I giggled. “You’re right. I don’t like it when a man’s head is too close shaven—”
“Because you think it makes him look like a melon.”
“What about you and the way you ate your ice cream? Those poor boys!”
This is how we were: we affectionately teased each other. We knew these foreign men meant nothing to us. We wanted to marry Koreans. We wanted perfect matches. Last year when we went home for the harvest, Mi-ja and I visited the shrine of Halmang Jacheongbi, the goddess of love. Her name means “wants for oneself,” and we were clear about what we wanted. We made sandals from straw to give to our future husbands as engagement gifts. We also began buying things to take into our new homes: sleeping mats, chopsticks, pots, and bowls. My marriage would be arranged. The wedding itself would take place in the spring, when cherry blossoms swirled through the air, fragrant, pink, and delicate. Some girls knew their future husbands for a long time, having grown up in the same village. If I were lucky, I would get to exchange a few words with my future husband at the engagement meeting. If I were less fortunate, then I wouldn’t see him until the day of our ceremony. Either way, I dreamed of loving my husband at first sight and of a union between two people fated to be together.
When we entered the boardinghouse, Gu-ja and Gu-sun were sitting on the floor, bowls in hand, their stockinged feet tucked to their sides. We took off our coats, mufflers, and boots. The landlady handed us bowls of millet porridge flavored with dried fish. It was the same meal that we’d had the night before and the night before that and almost every night before that.
“Will you show us your rubbing from today?” Gu-sun asked.
“Please tell us what you saw,” Gu-ja added.
“Why don’t you come with us one of these days?” Mi-ja suggested. “Find out for yourselves—”
“It’s dangerous, and you know it,” Gu-ja replied tartly.
“You’re just saying that because you are now an obedient wife,” Mi-ja remarked.
I knew Mi-ja meant it as a joke—in what circumstance could a haenyeo be called obedient, after all?—but Gu-ja must have heard it as an insult because she shot back, “You only say that because no one will ever marry you—”
In just a few sentences, a mild inquiry had turned hostile. We all knew that Mi-ja’s prospects for an arranged marriage were challenging, but why deliberately hurt her when we had to dive tomorrow? The simple explanation was that we spent too much time together, our lives were in each other’s hands six days a week, and we were all homesick. The damage was done, however, and Gu-ja’s comment—so thoughtless—brought added darkness to the already dim room. Trying to shift the mood, Gu-sun repeated her initial question. “Will you show us what you made today?”
Mi-ja silently pulled out her father’s book. “You show them,” she said.
I took the volume from her and stared from it to her questioningly. We both knew the rubbing we’d made today was still in her pocket and not yet tucked into the book for safekeeping. Mi-ja was silently letting me know she didn’t want to show Gu-ja and Gu-sun our new image. Now she shifted her body so that her right shoulder blocked the view of her face from the rest of us. In the crowded room, this was her way of finding a little privacy so she could nurse her hurt feelings.
“Here,” I said, opening the book and leafing through the pages to show the sisters different rubbings from the world just outside this dreary enclave. “This is from the foot of a statue outside a government building. This is from the side of a toy truck we found left in a square. I like this one a lot. It’s the bumpy metal siding of a bus that we rode one day to a mountain park. Oh, and here’s one of some bark. Do you remember that day, Mi-ja?”
She didn’t respond. The two sisters weren’t interested either.
“Do you know the fortress we can see up on the hill when we sail out of the harbor?” I asked. “This shows how coarse the walls are—”
“You’ve shown these to us before,” Gu-ja complained. “Are you going to show us what you saw today or not?”
“Maybe if you were a little nicer,” Mi-ja said, her back still to us. “Maybe if you could be a single drop nicer.”
Her words were sharp, and Gu-ja went quiet, realizing perhaps that she’d gone too far. But what this exchange showed me was how much Gu-ja’s comment about my friend’s marriage prospects had stung. I understood with sudden clarity that Mi-ja might long to be married even more than I did. If she were married, she could create her own family with a mother, father, and children.
Later, we sat together under heavy quilts on our sleeping mats, sharing body warmth and whispering so as not to disturb the Kang sisters, who huddled together on the other side of the curtain on their sleeping mats. Mi-ja and I quietly examined the rubbing we’d made that day, comparing it to our others. We’d been friends since we were seven, and we’d been collecting rubbings for fourteen years. Commemorations. Remembrances. Celebrations. Memorials. We had them all, and they eased our loneliness and homesickness. And our worry too, since we couldn’t know when Jeju might be bombed or invaded.
As usual, the last rubbing we looked at was the first we’d made: the rough surface of a stone in the wall that surrounded my family’s field. My fingers smoothed the paper, and I whispered to Mi-ja a question I’d asked her many times before. “Why didn’t I make a rubbing on one of the days of my mother’s funeral or memorial rite?”
“Stop punishing yourself for that,” Mi-ja answered in a low voice. “It only makes you melancholy.”
“But I miss her.”
Once my tears started, Mi-ja’s came too.
“You knew your mother,” she said. “All I can do is miss the idea of a mother.”
On the other side of the curtain, the oil lamp went out. Mi-ja tucked the papers back in her father’s book, and I turned down our oil lamp. Mi-ja wrapped her body around me, pulling me tighter than usual. She tucked her knees against my knees, her thighs against my thighs, her breasts against my back. Her arm draped over my hip, and she rested her hand on my stomach. The next day we would wake early and be dropped into the bitterly cold sea again, so we needed to sleep, but the unevenness of her breath on my neck and the alertness in her body made me realize she was wide awake and listening hard. Across the room, I sensed the Kang sisters listening to us equally hard. But it wasn’t long before Gu-sun began her light, buzzing snore. Soon her sister was lulled by that familiar sound, and her breathing deepened and lengthened.
Mi-ja’s body relaxed, and she whispered in my ear. “I want my husband to be filled with grit and mettle.” She clearly had not let go of Gu-ja’s comments. “He doesn’t have to be handsome, but I want him to have a strong body to show he’s a good worker.”
“It sounds like you’re talking about a mainland man,” I said. “How are you going to find one of them?”
“Maybe the matchmaker will bring one to me,” she answered.
Marriage arrangements were made either by matchmakers or when a relative of high regard made inquiries. It was doubtful, at least from my perspective, that Mi-ja’s aunt and uncle would pay for a matchmaker, and Mi-ja had never spoken of a relative of high regard who might bring a proposal. Most important, mainland men saw Jeju women as ugly, loud, and boyish in shape, with our lean bodies and strong muscles. They considered us to be too darkened by the sun. Mainland men also had strict ideas about how women should behave, because they followed Confucian ideals far more than Jeju men did. A woman was supposed to be gentle in her speech. Mi-ja had a lovely voice, but if she kept diving, her hearing would eventually go and she’d shout just as loudly as any other haenyeo. If she married a mainland man, she’d need to maintain a peach complexion. How was that going to happen if she spent her days under the sun, in salt water, buffeted by winds? A mainland husband would want a wife who dressed modestly, but haenyeo were considered to be half naked all the time. A wife should have red lips, shiny eyes, and a quiet disposition… All these ideas about women were set in stone in the minds of mainland men. Jeju husbands might have been indolent, but they would never triumph in a battle about what a woman could or could not do, say or not say. I mentioned none of this, however.