The Island of Sea Women

Day 4 (continued): 2008

Young-sook doesn’t go back to the memorial hall to find her family or her friends. Instead, she makes her way to the parking lot, waits for a taxi to drop off another group of visitors, and then hires the driver to take her home. Listening to Clara and hearing Mi-ja’s voice on the recording have opened something in Young-sook. What if I was wrong all these years? Or, maybe, not wrong completely, but what if I didn’t understand some of what happened? Her mind returns again and again to the questions posed by the man who spoke earlier today: Who can name a death that was not tragic? Is there a way for us to find meaning in the losses we’ve suffered? Who can say that one soul has a heavier grievance than another? We were all victims. We need to forgive each other.

Young-sook knows she’s old, but for the first time she has a deeper understanding of what that means. Life moves fast, and the sun of her life is setting. She doesn’t have much time left to love or hate or forgive. If you try to live, you can live on well. How often did her mother-in-law recite that aphorism? And it turned out to be true. Young-sook worked all day and had body aches all night, but she would do it all again for her children, because life without them is meaningless. And yet, she’d let Joon-lee slip away. Young-sook’s anger had convinced her she didn’t care what her daughter, Yo-chan, or Mi-ja might have to say to her, but she should have tried to look them up after the guilt-by-association system ended and she’d finally gotten a passport. She’d traveled to Los Angeles to visit her family plenty of times. Just once she should have asked to be driven past the house attached to the return address on the envelopes, if only to peer at the inhabitants from the car window.

The taxi hugs the curves of Hado’s shoreline until it stops at the gate to her beachside compound. She pays the driver—the ridiculous extravagance not registering in her mind—and hurries inside. She pulls out the box with the letters from America and hobbles down to the beach. She looks around, but with the opening of the memorial, there are no haenyeo on the sand, and even the tourists are staying away.

To understand everything is to forgive. With Clara’s words in her mind, she reaches into the box, pulls out the stack of letters from America, and flips them over, so she can start at the beginning. She runs a finger over Joon-lee’s handwriting on the first envelope. She remembers what it said. Then come the ones in Yo-chan’s script. The first group arrived once a month. After six months and up until a year ago, Young-sook had received two letters a year: one on the anniversary of her mother’s death, and the other on the anniversary of the deaths of Jun-bu, Yu-ri, and Sung-soo. In the early years, each had been opened by the censors, but Young-sook’s stubbornness had kept her from pulling out the letters. Now she reaches inside the first envelope and unfolds the letter written by Yo-chan on his mother’s behalf. The censors had been active with this one, so very few characters remain. She wonders how Mi-ja could have thought she’d “understand.” She pulls the letter from the next envelope, unfolds it, and this time finds another piece of paper tucked inside. Again, the letter has writing on it, most of which has been blacked out. The other paper she recognizes right away. It’s a page from Mi-ja’s father’s book. It’s old and yellowed. Young-sook’s hands tremble as she unfolds it. Here is the first rubbing she and Mi-ja made together: the rough impression of a stone they created on the day they met.

She reaches for the next envelope: again unsealed, with a letter folded around another page from Mi-ja’s father’s book. Toilet, made the day of the big haenyeo march. The next envelope: Sunrise, the name of the boat on their first dives together. Each envelope reveals another rubbing that commemorated for two girls the places they visited and the events of their lives: the surface of a scallop shell from this very beach, a carving they’d liked in Vladivostok, the outlines of their babies’ feet. Maybe the letters that Yo-chan wrote for his mother offer words of apology or regret, but Young-sook doesn’t need to hear them. These treasures of their friendship mean so much more.

When she comes to the last rubbing she remembers making with Mi-ja, she looks at the remaining stack of letters—all of them sealed, marking that they came after censorship ended—and wonders what could be inside. The first one has another letter she cannot read. This time, however, the page from Mi-ja’s father’s book is folded around a photograph. The page from the book shows a baby’s foot. In the photograph, Joon-lee sits propped in a hospital bed, a newborn in her arms. The next letter has a rubbing on a much larger piece of paper. Young-sook can’t read it, but she recognizes the pattern of letters and numbers and realizes that it’s from her daughter’s headstone. Young-sook chokes back a sob.

Once she’s reined in her feelings, she opens the rest of the letters. Each one is accompanied by a rubbing and a photograph, showing some aspect of the life of their shared granddaughter, Janet: smiling, with her hair clipped with brightly colored barrettes, standing on the steps to a house, with a lunch box in her hand, at a holiday sing-along, graduating from elementary school, junior high, high school, and college. A wedding photo. Another baby footprint: Clara. Later, another footprint: Clara’s brother. Mi-ja had tried to tell Young-sook everything that was happening, and everything that she missed.

Young-sook’s concentrating so hard and her emotions are so strong that she’s unaware of the woman and girl who’ve approached.

“She wanted you to know us,” Janet says in her poor Jeju dialect. “And she wanted us to know you.”

Janet and Clara have changed out of the clothes they wore to the opening of the Peace Park and are now dressed almost identically in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. Clara’s iPhone with the wires and earbuds dangles from her hand.

“She wanted,” Clara says, putting stress on every word, “for us to hear your story, your side. But you must hear her too. I taped Great-Granny Mi-ja for hours—”

“It started as a school project,” her mother explains.

“I’ve set this to the most important part,” Clara says. “Are you ready?”

Yes, finally, Young-sook is ready. She takes the earbuds, puts them in her ears, and nods. Clara pushes a button, and there comes Mi-ja’s old-woman voice.

“Young-sook always said I should divorce my husband, just as she always told the women in her collective who had similar experiences to mine. She was always so understanding of them when they couldn’t leave their husbands, but she could not think the same way when it came to me.”

“That was selfish of her,” Clara says on the recording.

“Not selfish. I loved her, and she loved me, but she never fully understood who or what I was.” Mi-ja gives a knowing snort. “And neither did I. It took me many years to see that I was different from those other women. I mean, of course, I was afraid of Sang-mun, as they were afraid of their husbands. I was in constant terror of what he might do to me. What made me different from the other haenyeo, whose husbands could be violent, was that I deserved Sang-mun and the punishment he gave me.”

“Granny, no one deserves what he did to you.”

“I did. My husband was married to a bad person.”

On the recording, Clara tries to tell her great-grandmother that she isn’t a bad person, and this gives Young-sook time to remember when she too had tried to argue this point with Mi-ja. Why hadn’t she heard what Mi-ja was truly saying? Why hadn’t she asked more questions? Even more painful is that this conversation had happened back when her heart had still been open to Mi-ja, or so she thought.

“I was a bad person,” Mi-ja now insists in Young-sook’s ears. “I killed my mother when I entered the world. I was the daughter of a collaborator. I let Sang-mun ruin me. But my greatest disgrace came when I didn’t stop what happened in Bukchon. From my birth to that moment, I lived a life of shame.”

In the recording, Young-sook hears Mi-ja weeping and Clara comforting her. Again, Young-sook is racked by memories, only they are of her own shortcomings. There’s a click, then another click, and the voices come back. Mi-ja is once again composed.

“To be ruined,” Mi-ja said. “You know what that means.”

“Granny, you’ve told me many times. You forget sometimes—”

“Forget? No! I will never forget. Young-sook and I were so happy. We’d just returned to Jeju from leaving-home water-work. Everything was so different on the dock. Scary. Sang-mun offered to help us. He looked man-beautiful, but he was evil. I don’t know why Young-sook didn’t see that right away, but she didn’t. I hated him from the first moment I saw him, and he must have seen in me the weakness of my bloodline. I was a person who would give in. He knew he could take advantage of that, and I let him. He easily separated us. Once she was out of sight, he took me to his office. When he started touching me, I froze. I let him pull down my pants—”

“You didn’t let him, Granny. He raped you.”

“I thought, If I don’t move or scream, then soon it would end.”

Mi-ja starts to cry again. This is all going back so much further than the events in Bukchon. Even when her own grandmother had hinted at what had happened to Mi-ja, Young-sook had refused to believe it, let alone ask more questions. She’d been too wrapped up in her own misery that Sang-mun had not come to Hado for her.

“I couldn’t tell Young-sook what happened,” Mi-ja says. “She would have been disgusted with me. Never would she have looked at me the same way.”

“Then she couldn’t have been a very good friend—”

Mi-ja’s voice comes back, surprisingly sharp. “Don’t ever say that. She was a wonderful friend and a great diver. She became the best haenyeo in Hado. She learned early on from Yu-ri’s accident and the loss of her mother how to protect those who looked to her for security and safety. Not one person died in her collective when she was chief.”

That Mi-ja would have known this about Young-sook should perhaps be more surprising. Or not. Young-sook had made it her business to know all about Mi-ja. Maybe Mi-ja had done the same with Young-sook. In the silence that follows Mi-ja’s outburst, Young-sook imagines how Clara must have felt in that moment—chastened, maybe even afraid or embarrassed—but for the first time she understands that, for all the anger and blame she’s held within her these past years, she herself failed Mi-ja in many ways.

“Young-sook was my only friend,” Mi-ja insists. “That’s why it all hurt so much.” Another long pause, then she continues. “You see, she liked Sang-mun. I thought she’d think I was trying to steal him from her.”

“Steal him?”

“There was always a part of Young-sook that was jealous of me. That I could read and write a tiny bit. That I got to work in the bulteok before she was allowed to enter it. That I was prettier. You look at me now and see an old face, but once I was beautiful.”

The shifting sea that has kept Young-sook unbalanced all day shifts again. She puts her fingers over the earbuds, pushing them farther into her head, trying to block the sound of the wind. Clara and Janet stare at her, watching her reaction.

“So either she would have been disgusted with me or she would have thought I’d gone with Sang-mun to hurt her.”

“Oh, Granny—”

“And later? If I’d told her after the killings, she wouldn’t have believed me. She would have only heard made-up excuses.”

The pause on the tape allows Young-sook to sort through this information. She purses her lips in acceptance of these truths about her own failings.

“I made a choice,” Mi-ja continues. “I sought out Young-sook’s grandmother and told her what happened. That old woman was fierce. I begged her not to tell anyone, but she went straight to my aunt and uncle. ‘What if the girl is pregnant?’ she asked them. Auntie and Uncle took the bus to Jeju City and confronted Sang-mun’s parents. They said if their son didn’t marry me, they would report him to the police.”

Young-sook tries to take this all in, seeking to understand things that happened more than sixty years ago. That Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle would have let her go into that marriage was one thing, but for Grandmother to arrange it? And then not tell her? With a chill, Young-sook remembers meeting Mi-ja in the olle after her engagement meeting. I told your grandmother everything. I begged her… And later, Young-sook’s grandmother’s triumphant demeanor when Mi-ja was driven away from Hado after her wedding. That girl has left Hado as she arrived—the daughter of a collaborator. Young-sook had loved her grandmother. She’d taught Young-sook about life and diving, but her hatred for the Japanese—whom she’d called the cloven-footed ones—and for those who collaborated with them had caused Mi-ja to be sent into a cruel and unforgivable situation. But it was Young-sook’s own blindness that had kept her from wanting to know the truth, and as a result she’d lost the sister of her heart. And later, Joon-lee and her family… But now… To understand everything is to forgive.

“After that,” Mi-ja continues, “it was as I’ve told you before. Sang-mun was forced to marry me. He considered it his duty to share love with me every night. He needed and wanted a son, and his parents needed and wanted a grandchild. They even sent me back to Hado, so I might visit the goddess with Young-sook. I’d longed to have a family of my own, but now I didn’t want to do anything that would help plant a baby in me.”

I’m not sure I want to have a baby. Mi-ja had said this directly to Young-sook on that first visit. If only Young-sook had questioned her more. But she didn’t. She’d been thinking solely of her own happiness.

“I was in constant fear of him,” Mi-ja continues. “When he escaped from the north, he was even worse. Sharing love. Aigo! What a lie that is! I didn’t know what to do, and I had nowhere to go. Every time I was as frozen as I was the day he first ruined me. And so terrified. He didn’t stop with me either. The way he beat your grandfather… I did everything I could to protect Yo-chan and raise him to be a good man.”

“You should have told Young-sook,” Clara says on the recording. “If you had, and if she was truly your friend, then maybe everything would have turned out different.”

When Young-sook thinks about how her friend suffered… For years… How pale Mi-ja had been when she and Sang-mun met Young-sook at the pickup point the first day the three of them met. The bruises she’d covered up over the years. The way she always froze when he came into view. How she made excuses for him. How she dressed for him. That Mi-ja herself had told Young-sook that Sang-mun made her pay for his loss of face before his superiors that day in Bukchon. And still later, how she’d gone back to Sang-mun to help Joon-lee…

On the recording, Mi-ja lets out a tortured moan. “Different? I thought we were all going to die that day in Bukchon. I had no hope of survival, but if I had to die, I was grateful it would be with my friend. Then Sang-mun arrived with Yo-chan. I never had a mother to love me, and I missed that always. I couldn’t let Yo-chan grow up without me and live alone with his father.”

With a chill, Young-sook remembers a visit from Mi-ja. She had talked about how some women chose suicide over living with their husbands. “But how can that be a path for a mother?” she had asked. “I have Yo-chan. I must live for him.”

On the tape, Mi-ja adds another reason. “Then, when Young-sook asked me to take her children,” she says, “all I could think of was the brutality they’d be stepping into.”

“I’m sorry, Granny, but I think it’s better to be alive and beaten than, well, dead.”

“If you could know what it was like that day… The screams… The crying… The smell of fear… But you’re right,” Mi-ja admits. “In the end, everything that happened was my responsibility alone. I couldn’t take Young-sook’s children into his home. I couldn’t even take one. I couldn’t bear the thought of what Sang-mun might do to them when I knew what he had already done to Yo-chan and me. And then everything happened so fast.” Her voice falters. “Later, when Sang-mun found out what I’d done—not done—he was so angry with me. He worried that Jun-bu and the others would come back to haunt him. He said that by making him look like a weakling, I’d threatened his position with the government. Worst, I hadn’t stepped forward from the beginning and pleaded with the commander for Young-sook and her family. He looked at me and saw a collaborator, perpetrator, and traitor, but all I’d wanted to do was stay alive for my son.”

Young-sook pulls out the earbuds. She looks from the girl, to her mother, and back to the letters. Her heart is cracking open. Maybe she won’t be able to bear it. A good woman is a good mother. She had tried to live by those words and had prided herself on all she’d done for her children. Now she sees that Mi-ja tried to do the same but with tragic results. She feels excruciating pain as decades of sorrow, anger, and regret she’s carried within her begin to shatter and melt.

“My grandmother never stopped loving you,” Janet says. “She accepted what she did, and she wanted you to know everything. This we’ve brought to you.”

For years, people have pestered Young-sook to tell her story. Always she’s said no. But now… The people asking carry within them the blood of Mi-ja and Young-sook. Yes, she’ll finally tell her story. She’ll tell them about the pain she endured but also about her closed heart that could not forgive.

Clara drops to her knees. “Does this beach have any food?”

This question is as old as the first haenyeo, and Clara must have learned it from her other great-grandma. Young-sook finds herself smiling. How can she not be transported back to the relationship she had with her closest friend, right on this beach, as they’d learned to swim, play, and love together?

“More food than thirty refrigerators in my grandmother’s house,” she answers, adding, “if she’d had a refrigerator.”

“Then will you take us into the sea?” Clara asks. “Will you teach us?”

Young-sook doesn’t hesitate. “Have you brought something to swim in?”

Clara grins up at her mother, who grins right back. Each of them shrugs a shoulder to reveal the brightly colored straps of their bathing suits.

A breath,

a breath,

a breath…