The Island of Sea Women Read online

  This was the coldest time of year, which was why we chose this period to Welcome the Goddess. Even so, a haenyeo is accustomed to freezing temperatures, while the nondiving women squealed and yipped as they tiptoed across the rocks, the bitter wind raising goosebumps and turning their skin blue. Joon-lee sat on the sand and hugged her knees to her chest to keep warm. The rest of us entered the water and paddled about ten meters offshore. Do-saeng and I dove down together. We knew this area well. The water wasn’t too deep, and light filtered to the ocean floor. Spring was coming, and what happens on land—leaves sprouting and flowers budding—also happens in the sea. Seaweed grows with the warmth of the sun. Sea creatures mate and have babies. When I came up for breath, I swam to Gu-sun to ask her to tell Gu-ja, her sister and our chief, about an area I’d spotted with many sea urchins we’d be able to harvest in the coming weeks.

  Within five minutes, the nondiving women went to shore. As they disappeared into the tent, I headed back down. I managed to stay in the water for a half hour—the same amount of time as when Mi-ja and I used to dive in Vladivostok. The scientists wanted to see shivering. This I could give them.

  When I returned to the tent, the nondiving women were on their cots, having a repeat of the earlier tests. Joon-lee went from cot to cot, talking to each woman, trying through small talk to distract her from her various levels of discomfort—the cold, the men, the way they spoke, the instruments, the foreignness of it all.

  Dr. Park approached me. “I hope you’ll permit me to do your tests.”

  I nodded, and he slipped the glass tube into my mouth. I tried to assess him without being too obvious about it. He seemed young, but maybe that was because he hadn’t spent a life outdoors. His hands were soft and surprisingly white. As had happened earlier, he spoke into a recording device. Again, I understood very little of what he said.

  “Today the water was ten degrees Centigrade, fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Subject Six remained submerged for thirty-three minutes. Her postdive skin temperature, five minutes from exiting the water, has dropped to twenty-seven degrees Centigrade, eighty point six degrees Fahrenheit, while her oral temperature is thirty-two point five Centigrade, ninety point five Fahrenheit.” He met my eyes. “That is a remarkable level of hypothermia. Now let’s see how long it takes you to return to normal.”

  He then moved on to Do-saeng. A different doctor took my temperature every five minutes. I returned to “normal” after a half hour. “Would you go into the sea again at this point?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I answered, surprised he would ask such a stupid question.

  “Remarkable.”

  Do-saeng met my eyes. Remarkable. This was beyond our comprehension.

  * * *

  The next day, the doctors performed the same tests. On the third day, they asked Joon-lee to bring towels and blankets to us when we came out of the ocean. By the fourth day, we’d grown more accepting of their peculiar ways. And they were so easy to tease. We repeated the words they used in singsong voices, making them laugh. Min-lee and Wan-soon were the biggest instigators, and the doctors loved them. On the morning of the fifth day, our little group was just about to enter the tent when I spotted Mi-ja standing on the seawall. Her son straddled a bicycle next to her. By now everyone in the village knew about the science experiment, and many people had come to the wall to gawk and point. I could imagine Mi-ja wanting to be a part of the study. Maybe she even felt jealous that I had this opportunity. Surely this was Mi-ja’s reason, because by bringing Yo-chan and his bicycle she was showing off what she could give her son.

  Joon-lee interrupted my thoughts by pulling on my sleeve and exclaiming, “Look, Mother! Yo-chan has a bicycle! Can I get one too?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But I want to learn how to ride—”

  “That’s not something girls do.”

  “Please, Mother, please. Yo-chan has one. Shouldn’t we have at least one for our family?”

  Her excitement disturbed me. First, of course my daughter would know Yo-chan and his mother, but that didn’t mean I liked it. Second, we were only here because I’d wanted to give Joon-lee an opportunity, but now it seemed she’d completely forgotten about the study in favor of the bike’s shiny metal.

  Up on the seawall, Mi-ja abruptly turned and limped away, but the boy remained where he was, staring in our direction. I realized he wasn’t looking at me but at Min-lee and Wan-soon. The three of them attended the same school and had many of the same classes together. All three were sixteen, old enough to get married, old enough to get in trouble. I nudged the girls’ shoulders to make them move along.

  Yo-chan was gone by the time we exited the tent in our diving costumes. The water was just as freezing as it had been all week. Once again, the dry-land women lasted only a few minutes, while the rest of us stayed in the water until we were shivering badly. When I came out, Joon-lee was there with my towel.

  “Mother,” she said, “can I have a bicycle? Please?”

  My youngest daughter could be fickle, but she could also be determined.

  “Do you want to be a scientist or a bicycle rider?” I asked.

  “I want to do both. I want—”

  I cut her off. “You want? We all want. You complain when I put a sweet potato in your lunch for school, but I had years when my only meal of the day was a single sweet potato.”

  Unfortunately, this pointed Joon-lee in another—but sadly familiar—direction. “Other kids get white rice, but the food you give us makes it look like we’re living a subsistence life.”

  “I buy white rice for the New Year’s Festival,” I said, stung. Then, defensively, “I often put barley in your lunch—”

  “Which is even more embarrassing, because that means we’re really poor.”

  “What a lucky child you are to say that. You don’t know what poor means—”

  “If we aren’t poor, then why can’t I have a bicycle?”

  I wanted to tug her hair and remind her that the money I saved was for her and her siblings’ educations.

  That night, after dinner, Wan-soon came over, as she usually did, and the three girls went out for a walk. I made citrus tea and took two cups across the courtyard to Do-saeng’s house. She was already on her sleeping mat, but the oil lamp still burned.

  “I was waiting for you,” she said. “You seemed upset all day. Did one of those men do something to you?”

  I shook my head, sat on the floor next to her, and handed her the cup of tea.

  “You were a good mother to Jun-bu,” I said. “You sent him to school when many haenyeo didn’t.”

  “Or couldn’t. Your mother had many children,” she said wistfully. “But look what you’re doing now. Three children in school. That’s more than any other family in the village.”

  “I couldn’t do that without your help.”

  She tipped her head in acknowledgment. Then, after a long pause, she said, “So tell me. What’s wrong?”

  “I saw Mi-ja and her son today.”

  “Don’t think about her—”

  “How can I not? She lives a ten-minute walk from here. We do our best to avoid each other, but Hado is small.”

  “So? In every village, victims live next door to traitors, police, soldiers, or collaborators. Now killers and the children of killers run the island. Is this so different from when you were a girl?”

  “No, but she knows everything about me—”

  “Who doesn’t know everything about you? As you said, Hado is small. Tell me your real concern.”

  I hesitated, then asked, “What future can I give my children when we have the guilt-by-association system?”

  “Those we lost were not guilty of anything.”

  “That’s not how the government sees it. Anyone who died is considered guilty.”

  “You could do what others have done and claim your husband died before April Three,” Do-saeng suggested.

  “But Jun-bu was a teacher! He was known to
everyone in Bukchon—”

  “He was a teacher, true, but he was not an instigator, rebel, insurgent, or communist.”

  “You say that as his mother.” Then I allowed myself to voice my deepest fear. “Could he have had secrets we didn’t know about?”

  “No.”

  It was a simple answer, but I wasn’t so sure. “He read the posters. He listened to the radio.”

  “You told me he read the posters from both sides, so he could tell people what was happening,” Do-saeng said. “He listened to the radio for the same reason. The authorities probably think he was just a typical Jeju husband—”

  “Who taught?”

  “I was always proud of him for becoming a teacher. I thought you were too.”

  “I was. I am.” Tears welled in my eyes. “But I can’t stop being afraid for my children.”

  “Whatever my son did or didn’t do, you know that Yu-ri and Sung-soo did nothing wrong. They were victims. Those of us who are left are victims. But unlike many others, I don’t feel like we’ve been targeted.” She held my gaze. “We haven’t been forced to report to the police every month as some families have.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And have you ever had the sense we’re being watched?”

  I shook my head.

  “All right then,” she said decisively. “Just keep your focus on the good in our lives. Your son performs the rites for the ancestors, and he’s learning family duties like cooking. Min-lee is turning out to be a good diver, while Joon-lee . . .”

  As she went on talking about the virtues of each of my children, I felt myself becoming calmer. My mother-in-law could be right. That we hadn’t been called to the police station or followed had to mean something. That didn’t mean we weren’t on a list somewhere, though.

  * * *

  By day six, the nondiving women had become more accustomed to being in their water clothes in front of the men. The scientists had gotten bolder too. At first, they’d taken care not to stare at us as we filed down to the shore, but now they gazed at us in the manner men do. I was particularly concerned about the way they gaped at Min-lee and Wan-soon. They were beautiful girls, slim, with happy faces and pretty skin. Looking at them together, I couldn’t help but think of Mi-ja and myself when we were that age. Or when we were older in Vladivostok. We hadn’t always realized the impression we were making, although we tried to be careful when we were on the docks. Our fears were concentrated more on what Japanese soldiers might do to us than on the looks we received from the men of Jeju or elsewhere. But Min-lee and Wan-soon weren’t old enough to remember the Japanese, and Wan-soon had seen nothing like what happened in Bukchon here in Hado. A saying my mother and father often recited came to my mind: For a tree that has many branches, even a small breeze will shake some loose. The meaning had always been clear to me. With children, there will be many conflicts, griefs, and problems. It was my job as Min-lee’s mother to prevent any of those things from happening.

  Two days later, Dr. Park and his team left Hado. They promised to return in three months. Two days after that, on the fourteenth day of the second lunar month, exactly two weeks after we’d welcomed the goddess of the wind to Jeju, it was time to send her away. Once again, haenyeo and fishermen cautiously gathered at the shore. Kang Gu-ja took a prominent seat as chief of our collective. On this occasion, however, her sister and niece did not sit with her. Although the Kang sisters had bickered since childhood, the fact that Gu-sun and Wan-soon had gotten to participate in the study irritated Gu-ja in a way that none of us could have predicted, as if our swimming in frigid water for no money had somehow threatened her position and power. It could be an hour, a day, or a week before Gu-sun and Gu-ja warmed again to each other.

  We made offerings of rice cakes and rice wine to the goddesses and gods. Then it was time for fortune-telling. The old women who traveled from village to village to fulfill this purpose sat on mats. Min-lee and Wan-soon sought out the youngest fortune-teller. I approached a woman whose face was dark and wrinkled from the sun. She didn’t remember me, but I remembered her because my mother had always trusted the futures she foretold. I got on my knees, bowed, and then sat back on my heels. The old woman filled her palm with uncooked rice kernels and tossed them in the air. I watched as my destiny rained down. Some kernels fell back onto the old woman’s hand; others fell to the mat.

  “Six grains will mean you’ll have good luck,” she said, quickly covering the back of her hand. “Eight, ten, and twelve are not as good but good enough. Four would be the worst number I could tell you. Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  She removed the hand covering the kernels and counted. “Ten,” she said. “Not too bad, not too good.” With that, she flicked away the kernels, and they dropped through the spaces between the rocks around us.

  I sighed. I would now make extra offerings and pray more. Others got bad readings. Some women cried at their prophecies; others laughed them off. Min-lee and Wan-soon both received sixes. Their fortune-teller asked them to swallow the kernels so they might carry their good luck.

  Finally, under Shaman Kim’s watchful eyes, we wove miniature straw boats, each about a meter in length. We filled them with tributes and offerings, attached small sails, invited the goddesses and gods to board, and then sent the vessels out to sea. We tossed more rice wine and handfuls of millet and rice into the water. With that, spring officially arrived.

  The day after the farewell rite, I started to cut sweet potatoes to mix with barley to make my children’s lunches appear more substantial when I remembered what Joon-lee had said about us looking poor. I opened an earthenware jar and dipped into my supply of salted anchovies to put on her barley. I expected her to thank me when she got home from school, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She ran in, opened her satchel, and pulled out a new book. The jacket showed a little girl wearing a ruffled skirt, apron, and ankle boots. Blond curls framed her face. She held an old man’s hand. Goats nibbled on grass. Behind them rose snowcapped mountains that seemed plentiful in number and awesome in height.

  “She’s Heidi,” Joon-lee announced, “and I love her.”

  Supplies of the book had been delivered to schools across the island. Why? We never learned, but every girl her age had received a copy. Now my daughter, who only days earlier had been fixated on learning to ride a bicycle and days before that had proclaimed her desire to become a scientist, became obsessed with Heidi. Wanting to encourage her, I asked her to read the story to me. Then Heidi, Clara, Peter, and Grandfather possessed me too. Next Do-saeng and Min-lee became consumed by the story. Min-lee got Wan-soon to read it. Then Wan-soon read the book to her mother. Soon houses across Hado were lit by oil lamps at night as daughters read the tale to their mothers and grandmothers. Everyone wanted to talk about the story, and we visited each other’s houses or gathered in the olle to discuss it.

  “What do you suppose bread tastes like?” Wan-soon asked one afternoon.

  Her mother answered, “When you go to Vladivostok for leaving-home water-work, you’ll have an opportunity to taste it. They have a lot of bakeries there.”

  “What about goat’s milk?” Min-lee asked me. “Did you drink it when you went out for leaving-home water-work?”

  “No, but I tasted ice cream once,” I answered, remembering licking cones on a street corner with Mi-ja and two Russian boys.

  One person loved Clara’s grandmother. Another loved Heidi’s grandfather. Many of the baby-divers, whose thoughts were turning to weddings, adored Peter. Wan-soon even said she wanted him for her husband. Min-lee said she preferred the Doctor, because he was so kind. But again, no one was more bewitched by the story than Joon-lee. Her favorite character was Clara.

  “Why would you choose her?” I asked. “She’s injured. She can’t help her family. She cries. She’s selfish.”

  “But she’s healed by the mountains, the sky, the goats, and their milk!” After a pause, she stated, “I’m going to Switze
rland one day.”

  When I heard that, I knew I had to steer her in another direction. No matter what Do-saeng said, having three victims in our family—one of whom was a teacher—guaranteed that we were tainted by the guilt-by-association system. Joon-lee would never receive permission to go to the mainland, let alone Switzerland. Since she was still too young to understand all that, I asked the first thing that came to my mind. “How can you go to a fairy world?”

  Joon-lee just laughed. “Mother, Switzerland is not a fairy world. It is not a land of goddesses either. I will leave Jeju just as Kim Mandeok did. And I’ll buy myself a bicycle.”

  The Vast Unknowable Sea

  August–September 1961

  Three months after the first visit, Dr. Park and his team returned, as promised. Then three months after that, at the end of August, they came again. For two weeks each visit, the same group of eighteen women—nine divers and nine nondivers—had light suppers, rested on cots in the mornings, and were tested. This time, though, we were driven by boat to the underwater canyon where Mi-ja and I had taken our first dive. The scientists selected the site for the very reason that my mother had chosen it: the geography allowed the nondivers to hover above the rocks that came nearly to the surface, while the divers could go down twenty meters into the coldness of the canyon. The nondivers still couldn’t last more than a few minutes, but with the warmer weather, we divers went back and forth for at least two and a half hours before returning to the boat. We learned that our temperatures didn’t drop as much as they did in winter, which seemed obvious to us. But now Dr. Park had the precise measurement he desired: 35.3 degrees Centigrade in water that was 26 degrees or 95.5 Fahrenheit in water that was almost 79 degrees. “Very impressive,” he said to us. “Not many people can function as well as you do when their temperatures fall so far below normal.”