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all hope for a nap and sighed. Why are you an old man?
Because I m not young.
Most people aren t young.
You right. You not young. He shook his head in disapproval.
Not young.
No, I m not.
You old. Not as old as Daddy, but you old.
I rolled my eyes. What s your point?
Soon you be thirty-seven.
What? I was twenty-eight.
You be thirty-seven.
In like ten years.
Nine year.
Whatever.
You going to marry?
Are you kidding me? We re not talking about this. Again.
Until I finished college, my parents had never taken an interest
in my love life. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Anne, they d
tell me, school not for fun, only for study to be doctor. In high
school, between the track-and-field practice, flute and piano les-
sons, SAT classes, and tutoring sessions, there was no time for
boys, not that any boy would even desire four feet, ten inches of
me. In college, when I grew four inches and a rack and was finally
able to pursue the elusive male, my parents made me promise to
concentrate on my studies, and I told them not to worry that if
there was one thing Berkeley had, it was a lot of things to study
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Rul e s of Eng ag e me nt
(for example, physics, the major with most guys, and architecture,
the major with the best-looking guys). When my mother asked
with raised eyebrows if I see boy at school, I said of course not,
because that was actually the truth. It turned out that all the eli-
gible guys at Berkeley had found other things to study. Shortly
after I graduated college, when it was finally acceptable for me to
date, my parents began asking why I hadn t found a husband, and
they haven t stopped since. Each year they get more desperate. I m
pretty sure they ve mounted my biological clock on the wall, next
to the picture of The Last Supper on petrified wood.
Annie, why you not marry? You have to marry now.
Now? Right this second?
I m an old man. I get sick.
What are you talking about? You re not sick.
But I get sick someday. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in five years,
who know?
You re not sick. You re insane.
Annie, you have to marry before I get sick.
I m not getting married just because you might get sick some-
day. That is stupid.
You know, man who is thirty-seven look for twenty-four year
old.
What are you talking about? Everyone s looking for a twenty-
four year old. Who s not looking for a twenty-four year old?
But you not twenty-four. Everyone who thirty-seven not look
for you.
What is your obsession with thirty-seven?
When you thirty-seven, no man want to marry you because
they want younger.
Dad, I m only twenty-eight! I m not old! I m closer to twenty-
four than I am to thirty-seven. I looked desperately at the free-
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happy birthday or whatever
way. It was still packed with cars, bumper to bumper. I considered
getting out and walking, but my father was right it was very hot
out there. Waves of heat were rising from the asphalt, as if Hades
were bubbling just underneath the San Diego Freeway.
You think that now, but you get old very fast. Women get old
very fast.
You know what else is getting old very fast? This conversa-
tion. Yoon-chong isn t married. Andy isn t either. Or Mike. Or
Woo-jay or Tina. And they re older.
They in big trouble, Annie. Big trouble. They not find hus-
band or wife now, they never will.
That s ridiculous. How do you know they haven t found some-
one already? I m sure they re all dating someone serious; we just
don t know it.
My cousins and I try to maintain a separation between family and
people who are important to us. Whenever we get together during
the holidays, my cousins ask me if I m dating anyone, and I always
answer no. Then I ask them the same question so that they can
give the same answer, and that s the end of that conversation. We
do this not because we aren t interested in keeping up with one
another but because in a family as large as ours someone is always
listening. And in a family as loud as ours, someone is always talk-
ing. And if someone is talking, they re probably talking trash.
Though we hate to admit it, we care what our family thinks; we ve
been brainwashed to seek approval and obey, just like the rest of
Korea s children. As a result, the unspoken rule among the cousins
is that we only discuss our significant others when it s absolutely
necessary. The first time many of us learned about Yoonmi s boy-
friend was when they were engaged. When she brought her fiancé
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Rul e s of Eng ag e me nt
to a big family dinner, all the cousins observed closely because she
was forging new territory, setting a precedent for what would hap-
pen when an outsider infiltrated family lines. The cousins watched
with fascination, fear, and pain as Yoonmi s fiancé answered tough
interview questions: Where did you go to school in Korea? (Yon-
sei University, which is the Yale, not Harvard, of Korea.) What do
you do for a living in the states? (lawyer) How will you provide for
our Yoonmi? (The best he could by working hard, making sure
she was happy.) How many children do you want? (Two or more,
depending on how Yoonmi felt.) Where do you want to raise the
family? (In Los Angeles, close to Yoonmi s family.) Where do you
want your children to go to college, and what kind of professions
should they have? (Harvard, lawyer or doctor of course.) Would
you consider raising the family in Korea? Why or why not? (Yes,
but his practice is here and he d have to check with Yoonmi.) He
was smooth accommodating but not obsequious, eloquent yet
warm and friendly. In the end, everyone liked him because he
looked smart, had nice hair, and was a well-educated lawyer from
Korea who obviously worked well under duress. Actually he is
pretty perfect now that I think about it; fluent in Korean and Eng-
lish, but definitely more Korean than American, and the owner of
a luxury German sedan. Still, the whole ordeal was so stressful
that the cousins only wanted to go through it once. It didn t mat-
ter how serious our boyfriends and girlfriends were; there was no
need to bring home or even mention anyone except for a fiancé.
But there was one cousin who ignored the memo. Twice.
Four years my senior, Andy works in Los Angeles as a physical
therapist. He s a good-looking mild-mannered guy with a lucrative
career, and we all figured he d be next to marry. In 2001, he brought
a girl named Eunice to our family s New Year s dinner. They had
been dating for four years, so marriage was a definite possibility,
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happy birthday or whatever
but they weren t engaged. I wasn t at the dinner, but from what
my mother said I gathered that Eunice was very smart, very nice,
and very Filipina. Since English was a challenge for most of our
relatives, Andy answered most of the questions and translated for
his girlfriend. The family wasn t thrilled with Filipina Eunice, but
there wasn t much they could do. At least she was smart and nice.
They got over their disappointment, or at least pretended to any-
way. Andy and Eunice didn t work out, and in 2003 he brought
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