나오미 in korea

I don’t think my legs are particularly big. Certainly they’re not the spindly giraffe-like stems of some people. Like my mother says, they get me around. I prefer them to the weak, pale, slack-skinned wobbly-ankled sticks of some Korean girls, who totter down the street in tall high heels and postage-stamp miniskirts. I have to prefer them anyway, otherwise life would suck. Anyway, I run a lot. I like them.

However, my legs do not impress my Korean students.

I was standing on a chair in class, hanging up a poster, wearing those 3/4 jeans that are probably out of fashion now, if indeed they ever were in fashion. My group of nine year olds were working steadily on some bullshit assignment I’d given them to keep them quiet. One kid glanced at me and said in a tone I’ve come to know quite well, “mool tari.” And he snickered.

The others laughed. Usually I manage to ignore this; I’m used to “big nose,” “fat belly,” “red face,” “hairy arms” or “filthy stinking foreigner.” Today, something about the quality of the laughter made me angry, and also curious. I’d never heard mool tari before. A new insult! I swung on the kid.

“What did you say?” I loomed over him and shook the sellotape in his face.

He looked stricken.

“Anneyo,” he said quickly, fluttering his hand weakly.

“It wasn’t nothing. What did you say?”

“Mool tari, mool tari!” chanted the other kids, pointing and laughing.

I went to Becky, the Korean teacher who likes me because I chose her first English name.

“Mool tari?”

“Ah.” she said. “Uhhh – big leg?” Great. Nothing new. I went back to the classroom and pretended it was funny.

Five minutes later Becky knocked and rushed in.

“Naohmee? Mool tari – big no. Uh – pat?”

“Pat?”

“Phhhhat.”

“Fat?!“

“Pat, yes!”

Even better! I grabbed the kid’s head in what was supposed to be a playful way.

“Mool olgul! Your face is big! Ha ha!” and sneered as he had done. He smiled uncertainly as Becky and the other kids laughed at him. Revenge.

It was mean. Koreans are sensitive about their wide faces. I felt cruel but triumphant; I am completely fed up with the daily snarky comments about my appearance. Big nose. Hairy arms. Dark circles. A pimple. A not cute or beautiful mole. Red face. Fat.

“May I have coloured pencil?” said Becky.

“Sure, sure.”

Becky left, and I resumed class, thinking once again that I was not cut out to be a teacher if I couldn’t be trusted to be the adult when they act like children.

As the kid ran out at 4:50, I swatted him on the side of the head and asked him if he said those things about his Korean teachers in front of them. He looked at me blankly. Go, go, go. I said. Get out. And added silently, fathead.

Becky came back with my coloured pencils, a dictionary, and a huge grin.

“Naomi! Mool tari – fat, no. Radish!” She outlined a rectangle in the air with her index fingers. The Korean radish is ugly, large, thick, white, heavy and shapeless, like a dumpy oval brick.

I have radish legs. I should have hit him harder.