“Grandma, what are they going to do?” I asked nervously.
She tsked her tongue at me. “Krista, let them do work. Stop asking questions.”
I sat in a chair and they put a small drape around the front of my shirt, so I guessed makeup was first. The lady pulled open a few drawers and started to get ready.
“Could you not over-do the makeup?” I asked the makeup artist.
She gave me a funny look. I don’t think she spoke English.
“Grandma, could you ask them to NOT turn me into a K-pop star?”
“K-Pop! Yes, good! Good!” The makeup artist nodded.
“What you mean K-Pop?” Grandma asked confused.
“No, no,” I shook my head. “Not K-Pop! Only a little bit of makeup!” I said that super loud, as if shouting it was going to help the makeup artist understand. Just then, I wished I could speak some Korean. “Tori, I need your phone! It’s a translation emergency!”
She was getting her hair cut so she tossed it to me. I typed in “Not too much makeup” into a translation app and the makeup artist read it and sighed. Grandma scolded me, “She is expert, Krista. You not expert in makeup. Let her do something nice. In Korea women very beautiful, not like here. Everybody so casual. Ugly boots and nobody take care to make their face.”
I sighed. I had a feeling I wouldn’t ever win any kind of argument with my grandmother in my entire life. I relented a little, but not completely, I still managed to give the hairdresser a hard time. I said “No” to just about everything she was trying to do. My grandmother kept tsking me with her tongue.
They had me turned around looking away from the mirror most of the time. After all my complaining, I think Grandma told them in Korean not to let me look at what they were doing because Tori’s chair was facing the mirror.
After they were nearly done they finally turned my chair so I could see the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. It took my brain a while to register what it was seeing. I guess I looked nice, but it was hard to process the stranger looking back at me. It wasn’t all together the worst thing that I had ever experienced, but I couldn’t imagine spending all that time every day trying to look like that.
But for my sister, it was as if she had finally found herself. She looked like she was right out of one those calendars at the Korean market with those girls with perfect milky white skin and hair perfectly curled. She looked beautiful. They even put special tape on her eyelids to make her eyes look bigger. She could even have been on the cover of the Korean fashion magazine that we had flipped through while we were waiting.
Tori and I had regular Korean eyes. While we were looking through all the magazines in the salon, it became obvious that none of the models had eyes like ours. They all had these impossibly big round eyes. The tape changed the way Tori looked—suddenly, she had those eyes too.
The makeup lady asked me if I wanted to try it. Well, it was more like, she held up a sheet of eye tape, pointed to it, and then pointed to my eyes. I looked over at Grandma and Tori, and they both nodded their heads. It was for this party, so I agreed, very reluctantly. I closed my eyes, felt her touch my eyelids and when I opened up my eyes, the salon ladies gathered around me and started muttering stuff in Korean I didn’t understand. But they were all smiling and nodding at me.
“They do nice job, right Krista? Your sister, so beautiful! In few years, I take you and Tori to Korea. You have ssangapul surgery. Big eyes. Even more pretty!” Tori beamed and Grandma patted her on the arm affectionately. She even squeezed my shoulder. It was the first time my grandmother had ever liked the way I looked. Of course, it was also the first time I didn’t actually look like myself.
The ladies gave me and Tori some extra tape on our way out. We all bowed excessively as we left the salon and said our good-byes and thank-yous.
When we got home, my mom stared at me until I started to feel uncomfortable. “What? Why are staring at me?” I asked.
“Just wondering about all the makeup,” she said and gestured to my eyes. “Do you like it?”
“Well,” I started, “it’s okay, I guess.”
“Is that tape?” She peered at my eyes.
“Well, it’s not regular tape, it’s the special eye tape,” I answered.
“Does it feel weird?” she asked.
I shrugged. Then I noticed something for the first time. My mom had double-eyelids.
“Do you wear the tape?” I asked her.
“No.” She looked at me, confused. “Krista, I hardly ever wear makeup and I certainly don’t bother with tape on my eyes.”
“But you have the double-eyelids,” I said.
“Well, I was just born with them,” she said. “Honestly, honey, I’ve never really thought a lot about it.”
Huh, easy for her to say. Her eyes were really big, why did I have such small eyes? Why had I never noticed before?
“Ready to go soon?” she asked.
“I just need to get the dress on. Give me two more minutes.” I ran upstairs.
“Be careful of hair and makeup!” Grandma shouted at me as I ran up the stairs.
After dressing, I looked at myself in a full-length mirror. Who was I? It didn’t look like me. I really couldn’t tell if I loved it or if I hated it. I went downstairs as quickly as I could and said to my mom, “Come on, let’s go. I think
