The younger women—noticeably fewer than even ten years ago—grab their gear and climb on the back of the truck to be taken to the boat. The Kangs and Young-sook gather their nets and cushions, then begin hobbling down to the beach. The sisters start in right away.
“Hey, old woman, thank you for this special treat!” Kang Gu-ja gripes.
“We love sitting in the hot sun!” Kang Gu-sun chimes in.
Young-sook should bite back at their teasing, but she’s noticed that half-and-half girl, Clara, perched on a rock. She wears a tank top and shorts that barely cover her crotch. Her bra straps show. Once again, she’s wearing earbuds. Young-sook’s great-grandchildren bob their heads when they listen to their music. Not this girl. She has a somber look on her face.
Young-sook changes course and walks straight to the girl. She keeps her Jeju words simple. “You here again?”
“I could say the same to you,” Clara says with a smile as she pulls out an earbud and lets the wire drip down her chest.
“I live here!”
“I’m visiting. I couldn’t take another day of sightseeing. I just couldn’t. Mom and Dad let me take the bus out here.”
“By yourself?” Young-sook asks, but inside she’s relieved the whole family didn’t come.
“I’m fifteen. What were you doing when you were fifteen?”
The old woman juts her chin. She’s not going to answer that.
Except for the clothes, Clara has Mi-ja’s eyes, legs, and manner. Young-sook should look away or leave or something. Instead, she says what she thought the first time she saw the girl. “So you’re Mi-ja’s great-granddaughter.”
“Great-granddaughter, yes,” Clara answers. “We shared a room, and she only spoke the Jeju dialect to me. She could speak English. I mean, she had to, right, having the shop and all? But her English was superbad. And you know how old ladies are. Talk, talk, talk. I had to learn it if I was going to understand her.”
The girl’s been speaking in the past tense. That must mean Mi-ja is gone. Young-sook focuses her eyes on the shell of a dead sand crab, which helps her control her emotions. Clara stares at her, though, waiting for her to say something. Young-sook settles on “Where have you gone? These sights—”
Clara flips a few strands of hair over her shoulder. “We hiked around Mount Halla Park. We climbed the Seongsan Ilchulbong Oreum to watch the sunrise. We toured Manjanggul—‘the world’s largest lava-tube cave system in the world.’ ” She sighs.
“Lots of natural beauty,” Young-sook says, but she remembers when people weren’t allowed on Mount Halla, when an oreum was for sitting on when you talked with a friend, and when the caves were places of hiding and death. “Mount Halla. We call it Grandmother Seolmundae—”
“But that’s not all,” Clara rushes on. “We’ve visited lots of museums or things they call museums or shrines or something. We went to where Jeju’s three founding brothers climbed out of a hole in the ground. And guess what. It’s just a hole in the ground! We went to a stone park. It had a bunch of stones. Stones! Then we went to this place to celebrate the life of some woman, Kim Something, who saved the people of Jeju during a famine.”
“Kim Mandeok.”
“That’s the one. They treat her like a god too.”
“Goddess.”
“And what’s with all the Swiss stuff? You know, like the Swiss Village and all the Swiss restaurants and the Swiss houses and—”
“Do all American girls complain?” Young-sook asks.
Clara shrugs, remains silent for a moment. Then she recites the new marketing slogan that’s been plastered on the sides of buses and on billboards in English and Korean. “The World Comes to Jeju, and Jeju Goes to the World! What’s that all about?”
“Tourism? The future?”
“Well, that’s dumb. Because it’s not like the world is coming here. It wouldn’t be at the top of my list.” Clara wrinkles her nose. “If it’s about the future, that’s even more lame. I mean, like, Jeju people seem to live in the past and not in the present. And certainly not in the future.”
How can Young-sook explain what she feels about all that to a fifteen-year-old? The past is the present. The present is the future.
The girl breaks into a grin. “Don’t get me wrong. I love to travel.”
“Me too,” Young-sook admits, glad to be on safer ground.
Clara’s eyes widen, as if she hadn’t thought of this possibility. “Where have you gone?”
Is it curiosity or impudence?
“I’d gone to three countries by the time I was twenty—Japan, China, and Russia. I went back to China last year. I’ve gone to Europe. The United States too. I liked the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. What about you?”
“Oh, the usual places. We live in Los Angeles, so it’s easy to go to Mexico or Hawaii on vacation. But we’ve also gone to France, Italy, Switzerland—”
“Switzerland? I’ve been there!”
“Figures. Switzerland and all—”
“Have you read Heidi?” Young-sook asks.
The girl tilts her head like she’s a bird and gives Young-sook a quizzical look. “I was named for a character in the book.”
“Clara, of course.”
“I’m not in a wheelchair, though. Don’t you think it’s…” She breaks off for a moment, trying to find the right Jeju word. Finally, she says, in English, “Weird?” Young-sook has heard her great-grandson use this word, so she recognizes it. “Weird,” Clara repeats before switching back to the Jeju dialect, “to be named for a character who’s disabled?”
Suddenly, a memory of hearing the story read aloud shears through Young-sook’s brain. She wants to go home, swallow some white diving powder, lie down, and close her eyes. “But Heidi helps Clara recover,” she manages at last. “The Alps. Goat milk. Grandfather.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Clara says.
Young-sook changes the subject. “I have to work.”
“Can I help?”
Young-sook surprises herself by nodding.
They pick their way over the rocks until they find a patch of sand. Young-sook straps her cushion to her behind and lowers herself until she’s sitting with her knees drawn up to her shoulders. The girl squats, and those shorts… Young-sook averts her gaze.
“You work pretty hard for a grandma,” Clara says.
Now it’s Young-sook’s turn to shrug.
Seeing she’s not going to get more of a response, Clara prompts, “So you travel…”
“A lot of haenyeo my age travel together. See those two women? They’re sisters. We’ve gone lots of places.”
“But you’re still working. Don’t you ever want to treat yourself? With something other than travel, I mean.”