Because I really can’t.
My mother’s family came to California from South Korea when she was in junior high. Her folks had nothing when they got here, but they worked their asses off, building a small grocery story in the Koreatown portion of LA, pouring all the profits into my mother’s schooling. They were so proud to be in America, the land of opportunity, where education could literally take you anywhere.
In the early ’90s, my parents were already married and Caitlyn—my sister—was a toddler. While my dad was taking classes towards his MBA at USC, my mom sometimes helped at my grandparents’ store. She was working there during the LA riots when the store was looted, ransacked, and finally burned to the ground.
The Korean community in LA refer to the riots as their sa-i-gu, meaning 4/29, which is the same kind of shorthand the rest of this country uses to describe 9/11. My mother never talks about what she witnessed over that six-day period. I think she just wants to forget the whole thing, which is probably why there’s very little Korean American about us.
Of course, I feel like the worst son in the world when she hears me listening to classic hip-hop, because it’s possible the music’s a trigger for her. She never says it is, but who really knows?
The problem is that these songs are what keep me sane, which is my dilemma.
I turn it off anyway.
My mother lingers in my doorway, as she’s clearly not done with me. “So, I called the Chalet. I asked them to drop off a brochure and price list at the Chastains’. I also touched base with Landscapes by Mariani and Greenworks. I figured they’d want to compare services to make an educated decision. Has Simone mentioned it to you? Given you any idea of their plans? I’m happy to make more helpful suggestions.”
Any compassion I feel for my mother dissipates. Her “helpful suggestions” are why Kent’s mom no longer calls her to play tennis.
“What the Chastains do with their lawn is none of my business, Ma. It’s none of yours, either.”
She clucks her tongue. “Stephen, property values are everyone’s business. They aren’t fulfilling the social contract. What, we’re supposed to be okay with our home’s asking price plummeting because they can’t call a yard crew?”
I grit my teeth. It’s grass, not a social contract.
My mother’s upset about Simone’s lawn, which is now unkempt, at least compared to the twenty other immaculately manicured homes on our street, one tidy green oasis lined up after the other. I just imagine Simone’s parents have better things to do than to chase after landscapers with a ruler, making sure the fescue hybrid is clipped to a uniform one point five inches.
Oh, yeah.
The crew that comes here loves Mrs. Cho.
“Ma, they’ll get their yard in shape when they’re done settling in. They’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“I just don’t want potential buyers to assume this town’s full of crack houses.”
Considering starter homes in our neighborhood go for one point five million and a bunch of Chicago Bears live here (along with tons of Fortune 500 CEOs and hedge fund managers), no one’s mistaking North Shore for Skid Row. And we’re not even in one of the “good” neighborhoods. Three blocks away, next to the lake, places start at four mil.
“Ma, is there anything else?” I ask, anxious to put on my headphones and start properly feeling sorry for myself.
“Shouldn’t you be at your meeting?”
I say, “I didn’t feel well,” because that seems easier than telling her I’m heartsick, that I’m enveloped in blackness, that I keep punching myself in the thigh just to see if I can feel anything.
“Stephen, please. If you’re okay to listen to music, then you’re certainly healthy enough to study. Seriously. Your father and I will be mortified if you fail any more classes.”
Fail. Right.
She’s referring to the C that I got last semester in my speech class, a requisite for all students, and one that I put off as long as I could. Most kids take it when they’re freshmen. For everyone else, the class was our school’s only easy A, but it was rough for me. I killed it first semester when we were allowed to write out everything and work from a script. The extemporaneous speeches of second semester are what slayed me. I couldn’t get the hang of speaking off the cuff in front of a group on topics outside of my wheelhouse. I’d freeze up and break into flop sweat. My teacher giving me a C was generous.
For anyone else, one C would not a be a big deal, but speech class took me out of the running for valedictorian, thus ending the Cho legacy of being first in the class, which included my sister, brother, mother, and father.
They’re all so proud. Or they were.
The bitch of it is, I’d probably have given a kickass commencement speech, because I’d have been allowed to write that shit down first.
Speech class is what started me resenting Owen, too. I kinda liked him when we were kids. We even hung out sometimes because we lived two houses apart. But now he’s this useless stoner, this complete wastoid. How was he able to get up to the podium and ramble with perfect ease and at length about anything in speech? Like he could be a politician or something. I resented his confidence, his conviction in what he had to say. He made everyone in class look bad, particularly me.
Now he’s using that golden tongue to win over Simone.
FML.
My mother studies me as I’m stretched out. “You are not lying down to study, (a) you’ll be asleep in two minutes, and (b) you’re going to mess up your back. Use your desk.”
Then she exits, knowing I’ll be powerless to refuse.
I do what she tells me to, relocating across the room. I drop into my chair and roll over to the center of the desk, resigned. The “back” argument is one I’ll never win. She’s been oddly relentless about our spinal cords my whole life. Apparently she never got over it when that actor Christopher Reeve became paralyzed in a horseback riding incident. I guess she was obsessed with him, as she learned English watching Superman again and again. Due to her age or maybe the language gap, some part of her must have thought the movie was real. So, when he was hurt, she was traumatized.
I swear her obsessive overprotection is why I was never able to take the leap off the big diving board. I’d get to the edge and then I’d hear her in my head, talking about how she didn’t want to have to feed me through a tube, then I’d wuss out.