Lisa See

Do-saeng’s husband had given her one son and one daughter, and that was the end.

One day I too would have a loud voice.

Mother had offered to pay Jun-bu to write messages for Yu-ri on long paper ribbons. He did it for free.

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.

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.

Top-level haenyeo led us, but it was the presence of grandmothers, who remembered the time before the Japanese arrived, and girls like Mi-ja and me, who’d lived our entire lives under Japanese rule, that reminded everyone of our purpose.

When she was done, she came to my house, where Mother allowed her to help me sort through our old thatch to search for insect larva, which Mother boiled for us to eat.

She held my hand when my father announced the official beginning of our family’s mourning by taking the last tunic my mother had worn to the roof, waving it above his head, and shouting three times into the wind, “My wife, Kim Sun-sil, of the Gul-dong section of Hado Village, has died at age thirty-eight. I inform you of her return to the place she came from.”

In addition, the shaman would attend to the living, because so many of us had been touched intimately by Mother’s death: I, for witnessing it; Do-saeng and Mi-ja, for being the vehicles that caused my mother to decide to help me get my first abalone that day; the other haenyeo, who helped free her and bring her to shore. The shock we’d experienced caused us all to be affected by soul loss.

I needed Mother to say I wasn’t at fault. I needed her to tell me to be strong. I needed advice on how to care for my brothers and sister. I needed special messages of love for me alone, but spirits are under no obligation to say or do what we want. They are in the Afterworld now and have their own entitlements. It’s up to us to read the deeper meaning.