The Island of Sea Women(56)

“Where is everyone?”

Her eyebrows rose on her forehead like two caterpillars. “You would think that collaborators like my father-in-law would have been punished. Instead he’s been hired by”—and here she struggled with the words which were new to all of us—“the transitional American government to help the U.S. Army with logistics.”

The words and concepts were foreign to me, but it was the way she spoke them that was unnerving. She whispered, even though we were alone.

“The Americans want the island to be kept running as smoothly as possible,” she went on, almost as if she’d memorized what she felt she had to say. “They plan to restore the businesses and enterprises that shut down when the Japanese left. And are still leaving . . . My father-in-law says there could be riots with so many of our citizens out of work. He says more than one hundred thousand migrants have returned home from Japan.” Those would be some of the people I’d seen loitering on the streets coming here. “Men—and women—will do desperate things when they’re hungry.”

“We’ve always been hungry on Jeju,” I allowed.

“This is different. Too many people and not enough food.” She sighed. “My father-in-law was a collaborator for the Japanese. Now he’s a collaborator for the Americans. I will always have that label associated with me.”

Was that true? Was she unable to shift her fate? No matter how many offerings we make to goddesses, it’s nearly impossible to change our destinies. I tried to steer the conversation in a new direction.

“My mother-in-law is not a bad woman,” I said. “I have great respect for her water skills, but I’m happy not to be living in her compound. How are things with your mother-in-law?”

All brides talk about these issues, and I expected Mi-ja to share her heart with me as she always had.

“Madame Lee went to the five-day market,” Mi-ja answered, and that was that. Her eyes drifted to the window. I had the sense she was longing for the sea, but how odd that she wasn’t inquiring after me, my husband, or the people we knew. And not a single question about Hado.

I tried a different approach. “Is your husband well?”

Her body had such lightness to it. She could have lifted right off the floor and out the window. “The last time Sang-mun wrote to his parents was five months ago,” she answered. “He was in Pyongyang, above the Thirty-eighth Parallel, visiting warehouses and learning to better manage shipments and storage. We’ve not heard from him again.”

Maybe this wasn’t the worst news. Still, I hesitated before responding. I placed a hand on her knee and tried to sound positive. “You must not worry. One Korean would never hurt another Korean.”

But as the afternoon wore on, I understood there was no point in trying to comfort my friend. She was paralyzingly unhappy. She needed to leave this place.

“You could go back to Hado,” I suggested.

“And live with Aunt Lee-ok and Uncle Him-chan? Never.”

“You could come to Bukchon and rent rooms near me—”

“I couldn’t live in a village as though I were a widow. I would be nothing.”

“Not as a widow,” I answered, hurt. “As my friend.”

All in all, it was a disheartening visit.

Before I left, Mi-ja gave me money to hire Shaman Kim the next time I went to Hado, so she could perform a ritual to retrieve Sang-mun’s lost and wandering soul. I returned to Bukchon feeling grateful for my husband, our home, and the stability of my life, which—while completely different from anything I’d previously known—was secure, peaceful, and happy. I worked as a haenyeo, and Jun-bu taught his classes unfettered by Japanese occupiers. He spoke to his students entirely in our native tongue, and they used their Korean names and spoke in the Jeju dialect without fear of punishment. We could do these things, because we were free from the colonists at last, although we still didn’t know what life with the American occupiers would be like.

When Jun-bu and I took the family to Hado for a visit, I sought out Shaman Kim, who conducted the ceremony for Sang-mun. “Where is the husband of Mi-ja?” she asked the gods. “Bring him home to his wife. Bring him home so he might show respect to his parents. Bring him home so he might meet his son.”



* * *



In June, a baby boy easily slipped out of me. We named him Sung-soo, with the soo as his generational name, which all sons born to Jun-bu and me would share. I dressed Sung-soo in the special outfit for him to wear during his first three days of life from good-luck material given to me by Gi-won. Bukchon’s shaman blessed him. Her powerful spirit infused his spirit. He not only survived his first three days but turned out to be a strong baby with big lungs and a lusty appetite for my milk.

When he was four months old and fall colors blazed on Grandmother Seolmundae’s flanks, Jun-bu, Yu-ri, Min-lee, and I took a boat to Hado to help my father perform ancestor worship for my mother, my sister, my fourth brother, and my two brothers who had not returned home after the war ended. As soon as we arrived and were settled in my natal home, Jun-bu fetched his mother. Do-saeng beamed with joy when she entered my father’s house. “A grandson!” she shouted. But beyond the guarantee that ancestral rites would be performed for her for another generation, she was happy to see her daughter, although Yu-ri didn’t seem to remember who she was. Together, Do-saeng and I worked side by side to prepare the ritual foods. This year our ingredients were minimal, but we were able to make soup with tilefish, white radish, and seaweed, a bowl of seasoned bracken, and turnip and green onion buckwheat pancakes, since ancestors are known to have a fondness for these dishes.