When July came, the seas, wind, and air went hot and still. My pregnancy was now unmistakable. At six months, my belly ballooned out bigger than for any of my previous pregnancies, even though I had less to eat. And whatever I was lucky enough to put down my throat came right back up. The vomiting I should have had in the early months came full force in the final months and wouldn’t leave. It felt like I was on choppy seas but couldn’t get off the boat. Not ever. I threw up in the latrine, with the pigs fighting beneath me to get what fell from my mouth. I threw up in the olles when I fetched water or gathered dung for the fire. I threw up outside our neighbors’ houses and in their houses. And still my stomach grew.
“Perhaps this is because you can’t go in the sea,” my mother-in-law speculated. It was true. I was too awkward to sneak out at night, scurry across the rocks, let alone lug a net heavy with harvest on my back, which meant I could find no refreshing chill of the water, no buoyancy, no quiet.
My father and brother laughed whenever they saw me, and they tried to revive my spirits by gently teasing me. Our neighbors offered home remedies to relieve my discomfort. Kang Gu-ja said I should eat more kimchee; Kang Gu-sun said I should avoid kimchee. One said I should sleep on my left side; the other said I should sleep on my right side. I tried all but one suggestion.
“You need to get married again,” Gu-sun said. “You need a man to stir the pot.”
“But who would want to marry me and stir my pot filled with another man’s child?” I asked, going along with the idea even though I would never do it.
“You could become a little wife—”
“Never!” Jeju, which had never had enough men, now had far fewer. There had to be many women like me—widowed, with children, particularly from the mid-mountain areas—who would need a man to give them security, but not me. “I’m a haenyeo. I can take care of myself and my children. A time will come when I’ll be able to dive again.”
Beyond all that, I’d loved Jun-bu. He wasn’t as replaceable as a broken diving tool. No, I could never become a wife or a little wife.
Anyway, I had a different theory for why I was so big. My muscles, which had always been so strong, had been stretched beyond their limit by what I’d experienced and by what was still happening around me. Since the first of the year, dozens of villages had been burned to the ground, and more of the population had been killed. Among them were many innocents. I felt like I carried all of them inside me. My mother-in-law and I made spirit tablets for Yu-ri, Jun-bu, and Sung-soo, and we bowed to them every day and made offerings, but nothing soothed my discomforts. My back and legs ached constantly. My feet, ankles, face, and fingers swelled. I couldn’t get comfortable on my sleeping mat. In fact, it was hard for me to get up from and down onto the floor. Min-lee complained that I would no longer pick her up. I felt damp and sweaty in every crevice. My tears, for the most part, had dried, but there were times I still thought about dying. I could swim out across the path of moon shadows late at night until I wouldn’t have the strength to return to shore. I could drink poison, throw myself in the well, or slice open my wrists with my diving knife. I so much wanted to find peace.
In August, the weather changed as winds stirred on the East China Sea and raced unobstructed across the waters until they smacked into Jeju, telling us a typhoon was coming. Do-saeng promised we’d be safe. She said that her husband’s great-grandfather had built these houses and that they’d withstood every typhoon that had passed over the island. Still, I was frightened and longed to move inland to my family home. The typhoon that hit us wasn’t the worst we’d ever experienced, but we were all so much weaker in our bodies and minds that the impact was just one more remorseless blow. Lashing winds and savage gusts whipped the island. Massive waves roiled over the shore and into houses. Violent rain came in horizontally. Boats were smashed on the rocks. Those few families that had crops saw them drowned or washed away. Once the rain stopped, the churning seas settled, and the sun came out, I saw that Do-saeng was right. Many people had lost their homes or had their roofs ripped off, and a wall of the bulteok had collapsed, but we were unscathed. I helped my neighbors gather the stones from fallen walls and cut thatch for their roofs. All the members of the collective worked together to rebuild our bulteok, bathing enclosures, and the stone wall that created the pool in the shallows we used for catching anchovies.
We received yet another setback in September, when insurgents entered Hado and burned the elementary school. Fortunately, it happened at night and no kids were there. At the beginning of October, the hillsides climbing Grandmother Seolmundae went aflame not with another village being burned but with the fiery colors of the season. This was a reminder to us that whatever was happening between men would pass, and nature would endure with her cycles and beauty. People in Hado were still working hard, seeing what, if anything, they could plant for the winter months, and mending nets and other sea tools in hopes that the haenyeo would be allowed back in the water at some point. This was not a display of optimism. We were just trying to stay alive.
There came a day when I noticed that Do-saeng was being unusually quiet. No joking. No bossing. No nothing. I told myself she was unused to having small children in her life, and their laughter, crying, and demanding ways were heartbreaking reminders of the son and daughter she’d lost. My father and brother came to help me with the children. Only instead of taking them to the village tree, as they once did, they played with them in the courtyard. They said they wanted to keep the family close in case the Ninth Regiment should arrive. When my brother, father, or Do-saeng offered to fetch water from the well, I agreed. What could an immensely pregnant woman—who had about as much swiftness in her as a stranded whale—do to protect herself if military men or insurgents decided they wanted to rape or kill her? For the first time in my life I let others take care of me. Then one day it all became clear.
I was in my ninth month and home alone. My mother-in-law had gone to the five-day market in Sehwa to see what staples she could buy. My father and brother had taken the children to my old family home, so I could nap. But as soon as they left and silence fell over the house, my mind got itchy with images and memories. To distract myself, I swept the courtyard. Then I decided to wash the children’s clothes and let them dry in the sun. I tied their garments in a piece of cloth, grabbed the bucket, washboard, and soap, and carefully picked my way across the rocks to the shallow area enclosed by rocks where we could wash clothes and our bodies without being seen. Stepping inside was like entering a bulteok: I never knew who would be there, but I looked forward to hearing the gossip. This time, a lone woman sat in the water, naked, scrubbing an arm and humming to herself. I recognized who she was by the curve of her spine. My insides spasmed protectively around my baby.
“Mi-ja.”
Her back stiffened at the sound of my voice. Then she slowly tilted her head to the side to peer at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re as big as everyone says.”
That’s what she had to say to me?
“What are you doing here?” I choked out.
“My son and I live here now.” After a long pause, she added, “In my aunt and uncle’s house. Our home in Hamdeok and my in-laws’ house in Jeju City were destroyed by the typhoon. My husband has gone to the mainland. He’s working in the government. I—”