The Island of Sea Women Read online

  The most important and startling of the changes was that men now oversaw the Village Fishery Association. We still had our own collective and met in the bulteok, but the man told us who could work and for how long. He tried to control us—as other men did with every haenyeo collective around the island—so we felt less free to be ourselves or determine our futures. He even made us pay fines if we exceeded catch limits or harvested something in the wrong season. Fines! This I had managed to prevent as chief, so the women in my collective did not have to pay penalties. If you put it all together—men telling us what to do, daughters going to school and getting dry-land jobs, and, especially, rules forbidding more than one woman in a household to work as a haenyeo—no wonder there were fewer of us. Add to that what happened after President Park came to visit. He looked around our island and decided that it wasn’t practical to build factories here, but, since the weather was good, he declared that the only way to earn a living was by growing a type of tangerine called gamgyul. So people, including many haenyeo, started growing tangerines on the other side of the island. The first time Dr. Park came, there were about twenty-six thousand haenyeo on Jeju. When he came last year—to measure our tolerance to holding our hands in ice water—we’d dropped to eleven thousand haenyeo. Eleven thousand! He made me a bet that within another five years we’d lose another half to retirement.

  The only good thing about the Village Fishery Association, as far as I was concerned, was that we could keep whatever we’d harvested beyond our “required quota.” These items I took to sell on the streets of Jeju City. The income had paid for my children’s educations and Min-lee’s wedding and would help me with the banquet and other festivities attached to the forthcoming marriage of Kyung-soo and a girl he’d met on the mainland during his mandatory military service. Soon I would have four generations living within the same fence: my mother-in-law, me, my son and daughter-in-law, and the children they would have.

  “Hurry up now!” the man shouted. “Gather your gear!”

  We did so, and then climbed onto the back of his truck. He drove us to the dock, where a large motorboat waited for us. Once we were aboard, the captain headed to sea, first dropping the small-divers in a cove and then steering through the churning waves to the deep sea. When we arrived, I took charge.

  “Mind your tewaks,” I said. “Stay close to the boat. Come in when you get cold. And please watch out for each other.”

  Life on land had changed, but the sea remained the same. A breath, a breath, a breath, then down . . . The water here was crystal clear to a great depth. Black volcanic rocks stood in contrast to the pearly sand. To my left, a forest of seaweed swayed as if blown by a gentle wind. As always, my above-sea concerns melted away when I began to concentrate, searching the rocks for creatures to put in my net, my senses heightened to watch for dangers.

  Four hours later, we arrived back at shore and were returned to Hado, where a few men waited for the truck to pull to a stop. Husbands still spent the day in the village square, minding babies and toddlers, but they helped their wives in ways once unimaginable. We haenyeo are strong, and we had always done our own hauling. Since our men were unaccustomed to physical labor, it typically took two of them to carry what a haenyeo brought ashore. “When you accept our help,” the man in charge had explained, “you become more profitable.” Of course, I didn’t have a husband, and my son was on the mainland. Today, my net was so heavy with my harvest that I had to bend over so that my face was nearly parallel to the ground to bear the weight. The burden—the tangible, physical proof of my labors—felt like money, opportunity, and love.

  We still weighed our catches together, but the man in charge oversaw sales and the distribution of monies earned from our sea harvests. Once that was done, we entered the bulteok, warmed by the fire, got dressed, and shared a meal. At least that man didn’t come inside. That would have been one insult too many.

  “I hear Joon-lee’s coming home today,” Gu-ja said.

  “For the summer,” I answered.

  “Have her thoughts turned to marriage yet?” Gu-sun asked.

  I put a hand on her shoulder, knowing how hard it had to be for her to ask questions that involved a daughter and the unfolding of her life. “You know how Joon-lee is,” I answered. “Her thoughts seem to be only on books. I’m lucky Min-lee has already given me twin grandsons.”

  “Very lucky,” Gu-sun agreed. “Now you have the security of another generation of boys to provide for you in the Afterworld.”

  We left the bulteok together but parted ways almost immediately. I headed to my home perched on the shore. Do-saeng, now sixty-nine, still lived in the little house, but I found her in the kitchen of the big house preparing Joon-lee’s welcome-home meal. A wall was stacked with earthenware jars, filled with homemade pickled radishes, sauces, and pastes. To me, those jars were like stacks of gold bars, representing how far I’d brought my family.

  “Joon-lee has always liked pork sausage,” Do-saeng said. “I’ve sliced this thin, so each person can have several pieces.”

  After so many years, I knew my mother-in-law very well, and she wasn’t speaking a pure truth. Having Joon-lee return home from her first year at university was a big occasion, and I’d agreed to slaughter one of our pigs. We’d use every part of the animal for the celebration tonight, but the sausage wasn’t for Joon-lee. It was for the twins. Do-saeng loved to spoil her great-grandsons.

  “What else have you made?” I asked. “And how can I help?”

  “I used pork bones, bracken, and spring onions to start the broth for the stew. You can stir in the powdered barley to thicken it, if you’d like. Just remember to—”

  “Keep stirring to keep it from getting lumpy. I know.”

  “Min-lee should be here soon. She’s promised to bring tilefish for us to grill. And you brought things from the sea too, I hope.”

  “I have a basket of baby abalones to grill. This I know Joon-lee loves.”

  “She is our greatest hope,” Do-saeng said with a smile.

  But, aigo, for the past seven years I’d never had a day when I hadn’t missed her. When she was at the all-girls middle and high schools in Jeju City, I only got to see her on special occasions. She even stayed in the city for summer school. “I want to improve my chances of getting into a better college,” she’d often repeated on those few days she visited. I thought perhaps the city had twisted her mind to have such a big dream, because to me it was miraculous enough that she was going to her special private schools. I should have known better, because whenever she came to Hado, she showed no desire to join me in the sea. Instead, she wanted to visit the new Village Fishery Association! The government on the mainland had sent books to create small libraries for each association so that a haenyeo like me could “improve her level of literacy.” But I wasn’t literate to begin with, so this gift felt like another insult. Joon-lee, however, loved those books. She systematically read every one. When the time came, she did so well on the entrance exam that she won a scholarship to Seoul National University—the top school in the country. I was stunned and very proud. Her attitude about it was different.

  “During the war, half the students went missing,” she’d said when she received the acceptance letter. “They were either killed in battle or moved to the north. Just like here on Jeju, the mainland has fewer men. They need girls like me to fill the slots.”

  Her older sister said what I felt. “You worked hard for this. Don’t dismiss it by acting like you didn’t earn your spot.”

  I couldn’t predict what would happen in the future, but even now twice as many boys as girls went to middle and high school. Competition would become ever fiercer as those boys moved forward, but I would make sure all my grandchildren would go to high school, and maybe even college or university, even if it meant their parents and I would be separated from them for most of the year. Sometimes you must experience heartache to have a treasured result.

  I heard Min-lee call, “Mother!
Granny!”

  Do-saeng and I ran outside.

  “Look who I found in the olle,” Min-lee said. She carried her sister’s suitcase in one hand and a basket in the other. Next to her was my younger daughter, who looked completely different than when I’d waved goodbye to her on the dock nine months ago. That day Joon-lee had worn a skirt that came midcalf and a long-sleeved blouse—both made from persimmon cloth. Her hair had hung down in two braids. Now she wore a sleeveless dress with a hem many centimeters above her knees. She’d cut her hair in such a way that her new bangs hid her eyebrows. The rest of her hair had grown several inches and it swung loose and straight almost to her waist. Her twin four-year-old nephews held her hands. Her smile was big. She did not have a big butt. I’d been wrong about that, for which we were all thankful.

  * * *

  “No, Mother, I can’t go with you to the sea,” Joon-lee told me two weeks later, when the next diving cycle arrived.

  “Don’t worry about the law—”

  “I’m not worried about that. I can’t go, because I have to study.”

  “Can’t I even get you into the sea to cool off?”

  “Maybe later,” she said. “I need to finish this chapter.”

  Maybe later. I already knew what that meant. Never. It was always the same two excuses. Either she had to study, or she needed to write letters.

  This was the longest she’d been home since she was twelve, and it wasn’t going well. I loved my daughter, but she couldn’t stop complaining. She didn’t like to go in the ocean, because she didn’t have a shower to rinse the salt from her skin. She didn’t like to wash her hair in the bathing area, because her conditioner didn’t work well with salt water. She was unaccustomed to chores and didn’t get up early to help me or her grandmother haul water or gather firewood, but she would go by herself to the well to bring back a bucket or two of water to wash her hair. (I had her do it behind the little house so our neighbors wouldn’t see how wasteful she was.) She saved her worst complaints for the latrine: “It stinks! The pigs are groveling around right under me. And the bugs!”

  We still had another two and a half months to go before she returned to Seoul.

  “Tell me about the book,” I said, trying to find a way to connect. “Remember when you read Heidi to me. Maybe you could read this one—”

  She looked at me with annoyance that turned to sadness. “Mother, you wouldn’t understand it. I’m trying to read ahead for the sociology class I’m taking next semester.”

  Sociology. It wasn’t the first time I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “All right,” I said, turning away. “I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again.”

  “Oh, Mother, don’t take it that way.” She put the book down, crossed the room, and put her arms around me. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  She stared into my face, and I was taken aback, as I always was, by how much her delicate features reminded me of her father. I smoothed tendrils of hair behind her ears.

  “You’re a good girl,” I said. “And you make me proud. Go back to your studying.”

  But inside, I hurt. I thought of her like seafoam—drifting farther and farther from me—and I couldn’t figure out how to change its course.

  * * *

  Gu-ja, of all people, told me what sociology was. “It’s the study of how people get along. Gu-sun and I have a second cousin who does that work in Jeju City.”

  That the Kang sisters had an educated relative in the city surprised me, but this also told me that I needed to adapt better to the changing conditions around me as I did, without thinking, to those in the sea.

  “Do you mean how friends or family get along?” I asked.

  “I suppose,” she answered, “but I think it’s more like what happens in our bulteok.”

  For days I mulled over what Gu-ja had told me. Gradually an idea began to form in my mind. When the second diving period of summer arrived, I invited Joon-lee to come to the bulteok with her grandmother and me. “Not to go in the sea,” I explained, “but to learn about haenyeo society.” I was thrilled when she said yes.

  Once in the bulteok, Joon-lee sat quietly, listening to the other divers and me as we changed clothes. “Is there food on this beach?” I asked the collective. As the typical boasting answers flew at me—“More food than rocks in my fields, if I had any fields” and “More food than the liters of gasoline it would take to fill my car, if I had a car”—she jotted them down in a notebook. When Do-saeng and her friends went to the beach to collect the algae that had washed ashore, Joon-lee joined me and the other haenyeo on the back of the truck to the dock. She hadn’t tied up her hair, and it blew here, there, and everywhere. Even as she waited on the boat while we dove, she didn’t properly cover her hair. Hours later, during our return to shore, she asked questions about what we were doing, but they only made me look like a bad mother.

  “Haven’t you taught her anything about diving?” Gu-ja asked me.

  When I let the years scroll across my mind, I could see I’d tried, but it hadn’t taken. As a young girl, Joon-lee had never been interested in taking the tewak I’d given her into the sea. She’d never borrowed my big eyes, nor had she asked me to make her a set of water clothes. When she turned fifteen, she was already living in Jeju City, so I couldn’t train her for sea work as my mother had trained me. I couldn’t help but be embarrassed in front of the collective, but my daughter came to my defense.

  “Don’t tease your chief,” she said lightly. “She’s worked hard to give me this life. You’ve done the same for you daughters too, right?”

  They had, but of course none of those girls had done as well as Joon-lee.

  Once in the bulteok, we did as we usually did: warmed ourselves by the fire, cooked a meal, and talked about problems in our families. Joon-lee blossomed in front of me, asking all sorts of questions about our matrifocal society. This was the first time any of us had heard this label—a culture focused on women—and it intrigued us.

  “You make the decisions in your households,” she explained. “You make money. You have a good life—”

  Gu-ja waved off the idea. “We think of ourselves as being independent and strong, but all you have to do is listen to our songs to know our days are hard. We sing about the difficulties of living under a mother-in-law, the sadness of being separated from our children, and lament how difficult this existence is.”

  “My sister’s right,” Gu-sun said. “It’s better to be born a cow than a woman. No matter how stupid or lazy a man is, he has the better hand. He doesn’t have to supervise the family. He doesn’t have to wash clothes, manage the household, look after the elders, or see that the children have food to eat and mats to sleep on. He doesn’t have to do hard physical work in the wet or dry fields. His only responsibilities are to take care of babies and do a little cooking.”

  “In other places, he would be called a wife,” Joon-lee said.

  This made us laugh.

  “So if you were a man,” she prompted, “how would your life be different?”

  From my youngest days as a baby-diver, conversation in the bulteok had often centered on men, husbands, and sons. I could remember my mother leading a group as they discussed whether it was better to live as a man or a woman, but my daughter’s question sent the haenyeo in my collective in new directions.

  Gu-ja answered first. “If I were a man, I wouldn’t worry about chores or responsibilities. I’d sit under the village tree, like they do, and contemplate big thoughts.”

  “I’ve wondered sometimes if it would be better to be my husband,” Gu-sun admitted. “Ever since our daughter died, he drinks too much. I’ve asked him to find a little wife and share her home. His response? ‘Why should I do that when you already house and feed me?’ ”

  I knew each woman’s story. Whose husband drank too much. Or gambled. Or beat her. Whenever a woman came to the bulteok with bruises, I told her the same thing I’d once told Mi-ja. Leave him! Bu
t they rarely did. They were always too afraid for their children, and maybe afraid for themselves.

  “Drinking and gambling are the hardest,” one of the women commented. “Once my babies were old enough to be taken care of by their older siblings, my husband became purposeless. I felt sorry for him, but what would have happened if I’d started drinking and gambling?”

  “I was a slave in my first husband’s family,” Yang-jin confessed. “My husband and father-in-law beat me. It’s true! I wouldn’t want to be a man who did something like that. I’m happier as a woman.”

  “Someone will always take care of a man,” a woman said. “Ask yourself if you know a man who lives alone.”

  No one could think of even one man in Hado who lived alone. He resided with his mother, his wife, his little wife, or his children.

  Do-saeng finally joined the conversation. “Not many men can do without a wife, while all women can do without a husband.”

  My daughter looked up from her notebook. “It seems to me that what you’re saying is you’re in charge, and yet you aren’t. When husbands die, houses and fields pass to sons. Why is it that men own all the property?”

  “You know the reason,” I answered. “A daughter cannot perform the ancestral rites, so all property must go to sons. It is how we thank them for caring for us in the Afterworld.”