Only Daughter Gets a Sister
자매가된 두 외동딸 [1]
Written by Zoe Gioja
When we pulled up to the restaurant, it was dark. I stepped out of the car, entered the restaurant, and saw at least twelve people sitting on the floor, all looking up at me. I bowed, mumbling some greeting in Korean.
This is it, I thought. Now I’m really in Korea.
The English teacher beside me explained who everyone was, pointing out my principal and vice-principal, but the person I really wanted to meet was my host sister. They’d left a seat for me next to her.
I had wondered what she would be like – shy or outgoing? Would she ask questions, or would I have to do most of the talking? I was determined to build a relationship with her; for some reason I held onto this as the main key to success. All I knew was that my host family consisted of two parents and an only daughter, Jiyeong. What questions does one even ask a middle schooler? I wondered as I sat down next to her. How do you make conversation?
But it turned out I didn’t have to worry. As we sat there, she was quiet at first. Then she turned to me.
“Teacher,” she said, in English. “I found some informations about you on the Facebook.”
“Oh really?” I asked.
“I found some pictures. Of you and your friends.” She took out her phone. She showed me pictures of me at my graduation, pictures from orientation, that she’d saved on her phone.
“Teacher,” she asked. “What is your favorite movie?”
“Oh gosh, I don’t know… Maybe… um…. Lord of the Rings?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” she nodded. “I like that one too. It is very good.”
All right, I thought. This is going to work.
Later that night, she sat with me as I unpacked, revealing that she’d wondered about me even more than I’d wondered about her. “I wanted to know would you be pretty or not,” she said. On their fridge was a low-quality photocopy of the form we’d filled out for our homestays, secured with two red-white-and-blue USA magnets. It had basic personal details and a picture, which had come out as a dark, vaguely Zoë-shaped smudge. “I couldn’t tell from the picture,” she said. “There were three things I was worried about: I didn’t want a foreigner who is fat; or a foreigner who is too shy, and just sits in her room all the time; and I wanted a foreigner who had lighter skin…. I wanted a pretty foreigner.”
This was just the beginning of her bluntness. When I’d finished unpacking, she added: “You have a lot of clothes. I think you must be very rich.”
Later that week, I asked her why her family decided to host me. “Because I always wanted a sister,” she said immediately. “Jo Teacher came to our class and said, ‘Who would like to have a foreigner in their house?’ And I raised my hand. At first my mom said ‘Hmmm….’ But she knew I want a sister. Sometimes I’m very lonely. But now I have you!”
I thought how strange it was, instantly being welcomed in as a member of their family. I didn’t know them at all. They didn’t know me. But they were so willing, so instantly ready, to use all the titles that we can’t earn – the titles that we’re usually born into: “daughter,” “sister,” “mom,” “dad.”
My host father was around often in those first few weeks, eager to show me Mokpo, drive us to museums and over bridges, to ply me with ice cream and ramen. He refused to speak to me in Korean, the way my host mom would, patiently working with me to create meaning. He relied on his translator. Once, he typed a string of words into his phone and put it up to my face: “I have two princesses so father is happy recently.” Days later, my host mom seconded, “He is happy because he has two daughters now.”
That’s right, I thought. Two oe dong ddal; two only daughter, trying to be sisters. This is going to be interesting.
***
One Saturday morning, I woke to my host sister poking me on the shoulder.
“Teacher, it’s late,” she said.
I looked at my phone. It was 10 a.m.
“I was asleep,” I mumbled. I was distinctly irritated that she’d come into my room at all. I sat up in bed. “Okay, so… in the future… please don’t wake me up. Ever. Unless we have a special plan. Okay?”
On Sunday, she settled for admiring me from afar. My room has a sliding window that looks onto the laundry room, covered by a pink-flowered curtain. I woke up, restless; I saw the curtain rustle. When I emerged, Jiyeong told me, “I was looking at you. To see if you were still asleep.”
You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.
At first, I’d loved everything, been grateful for everything – my school, my students, my host sister’s obsession with me, my host mom’s devotion and kindness. I’d spent all my time counting my blessings, trying my hardest; sitting in the living room assembling puzzles with my host sister and working at the kitchen table instead of retreating to my room. Endeavoring to be the pretty, social host sister she’d wanted. She asked me if she could nap with me in my bed, I said yes; she asked if I wanted to play Bananagrams, I said yes; help her with her drawing homework, her TOEIC studying, her English homework. But certain things began to wear on me.
“What are you writing?” Jiyeong asked when I sat with her at the kitchen table, writing in my journal. She picked it up. I wanted to protest, but she was already reading it. “Oh, I can’t understand,” she said. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Your writing, this kind of thing,” she indicated the cursive.
From then on, I made my cursive as illegible as possible.
And the questions. Teacher, why do all Americans wear bikinis? Do they wear them in the street, and everywhere? Teacher, how much do you weigh? You won’t tell? Why won’t you tell me? Teacher, on Sunday, do you have a special plan? Can we go to the bookstore?
So we went to the bookstore. They had a limited English selection. I couldn’t find much, but I did pick up a copy of 1984.
I took to reading a few pages every day on the way to school. One morning, after a night where Jiyeong had begged me to help her with her drawing homework until late into the night and still poked her head in through the sliding window after I’d shut my door, I read the sentence: “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.”
I almost burst out laughing. How could I possibly sympathize so much with that statement?
But when I tried to convey these feelings – the intense desire to be left alone, for her to leave me be – those near me often observed: “Boy, you’re really not used to having siblings, are you?”
No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t used to having a child in the house who by turns enraged and endeared me. There were days when everything she did annoyed me: the way she would talk to her mom (“엄마, 물,” [2] she’d demand, instead of asking for it politely or just getting it herself); the fact that, at thirteen, her mom was still cutting her toenails; how some days she’d tell me I was fat and on others, skinny; how she would talk about me to her mom in Korean even when we were sitting together at the dinner table; how she’d call me when I was out, wondering when I was going to be home; how she’d yell and whoop and scream and sing at midnight, right outside my door, when I was trying to sleep.
But then, as the weather got colder on our morning walks to school, she would link her arm through mine, holding onto me so we didn’t slip on the ice, and my heart would soften again. I wasn’t like her, so instantly and demonstrably ready to love someone. I wouldn’t reach out to hold onto someone’s arm like that. I felt grateful, those times, that she reached out and held onto mine.
***
It was midnight on Friday, December 6th – Jiyeong’s birthday. We’d eaten a cake and watched a movie together. Her father hadn’t come home from work to see her, on account of the snow. After the festivities, Jiyeong hadn’t wanted to keep studying. Her mother, who I’d never seen angry, had raised her voice and told her she had to study. She’d shut herself in her room, locked the door, and refused to speak to Jiyeong or come out.
I was sitting next to Jiyeong on the couch, stroking her hair, putting my arm around her. Tears were running down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry she’s mad,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to study on your birthday. And it’s no good to be mad at you on your birthday. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t talk for a long time. “I have to study,” she said finally, standing up and fetching her textbook.
I lay down next to her on the floor and read my book.
“Teacher,” she said after some time. “I didn’t expect to cry on my birthday.” She looked down, her lip sticking out. “This is the worst birthday ever.”
She read on for a few minutes. Then: “Teacher…” she said, looking up at me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My father didn’t come.”
She teared up again and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
I just stroked her hair again, murmuring apologies.
“Before you come, in this situation, I am always alone,” she said. “My mom just get mad and I just cry alone. But now, you are here, and you understand my feeling I think. You are only daughter, like me. So you understand your parents really… tell you to do well. My parents are always saying, ‘Top ten! Top ten!’ and ‘make me happy,’ like that.” She sighed. “But my friends, they don’t always understand my feeling. They don’t think deeply about this kind of thing. And I can’t tell the teacher, because… it looks bad on my parents. But you understand my feeling.”
I looked at her for a moment, struck by what she’d said. I remembered all the times I’d seen her as childish and immature – showing me picture after picture of K-pop stars on her phone; talking about “handsome guys”; acting like the kid she was. But she had articulated thoughts I’d often had, even as an adult.
We were quiet for a while, I reading and she working through her textbook. When I yawned, she made as if to ask something.
“Teacher, I – no, sorry.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I… I’m afraid you’ll say no.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “You can ask.”
“Will you… Can I sleep with you in your bed?”
She wasn’t used to sleeping alone. She always slept with her mom on the living room floor, right outside my room. But her mom wasn’t talking to her tonight.
I thought for a moment. “Well, my bed is pretty small. How about I sleep out here with you?”
“Okay,” she said.
I went in my room to get my blankets and pillow, thinking, sure, I’m entitled to my boundaries, my own room, my own bed, a door that I can close. But sometimes those things are worth giving up. I knew Jiyeong was a bed hog, that she’d probably kick me off the heated mat, that I’d roll around uncomfortably all night and probably wouldn’t get much sleep. Tonight, I realized with some surprise, that was okay with me.
When I peeked my head out of my door, she was passed out, her cheek stuck to her book, her pencil in her hand. I left my room and sat down beside her. I looked at her, thinking of all the times she’d annoyed me, and all the times she would annoy me again. Then I set my blanket down, peeled the book from her face, slipped the pencil out of her hand, and lay down next to her.
Zoë Gioja is a 2014-2015 ETA at Jeongmyeong Girls’ Middle School in Mokpo.
[1] ‘Jamaegadwen du Oe dong ddal’
[2] ‘Omma, mul,’ “Mom, water”