“Hopefully,” I said. “Let’s look together.”
I took her hand, and we swam down directly beneath Wan-soon’s float. I was immediately alarmed by what I saw and felt. We were at the farthest edge of the plateau. The current was strong here, and the vastness of the sea grabbed at us, but my daughter was too focused on the search to notice. I let her set the pace and depth, conscious that Wan-soon wouldn’t have been able to go faster or deeper than my daughter. We had not yet reached two body lengths when Min-lee stopped. Together we righted our bodies. Min-lee couldn’t hold her breath for much longer, but I needed to show her something. I held up my free hand to stop her from returning to the surface. Then I let go of her. The suck of the sea was so strong here that she was immediately pulled away from me. A look of terror passed over her face with the knowledge that she too might be drawn into a current that could take her body hundreds, if not more, kilometers away. I grabbed her hand and with the strength of many years of diving, I guided her away from danger and up to the surface.
Our search was over. We would not find Wan-soon today.
Once everyone was back on the boat, Gu-ja addressed us. “When we reach shore, I’ll send word to the haenyeo chiefs in the neighboring villages.” She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, but Gu-sun shrugged it off. “By the end of tomorrow, word will have circled the island and reached every haenyeo and fisherman. Let us pray to the Dragon Sea God and every goddess who has sway in the sea to bring Wan-soon’s body to shore.”
Gu-ja picked up her oar, and the rest of us took our places. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. Dealing with an accident or death is every haenyeo chief’s greatest torment. She must lead, even as she feels grief and culpability. My mother had not been responsible for Yu-ri’s greed or her encounter with the octopus, and yet the burden of what happened had weighed heavily upon her. This situation was different. Gu-ja couldn’t have anticipated this calamity, but the fact remained that she’d chosen this spot to dive out of jealousy and spite. That anyone died was terrible, but Gu-ja had to feel even more sorrowful because the victim was her niece.
* * *
It is said that after experiencing the vast unknowable sea, a daughter comes to know her mother and understand her for the first time. Indeed, on the day of Yu-ri’s accident I’d seen my mother in a new way. Now Min-lee saw me differently too. Every child should know that a parent will love, teach, and protect her, but during the Bukchon massacre my daughter had experienced something quite different. Now, for the first time, she absorbed deep into her marrow the love I felt for her. Still, the days that followed were hard. Min-lee was sick with heartache and regret.
“If I hadn’t looked away from her—”
“There was nothing you could have done,” I soothed. “You felt the current. You aren’t strong enough yet to have pulled her out of it.”
“But if I’d stayed with her—”
“You would have drifted away with her. I would have lost you.”
Once, in frustration, she blurted, “But I just don’t see how this could have happened. You were there for the fortune-telling. She received six rice kernels—”
I nodded in understanding. “We talk sometimes about fate and destiny,” I said. “And we like fortune-tellers to tell us our futures. Then we ask ourselves why Wan-soon received a good fortune and died, while other women received bad fortunes but are still with us. Even I have doubted. I’ve often questioned why the rice cake that Shaman Kim threw against the village tree during my marriage ceremony stuck, foretelling happiness, when so much adversity was coming. I have never found an answer.”
Min-lee buried her face in my lap to cry. I patted her back.
“But I wonder,” I went on tentatively, “if Wan-soon had a reason to be careless.”
Min-lee’s body stiffened under my hand. I wanted to say more, but Joon-lee came in to try to lift her older sister’s spirits. She sat on the floor next to us, opened her copy of Heidi, and began to read. Tonight, the story made Min-lee weep all the harder.
“Heidi and Clara were such good friends,” she managed to get out. “Wan-soon and I were like that. Now I’ve lost her.”
I tried my best to provide solace to my daughter, but I was also dealing with my own shaky spirits. When I wasn’t contemplating the plain truth that Min-lee could have been the one sucked into the depths, I was nibbling on the thoughts I’d had about Wan-soon in her last days: how white she’d been when Joon-lee broke her arm, which turned to sickly green the next morning, until she’d looked like she was going to throw up on the boat. When I wasn’t wondering whether I was the only person to suspect Wan-soon might have been pregnant—and if my daughter knew who the father was—I was pestered by thoughts of Mi-ja and how I could no longer turn to her for advice or consolation. When I wasn’t dwelling in that familiar shadowy abyss, I worried about Gu-sun and Gu-ja. One had lost her daughter; the other would be held responsible for the accident. The sisters had always squabbled and had bouts of jealousy, but they’d also been inseparable. I couldn’t imagine what they were feeling toward each other or what words could be said to bring forgiveness. This again brought Mi-ja to mind. I had once consoled her. She had once consoled me. Min-lee had now lost that. Gu-sun and Gu-ja may have lost that too. Then, in a moment of unsettling understanding, I saw how nearly all these occurrences had come as a result of Dr. Park’s study. His presence—and that of the other scientists—had rippled out, changing us and how we saw each other. We would not recover from Wan-soon’s death quickly, but other petty things—like Mi-ja buying her son a bicycle and Joon-lee breaking her arm—might still ripple out in ways I didn’t want to imagine.
After ten days, Wan-soon’s corpse still had not been found. With that, she turned from a tragically dead girl, who should have been buried properly, into a hungry ghost, who can cause illness and trouble for the living, but we also had to acknowledge the realities of the situation. Since word of the effort to find Wan-soon’s body had passed from haenyeo village to haenyeo village around the island, lots of people had to know we’d be holding a ritual, which was illegal. A total stranger could report us to gain favor from the authorities. We needed to stay especially alert and wary, so only those in our bulteok were notified of the date, time, and location. We met in a seaside cave about a twenty-minute walk from Hado. Gu-sun looked haggard, but her older sister seemed to have aged ten years. They stood together, wedded in grief. Do-saeng and I had Min-lee between us. Shaman Kim rang a bell in four directions to open heaven’s door and invite the spirits to join us. She slashed her sword through the air to expel any evil spirits that might try to attend.
“A woman who dies alone in the water has no one to hold her hand or stroke her forehead,” Shaman Kim began. “Her skin grows cold with no one to warm her. She receives no comfort from friends or family. But we also know that when the dead express concerns about the living, then it is accepted that they have become free of their grid of sorrows. Let us see what Wan-soon has to say.” Shaman Kim was known for her ability to sweet-talk, compliment, and negotiate with spirits. Now she addressed Wan-soon directly. “If you were unhappy for some reason, tell us, so we can help you.”