This essay first appeared in The Penn Review.
Mother eyes the space above me, the air seemingly pushing my head down back into my body, crushing growth plates. Neomu jageo, she says, as she wraps my limbs in measuring tapes then pulls, yanking them from their sockets. She curses when I curiously reveal my red-stained panties—no no no no too early andwae. She runs her hands down my legs, reaching out as if to confirm what she sees is true, that the artificial lighting and shadow is not just an illusion.
She forms rings around my ankles with her hands and I know she is searching: a slice of pale moon, a wafer tibia, space, space, space. When her hands wrap instead around her own tree-trunk stumps, she consults the “ologists.” Dr. H says that when girls get their period, they only have growth spurts for two more years.
That night, for my eleventh birthday, Mother and I slit open my esophagus and stuff it with fibers and milk.
———
Mother invites me into her bedroom. Her face is illuminated by the blue glow of her iPad screen. Neon tabloid headings in Korean print incandesce into the room. I cannot understand what they say but they look vibrant and artificial. Baljomjoba, she says, give me your legs. I lay down next to her and I’m reminded of the night of porcupine syringes, the flush of hormones injected into my veins. Is this plastic surgery?—no, it’s like acupuncture! My mother, a fierce adversary of anything manual and laborious, grabs my calves. She begins to squeeze my legs. Her body rocks back and forth almost mechanically as she digs the heels of her palms into my limbs, transferring the weight of her body and will into mine. Squeeze, release, squeeze, release, she murmurs to herself. Our limbs merge in a hot, aching equilibrium. Tendons and ligaments and cartilage crush into each other as my mother, the scientist, performs the transfusion. By the hundredth squeeze, her dark hair has been transfigured into a loose topknot and holographic molecules of sweat gleam on her forehead, emblazoned by the flashing tabloids. When the Samsung ringtone goes off, merrily announcing my bedtime, she kisses me goodnight and shuts the door. This becomes a nightly routine.
———
I took my first shower when I was six. That year, my mother deemed I could graduate from the guest quarter bathroom to the master bathroom upstairs. Maybe it was my mastery over the “starfish” pose in survival swim class or my notable dexterity with a colored pencil—something about me was grown enough for the change. She would get in the shower with me every day for a week and demonstrate each step, carefully and deliberately moving through the procedure like dance. She stood straight up and combed the shampoo from her hair in long, sweeping strokes. The soap suds always traveled in a steady stream down the curvature of her back, never touching the front of her body.
On my twelfth birthday, Mother watches through the glass door as I bend my head down to let the water soak the nape of my neck. Through the roar and fog of the cascading water, I catch a glimpse of her unmoving figure. The shampoo bottles she had been carefully filing away are now strewn at her feet. She opens the shower door and eyes my naked body. My body has always been a shared space between my mother and I, a vessel for her to float in and out of, clipping and cleaning me like a home garden. Her discernment does not intimidate me. It isn’t until the cold air scatters goosebumps across my skin and her hand slaps my chin upwards that I realize today she is not here to nurture. In China, people never bow their heads in the shower because it is a sign of submission. It’s not always a gesture of respect. I want to say: But I’m not Chinese? My mother leaves me in the hands of physics. Scorching water collides with my outstretched tongue.
———
I never quite understood what my mother was doing those mornings. She would spend hours in the mirror squeezing handfuls of flesh on her leg, holding the pooch of her belly, twisting her neck and body to get a glimpse of her back. She would wrinkle her nose at her underarms which swung too much when she shook them, peering fiercely into the glass surface. I want to tell her, unlike when you are a teenager, nobody cares what you look like when you’re fifty. I try to exercise empathy. It must be an unfortunate feeling to be trapped by your own loosening skin, a constant paradox with no solution. I wonder if my mother ever considered her body to be a vessel as well, a space meant to expand and grow wide so you can carry more of yourself. Mother later tells me she did feel that way once, during pregnancy.
———
The PEAKHEIGHT pills are smooth, round, and milky. They bloat in my stomach along with the NON-GMO beef, organic fruit, and whole milk my mother has stitched into my stomach that evening. Later that night, the organic filaments cut my tongue as my stomach heaves white chalk from my body.
———
My Korean friends are growing to be pale, willowy, and gorgeous. My mother asks to see pictures of new high school friends. In the polaroid, we are dressed in pink sequins and shiny lip gloss. My homecoming date has made sure to take the picture from a low angle to make our legs look longer, just as I requested. Ummuh, she points to Soohyun. That one is so tall, gnomeo yeppuda. I point to Amelia, She’s tall too. My mother nods but does not say anything more. I know what she’s thinking: Yes, but she’s white, so it doesn’t matter.
———
Ms. V, my social studies teacher, encourages the class to pursue a research project about our home country for extra credit. The New York Times is talking about the Korean-Japanese trade war and Parasite’s Oscar nomination. I feel a surge of patriotism, but I’m uncomfortably comfortable in the narrator’s voice, stuck viewing my country from a third-party perspective, a mere satellite in space. I migrate to Naver and Missy U.S.A., the unifying blogs for teenagers and moms across South Korea. There is something validating about being familiar with the cartoony greens and pinks of Korean news outlets. Trending first in “media” is the comic, Lookism. I do a quick Google search and my world shifts. Lookism: The discriminatory treatment of physically unattractive people. It occurs in a variety of settings, including dating, social environments, and workplaces.
The internet algorithms lead me through an echo chamber of information. During Japanese Colonialism in the 1940s, Korean citizens sought to establish their own nationality not just culturally but also physically, claiming to have taller and stronger limbs than any of their Mongolian counterparts. In the 1990s, the IMF economic crisis sent Korean people scrambling to make themselves as attractive as possible in a brutal job market. Suddenly, I understand why my mother was so secluded during her dances in the mirror. For those brief minutes in the morning, my mother had taken the form of an entirely new woman. The woman she had sacrificed for motherhood. The woman she had never grieved.
Ms. V asks to use my article as a class example. What a freaky story! My mother congratulates me but does not read my article. This isn’t out of the ordinary. She has never attempted to read any of my writing pieces. I’m not sure if it’s because of the language barrier or because she’s just uninterested, but I don’t press her. She was never an intended audience anyway.
On the other hand, it seems that the news of my article has spread to my entire town. So, do the men get plastic surgery too? a dad asks me at the winter orchestra concert.
———
As I progress in my high school years, a new group of male suitors emerge from the sea of white boys who love to flirt by debating what color your eyes are. Bluish-green? Aquamarine? Emerald with a hint of turquoise? This shiny new group of boys prefer to compliment our race rather than anything else. All of a sudden, my Asian friends and I are valuable on the market. We learn they enjoy watching anime in their free time, their favorite food is sushi, and they listen to Kpop for the “lyrics” (this is a joke, they later clarify). I am flattered by their interest in my culture and, most of all, by their flamboyant expressions of attraction for my appearance. 11:52pm fromNathan: don’t say that about yourself, you’re super petite and hot 😉
———
On the day of the Atlanta spa shootings, I learn yet another word.
Festishization: A sexual fascination with things not inherently sexual, like race, gender, sexuality, or body type.
Fetishization. Its soft syllables remind me of the French word, chuchotement (a hushed whisper), but it does not roll out of my mouth the same way. A Wikipedia search adds skins to my tongue.
In the media, sexualized Asian characters are often depicted as small, submissive, and obedient figures.
My mother had always taught me vicious methods of navigating marriage and men, even though her own relationship with my dad was stable. If the husband cheats on you, you cheat on him. Your daddy makes good money so that your husband knows you have a powerful family. Don’t get married if you don’t want to. I always considered myself lucky to have parents with a healthy marriage and wondered why she was so apprehensive about the subject. I revisit Nathan’s text. I wonder if my size had been the pulling factor or if I had somehow played into his fantasy role during our flirtatious nightly texts. His commercialized desire disgusts me. That night, swallowing the PEAKHEIGHT pills is rebellion.
———
Unlike my suburban, Jewish-dominated hometown, I can easily feel a sense of belonging within NYC crowds. Mother claims she is a city girl because she was born in Seoul, but in the city, she becomes neurotic. She stands taller and straighter than she usually does, shouldering her way briskly through the crowd. She talks louder than usual to the waitresses who sit us down, as if she is afraid that they will not hear her voice. As the hibachi chefs bellow Happy birthday! Happy fifteenth birthday to you and clang their spatulas on the metal stove, she smiles but does not try to sing along. When we walk back out in the evening, I can’t help but imagine how we must look: two small, skinny Asian women weaving through the peanut-crunching crowd, half-weaponed with age, half with language. Tourists. My mother grips my hand tightly as she leads me back to our car.
———
The “ologists” inform my mother that over the past year, I have only grown half an inch. This means that my growth spurts have come to an end and I will remain the same height for the rest of my life. That night, my mother does not call me into her bedroom for a massage nor feed me my PEAKHEIGHT pills. When I pass by her bedroom I can hear her weeping, mourning a world where her child will always be looked down on, mourning the heritage of a daughter, mourning the broken contracts of a mother. I lay down next to her. The room is dark and static save for the quiet hum of the air conditioning. I curl my body next to her and for a moment we are floating symbiotic in a womb. My body, a vessel for her anger, reminding her that although it is small, it has always been elastic enough to hold the both of us.
