The Island of Sea Women(72)
I wanted our family to return home to Hado, where we could be with Do-saeng, my father, and my brother, but Jun-bu felt we should stay in Bukchon. “I need to keep teaching,” he said. “We need the money.”
Schools had remained open to keep boys and young men occupied. Jun-bu had struggled with his part in this, but he was right that we needed the money when we haenyeo weren’t allowed to dive. We were all hungry and getting weaker every day. My children didn’t have the energy to cry, but they whimpered at night. All I could do was make meager offerings to Halmang Samseung in the hope she would prevent my breast milk from drying up. If it did, I wasn’t sure how I would nourish Kyung-soo.
Life-Giving Air
January 16–17, 1949
Winters can be long and dreary on Jeju, and the January of 1949 was particularly so. One night, the wind seemed to blow worse than ever through cracks in the walls of the house. My children could barely move, because their clothes were so padded that their arms and legs stuck out from their bodies like branches. Jun-bu and I laid out our sleeping mats, all of them touching. Min-lee and Sung-soo crawled off their mats and snuggled close to us, seeking extra warmth. I held Kyung-soo in the crook of my arm. Even with the oil lamps off and the room in utter darkness, the children fidgeted from cold and hunger. We didn’t know how to explain our misfortune to them when we were having a hard time understanding it ourselves, but I knew that if I could calm Min-lee, then Sung-soo would quiet as well. A story might help.
“We’re lucky that our island has so many goddesses to watch over us.” I spoke softly, hoping my lowered voice would bring tranquillity. “But we have one real-life woman, who was as brave and persistent as any goddess. Her name was Kim Mandeok, and she lived three hundred years ago. She was the daughter of an aristocrat, who’d been exiled here. Her mother was . . .” I was not going to say prostitute. “Her mother worked in Jeju City. Kim Mandeok did not follow in her mother’s wake.”
Jun-bu smiled at me in the darkness and squeezed my hand.
“Kim Mandeok opened an inn and became a merchant. She sold the great specialties of Jeju—horsehair, sea mustard, abalone, and dried ox gallstones. Then came the Most Horrendous Famine. People ate every dog. Soon, only water was left over, and our island doesn’t have much water. Kim Mandeok had to help. She sold everything she owned and then paid one thousand gold bars to buy rice for the people. When the king heard what she’d done, he offered to repay her, but she refused. He said he would give her whatever she desired, but her single request was bigger than the moon. She asked to make a pilgrimage to the mainland to visit sacred sites. The king kept his word, and she became not only the first native-born islander but also the first woman in two centuries to leave Jeju to go to the mainland. It is through Kim Mandeok that the inconceivable became conceivable. She paved the way for your father and so many others to leave Jeju.”
“Kim Mandeok was a woman with a generous heart,” Jun-bu whispered to Min-lee. “She was selfless and only thought of others. She was, little one, like your own mother.”
The children drifted off to sleep. I placed the baby between his sister and brother and moved into my husband’s arms. It was too cold to remove all our clothes. He pulled his pants down over his rump. I wiggled out of mine. Our hunger and desperation—and all the death and destruction around us—drove us to do the very thing that created life, that said there would be a future, that reminded us of our own humanity.
* * *
Not many hours later, we were awakened by what we’d come to recognize as gunfire. This was not uncommon in those days. The jolting to consciousness. The moment of terror. The instinctual gathering of my children. Jun-bu wrapping his arms around us all. Footsteps echoing through the olles. Shouts and gruff whispers insinuating their way into our room. Followed by silence. Soon, the baby dozed off, and the tension in my other children’s bodies melted as they returned to the limpness of slumber. Jun-bu and I lay awake together, listening, until we too fell back asleep.
When dawn broke and Min-lee and I went outside to gather dried dung and haul water, we found Mi-ja standing in the small courtyard in front of my house. She looked better than when I’d seen her eight months earlier. The sheen of her hair caught the morning sun’s rays. Her eyes were bright. She’d gained a little weight. Air puffed in clouds from her mouth. She was alone.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, thoroughly surprised but also a little wary. I was relieved to see she was all right, but a part of me felt I had to be careful, knowing the side her husband had taken.
Before she could answer, Min-lee squealed, “Where’s Yo-chan?” The two children would turn four in June. They were old enough to remember each other despite our infrequent visits.
Mi-ja smiled at her. “He went with his father to see his grandparents in Jeju City. It wasn’t far out of their way to drop me off. For now”—she turned her gaze to me—“I’m visiting my oldest friend.”
I had many questions, but first the required pleasantries. “Have you eaten? Will you spend the night?” Inside, I was wondering what I could feed her, where she would sleep in our small teacher’s house, and how her husband would respond.
“No need. They’ll be back for me this afternoon.” She tilted her head. “Give me a jar. Take me to the village well. Let me help.”