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 . . .”
PART III
Fear
1947–1949
The Shadow of a Nightmare