The Island of Sea Women

by Lisa See

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Open it.”

  Min-lee slit open the envelope. Money fluttered out of it, which we quickly gathered. Then she began to read: “ ‘Dear Mother and Sister, I’ve given birth to a baby girl. She’s healthy, and I’m fine. We’ve named her Ji-young. I’m hoping you’ve softened toward me and my husband these past months and will come to Seoul to meet her. I’ve enclosed money for your travel expenses. We’ll be moving to America in December. Yo-chan will be working at Samsung’s office in Los Angeles. I’m hoping to become a student at UCLA, so I can finish my degree. I’m not sure when we’ll be back, so you must come see us. Mother, you’ve always said that children are hope and joy. Ji-young is hope and joy to us. I hope she will be to you too. With love and respect, Joon-lee.’ ”

  Min-lee’s voice trailed off. She studied me, trying to get a sense of my feelings. I was ripped up inside. I had a new grandchild. Such a blessing. But that child was also the grandchild of the woman who’d nearly destroyed my life.

  “If you want to go,” Min-lee said tentatively, “I’ll take time off from work and come with you. Would you like that?”

  “You’re a good daughter,” I said, “but let me think about it.”

  A flash of hurt crossed Min-lee’s face.

  “Don’t misunderstand,” I said. “If I go, I’d love for you to come with me. You’ve always been a perfect daughter, and I’d need you. But I’m not sure if I’ll go.”

  “But, Mother, it’s Joon-lee. The baby . . .”

  I slowly rose. “Just let me think for a bit.”

  All that day and all that night I tortured myself with what I should do. In the deepest hours of darkness, I realized I needed advice from Shaman Kim. I followed the proper customs to prepare myself. I gave myself a sponge bath and dressed in clean clothes. I searched my mind for any contaminating activities I might have participated in and found none. I hadn’t drunk rice liquor recently, nor had I argued with friends, family members, or women in the bulteok. I no longer had my monthly bleeding. I wasn’t sharing love with anyone. I hadn’t butchered a pig, chicken, or duck, nor had I harvested any marine creatures in the past week.

  The sun had not yet risen when I put on my white kerchief and left the house with a basket filled with rice cakes and other offerings over my arm. I found Shaman Kim and her daughter at a makeshift shrine for Halmang Yeongdeung—the goddess of the wind. Shaman Kim was quite old now, and her daughter was training to take her place.

  “Visiting the goddess is like visiting one’s grandmother,” Shaman Kim recited when she saw me. “It’s always best to arrive at a goddess’s shrine close to dawn, when she is sure to be in residence. You can say anything, and she will listen. You can cry, and she will console you. You can complain, and she will be patient.” Shaman Kim motioned for me to sit. “How can we help you?”

  I gave her the news of the birth of my newest granddaughter and told her of my conflicted emotions.

  “You should go to Seoul, of course,” she said when I was done.

  But my mind was too divided to accept this simple direction. “How can I? I’ll look at the baby and see—”

  “Everyone lost people, Young-sook,” Shaman Kim said, not unkindly. “And you know you want to forgive. If you didn’t, well, then, explain to me why you’ve never taken the opportunity to retaliate against Mi-ja. You cared for her house all these years when you could very easily have set fire to the roof.”

  “I stopped visiting it after she came last year,” I pointed out. “It’s scheduled to be demolished.”

  “Ah, but how do you know that information? It’s because you make it your business to know everything about her.”

  I veered toward the subject that had been eating at me since the last time I saw Mi-ja. “She said that Jun-bu, Yu-ri, and Sung-soo spoke only when she appeared. She said their messages were for her. She said they’d forgiven her. But how can any of that be?”

  Shaman Kim’s eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning my abilities to let the dead speak through me?”

  “I’m not doubting you or what they said. I just need to know if they were speaking to her or to me.”

  “Maybe they were speaking to you and Mi-ja. Have you considered that?”

  “But—”

  “You waited a long time for them to come to you, but did you actually hear what they said? You should be grateful. They’ve found forgiveness. Why can’t you?”

  “But how can I forgive Mi-ja after what happened to them? I live with that every day.”

  “We all see that in you, and we all feel sorry for you, but everyone on the island was hurt in those terrible years. You more than some but also less than others. They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

  I listened, but Shaman Kim wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, because of course I was being punished by my anger. I lived with that every day as well.

  I left my offerings and, dissatisfied, walked to Gu-sun’s house. It was still early, but she had already built a fire and heated hot water. We sat together, drinking tea. I felt I could be direct, so I got straight to the point.

  “How did you forgive Gu-ja for Wan-soon’s death?”

  “What else could I do?” she asked me right back. “Gu-ja is my sister. We share our mother’s and father’s blood. Gu-ja may have been at fault, but maybe it was Wan-soon’s fate to be carried away. Maybe it was even her choice. I’ve heard the rumors.”

  “Not that it matters, but I don’t think they were true.”

  “Do you say that because Yo-chan is now your son-in-law?”

  “Hardly. I say it because I believed what my daughters told me.”

  “Min-lee I might trust,” Gu-sun said. “But Joon-lee? She married Yo-chan.”

  All these years, I’d never had a sense of Gu-sun’s feelings about Yo-chan. She’d kept them very well hidden.

  I surprised myself by saying, “I still believe my daughters. Whatever happened had nothing to do with Yo-chan.”

  A faraway look came to her eyes. “I guess you know I was full with child before I was married.”

  “People gossiped.”

  “Before my husband agreed to marry me, I wanted to die, so I understand if that’s what happened to Wan-soon.”

  “Maybe it was just an accident. That day the current was too strong for a baby-diver—”

  “Maybe. But if she was pregnant, I wish she would have come to me. I would have told her that once her father and I were married and I gave him our first son, we were both happy. I would have wished that for her. But I understand it’s my destiny never to know what happened to Wan-soon, or why.”

  The sadness of that lay in the silence between us.

  Finally, I said, “About Gu-ja . . .”

  “I will tell you this,” she said. “There are days when I think my sister has suffered more than I have. She will never forgive herself. How can I not love her for that?”

  “Mi-ja blames herself too,” I admitted, but I didn’t go into all the ways she’d tried to help Joon-lee. “But that’s not enough. I must know why. How could she have turned on me that way? How could she have been willing to let all of us die? I begged her to take my children, and she did nothing.”

  “Then accept that, and go and meet your granddaughter. She is the baby of your most beloved child. Once you hold her, you will love her. You know that as a halmang.”

  I let out a long breath. She was right, but I just couldn’t do it.

  “I can’t see that baby, let alone touch her,” I confessed. “If I looked at her, all I would see is the grandchild of a collaborator and perpetrator.”

  Gu-sun’s face filled with compassion as she stared at me. It pained me to know I couldn’t change and I couldn’t forgive, but I had to hold on to my anger and bitterness as a way of honoring those I’d lost.

>   * * *

  About six months later, the mailman delivered the first letter from America, unsealed, with the stamp torn off.

  “It looks like Joon-lee’s handwriting,” Min-lee said when she brought it to me.

  “It has to be.” I shrugged, pretending I didn’t care. “Who else would be writing to us from there?”

  Min-lee pulled the letter from the envelope. I peered over her shoulder when she unfolded it. Most of the written characters had been blacked out.

  “The censors,” Min-lee said, stating the obvious.

  “Is there anything you can read?”

  “Let’s see. ‘Dear Mother and Sister . . .’ ” My daughter’s finger traced each row, allowing me to follow along. “ ‘We’ve been here for . . . Yo-chan’s job is . . . The air is brown . . . The food is greasy . . . The sea is right here, but they get nothing from it . . . No sea urchin . . . No top shell . . . Their abalone is fished out . . .’ ” Then several lines were completely crossed out. The next paragraph began “ ‘I went to the doctor and . . . Wish it was slow . . . Fast . . . Time . . . This foreign land is not home . . .’ ” Min-lee stopped reading to say, “It’s like they only want negative things about America to come through.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. What about this part?” I put my finger on the last paragraph, which seemed to have the fewest characters inked out.

  “It says, ‘All mothers worry. I worry about what will happen and how Yo-chan will get by. I wish you . . . Please . . . If I could be home on Jeju . . . You would . . . Always remember I love you, Joon-lee.’ ” Min-lee looked at me. “What do you think it means?”

  “She sounds homesick.” But the letter was more troubling than that.

  “What should I write back?”

  “What does it matter what you write back, if the censors are only going to black it out?”

  My daughter set her jaw. “I’m going to write to her anyway.”

  I nodded. “Do what you must.”

  * * *

  The next month, we received another letter. Again, the envelope had been opened, the stamp taken, and most of the letter inked out, but the handwriting was different. Min-lee read, “ ‘Dear Mother Young-sook, This is Yo-chan. I write for my mother.’ ” That’s as far as she got before I rose and walked away. Later, Min-lee told me that there was no real news. Just a word or phrase here and there. “It’s like trying to understand the ocean floor by seeing only ten grains of sand,” she said. This time, Min-lee did not write back.

  After that, a letter came around the first of every month. In those days, they always arrived unsealed, but I didn’t pull them from their envelopes. I hid them in a small wooden box. It comforted me to know that whatever lies Mi-ja and her son wished to send me were hidden in the dark, where I wouldn’t have to hear them. It made me feel that I’d won.

  In spring, the rapeseed fields bloomed yellow, stretching from the mid-mountain area all the way to the gnarled coastline. The ocean kept its relentless movement. The deep blue waters frothed one moment and became almost serene the next. I did my farming work and went to the sea. When I dove I was able to push my daughter and granddaughter from my mind. Often I was reminded of Dr. Park and his search for the mystery of why the haenyeo could withstand cold better than any other humans on earth. I think I now knew the answer. Not only did I have a coldness at my core that would not thaw but it had become as hard as ice. I could not do what Shaman Kim, Gu-sun, and so many others had told me to do. If I could not forgive, then at least I could wrap my anger and bitterness in an icy shell. Each time I sank into the sea, I stretched my mind outward, away from that shell. Where’s my abalone? Where’s my octopus? I need to make money! I need to make a living! I would continue to strive to be the best haenyeo, even if I knew it wouldn’t last.

  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 b
e 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—”