The Island of Sea Women(40)

“I don’t want this marriage,” she confessed. “Auntie and Uncle would sell the hairs off my head to profit from me, but what about your grandmother? I begged her not to do this.”

I found my emotions shifting yet again. “You had to know how I felt about him,” I said reproachfully.

“I’d guessed,” she conceded. “But even though I knew your feelings doesn’t mean I had a say in what happened. I told your grandmother everything. I begged her . . .” She faltered. Finally, she resumed. “You’re lucky you don’t have to marry him. Anyone can see he is not a good man. You can tell by the strength of his arms and the curve of his jaw.”

Her observations shocked me. Just as I felt heat creeping up my spine, Mi-ja burst into tears.

“What am I going to do? I don’t want to marry him, and I don’t want to be away from you.”

And then we were both crying and making promises neither of us could possibly keep.

Later, back home, I sobbed into Grandmother’s lap. With her, I could speak more freely about my confused emotions. I’d hoped to marry Sang-mun, I told her. I was disappointed, but I was also angry at Mi-ja. Maybe she hadn’t stolen him, but she’d won him nevertheless, and it stung. She would be a city wife—enjoying paved roads, electricity, and indoor plumbing. “Sang-mun might even hire a tutor for her!” I wept, outraged, jealous, and still so very hurt.

But Grandmother wasn’t interested in comforting me. Instead, she poured out her disgust with Lee Han-bong, Sang-mun’s father. “That man! He comes here with his oily words, talking about a one-day marriage, and acting like he’s trying to save Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle from having to travel. He was saying they’re too poor to hold a proper wedding, and he didn’t want his friends to see it. He pretended he wants a pretty wife for his son—a girl that he and his friends remember from better circumstances—but he was trying to save face among his friends. He didn’t care at all for what this might do to Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle.”

“But you’ve never liked them—”

“Liked them? What does that have to do with anything? When he insults them, he insults everyone in Hado! He’s a collaborator, and he has too much Japanese thinking in him.”

This was about the worst thing she could say about anyone, since she so hated the Japanese and those who helped them. I rubbed my eyes with my palms. I was thinking too much about myself.

Next to me, Grandmother still stewed. “Mi-ja said his hands are smooth.”

“Lee Han-bong’s?”

“Of course not.” She snorted. “The son’s hands.”

I asked the obvious questions. “How do you know? Who told you?”

“Mi-ja said he grabbed her when they were walking from the port.”

“He grabbed her? She would have told me—”

“That poor girl was doomed to tragedy from the moment she sucked in her first breath,” Grandmother went on. “You must pity her when you have such good fortune. Don’t forget I’ve been working on an arrangement for you too.”

I was such a girl—swept up in a swirl of feelings I was too young to understand—and I struggled to make my heart and mind change course. I had wanted Sang-mun. Mi-ja had told me she didn’t want to marry him, and maybe the reason Grandmother gave was true. But if it were true, Mi-ja would have told me. I was sure of it. Maybe everything Grandmother said was to make me feel better that I wasn’t as pretty, as pale, or as precious—with white bows in my hair—as Mi-ja. Every twist made me doubt my friend when we’d always been so close.

“I can’t tell you who he is, but I know you’ll be happy,” Grandmother declared. “I would never arrange a marriage for you with someone you wouldn’t like. Mi-ja is a different story. Her choices were always limited, and she deserves what she gets.” Then a mischievous look passed over her face. “Your husband is arriving by ferry tomorrow.”

“Is he a mainland man?” I asked, knowing that this was what Mi-ja had wanted for herself.

Grandmother smoothed the hair from my face. She stared into my eyes. Could she see the pettiness in them? Or maybe she saw deeper, to my feelings of sorrow and betrayal. I blinked and shifted my gaze. Grandmother sighed. “If you are on the dock tomorrow . . .” She slipped a few coins in my hand. “Here’s enough to pay a fisherman to take you by boat to the city. I’m giving you this gift—a modern gift of a glimpse of the man you will marry before the engagement meeting. I caution you, though, to stay out of sight. You don’t want him to see you! There’s modern, and then there’s tradition.”

My insides swirled with emotions. Again, I sensed Grandmother assessing me.

“When you’re a wife,” she went on, “you’ll learn how to deprive your husband of a little of his allowance—‘My harvest wasn’t plentiful this week,’ or ‘I had to pay extra dues to the collective for more firewood’—so that you’ll have money to spend on yourself. You and Mi-ja will be separated, but a free day and a little cash will always bring the two of you together.”





On the Sleeping Mat


August–September 1944

The next morning, Mi-ja and I rode on a wind-driven raft to the harbor. We sat on the seawall and waited. We’d always been so close, but there was tension between us now. I didn’t ask what Sang-mun did or didn’t do to her, and she didn’t volunteer the story. We were looking for my husband now. Grandmother hadn’t told me which ferry he’d be coming in on or given any clues about what he looked like. He could be tall or short, with thick or thinning hair, with a prominent nose or one that was wide and flat. If he were from the mainland, he might be a farmer, fisherman, or businessman. But really, how did Grandmother expect me to pick him out of a crowd?