The Island of Sea Women

by Lisa See

  Schools had remained open to keep boys and young men occupied. Jun-bu had struggled with his part in this, but he was right that we needed the money when we haenyeo weren’t allowed to dive. We were all hungry and getting weaker every day. My children didn’t have the energy to cry, but they whimpered at night. All I could do was make meager offerings to Halmang Samseung in the hope she would prevent my breast milk from drying up. If it did, I wasn’t sure how I would nourish Kyung-soo.

  Life-Giving Air

  January 16–17, 1949

  Winters can be long and dreary on Jeju, and the January of 1949 was particularly so. One night, the wind seemed to blow worse than ever through cracks in the walls of the house. My children could barely move, because their clothes were so padded that their arms and legs stuck out from their bodies like branches. Jun-bu and I laid out our sleeping mats, all of them touching. Min-lee and Sung-soo crawled off their mats and snuggled close to us, seeking extra warmth. I held Kyung-soo in the crook of my arm. Even with the oil lamps off and the room in utter darkness, the children fidgeted from cold and hunger. We didn’t know how to explain our misfortune to them when we were having a hard time understanding it ourselves, but I knew that if I could calm Min-lee, then Sung-soo would quiet as well. A story might help.

  “We’re lucky that our island has so many goddesses to watch over us.” I spoke softly, hoping my lowered voice would bring tranquillity. “But we have one real-life woman, who was as brave and persistent as any goddess. Her name was Kim Mandeok, and she lived three hundred years ago. She was the daughter of an aristocrat, who’d been exiled here. Her mother was . . .” I was not going to say prostitute. “Her mother worked in Jeju City. Kim Mandeok did not follow in her mother’s wake.”

  Jun-bu smiled at me in the darkness and squeezed my hand.

  “Kim Mandeok opened an inn and became a merchant. She sold the great specialties of Jeju—horsehair, sea mustard, abalone, and dried ox gallstones. Then came the Most Horrendous Famine. People ate every dog. Soon, only water was left over, and our island doesn’t have much water. Kim Mandeok had to help. She sold everything she owned and then paid one thousand gold bars to buy rice for the people. When the king heard what she’d done, he offered to repay her, but she refused. He said he would give her whatever she desired, but her single request was bigger than the moon. She asked to make a pilgrimage to the mainland to visit sacred sites. The king kept his word, and she became not only the first native-born islander but also the first woman in two centuries to leave Jeju to go to the mainland. It is through Kim Mandeok that the inconceivable became conceivable. She paved the way for your father and so many others to leave Jeju.”

  “Kim Mandeok was a woman with a generous heart,” Jun-bu whispered to Min-lee. “She was selfless and only thought of others. She was, little one, like your own mother.”

  The children drifted off to sleep. I placed the baby between his sister and brother and moved into my husband’s arms. It was too cold to remove all our clothes. He pulled his pants down over his rump. I wiggled out of mine. Our hunger and desperation—and all the death and destruction around us—drove us to do the very thing that created life, that said there would be a future, that reminded us of our own humanity.

  * * *

  Not many hours later, we were awakened by what we’d come to recognize as gunfire. This was not uncommon in those days. The jolting to consciousness. The moment of terror. The instinctual gathering of my children. Jun-bu wrapping his arms around us all. Footsteps echoing through the olles. Shouts and gruff whispers insinuating their way into our room. Followed by silence. Soon, the baby dozed off, and the tension in my other children’s bodies melted as they returned to the limpness of slumber. Jun-bu and I lay awake together, listening, until we too fell back asleep.

  When dawn broke and Min-lee and I went outside to gather dried dung and haul water, we found Mi-ja standing in the small courtyard in front of my house. She looked better than when I’d seen her eight months earlier. The sheen of her hair caught the morning sun’s rays. Her eyes were bright. She’d gained a little weight. Air puffed in clouds from her mouth. She was alone.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, thoroughly surprised but also a little wary. I was relieved to see she was all right, but a part of me felt I had to be careful, knowing the side her husband had taken.

  Before she could answer, Min-lee squealed, “Where’s Yo-chan?” The two children would turn four in June. They were old enough to remember each other despite our infrequent visits.

  Mi-ja smiled at her. “He went with his father to see his grandparents in Jeju City. It wasn’t far out of their way to drop me off. For now”—she turned her gaze to me—“I’m visiting my oldest friend.”

  I had many questions, but first the required pleasantries. “Have you eaten? Will you spend the night?” Inside, I was wondering what I could feed her, where she would sleep in our small teacher’s house, and how her husband would respond.

  “No need. They’ll be back for me this afternoon.” She tilted her head. “Give me a jar. Take me to the village well. Let me help.”

  Min-lee skipped away to find another jar. Mi-ja put her hands on my cheeks. I couldn’t tell if she was taking in all the changes that hardship had brought to my face or was memorizing it to sustain her until the next time we saw each other. Either way, I felt love passing through her fingers and into my flesh. How could I ever have doubted her?

  Min-lee returned with a water jar nestled in a basket. Mi-ja put this on her back, then looped an arm through mine. To Min-lee, she said, “Lead the way.”

  Mi-ja moved with such ease. She had a frail quality to her steps that served as a camouflage for the strength of her body and mind.

  I heard a commotion up ahead. I wanted to go back home, but it’s the duty of women and girls to fetch water for their families. Bukchon’s well was in the square, so that’s where we had to go. If my daughter and I were no longer terrified by the sound of gunshots in the night, I can also say—with sadness—that we were no longer horror-struck by the sight of a dead body, but when we reached the square and found two soldiers, identifiable by their uniforms, lying on stretchers, Mi-ja gasped loudly. Both men had been shot in the chest. Their blood had seeped through their shirts in the shapes of grotesque flowers. About a dozen elders stood over the lifeless forms, arguing.

  “We need to take them to the military headquarters in Hamdeok,” one of the old men said. “That way we can prove we had nothing to do with this.”

  “No,” another responded indignantly. “All that will show is that we let them die here.”

  “How did we let them die? They were here to protect us from the insurgents—”

  Mi-ja had gone as white as seafoam. I took her elbow, and the three of us pushed through the men to the well. We filled our jars and then retreated, hoping to return home quickly.

  “If we take them to Hamdeok, the military will retaliate.”

  “If we don’t take them, the military will retaliate.”

  “But we didn’t do anything!” another elder shouted, as though his raised voice would bring back the two lives.

  Once in the olle, Min-lee babbled happily, as if nothing had happened. “Is Yo-chan good at counting? Has he learned any characters yet? Look how I can count! One, two, three . . .”

  But what had become normal to us was horrifying to my old friend, who still looked shaken and hadn’t spoken since we’d first reached the square.

  “Maybe you should go home,” I said. “Trouble could be coming. Jun-bu can walk you.”

  “No, I’m fine,” she mumbled. Then, a little louder, “I agree with the elder who said they should take the bodies to Hamdeok. The military will recognize innocence when they see it.”

  On the surface, this was how it had been our entire lives. Her lightness; my earthiness. Her cleverness; my simplicity. But things had changed. Now I thought she was acting willfully ignorant. The military was stationed in Hamdeok. Refugees lived in t
he school yard. People had been killed there. Her husband’s position probably protected her, but that shouldn’t have made her blind to the realities. Still, I didn’t argue with her. I wanted to see her as my friend and not as her husband’s wife.

  We entered the courtyard before my home. She set down her water jar and basket, slipped off her shoes, and entered the house. Min-lee and I followed wordlessly behind her. Jun-bu held Kyung-soo. Mi-ja rushed forward, her arms outstretched. “Let me see him.” I sensed my husband’s hesitancy. The last time we’d all been together hadn’t ended well between him and Sang-mun, but then the moment passed and Jun-bu allowed Mi-ja to take the baby. I suggested again that Jun-bu walk her home, but she waved off the idea. All this took only seconds.

  “Then I’ll go to the school,” my husband said. To me, he added, “Our sons are dressed and fed. Granny Cho will be here shortly. I’ll come back at lunch.” With that, he ducked out the door.

  Mi-ja, still holding Kyung-soo, glided across the floor to where Yu-ri was playing with a pile of shells and kissed her on the top of her head. My sister-in-law didn’t react, but that was expected. Mi-ja set Kyung-soo on the floor, and in a series of swift movements, she pulled a scarf from her pocket, untied the one that covered Yu-ri’s hair, and replaced it with the new one.

  “My husband bought this for me,” she said. “But from the moment I saw it, I knew it could only be for you. And see? The green and purple pattern looks pretty next to your face.”

  Yu-ri drew her hand up under her chin to show her pleasure. Next, Mi-ja peered around the room. I couldn’t tell if she liked it or not, and she didn’t give me a chance to ask, because her eyes came to rest on me. “You look thin,” she said, “and I’ve never seen you so pale.”

  I was not the kind of woman who sought the reassurances of a mirror, but my fingers went reflexively to my face. Now that I thought about it, I was paler than Mi-ja.

  “You’re the mother of three children,” she chastised me. “You need to be strong for them. Every mother gives the best morsels to her young, but you need to eat too.”

  I honestly couldn’t say if I was hurt because she didn’t have sympathy for me or stunned because her life had so changed that she didn’t recall the desperation of an empty stomach. “On the day we met—”

  Ignoring me, she pointed in the direction of the sea. “Your wet fields are right there. Let’s dive.”

  “Maybe you don’t know that the haenyeo have been forbidden—”

  She held up her hands in the same innocent gesture she’d used in Vladivostok when we got in trouble. “We aren’t diving as haenyeo,” she explained to the invisible person who might catch us. “We’re just two friends swimming together.”

  “In January?” I asked, dubious.

  She smiled in return. I decided to trust her.

  By the time Granny Cho arrived, Mi-ja and I had already changed into clothes we could wear into the sea. Not water clothes, which would mark us as haenyeo, but mere undergarments for me and an old sleeping shirt for Mi-ja. Over these, we wore our day clothes. We were so intent on looking innocent as we strolled toward the shore that we barely paid attention to the procession of elders carrying the two dead soldiers on their stretchers in the direction of Hamdeok. We simply pressed our backs against the rocky wall of the olle and pretended to whisper to each other, as friends do.

  We didn’t dare enter the bulteok. Instead, in plain view, we stripped off our outer clothes and walked hand in hand into the shallows. We didn’t wear our small-eyed goggles, which might also telegraph our intentions. If a villager saw us, he or she might think it strange that we would swim in the frigid water—for fun—at this time of year, but that person might also see two friends who’d enjoyed the sea together since childhood. If a soldier decided to make a fuss, I planned to share what we’d harvested with him.

  Since haenyeo had not been allowed to dive, the area just offshore was extra-rich with top shell and conch. These we snatched up and put into small nets. We were not greedy. We could not look greedy if we were caught. We were breaking a rule as tightly enforced as the curfew, but under the sea I felt that what I was doing was completely right. This was my world. How could I have let anyone tell me I could not visit it to feed my children? Beside me, I had Mi-ja, who gave me added courage.

  Around 11:00, after we’d gathered enough ingredients to make a porridge flavored with sea urchin roe and a stew of top shell and dried sweet potatoes, Mi-ja and I swam back to shore and quickly put on our clothes. We stuffed our nets into our baskets and covered them with pieces of cloth. We were hiding what we’d done but only in a minimal way, sure that any deliberate tricks or ploys would make us seem guiltier if someone stopped us to investigate. As we walked back toward my house, we saw people going about their daily lives with cautious peacefulness. Most of the men had gathered under the village tree, with the smallest children and babies in their care, yet I spotted none of the elders who’d taken the bodies to Hamdeok. Girls, many with younger brothers or sisters strapped to their backs, ran errands for their mothers. We saw women our age and older, bundled up against the cold and sitting on their front steps, doing what haenyeo who are not permitted to dive do—mending nets, sharpening knives and spears, repairing tears in their water clothes or sewing new ones for their daughters. Everyone wanted to be ready when the diving ban was lifted.

  The quiet was shattered—without a single shout or rumble of warning—by the sounds of trucks, gunfire, and running footsteps. Instant chaos. It was as if demon gods had descended on us all at once and from all sides. Fathers snatched up babies and toddlers. Brothers grabbed their siblings’ hands. Women, who’d been at home, bolted into the olles, searching for their children, grandchildren, and husbands. Mi-ja and I ran too. I had to get home to my children and Yu-ri. Mi-ja stayed at my side. We couldn’t be separated. I needed her, but, being away from home, she needed me even more. She was a stranger in Bukchon. No one would take her in if we got separated, because, for all they knew, she could be an insurgent or a spy.

  I smelled smoke and heard the crackle of fire before I saw it. When we darted around a corner, burning balls careened toward us. They were rats on fire! Behind them, flames shot up from thatch roofs, with several houses already engulfed. Men in uniforms and carrying torches jogged from house to house, igniting more roofs.

  “Come! There’s another way!” I shouted.

  We turned and sprinted back the way we’d come, pushing through those who were coming toward us. But soldiers were everywhere. We were quickly surrounded.

  “Do not move!” one of them shouted at us.

  “Do not run!” another yelled.

  But my children! I looked frantically in every direction. I had to get home. Another dozen or so people ran into the same trap that had caught Mi-ja and me. Surely every one of us wanted to flee—out of a desire to live or to find our families—but with rifles pointed at us and flames heating our backs, we had to obey. If I was shot in this olle, I could not help my children, and I wouldn’t find my husband and my sister-in-law. The haenyeo in me was filled with righteous anger. I will survive for my family. I will protect my family.

  The soldiers herded us like cattle, pushing us forward. Other soldiers with more captives flowed into our group.

  Mi-ja held my upper arm in a fierce grip. “Where are they taking us?” she asked, her voice tremulous.

  I had no answer. Mi-ja and I were in the middle of the pack. Bodies pressed against us on every side. We were funneled around another turn and came into the olle with the row of teachers’ houses, where I lived. I squeezed through the press of humans until I reached the edge. The gate to my courtyard was pulled open. Yu-ri’s tether lay limp and useless. The door to the house was ajar. It seemed like no one was there, but I shouted anyway. “Min-lee. Sung-soo. Granny Cho.” No answer. I hoped Granny Cho had taken the children to a secure place—whether to her own home or to the fields. But deep in my heart, I knew that wasn’t likely. I was sick with ter
ror, but my blood felt like molten steel. I let myself be pulled back into the crowd.

  “The school.” I did not recognize the voice that came out of me. “They’re taking us to the elementary school.”

  “Jun-bu—” Mi-ja said.

  “Maybe he already has the children.”

  We were steered through the school’s main gates. Husbands, brothers, and fathers were separated and pushed to the left. Many of them still carried babies and small children in their arms. The rest of us, including old men, were shunted to the right. At the point of separation, the ten Bukchon elders, who’d taken the two dead soldiers to Hamdeok in an attempt to avert reprisals, were stretched out like seaweed to dry on the playground. They’d each been shot in the head.

  “Keep moving! Keep moving!” soldiers yelled at us.

  My limbs bumped into those ahead of me. I was shoved from behind. Mi-ja clung to my arm. There was comfort in having her with me. At the same time, I fought the urge to shake her off. I had to find my children.

  I rose on my tiptoes, hoping to see Jun-bu and the children, but the entire population of Bukchon seemed to be here. Having heard of whole villages being wiped out—burned to the ground, all inhabitants killed—I was terrified, thinking what the soldiers might do to us.

  We came to an area with another group of soldiers, who had new orders for us. “Sit! Sit! Sit!”

  In an undulating wave, we dropped to the ground. Around me people sobbed. Some prayed to goddesses. One old woman chanted a Buddhist sutra. Babies wailed. Older children cried for their mothers. The old men hung their heads. A few people, weak or sick, lay crumpled on the ground, too exhausted to move. Opposite us, across a barren stretch of dirt, sat the men and teenage boys of Bukchon. Above us, black crows circled. Their dinner was coming.

  Soldiers stood with their legs spread to anchor themselves to the ground. Their weapons swung back and forth, roaming over us, searching for anyone who might try to bolt. Smoke clogged the air, making it hard to breathe. The whole village, except for the school, seemed to be on fire.