The Island of Sea Women

Day 2: 2008

The morning after the encounter with the family on the beach, Young-sook wakes early. She’s had a nearly sleepless night. All through the darkness, her mind was troubled, thinking about the foreign woman, her husband, and their children. She remembered all the rumors she’d heard about Mi-ja over the years: she was in America, living in a mansion, driving her own car, and sending money to her part of the village. But there were other stories too: she had a small grocery store in Los Angeles, she lived in an apartment, she was lonely because she was too old to pick up the language. Having met Mi-ja’s family, Young-sook isn’t sure what to believe.

She pads to the kitchen, heats water, stirs in tangerine marmalade, and sips the tart, citrusy drink. She goes to her kitchen garden to pick chives and garlic to add to her morning bowl of little-crab porridge. Then she returns to her room to get dressed, put her bedding away, and eat her breakfast. Dawn still hasn’t arrived.

When she was a girl, a haenyeo officially retired at age fifty-five. Those who continued breathing the air of this earth didn’t want to stay home, so they did water work on the shore. Times have changed. When she joins her grandson and his family in the big house for breakfast, she often announces, “I get lonesome at home by myself. I think I’ll go down to the sea.” What she means is she gets bored sitting around the house with her youngest great-grandchildren. Yes, she should enjoy those special times with the babies—something she wasn’t able to do with her own children—but they don’t have stories or tease or joke around. And working in the dry fields has never been, as her great-grandchildren put it, “her thing,” with all that stooped weeding, hoeing, planting, and harvesting. For her, life is better when she can live in harmony with nature—the wind, the tides, and the moon.

Young-sook can do what she wants, because she’s financially self-sufficient. No one ever paid her way, and no one ever will. She considers the sea to be her bank. Even if she didn’t have checks or credit cards, she could make money underwater. She’d always felt healthiest when she dove too, always felt healed in the water. Whenever she had problems in her life, she went diving. Of course, it’s dangerous, but every day something pulls her to the sea. When her body isn’t underwater, her mind is.

“I hear the ocean calling,” she tells her grandson this morning, and he isn’t about to fight her, and neither will anyone else in the household. Even long after she could have retired, she was one of the best haenyeo, with the most hard-won experience of tides, currents, and surges, the deepest knowledge of the nesting grounds for octopus, and her ability to hold her breath. How strange that these days it’s hard to find a haenyeo under fifty-five. They say that in another twenty years, the haenyeo will be extinct.

She has constant pain and ringing in her ears from decades of water pressure. She gets headaches, vertigo, dizziness, and nausea—as if she were always on a rocking boat. Her hips ache from carrying the weights she wore around her waist to drag her to the ocean floor when she started wearing a wet suit and the effort it took to fight against them when she needed to resurface. Those weights were in addition to paddling back to a boat or to shore with her net as heavy as thirty kilos with a day’s catch, and then dragging it onto dry land and back to the bulteok. Still, the unrelenting sea… It beckons her…

As she walks to the shore, Young-sook sees the remnants of the old stone bulteok and bathing enclosures, where these days young people go to meet in secret, listen to music, and smoke cigarettes. Such a waste. She veers left and joins other old women as they enter the new bulteok. It has individual shower stalls, changing rooms, air-conditioning, a stove, and a huge tub that can fit at least a dozen women, so they can rinse away salt water and warm up at the same time. It doesn’t have a fire pit, but it has a roof, and area heaters can be pulled out when needed. All these amenities, along with healthcare, have been given by the government as a thank-you for the work the haenyeo have done.

The women peel off their clothes. Breasts that long ago fed babies and gave husbands pleasure droop down to belly buttons. Once flat stomachs now ripple with rolls of insulating fat. Hair that was once lustrous black has dulled to white. Hands that have seen a lifetime of work are knobby, wrinkled, and scarred. Next to Young-sook, the Kang sisters yank and stretch their black neoprene pants up and over their sagging bottoms. Then they pull over their heads their regulation orange neoprene tops, which will make them more visible to passing boats.

Young-sook squeezes her skull through her cap, positioning the small opening above her eyebrows and just below her lips. As she looks around the bulteok, she sees the weathered faces of friends she’s known her entire life squishing through their own small openings. The characters of the women—and their histories of goodness, generosity, stinginess, and callousness—are centered in those few centimeters. Each line tells a story of underwater journeys, births and deaths, survival and triumph. The deep grooves around Kang Gu-ja’s mouth bloom outward like a child’s drawing of the sun. Creases streak from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks. Kang Gu-sun will forever be the younger sister. Despite her losses, kindness radiates from her eyes. Some women are toothless, cheeks pressed forward, amplifying furrows of sorrow and joy. Now, almost as one, they pull their face masks onto their heads, but each woman wears hers in a unique manner—over her brow, on top of her head, or on the side at an angle. A few women add homemade floral vests over their neoprene tops, wanting to show off their individuality.

The grannies leave the bulteok—with their tewaks, nets, fins, and other tools—walk down some steps, and set out across the jetty to the boat. They’re taken to a cove off a nearby island known for its abundance of top shell. Once the boat reaches its destination, Young-sook and the other women take a few moments to make offerings of rice and rice wine to the Dragon Sea God and pray for an abundant harvest, a safe return, and peace of mind. Young-sook’s life by now can be summed up in three words—pray, pray, pray—for all the good those prayers have done her.

Then, whoosh… Into the water. It’s been about thirty years since she and other haenyeo started wearing rubber clothes. “You’ll be covered head to toe,” an official from the government had told them. “This will finally put an end to the criticism that haenyeo are immodest and show too much skin. And you’ll be helping with our tourism industry!” (He’d been talking about tourists from the mainland, and he’d been right about that. But no one back then could have predicted the foreign tourists, that they’d love to come to the shore to watch ancients like her enter the sea, or that they’d enjoy seeing “re-creations” at the new Haenyeo Museum, where hired girls wore traditional water clothes and sang rowing songs in daily shows.) When Young-sook first started using a wet suit, she’d been able to stay in the water longer, because she was protected from the cold. It had also protected her from jellyfish stings and water snake bites. (It did not protect her from other dangers: fishing lines or speedboats bearing tourists.) Weights and fins had helped her reach a greater depth too. The result: she was safer, her catches were larger, and she’d earned more money. But when people suggested the haenyeo start using oxygen tanks, she, along with other divers around the island, refused. “Everything we do must be natural,” she’d told the collective, “otherwise we’ll harvest too much, deplete our wet fields, and earn nothing.” There, again, balance.

As she settles into the feeling of weightlessness, her aches and pains melt away. And, on a day like today, when her mind is in turmoil, the vastness of the ocean offers solace. She kicks down, going headfirst, shooting her body deeper and deeper. She hopes the pressure on her ears will squash the thoughts of the past. Instead, it feels as though they’re being pushed out—like toothpaste from a tube. The image troubles her. She needs to concentrate—always be aware—but her mother and grandmother, and, lurking in the shadows of her mind, Mi-ja, keep pushing against the backs of her eyes.

Young-sook’s mother used to say that the sea was like a mother, while Young-sook’s grandmother said that the sea was better than a mother. After all these years, Young-sook knows her grandmother to be the most right. The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.

On her third dive, her mind begins to relax. She tunes in to the thrum that connects her to the earth, to those she’s lost, to love. The way the blood pounds in her head makes her feel alive. When she’s in the sea, she’s in the womb of the world.

And she forgets to be cautious.

Young-sook dives deeper than she’s gone in years. The water pressure is harder on her now. She remembers when she could go down twenty meters… Deep enough to crush a plastic bottle. But that was before plastic bottles…

Returning to the surface… Aaah. Her sumbisori sighs out across the swells. She takes in several panted breaths. She’s making many short dives in a narrow time span, releasing her sumbisori, then gulping in air for her next dive. She knows better, but the water feels so good. On her next dive, she’ll try for her old twenty meters, just to see if she can. One last intake of breath, then head straight down, kicking hard. Down, down, down she goes. She’s aware of other haenyeo watching her, which makes her bolder. Finally, for a few precious seconds, she’s able to forget the family she met on the beach, their photos, and their daughter, who looked so much like Mi-ja. But in those moments of forgetting, she loses track of the most important thing—air. Now she must return swiftly to the surface. She can see it… Then things start to go black…

Her friends are waiting for Young-sook by her tewak when, unconscious, she breaks the surface. Together, they pull her to the boat. The boatman grabs Young-sook by the back of her wet suit, while the women lift her up from below. Once everyone is on board, the boatman pushes the throttle. One of the women calls for help on her cellphone. Young-sook is aware of none of this—her eyes closed, her body limp.

An ambulance waits for them at the shore. Young-sook, awake now, already berates herself for being so foolish.

The doctor in the emergency room is a woman, young, pretty, and born on the island to a haenyeo mother. Dr. Shin’s questions are nonetheless pointed and embarrassing. She ticks off a list of symptoms and possible causes. “Perhaps this is what you haenyeo call shallow-water blackout. It could have been caused by hyperventilation before your dive. I’ve seen several deaths from this. You take too many rapid inhales to expand your breath-holding capacity, but this type of hyperventilation lowers your carbon dioxide levels. This, in turn, can cause cerebral hypoxia.”

The technical terms mean nothing to Young-sook, and it must show on her face, because the doctor explains, “When the brain stem forgets to send the signal that you need air, you pass out in the water. But you keep breathing… Water… If people hadn’t been there…”

“I know. Quiet drowning,” Young-sook says, using the haenyeo expression for what happens when a diver loses her thinking capabilities and takes a breath as normally as if she were on land. “I wasn’t taking proper care with my breathing, but that’s not what happened.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“All right,” Dr. Shin says when it becomes clear that her elderly patient has nothing more to add. Then she goes on, musing to herself. “We can rule out a heart attack, but should we consider nitrogen narcosis? Deep diving can cause general physical impairment but also a feeling of euphoria—loss of judgment aggravated by forgetfulness that comes from exultation, for example. Some say these moments of bliss are what addict the haenyeo to the sea.” She purses her lips, nods sharply, and returns her focus to the woman before her. “Did you forget about breathing and the distance to the surface, because you were feeling elation, ecstasy, and joy—like you weren’t in your own body anymore?”

Young-sook is barely listening. She aches all over, but she doesn’t want to admit it. How could I have been so stupid? she asks herself, sure the doctor thinks the same thing.

“What about the cold?” Dr. Shin asks. “The human body cools very quickly in cold water.”

“I know that. I dove in winter. In Russia—”

“Yes, I’ve heard this about you.”

So, Dr. Shin knows Young-sook’s reputation…

“You should be more careful out there,” the doctor says. “You have a dangerous job. I mean, do you see men doing it?”

“Of course not!” Young-sook exclaims. “The world knows that the cold water will cause their penises to shrivel and die.”

The doctor shakes her head and laughs.

Young-sook turns serious. “Actually, I’ve seen haenyeo die the moment they hit cold water.”

“Their hearts stop—”

“But it wasn’t very cold today—”

“What does that matter?” Dr. Shin asks, letting her impatience come through. “At your age, even diving in warm weather is dangerous.”

“I have some numbness on the right side of my body,” Young-sook suddenly reveals, but what she’s feeling is much worse than that. The aches have turned into burning agony.

“Strokes are common for women who’ve been diving as long as you have.” Dr. Shin stares at her, assessing. “You look like you’re experiencing pain.”

“I hurt everywhere.”

The doctor’s eyes light with understanding. “I should have recognized this right away, but it’s hard when patients aren’t forthcoming. You’re a breath-hold diver. I think you’ve got decompression sickness—”

“I didn’t go down that far—”

“You haenyeo learned from your mothers and grandmothers, but what they taught you is the worst thing you can do. All those short breaths, followed by a deep dive, where you hold your breath for the entire time, and then the quick rise to the surface. And then you do it again and again and again? It’s terrible and very dangerous. You’ve got the bends. You’re lucky the air bubbles in your veins and lungs haven’t reached your brain.”

Young-sook sighs. She won’t be the first haenyeo on Jeju to spend time in a hyperbaric chamber. Still, she worries. “Will I be able to dive again?”

The doctor examines her stethoscope, refusing to meet Young-sook’s eyes. “There comes a point when you can no longer cheat the limits of the human body, but if I told you no, would you stop?” When Young-sook doesn’t respond, the doctor goes on. “What happens next time if you fall unconscious underwater? Sudden death at your age would not surprise me.”

Young-sook shuts out the doctor, not wanting to hear the lecture.

She closes her eyes as she’s wheeled through the corridors to another room. Nurses help her into a tube that looks like a coffin with a window that allows her to look out. She’s told she’ll have to remain in the hyperbaric chamber for several hours.

“Do you want us to play music?” a nurse inquires.

Young-sook shakes her head. With that, the nurse dims the lights. “I’ll be right here. You aren’t alone.”

But in the chamber, Young-sook is alone. In the past, before we had modern medicine, I would have died. But in the past, I would have had Mi-ja to protect me. Things spiral from there, and all the thoughts she’s been trying to avoid since meeting that family yesterday crowd in around her.