Delicious aromas greeted us when we entered the bulteok. Although we’d been doing cleaning duties, Grandmother had spotted a sea cucumber, which she’d boiled, seasoned, and sliced for everyone to share. Another grandmother had gathered some sand crabs, which she stewed with beans. The sun was high, and it poured down on us through the roofless bulteok as we ate.
After lunch, we returned to work. During the afternoon, we repeated the activities we’d done in the morning. All groups met back at the bulteok three hours later. The fathers once again waited for us to arrive, crying babies slung over their shoulders. These were given to their mothers to nurse, while the rest of us changed into land clothes, warmed by the fire, and ate squid that had been cooked. But our labor wasn’t finished. We sorted what we had in our nets—abalones from conches, sea cucumbers from sea urchins, crabs from sea snails, sea squirts from sea slugs.
We then prepared our catch for sale: opening sea urchins and scooping out the roe, hanging squid to dry, and placing some creatures in buckets of seawater, so customers could see they were buying merchandise so fresh it was still alive. On some days, all this could take as little as twenty minutes. Other days, we were there for another two or three hours. So, while mornings in the bulteok were serious, the end of the day was filled with laughter, relief that everyone had returned safely, and bragging about what each haenyeo had caught. We were a collective, but not everything was divided equally. Algae and seaweed were weighed together, and the profits divided into equal shares. The money earned for harvesting shellfish belonged to the haenyeo who brought it in. How many kilos of top shell did a single woman have in her gathering net? The diver who found an abalone? That was a very lucky person!
The accepted ritual was for women to complain, and they did. The banter was loud, our ears still clogged from being under the water with all its pressure.
“My husband drinks my earnings.”
“Mine gambles away the allowance I give him.”
“All mine does is sit under the village tree to discuss Confucian ideals, as though he were a successful farmer. Ha!”
“Men,” huffed another. “They can’t help it. They have weak and idle minds. Men always put things off . . .”
“It’s true. They have puny thoughts. That’s why they need us.”
These were such common grievances that sometimes the women seemed competitive about whose husband was worst.
“I had to let my husband bring home a little wife,” another diver announced, “because I couldn’t give him a son. She’s a widow—pretty, young, and with two sons. Now all she does is whine.”
Mi-ja and I had talked about it, and we agreed we didn’t think we could bear it if either of our future husbands started a relationship with a little wife—a widow or a divorced woman who enchanted another woman’s husband into setting up a separate household for her. Or worse, if he went to live with his little wife in her home. These arrangements seemed too much about men having fun and too little about their responsibility to their first families. But one woman took a different view.
“Two wives mean two purses,” she recited, expressing how handy a second wife could be.
“A little wife can bring in cash, if she’s a haenyeo,” the first diver grudgingly agreed. “She can even be better than a daughter in some cases. But not this one. She doesn’t even give our husband pocket money!”
“The only way to prevent a husband from taking a little wife is to bear a son. You are nothing but someone’s servant if you don’t have a son who can perform ancestor worship for you one day.”
The women mumbled their acknowledgment of this basic truth.
“But what woman on earth wants her husband to bring home someone younger and prettier?” one of the older haenyeo asked, cackling loudly, bringing humor into the conversation.
“I do all the work. She gets to have a fun life.”
“Fun? What fun?”
The women chortled at the idea.
“We all know the saying,” my grandmother said. “It’s better to be born a cow than a woman.”
“Who should eat more—a man or a woman?” Do-Saeng called out, trying to change the subject.
The bulteok shouted in unison: “A woman!”
“Always a woman.” Do-saeng beamed. “Because she works harder. Look at me! I have chores in the sea and in the fields. I take care of my son and daughter. And where is my husband? A factory job surely must be easier than what I do.”
“At least your husband sends money home!”
Do-saeng chuckled. “But he’s too far away to stir the pot.”
I turned red. Stir the pot.
The woman who would have been Yu-ri’s mother-in-law returned to Do-saeng’s original question. “How can a man enjoy a meal when he contributes so little?”
“Let’s not be so hard on our men,” Mother cautioned, bouncing my brother on her lap. “They take care of our children when we’re underwater. They make dinner for us. They wash our clothes.”
“And they always ask us for money—”
The women roared with laughter.
“Not that I have much to give,” someone said, which set the other women to chattering again. “And the money I have, I’m not going to let run through his fingers—”
“Everyone knows that women are better with money—”
“Because we don’t turn it into liquor to pour down our throats—”
“You can’t blame our men for drinking,” Mother said. “They have nothing to do and no purpose to push them through the day. They’re bored. And think how it must be for them to live in a household that depends on the tail of a skirt.” She paused to let the women consider the aphorism and absorb the reality of what it might mean for a man to rely entirely on his wife. “At least we have the sea,” she went on. “For me, it is a second home, even my preferred home. I know more about it—its rocks and boulders, fields and canyons—than I will ever know about the interior of our island, let alone the interior of my husband’s mind. The sea is where I’m most at peace.”
The other women nodded.
When our work was finished—our harvest sorted, tewaks piled, and nets repaired—sand was thrown on the fire. In the same way we’d crossed the jetty together on our way to the sea, we strolled in a long line along the beach, up an embankment, and onto the pathway that edged the shore. Some women walked alone. Others were in groups of two or three—mothers-in-law with their daughters-in-law, mothers and daughters, and friends like Mother and Do-saeng or Mi-ja and me. Do-saeng lived right on the shore. She said her goodbyes, and we continued on, going inland. We passed through Hado’s main square, and sure enough a group of men sat under the tree, playing cards and drinking. A couple of women peeled off to grab their husbands and take them home. For me, when Mi-ja turned off at the olle that led to her aunt and uncle’s house, the day ended.
* * *
The next morning, Mi-ja wasn’t at her spot in the olle. When we got to the bulteok, Do-saeng wasn’t there either. “We’ll have to dive without them,” Mother said and then made her assignments. The true grandmothers and baby-divers would work the area at the end of the jetty. “Everyone else, we’ll swim out a kilometer. Since Mi-ja and Do-saeng aren’t here today, my daughter will dive with me. It’s time for her to harvest an abalone.”
I could barely believe what I’d heard. It was an honor far beyond anything I deserved as a baby-diver. As we changed into our water clothes, a couple of women congratulated me.
“Your mother taught me everything I know about the sea,” one of them said.
“You’ll get your abalone. I’m sure of it,” said another haenyeo.
I could not have been happier.