I WOKE UP to the sound of mewling outside my door and found CholSoo in a basket. His mom was nowhere to be found in the village, the cove, or the sea. By midday, the word had gotten around that she had left her baby with me and run away back to the mainland. Her husband, a red-faced captain of a fishing boat, soon came lumbering into my house, reeking of alcohol.
“Where’s that whore! I will break her in half this time. And where’s my son?”
“Jindo daek is not here, and I don’t know where she is. But it looks like she wanted me to take care of CholSoo,” I said as calmly as possible.
“You stupid wench, give me my son back!” He bared his teeth.
“I’m old enough to be your mother, watch your tongue,” I snapped. “Do you even know anything about raising an infant? Fine, take him, if you want to see your own flesh and blood starve to death. Because of your stupidity and stubbornness, you’re going to kill this innocent baby. Just like you beat up the mother of your own child.” I walked into the room and fetched CholSoo in his swaddling clothes.
“Here, take him if you have any idea how to feed and clothe him.”
As soon as the man leaned in, the baby started wailing. His father flinched, and I imagined that he had beaten his wife whenever she couldn’t quiet the baby quickly enough.
“I can’t stand that crying . . .” He grimaced.
“Go away now. If you want what’s best for your child, go away in peace.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of my gates.
CHOLSOO WAS A GOOD BABY. There were four nursing women in the hamlet and they took turns nursing him once a day. I paid them generously for their milk. For the other meals, I fed CholSoo a gruel made of ground-up rice. He always smiled when I came to pick him up; the top of his head smelled like milk and bread. When I heard his soft breathing at night, I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I no longer felt the need to take a walk before sunrise.
IT WAS EARLY SUMMER and the hills and cliffs were covered in pink rhododendron. Something I discovered also is that in Jejudo, the cosmoses bloom even in spring and summer. The sight of wildflowers and the sea made my heart hurt. That was why I sought out the water.
I took the baby to the cove with me and laid him in the bowl-shaped rock. The other women were already hundreds of yards out from the shore. I waded out alone to the shallows with my tools.
The water was so clear that I could see the colorful little fish from above the surface. One orange fish with white stripes, the size of my pinky, nibbled at my toe and then swam away quickly.
I put on my goggle, took a deep breath, and sank down. The rocks looked promising with their corals, sea anemone, and starfish, but I could only hold my breath for so long. I dove several times before picking up a single sea urchin. Maybe an hour had passed but I was already out of breath and worried about the baby.
I sank down for just one more dive before heading back to the cove. That’s when I saw an abalone wedged on a rock, a few yards away from me. I resisted the urge to come up for air and kicked my feet toward the bottom. I slipped my knife under the abalone and sawed it off the rock.
My head broke the surface and I gasped for air, delirious at the sun shining incandescently above the cliff. By the time I came back to the cove, the other women had already left with their morning catches. The best divers caught about twenty abalones a day, and I had only just caught my first one. CholSoo whimpered in his cradle, and I picked him up and rocked him side to side.
After I fed CholSoo his gruel, I sat down on a rock and held up the abalone. Its shell was covered in a thin layer of green seaweed and didn’t look particularly appetizing. But I’d seen the seawomen snack on raw abalone many times. I flipped it to its naked underside. When I lifted it up out of its shell, my knife ran into something hard in the slimy flesh. Round, lambent. It was a pearl, glowing pink and gray like a morning moon in my palm.
I stared at it for a long time and I just knew that JungHo was still watching over me. Even from the other side. And I will be the same way, letting go and holding on continuously until only the sea parts of me remain.
Life is only bearable because time makes you forget everything. But life is worthwhile because love makes you remember everything.
I tucked the pearl away in my clothes bag and walked out to the water. I floated weightlessly in the cool azure waves, looking up at the cloudless blue sky. For the first time in my life I felt no wish or yearning for anything. I was finally one with the sea.
Acknowledgments
This book would not exist without Jody Kahn of Brandt & Hochman, whose integrity, intelligence, and literary stewardship have guided me from the very beginning. An agent extraordinaire and a class act, Jody is one of the great inyeons of my life.