How do we fall in love? The first time you see your husband’s face on your engagement day, you don’t know how your emotions will evolve over time. The moment your baby is wrenched from your insides, love may not be what you feel. Love must be nurtured and tended to in the same way we haenyeo care for our fields under the sea. With arranged marriages, many wives fall in love with their husbands quickly. For some, it can take years. And for others, decades of marriage will always be filled with loneliness and sadness, because we never grow the connection to that person with whom we share our sleeping mat. As for children, every woman knows the fears and sorrows. Joy is a delicious luxury that we experience most cautiously, for tragedy conceals itself around every corner. How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else ever will.
I remember clearly the first day I saw Mi-ja. I had recently turned seven. I lived a happy, if simple, life. We were poor, no better or worse than our neighbors. We had our wet fields in the ocean and our dry fields on land. We also had a small home garden next to our kitchen, where Mother grew white radishes, cucumbers, sesame leaf, garlic, onions, and peppers. While the vastness of the sea would suggest endless bounty, it was an unreliable source of food. The island had no natural harbors. The seas were rough. Our Korean kings had long barred our men from fishing in any significant way, and now, under Japanese rule, fishermen were allowed only rafts, with a single seat and a sail. (Or they could work on the large Japanese fishing vessels or in their canneries.) Many Jeju men were lost to rough tides, high waves, and strong winds. Long ago, Jeju’s men had been divers, but the Korean monarchs imposed such a high tax on their work that it was eventually given to women, who were taxed at a lower rate. It turned out that women had an aptitude for the work. Women, like my mother, were patient. Women understood suffering. Women had more fat, so they were better suited to endure the cold. Still, it was hard for Mother—or any woman—to make a meal hearty enough for a large family from sea urchin roe, turban shell, sea snails, and abalone alone. Besides, those creatures were not for us. They were for the wealthy—or, at least, wealthier—people on the mainland, or in Japan, China, and the USSR. All this meant that for most of the year my family lived on the millet, cabbage, and sweet potatoes that we grew in our dry field, while the money Mother earned from diving paid for clothes, house repairs, and anything else that required cash.
It was a wife’s social and familial duty to birth a son, who would lengthen her husband’s lineage. But every family in the seaside villages of Jeju was most grateful for the birth of a daughter, because she would always be a provider. In this regard, our family was not so fortunate, because we only had four females in our household: Grandmother, Mother, me, and Little Sister, who, back then, was only eleven months old and too young to help. Still, one day, she would work with me to help our parents pay their debts, chip in to build a better home for their old age, and possibly even contribute to sending our brothers to school.
On the summer day eight years ago when I first met Mi-ja, Father stayed home, as he usually did, to take care of my siblings. Mother and I set out to our dry field to weed. She looked like a misshapen melon. Her stomach bulged with what would soon be my third brother, while her back was bent under the weight of a basket stuffed with tools and fertilizer. I carried a basket filled with drinking water and lunch. Together we walked through the olles. In the village, the stone olles around houses were high enough to prevent neighbors from peeking inside. Once outside the village, the olles were about waist-high. Each plot of land was also surrounded by stone walls, which had less to do with limning a family’s property than with blocking the relentless wind, which could snap long-stemmed crops in two. No matter what their use, the olles were made from volcanic rocks so large they must have required at least two of our ancestors to put each one in place.
Just as we reached our land, Mother stopped so abruptly that I bumped into her. I feared we’d stumbled upon Japanese soldiers, but then she yelled, “You! There! What are you doing?”
I stood on my tiptoes to peer over the stone wall and saw a little girl crouched among our sweet potato plants, her hands digging into the earth. If Jeju was known for its Three Abundances of wind, stones, and women, it was also acknowledged for lacking three other things: beggars, thieves, and locked gates. But here was a thief! Even from afar, I could see her making calculations. She couldn’t escape through the opening in the wall, because that would put her in the olle with us. She leapt up and galloped to the far side of the field. Mother pushed me and yelled, “Catch her!”
I dropped my basket and dashed along the olle that edged the field. I turned left into the neighboring plot, galloped across it, scrambled over the far stone wall, and dropped to the other side. When I reached the next wall, I climbed to the top, and there she was on the opposite side below me, scurrying like a rat. Before she could sense me, I jumped on top of her and wrestled her to the ground. She fought hard, but I was far stronger. Once I’d pinned her wrists, I could see her face. Clearly, she was not from our village, because no one here was that pale. It was as if she’d been kept inside her entire life. Or she was a hungry ghost—a type of spirit who restlessly roams the earth and causes trouble for the living. Under any other circumstances, I would have been petrified. Instead, my heart thumped in my chest. The chase. The capture.
“Let me go,” she cried piteously in Japanese. “Please let me go.”
That’s when I got scared. We all had to speak Japanese for the colonists, but this girl’s tones were perfect. What if I’d tackled a Japanese girl? Then I registered the tears that ran down her cheeks toward her ears. What if I was caught torturing a Japanese girl?
I was about to free her when Mother’s voice floated down from above us. “Bring her to me.”
I looked up and saw Mother gazing down at us from over the stone wall. I carefully lifted myself off the girl, but I kept a firm grip on her arm. I pulled her to her feet and pushed her ahead of me. She didn’t have a choice but to climb over the wall. Once we were both on the other side, Mother slowly scanned the girl from head to toe and back again. Finally, she asked, “Who are you? Who do you belong to?”
“My name is Han Mi-ja,” she said, wiping away her tears with the heels of her hands. “I live with my aunt and uncle in the Sut-dong section of Hado.”
Mother sucked air in through her teeth. “I think I know your family. You must be Han Gil-ho’s daughter.”
Mi-ja nodded.
Mother stayed silent. I could tell she was upset, but I had no idea why. At last, she spoke. “Go ahead then. Tell me why you would steal from us.”
The words flooded out of Mi-ja’s mouth. “My mother died when I came out of her. My father died two months ago. Heart attack. Now I live with Aunt Lee-ok and Uncle Him-chan, and—”
“And they don’t feed you,” Mother interrupted. “I understand why—”
Defiance skittered across Mi-ja’s features. “My father was not a traitor. He worked for the Japanese in Jeju City, but that doesn’t mean—”