“I don’t care about looks so much,” I offered.
“You do too!” Mi-ja exclaimed.
Across the room, Gu-sun’s snoring snagged, and her sister rolled over.
“All right,” I admitted quietly after the Kang sisters settled once again. “I do. I don’t want someone who’s as thin as chopsticks. I want him to be dark skinned to show he’s not afraid of laboring in the sun.”
Mi-ja gave a throaty laugh. “So we both want men who will work.”
“And he should have a good character.”
“Good character?”
“Mother always said a haenyeo should not be greedy. Shouldn’t that be true for a man too? I don’t want to see greedy eyes or be around greedy hands. And he has to be brave.” When Mi-ja didn’t comment, I went on. “The most important thing is to marry a boy from Hado. That way I can continue to see and help my family. If you marry one too, we’ll both maintain our diving rights. Remember, if you marry out, then you’ll have to be accepted into that village’s collective.”
“More important, if I marry out, we’d no longer be together,” she said, pulling me even closer until nothing could separate us, not even a piece of paper. “We must stay together always.”
“Together always,” I echoed.
We drifted into silence. I was getting sleepy, but I had a few last thoughts I wanted to share with her. I whispered some of the biggest complaints about Jeju men that I’d always heard. “I don’t want a husband with puny thoughts. I won’t tolerate a husband who needs scolding—”
“Or requires constant attention to know I care for him,” she added. “He can’t drink, gamble, or desire a little wife.”
There, in the nighttime shadows, we could dream.
When Thoughts Turn to Weddings
When the season ended in late July, the Kang sisters, Mi-ja, and I boarded a ferry from Vladivostok to the Korean mainland and then took a second ferry down the east coast to Busan. Before catching the boat to Jeju, we went shopping. We were careful to speak Japanese in public as the colonists required. The Kangs quickly made their purchases and headed home. Mi-ja and I didn’t have husbands and babies who missed us, which allowed us to spend an extra day wandering the alleyways and open-air markets.
We patronized a stall that sold grain and came away with burlap sacks stuffed with barley and low-grade rice. One by one, we heaved them onto our shoulders and took them back to our guesthouse. A cloth peddler sold us quilts, which we rolled up tight to reduce their bulk and make them more portable. These we would take into our marriages. I spent a week’s earnings on a transistor radio, thinking this would make a good present for my future husband, while Mi-ja chose a camera for her future husband. I bargained hard for practical gifts for my siblings: a length of cloth, needles and thread, a knife, and the like. Father would receive a pair of shoes, and for Grandmother I bought socks to keep her warm on winter nights. Mi-ja and I chipped in to buy material to make scarves for Yu-ri, which we planned to sew on the trip home. Mi-ja also procured items for her aunt and uncle. Several times I spotted her standing motionless, staring into the distance, trying to remember all the things they’d asked her to bring home. On a few occasions, we went our separate ways, but for the most part we stayed together, haggling for better prices, smiling at merchants if we thought it would help, shouting in our loud haenyeo voices if it looked like they thought we were mere factory girls.
“We’ll buy six bags instead of two for me and three for her,” Mi-ja might say, her near-perfect Japanese conveying the steel in her heart, “but only if you give us a good price.”
When we were done, we still had enough money to pay for our room, buy deck-only tickets on the Jeju-bound ferry, share a simple meal, and have enough left over to help with wedding celebrations that had yet to be arranged. Getting everything to the dock took time. We didn’t want to leave our goods unattended, so one of us carried bags and boxes from the security of our room to the dock, while the other stood guard over our growing pile. Then we took turns moving everything from our pile up the gangplank and into a sheltered corner we’d found on the deck near a group of haenyeo, who were also returning home. One haenyeo wouldn’t steal from another. We didn’t need to worry about strangers trying to get our things off the boat when we were at sea either.
The crossing was rough, but the skies were clear. Mi-ja and I stood at the prow of the ferry, holding on to the railing, bouncing across the waves. Finally, far in the distance, Grandmother Seolmundae—Mount Halla—came into view. I was eager to be on my island. My desire made me impatient, though, and it felt like the crew took an eternity to bring the ferry past the breakwater and into the man-made harbor.
From the deck, we could see that the past nine months had brought many changes. There were far more—yes, absolutely, more—Japanese soldiers than we’d seen on the mainland, and certainly more than we’d seen before in Jeju City’s harbor. Some of them stood at attention at each point of entry, exit, and transaction. Others marched in formation, with their bayonet-tipped rifles propped on their shoulders. A few were apparently off duty, and they lounged against walls or sat on crates with their legs swinging. We’d been on our own in Vladivostok, and we were accustomed to men whistling at us or calling out words we couldn’t understand, but it had all seemed harmless enough. This felt different. The soldiers’ eyes followed us as we took turns unloading our belongings and purchases, with one person staying on the dock and the other doing the carrying. They couldn’t do anything to us when there were still so many passengers greeting families, businessmen striding purposefully through the crowd, and others unloading their trunks and suitcases. Most haenyeo unloaded faster than we did, however, and within minutes, Mi-ja and I were the last women left on the dock.
Three more things struck me. First, our port smelled just as bad as any other I’d visited—fetid with diesel fuel and fish. Second, the local boys, who usually crowded the docks looking for work when ships and ferries landed, were not in evidence. And third, seeing all the Japanese soldiers, sailors, and guards recalled the time the patrol came into our field. But we were older now—twenty-one—and we must have looked attractive to them. Mi-ja seemed to have noticed their interest too, because she asked, “What are we going to do? I’m not about to leave you here by yourself.”
“And I won’t let you walk alone to the recruiter’s stand.”
I caught sight of a soldier eating a piece of fruit a few meters away. The way he leered at us…
“You appear to need help. Is there something I can do for you?” a voice asked in Japanese. Mi-ja and I turned. I expected to see a Japanese man, but he clearly wasn’t. (What a relief.) And I doubted he was a native-born Jeju man, because he wore trousers, a white shirt with a collar, and a jacket that zipped in front. He wasn’t much taller than we were, but he was stocky. It was hard to tell, dressed the way he was, whether his bulk was from hard work or too much food.
Mi-ja dipped her chin as she explained the practicalities of getting our possessions to the pickup spot. The whole time she was speaking, he stared at her attentively, which gave me a chance to get a better look at him without either of them noticing. His hair was black, and his skin wasn’t too tanned. He was handsome in a way that was familiar to me—not like those Soviets, and not at all like a Japanese. I started daydreaming… I wondered who he was. My thoughts turned to weddings. I blushed, and I worried that the expression on my face might give me away, but the two of them weren’t paying attention to me.