I could have taken this as an insult, but I was more concerned with the humbling change in Mi-ja.
I stepped forward and bowed again. “My husband is looking forward to meeting you.”
Sang-mun regarded Mi-ja out of the corner of his eye. She was frozen in place. She was, I realized, afraid of him.
“I’m looking forward to this too,” he said at last. “Shall we go then?”
When we got to the house and Sang-mun slipped off his shoes and entered, he seemed to relax. Dinner was another matter. Men! What is it about their natures that they feel compelled to gain ground and debate points over which they have no power or control?
“The Japanese will always be in power,” Sang-mun maintained. “What need do we have to resist them?”
“The Korean people, especially here on Jeju, have fought against every invader,” Jun-bu reasoned. “Eventually we’ll rise up and expel the Japanese.”
“When? How? They’re too powerful.”
“Maybe. But maybe they’re fighting too many battles in too many places,” Jun-bu countered. “Now that the Americans are in the war, the Japanese are sure to lose territory. When they begin to retreat, we’ll be ready.”
“Ready? Ready for what?” Sang-mun shot back “They’ll conscript any and every man, no matter his age, education, marital status, or loyalty!”
This wasn’t an idle threat. My own brothers had been taken. We still didn’t know where they were or if we’d ever see them again.
“And consider this, my friend,” Sang-mun went on. “What will happen to people like you when the Japanese triumph, as they surely will?”
“Like me? What does that mean?”
“You’re studying abroad. You’ve picked up foreign ideas. It sounds like you’re an instigator, but are you a communist too?”
My husband laughed long and hard.
“You laugh now,” Sang-mun said, “but when the Japanese win—”
“If they win—”
“They’ll kill traitors and people who speak traitorous words. You need to be careful, brother,” Sang-mun warned. “You never know who might be listening.”
Mi-ja squeezed my hand to reassure me, but her husband had sown seeds of uncertainty in me.
* * *
September 14 arrived, and it was time for my husband to return to Japan for his final year of study. Our last night together was filled with kisses and words of love. The next morning, when he boarded a small motorboat to take him to the main port, I surprised myself by weeping. This girl, who’d been so disappointed in her match, had grown to love her husband after barely four weeks of marriage. In this I was lucky—as Grandmother and Mi-ja had pointed out even before the wedding—for not all brides had amicable feelings toward the men with whom they shared their sleeping mats. I would miss Jun-bu, and already I worried about him being far from me when war raged all around us.
The next day, still following our routine, Mi-ja arrived. I took her to visit the goddess, but what good would it do me when my husband was away? We made our offerings and then on the way home sat together on a hill overlooking the sea.
“This will be my last visit for a while,” she confided. “My husband leaves in two days. He will travel the length of Korea to make sure the Japanese military convoys get where they need to go. Supervising loading and unloading, as you’ve heard. The Japanese trust him, and he says this is a big promotion. My mother-in-law has decided I don’t need to visit the goddess if he isn’t here to plant a baby.”
These few weeks had been a gift, but now we were to be separated again. I felt lonely and alone already.
A Golden Rope
October 1944–August 1945
“I come to you as leader of the collective,” Kim In-ha, a woman from the Seomun-dong neighborhood of Hado, said to my mother-in-law. “I’m looking to fill a big boat with twenty haenyeo for leaving-home water-work. We’ll be going to Vladivostok for nine months and returning, as usual, in time for the August sweet potato harvest.”
It was the end of October, and my husband had been gone for six weeks. Do-saeng and I had arrived early at the bulteok and found Kim In-ha waiting for us. Now the two of them sat across from each other on opposite sides of the fire pit. A young apprentice had already gotten the flames going, and a pot of water sat on a grill. I’d been sorting through my gear, but I stopped when I heard the word Vladivostok. I’d earned good wages there the last couple of years.
“Twenty haenyeo. Impressive,” Do-saeng said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for young married women, who don’t yet have children,” In-ha answered. “Yes, they get homesick sometimes, but they’re still too inexperienced to suspect their husbands might start sharing love with a village woman or look for a little wife. They aren’t worrying if their children are sick or getting into trouble. I believe it’s important to have haenyeo whose emotions are calm and not troubled by thoughts of menfolk.”
It was a long-winded way of saying she’d come for me. I felt pleased and excited. It would be fun to go again. Doing chores for my mother-in-law and obeying her orders in the bulteok—as good and wise as they were—grated against me. Taking care of Yu-ri in the afternoons, when she was fussy and fitful, was always hard. And not having my husband to love me or Mi-ja to comfort me had left me in a restive and ill-humored mood. But when my mother-in-law said exactly what I wished her to say—“May I suggest my daughter-in-law?”—a black rock crushed the pit of my stomach. Do-saeng was too willing to let me go.
“In terms of age, she’s a baby-diver,” she went on. “But her skills are good enough to qualify her as a small-diver.” This was the first time I’d been officially called a small-diver, and a part of me was honored, but the black stone didn’t melt away. “She’s a hard worker, but the best thing I can say about her is that her husband is away, so she won’t miss him any more than she already does. And it seems she and my son were not together long enough for baby making to occur.”
That’s when I wondered just how deeply Do-saeng didn’t want me around. Grandmother had been wrong, and I was right. Do-saeng would always blame me for the roles she suspected I’d played in Yu-ri’s accident and my mother’s death. If I could help pay for my husband’s education, so be it, as long as I was gone from her sight. All right, then. I didn’t want to live with her either.
* * *
Five days later, when it was still dark, I packed a bag, picked up my sea-woman tools, and walked by myself to my family home, where I gave advice to Little Sister: “Stay close to others when you’re diving. Learn with your ears. Learn with your eyes. Most of all, stay safe.” I warned Third Brother: “Obey your sister. Stay in the house. Don’t let yourself be seen by the Japanese.” I said goodbye to my father, but I wasn’t sure if he’d remember by the time the sun rose. Then I walked out along the jetty and boarded the boat to take me and a couple of other young brides from other parts of Hado to the port. I felt my spirits rise.
I found In-ha and the rest of the divers she’d hired waiting by the gangplank to the ferry. I spotted one or two girls I knew from other visits abroad, but the rest were strangers to me. I was surreptitiously looking from girl to girl, trying through subtle signals to figure out who I’d want to partner with—who had strong legs and arms hidden under her clothes, who looked responsible or like a risk taker, who seemed like she might talk too much or keep too quiet—when I spotted Mi-ja, gazing straight at me, patiently waiting for me to find her, a bemused smile on her face.
“Mi-ja!” I ran to her and dropped my bag and other gear at our feet.
“I’m coming with you,” she announced.
“Your mother-in-law is letting you go?”