Part One
The oar breaks, but never the true timber from Hallasan
The rope snaps, but never the strong coils from Seonheul Cape
Warship on the ocean, please go away
Any direction at all but here
—from “The Songs of the Jeju Haenyeo,” recorded by the Haenyeo Museum
One
JEJU ISLAND, 1944
“Junja!”
Hands shook her so hard her teeth clattered like pebbles.
“Wake up, Junja!”
She’ll be forced to scrub abalone shells and carry buckets of water to the cistern if she doesn’t obey. But she’s so tired, she’d like to sleep now.
“Junja!” A slap landed hard on her face.
Her eyes opened—too bright!—she shut them.
Out of her mouth spilled the tides.
Junja’s eyes blinked open as she gasped.
Mother was standing over her, the sea streaming down her skin like silver. Junja started sneezing. Mother fell to her knees and cradled her head on her lap, stroking her hair.
“You are alive, Junja.” Mother’s hands were so warm. “You dove too deep, but the sea king returned you, and you are safe on land again …
Grandmother’s voice: “We must ask her what she saw while she was there.”
“Hush—not now,” said Mother. “Don’t worry her.”
Grandmother’s whisper was hot against her ear: “Remember your sea dream, Junja. When you wake up, dry and warm, remember the true dreams you dreamt under water …”
Wrapped in Junja’s fist was something hard and jagged that hurt. She opened her hand. Lying in her bleeding palm was a shell. She held it up to her mother, who shrieked while lifting it up high.
“She never let go!”
Shouts of joy and admiring murmurs. Junja looked around. She was lying in a circle of women all draped in wet ribbons of ocean, like Mother and Grandmother.
“You are a true haenyeo now,” whispered Mother. “You belong to the sea, like I do, and like your grandmother. You have visited the sea king like Sim Cheong, the beggar maiden, and returned alive, bearing his gift.”
Mother smashed the shell with a rock and clawed out the meat. “Eat this,” she commanded.
Junja turned her head. She couldn’t stomach any more of the sea.
Mother pushed the briny blob past her lips and made her swallow. The little piece of sea mass plummeted down Junja’s body, making her cough as it settled deep inside her.
She spat out a stone.
* * *
Ever since her near-drowning, Junja was allowed to follow her mother and grandmother to the seashore, instead of staying home to watch her little brother. That task now belonged to second sister Gongja, who was only eight but already knew how to make a fine millet porridge.
“I could probably cook a chicken too,” boasted Gongja.
“But you don’t know how to kill the chicken,” yelled Jin. “Or pluck out its feathers and clean the innards!
“Pretty soon you’ll have to take care of yourself, useless boy,” said Gongja. “Because I’ll be old enough to do water work with Ummung and Halmung and Junja.”
“Hush,” Mother said, crouching down to look her son in the eye. “Heed your noonah well. Don’t forget that Gongja is your mother while we are gone. Behave like a man. Both of you must weed the garden and feed the chickens. When you finish, write the alphabet three times. Over there, on the dirt near the garden fence, so the chickens can’t walk over it. Then, you may play.”
Mother rose to gather the supplies they needed for their day of work, dividing everything between her eldest daughter, her mother, and herself: picks, knives, scythes, hemp nets and rope, twig baskets, dried gourds, lengths of cloth, kindling, and fresh water.
The three of them walked down the rocky path toward the beach, large bundles balanced on their heads. The dawn sky was inky, but their eyes were accustomed to the darker pitch of the ocean. They navigated the shadows, their bare feet steering.
“Aigoo,” said Grandmother, “My feet are too old for these bad black rocks.”
“Aigoo,” said Junja, giggling, “My feet are too young for these bad black rocks.”
“Such noise!” scolded Mother. “You will wake the clams in their beds.”
“Tell me, what do you remember of your sea dream?” Grandmother asked, when Mother walked a few steps ahead of them to kick the large stones away from the path. Grandmother had asked this question every morning and every night for weeks, hoping that something would dart out of the crevices of her granddaughter’s memory and be caught.
“I cannot remember much, Halmung,” apologized Junja. “I remember falling and falling. Everything was dark and cold and wet. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t move. I remember thinking, ‘I am dead now. Instead of helping Mother, I am only bringing her sorrow.’ Suddenly, I could move again. The sea king and his maidens watched as I swam back up. I kicked and pushed toward the light. When I woke, I was holding something in my hand, something I knew I couldn’t let go.”
“You kept the pearl,” said Grandmother, “but you lost the treasure.”
Junja stayed silent.
“Your sea dream was the true treasure, but the sea king tricked you with a pearl so you’d return to this world holding onto a stone instead of the truth.” Grandmother sighed.
Mother had traded that pearl for a large sack of white rice and a new garden hoe. Junja didn’t understand how a dream could have been more helpful, despite Grandmother’s stories about her great-great-grandmother, who had captured a sea dream and shared its riches with everyone in her village.
“She dreamed her entire life in that sea dream. After she coughed the ocean out of her body, her mind cleared, leaving behind a detailed picture of everything that was going to happen in her life. She knew when typhoons would blow, which winters would freeze solid, and which summers would shrivel up in drought. She knew which parts of the ocean were teeming with delicious living things and where there were only barren rocks and sand. When she met the man she would marry, she told him, ‘I dreamed about you, and you will be my husband.’
“It wasn’t always easy to bear, knowing what would happen. Usually she would bite her tongue. On the day her mother drowned, she tried to stop her, begging her not to go out. The mother, wiser than her gifted daughter, continued on her way, because knowing never stopped the sun from rising or the tides from coming in.”
“Did your great-great-grandmother know how she’d die as well?” Junja wondered if knowing about your own death could somehow delay it.
Grandmother clucked. “She probably did, but she never told another person that secret. She grew so sad, knowing when everyone else would die, that all sorts of troublesome spirits were able to enter and cloud her mind.
“One night, she slipped and hit her head on some bad black rocks. When she woke up, she was as simple as a child of two. The villagers had to tether her to a tree so that she wouldn’t wander off a cliff. While no one was watching, she loosened the knots and slipped away. They found her body washed up on the beach, head cracked like an egg. It was the sea king’s way of reminding us that whatever comes from the sea will always return to it.”