The Island of Sea Women

by Lisa See

  “Grandmother Seolmundae watches over us all,” we chanted.

  “She tested herself in many ways, as all women must,” Shaman Kim told us. “She assessed the waters to see how deep they were, so that haenyeo would be safe when they went to sea. She also searched ponds and lakes, looking for ways to improve the lives of those who worked the fields on land. One day, attracted to a mysterious mist on Muljang-ol Oreum, she discovered a lake in its crater. The water was deep blue, and she could not begin to guess its depths. Taking one big breath, she swam straight down. She has never returned.”

  Several of the women nodded appreciatively at the good telling of this story.

  “That’s one version,” the shaman continued. “Another says Grandmother Seolmundae, like all women, was exhausted by all she did for others, especially for her children. Her five hundred sons were always hungry. She was making them a cauldron of porridge when she became drowsy and fell into the pot. Her sons looked everywhere for her. The youngest son finally found all that remained of her—just bones—at the bottom of the pot. She had died from mother love. The sons were so overcome that they were instantly petrified into five hundred stone outcroppings, which you can see even today.”

  Do-saeng silently wept. The story helped one suffering mother to hear of another suffering mother.

  “The Japanese say if Grandmother Seolmundae existed and if that oreum was the water pathway to her underwater palace,” Shaman Kim went on, “then she abandoned us, as have all our goddesses and gods. I say she never left us.”

  “We sleep on her every night,” we recited. “We wake on her every morning.”

  “When you go into the sea, you dive among the underwater ripples of her skirt. She is the great volcano at the center of our island. Some people call it Mount Halla, the Peak That Pulls Down the Milky Way, or the Mountain of the Blessed Isle. To us, she is our island. Anywhere we go, we can call to her and weep out our woes, and she will listen.”

  Shaman Kim now directed her attention to Yu-ri, who had not once stirred.

  “We are here to help Yu-ri with her traveling-soul problem, but we must also worry about those of you who’ve suffered soul loss, which happens any time a person receives a shock,” she said. “Your collective has experienced a terrible blow. None has suffered more than Yu-ri’s mother. Do-saeng, please kneel before the altar. Anyone else who is in anguish, please join her.”

  My mother knelt next to Do-saeng. Soon the rest of us were on our knees in a circle of anguish. The shaman held ritual knives in her hands from which white ribbons streamed. As she sliced through negativity, the ribbons swirled around us like swallows through the air. Her hanbok ballooned in clouds of riotous color. We chanted. We wept. Our emotions flowed from us accompanied by the cacophony of cymbals, bells, and drums played by Shaman Kim’s assistants.

  “I call upon all goddesses to bring Yu-ri’s spirit back from the sea or wherever it is hiding,” Shaman Kim implored. After making this request another two times, her voice changed as Yu-ri inhabited her. “I miss my mother. I miss my father and my brother. My future husband . . . Aigo . . .” The shaman turned to my mother. “Diving Chief, you sent me here. Now bring me home.”

  The way Yu-ri’s voice came out of Shaman Kim’s mouth sounded more like blame than an entreaty for help. This was not a good portent. Shaman Kim seemed to acknowledge this. “Tell me, Sun-sil, how would you like to respond?”

  My mother rose. Her face looked taut as she addressed Yu-ri. “I accept responsibility that I sent you into the sea, but I gave you a single duty that day: to stay with my daughter and help the Kang sisters as they looked after Mi-ja. You were the eldest of the baby-divers. You had an obligation to them and to us. Through your actions, I could have lost my daughter.”

  Perhaps only I could see how deeply affected Mother was by what had happened. I was both awed and humbled. I hoped one day I could prove to her that I loved her as much as she loved me.

  Shaman Kim swiveled to Do-saeng. “What do you wish to tell your daughter?”

  Do-saeng spoke sharply to Yu-ri. “You would blame another for the results of your greed? You embarrass me! Leave greed where you are and come home right now! Don’t ask someone else to help you!” Then she softened her tone. “Dear girl, come back. Your mother and brother miss you. Return home and we will drench you in love.”

  Shaman Kim chanted a few more incantations. The helpers banged their cymbals and drums. After that, there was nothing left to say or do.

  The next morning, Yu-ri woke up. She was not the same girl, though. She could smile, but she could not speak. She could move, but she limped and sometimes jerked her arms. Both sets of parents agreed that a marriage was no longer possible. Mi-ja and I hung on to my secret, which made us closer than ever. In the weeks that followed, after we’d worked in the dry or wet fields, we visited Yu-ri. Mi-ja and I talked and giggled, so Yu-ri would have the sense she was still a young girl with no worries. Sometimes Jun-bu joined us and read aloud the essays he was writing for school or tried to tease us as he had once teased his sister. On other days, Mi-ja and I helped Do-saeng wash Yu-ri’s body and hair. And when the weather grew warm, Mi-ja and I took her to the shore, where we sat in the shallows to let the smallest wavelets lap against her. We told stories, we patted her face, we let her know we were there, and she would reward us with a beautiful smile.

  Every time I visited, Do-saeng bowed and expressed her gratitude. “If not for you, my daughter would have died,” she’d say as she poured buckwheat tea or presented me with a dish of salted smelt, but her eyes sent a darker message. She may not have known exactly what part I’d played in Yu-ri’s accident, but she certainly suspected that it was more than I’d let on, either to her or to my mother.

  How Do We Fall in Love?

  (before)

  When Mi-ja and I first met, we were such opposites. I was like the rocks of our island—jagged, rough, all edges, but useful and no-nonsense. She was like clouds—drifting, melting, impossible to catch or fully understand. Even though we both became haenyeo, I would forever be of the earth in the sense that I was practical and concerned always for my family. Mi-ja was more like the sea—ever changing and occasionally tempestuous. I was tied closely to my mother and longed to follow her into a life in the sea; Mi-ja had no memory of her mother but missed her father terribly. I had the love and respect of my brothers and sister, while Mi-ja had only an aunt and uncle who didn’t care for her. I worked hard, hauling water, carrying my baby brother on my back, doing farmwork, and gathering dried manure for heating, but Mi-ja worked harder still, completing chores for her aunt and uncle, in our fields, and for the collective. I could not read or write my name. Mi-ja could write her name and still remembered a few Japanese characters. And, as steady as I appeared to others, inside I was often fearful; as evanescent as she seemed from the outside, her inner fortitude seemed to be as strong as bamboo—able to withstand almost any force or weight. On Jeju, we had a saying: If there is happiness at age three, it will last until you reach eighty. I believed this to be true. Mi-ja, on the other hand, often said, “I was born on a day with no sun and no moon. Did my parents know how hard my life would be?” We could not have been more different, and yet we were very close.

  How do we fall in love? The first time you see your husband’s face on your engagement day, you don’t know how your emotions will evolve over time. The moment your baby is wrenched from your insides, love may not be what you feel. Love must be nurtured and tended to in the same way we haenyeo care for our fields under the sea. With arranged marriages, many wives fall in love with their husbands quickly. For some, it can take years. And for others, decades of marriage will always be filled with loneliness and sadness, because we never grow the connection to that person with whom we share our sleeping mat. As for children, every woman knows the fears and sorrows. Joy is a delicious luxury that we experience most cautiously, for tragedy conceals itself around every corner. How different it is with friendship. No one pick
s a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else ever will.

  I remember clearly the first day I saw Mi-ja. I had recently turned seven. I lived a happy, if simple, life. We were poor, no better or worse than our neighbors. We had our wet fields in the ocean and our dry fields on land. We also had a small home garden next to our kitchen, where Mother grew white radishes, cucumbers, sesame leaf, garlic, onions, and peppers. While the vastness of the sea would suggest endless bounty, it was an unreliable source of food. The island had no natural harbors. The seas were rough. Our Korean kings had long barred our men from fishing in any significant way, and now, under Japanese rule, fishermen were allowed only rafts, with a single seat and a sail. (Or they could work on the large Japanese fishing vessels or in their canneries.) Many Jeju men were lost to rough tides, high waves, and strong winds. Long ago, Jeju’s men had been divers, but the Korean monarchs imposed such a high tax on their work that it was eventually given to women, who were taxed at a lower rate. It turned out that women had an aptitude for the work. Women, like my mother, were patient. Women understood suffering. Women had more fat, so they were better suited to endure the cold. Still, it was hard for Mother—or any woman—to make a meal hearty enough for a large family from sea urchin roe, turban shell, sea snails, and abalone alone. Besides, those creatures were not for us. They were for the wealthy—or, at least, wealthier—people on the mainland, or in Japan, China, and the USSR. All this meant that for most of the year my family lived on the millet, cabbage, and sweet potatoes that we grew in our dry field, while the money Mother earned from diving paid for clothes, house repairs, and anything else that required cash.

  It was a wife’s social and familial duty to birth a son, who would lengthen her husband’s lineage. But every family in the seaside villages of Jeju was most grateful for the birth of a daughter, because she would always be a provider. In this regard, our family was not so fortunate, because we only had four females in our household: Grandmother, Mother, me, and Little Sister, who, back then, was only eleven months old and too young to help. Still, one day, she would work with me to help our parents pay their debts, chip in to build a better home for their old age, and possibly even contribute to sending our brothers to school.

  On the summer day eight years ago when I first met Mi-ja, Father stayed home, as he usually did, to take care of my siblings. Mother and I set out to our dry field to weed. She looked like a misshapen melon. Her stomach bulged with what would soon be my third brother, while her back was bent under the weight of a basket stuffed with tools and fertilizer. I carried a basket filled with drinking water and lunch. Together we walked through the olles. In the village, the stone olles around houses were high enough to prevent neighbors from peeking inside. Once outside the village, the olles were about waist-high. Each plot of land was also surrounded by stone walls, which had less to do with limning a family’s property than with blocking the relentless wind, which could snap long-stemmed crops in two. No matter what their use, the olles were made from volcanic rocks so large they must have required at least two of our ancestors to put each one in place.

  Just as we reached our land, Mother stopped so abruptly that I bumped into her. I feared we’d stumbled upon Japanese soldiers, but then she yelled, “You! There! What are you doing?”

  I stood on my tiptoes to peer over the stone wall and saw a little girl crouched among our sweet potato plants, her hands digging into the earth. If Jeju was known for its Three Abundances of wind, stones, and women, it was also acknowledged for lacking three other things: beggars, thieves, and locked gates. But here was a thief! Even from afar, I could see her making calculations. She couldn’t escape through the opening in the wall, because that would put her in the olle with us. She leapt up and galloped to the far side of the field. Mother pushed me and yelled, “Catch her!”

  I dropped my basket and dashed along the olle that edged the field. I turned left into the neighboring plot, galloped across it, scrambled over the far stone wall, and dropped to the other side. When I reached the next wall, I climbed to the top, and there she was on the opposite side below me, scurrying like a rat. Before she could sense me, I jumped on top of her and wrestled her to the ground. She fought hard, but I was far stronger. Once I’d pinned her wrists, I could see her face. Clearly, she was not from our village, because no one here was that pale. It was as if she’d been kept inside her entire life. Or she was a hungry ghost—a type of spirit who restlessly roams the earth and causes trouble for the living. Under any other circumstances, I would have been petrified. Instead, my heart thumped in my chest. The chase. The capture.

  “Let me go,” she cried piteously in Japanese. “Please let me go.”

  That’s when I got scared. We all had to speak Japanese for the colonists, but this girl’s tones were perfect. What if I’d tackled a Japanese girl? Then I registered the tears that ran down her cheeks toward her ears. What if I was caught torturing a Japanese girl?

  I was about to free her when Mother’s voice floated down from above us. “Bring her to me.”

  I looked up and saw Mother gazing down at us from over the stone wall. I carefully lifted myself off the girl, but I kept a firm grip on her arm. I pulled her to her feet and pushed her ahead of me. She didn’t have a choice but to climb over the wall. Once we were both on the other side, Mother slowly scanned the girl from head to toe and back again. Finally, she asked, “Who are you? Who do you belong to?”

  “My name is Han Mi-ja,” she said, wiping away her tears with the heels of her hands. “I live with my aunt and uncle in the Sut-dong section of Hado.”

  Mother sucked air in through her teeth. “I think I know your family. You must be Han Gil-ho’s daughter.”

  Mi-ja nodded.

  Mother stayed silent. I could tell she was upset, but I had no idea why. At last, she spoke. “Go ahead then. Tell me why you would steal from us.”

  The words flooded out of Mi-ja’s mouth. “My mother died when I came out of her. My father died two months ago. Heart attack. Now I live with Aunt Lee-ok and Uncle Him-chan, and—”

  “And they don’t feed you,” Mother interrupted. “I understand why—”

  Defiance skittered across Mi-ja’s features. “My father was not a traitor. He worked for the Japanese in Jeju City, but that doesn’t mean—”

  Mother cut her off to recite a familiar aphorism. “If you plant red beans, then you will harvest red beans.” This meant that a child’s character and behavior came from what the parents planted. “No one likes a collaborator,” she said matter-of-factly. “The people in all seven villages of Hado were ashamed when your mother and father chose that life. And consider your given name. Mi-ja. So Japanese.”

  Even at my young age, I knew my mother was taking a risk speaking so openly against the Japanese and those who supported them.

  Mi-ja’s hands and face were smudged with dirt. Her clothes were finer than any I’d seen before, but they were filthy. At some point during her escape, she’d lost her scarf, and her hair looked matted, as though no one had put a comb through it in weeks. But what struck me most was how thin she was. She was pitiful, but Mother didn’t let up.

  “Let’s see what’s in your pockets,” she demanded.

  Mi-ja searched through her clothes, making sure she showed Mother everything. She held up a lump of coal, then she put it back in her pocket. She carefully wiped her dirty hand on her shirt, reached up under her sleeve, and pulled out a book. It was the first one I’d seen, so I couldn’t be impressed or unimpressed, but Mother’s eyes widened. In her nerves or out of fear, Mi-ja dropped it. Mother bent to pick it up, but Mi-ja grabbed it first. She gave Mother another defiant look.

  �
��Please. It’s mine,” she said, quickly secreting the book back up her sleeve. She reached into her last pocket, pulled out a closed fist, and then dropped a handful of baby sweet potatoes barely bigger than pebbles into Mother’s palm. Another long silence hung over us as Mother rolled them back and forth, examining them for damage. When she next spoke, her tone was still loud, as it always was, but kinder.

  “You’re a lucky girl,” she said. “If I were someone else . . . But I’m not. You’re coming back to our field, and you’re going to replant these. When you’re done, you’re going to help us. If you do a good job, we’ll share our lunch with you. If you don’t run away, if you obey, if you follow my orders, I’ll let you come again tomorrow. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t fall in love with Mi-ja on that first day—not when I was riled from the chase, confused by my mother’s reaction to her, and mad that I had to share part of our lunch with a thief. Here’s what did happen: Mi-ja listened to everything Mother told her to do, but she followed what I did. I showed her how to plant the tubers, then stomp on the soil to keep it from flying away in the wind. We spent the rest of the time pulling weeds and aerating the soil with a three-pronged tool. As the light changed and the sky began to glow crimson, she helped us pack.

  Mother said, “I will see you tomorrow. No need to tell your aunt and uncle.”

  Mi-ja bowed very low, several times. With that acknowledgment, Mother set off. I was about to follow her when Mi-ja held me back.

  “I want to show you something.” She pulled the book out from under her sleeve. Her eyes met mine. With two hands and a formality I’d only seen during ancestor worship, she offered it to me. “You can hold it if you want.” I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do that, but I took it anyway. It was a slim volume, bound in leather. “It’s all I have left of my father,” she said. “Open it.”

  I did. The pages were made from rice paper. I assumed the writing was Japanese, but it could have been Korean. A couple of pages in the middle of the book stuck out unevenly. I turned to that section and discovered that they’d been torn out. That seemed disrespectful, but I noticed Mi-ja was smiling.