Nicole- Part 1- Always Watch the Silent Ones

I so desperately wanted to be special as I grew up and I never really left that behind as I abandoned my childish toys for bras and sex. I wanted to be something and everything at the same time, if that makes sense. To be forever the reliable go-to person, the person that could fix everything and that had an answer for every reason; I wanted to be indispensable. It wasn't for a long while before I realized I just wanted to get high off the praise. I longed to snort up the compliments like the highest form of feel-good.

In all honesty, it probably started with those damned Jehovah's Witness ladies. They have a peculiar kind of way of sinking their claws into you. You never notice how much you turn to them until you start mentioning their names and then clawing at some dark parental neglect you didn't know you had because you are filthy and God only loves perfect sin-free women. That's how they got to Mother. They just appeared on the doorsteps one summer afternoon, adorning suits with skirts in a modest fashion and big bright jewelry to display their status to each other. The Head Lady for the group was always the most garish and gaudy in their given uniform. She always wore the most makeup, had the flashiest purse and was the only one to speak in English for the entire group she traveled with. The rest of the women spoke only in Korean and stayed relatively silent save for a few giggles and asides.

Maybe Mother was lonely being away from Korea and that's why she invited them. They had said they were Korean too and quite honestly, up until that point, Korea was still like a myth in my young head. They came and talked to my Mother in a language I knew intimately. Intimate because I only heard Korean when I was in trouble and it was never Mother to speak it, it was my white All-American Dad to utter the harsh phrases.

A secret is how I felt it was. It was like I was being let in on a secret that the rest of the world never knew. My parents never talked much about Korea unless they needed it like a pain reliever to quell the harsh world around us and no one in the community or school looked a thing like my Mother or me. Imagine how I felt when it was as if Korea had heard my curiosity and shown up on the doorstep in the form of five uniform women.

It confused me greatly to learn that not everything was like Mother had said. Lions and Bears were the original Koreans she had said. This meant that every Korean was proud, voracious and a fighter of their own desire but, all I saw were five soft women sitting around a dining room table sucking down coffee and nibbling on cookies. Five soft women and Mother. Even she didn't look like them. Her angles were harsher, her skin darker and her hair more unruly. The years of work and struggle lay evident upon the wrinkled skin of her hands and face. The women that came and went looked to be polished from moonstone with dark ebony hair. Since I knew naught of the origins of Snow White, this is what I equated each and every woman to look like especially when they came wearing red streaks upon their lips with pools of pink in their cheeks. They didn't appear to know the meaning of toil and they felt wrong to young little me.

Their claws caressed me in a way I didn't see coming. They called me pretty. When you grow up being the only one in your class looking and acting the way you do from cultural and economic viewpoints, you get cut off. Somehow people sense you aren't the same, even young children, and they cut you off from the friends you could make because they've never dealt with someone different. Being called four-eyes, slant eyes, Jackie Chan, banana, and even China doll were my normal. I did multi-cultural fashion shows for school when young because my traditional Hanbok was pretty. It was pretty when compared to the karate Dobok the white boy next to me wore. To the children, it was pretty for the bright pink color that paired with the embroidered Phoenix on it. I felt like a princess among commoners for that day. But what I couldn't articulate was that the adults begged for my authentic Hanbok because it was an authentic and exotic piece accentuated by an authentic and semi-exotic half-breed.

Being called pretty by people of your own race, from ones you assumed were mythical, gives hope. I hoped that I could be something to someone and that someone could see me as me. It morphed one day when the Head Jehovah lady came by one day and I took it upon myself to clear and clean her and Mother's plates. As I stood in the kitchen, within a few from her and Mother she spoke in English for the first time that visit.

"Nicole, you do so well cleaning those. You will make a good housewife for your husband someday."

"Thank you, Ajumma." I beamed at the thought that I could be useful. That I could serve a husband I had no business thinking of in ways and a future I had no idea I could think of.

This seemed to set a trend after that interaction. The group of women came by weekly if not daily, discussing issues only known to them in their inside language and lavished Mother with what I could only hope were good memories. On the occasion dad was home for their visit, he spoke to them with respect and gentleness. He perhaps knew how important it was for his wife to be kindred with people in her mother tongue. Dad's tolerance to them only lasted so long and it started when a book appeared in our home.

I'll always remember that book. Tan-Orange with the image of a watchtower against a setting sun. It was this book that introduced God, submission, and roles into the house. Dad and I had been doing karate for a while when the book showed up on the table unannounced. He figured it was a way to bond for us even when I complained about how organized our time needed to be for it. We had frequented our local dying mall for classes and Mother had complained a girl didn't need to know the finer points of self-defense. I can only imagine how happy she was, or rather those women controlling her were when they learned the assistant instructor with the Olympic background used the school as an opportunity to touch little girls as they changed.

Me, being innocent and naive, couldn't understand what the adults had meant or why dad had withdrawn us from the school. The arguments they had about whether the instructor had touched me never made much sense when they used "touch" in that matter. My thoughts on the issue didn't seem to help much either. It was always "Of course you had to touch the person you were fighting. You couldn't be a good karate fighter if you didn't do that." This made Mother livid and used it to coat her words with vitriol that Dad, at first glance, was impervious to. Dad insisted that I change at the house before we left for each class at the run-down mall. He prided himself in teaching me how to tie my belt which was infinitely harder than learning to tie my shoes at the time.

The ladies started to visit even more frequently after that and Dad had confided in me what to do when they came calling.

"Go outside and play, girly. You're a kid and should be playing with other kids. "

That was easier said than done. I didn't know where to look or who to turn to. All the kids I usually walked with from school lived even further down the long main street. Living on the outskirts of the ghetto and middle-class housing didn't help either due to cars or random shootings. I turned to our neighbors one day. I knew they had kids younger and older than me and I hoped they'd let me play with them. I got my chance one day when I say someone I knew from class sitting on the front porch.

"What are you doing here, Tyreik?"

"Me? What are you doing here, Nicole?"

I shrugged in a nonchalant way and pointed at my home.

"I live there. What about you?"

He shrugged back and pointed to the front door behind him with his thumb.

"Momma dropped me off here. My aunt and cousins live here."

As if on cue, the dirty white front door to the house opened and a woman wearing a towel on her head and her body poked herself out of the dingy house.

"You better get your ass in here, Tyreik. Yo momma ain't payin' me to watch you so you best get to watching your cousins."

I was too scared to say bye as he smiled a sad blank smile in my direction as he scrambled into the depths of that dark and seemingly humid house.

"Yes, Auntie G." I could hear as the door slammed shut on it's crooked hinges.

While I can say I lived a relatively sheltered childhood, it wasn't even comparable to the hell that started for Tyreik nor the hell that Mother was trying to start regarding my morals, values and overall virgin innocence. The end of summer was nearing and she had noticed that me going outside to play, at the request of Dad, wasn't going to stop. So, on the fourth day I decided to go outside and search for Tyreik, the gaggle of women stopped me from leaving the house. They sat me down at the dining room table, the Head Lady at the end of the table and Mother on her right hand side, and began with:

"Nicole, you know God is in every room, Yes?"

The group nodded in unison and I could feel my stomach tighten as I struggled to understand just how or what I did to be in trouble.

"Um... God?" I asked.

God was mythical to me at this time as well. Unseen and unknown I hadn't given Him much thought, if any at all. This seem to sadden and confuse the women.

"Your Mother has not told you about God? Ay!" she exclaimed. Her face twisted in a disgusting version of its usually smooth appearance.

"No matter!" She continued. "God wants you to know you are very special and very very important."

I looked to Mother and she didn't looked like anyone I knew at that point. This was were I knew something was wrong.