by Lisa See
Mi-ja sat with me on the floor just before the altar, her right knee touching my left knee, as our neighbors offered their condolences and respects. When the coffin was lifted again, Mi-ja accompanied my family to the field the geomancer had told Father would make a propitious burial site for Mother. It was surrounded by stone walls to keep the wind from washing over her and animals from walking on her. Mi-ja stood by my side when the grave was dug. Together we watched as food was distributed first to the older men, then the younger men, then the little boys. Next came women, from old to young. Mi-ja, Yu-ri, and I barely got anything to eat. Some girls, Little Sister included, received nothing, which caused some of the haenyeo to shout in their loud ocean voices that it wasn’t fair. But what about death is fair? Mother was lowered into the ground in a position in harmony with the land itself, then some men helped position a stone carved with her name atop the grave. Forever after, I would come here to remember my mother, weep for her, and place offerings in thanks for bringing me into this life.
“You see?” Mi-ja whispered. “She’ll always be protected by the stone walls that surround us. You’ll always find her here.” She gave me a gentle smile. “Every March we’ll go to the mountains to pick bracken to give as an offering.”
After bracken is picked nine times, it will sprout again. The saying Fall down eight times, stand up nine reminds us of this and symbolizes the wish for the dead to pave the way for future generations. We would have many opportunities throughout the year to make different types of offerings, but later that day, after a permanent memorial altar with a spirit tablet for my mother had been set up in our home, Mi-ja was the first to place a tangerine on the table. When I think of the money she must have spent on that . . .
That night, Mi-ja lay next to me on my mat and comforted me as I cried. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. You’ll always have me.” These three sentences she repeated until they became a mesmerizing rhythm in my head.
But my mother’s journey was not yet complete. Over two days of twelve hours each, Shaman Kim performed a special no-soul ritual for the haenyeo collective to cleanse the spirit of my mother and guide her peacefully to the land of the dead. In addition, the shaman would attend to the living, because so many of us had been touched intimately by Mother’s death: I, for witnessing it; Do-saeng and Mi-ja, for being the vehicles that caused my mother to decide to help me get my first abalone that day; the other haenyeo, who helped free her and bring her to shore. The shock we’d experienced caused us all to be affected by soul loss.
The ceremony was held in an old shrine tucked inside a natural outcropping of stones on the shore. Women and girls came from neighboring villages, bringing vessels of cooked fish, rice, eggs, and liquor, which they placed on the makeshift altar next to a photo of Mother. It was not from her wedding day but was a more recent one showing her and a dozen of her classmates posed before the Hado Night School. To honor her diving partner, Do-saeng had her son write messages on white paper ribbons, which fluttered festively in the wind. This was not the only touch of liveliness. Even though it was a sad occasion, Shaman Kim brought with her rainbows of color and a cacophony of sound. Her hanbok was sewn in great bands of magenta, yellow, and blue. She twirled red tassels. Two assistants clanged cymbals, while another three beat drums. All this was accompanied by wailing and crying. Soon we were a mass of bodies swaying in dance. Then we began to raise our voices in prayer and song.
As the sun set, we walked to the water’s edge, where Shaman Kim made offerings to the sea gods. “Release Sun-sil’s spirit,” she entreated. “Let her come back with me.” She tossed one end of a long piece of white cloth into the waves, then slowly hauled it in, bringing my mother’s spirit with it.
The next morning, the winds were violent, making it impossible to keep the candles lit. Today would be about release: for my mother to be released from this plane and for us to be released from our links to her and from our torments. We began with the same pattern of weeping, wailing, dancing, and chanting, until Shaman Kim finally asked us to sit. Around me, I saw faces filled with sadness but also excitement.
“I greet all goddesses,” Shaman Kim declared. “You, esteemed ones, are welcome here. Please know every woman in Sun-sil’s collective has been touched by misery. We must heal those most in need. The spirits ask Sun-sil’s eldest daughter, mother-in-law, Do-saeng, and Mi-ja to kneel before me.”
The four of us did as we were told, bowing three times to the altar. Shaman Kim began with my grandmother, gently touching her chest with a tassel. “You were a good mother-in-law. You were kind. You never complained about Sun-sil.”
The mourners crooned appreciatively at these compliments.
Shaman Kim’s tassel came to rest on Mi-ja’s chest. “Do not condemn yourself for being sick that day. Fate and destiny took Sun-sil from this world.” At these words, Mi-ja sobbed. I’d been so consumed by my own sorrow, I hadn’t realized how Mi-ja might feel.
“She was the only mother I ever knew,” Mi-ja choked out.
Next came Do-saeng . . .
Hearing Shaman Kim console Do-saeng was perhaps the hardest part of the ceremony. She had already lost the lively daughter she had once known, and now her closest friend was gone. Shaman Kim used knives strung with long white ribbons to cut the negativity that surrounded Do-saeng. “Take away this woman’s shock and sorrow. Let the collective elect her as its new chief. May she lead her sea women with wisdom and caution. Please allow no more tragedies to befall this group.”
Finally, Shaman Kim turned to me. The touch of her fingers along my spine caused my back to relax. Her forefinger tapping my forehead opened my mind. The swish of the tassel across my chest exposed the depth of my anguish. “Let us repair this girl’s spirit,” she said. “Let her fly from grief.” Then she shifted away from me, directing her attention to the Afterworld. “I call upon the Dragon Sea God to bring Sun-sil’s spirit to us one last time.”
Before my eyes Shaman Kim opened her heart completely, and I heard my mother’s voice speak of her life, as was customary. “When I was twenty, I was matched in marriage. This was the same year of the cholera epidemic that killed my mother, father, brothers, and sister. I was an orphan and a wife. My marriage was not particularly harmonious or inharmonious. Then I became a mother.”
I needed Mother to say I wasn’t at fault. I needed her to tell me to be strong. I needed advice on how to care for my brothers and sister. I needed special messages of love for me alone, but spirits are under no obligation to say or do what we want. They are in the Afterworld now and have their own entitlements. It’s up to us to read the deeper meaning.
The shaman’s voice rose. Hairs prickled on the back of my neck as I was enveloped in love. “My life has been in the sea, but my heart has been with my daughters. I love my oldest daughter for her courage. I love my youngest daughter for the sound of her laughter. I will miss them in the coldness of black death.”
With that, Shaman Kim came out of her trance. It was time for more singing and dancing. Then we shared a meal from the sea—slivers of octopus, sea urchin roe, slices of raw fish. My mother had died in the sea, but we could never forget that it gave us life.
That night, Mi-ja stayed with me again, curling her body around mine. “Every year you will mourn a little less and release a little more,” she whispered in my ear. “In time, your sadness will melt away like seafoam.”
I nodded as though I understood, but her words offered little comfort when I knew she had never freed herself of the grief she felt for the loss of her own mother and father.
* * *
They say, When the hen cries, the household will collapse. But we don’t have a saying for what happens when the hen dies. As the eldest daughter, I had always been responsible for my younger siblings. Now I had to provide their food and clothing and be a second mother to them. My father was no help. He was a kind man, but he shuddered under the added responsibility. Too often I found him outside, alone with his sadness. N
o man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.
If family worries were not enough, the Japanese colonists gripped us ever tighter in the months after my mother’s death. She had once hoped to earn enough money to send my brothers to school, if only to age ten. The extra income I earned might once have helped pay their way. But even if we could have relied on my extra income, it was too dangerous, when those “lucky” boys who attended schools around the island were suddenly being forced to build underground bunkers to hide Japanese soldiers.
I felt pressured from every direction. I sought courage and inspiration in the ways my mother had. Wherever you are on Jeju, you can see Grandmother Seolmundae. I walked on the goddess’s flesh, I swam over and through her skirts, I breathed in air she had exhaled. I also had two living people I could rely on: Mi-ja, who was a survivor, and my grandmother, who loved me very much and had also suffered tragedies; and they trusted me to do my best for the family.
“Parents exist in children,” Grandmother said to bolster my confidence. “Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.”
And on those days when we walked to the sea and found Mi-ja waiting at her usual spot in the olle, Grandmother recited common sayings in hopes of comforting us two motherless girls. “The ocean is better than your natal mother,” she said. “The sea is forever.”
Day 2: 2008
The morning after the encounter with the family on the beach, Young-sook wakes early. She’s had a nearly sleepless night. All through the darkness, her mind was troubled, thinking about the foreign woman, her husband, and their children. She remembered all the rumors she’d heard about Mi-ja over the years: she was in America, living in a mansion, driving her own car, and sending money to her part of the village. But there were other stories too: she had a small grocery store in Los Angeles, she lived in an apartment, she was lonely because she was too old to pick up the language. Having met Mi-ja’s family, Young-sook isn’t sure what to believe.
She pads to the kitchen, heats water, stirs in tangerine marmalade, and sips the tart, citrusy drink. She goes to her kitchen garden to pick chives and garlic to add to her morning bowl of little-crab porridge. Then she returns to her room to get dressed, put her bedding away, and eat her breakfast. Dawn still hasn’t arrived.
When she was a girl, a haenyeo officially retired at age fifty-five. Those who continued breathing the air of this earth didn’t want to stay home, so they did water work on the shore. Times have changed. When she joins her grandson and his family in the big house for breakfast, she often announces, “I get lonesome at home by myself. I think I’ll go down to the sea.” What she means is she gets bored sitting around the house with her youngest great-grandchildren. Yes, she should enjoy those special times with the babies—something she wasn’t able to do with her own children—but they don’t have stories or tease or joke around. And working in the dry fields has never been, as her great-grandchildren put it, “her thing,” with all that stooped weeding, hoeing, planting, and harvesting. For her, life is better when she can live in harmony with nature—the wind, the tides, and the moon.
Young-sook can do what she wants, because she’s financially self-sufficient. No one ever paid her way, and no one ever will. She considers the sea to be her bank. Even if she didn’t have checks or credit cards, she could make money underwater. She’d always felt healthiest when she dove too, always felt healed in the water. Whenever she had problems in her life, she went diving. Of course, it’s dangerous, but every day something pulls her to the sea. When her body isn’t underwater, her mind is.
“I hear the ocean calling,” she tells her grandson this morning, and he isn’t about to fight her, and neither will anyone else in the household. Even long after she could have retired, she was one of the best haenyeo, with the most hard-won experience of tides, currents, and surges, the deepest knowledge of the nesting grounds for octopus, and her ability to hold her breath. How strange that these days it’s hard to find a haenyeo under fifty-five. They say that in another twenty years, the haenyeo will be extinct.
She has constant pain and ringing in her ears from decades of water pressure. She gets headaches, vertigo, dizziness, and nausea—as if she were always on a rocking boat. Her hips ache from carrying the weights she wore around her waist to drag her to the ocean floor when she started wearing a wet suit and the effort it took to fight against them when she needed to resurface. Those weights were in addition to paddling back to a boat or to shore with her net as heavy as thirty kilos with a day’s catch, and then dragging it onto dry land and back to the bulteok. Still, the unrelenting sea . . . It beckons her . . .
As she walks to the shore, Young-sook sees the remnants of the old stone bulteok and bathing enclosures, where these days young people go to meet in secret, listen to music, and smoke cigarettes. Such a waste. She veers left and joins other old women as they enter the new bulteok. It has individual shower stalls, changing rooms, air-conditioning, a stove, and a huge tub that can fit at least a dozen women, so they can rinse away salt water and warm up at the same time. It doesn’t have a fire pit, but it has a roof, and area heaters can be pulled out when needed. All these amenities, along with healthcare, have been given by the government as a thank-you for the work the haenyeo have done.
The women peel off their clothes. Breasts that long ago fed babies and gave husbands pleasure droop down to belly buttons. Once flat stomachs now ripple with rolls of insulating fat. Hair that was once lustrous black has dulled to white. Hands that have seen a lifetime of work are knobby, wrinkled, and scarred. Next to Young-sook, the Kang sisters yank and stretch their black neoprene pants up and over their sagging bottoms. Then they pull over their heads their regulation orange neoprene tops, which will make them more visible to passing boats.
Young-sook squeezes her skull through her cap, positioning the small opening above her eyebrows and just below her lips. As she looks around the bulteok, she sees the weathered faces of friends she’s known her entire life squishing through their own small openings. The characters of the women—and their histories of goodness, generosity, stinginess, and callousness—are centered in those few centimeters. Each line tells a story of underwater journeys, births and deaths, survival and triumph. The deep grooves around Kang Gu-ja’s mouth bloom outward like a child’s drawing of the sun. Creases streak from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks. Kang Gu-sun will forever be the younger sister. Despite her losses, kindness radiates from her eyes. Some women are toothless, cheeks pressed forward, amplifying furrows of sorrow and joy. Now, almost as one, they pull their face masks onto their heads, but each woman wears hers in a unique manner—over her brow, on top of her head, or on the side at an angle. A few women add homemade floral vests over their neoprene tops, wanting to show off their individuality.
The grannies leave the bulteok—with their tewaks, nets, fins, and other tools—walk down some steps, and set out across the jetty to the boat. They’re taken to a cove off a nearby island known for its abundance of top shell. Once the boat reaches its destination, Young-sook and the other women take a few moments to make offerings of rice and rice wine to the Dragon Sea God and pray for an abundant harvest, a safe return, and peace of mind. Young-sook’s life by now can be summed up in three words—pray, pray, pray—for all the good those prayers have done her.
Then, whoosh . . . Into the water. It’s been about thirty years since she and other haenyeo started wearing rubber clothes. “You’ll be covered head to toe,” an official from the government had told them. “This will finally put an end to the criticism that haenyeo are immodest and show too much skin. And you’ll be helping with our tourism industry!” (He’d been talking about tourists from the mainland, and he’d been right about that. But no one back then could have predicted the foreign tourists, that they’d love to come to the shore to watch ancients like her enter the sea, or that they’d enjoy seeing “re-creat
ions” at the new Haenyeo Museum, where hired girls wore traditional water clothes and sang rowing songs in daily shows.) When Young-sook first started using a wet suit, she’d been able to stay in the water longer, because she was protected from the cold. It had also protected her from jellyfish stings and water snake bites. (It did not protect her from other dangers: fishing lines or speedboats bearing tourists.) Weights and fins had helped her reach a greater depth too. The result: she was safer, her catches were larger, and she’d earned more money. But when people suggested the haenyeo start using oxygen tanks, she, along with other divers around the island, refused. “Everything we do must be natural,” she’d told the collective, “otherwise we’ll harvest too much, deplete our wet fields, and earn nothing.” There, again, balance.
As she settles into the feeling of weightlessness, her aches and pains melt away. And, on a day like today, when her mind is in turmoil, the vastness of the ocean offers solace. She kicks down, going headfirst, shooting her body deeper and deeper. She hopes the pressure on her ears will squash the thoughts of the past. Instead, it feels as though they’re being pushed out—like toothpaste from a tube. The image troubles her. She needs to concentrate—always be aware—but her mother and grandmother, and, lurking in the shadows of her mind, Mi-ja, keep pushing against the backs of her eyes.
Young-sook’s mother used to say that the sea was like a mother, while Young-sook’s grandmother said that the sea was better than a mother. After all these years, Young-sook knows her grandmother to be the most right. The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.