The Island of Sea Women

Day 3: 2008

Young-sook has another fitful night. She lies on her sleeping mat, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the sound of waves hitting the rocks. She punishes herself for the bad judgment she showed during her dive yesterday and if it’s a hint that worse might be coming. She frets about her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She agonizes over what will happen if Kim Il-sung decides to invade South Korea again. She worries about Roh Tae-woo, a former general and now the first president to be elected by the South Korean people, even if he was handpicked by his predecessor. She wonders if maybe it’s better to have the corrupt leader you know… But Roh is going to host the Olympics in Seoul… She keeps hearing about “the world stage,” but what if… If eighty-five years have taught her anything, it’s that governments come and go and that whoever and whatever comes next will eventually become rotten.

These things clutter the front of her mind, and she’s grateful in some way, because deeper, more persistent memories of screaming and begging keep floating into view. She counts forward and backward. She scrubs an imaginary eraser against the inside of her skull. She relaxes each toe, then her arches, then her ankles, then her calves, slowly working her way up to her forehead, and back down again. She does everything she can to push the bad pictures out of her head. None of it works. It never does.

When dawn finally comes, Young-sook gets dressed, eats breakfast, and considers what will come next. Some of her friends find company in television soap operas, but the troubles of the characters are of no interest to her. No, she is not the kind of old woman to sit inside and watch television. However, today—and she hates to admit it—she feels worn out. How pleasant it would be to go down to the shore and rest in the pavilion. There, she could look out to the sea, watch the haenyeo bobbing up and down not far offshore, and listen to the lilting, haunting cries of their sumbisori. Or she could doze. No one would bother her, because she’s an ancient who’s earned the respect of everyone in Hado.

Instead, habit takes her to the cement building with the tin roof that is now Hado’s bulteok. Women sit outside on their haunches. They wear long-sleeved shirts with floral or checkerboard prints. Their faces are protected from the sun by big straw hats or broad-brimmed bonnets. Their feet, covered in droopy white socks, are tucked into plastic slippers or clogs. The man in charge of the cooperative talks to them through a bullhorn. She can’t decide what she dislikes more—that they’re being ordered around by a man or the whining sounds of his bullhorn. “Today you will do a job as old as haenyeo tradition—but with a new title—working as guardians of the sea.” It used to be said that the sea’s gifts were like a mother’s love, unending, but parts of the sea are turning white, where coral, algae, seaweed, and sea creatures have perished. Some of this has been caused by the change in climate, some by overfishing, and some by human disregard. Therefore, the haenyeo will dive for a harvest of Styrofoam, cigarette filters, candy wrappers, and bits of plastic. The man from the cooperative ends his orders with “Young-sook and the Kang sisters will gather litter on the shore today.” He’s trying to let her save face for the mistake that almost led to her death yesterday, but she wonders how long it will be before she’s allowed to dive again, even in the shallows.

The younger women—noticeably fewer than even ten years ago—grab their gear and climb on the back of the truck to be taken to the boat. The Kangs and Young-sook gather their nets and cushions, then begin hobbling down to the beach. The sisters start in right away.

“Hey, old woman, thank you for this special treat!” Kang Gu-ja gripes.

“We love sitting in the hot sun!” Kang Gu-sun chimes in.

Young-sook should bite back at their teasing, but she’s noticed that half-and-half girl, Clara, perched on a rock. She wears a tank top and shorts that barely cover her crotch. Her bra straps show. Once again, she’s wearing earbuds. Young-sook’s great-grandchildren bob their heads when they listen to their music. Not this girl. She has a somber look on her face.

Young-sook changes course and walks straight to the girl. She keeps her Jeju words simple. “You here again?”

“I could say the same to you,” Clara says with a smile as she pulls out an earbud and lets the wire drip down her chest.

“I live here!”

“I’m visiting. I couldn’t take another day of sightseeing. I just couldn’t. Mom and Dad let me take the bus out here.”

“By yourself?” Young-sook asks, but inside she’s relieved the whole family didn’t come.

“I’m fifteen. What were you doing when you were fifteen?”

The old woman juts her chin. She’s not going to answer that.

Except for the clothes, Clara has Mi-ja’s eyes, legs, and manner. Young-sook should look away or leave or something. Instead, she says what she thought the first time she saw the girl. “So you’re Mi-ja’s great-granddaughter.”

“Great-granddaughter, yes,” Clara answers. “We shared a room, and she only spoke the Jeju dialect to me. She could speak English. I mean, she had to, right, having the shop and all? But her English was superbad. And you know how old ladies are. Talk, talk, talk. I had to learn it if I was going to understand her.”

The girl’s been speaking in the past tense. That must mean Mi-ja is gone. Young-sook focuses her eyes on the shell of a dead sand crab, which helps her control her emotions. Clara stares at her, though, waiting for her to say something. Young-sook settles on “Where have you gone? These sights—”

Clara flips a few strands of hair over her shoulder. “We hiked around Mount Halla Park. We climbed the Seongsan Ilchulbong Oreum to watch the sunrise. We toured Manjanggul—‘the world’s largest lava-tube cave system in the world.’ ” She sighs.

“Lots of natural beauty,” Young-sook says, but she remembers when people weren’t allowed on Mount Halla, when an oreum was for sitting on when you talked with a friend, and when the caves were places of hiding and death. “Mount Halla. We call it Grandmother Seolmundae—”

“But that’s not all,” Clara rushes on. “We’ve visited lots of museums or things they call museums or shrines or something. We went to where Jeju’s three founding brothers climbed out of a hole in the ground. And guess what. It’s just a hole in the ground! We went to a stone park. It had a bunch of stones. Stones! Then we went to this place to celebrate the life of some woman, Kim Something, who saved the people of Jeju during a famine.”

“Kim Mandeok.”

“That’s the one. They treat her like a god too.”

“Goddess.”

“And what’s with all the Swiss stuff? You know, like the Swiss Village and all the Swiss restaurants and the Swiss houses and—”

“Do all American girls complain?” Young-sook asks.

Clara shrugs, remains silent for a moment. Then she recites the new marketing slogan that’s been plastered on the sides of buses and on billboards in English and Korean. “The World Comes to Jeju, and Jeju Goes to the World! What’s that all about?”

“Tourism? The future?”

“Well, that’s dumb. Because it’s not like the world is coming here. It wouldn’t be at the top of my list.” Clara wrinkles her nose. “If it’s about the future, that’s even more lame. I mean, like, Jeju people seem to live in the past and not in the present. And certainly not in the future.”

How can Young-sook explain what she feels about all that to a fifteen-year-old? The past is the present. The present is the future.

The girl breaks into a grin. “Don’t get me wrong. I love to travel.”

“Me too,” Young-sook admits, glad to be on safer ground.

Clara’s eyes widen, as if she hadn’t thought of this possibility. “Where have you gone?”

Is it curiosity or impudence?

“I’d gone to three countries by the time I was twenty—Japan, China, and Russia. I went back to China last year. I’ve gone to Europe. The United States too. I liked the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. What about you?”

“Oh, the usual places. We live in Los Angeles, so it’s easy to go to Mexico or Hawaii on vacation. But we’ve also gone to France, Italy, Switzerland—”

“Switzerland? I’ve been there!”

“Figures. Switzerland and all—”

“Have you read Heidi?” Young-sook asks.

The girl tilts her head like she’s a bird and gives Young-sook a quizzical look. “I was named for a character in the book.”

“Clara, of course.”

“I’m not in a wheelchair, though. Don’t you think it’s…” She breaks off for a moment, trying to find the right Jeju word. Finally, she says, in English, “Weird?” Young-sook has heard her great-grandson use this word, so she recognizes it. “Weird,” Clara repeats before switching back to the Jeju dialect, “to be named for a character who’s disabled?”

Suddenly, a memory of hearing the story read aloud shears through Young-sook’s brain. She wants to go home, swallow some white diving powder, lie down, and close her eyes. “But Heidi helps Clara recover,” she manages at last. “The Alps. Goat milk. Grandfather.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Clara says.

Young-sook changes the subject. “I have to work.”

“Can I help?”

Young-sook surprises herself by nodding.

They pick their way over the rocks until they find a patch of sand. Young-sook straps her cushion to her behind and lowers herself until she’s sitting with her knees drawn up to her shoulders. The girl squats, and those shorts… Young-sook averts her gaze.

“You work pretty hard for a grandma,” Clara says.

Now it’s Young-sook’s turn to shrug.

Seeing she’s not going to get more of a response, Clara prompts, “So you travel…”

“A lot of haenyeo my age travel together. See those two women? They’re sisters. We’ve gone lots of places.”

“But you’re still working. Don’t you ever want to treat yourself? With something other than travel, I mean.”

“How do you know I don’t treat myself?” But the truth is the idea seems foreign to Young-sook. She worked to help her brothers and sister, support her father until his death, grow vegetables, and bring home seaweed and turban shells for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to eat. She fills the lengthening silence. “We have a saying: The granny who weaves on a loom as her work has five rolls of cloth in her old age, but the granny who dives all her life doesn’t even have proper underwear. I began with empty hands. I’ll never forget the memory of being hungry, but the saying is wrong. I was able to help my children go to school and buy them houses and fields.” She glances at the girl, who stares back at her, still wanting more. “I have plenty of underwear too!” This brings a smile to Clara’s face, and Young-sook goes on. “I couldn’t be more content than I am now.”

“There must be something you’ve wanted—”

Young-sook finds herself trying to answer. “I wish I could have had an education. If I’d learned more, then I could have helped my children more.” She glances over to Clara to see how the girl is taking the response, but her head is bent as she picks through seaweed dotted with bits of plastic. She’s fast, efficient in her movements. When she doesn’t come back with a follow-up question, Young-sook answers the one she wishes Clara had asked. “So maybe I did more than I’ll admit, because my children and grandchildren have accomplished a lot. My son owns a computer business in Seoul. I have a grandson who’s a chef in Los Angeles, and one of my granddaughters is a makeup artist—”

This brings forth a spiral of giggles.

“Why is that so funny?” Young-sook asks.

Clara leans forward as if to confide. “Someone’s tattooed your eyebrows and lips.”

That stings, because all haenyeo Young-sook’s age have done this. Her great-grandson called it, in English, a fad. Just as her dyed and permed hair is a fad.

“Hyng,” Young-sook bristles. “Even an old woman wants to look beautiful.”

The half-and-half girl giggles. The old woman knows what she’s thinking: Weird!

Young-sook’s patience evaporates. “Why are you here anyway?”

“Here?”

Young-sook spells it out. “On my beach.”

“My mother sent me. You’ve got to know that.”

“I can’t help her.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Won’t.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“Then why are you here?”

It’s a simple question, but the girl goes in a different direction. “Your kids and their families, who live in other places, do you see them often?”

“I already told you I’ve gone to America. My grandson has me come every other year—”

“To Los Angeles—”

“Yes, Los Angeles. And I go to the mainland to visit the family who live there. Then every spring, the whole family comes here. It’s been my privilege to introduce each of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to the sea.”

“How deep can you go?”

“Now or back when I was the best haenyeo?”

“Now.”

Young-sook spreads her arms out wide. “Fifteen times this.”

“Would you ever take me in the water? I’m a good swimmer. Have I told you that yet? I’m on the swim team at my school…”