Лиза Си - The Island of Sea Women

“That was selfish of her,” Clara says on the recording.

“Not selfish. I loved her, and she loved me, but she never fully understood who or what I was.” Mi-ja gives a knowing snort. “And neither did I. It took me many years to see that I was different from those other women. I mean, of course, I was afraid of Sang-mun, as they were afraid of their husbands. I was in constant terror of what he might do to me. What made me different from the other haenyeo, whose husbands could be violent, was that I deserved Sang-mun and the punishment he gave me.”

“Granny, no one deserves what he did to you.”

“I did. My husband was married to a bad person.”

On the recording, Clara tries to tell her great-grandmother that she isn’t a bad person, and this gives Young-sook time to remember when she too had tried to argue this point with Mi-ja. Why hadn’t she heard what Mi-ja was truly saying? Why hadn’t she asked more questions? Even more painful is that this conversation had happened back when her heart had still been open to Mi-ja, or so she thought.

“I was a bad person,” Mi-ja now insists in Young-sook’s ears. “I killed my mother when I entered the world. I was the daughter of a collaborator. I let Sang-mun ruin me. But my greatest disgrace came when I didn’t stop what happened in Bukchon. From my birth to that moment, I lived a life of shame.”

In the recording, Young-sook hears Mi-ja weeping and Clara comforting her. Again, Young-sook is racked by memories, only they are of her own shortcomings. There’s a click, then another click, and the voices come back. Mi-ja is once again composed.

“To be ruined,” Mi-ja said. “You know what that means.”

“Granny, you’ve told me many times. You forget sometimes—”

“Forget? No! I will never forget. Young-sook and I were so happy. We’d just returned to Jeju from leaving-home water-work. Everything was so different on the dock. Scary. Sang-mun offered to help us. He looked man-beautiful, but he was evil. I don’t know why Young-sook didn’t see that right away, but she didn’t. I hated him from the first moment I saw him, and he must have seen in me the weakness of my bloodline. I was a person who would give in. He knew he could take advantage of that, and I let him. He easily separated us. Once she was out of sight, he took me to his office. When he started touching me, I froze. I let him pull down my pants—”

“You didn’t let him, Granny. He raped you.”

“I thought, If I don’t move or scream, then soon it would end.”

Mi-ja starts to cry again. This is all going back so much further than the events in Bukchon. Even when her own grandmother had hinted at what had happened to Mi-ja, Young-sook had refused to believe it, let alone ask more questions. She’d been too wrapped up in her own misery that Sang-mun had not come to Hado for her.

“I couldn’t tell Young-sook what happened,” Mi-ja says. “She would have been disgusted with me. Never would she have looked at me the same way.”

“Then she couldn’t have been a very good friend—”

Mi-ja’s voice comes back, surprisingly sharp. “Don’t ever say that. She was a wonderful friend and a great diver. She became the best haenyeo in Hado. She learned early on from Yu-ri’s accident and the loss of her mother how to protect those who looked to her for security and safety. Not one person died in her collective when she was chief.”

That Mi-ja would have known this about Young-sook should perhaps be more surprising. Or not. Young-sook had made it her business to know all about Mi-ja. Maybe Mi-ja had done the same with Young-sook. In the silence that follows Mi-ja’s outburst, Young-sook imagines how Clara must have felt in that moment—chastened, maybe even afraid or embarrassed—but for the first time she understands that, for all the anger and blame she’s held within her these past years, she herself failed Mi-ja in many ways.

“Young-sook was my only friend,” Mi-ja insists. “That’s why it all hurt so much.” Another long pause, then she continues. “You see, she liked Sang-mun. I thought she’d think I was trying to steal him from her.”

“Steal him?”

“There was always a part of Young-sook that was jealous of me. That I could read and write a tiny bit. That I got to work in the bulteok before she was allowed to enter it. That I was prettier. You look at me now and see an old face, but once I was beautiful.”

The shifting sea that has kept Young-sook unbalanced all day shifts again. She puts her fingers over the earbuds, pushing them farther into her head, trying to block the sound of the wind. Clara and Janet stare at her, watching her reaction.

“So either she would have been disgusted with me or she would have thought I’d gone with Sang-mun to hurt her.”

“Oh, Granny—”

“And later? If I’d told her after the killings, she wouldn’t have believed me. She would have only heard made-up excuses.”

The pause on the tape allows Young-sook to sort through this information. She purses her lips in acceptance of these truths about her own failings.

“I made a choice,” Mi-ja continues. “I sought out Young-sook’s grandmother and told her what happened. That old woman was fierce. I begged her not to tell anyone, but she went straight to my aunt and uncle. ‘What if the girl is pregnant?’ she asked them. Auntie and Uncle took the bus to Jeju City and confronted Sang-mun’s parents. They said if their son didn’t marry me, they would report him to the police.”

Young-sook tries to take this all in, seeking to understand things that happened more than sixty years ago. That Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle would have let her go into that marriage was one thing, but for Grandmother to arrange it? And then not tell her? With a chill, Young-sook remembers meeting Mi-ja in the olle after her engagement meeting. I told your grandmother everything. I begged her… And later, Young-sook’s grandmother’s triumphant demeanor when Mi-ja was driven away from Hado after her wedding. That girl has left Hado as she arrived—the daughter of a collaborator . Young-sook had loved her grandmother. She’d taught Young-sook about life and diving, but her hatred for the Japanese—whom she’d called the cloven-footed ones—and for those who collaborated with them had caused Mi-ja to be sent into a cruel and unforgivable situation. But it was Young-sook’s own blindness that had kept her from wanting to know the truth, and as a result she’d lost the sister of her heart. And later, Joon-lee and her family… But now… To understand everything is to forgive.

“After that,” Mi-ja continues, “it was as I’ve told you before. Sang-mun was forced to marry me. He considered it his duty to share love with me every night. He needed and wanted a son, and his parents needed and wanted a grandchild. They even sent me back to Hado, so I might visit the goddess with Young-sook. I’d longed to have a family of my own, but now I didn’t want to do anything that would help plant a baby in me.”

I’m not sure I want to have a baby. Mi-ja had said this directly to Young-sook on that first visit. If only Young-sook had questioned her more. But she didn’t. She’d been thinking solely of her own happiness.

“I was in constant fear of him,” Mi-ja continues. “When he escaped from the north, he was even worse. Sharing love. Aigo! What a lie that is! I didn’t know what to do, and I had nowhere to go. Every time I was as frozen as I was the day he first ruined me. And so terrified. He didn’t stop with me either. The way he beat your grandfather… I did everything I could to protect Yo-chan and raise him to be a good man.”