The Island of Sea Women(57)
My father was chasing Min-lee, who was fifteen months old and a master walker, when we heard a honking horn. I knew only one family who owned an automobile. I dried my hands and ran through the olles to the main road. Indeed, there was Sang-mun’s family car. Mi-ja stood by the open back door, leaning in. She straightened, pulling out Yo-chan. She set his feet on the ground. She wore a Western-style dress and a hat decorated with a long pheasant feather. Yo-chan, whose plump cheeks made him into a miniature image of his father, had grown a lot this past year.
“Have I ever missed marking this day with you?” my friend asked. “Sun-sil was like a mother to me.”
Just then, the sedan’s other door slowly swung open, and Sang-mun emerged. I hadn’t seen him in two years, and I might not have recognized him if he had not been with Mi-ja and her son. He’d turned to skin and bones. His eyes and cheeks were sunken. He also wore Western-style clothes, but on his feet were the straw sandals Mi-ja had made as a traditional wedding gift. His feet were covered with open sores.
“My husband escaped from the north,” Mi-ja explained, speaking for the broken man beside her. “When he first came home, we thought he might not live. Now we are here to ask Shaman Kim to thank the gods and spirits who worked on his behalf. I think he can heal here.”
We ended up staying together in Hado for a week. Jun-bu made bowls of sea urchin porridge—known to help the elderly and ailing babies—which Sang-mun slurped down. Each morning, my husband helped Sang-mun to the shore, so he could soak his feet in salt water. The two men watched our children, while Mi-ja and I went diving with Do-saeng’s collective. In the early evenings, the four of us sat on the rocks, watching the sun set, drinking rice wine, and doting over our children, who’d stand, fall, grab on to a rock, pull themselves up again, totter over the uneven surface, and fall again.
One day Sang-mun took photos of Mi-ja and me with his wedding camera as we stepped out of the sea in our diving clothes. I took that as a sign he was feeling better, except that his mind remained both bitter and terrified. Like many of those who’d escaped from the north, he hated communism and was distrustful of the direction Jeju and the rest of the country might take, while my husband was idealistic about our new nation and what it could become. By the time we all needed to return to our own homes, the two husbands were barely speaking.
Day 3: 2008
Young-sook has another fitful night. She lies on her sleeping mat, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the sound of waves hitting the rocks. She punishes herself for the bad judgment she showed during her dive yesterday and if it’s a hint that worse might be coming. She frets about her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She agonizes over what will happen if Kim Il-sung decides to invade South Korea again. She worries about Roh Tae-woo, a former general and now the first president to be elected by the South Korean people, even if he was handpicked by his predecessor. She wonders if maybe it’s better to have the corrupt leader you know . . . But Roh is going to host the Olympics in Seoul . . . She keeps hearing about “the world stage,” but what if . . . If eighty-five years have taught her anything, it’s that governments come and go and that whoever and whatever comes next will eventually become rotten.
These things clutter the front of her mind, and she’s grateful in some way, because deeper, more persistent memories of screaming and begging keep floating into view. She counts forward and backward. She scrubs an imaginary eraser against the inside of her skull. She relaxes each toe, then her arches, then her ankles, then her calves, slowly working her way up to her forehead, and back down again. She does everything she can to push the bad pictures out of her head. None of it works. It never does.
When dawn finally comes, Young-sook gets dressed, eats breakfast, and considers what will come next. Some of her friends find company in television soap operas, but the troubles of the characters are of no interest to her. No, she is not the kind of old woman to sit inside and watch television. However, today—and she hates to admit it—she feels worn out. How pleasant it would be to go down to the shore and rest in the pavilion. There, she could look out to the sea, watch the haenyeo bobbing up and down not far offshore, and listen to the lilting, haunting cries of their sumbisori. Or she could doze. No one would bother her, because she’s an ancient who’s earned the respect of everyone in Hado.
Instead, habit takes her to the cement building with the tin roof that is now Hado’s bulteok. Women sit outside on their haunches. They wear long-sleeved shirts with floral or checkerboard prints. Their faces are protected from the sun by big straw hats or broad-brimmed bonnets. Their feet, covered in droopy white socks, are tucked into plastic slippers or clogs. The man in charge of the cooperative talks to them through a bullhorn. She can’t decide what she dislikes more—that they’re being ordered around by a man or the whining sounds of his bullhorn. “Today you will do a job as old as haenyeo tradition—but with a new title—working as guardians of the sea.” It used to be said that the sea’s gifts were like a mother’s love, unending, but parts of the sea are turning white, where coral, algae, seaweed, and sea creatures have perished. Some of this has been caused by the change in climate, some by overfishing, and some by human disregard. Therefore, the haenyeo will dive for a harvest of Styrofoam, cigarette filters, candy wrappers, and bits of plastic. The man from the cooperative ends his orders with “Young-sook and the Kang sisters will gather litter on the shore today.” He’s trying to let her save face for the mistake that almost led to her death yesterday, but she wonders how long it will be before she’s allowed to dive again, even in the shallows.