The Island of Sea Women

by Lisa See

  I gathered what food and water I could carry. Beyond that and my two children, I didn’t have anything to pack. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I slipped out in the darkest part of night and creeped barefoot through the village, with food and water strapped to my back, Kyung-soo tied to my breast, and holding Min-lee’s hand. I’d stuffed her mouth with straw and tied it shut with a rag so she couldn’t make a sound until we were safely out of the village. We walked all night, skirting refugee encampments with their foul odors and pathetic cries. We slept during the day, curled together in the shadow of a rock wall surrounding an abandoned field. As soon as darkness fell, we started again, staying far off the dirt road that circumnavigated the island, hugging the shore, and avoiding anything that warned of human habitation—houses, oil lamps, or open fires. My entire body ached. Kyung-soo slept on my chest, but I now carried Min-lee on my hip in addition to the strain of the pack on my back.

  Just when I felt I couldn’t go another step, the outline of Hado came into view. Suddenly, my feet flew across stones. I longed to find my father and brother, but my duty was to go straight to my mother-in-law’s home. I ducked into the courtyard between the little and big houses.

  “Who’s there?” came a quavering voice.

  I’d lived through so much, yet it hadn’t occurred to me that Do-saeng, one of the strongest women I would ever know, could be so cowed by fear.

  “It’s Young-sook,” I whispered.

  The front door slowly opened. A hand reached out and pulled me inside. Without the aid of glittering light from the stars, I was unbalanced, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Do-saeng’s rough palm stayed closed over my wrist. “Jun-bu? Yu-ri?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, but my silence told my mother-in-law the answers. She choked back a sob, and in the darkness I felt her fight her body’s impulse to collapse in anguish. She reached up, touched my face, and ran her hands down my body, before caressing Min-lee—her hair, her sturdy little legs, and her size. Then she felt the baby on my chest. When her hands didn’t find a little boy, she learned that I’d lost a son too. We stood together like that, two women bound by the deepest sorrow, tears running down our faces, afraid to make a sound in case someone might hear us.

  Even with the door and side wall used for ventilation pulled shut, we moved like a pair of ghosts. Do-saeng unfolded a sleeping mat. I lay Min-lee down first, then unwrapped Kyung-soo. With that, the cold air bit through the front of my tunic and pants, which had been soaked through with his urine. Do-saeng undressed me like I was a small child and wiped down my breasts and stomach with a wet cloth. Her hand paused for a moment on my lower belly, where Jun-bu’s child was just beginning to make his or her presence known. No words could express the grief and hopefulness that passed between my mother-in-law and me in that moment. Still feeling her way, she drew a shirt over my head and then whispered, “We’ll have time for talking later.”

  I slept for hours. I was aware of things happening around me as dawn broke. Padding feet going in and out of the house. My mother-in-law prying Min-lee away from my side to take her to the latrine or perhaps to fetch water and firewood. Kyung-soo making a couple of squawks, and my being conscious enough to feel hands lift him from the sleeping mat and carry him to a distance far enough away that I would be neither terrified nor wakened. I heard men’s voices—low and worried—and knew they belonged to my father and brother.

  When my eyes finally blinked open hours upon hours later, I saw Do-saeng sitting cross-legged about a meter away from me. Kyung-soo was crawling nearby, exploring. Min-lee was setting pairs of chopsticks on the rims of bowls that had been put on the floor. The room smelled of steaming millet and the tanginess of well-fermented kimchee.

  “You woke up!” I heard in my daughter’s voice the fear that I might leave her or give her up. The poor child helped me to a sitting position and handed me one of the bowls. The food smelled delicious—giving off the fragrance of home and safety—but my stomach lurched and twisted.

  “After the bombing of Hiroshima,” my mother-in-law said, unprompted, “I couldn’t accept what had happened. I didn’t have my monthly bleeding for six months, but my husband hadn’t blessed me with another life to bring into the world. I finally had to acknowledge that he’d died alone, without me or any family to care for him. The worst part was wondering if he died immediately or if he suffered. Like you, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep—”

  “I thank you for your worry.”

  Do-saeng smiled at me sadly. “Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren’t brave. Now you need to be braver still.”

  This was her way of telling me that even though nothing had yet happened in Hado, terror could be visited upon this place, whether by the insurgents, the police, or the military.

  My mother-in-law continued in a gentle tone. “Young-sook, you need to look forward. You need to eat. You need to help the baby inside you grow. You need to live and thrive. You need to do these things for your children.” She hesitated for a moment. Then, “And you need to start preparing in earnest to be the next chief of the collective.”

  There was a time when I would have wished this above all else. Now, not only was my desire gone but the idea seemed an impossibility. “Chief of the collective? Even if we were allowed to dive, I couldn’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”

  “When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree,” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.” She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she went on. “Have you never wondered the real reason that I allowed you to go out for leaving-home water-work when you were barely married to my son? I wanted to increase the speed of your training to become chief. What if something happened to me?”

  But this was opposite to everything I’d believed about her. “I thought you blamed me—”

  “Once I would have wanted Yu-ri to become chief,” she said, speaking over me, “but we both know she did not have the judgment for it. On that day . . .” Even after all these years, it was hard for her to talk about what happened. “You showed courage, even though it was your first dive. Becoming a haenyeo chief is what your mother planned for you too. She was a good mother to you, and she trusted you. You have been a good mother to your children, but now you must be an even better and stronger mother. Children are hope and joy. On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”

  I used to think mothers-in-law are difficult the world over, but on that day I came to understand that they’re simply unknowable. Their motives. The things they say. Who they choose for their sons or daughters to marry. Whether they share the way they make kimchee with you or not. But one thing was clear: for all the losses Do-saeng had suffered, which were at least equal to mine but perhaps far worse since she had no son left to care for her when she went to the Afterworld, she’d continued to live. Yet again I was faced with the most basic truth, the one that I’d learned when my mother died: when the end comes, it’s over. Plain and simple. There’s no turning back the clock, no way to make amends, no way, even, to say goodbye. But I also remembered how my grandmother had said, “Parents exist in children.” Jun-bu existed in our unborn baby, in all our children. I now had to follow my mother-in-law’s advice and draw strength from the things I’d learned, if only to protect this tiny bit of my husband I carried in my belly. I would live because I could not die.

  * * *

  When July came, the seas, wind, and air went hot and still. My pregnancy was now unmistakable. At six months, my belly ballooned out bigger than for any of my previous pregnancies, even though I had less t
o eat. And whatever I was lucky enough to put down my throat came right back up. The vomiting I should have had in the early months came full force in the final months and wouldn’t leave. It felt like I was on choppy seas but couldn’t get off the boat. Not ever. I threw up in the latrine, with the pigs fighting beneath me to get what fell from my mouth. I threw up in the olles when I fetched water or gathered dung for the fire. I threw up outside our neighbors’ houses and in their houses. And still my stomach grew.

  “Perhaps this is because you can’t go in the sea,” my mother-in-law speculated. It was true. I was too awkward to sneak out at night, scurry across the rocks, let alone lug a net heavy with harvest on my back, which meant I could find no refreshing chill of the water, no buoyancy, no quiet.

  My father and brother laughed whenever they saw me, and they tried to revive my spirits by gently teasing me. Our neighbors offered home remedies to relieve my discomfort. Kang Gu-ja said I should eat more kimchee; Kang Gu-sun said I should avoid kimchee. One said I should sleep on my left side; the other said I should sleep on my right side. I tried all but one suggestion.

  “You need to get married again,” Gu-sun said. “You need a man to stir the pot.”

  “But who would want to marry me and stir my pot filled with another man’s child?” I asked, going along with the idea even though I would never do it.

  “You could become a little wife—”

  “Never!” Jeju, which had never had enough men, now had far fewer. There had to be many women like me—widowed, with children, particularly from the mid-mountain areas—who would need a man to give them security, but not me. “I’m a haenyeo. I can take care of myself and my children. A time will come when I’ll be able to dive again.”

  Beyond all that, I’d loved Jun-bu. He wasn’t as replaceable as a broken diving tool. No, I could never become a wife or a little wife.

  Anyway, I had a different theory for why I was so big. My muscles, which had always been so strong, had been stretched beyond their limit by what I’d experienced and by what was still happening around me. Since the first of the year, dozens of villages had been burned to the ground, and more of the population had been killed. Among them were many innocents. I felt like I carried all of them inside me. My mother-in-law and I made spirit tablets for Yu-ri, Jun-bu, and Sung-soo, and we bowed to them every day and made offerings, but nothing soothed my discomforts. My back and legs ached constantly. My feet, ankles, face, and fingers swelled. I couldn’t get comfortable on my sleeping mat. In fact, it was hard for me to get up from and down onto the floor. Min-lee complained that I would no longer pick her up. I felt damp and sweaty in every crevice. My tears, for the most part, had dried, but there were times I still thought about dying. I could swim out across the path of moon shadows late at night until I wouldn’t have the strength to return to shore. I could drink poison, throw myself in the well, or slice open my wrists with my diving knife. I so much wanted to find peace.

  In August, the weather changed as winds stirred on the East China Sea and raced unobstructed across the waters until they smacked into Jeju, telling us a typhoon was coming. Do-saeng promised we’d be safe. She said that her husband’s great-grandfather had built these houses and that they’d withstood every typhoon that had passed over the island. Still, I was frightened and longed to move inland to my family home. The typhoon that hit us wasn’t the worst we’d ever experienced, but we were all so much weaker in our bodies and minds that the impact was just one more remorseless blow. Lashing winds and savage gusts whipped the island. Massive waves roiled over the shore and into houses. Violent rain came in horizontally. Boats were smashed on the rocks. Those few families that had crops saw them drowned or washed away. Once the rain stopped, the churning seas settled, and the sun came out, I saw that Do-saeng was right. Many people had lost their homes or had their roofs ripped off, and a wall of the bulteok had collapsed, but we were unscathed. I helped my neighbors gather the stones from fallen walls and cut thatch for their roofs. All the members of the collective worked together to rebuild our bulteok, bathing enclosures, and the stone wall that created the pool in the shallows we used for catching anchovies.

  We received yet another setback in September, when insurgents entered Hado and burned the elementary school. Fortunately, it happened at night and no kids were there. At the beginning of October, the hillsides climbing Grandmother Seolmundae went aflame not with another village being burned but with the fiery colors of the season. This was a reminder to us that whatever was happening between men would pass, and nature would endure with her cycles and beauty. People in Hado were still working hard, seeing what, if anything, they could plant for the winter months, and mending nets and other sea tools in hopes that the haenyeo would be allowed back in the water at some point. This was not a display of optimism. We were just trying to stay alive.

  There came a day when I noticed that Do-saeng was being unusually quiet. No joking. No bossing. No nothing. I told myself she was unused to having small children in her life, and their laughter, crying, and demanding ways were heartbreaking reminders of the son and daughter she’d lost. My father and brother came to help me with the children. Only instead of taking them to the village tree, as they once did, they played with them in the courtyard. They said they wanted to keep the family close in case the Ninth Regiment should arrive. When my brother, father, or Do-saeng offered to fetch water from the well, I agreed. What could an immensely pregnant woman—who had about as much swiftness in her as a stranded whale—do to protect herself if military men or insurgents decided they wanted to rape or kill her? For the first time in my life I let others take care of me. Then one day it all became clear.

  I was in my ninth month and home alone. My mother-in-law had gone to the five-day market in Sehwa to see what staples she could buy. My father and brother had taken the children to my old family home, so I could nap. But as soon as they left and silence fell over the house, my mind got itchy with images and memories. To distract myself, I swept the courtyard. Then I decided to wash the children’s clothes and let them dry in the sun. I tied their garments in a piece of cloth, grabbed the bucket, washboard, and soap, and carefully picked my way across the rocks to the shallow area enclosed by rocks where we could wash clothes and our bodies without being seen. Stepping inside was like entering a bulteok: I never knew who would be there, but I looked forward to hearing the gossip. This time, a lone woman sat in the water, naked, scrubbing an arm and humming to herself. I recognized who she was by the curve of her spine. My insides spasmed protectively around my baby.

  “Mi-ja.”

  Her back stiffened at the sound of my voice. Then she slowly tilted her head to the side to peer at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re as big as everyone says.”

  That’s what she had to say to me?

  “What are you doing here?” I choked out.

  “My son and I live here now.” After a long pause, she added, “In my aunt and uncle’s house. Our home in Hamdeok and my in-laws’ house in Jeju City were destroyed by the typhoon. My husband has gone to the mainland. He’s working in the government. I—”

  A second spasm hit me with such ferocity that I doubled over. I dropped my bucket and the other things I’d brought and steadied myself by holding on to the rock wall.

  “Are you all right?” Mi-ja asked. “Can I help you?”

  She started to rise. Water ran down her breasts and legs. Her skin rippled with goosebumps. As she reached for her clothes, I turned and staggered out of there. Another spasm. I bent at the waist, barely able to walk. I saw Do-saeng standing outside the house, scanning the beach. When she saw me, she let her shopping bags fall and scuttled as fast as a crab over the rocks to me. She put her arm around my midsection and hurried me up to the house. Mi-ja did not follow us, but I was weeping with anger, sadness, and pain.

  “How can she be here?”

  “They say her husband’s house was destroyed in the typhoon,” Do-saeng answered, confirming what Mi-
ja had just told me.

  “But there are other places she could go.”

  “Hado is her home, and her husband—”

  “Was sent to the mainland,” I moaned, finishing for her. “Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”

  “Your father, brother, and I thought it best. We wanted to protect you.”

  “But how can she be here? How can anyone let her live here after what she did?”

  Do-saeng set her lips in a grim streak. This was painful for her too.

  Another contraction gripped me. I was sure the baby would slip out easily, since I’d never had problems giving birth in the past. I was wrong. This baby had been difficult from the first moment I knew of its presence. Did it not want to come out? Or did I not want it to come out? All I know is that the baby took three days to push its way into the world. I threw up the entire time. I cried. I screamed. I thought about all I’d lost. I felt hate for Mi-ja and love for my baby. I felt the loss of Jun-bu, my son, and Yu-ri even as I brought a new life into the world. At last, Do-saeng pulled the baby from between my legs and held it up for me to see. A girl. I named her Joon-lee.

  Do-saeng recited the traditional words. “When a girl is born, there is a party,” but I was exhausted, my body ached, and I couldn’t stop weeping. Joon-lee, worn out from her three-day journey, was too sleepy to take my breast. I flicked my fingernail on the bottom of her foot. She blinked and then closed her eyes again.