I gathered what food and water I could carry. Beyond that and my two children, I didn’t have anything to pack. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I slipped out in the darkest part of night and creeped barefoot through the village, with food and water strapped to my back, Kyung-soo tied to my breast, and holding Min-lee’s hand. I’d stuffed her mouth with straw and tied it shut with a rag so she couldn’t make a sound until we were safely out of the village. We walked all night, skirting refugee encampments with their foul odors and pathetic cries. We slept during the day, curled together in the shadow of a rock wall surrounding an abandoned field. As soon as darkness fell, we started again, staying far off the dirt road that circumnavigated the island, hugging the shore, and avoiding anything that warned of human habitation—houses, oil lamps, or open fires. My entire body ached. Kyung-soo slept on my chest, but I now carried Min-lee on my hip in addition to the strain of the pack on my back.
Just when I felt I couldn’t go another step, the outline of Hado came into view. Suddenly, my feet flew across stones. I longed to find my father and brother, but my duty was to go straight to my mother-in-law’s home. I ducked into the courtyard between the little and big houses.
“Who’s there?” came a quavering voice.
I’d lived through so much, yet it hadn’t occurred to me that Do-saeng, one of the strongest women I would ever know, could be so cowed by fear.
“It’s Young-sook,” I whispered.
The front door slowly opened. A hand reached out and pulled me inside. Without the aid of glittering light from the stars, I was unbalanced, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Do-saeng’s rough palm stayed closed over my wrist. “Jun-bu? Yu-ri?”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, but my silence told my mother-in-law the answers. She choked back a sob, and in the darkness I felt her fight her body’s impulse to collapse in anguish. She reached up, touched my face, and ran her hands down my body, before caressing Min-lee—her hair, her sturdy little legs, and her size. Then she felt the baby on my chest. When her hands didn’t find a little boy, she learned that I’d lost a son too. We stood together like that, two women bound by the deepest sorrow, tears running down our faces, afraid to make a sound in case someone might hear us.
Even with the door and side wall used for ventilation pulled shut, we moved like a pair of ghosts. Do-saeng unfolded a sleeping mat. I lay Min-lee down first, then unwrapped Kyung-soo. With that, the cold air bit through the front of my tunic and pants, which had been soaked through with his urine. Do-saeng undressed me like I was a small child and wiped down my breasts and stomach with a wet cloth. Her hand paused for a moment on my lower belly, where Jun-bu’s child was just beginning to make his or her presence known. No words could express the grief and hopefulness that passed between my mother-in-law and me in that moment. Still feeling her way, she drew a shirt over my head and then whispered, “We’ll have time for talking later.”
I slept for hours. I was aware of things happening around me as dawn broke. Padding feet going in and out of the house. My mother-in-law prying Min-lee away from my side to take her to the latrine or perhaps to fetch water and firewood. Kyung-soo making a couple of squawks, and my being conscious enough to feel hands lift him from the sleeping mat and carry him to a distance far enough away that I would be neither terrified nor wakened. I heard men’s voices—low and worried—and knew they belonged to my father and brother.
When my eyes finally blinked open hours upon hours later, I saw Do-saeng sitting cross-legged about a meter away from me. Kyung-soo was crawling nearby, exploring. Min-lee was setting pairs of chopsticks on the rims of bowls that had been put on the floor. The room smelled of steaming millet and the tanginess of well-fermented kimchee.
“You woke up!” I heard in my daughter’s voice the fear that I might leave her or give her up. The poor child helped me to a sitting position and handed me one of the bowls. The food smelled delicious—giving off the fragrance of home and safety—but my stomach lurched and twisted.
“After the bombing of Hiroshima,” my mother-in-law said, unprompted, “I couldn’t accept what had happened. I didn’t have my monthly bleeding for six months, but my husband hadn’t blessed me with another life to bring into the world. I finally had to acknowledge that he’d died alone, without me or any family to care for him. The worst part was wondering if he died immediately or if he suffered. Like you, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep—”
“I thank you for your worry.”
Do-saeng smiled at me sadly. “Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren’t brave. Now you need to be braver still.”
This was her way of telling me that even though nothing had yet happened in Hado, terror could be visited upon this place, whether by the insurgents, the police, or the military.
My mother-in-law continued in a gentle tone. “Young-sook, you need to look forward. You need to eat. You need to help the baby inside you grow. You need to live and thrive. You need to do these things for your children.” She hesitated for a moment. Then, “And you need to start preparing in earnest to be the next chief of the collective.”
There was a time when I would have wished this above all else. Now, not only was my desire gone but the idea seemed an impossibility. “Chief of the collective? Even if we were allowed to dive, I couldn’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”
“When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree,” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.” She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she went on. “Have you never wondered the real reason that I allowed you to go out for leaving-home water-work when you were barely married to my son? I wanted to increase the speed of your training to become chief. What if something happened to me?”
But this was opposite to everything I’d believed about her. “I thought you blamed me—”
“Once I would have wanted Yu-ri to become chief,” she said, speaking over me, “but we both know she did not have the judgment for it. On that day…” Even after all these years, it was hard for her to talk about what happened. “You showed courage, even though it was your first dive. Becoming a haenyeo chief is what your mother planned for you too. She was a good mother to you, and she trusted you. You have been a good mother to your children, but now you must be an even better and stronger mother. Children are hope and joy. On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”
I used to think mothers-in-law are difficult the world over, but on that day I came to understand that they’re simply unknowable. Their motives. The things they say. Who they choose for their sons or daughters to marry. Whether they share the way they make kimchee with you or not. But one thing was clear: for all the losses Do-saeng had suffered, which were at least equal to mine but perhaps far worse since she had no son left to care for her when she went to the Afterworld, she’d continued to live. Yet again I was faced with the most basic truth, the one that I’d learned when my mother died: when the end comes, it’s over. Plain and simple. There’s no turning back the clock, no way to make amends, no way, even, to say goodbye. But I also remembered how my grandmother had said, “Parents exist in children.” Jun-bu existed in our unborn baby, in all our children. I now had to follow my mother-in-law’s advice and draw strength from the things I’d learned, if only to protect this tiny bit of my husband I carried in my belly. I would live because I could not die.