The Island of Sea Women Page 35

  “Tomorrow is going to be a big day,” she reminded me. “You need to tell everyone to go home.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “But I think I’ll join them for a while first.”

  “Hyng!”

  I took some tangerines from a bowl and tucked them in my pockets. Then I waded through the courtyard and into the big house.

  “Granny!”

  “Granny!”

  I sat with my legs tucked under me, my bottom nestled between my feet. My granddaughters climbed into my lap, and my grandsons cuddled close.

  “Did you bring us anything?” the oldest girl asked.

  I pulled out a tangerine. I unpeeled it in one long string. Once I was done, I rolled the peel back into its tangerine shape and set it on the floor. The children loved when I did that for them. I gave them each a couple of wedges, then repeated the process three times.

  How lucky I was to have such beautiful grandchildren. How fortunate I was that Min-lee had married a teacher like her father, who taught right here in Hado. I missed Kyung-soo and his family, though. When he’d sent word that he was getting married, I’d thought the wedding would happen here. But when the goddess brought him home, he was already married to his mainland wife. I’d participated in no discussions about matching birth dates or seeking help from the geomancer for a propitious day to hold the wedding. Naturally, my feelings were injured, but I let all that go when I met my daughter-in-law for the first time and saw she was big with a baby in her belly. After they returned to Seoul, she gave birth to a son, giving me another grandson. Now she was pregnant with a second child, and Kyung-soo worked at his father-in-law’s electronics company. I wished my only son didn’t live so far away, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  I missed Joon-lee most of all. For the last four years, she’d also been in Seoul. In the fall, she’d attend the Graduate School of Public Health at Seoul National University. Tomorrow she’d be coming home for a short visit. The note she’d written to Min-lee had said, “I have a surprise for everyone.” My guess was she’d won another award.

  “Do you have more tangerines?” the five-year-old asked. I turned out my pockets to show they were empty. She sucked her bottom lip in disappointment. I kissed her forehead.

  Do-saeng was right. I did spoil these little ones. I gave them and their parents everything—fixing up our houses to meet the new standards, buying tricycles and bicycles, getting the television so they could learn more about our country and the world—and it had left them soft. Children these days wanted easy lives. They didn’t have the physical or emotional strength of their grandmother or great-grandmother. That said, I loved them and would sacrifice anything for them, even if it meant selling seafood to American soldiers on a street corner.

  I’d been a widow for twenty-three years, but I considered myself to be a fortunate woman. I squeezed the twins, they squealed, but no one seemed to mind the noise. Everyone was too focused on the shoot-out happening on the screen.

  * * *

  The next day, our diving was good. I was the last to leave the bulteok and was just crossing the beach toward my house when a motorcycle came bumping along the shore road and pulled to a stop. A man wearing a black leather jacket and a helmet that hid his face sat in front. Joon-lee sat behind him, holding his waist. She waved and called, “Mother! It’s me! I’m home!” She jumped off the bike and ran down the steps and across the beach to me. Her long black hair flew behind her. Her short shirt fluttered in the wind. When she reached me, she bowed.

  “I thought you weren’t coming until later,” I said. “The bus—”

  “We rented the bike.” With that, her initial burst of enthusiasm ebbed, and she stood with such stillness that I was immediately concerned.

  “We?”

  She took my hand. “Come, Mother. I couldn’t wait to tell you. I’m just so happy.” Her hand was soft and warm in mine, but her voice was far too somber to be expressing anything close to joy.

  I kept my eyes on the man with the motorcycle. He didn’t have to take off the helmet for me to know who he was, because he was in nearly the same spot where he’d been perched on his new bicycle many years ago to see what was happening on the beach with Dr. Park and his team. When I said his name in my mind—Yo-chan—my stomach fell so hard and fast that for a second the world went black. I blinked a few times, trying to bring back light. Up on the roadway, Yo-chan set the kickstand, took off his helmet and hung it on one of the handlebars, and watched us approach. He put his palms on his thighs and bowed deeply when we reached him. As he rose, he offered no greetings or small talk. Instead, he said, “We’ve come to tell you that we’re going to get married.”

  The inevitability of this moment seemed obvious and predictable, and yet it was still agonizing. I hesitated awhile, too long, really, before I asked, “What does your mother say?”

  “You can ask her yourself,” he answered. “She’s coming in a taxi.”

  I felt as though I were suspended in gelatin, watching as he turned to the bike and pushed it the last few meters to my house, with Joon-lee following behind him.

  * * *

  We aligned in two pairs: my daughter next to me facing Yo-chan, who sat next to his mother, who faced me. Teacups sat on a small tray on the floor between us. I could hear my granddaughters crying across the courtyard in the little house, where Min-lee had taken them so I could have this meeting in the big house. I hadn’t seen Mi-ja in eleven years. When she’d entered, I saw that her limp was much worse, and she used a cane. She looked far older than I did, even though her life had to be easier than mine. Her clothes were loose. Her hair had gone completely gray. Looking into her eyes, I sensed a deep well of unhappiness. That was not my problem, however.

  “We have not consulted a geomancer to determine if this is a good match,” I said, keeping my sentences and attitude as formal as possible. “We haven’t brought in an intermediary. No one has asked if our family gives permission—”

  “Oh, Mother, no one does those things anymore—”

  I spoke right over my daughter. “No one has set an engagement meeting or—”

  “Let us consider this the engagement meeting,” Mi-ja said.

  I addressed my daughter. “I did not know your thoughts had turned to marriage.”

  “Yo-chan and I are in love.”

  I barely knew where to start. “Four years ago, I asked you to promise you wouldn’t see him again. Then you kept this”—I searched for the right word and settled on—“affiliation a secret from me, your mother.”

  “I knew how you’d react,” Joon-lee admitted. “But I also wanted to make sure in my own heart. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “This cannot happen.”

  “We’re happy,” she said. “We love each other.”

  She could be stubborn, but I would never back down. I could have dredged up the nasty gossip about Yo-chan and Wan-soon, but even I didn’t believe it, so I went straight to my deepest argument. “For you to show such disrespect to the memory of your father—”

  “I’m sorry, but I have no memory of my father.”

  This was too painful. I closed my eyes as the horrifying images came flooding back. No matter how much I fought against them, the details were as vivid and brutal as in the moments they’d happened: Mi-ja touching her husband’s arm . . . Yo-chan in his little uniform . . . My husband when the bullet hit his head . . . Yu-ri’s screams . . . My little boy being snatched away . . . I would never heal or forget.

  Mi-ja quietly cleared her throat, and I opened my eyes. “There was a time when you and I wished for this day.” She allowed herself a small smile. “Although we thought it would be Min-lee and Yo-chan. Still, this day has come. A son-in-law is a guest for one hundred years, meaning forever. It is time for you to put aside your anger, so these two, who have no responsibility for the past, can be wed. May you accept my son as part of your family for one hundred years.”

  “I—”

  She hel
d up a hand to keep me from speaking. “As your daughter said, they do not need our permission any longer. We can only give them what they want. I had no desire to return to Jeju, but I did because Joon-lee wants to be surrounded by her family on her wedding day. I’ve made arrangements for them to be married in the Catholic church in Jeju City.”

  I gasped. Christianity had grown on the island, and those people were even more fanatical than our government when it came to Shamanism. Joon-lee lowered her head as her hand went to finger the small cross hanging from her neck, which I’d been too stunned by Yo-chan’s presence and Mi-ja’s arrival to notice until now. That she was not just hurting me but also abandoning the traditions of our haenyeo family was more than I could absorb.

  Mi-ja went on, unfazed. “The ceremony will be followed by a banquet and party here in Hado.”

  Resentment bubbled to the surface. “You’ve taken so much from me,” I said to her. “Why do you have to take Joon-lee too?”

  “Mother!”

  In response to my daughter’s outburst, Mi-ja said, “Perhaps it would be best if the two mothers speak alone.”

  “We want to stay,” Yo-chan said. “I want to make her understand.”

  “Believe me,” Mi-ja said mildly. “This will be best.”

  Yo-chan and Joon-lee were barely out the door before Mi-ja said, “You’ve never understood a single thing. You’ve carried your blame and hatred without ever asking me what really happened.”

  “I didn’t have to ask you. I saw with my own eyes. That soldier picked up my son—”

  “Do you think I don’t see that in my mind every single day? That moment is burned in my memory.”

  She looked tortured, but what did that mean? I waited to see what she would say next.

  “After my cowardice, I needed to atone,” she said at last. “When my husband began to travel and I knew he wouldn’t miss me”—an emotion flitted across her face, but she buried it before I could read it—“I moved back to Hado. I wanted to see if I could help you.”

  “I saw no help from you.”

  “I had to wait a long time. I thought there was no hope for me. Then Wan-soon died.”

  “You came to the ritual rite. No one wanted you there.”

  “You may not have wanted me, but the spirits of those you lost did. They spoke to me—”

  “They spoke to me,” I corrected her.

  “You change what happened, because you only see evil when you look at me.” Her quiet calm was having the opposite effect on me. She must have sensed this, because she kept her voice low and steady, like she was trying to lull me into believing her. “Consider what actually happened: Shaman Kim went into her trance. Yu-ri spoke first—”

  “Yes, she spoke to me. I’d been waiting so long to hear from her. From any of them.”

  “But they only spoke when I was there.” Mi-ja, perhaps sensing my doubt, went on. “They never came to you again, did they?”

  My head throbbed as I thought about what she’d said. This couldn’t be right.

  “Each of them said the same thing,” Mi-ja continued softly. “They had found forgiveness. Who was that message for, if not for me?”

  I was innocent, they killed me, but I have found forgiveness.

  I began to tremble. Maybe they had come for her.

  “If the dead can forgive me, then why can’t you?” she asked.

  “You could never understand, because you haven’t suffered the losses I have.”

  “I’ve suffered in my own ways.”

  I suspected she wanted me to question her, but I didn’t.

  The moment lengthened until she finally said, “Even though you refuse to accept it, I’ve tried to make amends to you in every way I can. When Joon-lee won the competition, Teacher Oh came to me—”

  “No, he didn’t—”

  “Yes, he did. He explained that she’d been offered a place at a fine school in Jeju City but that the guilt-by-association system had tainted her. I took a ferry to the mainland and met with my husband. I told him I was willing to do whatever he wanted if he would see that she got her place. I reminded him how you and your family had helped bring him back to health after he escaped from the north. He still had those scars, you know, inside and out.”

  “But he did nothing that terrible day to stop—”

  “He didn’t know you were there, and then it was too late. When he found out . . . He’d beaten me before, but not like that. I ended up in the hospital. I stayed there for weeks, which is why I couldn’t come to you right away. Most of my injuries healed, but my hip has never been the same.”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  The corners of her mouth turned up into the barest smile. “All that matters is that Sang-mun said he’d have Joon-lee erased from the guilt-by-association records so she could go to school. In exchange, I’d have to move to Seoul and live with him again. He told me that this was the only way he could remove the stain of my actions from his face. I accepted Sang-mun’s terms, which meant I would also have to accept the way he’d treated me from the day we met on the dock. Of course, I didn’t trust him, so I stayed in Hado until Teacher Oh confirmed Joon-lee was settled at her school.”

  I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to feel. Pity? Maybe I did pity her in my own way, but what she’d told me made her sound even worse than I’d thought. For her own husband to blame her . . .

  “So,” she said, breaking another long silence, “I did what I could for Joon-lee. Yo-chan and I visited her in Jeju City when we came to the island to see Sang-mun’s parents. When she arrived in Seoul—”

  “You had Yo-chan hunt her down.”

  “Hyng! It was far from that! They bumped into each other on the campus. I never expected them to fall in love, but they did. I saw it on their faces the first time he brought her to the apartment. It was fate, don’t you see?”

  “Do Catholics believe in fate?” I asked.

  She blinked rapidly. She could accept my hatred, but she wouldn’t allow me to mock her faith. Interesting.

  “Joon-lee’s been on her own a very long time,” she said. “I’ve tried, when possible, to be a second mother to her. I love Joon-lee, and I’ve done my best to help her.”

  “You mean you tried to steal her from me.”

  Mi-ja’s cheeks colored, and she shook a finger in front of my face. “No, no, no.”

  Good, I’d finally gotten to her. Maybe now she’d speak truthfully. But then she took a breath, her cheeks paled, and she returned to the unnerving calm she seemed to have perfected.

  “There’s no point in trying to share my heart with you,” she said. “Your anger has poisoned you. You’ve become like Halmang Juseung. You touch everything with the flower of demolition. You’re killing all that is beautiful—our friendship, your love for Joon-lee, the happiness of a young couple.” She rose and padded across the floor. When she reached the door, she turned back to me. “Joon-lee told me that you’ve been taking care of my house. Why?”

  “I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought,” I confessed, because my years of believing that I’d be ready when she came back had turned out to be false. I hadn’t been prepared for any of this.

  “I thank you anyway.” She lifted her chin as she added, “The ceremony will be tomorrow at the church, as I told you earlier. The banquet will be at my aunt and uncle’s home. You are welcome to attend. The children would love to have you with them on their joyous day.”

  But as much as I loved my daughter, I couldn’t go to her wedding. First and foremost, it would have been disrespectful to her father, brother, and aunt. On another level, I was too hurt by Joon-lee’s years of lies and broken promises even to want to see her face. I would have to overcome a lot within myself to break through the barriers that now separated us. So, the next day, I stayed with Min-lee—who also refused to attend the wedding—and her family through the long, hot hours until night finally fell. They rolled out sleeping mats in the main room, so we could
all be together. The children fell asleep. Min-lee’s husband snored lightly. But Min-lee and I went outside, sat on the step, held hands, and listened to the music, songs, and laughter that wafted from the other side of the village.

  “So many bad memories,” Min-lee whispered. “So much pain.”

  I patted her back as she quietly wept. She and I would never be the same after what we’d seen and lost twenty-three years ago, but that could also be said for most people on the island. On this night, I couldn’t take my mind from Jun-bu, what he’d wished for our children, and what he’d feared for them. For a tree that has many branches, even a small breeze will shake some loose. We had grown a tree with many branches. One son had died too soon, but we now had grandchildren who would ensure our family’s line. But wherever Jun-bu was, could he be disappointed in Joon-lee and even more disappointed in me for how I’d raised her? For me, the pride of my life, my youngest daughter, was the branch who’d broken off in a way I never expected. By joining Mi-ja’s family, she had shattered my heart.

  * * *

  Fourteen months later, on a sultry fall morning, I walked my twin grandsons to school. They usually went with their father, but he’d needed to leave the house early to attend a meeting. We saw other children in the olles. The girls wore school uniforms: a dark blue skirt, white blouse, and wide-brimmed sunhat. The boys wore blue pants and white shirts. We met a teacher as we neared the school. Jun-bu had always worn traditional clothes made of persimmon-dyed fabric to teach, but these days the instructors wore their own version of a uniform: slacks, white shirts, and ties. We bowed to show our respect. The teacher nodded to us and continued purposefully in the direction of the high school. When we reached the elementary school, I gave each grandchild a tangerine. These days, teachers in Hado expected to find tangerines placed in a neat stack on their desks every morning, and I was proud that my grandchildren could participate in that. I watched them run inside, and then I went back home. Min-lee waited for me much as I’d left her, sitting on a low stone wall, holding an envelope in her hand. This was the first letter Joon-lee had sent since her wedding.