The Island of Sea Women(65)
“You have many burdens,” Ki-yeong complimented me as I herded my children and Yu-ri.
“I’m a lucky woman,” I responded. To return her praise, I said, “Your daughter follows in your wake. She’s a good baby-diver.”
“Your daughter will do the same one day.”
“That will be the greatest gift she can give me.”
We entered the village. Up ahead, someone passed out leaflets.
“Here. Take one,” the young man said.
“I can’t read,” I said.
The young man tried to press his wares into the hands of Ki-yeong and Yun-su.
“We can’t read either,” Yun-su admitted.
Just then two policemen came around a corner. When they saw the boy, one of them shouted, “Halt!” The other yelled, “Stop right there!”
The color drained from the boy’s face. Then his eyes hardened. He tossed the leaflets and took off. The policemen sprinted after him—toward us. I picked up Min-lee, put an arm around Yu-ri, who had Sung-soo on her back, and together we moved toward the square. In the confusion, Yun-su came with me instead of with her mother, sisters, and grandmother. Gunfire—the same horrible popping sounds we’d heard in the square during the demonstration—burst around us. Next to me, Yun-su stumbled and fell. She rolled over and stood up. Blood oozed from her shoulder. It looked like a surface wound, but I didn’t wait to examine it.
“Yu-ri, hold on to me!” My sister-in-law, horrified, grabbed the hem of my tunic in her fist. Min-lee was crying so hard she could barely breathe. I shifted her weight and then wrapped my other arm around Yun-su’s waist. We were five people moving as one. When we got to the square, we collapsed to the ground. Min-lee still screamed. Yu-ri, white with terror, hunkered next to me. Yun-su’s blood dripped everywhere. I ran my shaking hands over Yu-ri, Min-lee, and Sung-soo. They hadn’t been hurt.
A siren rang through the village. Neighbors burst from their homes—some of them armed with farming tools—to chase the two policemen who’d shot at us. I didn’t stay to see what would happen. I gathered my group, and together we went to Yun-su’s house. Ki-yeong and the other relatives stood in their courtyard, looking frantic. When they saw Yun-su, they leapt into action. One person put water on to boil. Another shook out a length of clean persimmon cloth and ripped it into strips to use for bandages. But when Ki-yeong appeared with a knife, scissors, and tweezers, the poor girl went limp in my arms, her legs collapsing beneath her as she lost consciousness. She was hurt, but her injuries weren’t life threatening. Once the smell of blood was gone from her wound, she’d be able to dive again.
I had to get my family home. We retraced our steps to the square, where villagers had the two policemen in ropes. People yelled and cursed. Someone kicked the smaller policeman.
“Jabbing him with your old sandal is not enough!” an old man railed. “Let’s take them to the police outpost in Hamdeok! We’ll make sure they’re punished!”
The crowd roared its approval. I should have followed my plan and gone home, but I roared along with everyone. My terror had turned to fury. How could other Koreans—even if they weren’t from Jeju—shoot at us? We were innocent people, and this had to stop! So we joined the throng as they dragged the two policemen through the olle and along the shore the three kilometers to Hamdeok. Barely an hour had passed since my family and I left our dry fields.
“We want to lodge a complaint against these two!” one of the elders from Bukchon called out when we reached the small police station. “Let us tell you our grievances.”
The Japanese had listened when we complained, but not our own people. Instead, I watched in horror as some policemen came out on the roof, ran to a mounted machine gun, and, without warning, began to fire. It took a moment to realize they’d fired blanks, but we’d already scattered like bugs on the floor of a latrine when startled by the light of an oil lamp. Hiding behind some barrels, I snuck a quick look to see if it was safe. There, in the window of the police station, staring out, was Sang-mun. I fell back out of sight. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. My eyes had to be lying, but when I peeked out again, there he was. Our eyes met.
I didn’t stop to visit Mi-ja on my way back to Bukchon. I didn’t know what I could possibly say to her. For the first time in our many years of friendship, I wasn’t sure I could trust her.
My husband was waiting for us at the front gate when we got home. Wordlessly, he took me in his arms. I sobbed out what I’d seen.
“You’re safe,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
But I was deeply ashamed that I’d let the anger and confusion of the moment put my children and Yu-ri at risk. I promised myself I’d never let that happen again. Not as a mother. Not as a wife.
The next day, the newspaper reported that the police had “needed” to crack down on those distributing leaflets, but that the culprit in Bukchon had gotten away. Two days after that, a report leaked from the U.S. Twenty-fourth Corps also made the front page. My husband read the story:
“Two women and one man were wounded in a wild gunfight between leftists distributing leaflets and police in Bukchon—”
“But that’s not what happened!” I cried, indignant.
Jun-bu returned to the article. “A mob of approximately two hundred attacked the police station in Hamdeok,” he read. “Police reinforcements were required to disperse the mob.”