The Island of Sea Women(93)
Two days later, Dr. Park and his team left Hado. They promised to return in three months. Two days after that, on the fourteenth day of the second lunar month, exactly two weeks after we’d welcomed the goddess of the wind to Jeju, it was time to send her away. Once again, haenyeo and fishermen cautiously gathered at the shore. Kang Gu-ja took a prominent seat as chief of our collective. On this occasion, however, her sister and niece did not sit with her. Although the Kang sisters had bickered since childhood, the fact that Gu-sun and Wan-soon had gotten to participate in the study irritated Gu-ja in a way that none of us could have predicted, as if our swimming in frigid water for no money had somehow threatened her position and power. It could be an hour, a day, or a week before Gu-sun and Gu-ja warmed again to each other.
We made offerings of rice cakes and rice wine to the goddesses and gods. Then it was time for fortune-telling. The old women who traveled from village to village to fulfill this purpose sat on mats. Min-lee and Wan-soon sought out the youngest fortune-teller. I approached a woman whose face was dark and wrinkled from the sun. She didn’t remember me, but I remembered her because my mother had always trusted the futures she foretold. I got on my knees, bowed, and then sat back on my heels. The old woman filled her palm with uncooked rice kernels and tossed them in the air. I watched as my destiny rained down. Some kernels fell back onto the old woman’s hand; others fell to the mat.
“Six grains will mean you’ll have good luck,” she said, quickly covering the back of her hand. “Eight, ten, and twelve are not as good but good enough. Four would be the worst number I could tell you. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready.”
She removed the hand covering the kernels and counted. “Ten,” she said. “Not too bad, not too good.” With that, she flicked away the kernels, and they dropped through the spaces between the rocks around us.
I sighed. I would now make extra offerings and pray more. Others got bad readings. Some women cried at their prophecies; others laughed them off. Min-lee and Wan-soon both received sixes. Their fortune-teller asked them to swallow the kernels so they might carry their good luck.
Finally, under Shaman Kim’s watchful eyes, we wove miniature straw boats, each about a meter in length. We filled them with tributes and offerings, attached small sails, invited the goddesses and gods to board, and then sent the vessels out to sea. We tossed more rice wine and handfuls of millet and rice into the water. With that, spring officially arrived.
The day after the farewell rite, I started to cut sweet potatoes to mix with barley to make my children’s lunches appear more substantial when I remembered what Joon-lee had said about us looking poor. I opened an earthenware jar and dipped into my supply of salted anchovies to put on her barley. I expected her to thank me when she got home from school, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She ran in, opened her satchel, and pulled out a new book. The jacket showed a little girl wearing a ruffled skirt, apron, and ankle boots. Blond curls framed her face. She held an old man’s hand. Goats nibbled on grass. Behind them rose snowcapped mountains that seemed plentiful in number and awesome in height.
“She’s Heidi,” Joon-lee announced, “and I love her.”
Supplies of the book had been delivered to schools across the island. Why? We never learned, but every girl her age had received a copy. Now my daughter, who only days earlier had been fixated on learning to ride a bicycle and days before that had proclaimed her desire to become a scientist, became obsessed with Heidi. Wanting to encourage her, I asked her to read the story to me. Then Heidi, Clara, Peter, and Grandfather possessed me too. Next Do-saeng and Min-lee became consumed by the story. Min-lee got Wan-soon to read it. Then Wan-soon read the book to her mother. Soon houses across Hado were lit by oil lamps at night as daughters read the tale to their mothers and grandmothers. Everyone wanted to talk about the story, and we visited each other’s houses or gathered in the olle to discuss it.
“What do you suppose bread tastes like?” Wan-soon asked one afternoon.
Her mother answered, “When you go to Vladivostok for leaving-home water-work, you’ll have an opportunity to taste it. They have a lot of bakeries there.”
“What about goat’s milk?” Min-lee asked me. “Did you drink it when you went out for leaving-home water-work?”
“No, but I tasted ice cream once,” I answered, remembering licking cones on a street corner with Mi-ja and two Russian boys.
One person loved Clara’s grandmother. Another loved Heidi’s grandfather. Many of the baby-divers, whose thoughts were turning to weddings, adored Peter. Wan-soon even said she wanted him for her husband. Min-lee said she preferred the Doctor, because he was so kind. But again, no one was more bewitched by the story than Joon-lee. Her favorite character was Clara.
“Why would you choose her?” I asked. “She’s injured. She can’t help her family. She cries. She’s selfish.”
“But she’s healed by the mountains, the sky, the goats, and their milk!” After a pause, she stated, “I’m going to Switzerland one day.”
When I heard that, I knew I had to steer her in another direction. No matter what Do-saeng said, having three victims in our family—one of whom was a teacher—guaranteed that we were tainted by the guilt-by-association system. Joon-lee would never receive permission to go to the mainland, let alone Switzerland. Since she was still too young to understand all that, I asked the first thing that came to my mind. “How can you go to a fairy world?”