No one else was nominated, and I received a unanimous vote. If there were others who wanted my place, I never heard about it.
I solemnly gave my first instructions and assignments. “Today we will enter the sea with caution. Let us be prudent for the rest of this diving cycle. Our spirits are worn, and we do not know what the goddesses and gods desire of us. We will make extra offerings. The baby-divers will stay close to shore. The small-divers and grandmother-divers will watch over them. We want to make sure everyone is safe the next time we go to deeper waters.”
My orders meant that all of us would earn less money for a while, but no one disagreed.
“As for diving partners,” I went on, “I ask Gu-sun if she would like to dive with me.”
Gu-ja stared down at her folded hands, afraid to glance at her sister.
Gu-sun gave an unexpected answer. “My sister and I have gone into the sea together since we were small children. I will be safer with her than with anyone else.”
A few women audibly gasped. For myself, a person who had held so much blame and anger within me, I could not understand her thinking, but I said, “If this is what you wish.” I ended our meeting with something my mother used to say. “Every woman who goes into the sea carries a coffin on her back. In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of this hard life.” Then I added a few words of my own. “Please be careful today and every day.”
I settled into my responsibilities quickly. All the training that had come to me from my mother and mother-in-law now flowed naturally from me, and I like to think I was respected for my judgment from the first day. Chief of the collective. I wondered what Mi-ja thought when she heard the news. Maybe she didn’t think anything, because she had problems of her own.
Gossip spread about Wan-soon’s last day of diving. “She was sick that morning,” the butcher’s wife told me knowingly. The woman who ground millet commented, “Who among us has not been ill in the first months of pregnancy?” “She spent too much time with Mi-ja’s son,” the weaver whispered when I came to buy muslin to make a dress for Joon-lee. I absolutely did not start these rumors. I’m not proud to admit this, but some days I wished I had. No act of retaliation would ever erase the pain Mi-ja had caused me, but this might have been a start. A good part of Hado had never trusted Mi-ja—the daughter of a Japanese collaborator and the wife of someone who had worked for the Americans and currently lived on the mainland. Now she had another black mark against her as the mother of the boy who might have gotten Wan-soon pregnant. “Maybe the girl was afraid to tell her mother,” the butcher’s wife said. “Maybe Yo-chan told Wan-soon he wouldn’t marry her,” the woman who ground millet speculated. Everyone had a theory, and they ranged from Wan-soon being distracted by her troubles to the idea that she deliberately let herself be swept away out of shame that she was pregnant.
My daughters remained surprisingly silent about the gossip. Joon-lee may have been too young and embarrassed to repeat the rumors to me, and I didn’t want to have a conversation about sex with her just yet, but I finally asked Min-lee if they were true.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, “you’ll always think the worst of Yo-chan and his family. He and Wan-soon were friends. The three of us just wanted to help Joon-lee learn to ride a bike. That’s all.”
I didn’t know if I could believe her or not.
The day arrived when Teacher Oh took Joon-lee on a bus to Jeju City for the competition. They returned three days later with wonderful news. Joon-lee had won. I bought her a bicycle, thinking it would prevent any future meetings between her and Yo-chan. This is not to say I didn’t have misgivings. “You really are going to get a big butt,” I warned her, but she just laughed and pedaled away. Then, as she disappeared around the corner, I realized the terrible mistake I’d made. She might not need Yo-chan to give her lessons any longer, but now the two of them could ride together and I couldn’t do anything about it except rely on the gossip of others to tell me what my daughter was up to.
A week after the competition, Teacher Oh paid another visit. “A happy day!” he announced. “Joon-lee has been selected to go to Jeju City Middle School.”
I should have been joyous, but my first thought was practical. “It’s too far for her to travel back and forth every day.”
“No travel will be required. She will board with a family.”
This was even worse. “She’s only twelve,” I objected. “I don’t want us to be separated.”
Teacher Oh jutted his chin. “But all haenyeo daughters go out for leaving-home water-work. Even you—”
“But I didn’t leave Hado until I was seventeen. And I had to go.”
“If Joon-lee does this,” he went on, almost as though he’d practiced his response, “she might be able to go to college or university on the mainland. Or”—his eyes gleamed—“maybe even to Japan.”
But he’d gotten ahead of himself.
“How can she leave Jeju for the mainland, let alone leave the country?” I asked. “The authorities would never allow it.”
“Why? Because your husband was a teacher?”
“We’re stained by the guilt-by-association system. We—”
“I prefer to think the authorities know you now as a haenyeo chief. Your mother and mother-in-law were also haenyeo chiefs. Maybe that will be a help. And it’s not as though she’s a boy who could cause trouble in the future. I’ve heard of many cases where sons are not admitted to school or military academies, while daughters have gone to the mainland for university and jobs.”
“Maybe that’s true for some, but I lost three family members during the Four-Three Incident.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “The higher-ups have already decided to look the other way in Joon-lee’s case.”
This took me aback. “How can that be?”
He shrugged. “She’s exceptionally smart. Maybe Dr. Park put in a good word…”
But now he was telling me another story. I spoke bluntly. “Which is it? The higher-ups will look the other way or Dr. Park helped? Or she’s smart enough? Or she’s not a boy?”
“Does it matter? She’s been given an opportunity that few will ever receive.” He scrutinized my face before adding, “Best of all, you won’t have to worry about her bicycling in the olles with a boy who’s older than she is.”
He didn’t need to say another word.
We packed Joon-lee’s clothes and her few books. The entire family walked her to the bus stop, where Teacher Oh waited for us. The road was busy with people walking to market. Women wore white scarves and carried baskets over their arms. Men had their pants rolled up to midcalf and horsehair hats pulled down over their ears. One farmer led a donkey, whose back was piled high with bulging burlap bags. As far down the road as I could see in either direction, there wasn’t a car, truck, or bus. Do-saeng, Min-lee, and I couldn’t stop weeping. My father, brother, and son stood off to the side, trying to camouflage their feelings. Joon-lee wasn’t sad, though. She was excited.
“I’ll come home for every holiday and festival,” she babbled breathlessly. “I’ll ask if I can come when Dr. Park next returns. I promise to work hard.”
I saw so much of her father in her—her love of family combined with an eagerness to learn, and her sense of responsibility combined with a desire to try new things—but when the bus came into view, her eyes finally got misty.