“I thank you for your worry.”
Do-saeng smiled at me sadly. “Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren’t brave. Now you need to be braver still.”
This was her way of telling me that even though nothing had yet happened in Hado, terror could be visited upon this place, whether by the insurgents, the police, or the military.
My mother-in-law continued in a gentle tone. “Young-sook, you need to look forward. You need to eat. You need to help the baby inside you grow. You need to live and thrive. You need to do these things for your children.” She hesitated for a moment. Then, “And you need to start preparing in earnest to be the next chief of the collective.”
There was a time when I would have wished this above all else. Now, not only was my desire gone but the idea seemed an impossibility. “Chief of the collective? Even if we were allowed to dive, I couldn’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”
“When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree,” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.” She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she went on. “Have you never wondered the real reason that I allowed you to go out for leaving-home water-work when you were barely married to my son? I wanted to increase the speed of your training to become chief. What if something happened to me?”
But this was opposite to everything I’d believed about her. “I thought you blamed me—”
“Once I would have wanted Yu-ri to become chief,” she said, speaking over me, “but we both know she did not have the judgment for it. On that day . . .” Even after all these years, it was hard for her to talk about what happened. “You showed courage, even though it was your first dive. Becoming a haenyeo chief is what your mother planned for you too. She was a good mother to you, and she trusted you. You have been a good mother to your children, but now you must be an even better and stronger mother. Children are hope and joy. On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”
I used to think mothers-in-law are difficult the world over, but on that day I came to understand that they’re simply unknowable. Their motives. The things they say. Who they choose for their sons or daughters to marry. Whether they share the way they make kimchee with you or not. But one thing was clear: for all the losses Do-saeng had suffered, which were at least equal to mine but perhaps far worse since she had no son left to care for her when she went to the Afterworld, she’d continued to live. Yet again I was faced with the most basic truth, the one that I’d learned when my mother died: when the end comes, it’s over. Plain and simple. There’s no turning back the clock, no way to make amends, no way, even, to say goodbye. But I also remembered how my grandmother had said, “Parents exist in children.” Jun-bu existed in our unborn baby, in all our children. I now had to follow my mother-in-law’s advice and draw strength from the things I’d learned, if only to protect this tiny bit of my husband I carried in my belly. I would live because I could not die.
* * *
When July came, the seas, wind, and air went hot and still. My pregnancy was now unmistakable. At six months, my belly ballooned out bigger than for any of my previous pregnancies, even though I had less to eat. And whatever I was lucky enough to put down my throat came right back up. The vomiting I should have had in the early months came full force in the final months and wouldn’t leave. It felt like I was on choppy seas but couldn’t get off the boat. Not ever. I threw up in the latrine, with the pigs fighting beneath me to get what fell from my mouth. I threw up in the olles when I fetched water or gathered dung for the fire. I threw up outside our neighbors’ houses and in their houses. And still my stomach grew.
“Perhaps this is because you can’t go in the sea,” my mother-in-law speculated. It was true. I was too awkward to sneak out at night, scurry across the rocks, let alone lug a net heavy with harvest on my back, which meant I could find no refreshing chill of the water, no buoyancy, no quiet.
My father and brother laughed whenever they saw me, and they tried to revive my spirits by gently teasing me. Our neighbors offered home remedies to relieve my discomfort. Kang Gu-ja said I should eat more kimchee; Kang Gu-sun said I should avoid kimchee. One said I should sleep on my left side; the other said I should sleep on my right side. I tried all but one suggestion.
“You need to get married again,” Gu-sun said. “You need a man to stir the pot.”
“But who would want to marry me and stir my pot filled with another man’s child?” I asked, going along with the idea even though I would never do it.
“You could become a little wife—”
“Never!” Jeju, which had never had enough men, now had far fewer. There had to be many women like me—widowed, with children, particularly from the mid-mountain areas—who would need a man to give them security, but not me. “I’m a haenyeo. I can take care of myself and my children. A time will come when I’ll be able to dive again.”
Beyond all that, I’d loved Jun-bu. He wasn’t as replaceable as a broken diving tool. No, I could never become a wife or a little wife.