the slap

although my parents sporadically threatened corporal punishment until i was about 10 years old, I only vaguely remember being hit by them twice, and the first time might not have really happened. the second time i was younger than 7; i am sure of this because i remember staring at the pale yellow floor tiles as i threw a tantrum in the unlit mudroom of the upstate NY house, and we only lived in that house until i was 7. my mom struck me on the arm with a bamboo rod, then burst into tears when she saw how my skin puffed up around the spot where it made contact. the supposed first time i was hit would’ve also taken place in the upstate NY house but I am not very certain of this memory - were we in my sister’s room for some reason? - only that my dad had threatened to spank me on the bum and i stood before him with my eyes averted and shaking with fear although i don’t remember him actually doing it.

the one time i was definitely slapped in the face was by my friend’s mother.

we were teenagers at the time, me and patty and jane, and one of the main places where we’d meet to hang out was at the mall near patty’s house. sometimes we window-shopped, sometimes we ordered soup-in-a-bread-bowl at Panera, and sometimes we went to the movies - that is, until one day I discovered that certain department stores don’t place anti-theft tags on their clothing and thus, a new hangout activity was born. contrary to my intuition at the time, the department stores which didn’t have anti-theft systems were actually the fancier, higher end ones - Nordstrom’s, Neiman Marcus, etc. - perhaps because they simply didn’t expect their clientele to shoplift, or perhaps because they thought the anti-theft tags ruined the expensive aesthetic of the inventory they stocked.

it all started as an innocuous experiment when i was alone at the mall one day: I went into a dressing room at Nordstrom’s, removed the price tags on a tank top, folded it neatly into my medium-sized purse and then walked as casually as possible out of the store, hoping that my flushed poker face wouldn’t betray my racing heart. afterwards, exhilarated, i telephoned jane to tell her about it and then the two of us told patty at our next 3-way get together. somewhere in the back of my mind i wondered about the ethics of shoplifting, but i quickly concluded that i was not making even the slightest dent in Nordstrom’s bottom line, and besides that the exhilaration of doing something illegal outweighed any moral calculus that i was able to wrap my head around.

our trips to the mall grew more frequent over the course of the next few months as did our boldness: the shoplifting escalated from one-off, low-dollar value items like tank tops and bralettes to ever-increasing quantities of clothes, jewelry and even things like gourmet fruit gems, boxes of chocolates or potpourri bags which were on rotating display during each of the major shopping seasons. we were being laughably careless on the day when we eventually got caught: sitting cross-legged on the floor of the fitting room at Macy’s, giggling and chatting relaxedly and eating godiva chocolates from the boxes we were planning to shoplift while we cut price tags off of hundreds of dollars worth of clothes with the pair of scissors i had brought with me and stuffed them into our backpacks and oversized shoulder bags. at one point i thought I noticed the shuffling of stockinged legs beneath the fitting room stalls, but i figured it was just staff clearing away unwanted clothes. we ignored any need for discretion because we had gotten away with it so many times by then.

and then, still giggling and clueless, we emerged from the fitting room wearing our backpacks and over-sized shoulder bags and strode boldly towards the entrance to the rest of the mall. just after we had crossed the threshold i heard a stern woman’s voice yell: “Wait!” behind us. the voice belonged to the stockinged legs I had seen in the fitting room, and the woman - middle-aged, asian, old enough to be my mother - was flanked by two equally stern-faced security guards carrying walkie talkies.

she gestured for us to follow her so we did, timidly, obediently, into a windowless, coldly lit employee room somewhere in the bowels of the department store. on our way there i ran through a plethora of strategies in my mind: unlike jane and patty, i refused to surrender to the inevitability of my parents finding out what had happened. i could not say for sure how they would react but i was sure the fate would be worse than death. so i hatched a plan: when it came time to call our parents, i would simply pretend that they weren’t home.

the woman was livid but i don’t remember much of what she said after we arrived in that room except that we were to be permanently banned from shopping at Macy’s for the rest of our lives and that we were to pay back double the retail value of everything we’d attempted to shoplift that day. she then proceeded to inventory each item in our bags, one at a time, shaking her head as she discovered jumbles of lacy underwear and already-opened boxes of chocolates with candy wrappers shoved back into them.

finally it was time to call our parents. the woman handed us the beige landline receiver one at a time, and i watched jane and patty’s flushed faces as they each spoke to their parents in quiet, mixed korean-and-english sentences. my mom has often teased me for having more korean than taiwanese girlfriends, and jane and patty were my first two of them.

when the phone was handed to me i dialed my home phone number, somberly prepared to carry out the lie which had already played out several times in my head.

“hello?” answered my father on the other end of the line. his voice sounded high-pitched, pointy but cautiously friendly the way i was used to.

“hi mama, hi baba,” i said, launching into my script. i spoke quickly and monotonously, not leaving any room for my father to respond, as if i was leaving a voice message on an answering machine. i attempted to speak exclusively in taiwanese but slipped in occasional english words. “i’m working on that project i told you about with jane and patty and we need longer than i expected to finish the presentation. we’re at patty’s house which is not that far from [my older sister] Piying’s place so i’ll just call her to pick me up and take me home when i’m done, okay? that’s right, you don’t need to come pick me up. i’ll be home in maybe an hour but maybe a little later because i don’t know how much longer it’ll take. and you can eat dinner without me, no need to wait. ok. thanks. bye.”

my dad seemed confused - he tried to interrupt when i mentioned dinner - but then he started to say goodbye too, and i quickly clicked the receiver back in its place before he could change his mind and start talking again, fearing that the Macy’s lady and the security guards might hear his voice.

I looked up at them. “My parents aren’t home so I had to leave a message for them just now,” i said, just as planned. “Is it okay if i call my sister to pick me up instead?”

a half an hour later my sister and the mothers of jane and patty filed one-by-one into the brightly lit room like visitors arriving at a prison. the mothers’ faces were sunken with disappointment; my sister’s was slightly embarrassed. as patty’s mother approached i turned to her and blurted out, my words loud and chirping in an attempt to hide my nervousness: “hi mrs. ahn! how are you?”

and then, instantaneously, her outstretched palm landed squarely on my cheek, squishing fat against bone and leaving behind a throbbing, stinging sensation in its wake. she might have said something but i don’t remember anything except my surprise.

“oh!” i said.

“mom!” exclaimed patty, mortified.

my sister gasped but said nothing else.

and suddenly, there it was: the moral calculus i had left unattended had reared its head again, reminding me that i didn’t need a thoroughly ironed out ethical framework in order to prevent myself from shoplifting and doing bad things, all i needed was to remember this throbbing feeling of shame and dishonor - somehow made worse by the fact that it had come at the hands of my friend’s mother and not my own - and the stinging aftershock it left behind on my cheek.

afterwards, in the car, my sister asked me if i thought i would do it again. “are you kidding? no way,” i said, staring out the passenger’s side window. after a little while i added: “please don’t tell mom and dad.”

“of course not,” said my sister.