When I was very young, I usually stayed at home alone. Actually, not alone. My grandmother, who was Father’s mother, would stay at home and work at something, very busily. I wanted to talk to her but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to make her usual headache or whatever kind of pain it was worse than usual. If she didn’t have any work to do she would go somewhere for a while. Or very occasionally, other grannies of her age would come and she would talk with them. I was also surprised that she smoked with them — especially because she did not look like those mean grannies who did so.
I also felt somewhat lonely. No toys, no picture books, no friends, no pets — the half-siblings did not live with me at that time (I wish they never existed to begin with). Other kids in the town were very mean, had mange skin, and/or dirty — which was very common around there — so I did not want to associate with them. When we moved out of that house some years later, a couple of my father’s college students could not believe that this was a professor’s house because it was a very small house with some cement bricks and plastic slates put together in sloppy cement jobs, which did not have indoor kitchen or bathroom.
The daily routine of my grandmother stopped when she got ill and had to be taken care of by somebody, my uncle’s family took over that job because he lived with extended family and had always someone available to keep an eye on her. Then I was left alone at home. Really alone with nobody. My father’s intern may stay with me a little. My maternal grandmother who was visiting from USA may stay a bit. But until I entered elementary school, it was like that. My mother would stay at home during summer and winter vacation since she was an elementary school teacher. Otherwise I lived like that for a while until age 6.
Both of my parents arrived at home late. My brother and sister also came home late. They arrived earlier than my parents, but they usually had something to do or wanted to play outside with their age peers. When they were playing I would like to get into what they were doing, and try to play with them, but they would get annoyed and angry at me saying I am a bad baby ruining their play. They didn’t want to bother to teach or play with me in any shape or form. Because of that, when I got angry and cried, they blamed me for it saying I am a bad baby, not staying quiet and leaving them alone. There were no adults supervising any of it, and if I asked any adults, they would blame me for getting in my siblings and their friends’ way for not being obedient to older siblings and older children.
In the evening, we sat around the dinner table and started to have meals with tired hands. I hated clams. Especially in seaweed soup. On weekends, sometimes they would cover clams in eggs and flour and fry them. I imagined that they were doing it because it made clams appear better. In the beginning, I would be fooled by the appearance of yucky clams and ate them. I would chew them until I realized they were them and would not eat it any more. I was afraid of clams. In fact, I was afraid of anything that appeared like that. The appearance of clams looked like dead mouths with dead human skin, discolored tongues and other mangled body parts — reminder of Korean War.
One of my favorite food was puff pastry jam tart. Of course, we did not have oven, it was usually brought by some acquaintance or friend of my parents who visited home as a present, which was commercially produced. I loved it. I would show love of the food and enjoy it. I wanted to save a little for later, but every time it was futile. It disappeared. I knew my mother hid it somewhere and before I could find out where it was, it was all gone. I never dared to ask where it went. Any food I loved, that’s what had happened — except the ones that needed to be refrigerated, then I would find where it was in the refrigerator and ate secretively. My half-sister and half-brother also ate such food secretively from the refrigerator. My mother sort of knew what had happened and she would say something in a complaining manner. But I knew that she knew what she was doing was not a such morally sound thing to do so she didn’t say too much.
Only now I figured out what had happened to those cookies — she ate them with my so-called father. The food packages found some time after whispers they were having in their room behind closed door. That was what was happening. It just did not click to me at the time because me and so many other children were brainwashed in Confucian way of thinking (although they probably would not say that it was Confucian way).
Mother always seemed to have problems and worries of her own. I couldn’t ask her what exactly it was because I couldn’t express my thoughts with analytical and refined language at such a young age. However, my mind did so on its own, which created imagery and symbolism of those. Father seemed happy but I could sense his worries behind his physical appearance. It was a little different than Mom’s but in a way, it was similar. Furthermore, it seemed harder to reach than Mom’s. He always remained somewhat distant from the family. Occasionally, he would have fits of unreasonable anger which I didn’t really know what was going on. No one explained it to me or to my siblings for that matter.
When I was playing with my parents, I intuitively knew when they were tired of playing with me, and I could feel that they assumed it as a tiring responsibility. They would always stop before I was finished and I did not dare to press on, because of the imagery and symbolism I got from them. I knew they were hiding their depression, anger, confusion behind normal facade. I considered play as recreation, but it seemed that they didn’t know how to play. When they didn’t want to play with me, they would say to me, “sleep”. Then I had to go to sleep even though I didn’t want to. Often I got headaches because I slept too much, but I never dared to voice about that, either. None of my deprivation was noticed by them. If I voiced or hinted any of those, I became the bad one who complained about better life I had than theirs.
I would occasionally get beaten severely, but I thought that was normal. Because I would hear such cries of other children from neighbors while parents yelled and beat them — in fact, much more often. I was being what they would call a good kid — not voicing their opinion or need, not playing or doing anything that would annoy them or get on their nerve, just eat and sit silent and obey. If I did not voice the problem and it became worse, to them, it was my fault that I did not say anything.
There was this oppressive air hung all the time in the general environment — town, city, country, the entire nation — I was wondering what all this was about and why such dreadful air was so prevailing all the time.
Other things happened but I did not know it was abuse and neglect. Nor I knew all these were just beginning of other abuse and neglect that would follow.