The Island of Sea Women Page 16

  “Mi-ja!” I ran to her and dropped my bag and other gear at our feet.

  “I’m coming with you,” she announced.

  “Your mother-in-law is letting you go?”

  “My father-in-law received a letter from Sang-mun, who says he’s learning a lot and won’t be coming home for longer than we expected. I can’t dive in the city, so I’m just another mouth to feed while my husband is on the mainland.”

  Sending Mi-ja away for leaving-home water-work didn’t make a lot of sense to me, because Sang-mun hadn’t married my friend for her diving skills or her ability to earn money for him and his family, but so what? We were going to be together again. She started to laugh, and I joined in.

  Over the next couple of days, we got to know the other girls. They were nice enough, although most of them had come less to earn money than to leave the dangers of where they lived on Jeju.

  “I was diving with my collective when bloated bodies, like a school of fish, drifted into our field,” a girl with round cheeks recounted. She shivered in disgust. “They’d been in the water a long time, and their eyes, tongues, and faces had been eaten.”

  “Were they fishermen?” I asked.

  “Sailors, I guess,” the girl answered. “Their corpses were burned. From the war.”

  “Japanese?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not their uniforms.”

  Another girl, whose eyes were set so far apart she looked disconcertingly fishlike, had lost three sisters. “They went to gather firewood one morning, and they never came home,” she told us.

  It was said Japanese troops wouldn’t dare kidnap a haenyeo to take her to be a comfort woman, but who knew? If a haenyeo or any woman from Jeju was abducted and used for sex by Japanese soldiers, the loss of face and the depth of shame would be so great that she would never be able to return to our island home.

  “At least we’ll be in Vladivostok and away from the Japanese occupiers,” someone said. “The USSR is fighting in Europe and has ignored Japan.”

  “It’s more like the Japanese have ignored the Soviets,” the girl with the round cheeks responded knowingly.

  Mi-ja and I never talked about the war; it cut too close to her family’s past. We never considered why we’d always felt safe in Vladivostok, but our haenyeo senses told us we were safe enough not to question what might be lurking behind every corner. We’d learned from our husbands more about world conferences, battle strategies, and the plans being made about our country in rooms far from our influence. Even so, we seemed less informed than these girls.

  * * *

  Mi-ja and I had our favorite boardinghouse in Vladivostok, but this time all twenty of us, plus In-ha, stayed in a dormitory. The room was long and narrow, with a lone dingy window smeared with soot and port grime at the far end. Some of the girls claimed beds on the three-tiered bunks. Mi-ja and I preferred to lay sleeping mats on the floor, so we could be next to each other.

  The following morning, we rose, gathered our gear, and made our way to the dock. The boat wasn’t terribly big—there wasn’t enough room for us all to sleep on the deck or gather inside if bad weather befell us—but the captain was Korean and seemed reliable. Beyond the protection of the port, the boat rode up a wave before slapping down on the other side. My stomach rose and fell. The engine was strong, but the sea is infinite and powerful. Up . . . Down . . . Up . . . Down . . . I felt a little seasick, but I couldn’t have been as pale as Mi-ja. Neither of us complained, however. Rather, we put our faces into the wind and let the salty mists spray our faces.

  When the captain shut down the motor and the boat bobbed in the whitecaps, we stripped out of our street clothes. Mi-ja tightened the ties on my water clothes, and I checked hers. We put on our tool belts, wedged our small-eyed goggles into place, threw our tewaks overboard, and then jumped into the water feetfirst. Bracing cold swallowed me. I kicked my feet beneath me to stay afloat. Still, the water was rough enough to smack my face. A breath, a breath, a breath, then straight down. Enveloping silence. My heart beat in my ears, reminding me to be careful, stay alert, remember where I was, and forget absolutely everything else. I wouldn’t be greedy. I’d take my time. For now, I simply looked around. I counted, one, two, three turban shells I could easily harvest on my next breath. I would make a lot of money today! I was just about to go back to the surface when I spotted a tentacle creeping sucker over sucker out of its rocky den. I held that spot in my head, then swam quickly to the surface. My sumbisori—aaah! I detached my net from my tewak, took some quick breaths, and went back down. When I got to the crevice, I saw not one but two octopuses, roiling together. I jabbed one and then the other in the head to stun them. Before they could waken, I stuffed them in my net and kicked to the surface. Aaah! Triumphant on my second dive!

  * * *

  Mi-ja discovered she was pregnant first. I expected her to cry and worry, and she did.

  “What if I have a son who’s like his father?”

  “If there’s a son inside you, he’ll be perfect, because you’ll be his mother.”

  “What if I die?”

  “I won’t let you die,” I vowed.

  But no matter what I said, Mi-ja remained gloomy and apprehensive.

  A week later . . . Joyous! That’s how I felt, even though I was hanging my head over the boat’s railing and throwing up. I too had a baby growing inside me. And Mi-ja and I weren’t the only ones on the boat. Most of us had been married for a year or less. And look! Eight of us were pregnant. Surrounded by so much happiness, Mi-ja’s spirits lifted. She was one of many. Of course In-ha wasn’t too thrilled.

  Children bring hope and joy, but naturally every single one of us wished for a son. A couple girls had secretly known they were pregnant when they left home. This meant that babies would start to arrive within five months. Mi-ja and I figured we’d have our babies—if we were right in our counting—in mid-June. But we had to get through the first rough weeks of morning sickness. Each dawn, as we went to sea, all we needed was one haenyeo to throw up to trigger the rest of us. The boat captain didn’t mind if what came out of our stomachs went directly into the sea, while In-ha changed course and decided that each woman with a child growing in her belly would be even more motivated to have a large daily harvest.

  We ate abalone porridge with all the organs nearly every day, knowing this was the most nutritious meal we could eat and that it would also train our babies to love the taste. Soon our stomachs began to swell, and we loosened the ties that closed the sides of our suits. We hoped our babies would be born “right in the field,” meaning they would take their first breaths on the boat or slip out when we were in the sea.

  Pregnancy brings changes not only to a woman’s body but also to her mind. Things Mi-ja and I had once done in Vladivostok seemed silly now. We no longer dashed from place to place to make rubbings. We’d already captured those memories. Instead, we were growing our babies. By the time the bitter months of winter arrived, Mi-ja’s morning sickness was completely gone. It lingered for me, but I found the frigid waters brought instant relief. The moment of submersion into that cold seemed to calm my baby, put him to sleep, freeze him in place. As the months passed and our bellies grew, water offered new comforts. As soon as I was submerged, my aches were massaged, and the weight of my baby was buoyed. I felt strong. Mi-ja did too.

  The first babies began to arrive. Mothers had no one onshore to care for their infants, so each baby was put in a cradle with a single rope securing it to the deck. As soon as we were in the water, the captain would leave us, as was the custom, but go not too far away. Newborns sleep a lot, and the rocking of the boat kept them calm. Nevertheless, as the morning wore on and we came back to the surface after a dive, we would hear not only the individual and unique sounds of each woman’s sumbisori but also the individual and unique cries of each baby. Lunches were lively and busy. The new mothers nursed their infants while shoveling millet and kimchee into their own mouths. The rest of us bragged and
gossiped. Then it was back into the water.

  In mid-June, Mi-ja went into labor in the sea. She kept working until the final hour, when In-ha and I joined her on the deck for the delivery. After all her foreboding, that baby practically swam out of Mi-ja. A boy! She named him Yo-chan. It was through the ancestral rights he would perform in the future that Mi-ja would be able to stay in contact with her family on earth when she went to the Afterworld. Once we got back to the dormitory, she made offerings to Halmang Samseung and Halmang Juseung—one a goddess who protects babies and one a goddess who can kill them with her flower of demolition—while I prepared a pot of buckwheat noodle soup for her to eat, since it’s known to cleanse a woman’s blood after childbirth. We did not have Shaman Kim here to bless the special protective clothes an infant wears for his first three days of life, but on his fourth morning Mi-ja packed away her worries.

  I would have preferred to have gone into labor in the ocean and had my baby born in the field, but eight days after Yo-chan’s arrival, my water broke in the middle of the night. My labor was even easier than Mi-ja’s. What came out was a girl. I liked the name Min and added to that lee for her generational name, which Min-lee would share with her future sisters. I still needed to have a son, but what a blessing it was to give birth to someone who would work for Jun-bu and me and help make money to send our future son or sons to school in the years to come. Mi-ja made me the special mother’s soup, we made offerings, and then we waited three days to make sure Min-lee survived. To honor this most important moment in our lives, we traced the babies’ footprints on pages from Mi-ja’s father’s book.

  The four of us were back on the boat within days. The babies lay side by side in their cradles, linked with all the other cradles. When we came back to the boat to warm up, we opened the tops of our water clothes, exposed our breasts, and let our babies latch on to our nipples. I was raised to follow the aphorism A good woman is a good mother. I’d learned how to be a good mother from my mother and then from being a second mother to my siblings, so I loved my baby from the moment of her first breath. Motherhood shouldn’t have come naturally to Mi-ja, but her connection to her son was instant and deep. Whenever she nursed Yo-chan, she whispered into his face, calling him ojini, which means “gentle-hearted person.” “Eat well, ojini,” she’d coo. “Sleep well. Don’t cry. Your mother is here.”

  When our contracts ended, at the end of July, our babies were six and five weeks old. We took the ferry to Jeju. Our arrival was both frightening and hopeful. My entire life I’d seen Japanese soldiers, but now there were many more of them on the wharf. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, coming off ships, milling about, marching to and fro. It was stunning enough that Mi-ja, curious as ever, asked a pair of dockworkers, “Why so many?”

  “The tide of the war has changed,” one of them answered in a low voice.

  “The Japanese might lose!” the other exclaimed, before dropping his eyes so as not to be noticed.

  “Lose?” Mi-ja echoed.

  We’d all hoped something like this would happen, but our occupiers were so strong it was hard to believe.

  “Do you understand the idea of a last stand?” the first dockworker asked. “The colonists say the Allies will have to come through Jeju to reach Japan. This is where the greatest land and sea battles will be! We’ve heard there are over seventy-five thousand Japanese soldiers living underground—”

  “And there are more than that aboveground. They say another two hundred and fifty thousand men—”

  “The Allies will step on us, crush the Japanese here, and then take one more step to Japan.”

  I remembered how Grandmother used to talk about the Mongols using Jeju as a stepping-stone to invade Japan and China. More recently, Japan had used the island as a base for bombing raids on China. If these men were right, then we were to be a stepping-stone again, this time leading to Japan.

  “Ten Japanese army divisions are here—many of them hiding! In caves! In lava tubes! And in special bases they’ve built into the cliffs right at the shoreline!” Fear had clearly pushed the second dockworker into his overwrought state. “They’ll charge their torpedo boats directly at the American navy ships. You know how the Japanese are. They’ll defend the island until all are dead. They’ll fight to the last man!”

  Mi-ja raised the back of her hand to her mouth. I hugged Min-lee closer to my breast. The idea that the war would come to our island was terrifying.

  “What should we do?” Mi-ja asked, her voice quavering.

  “There’s nothing any of us can do,” the first dockworker said. He scratched his face. “It’s lucky you weren’t here three months ago—”

  “The Japanese were going to move all women to the mainland and use the remaining men to help them fight—”

  “But then the Americans started bombing us—”

  “They bombed Jeju?” I asked, my concern turning immediately to my family.

  “And they have submarines offshore,” the first dockworker said.

  “They sank the Kowamaru,” the second one added.

  “But that’s a passenger ship!” Mi-ja exclaimed.

  “Was a passenger ship. Hundreds of Jeju people died.”

  “Now the Japanese want every Jeju person to fight the Americans when they land—”

  “Every Jeju person,” Mi-ja repeated.

  “You should go home,” the second dockworker said. “Hope for the best.”

  The pain of separating from Mi-ja and her son was made harder by the frightening news, because she would return to her husband’s home here in Jeju City, which surely would be the first target in an invasion. Mi-ja, who’d probably come to the same conclusion, had gone white. Sensing his mother’s nerves, Yo-chan began to howl. Urgency propelled us each to hire a boy to help with our things. Once Mi-ja’s boy had her purchases in his wheelbarrow, she turned to me.

  “I hope I see you again.”

  “You will,” I promised, but I was unsure.

  I touched Yo-chan’s cheek. Mi-ja cupped her palm over Min-lee’s head. We stayed that way for a long moment.

  “Even when we’re separated,” Mi-ja said, “we’ll always be together.”

  She slipped into my hand a folded piece of paper. I opened it and saw some written characters. “Before we left, my father-in-law gave me the address for my married home in case anything happened to me,” she said. “I give it to you now. I hope you will visit me one day.” With that, she flicked a finger at the boy to get him started and then followed him through the banks of soldiers. I watched until she disappeared. She never glanced back.

  On the truck ride to Hado, every curve brought a new vista of change. It felt like the entire island had become a fortress. Soldiers were camped on every field and hill. From a distance, I saw outposts at the base of each ancient beacon tower on the crest of each oreum. For centuries, these lookout towers perched atop volcanic cones had been a way for the people of Jeju to send defense communications across the island. Now, cannons pointed out to sea. Even the crows, which were so common on Jeju, felt ominous.

  When I got home, my fears about what might happen to our island turned personal and immediate. I learned Little Sister had died the previous winter from “chill.” My father hadn’t received word about my first and second brothers either. But I didn’t have a chance to feel much sadness when Father, Grandmother, and Third Brother were so happy to meet my baby. Do-saeng was beyond pleased to have a granddaughter, and she recited the traditional words when she saw us. “When a girl is born, there is a party. When a boy is born, there is a kick to the hip.” She hung a golden rope with pine branches on the front door to let our neighbors know the joyful news that I’d given birth to a daughter who would help provide food for our family one day. Yu-ri couldn’t stop beaming, but I needed to be watchful that she never be alone with Min-lee. Yu-ri wouldn’t do intentional harm, but I couldn’t count on her to be gentle always.

  The person I most wished to see—my husband—wasn’t there.
Jun-bu had returned safely from Japan and had been immediately hired to teach at the elementary school in Bukchon, which was about sixteen kilometers from Hado. He was there now, setting up our new home. I wanted to walk there right away, but Do-saeng told me that they’d agreed I should help her with the sweet potato harvest and then join him at the beginning of September, when classes started. Until then, I needed to settle back into Hado village life.

  Of course, we were all terrified. If bombs started dropping from the sky or landing boats filled with foreign soldiers came to shore, we had nothing with which to defend ourselves except for the shovels and hoes we used in our dry fields and the hooks and spears we used in our wet fields. There’s nothing like a baby, however, to remind you that life goes on. While I’d been away, one of the Kang sisters, Gu-sun, had given birth to a baby girl, Wan-soon, who was the same age as my daughter. The four of us spent many hours together. Often Gu-sun would purr about how our babies would be as close as she and her sister were or as Mi-ja and I had always been: “Min-lee and Yo-chan might marry one day, but they can never be friends the way that Min-lee and Wan-soon will be.” I never argued with Gu-sun about this. Instead, I accepted her friendship more out of necessity than out of love or like minds. Our babies needed to be nursed, burped, washed, changed, comforted, and put to sleep. I was happy for Gu-sun’s company.

  Fortunately, Min-lee was a good baby, which meant my hands could stay busy. When I was in the little house, I used my foot to rock her cradle, so I could repair my nets, sharpen my knives, and patch my diving outfit. When we went to the sweet potato fields, she stayed in her cradle, which I draped with cloth to protect her from the sun. When I dove with Do-saeng and the collective, my father took care of Min-lee. He met me outside the bulteok when we came back for lunch and at the end of the day so I might nurse her. He’d always been good at caring for babies, and he was drinking less.