The Island of Sea Women(110)
I sold the last of my goods, and the soldiers wandered down the street and into a bar. I emptied my tubs, stacked them, and walked to the bus stop. Along the way, I passed women wearing tight dresses. Men in untucked T-shirts and shorts or jeans sauntered up to those young women and exchanged words. Sometimes a deal was struck, but most of the women continued on their way, ignoring the eager attentions.
When I was a girl going in and out of the port for leaving-home water-work, Jeju City had seemed so much more advanced than Hado. It still was. Jeju City had the largest five-day market on the island, where I could buy just about anything, but the city also had souvenir shops, photo studios, beauty parlors, and places to buy or repair toasters, fans, and lamps. Cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, and taxis moved through traffic that also included horse-and donkey-pulled carts, as well as hand-pushed wheelbarrows piled high. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, perfume, diesel and gasoline exhaust, and dung from the dray animals. Raw sewage still ran through the gutters down to the harbor, where ships spewed oil and fish waited to be off-loaded to canneries. The alleyways were chockablock with bars serving our local rice wine, beer, barbecue, and girls. I had to be careful as I passed those places, because customers liked to throw chicken, pork, and beef bones out the door to the sidewalk, where poor kids scurried and darted to scavenge these discards and take them home to their families.
By the time I boarded the bus, the sun had set. Outside the window, lights sprawled to infinity—from cafés and houses, to the port, and then offshore to the squid and shrimp boats, which dotted the sea all the way to where the ocean met the star-filled sky. The road circling the island had been paved the previous year, and the ride was smooth and fast. I got off at Hado and walked home through the olle. Oil lamps glowed here and there, but the old quiet was gone. People were frugal, so they didn’t always use their new electricity to light their homes, preferring instead to play radios and record players.
I heard the racket from my house even before I reached it. I sighed. I was tired and didn’t want to face a crowd. I entered the gate, and the entire courtyard was filled with people, sitting with their backs to me. The new sliding doors into the big house had been pushed open. More people sat on the floor inside the house. Whether inside or outside, everyone faced the television like they were in a cinema. They’d all brought food too—buckwheat pancakes with shredded turnip and stews filled with rice cakes and fish floating in spicy red sauce and topped with fried chilies. The television picture was in black and white, and the reception was fuzzy, but I recognized the show right away. Maybe tonight Marshal Dillon would finally kiss Miss Kitty. I spotted Min-lee, her husband, the twins—now eight—and her daughters, five and two. Min-lee’s husband rubbed her back. Their fifth child was due in six weeks, and Min-lee stood on her feet all day in the gift shop in the hotel where she worked. They all lived in the big house now.
I picked my way through the crowd to the little house that Do-saeng and I—two widows—now shared. I put away my tubs and added the cash I’d earned today to the tin box where I kept my savings. When I was done, Do-saeng said reproachfully, “They’ve been peeing in the courtyard again.”
“Tell them to use the latrine next time.”
“Do you think I didn’t?”
Not only were we the first in Hado to get a television, but our compound had been among the first to be affected by Saemaul Undong—the New Village Movement—which the regime had recently inaugurated. We’d been told we couldn’t promote tourism without upgrading the island. We were to have indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, paved roads, and commercial airlines. This meant, among other things, that thatch roofs had to be replaced with those made of corrugated tin or tile. We were told tourists wouldn’t like our three-step farming system, and that we had to get rid of our pigsty latrines. Tourists wouldn’t want to see or smell pigs, and they certainly wouldn’t want to put their rear ends above the pigs’ greedy snouts. I didn’t know one family willing to tear down its latrine, and I’d continue to keep mine for as long as possible. So much change so fast was unsettling, and it undermined our way of life, our beliefs, and our traditions.
“You spoiled your children, and now you’re spoiling your grandchildren with that television,” Do-saeng complained.
I absorbed the criticism. Yes, I gave a spoonful of sugar to Min-lee’s twins and to her two daughters whenever I saw them, which was every day. I didn’t begrudge my grandchildren their treats, but the television had clearly been a mistake.
“Look at it this way,” I said. “You get to see your great-grandchildren every day, and you’re healthy enough to enjoy them. Not every woman your age can say that.”
At seventy-three, Do-saeng was in remarkable shape. Her braids had gone gray, but her body was strong. Even though she was well past retirement age, she’d begun diving again. That broke the rule of having more than one diver per household, but the man in charge of the Village Fishery Association let her join us from time to time because we needed her, and women like her, since it was impossible to find baby-divers these days. This, more than giving sugar to children, would have been unimaginable back when my own grandmother was alive.
“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.”