Beasts of a Little Land(115)

Hesoon used to say that Jejudo is the most beautiful place in the world. I haven’t seen much of the world to truly know, but she may have been right.

I found an empty hut by the sea. There were a lot of abandoned houses in Jejudo after the unrest and the cholera in the 1940s and 1950s. No one in the village was happy to see me, but no one told me to get out, either. The island people are wary of mainlanders. None of them spoke standard Korean, and I didn’t understand them when they whispered and giggled in front of my face.

THE FIRST THING I DID was scatter the ashes. If I had a way to find Hesoon’s family, I would have tried—but I was just a child when we met, and I didn’t even know her last name. I took them to the top of a cliff near my house and the wind carried them to the sea. “Do you like it here? Isn’t it beautiful, Aunt Dani? Are you happy to be back, Hesoon?” No one answered, except for the howling of the wind.

FROM THE CLIFF, I COULD look down and see a cove where the seawomen got changed and rested between dives. After several days of hesitating, I finally went down there. The descent itself sent my head spinning and my legs shaking.

“I would like to learn how to dive,” I said to the women, not sure any of them would understand. They talked among themselves in their dialect, laughed a little, and went back to drying themselves over a fire. One of them was nursing a baby, and another one was sharing her tangerines with her mates. They seemed to think I would leave eventually. I turned around, dismayed at the thought of the climb back up to the top.

“What’s a mainlander like you doing here?” I heard a voice behind my back and turned around. She was in a pair of black linen diving pants, yet under her white chemise she was heavily pregnant. She was speaking in the thick, lilting Jeolla dialect.

“I was hoping I could become a seawoman,” I said.

She laughed heartily. “I never heard such a thing. Auntie, this isn’t something you can learn at this age. People drown in these waters. Go take care of yourself, Auntie.”

I HAD MORE THAN ENOUGH money after selling the house in Seoul. I didn’t have anything to do except walk around all day. One morning I wandered out toward the snowcapped Halla Mountain, which is visible from my part of the island. I thought it would be much closer, but after walking many hours, I was still so far from it. Finally I had to admit that I was lost, and foolish to try to get there without any directions. Somehow I made it back on the path to the village, which I recognized from some familiar trees and shrubs. That’s when I heard the moaning and the screams, coming from a fenced-in hut nearby.

I ran inside and found a woman in labor. It was the same seawoman who had told me to go back home. There was no one in the neighborhood; all the men were out at sea on their boats, and all the women were diving.

I tried to remember what the midwife had done with Luna. If it had been a difficult birth, I’m sure I wouldn’t have helped. But the woman was young and healthy, and so was the baby. All I really had to do was cut the cord, tie the end, bathe the baby, and put him in his mother’s arm.

WATCHING THE SEA MAKES YOU think of things. I spent whole days by the beach, my knees tucked in front of my chest, reminiscing. And a few times at first, I cried thinking of JungHo, the last smile he gave me even as he was being stoned and paraded. But the more I stared at the infinite blue waves, the more my mind was pulled toward the happy memories. Truthfully, it is hard for me to remember in great detail all the terrible things that have happened, save for some images.

I remembered that when HanChol and I broke up, I didn’t cry in bed before falling asleep. But I wept so bitterly in my dreams that night that I startled myself awake, and realized my eyes were wet. Nonetheless, I can’t remember what we said to each other that last evening—or how exactly he broke my heart. What I can still see with great clarity are only the beautiful parts. Dancing the waltz with Aunt Dani, Luna, and Lotus. The first time I went onstage at Joseon Theatre. Kissing HanChol under the moonlight. The way he looked at me. Being caressed by him. I have to admit—and it is embarrassing, even at this age—that it is HanChol who gave me the most to remember.

I feel sad and guilty about this, on account of JungHo.

“WHY DO YOU SIT THERE all day watching the sea, Auntie? Don’t you have anyone to look after?”

It was Jindo daek in her diving clothes. Because she was from Jindo on the mainland, everyone called her Jindo daek or CholSoo’s mom, after her baby.

“Where’s CholSoo, Jindo daek?” I asked her.

“I left him on a rock, over there in the cove.” She looked behind her shoulder.

“What? Leave a month-old baby on a rock by the sea?” I jumped up.

“Auntie, that’s what we seawomen do. If I don’t keep him nearby, how can I give him my breast when he’s hungry?” She rolled her eyes.

“I’m always on the beach anyway, why don’t you just let me watch him?”

“That’s why I came over here, isn’t it?” She smiled, already leading the way to the cove. CholSoo was mewling like a kitten inside a bowl-shaped black rock, about a yard up from the ground. His mother quickly opened her chemise and nursed him, and I noticed that there was a large bruise on her shoulder. I asked her about it.

“Oh, this is nothing. The waves were so strong,” she said.

THE DAYS BECAME LONGER and CholSoo turned from bright red to light beige. He was such a good-natured little baby. I sat alone in the cove with CholSoo, shielded from the sea spray, the wind, and the sun. The other women came back periodically to empty their bags of abalones and eat a bite of food before heading back out. They were divided by rank and could dive only in their respective areas. CholSoo’s mom only went out to the shallow waters by the shore, and when she came back her bag was usually a lot lighter than the others’.