Now we were both desperate. She grabbed my knife and tried to slice through the leather. In her rush, she slit a deep gash in her forearm. The blood turned the water murky, making it even harder to see where she was cutting. Her legs began to kick frantically, trying through sheer strength to free herself from the abalone’s grip on the bitchang. I pulled on her arm, trying to help. I couldn’t last much longer…
Suddenly, Mother stopped struggling. She calmly set the knife on the boulder and placed her now free hand over my wrist, getting my attention. Her pupils were dilated—from the darkness, from terror. She stared deeply into my eyes for a second or two, taking me in, remembering me. Then she released her breath. Her life bubbles burbled up between us. Another second passed. She still held my wrist, but I placed my other hand on her cheek. A lifetime of love passed between us, and then my mother sucked in water. Her body jerked and flailed. I badly needed air, but I didn’t leave her side until she was gone, floating peacefully, still attached to the rock.
Since my mother’s body was easily retrieved and brought to shore, she would not become a hungry ghost. This was the only comfort I could offer to my grandmother, father, and siblings when I told them that Mother would never again breathe and her body would never again be warm. When pressed, I told them about her final moments. We all wept, but Father didn’t reproach me. Or, if he did, it was nothing compared to how I cursed myself. The suspicion that I was the cause of her death ate at me like lye. I was filled with misery and guilt.
Mi-ja came to my house the next morning. She had deep circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were hollowed from a day and night of stomach ailments. She listened as I explained what had happened through gasping sobs. “Maybe I startled the abalone with my kicking to the surface. I was so excited and proud of myself, but maybe I stirred the waters too much and the abalone clamped down on Mother’s bitchang—”
“Don’t blame yourself for things that maybe happened,” she said.
Even if she was right about that, I saw no way to remove my guilt.
“Why didn’t I retrieve her knife and just give it to her? If I’d done that, she could have worked on the strap herself. And worse,” I cried, “I didn’t know how to handle my knife effectively.”
“No one expects a baby-diver to have such presence of mind. That’s why we train.”
“But I should have saved her…”
Mi-ja had lost her mother and father, so she felt my pain in a way no one else could. She refused to leave my side. She held my hand when my father announced the official beginning of our family’s mourning by taking the last tunic my mother had worn to the roof, waving it above his head, and shouting three times into the wind, “My wife, Kim Sun-sil, of the Gul-dong section of Hado Village, has died at age thirty-eight. I inform you of her return to the place she came from.”
Mi-ja stayed at our house, woke up early, and helped me haul water and gather fuel for the fire. She assisted me when I washed my mother’s body, placed buckwheat kernels in her palms and on her chest to feed the spirit dogs she would encounter on her journey to the Afterworld, and then wrapped her in cloth. This act is a daughter’s greatest honor and her greatest desolation. Mi-ja dressed my younger brothers and sister in mourning white. She helped me cook sea urchin soup and other required dishes for the funeral.
Mi-ja walked by my side during the procession through Hado. She bounced Fourth Brother on her hip to keep him from crying. I carried my mother’s spirit tablet and took care never to look over my shoulder for fear she might return to this world again. The women from the bulteok followed behind us, helping us clear the road for the passage of the dead to her grave. Behind them, twelve men carried my mother’s casket. Many people lined the olles. Everyone wanted to be a part of my mother’s journey to the Afterworld.
The coffin was brought back to our house. Friends and neighbors placed offerings—sticky rice cakes, bowls of grains, and rice wine—on the altar. My mother and father’s marriage photo held the center spot. She was pretty when she was young—long before the sun, wind, salt water, worry, and responsibility had creased her face and turned it the color of saddle leather. But all I could think about was how she must look now: tinted permanently blue from the chill of the sea and iciness of death.
Mi-ja sat with me on the floor just before the altar, her right knee touching my left knee, as our neighbors offered their condolences and respects. When the coffin was lifted again, Mi-ja accompanied my family to the field the geomancer had told Father would make a propitious burial site for Mother. It was surrounded by stone walls to keep the wind from washing over her and animals from walking on her. Mi-ja stood by my side when the grave was dug. Together we watched as food was distributed first to the older men, then the younger men, then the little boys. Next came women, from old to young. Mi-ja, Yu-ri, and I barely got anything to eat. Some girls, Little Sister included, received nothing, which caused some of the haenyeo to shout in their loud ocean voices that it wasn’t fair. But what about death is fair? Mother was lowered into the ground in a position in harmony with the land itself, then some men helped position a stone carved with her name atop the grave. Forever after, I would come here to remember my mother, weep for her, and place offerings in thanks for bringing me into this life.
“You see?” Mi-ja whispered. “She’ll always be protected by the stone walls that surround us. You’ll always find her here.” She gave me a gentle smile. “Every March we’ll go to the mountains to pick bracken to give as an offering.”
After bracken is picked nine times, it will sprout again. The saying Fall down eight times, stand up nine reminds us of this and symbolizes the wish for the dead to pave the way for future generations. We would have many opportunities throughout the year to make different types of offerings, but later that day, after a permanent memorial altar with a spirit tablet for my mother had been set up in our home, Mi-ja was the first to place a tangerine on the table. When I think of the money she must have spent on that…
That night, Mi-ja lay next to me on my mat and comforted me as I cried. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. You’ll always have me.” These three sentences she repeated until they became a mesmerizing rhythm in my head.
But my mother’s journey was not yet complete. Over two days of twelve hours each, Shaman Kim performed a special no-soul ritual for the haenyeo collective to cleanse the spirit of my mother and guide her peacefully to the land of the dead. In addition, the shaman would attend to the living, because so many of us had been touched intimately by Mother’s death: I, for witnessing it; Do-saeng and Mi-ja, for being the vehicles that caused my mother to decide to help me get my first abalone that day; the other haenyeo, who helped free her and bring her to shore. The shock we’d experienced caused us all to be affected by soul loss.
The ceremony was held in an old shrine tucked inside a natural outcropping of stones on the shore. Women and girls came from neighboring villages, bringing vessels of cooked fish, rice, eggs, and liquor, which they placed on the makeshift altar next to a photo of Mother. It was not from her wedding day but was a more recent one showing her and a dozen of her classmates posed before the Hado Night School. To honor her diving partner, Do-saeng had her son write messages on white paper ribbons, which fluttered festively in the wind. This was not the only touch of liveliness. Even though it was a sad occasion, Shaman Kim brought with her rainbows of color and a cacophony of sound. Her hanbok was sewn in great bands of magenta, yellow, and blue. She twirled red tassels. Two assistants clanged cymbals, while another three beat drums. All this was accompanied by wailing and crying. Soon we were a mass of bodies swaying in dance. Then we began to raise our voices in prayer and song.