Colors

Jamie Kim, Age 19
Cupertino CA
San Jose State University

It called to my grandmother quietly at first. She was only a child then, but me feeling was so intense that it could not be denied. It was a red and real as the blood running through her body. She asked her father if she could have a pad of paper and some pencils for drawing pictures. Her father laughed out loud, "Mee Chu Su?" "Are you crazy?" He blurted out in harsh Korean. He went on to say that girls were not to waste their time on such frivolous activities. There was much work to do and she was now old enough to help out in the kitchen. She should start thinking about her duties as a filial daughter and then her duties as a wife to her husband. That was it and nothing else would be said. He spoke so diplomatically the she almost believed him. All she wanted was to feel smooth charcoal in her fingers and to press them onto paper, so that the vivid images in her head could be recorded and soothed.

Her mother thought differently. She was very fond of her child and desired to give her all that she could to make her happy. She disobeyed the orders of her husband and bought the shiniest wax crayons and a pad of thin rice paper from the street peddler. Her daughter would be so pleased and she was. She spent many hours training her hand to follow the details that her eyes saw. She drew red strawberries, green leaves and white clouds.

Her father was not at all pleased when he found one of the drawing. She had run out of paper and had drawn on a piece of butcher paper that she asked from the man at the market. He dragged my grandmother and pulled her hair and loudly ripped the delicate paper into the angriest pieces. The echo of the ripping stayed inside of her and silenced the desire.

It called to her again later. This time more loudly. She had to wait until her father and the others were asleep, then she would steal into the kitchen and take small pieces of burnt firewood from the stove and hide them in her dress. She drew, with those sticks, on the walls of the barn. The deep, ashy remains of the wood rubbed smooth and velvety across the barren, clay walls of the barn. She was free to greet the calling inside of her now and she felt furious, as the fervor of bottled passion came out in waves across her fingertips and onto the walls. Her strong arm pushed hard with the sticks to deepen the darkest color and then varied the color into a lighter shade with gentle brushes. When she heard noises from the house, she quickly rubbed the images away with a rag, and they were gone as quickly as the came.

My grandmother got married later and had four daughters, but it was the third one born in January, that heard the calling. The genius that my grandmother held was not released completely since it was not allowed to breathe the air or to feel the orange sun. The calling was still strong and had been passed on to my mother.

It was obvious in my mother. My grandmother saw that her child had taken a small twig and carved out the shape of a beautit6i house in the soft earth. Despite what her husband said, my grandmother bought countless oil pastels and helped her daughter focus her energy on paper. My mother took the pastels like they were candy, and drew endless rainbows, clouds, and familiar faces that my grandmother knew too well. At every opportunity, my mother was given sticks of graphite, colored pencils, watercolor squares. Anything was given to her to satiate the calling that consumed her body.

The death of my grandfather shocked everything. It created a certain disaster inside my grandmother. She became very poor, very fast. There were far greater things to worry about since she could hardly sustain her family, as a widow without education and without money. Money for my mother's art supplies could not be made and the calling had to be silenced. My mother was grown by then, and she had wanted to go to college. It was a rare thing in Korea. Korean women were hardly found on university campuses, and never found there if they were poor. My mother wanted to pursue a career in art and to become a fashion designer. It was a silly dream for a poor girl and it broke my grandmother's heart when my mother got married instead. The calling slept and my grandmother died a few years after I was born.

We immigrated into America when I was five. My mother worked hard so that I would not be limited in opportunities. She wanted my life to be better than her life in Korea. America offered chances for things that were not be made available to her. She wanted me to become independent and to pursue my dreams in every way possible. The calling awoke from its hibernation sharply after we found ourselves in foreign land.

My mother tells me that it was evident that I had the calling when she saw the way I furiously held on to a pencil until my knuckles were white. The tight little fist scribbled on chairs and walls religiously, all over their new apartment. The calling wanted out, since it was tired of hiding. She had passed it down to me with such potency that my whole body shook as I pushed out the energy from my hands. My mother put me in art classes at an early age and was assured that my life would be different. This passion, as strong as opaque colors blended, would no longer be suppressed.

I am nineteen years old now and my mother still tells me the story of her mother. I am given opportunities that my grandmother desired so much for her daughter. I have made the most important choice by going to college to institutionalize my calling and to paint in classrooms, with the full support of both my mother and my father. This choice was important in determining not only my future, but in settling the anxieties of the Korean women of my previous generations who desired more.

Being Asian-American is an honor in which I receive cultivated passion from the struggles of my ancestors. My mother tells me the stories in soft Korean and they paint glorious murals that leave me inspired. Being an Asian- American, I am benefited with unlimited opportunities that I am lucky enough to encounter. I am able to hear the voices of my grandmother and the struggles of my mother in a language that is reminiscent of not only a distant land, but of experiences that mold the human spirit and my own personal history. It calls to me and I choose to answer proudly in school. My art speaks to me in the tongue that beckoned my grandmother years ago, to those barren, clay walls.