Beasts of a Little Land(116)

ONE NIGHT I FOUND IT hard to sleep. It was the sound of the waves crashing. As soon as the sky began to lighten, I went for a walk. The sun was just below the sea and the world was awash in orange and pink.

My feet led me to the cliff, and standing there amid the fluttering new grass was a pair of chestnut-colored wild horses. They stared at me for a long time with such calm eyes.

“COME NOW, if you really want to dive, I’ll show you,” Jindo daek said to me, throwing me a pair of diving pants and a white linen chemise.

“What about CholSoo?” I asked.

“He’ll be fine. I just fed him and we won’t be out long.”

I quickly changed into the diver’s outfit and put on the circular goggle over my head. She didn’t give me a bag, a knife, and a buoy, because I wouldn’t even try to dive deep or catch an abalone for months at least.

The water was warmer than I thought. All I learned that day was how to float in the water without sinking. For hours I bobbed in the shallow, turquoise water, the waves carrying me back and forth, rocking me the way I rock CholSoo to sleep.

I FINALLY GAINED SOME RESPECT within the hamlet after I bought a black-and-white television from the mayor of the neighboring town. No one had ever owned a TV in this village, and almost every evening people came over to my house to watch the news—never mind that they barely understood what was being said. Every so often, the screen turned to static and I had to get up and hammer the side of the TV to get it working again. They were even delighted by that. The women started calling me Seoul halmang—Seoul granny.

AFTER MONTHS OF BOBBING and doggy-paddling, I was finally allowed to hold my breath and sink down to the sea floor. It was only a little deeper than my height but panic gripped me and I came back to the surface, coughing and gasping. Jindo daek gave me her arm so I could hold on to it and regain my breath. I couldn’t help but notice that her arm was covered in bruises. Every day her bruises became bigger.

“It’s nothing,” she said before I could question her.

“You could leave him and come live with me,” I offered.

“Auntie, he would break down your entire house and drag me out by my hair,” she said.

After some practice, I began collecting sea urchins and oysters near the shore. Instead of going to the cove to relax with the other women, I stayed in the sea and just floated. In the water, I felt the weight of the people I used to be falling down to the seafloor. I no longer felt like the same person who had had all those heartaches and regrets.

ONE NIGHT, the stiff-faced announcer reported that the last tiger to be captured in the wild had died in the ChangGyeong Palace Zoo. It had been discovered as an orphaned cub right after the end of the Korean War. Most scientists believe that the Siberian tiger is now officially extinct in the Korean peninsula. But one scientist who was interviewed said they may still exist in the Demilitarized Zone or the deepest mountains in the northeastern border of North Korea.

I WOKE UP to the sound of mewling outside my door and found CholSoo in a basket. His mom was nowhere to be found in the village, the cove, or the sea. By midday, the word had gotten around that she had left her baby with me and run away back to the mainland. Her husband, a red-faced captain of a fishing boat, soon came lumbering into my house, reeking of alcohol.

“Where’s that whore! I will break her in half this time. And where’s my son?”

“Jindo daek is not here, and I don’t know where she is. But it looks like she wanted me to take care of CholSoo,” I said as calmly as possible.

“You stupid wench, give me my son back!” He bared his teeth.

“I’m old enough to be your mother, watch your tongue,” I snapped. “Do you even know anything about raising an infant? Fine, take him, if you want to see your own flesh and blood starve to death. Because of your stupidity and stubbornness, you’re going to kill this innocent baby. Just like you beat up the mother of your own child.” I walked into the room and fetched CholSoo in his swaddling clothes.

“Here, take him if you have any idea how to feed and clothe him.”

As soon as the man leaned in, the baby started wailing. His father flinched, and I imagined that he had beaten his wife whenever she couldn’t quiet the baby quickly enough.

“I can’t stand that crying . . .” He grimaced.

“Go away now. If you want what’s best for your child, go away in peace.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of my gates.

CHOLSOO WAS A GOOD BABY. There were four nursing women in the hamlet and they took turns nursing him once a day. I paid them generously for their milk. For the other meals, I fed CholSoo a gruel made of ground-up rice. He always smiled when I came to pick him up; the top of his head smelled like milk and bread. When I heard his soft breathing at night, I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I no longer felt the need to take a walk before sunrise.

IT WAS EARLY SUMMER and the hills and cliffs were covered in pink rhododendron. Something I discovered also is that in Jejudo, the cosmoses bloom even in spring and summer. The sight of wildflowers and the sea made my heart hurt. That was why I sought out the water.

I took the baby to the cove with me and laid him in the bowl-shaped rock. The other women were already hundreds of yards out from the shore. I waded out alone to the shallows with my tools.

The water was so clear that I could see the colorful little fish from above the surface. One orange fish with white stripes, the size of my pinky, nibbled at my toe and then swam away quickly.