As the sun set, we walked to the water’s edge, where Shaman Kim made offerings to the sea gods. “Release Sun-sil’s spirit,” she entreated. “Let her come back with me.” She tossed one end of a long piece of white cloth into the waves, then slowly hauled it in, bringing my mother’s spirit with it.
The next morning, the winds were violent, making it impossible to keep the candles lit. Today would be about release: for my mother to be released from this plane and for us to be released from our links to her and from our torments. We began with the same pattern of weeping, wailing, dancing, and chanting, until Shaman Kim finally asked us to sit. Around me, I saw faces filled with sadness but also excitement.
“I greet all goddesses,” Shaman Kim declared. “You, esteemed ones, are welcome here. Please know every woman in Sun-sil’s collective has been touched by misery. We must heal those most in need. The spirits ask Sun-sil’s eldest daughter, mother-in-law, Do-saeng, and Mi-ja to kneel before me.”
The four of us did as we were told, bowing three times to the altar. Shaman Kim began with my grandmother, gently touching her chest with a tassel. “You were a good mother-in-law. You were kind. You never complained about Sun-sil.”
The mourners crooned appreciatively at these compliments.
Shaman Kim’s tassel came to rest on Mi-ja’s chest. “Do not condemn yourself for being sick that day. Fate and destiny took Sun-sil from this world.” At these words, Mi-ja sobbed. I’d been so consumed by my own sorrow, I hadn’t realized how Mi-ja might feel.
“She was the only mother I ever knew,” Mi-ja choked out.
Next came Do-saeng…
Hearing Shaman Kim console Do-saeng was perhaps the hardest part of the ceremony. She had already lost the lively daughter she had once known, and now her closest friend was gone. Shaman Kim used knives strung with long white ribbons to cut the negativity that surrounded Do-saeng. “Take away this woman’s shock and sorrow. Let the collective elect her as its new chief. May she lead her sea women with wisdom and caution. Please allow no more tragedies to befall this group.”
Finally, Shaman Kim turned to me. The touch of her fingers along my spine caused my back to relax. Her forefinger tapping my forehead opened my mind. The swish of the tassel across my chest exposed the depth of my anguish. “Let us repair this girl’s spirit,” she said. “Let her fly from grief.” Then she shifted away from me, directing her attention to the Afterworld. “I call upon the Dragon Sea God to bring Sun-sil’s spirit to us one last time.”
Before my eyes Shaman Kim opened her heart completely, and I heard my mother’s voice speak of her life, as was customary. “When I was twenty, I was matched in marriage. This was the same year of the cholera epidemic that killed my mother, father, brothers, and sister. I was an orphan and a wife. My marriage was not particularly harmonious or inharmonious. Then I became a mother.”
I needed Mother to say I wasn’t at fault. I needed her to tell me to be strong. I needed advice on how to care for my brothers and sister. I needed special messages of love for me alone, but spirits are under no obligation to say or do what we want. They are in the Afterworld now and have their own entitlements. It’s up to us to read the deeper meaning.
The shaman’s voice rose. Hairs prickled on the back of my neck as I was enveloped in love. “My life has been in the sea, but my heart has been with my daughters. I love my oldest daughter for her courage. I love my youngest daughter for the sound of her laughter. I will miss them in the coldness of black death.”
With that, Shaman Kim came out of her trance. It was time for more singing and dancing. Then we shared a meal from the sea—slivers of octopus, sea urchin roe, slices of raw fish. My mother had died in the sea, but we could never forget that it gave us life.
That night, Mi-ja stayed with me again, curling her body around mine. “Every year you will mourn a little less and release a little more,” she whispered in my ear. “In time, your sadness will melt away like seafoam.”
I nodded as though I understood, but her words offered little comfort when I knew she had never freed herself of the grief she felt for the loss of her own mother and father.
They say, When the hen cries, the household will collapse. But we don’t have a saying for what happens when the hen dies. As the eldest daughter, I had always been responsible for my younger siblings. Now I had to provide their food and clothing and be a second mother to them. My father was no help. He was a kind man, but he shuddered under the added responsibility. Too often I found him outside, alone with his sadness. No man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.
If family worries were not enough, the Japanese colonists gripped us ever tighter in the months after my mother’s death. She had once hoped to earn enough money to send my brothers to school, if only to age ten. The extra income I earned might once have helped pay their way. But even if we could have relied on my extra income, it was too dangerous, when those “lucky” boys who attended schools around the island were suddenly being forced to build underground bunkers to hide Japanese soldiers.
I felt pressured from every direction. I sought courage and inspiration in the ways my mother had. Wherever you are on Jeju, you can see Grandmother Seolmundae. I walked on the goddess’s flesh, I swam over and through her skirts, I breathed in air she had exhaled. I also had two living people I could rely on: Mi-ja, who was a survivor, and my grandmother, who loved me very much and had also suffered tragedies; and they trusted me to do my best for the family.
“Parents exist in children,” Grandmother said to bolster my confidence. “Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.”
And on those days when we walked to the sea and found Mi-ja waiting at her usual spot in the olle, Grandmother recited common sayings in hopes of comforting us two motherless girls. “The ocean is better than your natal mother,” she said. “The sea is forever.”
Day 2: 2008
The morning after the encounter with the family on the beach, Young-sook wakes early. She’s had a nearly sleepless night. All through the darkness, her mind was troubled, thinking about the foreign woman, her husband, and their children. She remembered all the rumors she’d heard about Mi-ja over the years: she was in America, living in a mansion, driving her own car, and sending money to her part of the village. But there were other stories too: she had a small grocery store in Los Angeles, she lived in an apartment, she was lonely because she was too old to pick up the language. Having met Mi-ja’s family, Young-sook isn’t sure what to believe.
She pads to the kitchen, heats water, stirs in tangerine marmalade, and sips the tart, citrusy drink. She goes to her kitchen garden to pick chives and garlic to add to her morning bowl of little-crab porridge. Then she returns to her room to get dressed, put her bedding away, and eat her breakfast. Dawn still hasn’t arrived.