The Island of Sea Women

Years of Secrecy

Jeju had always had a surplus of women, but with so many men and boys killed—with entire posterity lines wiped out—the imbalance was even greater. For the last eleven years, we women had forced ourselves to do even more than we had in the past. Those of us who ran our own households learned we could gather more wealth without husbands to drink or gamble it away. We contributed funds to rebuild schools and other village structures. We donated money to repair old roads and construct new ones. None of this would have been possible if we hadn’t been completely free to dive again. And to dive, we needed to remain safe, which was why on the second day of the second lunar month we washed our minds of all trivialities, and then met Shaman Kim for the annual ceremony to Welcome the Goddess.

We gathered on the beach, totally exposed, and the back of my neck prickled. What we were doing was against the law. Although the Japanese colonists had sought to ban Shamanism, the new leader of our country decided to end it once and for all. President Park Chung-hee had come to power during a military coup, and he approached his new job in the same manner. There were more kidnappings and instances of torture, disappearances, and deaths. He ordered all shrines to be dismantled. Shaman Kim had been forced to break her drums and burn her tassels. Things that were difficult to destroy—her cymbals and gongs—were confiscated. This came at a time when we all needed—wanted—to be cleansed of the blame and guilt we felt for being survivors. Some turned to the Catholic missionaries for help. Others sought comfort in Buddhism and Confucianism. But even though Shamanism had been outlawed, Shaman Kim, and so many like her across the island, did not abandon us.

We typically took precautions and hid our activities as best we could, but this annual event was too large to be held in private. Not just my collective but all the collectives from the different villages that made up Hado had come together. Unlike the Jamsu rite, which was for haenyeo alone and honored the Dragon King and Queen of the Sea, this ceremony included fishermen. The women wore padded jackets, scarves, and gloves. The handful of men stamped their feet, seeking warmth in movement.

“I call on all the gods and goddesses of Jeju,” Shaman Kim beckoned. “We welcome Yeongdeung, the goddess of the wind. We welcome all ancestors and spirits who accompany her. Enjoy the peach and camellia that are blooming. Embrace the beauty of our island. Sow the seeds of the five grains on our land. Sow seeds into the sea, which will grow into underwater crops.”

Offerings of fruit, bowls of rice, dried fish and squid, bottles of homemade liquor, and hard-boiled eggs spilled across the makeshift altar. Every woman and girl from our collective was here. Kang Gu-ja sat in a prominent spot. Her sister, Gu-sun, sat nearby, with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Wan-soon, beside her. Min-lee and Wan-soon had become friends when we moved back to Hado. Min-lee tended toward melancholy, for which I blamed myself, so to see the two girls giggling together was wonderful. Do-saeng and Joon-lee, who would turn twelve in the fall, sat together. Yang-jin, my diving partner, was next to me. At the far end of the gathering, as far as she could be from me, Mi-ja sat with her collective. Everyone had bathed and wore clean clothes, yet she somehow managed to look fresher than the rest of us.

Shaman Kim swirled in her hanbok. Her helpers had made a new drum from a gourd, since only the sounds from this instrument can reach the ears of spirits, and hammered flat a cooking vessel to use as a gong to waken the spirits of the wind and waters. Shaman Kim rang a bell, which she’d hidden during the raid of her home, to rouse the spirits who live on the earth. Her tassels were now made from shredded pieces of persimmon cloth. We feared for her, because if she was caught with any of these things, she would be arrested.

“I pray to the goddess of the wind to look after the haenyeo,” Shaman Kim implored. “Don’t let a tewak drift. Don’t let tools break. Don’t let a bitchang get stuck or let an octopus pin a haenyeo’s arms.”

We knelt and prayed. We bowed. Shaman Kim spat water to keep evil spirits at bay. She commented on the weather and tides, cajoling the goddess of the wind to be gentle in the coming months. “Let our haenyeo be safe all season. Prevent our fishermen from being lost to a typhoon, cyclone, or tempestuous seas.”

When the ceremony ended, we ate some of the offerings and then threw the rest of the food into the sea for all water and wind goddesses and gods to enjoy in hopes they would show us favor. Then it was time for dancing. Min-lee and Wan-soon held hands as they swayed. They looked free and happy. Last year, when Min-lee turned fifteen, I’d given her a tewak made of Styrofoam. Wan-soon was given one as well. Gu-sun and I had taught our daughters to dive, but their destinies lay elsewhere. I’d thought Jun-bu crazy when he’d said he wanted all our children to be educated, but now I did everything possible to respect his wishes. If you plant red beans, then you will harvest red beans. Min-lee was in high school, Kyung-soo in middle school, and Joon-lee in elementary school. My two eldest children were only so-so students, but Joon-lee was truly her father’s daughter. She was smart, diligent, and studious. Each year, her teachers proclaimed her the smartest person—boy or girl—in class. Gu-sun had also saved money to send Wan-soon, her youngest child, to school, so our daughters only dove with us if their free days corresponded with the right tides. Since they worked so little, Gu-sun and I had told them they could use their earnings to buy school supplies, but they mostly treated themselves with ribbons for their hair or candy bars.

For the next two weeks, while the goddess of the wind was on Jeju, we’d remain idle. We wouldn’t dive and fishermen wouldn’t board their boats or rafts, since the winds the goddess brought with her were particularly fierce and fickle. No other chores could be done either. It was said that if you made soy sauce at this time, insects would hatch in it. If you repaired your roof, it would leak. If you sowed grains, a drought would come. Hence, this was a time to visit neighbors, talk long into the night, and share meals and stories.

“Mother, come see!” Joon-lee called.

I peeked out the door as she came into the courtyard with the water she’d drawn from the village well. Through the open gate, I saw men filing past, one right after the other like a string of fish.

“Hurry here!” I cried, fearful. Joon-lee left the jar on the ground and ran to my side. I pushed her protectively behind me. “Where’s your sister?” I asked.

Before Joon-lee could answer, Min-lee came through the gate. She set down her water and jogged over to us. “They’re strangers,” she whispered. Of course they were. They wore black trousers with sharp creases. Their shoes were made of leather. Their jackets were unlike any I’d seen before, making them look puffy and awkward. Some of them were Korean. They had to be from the mainland. But there were also Japanese and white men. I automatically took them to be Americans, because they were tall and sandy-haired. Not one of them wore a uniform. They weren’t armed either, as far as I could tell. At least half of them wore glasses. My initial anxiety was replaced by curiosity. The last man strode past. Friends and neighbors, chattering, pointing, and craning their necks to get a better glimpse, trailed behind him.

“I want to see who they are,” Joon-lee said, grabbing my hand. She was too young to understand terror, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid, and neither was Min-lee. I even called to Do-saeng to join us.

We stepped into the olle and were swept along the shore road.

“Who are they?” Joon-lee asked.

Her older sister asked the more important question. “What do they want?”

More women came out of their houses. I saw my diving partner, Yang-jin, up ahead, and we rushed to catch up to her.

“Are they going to the village square?” I asked.

“Maybe they have business with the men,” she replied.

But we didn’t turn inland toward the village square. Instead, we spilled onto the beach. Once there, I saw that there weren’t so many of us after all. Maybe about thirty women and children. The strangers turned to us. With their backs to the sea, the frigid wind ruffled their hair and flapped through their trousers. A small, compact man stepped forward. He spoke in standard Korean, but we were able to understand him.

“My name is Dr. Park. I’m a scientist.” He motioned to the men around him. “We’re all scientists. Some of us are from the mainland, but we also have scientists from around the world. We’re here to study the haenyeo. We’ve just spent two weeks in a village near Busan, where many haenyeo go for itinerant work. Now we’ve come to the native home of the haenyeo. We hope you will help us.”

We had six haenyeo chiefs—one for each of the sections that made up Hado—but not one of them was with us. I nudged my mother-in-law. “You’re the highest ranked among us,” I said. “You must speak to them.”

She set her jaw, determined, and then stepped out of the crowd and crossed halfway to the men. “I am Yang Do-saeng. I’m the former chief of the Sut-dong collective. I’m listening.”

“We understand you have just greeted the goddess of the wind and will be free from activity for the next two weeks—”

“A woman is never free from activity,” she said.

Dr. Park smiled at her comment but chose not to address it. “You may not know this, but the cold-water stress that the haenyeo endure is greater than for any other human group in the world.”

This was met by indifferent looks. We didn’t know about “other human groups” or “cold-water stress.” We only had our own experiences. When Mi-ja and I had dived off Vladivostok in winter, we didn’t see any people in the water with us apart from other haenyeo. We considered our ability a gift that allowed us to help our families.

“We’re looking for twenty volunteers,” he went on. “We would like ten haenyeo and ten nondivers.”

“What are they volunteering for?” Do-saeng asked.

“We’ll be testing women in and out of the water,” Dr. Park answered.

“We don’t enter the sea when the goddess of the wind is here,” Do-saeng said.

“You don’t enter the sea, or you don’t harvest?” he inquired. “We aren’t asking you to harvest anything. That’s why we came now—when you aren’t busy. If you aren’t harvesting, the goddess won’t be angry.”

But what did he know about our goddess or how strong she was? Still, he had a point. No one had ever said it was forbidden to enter the water during this time.

“We’ll be taking your temperatures,” he continued, so sure of himself. “We’ll—”

“Can I help?” Joon-lee chirped.

People on both sides laughed. Those who knew Joon-lee expected something like this from her, while the strangers clearly thought she was cute. She ran to her grandmother. Dr. Park squatted so he was face-to-face with her. “We’re studying the basal metabolic rate of the haenyeo compared to nondiving women. We’ll come in each of the four seasons. Is your mother a diver?” When she nodded, he continued. “We’re going to set up a lab on this beach. We’ll take women’s temperatures before and after they go in the water. We want to study their shiver index. We’re wondering if a breath-hold diver’s ability to withstand cold is genetic or a learned adaptation. We—”

Joon-lee turned and stared at me with her soot-black eyes. “Mother, you have to do this. Granny too! And you too, Big Sister.” She swung back to Dr. Park. “That’s three. Oh, and Kim Yang-jin will do it too, won’t you?” When my diving partner nodded, Joon-lee gave Dr. Park a resolute look. “I’ll help you find the others. We don’t have many households without haenyeo, but there’s a widow who grinds and sells millet, a woman who makes charcoal, and another who’s known for her weaving.” She cocked her head. “When do you want them to start?” And then she took in the other men’s faces. “Where are you going to put your lab?”

Lab. I didn’t know what that was. That’s how far my daughter had come already.

Finding volunteers was not easy, though. These were still the years of secrecy, and we had reasons to be cautious. On September 21, 1954—after seven years and six months—the last of the insurgents were caught or killed, and the shoot-on-sight order for Mount Halla was finally lifted. The 4.3 Incident—although how something that lasted more than seven years could qualify as an “incident” didn’t make sense to me—was officially over. We pieced together information in a variety of ways. What we learned was staggering. Three hundred villages had been burned or razed, forty thousand homes destroyed, and so many people killed that not one family on Jeju had escaped untouched. On the mainland, Koreans were told not to believe stories about the massacre. The people of Jeju had always been suspicious of outsiders. Now we were even more so. As a result, our island had become more closed off. It was as if Jeju had once again turned into an island of exiles, all of us wandering souls.

Reminders of what had happened were everywhere. The man who walked on crutches because his knee had been shattered by a pickax. The girl, with burns on most of her body, who grew to marriageable age but received no proposals. The young man who’d survived months of torture roamed the olles, his hair uncut, his face unshaven, his clothes uncleaned, and his eyes unfocused. We all suffered from memories. Nor could any of us forget the throat-choking smell of blood or the crows that had swarmed in great clouds over the dead. These things haunted us in our dreams and during every waking moment. But if someone was foolish enough to speak a single word of sadness or was caught shedding a tear over the death of a loved one, then he or she would be arrested.

The list of restrictions was long, but none were more terrifying for me than those that limited access to education. No matter how bad things got, I had to do my best to make sure Jun-bu’s dreams for our children became real. This meant that while the idea of total strangers poking and prodding me had no appeal, I agreed to participate—and made my older daughter and mother-in-law participate too—because Joon-lee was interested in the project, and those men might help her in some way I couldn’t conceive.

We were told to eat a light supper, wear our diving clothes under our land clothes, and report to the laboratory the next morning without having eaten breakfast. Wan-soon and Gu-sun picked up my mother-in-law, two daughters, and me. The six of us walked down to the beach, where two tents had been set up. Between my daughter’s efforts and the team’s inquiries, they’d managed to find ten haenyeo—including the Kang sisters and my diving partner, Yang-jin—and ten women who did not work in the sea.

Dr. Park introduced us to the others on his team: Dr. Lee, Dr. Bok, Dr. Jones, and so on. Then he told us, “You will begin the day with thirty minutes of rest.”

Do-saeng and I exchanged glances. Rest? What an idea. But that was exactly what happened. We were escorted into the first tent, where we lay down on cots. Joon-lee stayed at my side, but her eyes darted from cot to cot, table to table, man to man. Although I could understand their Korean words, much of the meaning was lost on me.

“I’m using a nine-liter Collins spirometer to measure oxygen and convert that to kilocalories to establish a basal metabolism rate as a percent deviation from the DuBois standard,” Dr. Lee intoned, speaking into a tape recorder.

It sounded like gibberish, but Joon-lee seemed to soak up every word and action.

The next step was conducted by Dr. Bok, who put a glass tube in my mouth. He reported that I had a normal temperature of 37 degrees Centigrade and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Across the aisle, my older daughter giggled when one of the white doctors placed something on her chest that had tubes running up to his ears. I did not like that one bit, nor did I like the idea that he would do the same to me. I was about to take my girls and walk out of there when Dr. Park cleared his throat.

“Yesterday I told you something you must know already. You have a greater tolerance for hypothermia than any other humans on the planet. In Australia, aborigines walk naked, even in winter, but their temperatures rarely fall below thirty-five degrees Centigrade. Men and women who swim across wide channels lose a lot of body warmth, but even they rarely drop below thirty-four point four degrees Centigrade. Gaspé fishermen and British fish filleters spend their days with their hands immersed in cold salt water, but it is only their hands. And then there are Eskimos. Their temperatures stay within the normal range. We believe that’s because they have a diet high in protein, and they wear so many clothes.”

The way he spoke was strange, but his animated bearing was even more foreign. Still, I wasn’t a fool, and I suspected he was using his energetic manner to distract us from what the other doctors were doing to us. One of them put a band around my upper arm and squeezed a rubber ball, which caused the band to swell and press into my flesh. What happened next was so swift that none of us had the time to process it fully. Gu-ja had the same type of band around her arm, but the scientists didn’t like what they were seeing. “Her blood pressure is too high to qualify her to be in the study,” I overheard one of the men say. Before anyone could object, our collective’s chief was escorted from the tent.

Dr. Park didn’t acknowledge what to me seemed stunning. He just kept talking. “We want to see how long you can stay in the water and what that immersion does to your body temperatures. We hypothesize that your shiver index is a latent human adaptation to severe hypothermia that is rarely, if ever, experienced in modern man or, in this case, woman.”

Of course, we had no idea what he was talking about.

“Could this ability have something to do with your thyroid function?” he asked, as though we might actually know the answer. “Does something in your endocrine system allow you to perform in the cold as well as small animals do on land and in water? Could you be like the Weddell seal that—”

“Tell that man to stop touching my daughter!” Gu-sun sat up on her cot and glowered so fiercely at a white doctor that he raised his hands and backed away from Wan-soon. “You need to tell us exactly what you’re doing or we’re leaving.”

Dr. Park smiled. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You and the others here are helping to create science—”

“Are you going to answer my question?” Gu-sun asked as she swung her legs off the cot. A few others did as well. Haenyeo or non-haenyeo, we didn’t like these men touching our daughters.

Dr. Park clasped his hands together. “I don’t think you understand. We respect what you do. You’re famous!”

“Famous to whom?” Gu-sun asked.

He ignored the question and went on. “All we’re asking is that you go in the water, so we can measure your shiver threshold.”

“Shiver threshold,” Gu-sun echoed. She snorted and jutted her chin, but I could tell she didn’t plan on leaving. By staying in the study, she had something over her sister, who’d been dismissed. None of this was to say I was comfortable. My desire to protect myself and Min-lee fought against my desire to help my younger daughter.

“Is there a way you can do the tests without…” I was a widow and hadn’t been touched by a man since the Bukchon massacre.

Dr. Park’s eyes widened in understanding, and his enthusiasm disappeared. “We’re doctors and scientists,” he said stiffly. “You are our subjects. We don’t look at you like that.”

But every man looked at women like that.

“And even if we did, we have this little girl here,” he added. “We need to protect her from anything improper. Her presence protects you too.”

Joon-lee blushed, but it was obvious she enjoyed being singled out.

“She helped bring you here,” he said. “Let’s see how else she can help.”

With that, the men went back to conducting their tests. They didn’t let Joon-lee handle a single instrument, but they used her to explain to us—in words we could understand—what they were doing. It turned out our average age was thirty-nine years. We averaged 131 centimeters in height and fifty-one kilos in weight. (Or, as one of the American scientists put it, “A little over fifty-one inches tall and one hundred and twelve pounds.”) About fifteen minutes later, the doctors asked us to remove our land clothes. The haenyeo among us had never been shy about showing our bodies. We’d all seen each other naked, and we’d lived for generations with the stigma of nakedness. Still, despite Dr. Park’s sentiments about the team being doctors and scientists, it was embarrassing to step out of our trousers and jackets in front of them. The women who weren’t divers were the most uncomfortable. They’d probably never worn so few clothes in front of a man apart from their own husbands, and it proved too much for one woman, who decided to drop out of the study. Now the haenyeo and non-haenyeo were equal again, with nine women on each team.

This was the coldest time of year, which was why we chose this period to Welcome the Goddess. Even so, a haenyeo is accustomed to freezing temperatures, while the nondiving women squealed and yipped as they tiptoed across the rocks, the bitter wind raising goosebumps and turning their skin blue. Joon-lee sat on the sand and hugged her knees to her chest to keep warm. The rest of us entered the water and paddled about ten meters offshore. Do-saeng and I dove down together. We knew this area well. The water wasn’t too deep, and light filtered to the ocean floor. Spring was coming, and what happens on land—leaves sprouting and flowers budding—also happens in the sea. Seaweed grows with the warmth of the sun. Sea creatures mate and have babies. When I came up for breath, I swam to Gu-sun to ask her to tell Gu-ja, her sister and our chief, about an area I’d spotted with many sea urchins we’d be able to harvest in the coming weeks.

Within five minutes, the nondiving women went to shore. As they disappeared into the tent, I headed back down. I managed to stay in the water for a half hour—the same amount of time as when Mi-ja and I used to dive in Vladivostok. The scientists wanted to see shivering. This I could give them.

When I returned to the tent, the nondiving women were on their cots, having a repeat of the earlier tests. Joon-lee went from cot to cot, talking to each woman, trying through small talk to distract her from her various levels of discomfort—the cold, the men, the way they spoke, the instruments, the foreignness of it all.

Dr. Park approached me. “I hope you’ll permit me to do your tests.”

I nodded, and he slipped the glass tube into my mouth. I tried to assess him without being too obvious about it. He seemed young, but maybe that was because he hadn’t spent a life outdoors. His hands were soft and surprisingly white. As had happened earlier, he spoke into a recording device. Again, I understood very little of what he said.

“Today the water was ten degrees Centigrade, fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Subject Six remained submerged for thirty-three minutes. Her postdive skin temperature, five minutes from exiting the water, has dropped to twenty-seven degrees Centigrade, eighty point six degrees Fahrenheit, while her oral temperature is thirty-two point five Centigrade, ninety point five Fahrenheit.” He met my eyes. “That is a remarkable level of hypothermia. Now let’s see how long it takes you to return to normal.”

He then moved on to Do-saeng. A different doctor took my temperature every five minutes. I returned to “normal” after a half hour. “Would you go into the sea again at this point?” he asked.

“Of course,” I answered, surprised he would ask such a stupid question.

“Remarkable.”

Do-saeng met my eyes. Remarkable. This was beyond our comprehension.

The next day, the doctors performed the same tests. On the third day, they asked Joon-lee to bring towels and blankets to us when we came out of the ocean. By the fourth day, we’d grown more accepting of their peculiar ways. And they were so easy to tease. We repeated the words they used in singsong voices, making them laugh. Min-lee and Wan-soon were the biggest instigators, and the doctors loved them. On the morning of the fifth day, our little group was just about to enter the tent when I spotted Mi-ja standing on the seawall. Her son straddled a bicycle next to her. By now everyone in the village knew about the science experiment, and many people had come to the wall to gawk and point. I could imagine Mi-ja wanting to be a part of the study. Maybe she even felt jealous that I had this opportunity. Surely this was Mi-ja’s reason, because by bringing Yo-chan and his bicycle she was showing off what she could give her son.

Joon-lee interrupted my thoughts by pulling on my sleeve and exclaiming, “Look, Mother! Yo-chan has a bicycle! Can I get one too?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But I want to learn how to ride—”

“That’s not something girls do.”

“Please, Mother, please. Yo-chan has one. Shouldn’t we have at least one for our family?”

Her excitement disturbed me. First, of course my daughter would know Yo-chan and his mother, but that didn’t mean I liked it. Second, we were only here because I’d wanted to give Joon-lee an opportunity, but now it seemed she’d completely forgotten about the study in favor of the bike’s shiny metal.

Up on the seawall, Mi-ja abruptly turned and limped away, but the boy remained where he was, staring in our direction. I realized he wasn’t looking at me but at Min-lee and Wan-soon. The three of them attended the same school and had many of the same classes together. All three were sixteen, old enough to get married, old enough to get in trouble. I nudged the girls’ shoulders to make them move along.

Yo-chan was gone by the time we exited the tent in our diving costumes. The water was just as freezing as it had been all week. Once again, the dry-land women lasted only a few minutes, while the rest of us stayed in the water until we were shivering badly. When I came out, Joon-lee was there with my towel.

“Mother,” she said, “can I have a bicycle? Please?”

My youngest daughter could be fickle, but she could also be determined.

“Do you want to be a scientist or a bicycle rider?” I asked.

“I want to do both. I want—”

I cut her off. “You want? We all want. You complain when I put a sweet potato in your lunch for school, but I had years when my only meal of the day was a single sweet potato.”

Unfortunately, this pointed Joon-lee in another—but sadly familiar—direction. “Other kids get white rice, but the food you give us makes it look like we’re living a subsistence life.”

“I buy white rice for the New Year’s Festival,” I said, stung. Then, defensively, “I often put barley in your lunch—”

“Which is even more embarrassing, because that means we’re really poor.”

“What a lucky child you are to say that. You don’t know what poor means—”

“If we aren’t poor, then why can’t I have a bicycle?”

I wanted to tug her hair and remind her that the money I saved was for her and her siblings’ educations.

That night, after dinner, Wan-soon came over, as she usually did, and the three girls went out for a walk. I made citrus tea and took two cups across the courtyard to Do-saeng’s house. She was already on her sleeping mat, but the oil lamp still burned.

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “You seemed upset all day. Did one of those men do something to you?”

I shook my head, sat on the floor next to her, and handed her the cup of tea.

“You were a good mother to Jun-bu,” I said. “You sent him to school when many haenyeo didn’t.”

“Or couldn’t. Your mother had many children,” she said wistfully. “But look what you’re doing now. Three children in school. That’s more than any other family in the village.”

“I couldn’t do that without your help.”

She tipped her head in acknowledgment. Then, after a long pause, she said, “So tell me. What’s wrong?”

“I saw Mi-ja and her son today.”

“Don’t think about her—”

“How can I not? She lives a ten-minute walk from here. We do our best to avoid each other, but Hado is small.”

“So? In every village, victims live next door to traitors, police, soldiers, or collaborators. Now killers and the children of killers run the island. Is this so different from when you were a girl?”

“No, but she knows everything about me—”

“Who doesn’t know everything about you? As you said, Hado is small. Tell me your real concern.”

I hesitated, then asked, “What future can I give my children when we have the guilt-by-association system?”

“Those we lost were not guilty of anything.”

“That’s not how the government sees it. Anyone who died is considered guilty.”

“You could do what others have done and claim your husband died before April Three,” Do-saeng suggested.

“But Jun-bu was a teacher! He was known to everyone in Bukchon—”

“He was a teacher, true, but he was not an instigator, rebel, insurgent, or communist.”

“You say that as his mother.” Then I allowed myself to voice my deepest fear. “Could he have had secrets we didn’t know about?”

“No.”

It was a simple answer, but I wasn’t so sure. “He read the posters. He listened to the radio.”

“You told me he read the posters from both sides, so he could tell people what was happening,” Do-saeng said. “He listened to the radio for the same reason. The authorities probably think he was just a typical Jeju husband—”

“Who taught?”

“I was always proud of him for becoming a teacher. I thought you were too.”

“I was. I am.” Tears welled in my eyes. “But I can’t stop being afraid for my children.”

“Whatever my son did or didn’t do, you know that Yu-ri and Sung-soo did nothing wrong. They were victims. Those of us who are left are victims. But unlike many others, I don’t feel like we’ve been targeted.” She held my gaze. “We haven’t been forced to report to the police every month as some families have.”

“That’s true.”

“And have you ever had the sense we’re being watched?”

I shook my head.

“All right then,” she said decisively. “Just keep your focus on the good in our lives. Your son performs the rites for the ancestors, and he’s learning family duties like cooking. Min-lee is turning out to be a good diver, while Joon-lee…”

As she went on talking about the virtues of each of my children, I felt myself becoming calmer. My mother-in-law could be right. That we hadn’t been called to the police station or followed had to mean something. That didn’t mean we weren’t on a list somewhere, though.

By day six, the nondiving women had become more accustomed to being in their water clothes in front of the men. The scientists had gotten bolder too. At first, they’d taken care not to stare at us as we filed down to the shore, but now they gazed at us in the manner men do. I was particularly concerned about the way they gaped at Min-lee and Wan-soon. They were beautiful girls, slim, with happy faces and pretty skin. Looking at them together, I couldn’t help but think of Mi-ja and myself when we were that age. Or when we were older in Vladivostok. We hadn’t always realized the impression we were making, although we tried to be careful when we were on the docks. Our fears were concentrated more on what Japanese soldiers might do to us than on the looks we received from the men of Jeju or elsewhere. But Min-lee and Wan-soon weren’t old enough to remember the Japanese, and Wan-soon had seen nothing like what happened in Bukchon here in Hado. A saying my mother and father often recited came to my mind: For a tree that has many branches, even a small breeze will shake some loose. The meaning had always been clear to me. With children, there will be many conflicts, griefs, and problems. It was my job as Min-lee’s mother to prevent any of those things from happening.

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?”

Joon-lee just laughed. “Mother, Switzerland is not a fairy world. It is not a land of goddesses either. I will leave Jeju just as Kim Mandeok did. And I’ll buy myself a bicycle.”

The Vast Unknowable Sea

Three months after the first visit, Dr. Park and his team returned, as promised. Then three months after that, at the end of August, they came again. For two weeks each visit, the same group of eighteen women—nine divers and nine nondivers—had light suppers, rested on cots in the mornings, and were tested. This time, though, we were driven by boat to the underwater canyon where Mi-ja and I had taken our first dive. The scientists selected the site for the very reason that my mother had chosen it: the geography allowed the nondivers to hover above the rocks that came nearly to the surface, while the divers could go down twenty meters into the coldness of the canyon. The nondivers still couldn’t last more than a few minutes, but with the warmer weather, we divers went back and forth for at least two and a half hours before returning to the boat. We learned that our temperatures didn’t drop as much as they did in winter, which seemed obvious to us. But now Dr. Park had the precise measurement he desired: 35.3 degrees Centigrade in water that was 26 degrees or 95.5 Fahrenheit in water that was almost 79 degrees. “Very impressive,” he said to us. “Not many people can function as well as you do when their temperatures fall so far below normal.”

The scientists added a new dimension: food. They came to our houses three times a day to measure everything before we put it in our mouths. They asked us the same question we often joked about in the bulteok. “Who should have more food—a man or a woman?” We knew the answer, but their tests proved it. A haenyeo not only needed 3,000 calories a day compared to a nondiving woman, who typically ate 2,000 calories a day, but also ate more than any man they tested in Hado. “We have not seen this magnitude of voluntary heat loss in any other human,” Dr. Park effused, “but look how you make up for it!” But he was studying us at a very different point in our lives. I remembered back to when Mi-ja and I were girls just learning to dive, later when we were in Vladivostok, and later still in the lean war years. We’d never had enough to eat, and we’d both been very thin.

Every woman—diver and nondiver—wanted to be hospitable. Each woman prepared her best dishes, so she could offer a meal to the scientist who came to visit. In my household, Do-saeng, Min-lee, and I pushed aside Kyung-soo, who usually did the cooking, so we could make the types of dishes we ate in the bulteok: grilled conch, steamed blue abalone, small crabs stir-fried with beans, or octopus on skewers. As the scientist of the day sat on our floor, eating, Joon-lee asked endless questions. What was it like in Seoul? What university did he attend? Was it better to be a research scientist or a medical doctor? Those men answered Joon-lee’s questions, but they watched her older sister whenever she crossed the room.

When Dr. Park finally came to my house, I invited him to sit and poured him a bowl of rice wine. The low table was already set with side dishes: kimchee, pickled beans, lotus root, boiled squash, sliced black pig, salted damselfish, spiced bracken, and boiled, seasoned, and slivered sea cucumber. Just as we were about to start eating, Joon-lee’s teacher came to the door. Teacher Oh bowed and then made an announcement.

“Your daughter has won an island-wide contest for fifth graders,” he said. “Joon-lee will now represent our side of Mount Halla in an academic competition in Jeju City. This is a great honor.”

Joon-lee jumped to her feet and hopped around the room. Her sister and brother congratulated her. Do-saeng cried happy tears. I couldn’t stop smiling. After Dr. Park said, “The daughter is smart because the mother is smart,” I really couldn’t stop smiling.

I invited Teacher Oh to join us. Space was made for him, and more rice wine was poured. When Dr. Park inquired about the competition, Teacher Oh responded, “Joon-lee is not just a bright girl. She’s the brightest student in our elementary school. The children from schools in Jeju City will have received better opportunities, but I believe she has a good chance of winning the entire competition.”

These words of praise should have humbled my daughter. Instead, they encouraged her to ask, “If I win, Mother, will you buy me a bicycle?”

My answer escaped my mouth too quickly. “Riding a bicycle is not for you. Everyone knows that riding one will give a girl a big butt.”

Dr. Park raised his eyebrows, and my argument didn’t sway Joon-lee one bit. “But if I win,” she said, “don’t you think I should be rewarded?”

Rewarded? Impatience flushed my face. The scientist politely changed the subject. “Did you catch this squid yourself?” he asked. “If so, can you tell me about the drying process?”

After dinner, Wan-soon came to collect my daughters for their nightly walk. Teacher Oh left with them, and Do-saeng returned to the little house, taking Kyung-soo with her. I inquired about Dr. Park’s life in Seoul; he tried to delve deeper into my life as a haenyeo. It all went about as well as could be expected, which is to say fine. He was just leaving when Min-lee burst through the door.

“Mother, come quick!”

I slipped on my sandals and ran after her. Dr. Park trotted behind me. We followed Min-lee to the main square. There in a heap lay Joon-lee, her arms and legs tangled with a bicycle. She was crying softly. Yo-chan crouched over her. Of course. Yo-chan. His bicycle. My daughter. A wave of anger washed over me.

“Get away from her,” I said.

The boy backed off but didn’t leave. I squatted next to Joon-lee.

“I think I broke my arm,” she whimpered.

I started to lift the bicycle. She yelped in pain.

“Here, you steady her arm,” Dr. Park said. “Let the boy and me move the bike.”

He motioned to Yo-chan, who stepped forward. “It’s my fault,” he said.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Dr. Park told him. “Let’s just work together to help her. All right? Are you ready?”

While we pried the bike off Joon-lee, her older sister wept and muttered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Not far from her, Wan-soon stood with her back against the village tree. She looked as pale as the moon.

“I’ll drive her to the hospital in Jeju City,” Dr. Park said once Joon-lee was free.

“I’m coming too,” I said.

“Naturally. And the others can tag along too if they want,” he said. “There’s room.”

I motioned for Min-lee and Wan-soon to follow us. Before we left the square, I turned back to look at Yo-chan. His head was bent, and his shoulders were hunched.

I hadn’t been to Jeju City’s hospital before. The electric lights glowed brightly. The nurses and doctors were all dressed in white. Joon-lee was put in a wheelchair. “Like Clara,” she said and smiled weakly. Then a nurse pushed her down a hallway and out of sight.

“It’s not a compound fracture,” Dr. Park said. “You can be happy about that.”

I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on finding tranquillity. He couldn’t possibly know how it felt for me to see my little girl hurt and to understand that Mi-ja’s son was somehow involved. What made it worse was that Yo-chan had probably taught Joon-lee how to ride a bike to get to her older sister. All those times Mi-ja and I had dreamed that her son and my daughter would marry one day burned in my chest. Never.

It wasn’t long before the nurse came to the waiting room and took us to see Joon-lee. Her arm was in a plaster cast. Her cheeks were wan. The doctor tried to make sense of our group: a man clearly not from Jeju dressed in Western-style clothes, two sixteen-year-old girls, a younger girl, and me in our persimmon-dyed island pants, tunics, and scarves.

“Joon-lee tells me she comes from a haenyeo family,” the doctor said. “Please be assured that her injury will heal well. She’ll be able to dive with you when the time comes.”

During the drive back to Hado, the emotions in the car were so heavy that it felt as though it were weighted down by rocks. I stared out the window. The streets were nearly deserted, but a few women strolled with their men. Neon lights lit up bars and stalls that served barbecued pork. The city seemed much more modern now, although most of the houses were still made from traditional stone and thatch.

Dr. Park drove as close to my house as he could get. When he turned off the motor and opened his door, I said, “Thank you for your kindness and help, but we can make it the rest of the way ourselves. I’ll see you in the morning at the usual time.”

Joon-lee cradled her arm. Min-lee and Wan-soon walked ahead of us hand in hand. When we reached our house, Wan-soon said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll discuss things with your mother tomorrow,” I informed her.

Wan-soon and Min-lee exchanged glances. As Wan-soon padded away, I felt a stab, remembering what it was like to have a friend so close.

When my daughters and I entered our courtyard, we found my son and mother-in-law sitting on the steps of the little house waiting for us.

“Yo-chan came to tell us what happened,” Do-saeng said. “Are you all right, little one?”

“I’m fine,” Joon-lee answered, her voice sounding small and tinny.

“Can Kyung-soo stay with you tonight?” I asked my mother-in-law. “I need to talk to the girls.”

My son jumped to his feet. “But I want to hear—”

His grandmother pulled him back down beside her.

Once my girls and I were in the big house, I addressed Min-lee, keeping my declaration short to see how she’d respond. “You kept a secret from me.”

“It would have stayed a secret too, if Joon-lee hadn’t fallen,” she admitted.

“Are you blaming your little sister?” I asked.

Before Min-lee could reply, Joon-lee said, “We like Yo-chan, and I wanted to learn—”

“We?” I turned back to my older daughter, who turned red to the roots of her hair.

“Joon-lee’s the one who wanted to learn how to ride a bike!” Min-lee exclaimed defensively. “She asked Yo-chan to help her.”

“She’s a child,” I said, “but you’re old enough to know better. When I say no, I mean no. But this goes far beyond a bicycle, does it not? I don’t want you to see Yo-chan again.”

She laughed. “How’s that supposed to happen? It’s a small village and—”

I cut her off. “You’ve been given so much. Food. Schooling. You’ve had such an easy life that even your monthly bleeding has come early.” I gave her the sternest warning I could. “If you share love with Yo-chan, you could get pregnant.” I followed up with the worst curse a mother can give her daughter on an island with no beggars. “You’ll end up a girl who’s going to beg.”

She cocked her head. I felt like I was watching her think.

“It’s not like that,” she said at last.

“He’s a boy. You’re a girl—”

“I’ve known Yo-chan my entire life. He’s like a brother to me.”

“But Yo-chan is not your brother. He’s a boy—”

“Mother, we are not having sex.”

I blinked, stunned. I was hinting at this certainly, but I never expected her to be so blunt, especially in front of her little sister. Trying to regain my footing, I turned my attention to Joon-lee. “Yo-chan is not your brother either. And he’s not your friend. Stay away from him.”

Joon-lee lowered her eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

“Best is not enough,” I said. “So you understand how serious I am, tomorrow you will not be allowed down by the tents.”

“But—”

“Keep talking. For every word, you’ll stay home another day.”

The next morning, Joon-lee moaned a bit about her punishment and how unfair it was, and I told her she should have thought about that before getting on a bicycle. Then Min-lee, Do-saeng, and I left the house together. We met Gu-sun and Wan-soon in the olle. Wan-soon apologized once more for her part in last night’s accident. Her eyes were swollen from crying and the color of her usually rosy cheeks had drained to an off-green. Acknowledging her suffering, I said, “Thank you, Wan-soon. I appreciate that you’ve taken greater responsibility for what happened than my own daughters.”

“And I’ve made her promise she won’t be a part of anything having to do with Yo-chan or his mother in the future,” Gu-sun reported.

Again, Wan-soon and Min-lee exchanged glances, wordlessly sending messages back and forth. Again, I thought of how Mi-ja and I had once done the same thing, which further convinced me that Gu-sun and I would need to keep an eye on these two.

When we got to the laboratory tents, Dr. Park inquired after Joon-lee. I let him know she wouldn’t be coming today.

“I hope to see her tomorrow,” he said. “She should be exposed to things that will put her ahead of the city children.”

He was right, of course. The next day, I let Joon-lee return to the lab, where it seemed Dr. Park had confided to the others the news about the competition to which she’d been invited. For the first time, she was allowed to put a thermometer in a woman’s mouth and pump the cuff that went around her arm.

Two days later, Dr. Park and his team packed up their instruments and left Hado. They would return in another three months. I worked in my dry field, while my children started their fall semester. After school let out, when her brother and sister went to the shallows to visit friends and cool off, Joon-lee sat in the main room to do her homework, study for the competition, and read.

The next diving period arrived on a Sunday, which meant that Wan-soon and Min-lee were able to come. It was a particularly blustery day, and wind pressed our clothes tight against our bodies. Waves frothed and sprayed as though pushed by a storm. Once inside the bulteok, Gu-ja took her honorary position. The rest of us sat according to our skill levels. Gu-ja was peevish. The recent visit from Dr. Park and his team reminded her how irritated she was that she’d been dropped from the study, but I figured she’d return to her normal irascible self after a day in the water.

Forgoing the usual pleasantries, Gu-ja began. “Today is going to be hot—”

“And it’s certainly gusty,” Gu-sun interrupted. “We’ll need to be careful where we dive—”

Irritated, Gu-ja waved off her sister. “I’m willing to hear suggestions for where we should go. Anyone?” she asked.

Although it seemed apparent that she was deliberately not asking her sister, Gu-sun offered the first idea. “Let’s walk to the cove north of us. The cliffs protect that area from the wind.”

“It’s too hot to walk that far,” Gu-ja said.

Gu-sun tried again. “We could stay here and dive off the jetty.”

“Did you not notice how the wind is pushing the surf?” Gu-ja scanned the faces in the circle, but her sour mood invited no other proposals. “All right then. Let’s row straight out to sea to the plateau. Hopefully the waves will be milder than what we’re seeing from shore, and the deeper waters will be colder.”

Next to me, Yang-jin muttered under her breath, “This is not good.”

I agreed. Gu-ja was the chief, but she’d made her decision just to be contrary.

We changed into our water clothes, strapped our face masks on the tops or sides of our heads, gathered our gear, and filed out to the boat. Gu-ja’s mood may have been off, but she was right that on this unseasonably hot day the deeper and cooler waters would feel refreshing. We took our places on the boat. Min-lee and Wan-soon sat across from each other. Soon we were bending over our stomachs and pulling back, dipping our oars into the water together. The girls’ voices sounded clear and fresh as we sang. A single wisp of a cloud raced across the sky, seagulls soared and swooped, and just as Gu-ja had predicted the sea was uneasy but not as bad as at the shore. Nevertheless, ruffling whitecaps were not welcomed by those with weak stomachs. A haenyeo pregnant with her fourth child pulled in her oar, threw up, and then resumed rowing. We cheered for her and then went back to our singing. I noticed, though, that Wan-soon’s complexion had faded to an even more unsettling green. She didn’t look well, but in the year and a half she’d been diving with us I hadn’t known her to get seasick.

Gu-ja raised an arm, signaling us to stop. After the anchor was dropped, she made the traditional offerings to the sea gods. When she was done, she said, “Together, let us scour the ocean floor.” With that, we pulled our face masks from our foreheads, rubbed mugwort on the glass, and positioned them over our eyes and noses. Each woman double-checked her tools. Then two by two, women threw their tewaks into the water and jumped in after them. Gu-sun and Gu-ja went down together. I told Min-lee to be careful, as I always did, and then she and Wan-soon dropped over the side of the boat. I nodded to Yang-jin, and together we entered the sea.

We were far from shore, as Gu-sun had wanted, but the underwater geography made it ideal for divers of all levels. Unlike the spot my mother had chosen for my first dive, which had a deep canyon, here a wide plateau rose up—high, flat, easy to reach but deep enough not to scrape a boat’s hull, and so wide it presented a vast field of opportunity. In the murky waters, I couldn’t see the full circumference, but if the baby-divers stayed together, they’d be fine.

Down I went. Yang-jin and I stayed within sight of each other but not so close that she would invade my territory or I hers. I went up for sumbisori and to put what I’d harvested in my net. The water felt wonderful. Down. Up. Sumbisori. Down. Up. Sumbisori. The concentration involved to stay safe, grab as much as I could, and forget the troubles of land created the pattern of my life.

Once our nets were full, Yang-jin and I returned to the boat. We stored our gear and began to sort what we’d harvested. As Gu-ja, Gu-sun, and the other women came in, we helped them haul their nets into the boat. Many of these women also sorted their harvests, while others drank cups of tea. A few propped themselves against their full nets and allowed the rocking of the boat to lull them to sleep. I kept an ear tuned to the sumbisori of the haenyeo still in the water, always relieved when I heard Min-lee’s distinctive hrrrr. She was still learning how to dive, but I trusted her skills. That said, my shoulders relaxed when I saw her loop her arms over the side of the boat. But when she didn’t try to push her net on board or hoist herself up, I knew something was wrong.

“Has anyone seen Wan-soon?” she asked.

At these words, Gu-sun’s head snapped up.

“I saw her out that way,” a woman said, pointing off the bow.

“So did I,” Yang-jin added. “When we came up for sumbisori at the same time, I told her to dive closer to the boat.”

“Then where is she now?” Gu-sun asked, turning to her older sister.

“Don’t worry,” the chief responded. “We’ll find her.”

A couple of stragglers paddled toward the boat. Gu-sun shouted to them, but no, they hadn’t seen Wan-soon either. Gu-sun and Gu-ja stood, rooting their feet to the deck as the boat bobbed in the swells.

“There!” Gu-ja shouted. “Her tewak.”

I knew this area well—all the grandmother-divers did—and seeing that the tewak had drifted farther out to sea was concerning.

Those of us on the boat picked up our oars and began rowing, leaving several divers in the water. We wanted to get to Wan-soon’s tewak quickly, but to be efficient we had to keep our rhythm. When we reached the tewak, Gu-sun and Gu-ja dropped their oars and stood. Gu-sun yelled at us to be quiet, so we could listen for Wan-soon’s sumbisori, but it was nowhere on the wind. Slowly turning in circles, the sisters scanned the swells. They must have tried for five minutes, far longer than a haenyeo could stay underwater. The aunt looked terrified and desperate, while the mother looked sad and resigned.

“Everyone,” Gu-ja said, “we need to get back in the water. Hurry.” Then she spoke the words no one wanted to hear. “We must find Wan-soon’s body before it’s lost to the sea and she becomes a hungry ghost.”

Face masks were fitted back into place, and everyone leapt into the water. Those who were already in the sea were coming closer. Gu-sun called to them. “We’re looking for Wan-soon. Search the area where you are.”

The baby-divers, including my daughter, fanned out across the plateau. If an abalone had grabbed Wan-soon’s bitchang or if her hair or clothing had somehow gotten caught on a rock, they’d find her body. The small-divers and grandmother-divers swam down the sides of the plateau. Nothing. Every time I resurfaced, women yelled questions across the cresting waves, which were growing larger now. Did you search here? Did you search there? Nothing here. Nothing there. Down again.

The next time I surfaced, I spotted Min-lee with her arms draped over Wan-soon’s tewak. I was not much younger than she was now when Yu-ri had her accident, so I knew the guilt and remorse my daughter had to be feeling. I swam over to her.

“Wouldn’t she need to be near her tewak?” Min-lee asked before sucking in her lips to hold in her emotions.

“Hopefully,” I said. “Let’s look together.”

I took her hand, and we swam down directly beneath Wan-soon’s float. I was immediately alarmed by what I saw and felt. We were at the farthest edge of the plateau. The current was strong here, and the vastness of the sea grabbed at us, but my daughter was too focused on the search to notice. I let her set the pace and depth, conscious that Wan-soon wouldn’t have been able to go faster or deeper than my daughter. We had not yet reached two body lengths when Min-lee stopped. Together we righted our bodies. Min-lee couldn’t hold her breath for much longer, but I needed to show her something. I held up my free hand to stop her from returning to the surface. Then I let go of her. The suck of the sea was so strong here that she was immediately pulled away from me. A look of terror passed over her face with the knowledge that she too might be drawn into a current that could take her body hundreds, if not more, kilometers away. I grabbed her hand and with the strength of many years of diving, I guided her away from danger and up to the surface.

Our search was over. We would not find Wan-soon today.

Once everyone was back on the boat, Gu-ja addressed us. “When we reach shore, I’ll send word to the haenyeo chiefs in the neighboring villages.” She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, but Gu-sun shrugged it off. “By the end of tomorrow, word will have circled the island and reached every haenyeo and fisherman. Let us pray to the Dragon Sea God and every goddess who has sway in the sea to bring Wan-soon’s body to shore.”

Gu-ja picked up her oar, and the rest of us took our places. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. Dealing with an accident or death is every haenyeo chief’s greatest torment. She must lead, even as she feels grief and culpability. My mother had not been responsible for Yu-ri’s greed or her encounter with the octopus, and yet the burden of what happened had weighed heavily upon her. This situation was different. Gu-ja couldn’t have anticipated this calamity, but the fact remained that she’d chosen this spot to dive out of jealousy and spite. That anyone died was terrible, but Gu-ja had to feel even more sorrowful because the victim was her niece.

It is said that after experiencing the vast unknowable sea, a daughter comes to know her mother and understand her for the first time. Indeed, on the day of Yu-ri’s accident I’d seen my mother in a new way. Now Min-lee saw me differently too. Every child should know that a parent will love, teach, and protect her, but during the Bukchon massacre my daughter had experienced something quite different. Now, for the first time, she absorbed deep into her marrow the love I felt for her. Still, the days that followed were hard. Min-lee was sick with heartache and regret.

“If I hadn’t looked away from her—”

“There was nothing you could have done,” I soothed. “You felt the current. You aren’t strong enough yet to have pulled her out of it.”

“But if I’d stayed with her—”

“You would have drifted away with her. I would have lost you.”

Once, in frustration, she blurted, “But I just don’t see how this could have happened. You were there for the fortune-telling. She received six rice kernels—”

I nodded in understanding. “We talk sometimes about fate and destiny,” I said. “And we like fortune-tellers to tell us our futures. Then we ask ourselves why Wan-soon received a good fortune and died, while other women received bad fortunes but are still with us. Even I have doubted. I’ve often questioned why the rice cake that Shaman Kim threw against the village tree during my marriage ceremony stuck, foretelling happiness, when so much adversity was coming. I have never found an answer.”

Min-lee buried her face in my lap to cry. I patted her back.

“But I wonder,” I went on tentatively, “if Wan-soon had a reason to be careless.”

Min-lee’s body stiffened under my hand. I wanted to say more, but Joon-lee came in to try to lift her older sister’s spirits. She sat on the floor next to us, opened her copy of Heidi, and began to read. Tonight, the story made Min-lee weep all the harder.

“Heidi and Clara were such good friends,” she managed to get out. “Wan-soon and I were like that. Now I’ve lost her.”

I tried my best to provide solace to my daughter, but I was also dealing with my own shaky spirits. When I wasn’t contemplating the plain truth that Min-lee could have been the one sucked into the depths, I was nibbling on the thoughts I’d had about Wan-soon in her last days: how white she’d been when Joon-lee broke her arm, which turned to sickly green the next morning, until she’d looked like she was going to throw up on the boat. When I wasn’t wondering whether I was the only person to suspect Wan-soon might have been pregnant—and if my daughter knew who the father was—I was pestered by thoughts of Mi-ja and how I could no longer turn to her for advice or consolation. When I wasn’t dwelling in that familiar shadowy abyss, I worried about Gu-sun and Gu-ja. One had lost her daughter; the other would be held responsible for the accident. The sisters had always squabbled and had bouts of jealousy, but they’d also been inseparable. I couldn’t imagine what they were feeling toward each other or what words could be said to bring forgiveness. This again brought Mi-ja to mind. I had once consoled her. She had once consoled me. Min-lee had now lost that. Gu-sun and Gu-ja may have lost that too. Then, in a moment of unsettling understanding, I saw how nearly all these occurrences had come as a result of Dr. Park’s study. His presence—and that of the other scientists—had rippled out, changing us and how we saw each other. We would not recover from Wan-soon’s death quickly, but other petty things—like Mi-ja buying her son a bicycle and Joon-lee breaking her arm—might still ripple out in ways I didn’t want to imagine.

After ten days, Wan-soon’s corpse still had not been found. With that, she turned from a tragically dead girl, who should have been buried properly, into a hungry ghost, who can cause illness and trouble for the living, but we also had to acknowledge the realities of the situation. Since word of the effort to find Wan-soon’s body had passed from haenyeo village to haenyeo village around the island, lots of people had to know we’d be holding a ritual, which was illegal. A total stranger could report us to gain favor from the authorities. We needed to stay especially alert and wary, so only those in our bulteok were notified of the date, time, and location. We met in a seaside cave about a twenty-minute walk from Hado. Gu-sun looked haggard, but her older sister seemed to have aged ten years. They stood together, wedded in grief. Do-saeng and I had Min-lee between us. Shaman Kim rang a bell in four directions to open heaven’s door and invite the spirits to join us. She slashed her sword through the air to expel any evil spirits that might try to attend.

“A woman who dies alone in the water has no one to hold her hand or stroke her forehead,” Shaman Kim began. “Her skin grows cold with no one to warm her. She receives no comfort from friends or family. But we also know that when the dead express concerns about the living, then it is accepted that they have become free of their grid of sorrows. Let us see what Wan-soon has to say.” Shaman Kim was known for her ability to sweet-talk, compliment, and negotiate with spirits. Now she addressed Wan-soon directly. “If you were unhappy for some reason, tell us, so we can help you.”

The assistants clanged their improvised cymbals and drums. The aromas from the offerings filled our noses. Shaman Kim twirled in her colorful hanbok. Her handmade tassels flew. Suddenly she and her assistants halted in midmovement. Silence fell over us, like the pause between hiccups. The cause: Mi-ja had entered the cave and was standing with her back against the jagged wall. She was dressed modestly, and she cradled offerings in her arms. She’d known Wan-soon since she was a baby, but her presence was thoroughly unsettling.

The banging and clanging resumed. Shaman Kim slashed her knives through the air even more ferociously. She slowed, came to a stop, and went into a trance. When she next spoke, her voice seemed to come at us from far away. Wan-soon had arrived.

“I am so cold,” she said. “I miss my mother and father. I miss my aunt and uncle. I miss the haenyeo in our bulteok. I miss my friend.”

The shaman changed back to her regular voice. “Tell us, Wan-soon, of your grievous miseries.”

But in those days even spirits had to be careful what they said, and Wan-soon’s spirit refused to impart another word. This seemed terribly disconcerting. Then something even more unnerving occurred. Shaman Kim twirled in my direction and stopped in front of me.

“I nearly lost my life in the sea,” Shaman Kim said in a different voice as another trance came over her. “I was greedy.”

Yu-ri! How many times had I asked Shaman Kim to look for her, my husband, and son, only to be given silence?

“I suffered for many years,” Yu-ri said through the shaman’s mouth. “Then came my last day of life. Aigo!”

The agony in that sound was chilling. Do-saeng sobbed for her daughter.

Then a small voice spoke. “I miss my mother. I miss my brother and my sisters.”

I collapsed. Sung-soo.

Min-lee knelt beside me and put an arm around my shoulders. Others also fell to their knees and lowered their foreheads to the cave’s floor. We had come for Wan-soon, but I was the one being contacted.

Shaman Kim could never sound like my husband, but I recognized his cadence and careful way of speaking. “It’s crowded in this grave, but I’m grateful for the company. We share our anguish together.”

Then it was as if the three people I’d lost were fighting to find space in Shaman Kim’s mouth to relay their thoughts.

“I was a child who only wanted his father. I was innocent, they killed me, but I have found forgiveness.”

“I was a girl who once longed for marriage. I was innocent, they killed me, but I have found forgiveness.”

“I was a husband, father, and brother. I was innocent, they killed me, but I have found forgiveness.”

Then Shaman Kim sang the things I’d long wanted to tell them. “To my son, I wish I could have protected you. To my sister-in-law, I’m sorry for your years of affliction. And to my husband, I say a baby was growing inside me even when I wished to die. We could not give any of you a proper burial, but at least I know you’re together.”

Now Shaman Kim returned to herself to address the spirits directly. “The three of you are not hungry ghosts in the sense you were lost at sea, but you died terribly and away from your ancestral home.” Then she shifted her attention back to the person who’d brought us here today. “Please, Wan-soon, find comfort in the presence of the others from Hado.” Addressing all of us, she said, “Let us together allow our tears to flow as I ask the Dragon Sea God to help Wan-soon’s spirit travel to the Afterworld, where she can reside in peace.”

The ceremony continued, with offerings, music, tears, and singing. It was not our way to question the shaman or who might send messages through her, but I did wonder at the reason the people I’d lost had chosen this occasion to visit. To hear the voices of those I’d loved stirred my soul. I was grateful. At the same time, I could taste the bitterness I felt toward Mi-ja. When I looked for her, she was gone. Why had she come?

Haenyeo have no choice but to provide for their families, so the next day Do-saeng and I returned to the bulteok. Min-lee had school, so she didn’t come, which was just as well. Gu-ja took her usual place, and her sister sat beside her. Gu-sun looked as if she hadn’t slept in a month. This was a part of mourning I understood well. But Gu-ja’s appearance was shocking. The tragedy had caused her sun-etched wrinkles to cut even deeper, making her look older than my mother-in-law. Her hands shook, and her voice trembled when she spoke.

“Long ago our collective had an accident, and our chief was haunted by it. Sun-sil should have stepped aside. She didn’t, and months later she died in the sea.” Those old enough to remember my mother nodded gravely at the memory. “As chief of this collective, I accept responsibility for what happened to Wan-soon. For this reason, I now ask for nominations for a new chief.”

Her sister’s reaction was so swift that not one among us didn’t recognize the depth of her condemnation of her sister. “I nominate Kim Young-sook for the very reason that I didn’t nominate her years ago,” she said. “No one understands loss better than someone who has lost. Of all of us, Young-sook has lost the most. This will make her cautious in her decisions. She will look out for everyone.”

No one else was nominated, and I received a unanimous vote. If there were others who wanted my place, I never heard about it.

I solemnly gave my first instructions and assignments. “Today we will enter the sea with caution. Let us be prudent for the rest of this diving cycle. Our spirits are worn, and we do not know what the goddesses and gods desire of us. We will make extra offerings. The baby-divers will stay close to shore. The small-divers and grandmother-divers will watch over them. We want to make sure everyone is safe the next time we go to deeper waters.”

My orders meant that all of us would earn less money for a while, but no one disagreed.

“As for diving partners,” I went on, “I ask Gu-sun if she would like to dive with me.”

Gu-ja stared down at her folded hands, afraid to glance at her sister.

Gu-sun gave an unexpected answer. “My sister and I have gone into the sea together since we were small children. I will be safer with her than with anyone else.”

A few women audibly gasped. For myself, a person who had held so much blame and anger within me, I could not understand her thinking, but I said, “If this is what you wish.” I ended our meeting with something my mother used to say. “Every woman who goes into the sea carries a coffin on her back. In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of this hard life.” Then I added a few words of my own. “Please be careful today and every day.”

I settled into my responsibilities quickly. All the training that had come to me from my mother and mother-in-law now flowed naturally from me, and I like to think I was respected for my judgment from the first day. Chief of the collective. I wondered what Mi-ja thought when she heard the news. Maybe she didn’t think anything, because she had problems of her own.

Gossip spread about Wan-soon’s last day of diving. “She was sick that morning,” the butcher’s wife told me knowingly. The woman who ground millet commented, “Who among us has not been ill in the first months of pregnancy?” “She spent too much time with Mi-ja’s son,” the weaver whispered when I came to buy muslin to make a dress for Joon-lee. I absolutely did not start these rumors. I’m not proud to admit this, but some days I wished I had. No act of retaliation would ever erase the pain Mi-ja had caused me, but this might have been a start. A good part of Hado had never trusted Mi-ja—the daughter of a Japanese collaborator and the wife of someone who had worked for the Americans and currently lived on the mainland. Now she had another black mark against her as the mother of the boy who might have gotten Wan-soon pregnant. “Maybe the girl was afraid to tell her mother,” the butcher’s wife said. “Maybe Yo-chan told Wan-soon he wouldn’t marry her,” the woman who ground millet speculated. Everyone had a theory, and they ranged from Wan-soon being distracted by her troubles to the idea that she deliberately let herself be swept away out of shame that she was pregnant.

My daughters remained surprisingly silent about the gossip. Joon-lee may have been too young and embarrassed to repeat the rumors to me, and I didn’t want to have a conversation about sex with her just yet, but I finally asked Min-lee if they were true.

“Oh, Mother,” she said, “you’ll always think the worst of Yo-chan and his family. He and Wan-soon were friends. The three of us just wanted to help Joon-lee learn to ride a bike. That’s all.”

I didn’t know if I could believe her or not.

The day arrived when Teacher Oh took Joon-lee on a bus to Jeju City for the competition. They returned three days later with wonderful news. Joon-lee had won. I bought her a bicycle, thinking it would prevent any future meetings between her and Yo-chan. This is not to say I didn’t have misgivings. “You really are going to get a big butt,” I warned her, but she just laughed and pedaled away. Then, as she disappeared around the corner, I realized the terrible mistake I’d made. She might not need Yo-chan to give her lessons any longer, but now the two of them could ride together and I couldn’t do anything about it except rely on the gossip of others to tell me what my daughter was up to.

A week after the competition, Teacher Oh paid another visit. “A happy day!” he announced. “Joon-lee has been selected to go to Jeju City Middle School.”

I should have been joyous, but my first thought was practical. “It’s too far for her to travel back and forth every day.”

“No travel will be required. She will board with a family.”

This was even worse. “She’s only twelve,” I objected. “I don’t want us to be separated.”

Teacher Oh jutted his chin. “But all haenyeo daughters go out for leaving-home water-work. Even you—”

“But I didn’t leave Hado until I was seventeen. And I had to go.”

“If Joon-lee does this,” he went on, almost as though he’d practiced his response, “she might be able to go to college or university on the mainland. Or”—his eyes gleamed—“maybe even to Japan.”

But he’d gotten ahead of himself.

“How can she leave Jeju for the mainland, let alone leave the country?” I asked. “The authorities would never allow it.”

“Why? Because your husband was a teacher?”

“We’re stained by the guilt-by-association system. We—”

“I prefer to think the authorities know you now as a haenyeo chief. Your mother and mother-in-law were also haenyeo chiefs. Maybe that will be a help. And it’s not as though she’s a boy who could cause trouble in the future. I’ve heard of many cases where sons are not admitted to school or military academies, while daughters have gone to the mainland for university and jobs.”

“Maybe that’s true for some, but I lost three family members during the Four-Three Incident.”

“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “The higher-ups have already decided to look the other way in Joon-lee’s case.”

This took me aback. “How can that be?”

He shrugged. “She’s exceptionally smart. Maybe Dr. Park put in a good word…”

But now he was telling me another story. I spoke bluntly. “Which is it? The higher-ups will look the other way or Dr. Park helped? Or she’s smart enough? Or she’s not a boy?”

“Does it matter? She’s been given an opportunity that few will ever receive.” He scrutinized my face before adding, “Best of all, you won’t have to worry about her bicycling in the olles with a boy who’s older than she is.”

He didn’t need to say another word.

We packed Joon-lee’s clothes and her few books. The entire family walked her to the bus stop, where Teacher Oh waited for us. The road was busy with people walking to market. Women wore white scarves and carried baskets over their arms. Men had their pants rolled up to midcalf and horsehair hats pulled down over their ears. One farmer led a donkey, whose back was piled high with bulging burlap bags. As far down the road as I could see in either direction, there wasn’t a car, truck, or bus. Do-saeng, Min-lee, and I couldn’t stop weeping. My father, brother, and son stood off to the side, trying to camouflage their feelings. Joon-lee wasn’t sad, though. She was excited.

“I’ll come home for every holiday and festival,” she babbled breathlessly. “I’ll ask if I can come when Dr. Park next returns. I promise to work hard.”

I saw so much of her father in her—her love of family combined with an eagerness to learn, and her sense of responsibility combined with a desire to try new things—but when the bus came into view, her eyes finally got misty.

“You’re a brave girl,” I said, but inside my heart was aching. “We’re all proud of you. Do well. We’ll all be here when you come home.”

The bus ground to a stop, and the door swung open. As dust swirled around us, I brought my daughter into my arms, and we held each other tight.

“I’m not going to wait here forever,” the bus driver shouted out the door. “I have a schedule to keep.”

Teacher Oh picked up Joon-lee’s satchel. “I’ll make sure she gets settled.”

Joon-lee let go of me, bowed to me and the rest of the family, and then climbed the steps. The driver pulled away before she had a chance to sit down. My last glimpse was of her walking down the aisle.

Three days later, Mi-ja and Yo-chan departed on the morning bus. Some said they’d left because Mi-ja couldn’t stand hearing the gossip about her son. One rumor had her joining her husband in Seoul, while another had the entire family moving to America. Others said she was never coming back, using the fact that she’d sold her pigs to the butcher as proof. After all, no one could live a civilized life without the three-way cycle of latrine, pigs, and food. A few people pointed out that if she were never coming back, then she would have tried to sell her aunt and uncle’s house, sleeping mats, chests, and cooking utensils. None of the gossip made sense to me.

For the first time in many years, I walked to the Sut-dong part of Hado, where Mi-ja had lived. I opened her gate and entered. The courtyard was tidy, and the straw roof was well kept. A stack of empty earthenware jars filled a corner. The granary, where Mi-ja had slept when she was a girl, was empty. A vine with magenta flowers creeped along a wall. Cucumbers, carrots, and other vegetables flourished in a patch next to the kitchen. The door was unlocked, and I walked in. It was just as people had said. She’d left all her furniture in place. Mi-ja may not have been here, but her spirit infused everything. Idly, I opened a chest in the main room. Inside, I found her father’s book. I couldn’t believe she’d left it behind.

Weeks, then months, went by. Mi-ja and Yo-chan did not return. The house remained unlocked. Nothing was stolen. Perhaps people were following the aphorism that we have no robbers on Jeju. Or maybe they were afraid they might find me, because I went there every day. I found I missed glimpsing Mi-ja from afar. I missed having her to blame. When that missing grew too strong, I walked to her house, where I touched her things and sensed her all around me. The house became the scab I could not stop picking.