigan, most likely purchased in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood. Next to her friends, my mother looks modern—confident, independent, and sophisticated.
My mother always considered every moment in public as an opportunity to show off her sense of style, as if walking to the post office were like strutting down a catwalk. When she was young, friends and relatives called her a “Hollywood movie star” and asked for an autograph. Most Korean girls are raised to be demure and bookish, but my mother liked being the center of attention, and often demanded it. Clothing elevated her above the rest of the crowd and allowed her to distinguish herself as an individual, while still belonging to a special group—the glamorous and sophisticated elite. When she was older, my mother cringed at the mousy moms who wore sweats and flip-flops when they picked up kids from school: “They look like they just wake up!” My mother pulled up to my elementary school wearing a fitted blazer and pinstripe slacks, as if carpooling required business-professional attire. She felt that just because she was a stay-at-home mom, she didn’t have to dress like one. She coordinated colorful silk blouses with sassy pleated skirts and Italian leather pumps. She wore sweaters in every style imaginable—V-neck, scoop neck, turtleneck, mock neck, cowl neck—and they came in mouth-watering colors that she described as lemon, lime, and raspberry. Even her socks were stylish—argyle, polka dots, stripes, checkers. One of my chores when I was young was to fold laundry and matching her socks was the only fun part.
The labels of my mother’s clothes announced sophistication and a certain level of financial comfort, but she picked through department store sales and outlet malls to buy brand-name fashion at sensible prices. While I squirmed on the floor or rearranged the clothes by color, she browsed the racks for hours, sliding hundreds of dresses, shirts, and skirts from one side to the other. Every few minutes she would hold up a garment and tell me its designer, and then critique their latest line for the season.
“Ralph Lauren for fall
look so silly, with tight pants and big boot. It look like clothes for riding horse! Who has horse? Only farmer has horse and he wear Osh Kosh!”
Going to the mall with my mother was like going to fashion school. At six years old, I learned that cashmere came from goats and was thinner and warmer than wool. Before I knew how to multiply, I knew that linen garments wrinkled easily at first, but after several washings they would become softer and less prone to creases. Throughout elementary school, I learned exactly when plaid was in and when it was out, and when it was in again, and I found out what kind of people wore certain designers. Chanel was for the “old lady with big hair and little dog.” Calvin Klein was for the “girl who look hungry but not eat.” Liz Claiborne was for “lady with big hip and big purse.” Versace, she explained one afternoon at Nordstrom when I was nine, was for women who wore two diamond rings on each finger and fur during a Los Angeles winter.
“Veh-sahch-ee for lady who get many plastic surgery.”
“What’s plastic surgery?”
“When you old you get plastic surgery to make young face. Young face, with no wrinkle. You know, wrinkle, like what you give Mommy!”
She laughed and showed me a Versace blouse. It was silk with red, bloated sleeves and a frenetic print of yellow lassos, blue flags, and white life preservers. It had oversized golden buttons in the shape of anchors.
“Ew, gross! Who’d wear that?”
She listed women at my Korean Saturday school who participated in this mutiny against good taste. Edward Kim mommy, Michelle Choi mommy, Sujin Lee mommy, to name a few. “You know, Anne, it cost lot of money.”
